Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

Even as sleep pulled at me, and her—even as I wondered if I ought to tell her, not only how special she was, but how loved by me she’d become—I said nothing. I just held her, and in time she placed her hand in my own, and I drifted to sleep with my wife helping me tap out that soft rhythm against the place our child grew.

Sometimes, whether in lyrics or prose, or stuttered confessions deeply felt, you just don’t need words.

Elizabeth

Julian and I lay beside one another on his bed, his arm draped over my naked form. After everything that had happened, it still felt so goddamn right. I closed my eyes and basked in the glow of his warmth beside me, wrapped up in his silk sheets, too lazy to move. Too pleased to even entertain the thought of doing much more than stealing as many minutes and hours as I could with him.

For once, I could finally put a name to the reason why sleeping with Julian felt so much more fulfilling than it ever had with anyone else; I’d never really been in love with any of them. Sure, I had cared. Some of them were nice, and with some of them, we even ended up remaining friends. But in the end, it had never been about a relationship for either of us. Not really. It had been about connecting, about feeling wanted for a while, about getting laid.

And yet whenever Julian and I made love, I could feel the way that the two of us connected, our bodies moving in such sweet tandem as we eased each other into cresting and crashing. That was part of being in love, wasn’t it? Looking after your partner’s needs before you looked after your own? Making sure that they got what they needed? I’d never felt that for anyone I’d been with before. Not even my first time had been like that. Every other time, with everyone else, all it had ever been about was the physical.

But Julian made it about so much more than that—it was about being close to someone and knowing that they would be there, no matter what. It was about sharing something spectacular, some parts of us that no one else would ever know. I had read somewhere that married couples, contrary to popular belief, ended up having a lot more sex than their unmarried counterparts. Now I thought maybe I knew why. There was just something different about it. Something totally fulfilling.

My thoughts wandered slowly from the man beside me and finally to the child growing within. My child. Our child. The idea of becoming a mother had seemed so unreal, so abstract, before we saw the ultrasound. I could still feel Julian’s hand grasping mine as the technician showed us which shape among the countless others was ours. Not just mine, but also his. And I marveled at the distinction, the knowledge that something of Julian’s existed inside of me.

No turning back now, I thought, softly caressing Julian’s hand, over his knuckles, and up along his arm, drawing a soft, satisfied moan from his throat. You’re in it for the long haul.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as I gently let my head rest back against his chest, breathing in the scent of him as we both dozed lightly through our afterglow. I knew that things might not be all sunshine and rainbows through all of this, but it was the moments like these that made the struggle worth it.

But as with all things in life, our post-coital bliss couldn’t last forever, and soon I could feel the press of reality creeping back into my mind, banishing our warm and sentimental glow with a chill wind of truth.

I knew who’d done this to us…

As though he could sense my unease, Julian stirred, pulling me close as I turned my gaze to look up into his eyes. Concern was writ plain across his face in the creasing of his eyes, the furrow of his brow. Still, his was a face I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of—a gorgeous, compassionate, covered-in-stubble face with a pair of lips that were just begging to be kissed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, running his hand over my hip and raising goosebumps as she went. I indulged my whim, kissing his mouth, and he sighed when I pulled away from him after. “You look like you’re upset.”

“I’m just thinking,” I said, trying not to worry him too much.

“About who would do this to us,” he rumbled, shaking his head before resting it against mine. “There are only a handful of people who knew about what was really going on between us,” he continued thoughtfully. “You, me, your friend Jen, Tessa, and Lewis, my lawyer. Tessa had been talking to him about a contract you’d have to sign.”

“And I thought that I couldn’t like her any less,” I said, sighing in frustration. “Fucking Tessa.”

“She can be difficult, but Tessa has always looked out for me…” he said quietly.

“She’s been playing us both from the very beginning. Who was there for almost every step of this arrangement?” I asked him, though I continued on without waiting for an answer. “Who made sure the press constantly saw me and you together? Who knew where we’d be at all times?”

“You can’t honestly be saying that Tessa planned to get you pregnant,” Julian said, incredulity spreading across his face. That would have been insane.

“I’m saying she took advantage of the opportunity!” I shouted.

“I know you didn’t get along, but I don’t think you ever did anything to make her want to screw me over like that, or put that much work into screwing you. Plus that entire marriage arrangement scheme was her plan. Why would she want to ruin it?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, shaking my head as I tried to figure out more ways to connect the dots. Somewhere in all of this was a more complete picture. I just wasn’t sure how it all fit yet.

“Think about it, Julian,” I said. “Tessa is pretty much the only person who comes out of this on top. Whether you and I ended up together or we split, she was still planning to take advantage of the situation.”

“She did always say that any press was good press,” he murmured. “And up until we were about to have that press conference after the story leaked, she’d seemed totally fine about the two of us being together. It wasn’t until I mentioned that I cared about you that she started getting angry.”

“Angry? Why?” I asked as he sat up beside me. “Why would she care? If we really were in love, that just would have made us all look better at the press conference. Wouldn’t it?”

“You’d think so,” he said with a shrug. “But she kept going on about how it wasn’t a part of the plan. Made a huge deal about how she’d worked too hard—”

“She said the exact same thing to me!” I said, my eyes widening. “I tried to get a hold of you after your press meeting, and she answered the phone. Oh, my God!” I gently slapped his arm. He pretended it hurt. “She shut off my cell phone!”

“What?”

I nodded emphatically. “When I got in the car after the ultrasound, I noticed I didn’t have any texts or voicemails or missed calls—not one. Usually Jen is so good about calling me or checking in, but there was nothing. Then when I tried to call you, I got a message that my phone service had been disconnected. I had to have it turned back on using the landline at the hotel. Julian… no one knew my account details except for Tessa, and that was only because she’d insisted on knowing everything there was to know about me so she could get ahead of any bad press.”

Tessa was going to have to go, but before I could let that happen, I knew that both Julian and I needed answers—answers that only the woman who had caused so much of our suffering over this last week could provide. And if I had anything to say about it, she wouldn’t be leaving without singing like a damn canary.

I was through with being taken advantage of. I had all I needed in that bed with me—my husband, the truth, and our child growing inside me.

Julian

I couldn’t believe how nervous I was about all of this. For the last ten years, Tessa had been the one person in my life I thought I could trust—the one person I was sure would always do what was best for me. But after what I’d realized the night before, there was hardly any doubt in my mind—she was the only person who had the kind of access to my life that would allow her to orchestrate this mess.

She’d always gone on and

on about how it was important for me to be out in the public eye—for at least one newspaper to be running some kind of story on me. God forbid I ever wanted to be doing something that wasn’t sensational or scandalous. She’d been pushing me to be some kind of drunken rock god.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Liz asked, resting her hand on my shoulder. The way she grazed her thumb along the cord of my muscle there was very soothing to me.

“No,” I said, turning to lock my gaze with hers, “but I’ve got no other choice. If I don’t confront her, then nothing will ever change. I want answers—we both deserve answers—and I’m going to bloody well get them.”

“All right,” she said, nodding solemnly. “I’m with you all the way.”

The plan was simple—or at least, I hoped it was going to be simple. I would invite Tessa up to talk about the Liz situation. When she got here, Liz was going to keep out of sight until I brought up the little game Tessa was playing.