Surrender (A Dangerous Man 4)

“Have you been with David long?” I asked, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that I just wanted to keep talking about David with the first person I’d seen in a few days who knew him too, perhaps more than I did.

“You could say that.” Steve replied with a small smile. “I used to drive him around when he was a boy.”

I didn’t know that, and my face betrayed my surprise. If Steve was surprised at my lack of knowledge about my husband, he didn’t let it show.

“What was he like?” I asked, imagining a teenage David been driven around in a chauffeured car, even then he would have been beautiful to look at.

Steve contemplated my question for a few seconds, and then shrugged. “Clever, curious, and adventurous,” He said, finishing his water, “Like most boys that age.” He paused. “He was also the loneliest boy I’d ever met.”

He looked almost sad for a moment, but his usual taciturn expression soon returned. “Mr. Preston also asked me to give this to you,” he continued, digging into the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieving an envelope, which he placed on the kitchen counter. “Thanks for the water.” He said, getting up.

After he left, I opened the envelope and found the cards for the expense account David had set up for me. I’d left behind in David’s apartment for my own reasons. The cases contained some of the things I’d also left behind, clothes and jewelry, phone and tablet. I put the cards in one of the cases and left them all in a corner of my bedroom.

That was almost two months ago. Since then I’ve heard nothing from David. I’ve taken to scouring the news for any mention of him. The few articles I’ve managed to find about his work aren’t nearly enough, but I devour them hungrily. Sadly, there’s usually nothing about his personal life, nothing about our marriage or separation, nothing about us.

I may very well never have been a part of his life.

“Sophie?” Stacey’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts.

“No, I haven’t heard anything from him.” I reply to her question. And I shouldn’t care, I tell myself. In time, I will get over him. I will forget the short time I spent as a billionaire’s wife. I will forget David Preston.

Even if I don’t want to.

“Have you tried talking with him?” Stacey persists. Sometimes, I think that she imagines that my separation is just temporary, a little hitch waiting to be smoothed out, but she wasn’t there, she didn’t see the scorn on David’s face when I told him that I loved him.

This has always been about sex.

“There’s nothing to say.” I tell her.

“That can’t be true.” Stacey urges. “He’s still your husband.” She reminds me. “Unless you mean to…” She stops talking abruptly, but already I know what she was about to say, unless I mean to get a divorce.

Heaven knows I should want that. I should want to do something about the fact that I’m still legally married to David. It’s the clear first step to moving on with my life.

Except, I don’t think I want to move on. At least, not right now, and not just yet.

I spend my evenings alone. Sometimes I read, trying to keep my mind occupied, but it doesn’t always help. Everything I do ends up feeling like a temporary measure, a small pause until my mind goes back to David, and I start thinking about how much I miss him, how unclear my reasons for leaving him have become, even to me, and how much I wish things could be different.

My apartment is empty and lonely, almost as bare as it was when I first moved in. I took over the lease from Jan and Larry’s former assistant who used to live there before he suddenly decided to go to New York to sell his paintings. It’s not David’s luxury apartment, but its fine. I could barely afford it with what was left of my savings, and although I could have gotten something bigger if I’d used even a fraction of the obscenely large amount of money David transferred to my account, I do not intend to touch his money, now or ever.

It’s not his money that I want.

Have you tried talking with him?

It’s scary how tempted I am. How willing I am to wrack my brain for excuses to hear his voice again. I close my eyes and remember the sound of my name on his lips, the feel of his breath against my ear when he would whisper something to me, so effortlessly seductive that all he had to do was look at me, and my body would go crazy with need.

Outside the only window, I can see the happy hour crowds walking along the sidewalk. I wish I were one of them. I wish I had nothing on my mind but the thought of a drink with friends at a bar somewhere. I wish I wasn’t haunted by the man who broke my heart. I wish I could close my eyes without seeing his face, his sensual lips that I’ve kissed a thousand times.

I take a deep breath. My sketchpad is lying on the bedside table. Picking it up, I go to sit on my bed, keeping my eyes from going to the cases stacked in a corner of the room. I was only tempted to open them once, and seeing the familiar things so well packed by Mrs. Daniels had brought a huge lump to my throat. Later, I’ll decide what to do with them. I’ll give them away, eventually.

I flick through the pages of the sketchpad, looking at the familiar drawings I’ve done over the years. Pencil drawings of jewelry, earrings, necklaces all worn by a woman with my mother’s face, my mother’s smile, the way I remember it from the pictures I’ve seen. Before David, doing the drawings used to make me feel less lonely, now it makes no difference.

I flip to the last drawing, a half completed one started in Italy, on a sunny afternoon by the pool with David lying beside me, his firmly muscled body gleaming from the sun. He’d caught me admiring him and put my sketchpad away, then we’d made love right there by the pool, our sun warmed skin sliding against each other, fitting perfectly together. Afterward, we’d gone into the pool and made love again in the water.

The memories are enough to make me feel hot, needy, and raw. I close my eyes and take a deep, shaky breath, putting the sketchpad away. It’s no use. I haven’t drawn anything since that d

ay. I can’t complete the drawing without being assaulted by my memories, and I can’t move on to the next one.

Soon it’s dark outside, another evening, another day gone. It takes a while to go to sleep, and when I finally drift away, my last thought is of the piercing blue eyes I love, and the face that will haunt me until the day I die.