His for a Price

As foolish and as suicidal as his mother’s had been.

“You must stop this,” he ordered himself, only aware that he spoke out loud when he heard the resounding silence that followed his words.

He cursed beneath his breath, pushing back from the desk, ignoring his ringing phone. Ignoring the hours of work he had left to do today. Ignoring everything but that darkness inside him that he wished he could excise with his own two hands.

He wished. He still wished and that, Nicodemus understood, was his problem. Perhaps it always had been.

He had to decide what to do with Mattie now. It occurred to him, standing in yet another home he’d made with every expectation that she would live in it with him one day, that this was the first time in a decade that he’d had any doubts. He’d always known exactly what to do with Mattie Whitaker. He’d always had a plan. That plan had changed in its particulars over the years, but essentially, it was always the same: isolate the two of them from the rest of the world and let their insane chemistry do the rest.

He’d always imagined that would be enough.

But now—he’d tasted her innocence. He’d seen truths in her beautiful eyes that she’d refused to speak out loud. He’d soothed her in her restless, broken sleep and he’d held her in his arms as she’d cried. He’d watched her rebel, and he’d watched her surrender, and he couldn’t have said which part of her he liked most.

He’d loved her from afar for ten years. He loved her even more now.

And it still didn’t matter.

He couldn’t trust her. He didn’t believe her. She was made entirely of secrets and lies, and he couldn’t do it. He knew where it led. Exactly where it led. He’d already done this, more than once.

Which meant that somehow, after all these years and all the things he’d done to get them here, the lives he’d built for them to live in and the dreams he’d been fool enough to think he could indulge, he had to find a way to let her go.

* * *

“You must have done something,” Chase said over the phone, with what sounded like sheer irritation in his voice. It made his British accent that much more pronounced.

It made Mattie want to reach through the phone and slap him, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in his London office.

This is your beloved big brother, the only family you have left in all the world, she cautioned herself. None of this is his fault,

None of this is your fault, either, she replied to herself staunchly—though she imagined that depended on which of her faults was under discussion. And with whom.

Mattie took a deep breath as she stood in her same old living room on the Upper West Side, now its usual size without Nicodemus looming in it to shrink the dimensions around him. His absence lanced into her, a sharp and searing pain, no less bearable for the fact it wasn’t anything new, and she deeply regretted returning her brother’s call.

“Would you like a point-by-point analysis of how I executed my duties as Nicodemus’s arranged bride?” she asked, her voice almost as clipped as his, and her accent had gone American years ago. “I should warn you in advance. Some parts get a little bit naked. That’s what happens in marriages whether they’re arranged or not, or didn’t you know?”

It was easy to keep her voice cool and even. Or arch and brittle, more accurately. Because ever since Nicodemus had left her to make her own way home from his island, Mattie had felt...nothing. Not when Chase called. Not when the papers speculated about her and her marriage. Not at all.

She was a polished piece of glass, she told herself now. Hard and smooth. Impervious to harm.

“I don’t need this bloody headache,” Chase muttered.

It was almost under his breath. And Mattie therefore almost pretended that she hadn’t heard it. But there was that raw thing inside her that felt like a poisonous snake, coiled tight and ready to strike, and Chase was setting himself up as the perfect target.

“I apologize that the marriage you pushed me into for business purposes has turned out to be less than blissful,” she said in that same bright and hard tone. “You’ll remember how thrilled I was about it in the first place. Who could possibly have predicted that this might happen?” She pretended to wait a beat, as if considering the question. “Oh, right. I did.”

Chase sighed at her sarcastic tone. Mattie’s fingers clenched so hard around her phone receiver that it hurt, her rings biting into her flesh, and it wasn’t her brother who she was angry at, she knew. He had nothing to do with all the things that had happened between her and Nicodemus on that island—all the things she couldn’t tell him. Or anyone.