Pride After Her Fall
John Cullinan stepped into the hall. ‘Nash, man, are you in this or not?’
‘Yeah.’ Nash pocketed his cell. He’d done all he could for the moment. ‘I’m in.’
* * *
Sitting on the little red couch in a twin room at the Hotel de Paris, Lorelei shook her head over the paperwork the bank had given her.
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Simone, mixing coffee. ‘He’s opened up negotiations with the bank for you, covered your outstanding mortgage payments and is acting as guarantor for the next six months?’
‘Oui, it appears so.’
‘Is that legal?’
‘If I give the bank my signature.’
Simone stopped stirring. ‘If? If?’
‘I can’t accept this, Simone. Not now.’
‘You’re going to accept it, chère, if I have to tie you up and carry you down there myself. He must be feeling a cartload of guilt to be doing this.’
‘Non, it’s just Nash—the way he is.’ Generous. Always so generous with his time and his money...and his brother. He’d given up everything for a year for his brother. He’d given up his racing career for his brother.
He deserved to have another chance.
Lorelei found her breathing had become scratchy.
Like Simone. Who had flown down immediately from Paris, leaving her children with her husband and taking a leave of absence from her high-powered job. To make coffee, offer a kind shoulder and listen.
You did those things for the people you loved.
But he didn’t love her or he wouldn’t have let her go.
Simone came and set a mug down in front of her.
‘He’s racing tomorrow in Lyon. We could go. You could speak to him about this.’
Lorelei shook her head vigorously.
Simone gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Do you know what I think, chère? This man loves you. He’s just having a few problems working out how to show it.’
‘Don’t, Simone. You have no idea how many times I heard all my stepmothers and their girlfriends talking like this. He’s this way because he’s a man. He’s this way because you make him like this. In the end he’s this way because it’s who he is. It’s who he wants to be. Nash wants to race cars, he wants to win and he puts work above everything.’
Lorelei released a huge sob of a breath.
‘All my life that’s how it’s been. Papa put his women ahead of me. Grandmaman put the charity ahead of me. I’m not mooning over a man who thinks oil and grease and speed outweigh my love.’
‘You’re in love with him.’ Simone sat down beside her.
‘That’s what you got out of my little speech?’
Simone shook her head with a smile. ‘Isn’t it all that matters in the end, cherie?’
* * *
Was it all that mattered?
Lorelei lay awake, staring out at the night.
Her father would say, Oui, but of course. L’amour is everything.
But Raymond had never really loved anybody in his life but himself, with a little corner of his heart reserved for her.
She deserved so much more. Everyone deserved to be loved wholeheartedly and for themselves. A sob made its way up through her body, leaving her shaken, but still she couldn’t cry.
She loved Nash, really loved him, but she felt battered. He had left her behind, he didn’t love her back, and here she was—so very, very dependent on him.
Except for one thing.
The villa.
He could have gifted it to her. The meaningless gesture of an excessively wealthy man. He hadn’t. He had chosen instead to take the pressure off her with the gift of time. Time to think. Time to make a decision about what she really wanted to do. It also enabled her to envisage a time when she could pay him back.
He knew her well enough to know it was the only gift she wouldn’t throw back in his face.
Lorelei rolled onto her back.
Mon Dieu, he hadn’t made her dependent. He had made her strong again.
In every way.
Lorelei bolted up in bed.
She flung open the other bedroom door and the little bedside light flickered on as Simone sat up groggily.
‘How long will it take me to drive to Lyon?’
‘Three hours, give or take.’ Simone yawned. ‘Why?’
Lorelei bit her lip. ‘I’m going to do what I should have done on that plane. Fight for him.’