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He shook his head as if disgusted with me or him or both, and without a word stalked away.
‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ Miko said, taking my arm. He took the keys from my unresisting fingers and opened the door. Inside, the foyer seemed cold and I began to shiver. I wrapped my arms tightly around my body and felt Miko’s eyes on me, but I refused to look at him.
I had not left any windows open, and inside my tiny flat it was stuffy and hot. Miko ran the shower and helped me to undress as if I was a child. He put me into the shower and slid the door closed. I felt frozen with shock. The hot water sluiced down on me and the strange feeling of numbness went away. I got out of the shower, toweled myself dry, and after slipping into my fluffy bathrobe went into the living room. Miko had hitched a towel around his hips and was making tea. He had also opened a couple of windows to let in some fresh air.
He looked up at me, bare-chested, his hair still damp. ‘I made us some tea.’
I walked up to him. He looked unbearably beautiful. I felt like such a fool. I turned away from him and would have put some distance between us if he had not caught my hand and whirled me around. He put his fingertips to my mouth. They tasted of rain. His gaze was haunted.
I felt that tarnished ache in my heart again. Somewhere in this story was a lie. I was not the hunter. I was the prey, after all.
‘You can change absolutely everything about you, but never your eyes. Nobody has eyes like yours. I drowned in them seven years ago.’
My heart did a little helpless flip. The tears that were threatening spilled over. Blast it.
‘Don’t cry, Sky. I can’t bear to see you cry.’
‘You didn’t just happen to acquire the firm I was working for, did you?’
‘No.’
‘And we didn’t meet in the coffee shop by accident?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to take you to lunch, apologize, and explain, but I didn’t expect you to pretend not to recognize me.’
My breath escaped in a rush. ‘So you decided to date me instead?’
‘I’m in love with you, Sky.’
The rich miracle of his desire was a mirage. He desired Lexi. A construct. Sky was still alive underneath and still hurting. Still wanting to be accepted. And still a freak. I looked at him bitterly.
‘You love me now because I am beautiful, but underneath a trip to the hairdresser every six weeks to turn my hair and eyebrows blonde and the countless cosmetic surgeries, I am still Lexi, the girl you asked out to a freak party.’
‘Beauty has nothing to do with it, Sky.’
‘I’m damaged goods, Miko. I’m not normal. I look in the mirror and I still see a freak. I have to stop myself from making an appointment with the plastic surgeon.’
A muscle jumped along his jaw and he winced as if in pain. ‘If you are in any way damaged, then I’m to blame,’ he said huskily.
I yanked my hand away from his and backed away a few steps. I felt the tears of self-pity start to swim in my eyes. He looked at me with horror.
‘Just go back where you came from and leave me alone.’ Before I could turn around and flee, his hand shot out and snagged mine.
He didn’t look smooth or charismatic then. For the first time he looked broken. ‘Don’t, Sky,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t fight me anymore.’
‘You hurt me,’ I sobbed.
‘I know. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what I did.’
Tears were running freely down my face. I bit my wobbly lip. ‘You’re a son of a bitch, Miko.’
He didn’t flinch. ‘I was. I was a mean, selfish, shallow jerk. And what I did to you was sick. But I’ve changed, Sky. You changed me.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ I spat.
‘No, it’s the truth. I was a spoilt kid, high on adulation. Everybody wanted me. I could have had anything I wanted. Any girl. And it made me careless and ugly. But the truth was they were using me and I was using them. And then you got into my car so full of truth and softness and I felt something. Something I’d never felt. I was so shocked. I’d never met anyone like you. And if you remember I didn’t want to go to the party. But you looked so crushed that I had the crazy idea I could slip you in and slip you out, and nobody would be the wiser. How wrong I was.’
I shook my head. ‘That doesn’t make sense. You never once tried to contact me. Why did you wait until now?’
He frowned. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘I drove around looking for you for hours but you were nowhere to be seen.’
‘Mr. Hutton found me walking by the side of the road and gave me a lift in his truck.’
‘By the time I drove to your house later that night your mother told me you were too upset to see me. She told me to go home and come back the next evening. When I went back the next day, she told me you never wanted to see me again, and closed the door in my face. Then you never came back to school.’
‘No, I left for England to live with my aunt. I was so humiliated. I couldn’t go back.’
‘For years I tried to forget you, but I couldn’t. No matter who I went out with I couldn’t completely get you out of my mind. I felt something that night in the car with you that I had never felt before or after. So I hired a private detective who found you with great difficulty. You’d changed your name and left the country and you looked nothing like the picture I had given him.’
‘What picture?’
‘Want to see it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said curiously.
He went to the kitchen table and I watched him open his wallet and extract a small picture from it. He brought it to me and I stared at the blurred image in disbelief. When I raised my shocked eyes to him he shrugged.
‘It’s not your best, but I had nothing else, so I had to take something from a yearbook. I had it professionally aged. This is what you should look like without any…interventions.’
I dropped my eyes back to the picture. Indeed that was the bespectacled me of seven years ago, but made heavier, with jowls, and faint lines running between my cheek and mouth.
‘You were looking for an ugly woman,’ I whispered.
He shook his head. ‘I was looking for you. For that magical girl who sat in my car, tilted her chin and looked up at the stars. No matter what you look like. I just love you.’
I stared at him. Could anyone change that much? Surely this couldn’t be true? In real life every man wanted a beauty to hang on his cold arm. Rich or poor, beauty was the most prized ingredient in a woman. But what if his tale of redemption was true? What if he was the last true romantic on this dead earth? What if he was truly changed?
He was staring at me. ‘People can change, Sky. I did.’
I nodded. My heart was glowing. ‘So did I.’
His finger tilted my chin up. ‘You’re a Jezebel, you know? Your scent tortured me for seven years and then I find you and you tell me you’re pregnant.’
I laughed. ‘I didn’t know how else to explain the fact that I was swooning at your feet.’
‘Do you know how devastated I was when you said that?’
‘Oh, darling. Do you know I fooled myself into thinking I hated you? I convinced myself that I wanted to see you suffer. But the truth was I never stopped wanting you or loving you.’
‘Will you forgive me for what I did, Sky?’
‘Oh, darling,’ I said, and my throat ached. ‘There is nothing to forgive. I was dead inside until you came.’
‘I love you, Sky. I couldn’t stop loving you even after trying for years. You’re mine forever.’
I smiled up at my man. ‘Go on then. Show me how much I’m yours.’
He picked me up and, carrying me in his powerful arms, kicked the door of the bedroom open. And the expression in his beautiful, beautiful eyes—pretty wicked!
The End
