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He lifted his arms high above. “My rose, my rose, you look stunning.”
Monica smiled coldly. He called her his rose because she had thorns, and was he ever going to feel the prick tonight.
“Come in, Roland. Sit.” She sat down in the living room and passed him the pictures, not offering him either a hug, a handshake, a kiss, or a drop of wine. She didn’t want to waste a moment more. She had been wasting too many years of her life already. “Why?” she asked him.
His usually calm demeanor broke as he flicked over the photographs, one by one, the color slowly draining from his face. “Where did you find these?”
“Apparently my father had you followed.”
He raised his head, his eyes wide and, surprisingly, tear-filled. “I loved her. I loved her, Monica.” He shook his head and glanced down at a picture where they were together, her mother and him. “I loved her. You’re a little part of her, rose.”
Monica stifled the impulse to deny her similarities to her mother, having spent an entire lifetime stifling her passionate side. But she just needed to know, so she asked, “How did you know her? You weren’t at the funeral.”
“At the country club.” A raw and primitive expression crossed his features. “I’d always had my eye on her, but she never ev
en glanced my way until the rumor of your father’s affair broke. She was passionate, Monica. She wanted me any way possible. And when I see you, I can’t help seeing a little bit of her. You make me ache to get a little of what she gave me. She made me promise to look after you if anything happened to her, and I have. I have. But I need you to want me like I want you.”
“You don’t want me, Roland, you want an illusion of my mother.”
He stared at her, visibly heartbroken. “No. I do love you, rose. I do. We go so well together. You’re poised and elegant. We both want the same things. Peace. Tranquility. Her death left me broken, too. She was using me, but I was not using her. I never used her.”
He took her hand from her lap and squeezed it between his, and Monica’s chest ached at the pain in his eyes.
“Roland,” she said, softening her voice, setting his hands back in his lap and patting them gently. “I’m sorry she did this. I’m sorry. But you see, that’s what I now realize. My mother was hurting, and she found relief with you. But I don’t want to use you like this, too. And I … I’ve been with you to forget another man.” She squeezed his hands as a wealth of emotion squeezed around her throat, and then let go, shaking her head with an immense sadness. “It’s wrong, I see that now. It was wrong of me, and wrong of you. We’re together for all the wrong reasons.”
“But Monica—”
“No, Roland. I’m really sorry, but we have to move on. You and I know, I think we’ve both known, there’s nothing here worth fighting for. There’s just nothing here at all.”
When he at last nodded, it was with a tear rolling down his sun-weathered cheek. It wasn’t easy, hugging him good-bye. Monica didn’t close up, now that she knew he would not be pushing for anything else. It was actually heartfelt, their last embrace. Representing the closing of another chapter of her life.
A chapter where she had been scared to feel, and had just kept thinking if she kept moving, working, she would survive.
She didn’t really want this life.
Make the right choice.
She dragged in a deep breath as she remembered his note, thinking, I will, Daniel. I have.
She didn’t know if it was the right choice, but she was beyond caring now. She wanted a life with the man she loved in it, and she wanted it with every inch of her aching heart. If it would sometimes hurt, then she just couldn’t believe it would hurt more than these past few days, when she’d been every second of the day hurting for him.
Thirty minutes later, Monica’s limo pulled over in front of the Four Seasons Hotel, and once again, she found herself entering the gala, alone. Flashes exploded around her until she was safely tucked inside the hotel ballroom, and her heart began kicking up in speed as she looked for Daniel among the glittering crowd.
The dramatic beat of the small live orchestra intensified her heartbeat, and suddenly every nerve and fiber in her body clamored to be closer to him, to be touched by him, to be loved by him. Him. He’d been inside her. He’d spilled his love all over her.
Roland would never be him. No man would. What she wanted—it was all in Daniel.
It was so clear to her now, so so clear when she saw that she could be Monica and still be strong.
Daniel could be accompanied tonight, and Monica shuddered at the thought, but suddenly she knew that she would fight for him with the same strength she fought for everything else. She would take her rightful place at his side no matter the price. She was at last ready to love him without fearing that what she felt for this man could possibly do anything but make her the happiest woman on the planet.
Suddenly, she spotted him at the far end, towering over a blonde who Monica instantly recognized as Chloe. His head was bent to her as they talked, Chloe looking up into his face and shaking her head.
Monica stopped in her tracks when she caught a sight of his profile, the shock of seeing him almost shattering her.
I choose him, she’d said, about Roland.
Oh, God, she wanted to die for saying that to him. What had she been thinking? Did loving him truly make her so afraid? How could being loved by a man like him be anything but uplifting and empowering? Daniel had been nothing but gentle to her—supportive, understanding, passionate, and open. How could feeling so good be dangerous to anyone? No. The danger would be denying it, making mistake after mistake, trying to run away from it.
