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Nicodemus stared at her, his beautiful wife and this warrior creature who’d taken her over, making her lovely cheeks flush and her bittersweet eyes glitter wildly. She looked perfect in her stunningly feminine clothes, from head to toe his living, breathing, fantasy—and she’d just called him an idiot.
“What do you mean, because of me?” he asked, because he couldn’t process any of this. It was like he was learning English all over again, and missing half the meaning.
“I mean, because of you,” she said, and her voice was a little too thick and too uneven. “You were always there, weren’t you? Since I was eighteen. And how could any of the boys I dated compete?” He only stared at her. “Whatever I felt for you, Nicodemus, it was consuming. I spent more time worrying about how to avoid you than I did about the boys I was supposed to be in love with. It never seemed right to take things any further when you were always there, lurking around in my head or at the next party. Always so sure that I’d end up with you.”
“Careful, Mattie,” he said, unable to do anything about that dark thing inside him that colored his voice, bitterness and confusion and all these years, all these long years, “or I may be tempted to think you care.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she snapped back at him. “Obviously. Since I’m standing right here, in your office, after you left me on a Greek island half a world away.” She was scowling at him now. “Why else would I be here?”
“Sex?” he supplied acidly. “As you mentioned in the reception area?”
“Right,” she said, her voice so dry it hurt. “Because after waiting twenty-eight years to have sex, it makes perfect sense that I’d suddenly want to whore it up all over Manhattan. Like it’s a faucet I can turn on or off and oops! You left it on! Like it had absolutely nothing to do with you at all.” She looked so furious for a moment that he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she’d swung at him. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest again, which didn’t help him at all, as he already found those perfect breasts distracting. “You really are an idiot.”
“I let that slide once,” he bit back at her. “Don’t push me.”
“That’s the only thing I know how to do!” she shouted at him. “And God knows, Nicodemus, it’s the only thing you ever respond to!”
He moved toward her then, but she backed away, her eyes stormy as they fixed on him.
“Don’t touch me,” she ordered him. “That confuses everything.”
He recognized the things that flowed through him now, though he couldn’t quite believe any of them. Triumph, yes. Hope, which was harder to stomach. That same old wild desire—and he knew too much, now. He knew that the reality of her trumped his fantasies, and then some.
“You wanted honesty,” she was saying, still watching him too intently, as if all of this was hurting her. “You can’t cut it off in the middle because it doesn’t fit the story you’ve already told yourself about how this would go.”
She’d backed up all the way to that wall of windows, and stood there, bracketed by another perfect autumn afternoon in New York City. The light was tipping over toward gold, and it poured over her, making her look like something out of a dream.
His dream, he realized. He’d had this dream.
He stood and waited though he thought that it was perhaps the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
“My mother died when I was eight,” she said, and for some reason, Nicodemus felt a chill go through him. “But you know that already.”
“Of course,” he said, not sure why he felt so uneasy all of a sudden. “Lady Daphne was in a car accident while your family was on holiday in South Africa. It was a tragedy.”
“It was a tragedy,” Mattie said in a whisper that wasn’t at all soft. “It was my fault.”
Nicodemus only watched her. She swallowed hard, her gaze on his like she was searching for condemnation. She must have seen something on his face that encouraged her, because she cleared her throat and continued.
“I was in the backseat with Chase. Mama was in the passenger seat in front, talking with the driver. I was singing. Chase told me to stop. They all told me to stop. And I hit him.”
Her eyes darkened, and he realized that this was her nightmare. This was what he’d found her reliving that night in the pool house.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, when it seemed she’d gone somewhere inside her head. “But I don’t understand how you could have caused a car accident from the backseat.”
