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“Take it,” he said again. “Let me help you. I want to…”
Two hundred thousand dollars? After a night in his bed? She was cold, shivering, aching. “Go to hell.”
She spun around, moving quickly down the hallway lined with beautiful art.
“Sarah?”
She didn’t stop this time, so that he had to run to catch her, and at the door, his fingers curled around her wrist. “Stop.”
She bit down on her lip, but tears, surely, actually tears, were not far away. “What?” She didn’t look at him.
“Please, bank the cheque.”
“No way.”
“I want to know you are comfortable. I want you to be happy.”
“You think I could be happy with that? With you believing I would sleep with you for money?” And now she squared her shoulders and met his curious gaze, almost wilting under the strength of his examination. “I came here last night because I wanted to be with you.” She cleared her throat. “I got what I came for.”
He said something in his own tongue; she guessed from the inflection that it was a curse. “Take the money.”
“No.”
“You need it.”
She stared at him with disbelief. “No, I don’t.” And then, with a shake of her head. “Not like this.”
“How else, then?” He thrust his hands onto his hips and stared at her.
“Don’t you get it? You are turning me into a hooker. A woman who has sex for money. That’s not what I am. It’s not what we are – or were. That you would actually think me capable of … of … selling my body …” She let the sentence hang between them, as a filthy pit of disgust. It was demeaning and horrifying, all at once. “I have to go.”
She turned and left, and this time, she had no doubt their relationship truly had run its course.
CHAPTER SIX
“Oh, come on! Give me a Goddamned break!” Sarah swore, flicking the light switch up and down, staring at the bulb in outrage and disbelief
“That’s a swear, mama.”
Sarah tilted a glance at Lexi, and despair filled her.
She’d only been back from New York a matter of hours. The power had been on in the afternoon; they’d gone to the park. And now the house was pitched into darkness.
“Maybe it’s a blown globe,” she murmured without any true hope, reaching down and grabbing Lexi’s chubby little hand in her own. “Let’s check the lounge, hmm?” She pulled her phone from her pocket and flicked the torch feature, using it to guide Lexi down the corridor and into their small sitting room. She reached a hand around the corner, pushing the switch.
Nothing.
A blanket of darkness and the glow from her phone.
“Well, Lexi,” her voice trembled but she controlled it with effort. “You know what we’re going to have to do tonight?”
“What?” Lexi’s response was quiet, and Sarah knew her daughter well enough to know that tears weren’t far away – for either of them.
“We’re going to camp in our own home! What do you think of that?”
“Camp?” She was dubious, but a little further from crying. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to light some candles and we’ll eat whatever we can out of the fridge,” Sarah thanked the heavens that she hadn’t done a big grocery shop recently. There were only some eggs, cheese and milk that she could think of. A few carrots which would surely survive without power. “And we’ll sleep out here on the sofa. It’ll be such fun!”
