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CHAPTER ELEVEN
CRETEDIDNOTSLEEP.
He could not.
He stayed wide awake long after Timoney finally drifted off. She lay beside him, curled into him, her breathing deep and even. Sometimes she murmured wordless chants in her sleep, as if she was dreaming of giving long speeches. But all it took to settle her was to hold her close again.
Sometimes when he held her, she smiled with such pure, sleepy happiness that it pierced him straight through.
But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t seem to sleep himself.
He left her reluctantly and swung out of the bed, noticing the first stirring of dawn in the sky outside his windows. As good a time as any to remind himself who he was, he told himself sternly as he moved back into the flat. He took a quick shower—cold—to reset. Then he threw on a pair of trousers and retraced the steps he’d taken a seeming lifetime ago when he’d decided to take that drive.
It had started in his study. He’d been catching up on the never-ending fire hose of work projects that required his input or a critical decision to proceed. And privately, he could admit that he was no longer quite as driven as he’d been once.
Though that felt like a betrayal of the determined eighteen-year-old he’d been long ago, who had thrown himself so completely into his work that he hadn’t known where one ended and the other began. It was all him. It was only him.
Until Timoney.
He took his usual seat at his desk but didn’t turn his attention to the stacks of papers before him, the blinking light on his answerphone, or the many messages he’d been ignoring all night long. He didn’t even crack open his laptop.
Instead, Crete found himself staring at the wall opposite him and the ridiculous mural that Timoney had painted there. It had been blank for years. Deliberately empty space before him to keep him from being distracted.
He’d flown home from a conference in Berlin that day and hadn’t gone into his office the way he normally would. Instead he’d raced home to discover her here. She hadn’t seemed the least bit put off by his reaction to the bold, bright colors she’d painted—or to her presence in what was meant to be his sanctuary.
You really need to think about brightening yourself up, she’d told him with that great, unearned authority of hers that had baffled him from the start. And bewitched him, against his will.Maybe make that an action item in one of your meetings, Crete.
You need to think about boundaries, he had growled back.
And the smile she’d given him had been pure wickedness.Maybe you should teach me some,she’d invited him.
He had. Oh, he had.
But what he hadn’t done was take that mural down. Not even after she’d gone. And even now he couldn’t seem to come up with a good reason why not. His staff had offered, repeatedly, and he’d simply waved them off.
And now he sat in his chair once again and stared at all the haphazard splashes of color, tossed this way and that as if she’d simply flung paint at the wall to see what might happen. Brilliant blues. Screaming reds. Sunshiny, buttery, happy yellows.
The bloody thing was an eyesore.
Crete found himself on his feet. He left his study and walked through the flat, turning on the lights as he went, though the sky outside was brightening and light was beginning to come in all the walls of windows.
It was one of the most sought-after spaces in London. It was the finest view available. That was why Crete had bought this place. But for the first time, he noticed what Timoney had been saying from the moment he’d brought her here. That it really was...institutional.
You are the richest man on earth, or close enough, she had said not long after moving in.You can have anything you want, in triplicate. Why on earth have you chosen to live in this...prison?
Her words seemed to chase him as he moved through his rooms. Rooms upon rooms, all of them empty, because the point was having them, not filling them. Concrete and steel in the place of furnishings, because he told himself he liked clean lines and no clutter, the better to focus. Selected works of art chosen not because they were pleasing to him, but because they were worth vast fortunes.
He didn’t even look at them.
What Crete looked at—what he studied, day and night—was that mural Timoney had painted for him that would likely offend and horrify his art dealer.
And it all made sense to him now.
The problem wasn’t the mural. He’d tried to convince himself, in these last few weeks, that he kept it on that wall to remind himself of the defacement he’d allowed. To make sure he never forgot how wholly he had abandoned himself for a woman.
Making him more like the father he had always detested than he found at all excusable.
But now it was clear.
