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So that’s what she was trying to do again now—take baby steps toward feeling alive again.
Being the face of one of the biggest tech companies in the world meant dating was even more torturous than the painful twinges in her feet as she rounded the steep hill and the house came into sight. She’d already written off sleeping with any of these dates.
The chance of her finding a man she could trust enough to bare herself, to be that intimately vulnerable with...was very low. But God, was it too much to ask for a decent conversation for just one evening? Too much to hope that the men she met over an app didn’t turn out to be either dull or so incredibly full of themselves?
Or did the fault lie with her?
Maybe she had too many expectations. Maybe what she wanted was irrational and ridiculous... Maybe that’s what the universe was telling her by sending her foolish, dull-as-rocks men on these casual dates she’d tried. That she’d already had her share of good men—two in one lifetime—and there were no more to spare for her. Even if she’d lost them both.
Laughter fell from her mouth at the crushing thought, with an edge of hysteria to it.
Grief was a strange thing. It had ravaged her and reshaped her—not once but twice. When Christian’s plane had crashed, she’d pushed the grief into a corner of her heart, locked it tight and moved on to what had needed to be done.
She’d inherited not just a tech empire but a grieving grandfather. And then the baby growing inside her had been born and needed her. Being a mother—a single mother at that—had been a challenge she’d never foreseen but had grown into.
Now that grief crashed through Priya, threatening to take her down at the knees, demanding its due. Maybe it was the fact that Christian had been gone for eight years this week that was making it all raw and fresh again. Maybe it was the fact that her son was beginning to ask questions about his father. Maybe it was the fact that she’d never admitted what he’d meant to her. Not even to herself.
She was soaking and shivering, fresh tears pouring out and being washed away by the rain when she reached the house. Motion sensor lights flickered on, illuminating the fountain and the courtyard and wide, majestic steps with giant pillars straddling them.
Her chest burned with the exertion and she stilled to pull in a deep breath. The cold kiss of the rain was a sting against her skin. And then she saw him standing there, with the focus lights illuminating his face.
That sharp nose with a dent in it, the dark blond eyebrows, the glittering blue of his eyes, the wet hair that gleamed like burnished gold and that sensuous, sculpted mouth partly hidden by the thick beard... But it was definitely him.
It was Christian. Waiting for her. Staring at her.
She felt a feverish chill in her bones that had nothing to do with her soaked skin. How far gone was she in her madness that she was seeing a man long gone standing there within touching distance?
“Pree,” the man said, her name a soft whisper on his lips.
He’s real, came the frantic whisper inside her head. Only he called her that.
This Christian was not some mirage conjured up by her feverish imagination. This Christian looked as solid and real as he’d always been.
The man moved then, stepping out of the circle of light, from under the high-ceilinged porch into the rain. He stilled on the top step while Priya looked up at him, her heart running at a thousand beats per minute now.
Rain pelted his face, poured down that arrogant nose of his into his mouth, where it was swallowed up by his beard. His white linen shirt was soaked through to his skin, delineating a muscled chest and hard abdomen, but he didn’t seem to care.
He stared at Priya with an energy that rivaled the storm raging around them. He stared at her as if he meant to inhale her whole. He stared at her as if...he’d walked out of a nightmare just to find her.
Priya laughed brokenly and wiped the water from her face. No doubt she was dreaming because Christian Mikkelsen—her convenient husband of a few short months—was not the kind of man who had ever pined after a woman. Would never have stared at any woman with such acute longing in his eyes as this illusion looked at her.
The breeze carried the scent of him to her and Priya shuddered afresh. She knew that scent well, better than she knew her own. She’d chased that warm scent of his for years since the crash, digging through rows and rows of his designer suits, walking through his closet like some kind of otherworldly specter. She’d even gone into labor while wearing one of his Armani shirts. But after a couple of years, the scent of him had vanished from those clothes. She’d lost even that part of him.
And the memory of that longing, of how she’d hardened her heart a second time... It loathed this weak part of her that ran after illusions. It wanted only truth.
She stretched out a hand, fear and hope making the simple movement exquisitely painful. Her palm landed on his chest—hard and defined. His head jerked, his chest rose and fell at her touch. His heartbeat matched the thunderous beat of hers.
Her stomach felt as if she’d just fallen from a great height, was still falling. Priya spread her fingers, seeking more and more of that hard flesh. Curling her fingers, she dug her nails into his abdomen, determined to hold him in place. Up and down, she touched him, waiting with a stifled sob, waiting for him to disappear.
A groan fell from his mouth as she raked a nail over the taut skin at his chest, bared by the V of his shirt. She wanted to do more. She wanted to bury her face in his throat, she wanted to nip that racing pulse with her teeth, she wanted to taste his skin with her tongue, and she wanted to...
He said nothing. Did nothing. He simply stood there, letting her ravage him with her fingers, his head almost bowed in supplication. The Christian she remembered never bowed to anyone, much less her. It had to be a dream, a dream so far from reality that Priya almost laughed again.
Raindrops clung to his lashes and his blue eyes glittered with an understanding that only made her angrier. When she’d have jerked her hand back, his fingers wrapped around her wrist, holding her hand there, over his chest. “No, Pree. Don’t pull away,” he whispered in a voice that had visited her a thousand times in her dreams.
I’m here, Pree, that voice had said when her fiancé and best friend had died.
Use me, Pree, that voice had said when she’d been flung this way and that by her mother’s overbearing love.
