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CHAPTER EIGHT
THELASTTHINGin the world Timoney wanted was tothankhim.
Her pulse was a riot inside her. Her head was spinning, and not only because she was upside down. There was something buried inside her, something suppressed, that seemed to be storming its way out and she had no idea what might become of her then. She wanted to rip him apart with her fingers, to make him heed her cries—
Or that was what she told herself she wanted as he strode away from her uncle’s house. Carrying her with him whether she wanted to go or not.
And she was terribly afraid thatthinginside her, nearly free now, was a kind of triumph. Laced through with relief.
As if, despite what she might have said to him in the conservatory, she reveled in the fact he’d made this choice.
Freeing her from Julian and her uncle and the choices she’d made while grayed out and dead within. Without her having to make them herself.
Maybe you should thank him after all, that voice needled her.
The world spun all around again and she found herself on her feet, but only briefly, as Crete set about strapping her into the passenger side of the gleaming Range Rover he’d left parked haphazardly near the estate’s lower stables.
He slammed the door and strode around the front of the vehicle. And it was only when he swung in beside her that Timoney realized that she really should have used this opportunity to effect her escape.
Because surely if she had an opportunity to escape and she didn’t take it, that was a choice. Wasn’t it?
But instead of hurling herself out into the night and running for the questionable safety of the house, she’d been too busy contemplating the fact that Crete Asgar had actually turned up out of the blue. Had kissed her silly, then made her sob and scream on the floor of the only room in that house that had always felt safe. And had topped all that off by abducting her.
The night before her wedding.
On Christmas Eve.
And by the time it occurred to her that she really ought to try the door and see if she could outrun him, however unlikely, he was already turning the car around and heading away from her childhood home.
With what felt like a tremendous amount of finality.
Not that she was required to accept that, she told herself stoutly.Hedidn’t get to decide.
“This is remarkably childish, Crete,” she said as he headed down the winding drive. The December dark pressed in all sides and his headlights caught the remnants of the mist as it still collected in the hollows. Making herself sound reasonable and rational made her feel, if not in control, at least not as out of control as this situationshouldfeel. “What do you think is going to happen now? Do you think removing me from the house will fix anything?”
“It will fix one, pressing matter,” Crete replied, his eyes on the road ahead. “This is something you should know about me by now, Timoney. I always put out the biggest fire first.”
But she knew that wasn’t true, because the biggest fire of all still burned inside her. She was beginning to understand that it always would. No matter how much ice she piled on top of it, or how much gray she wrapped around herself. The flames were only ever banked, never extinguished.
“Sooner or later, whatever madness this is will pass,” she said quietly, because thinking about the fires within wasn’t helpful. “What gives you the right to wreck my life in the meantime? You had the opportunity to stay with me forever and you chose instead to have me tossed out of your flat. You don’t want this. You don’t like to be told no, that’s all.”
And she hoped he never knew what it cost her to sound soserenewhen she felt anything but.
“Surely it’s time to set aside all this drama.” But she could see that despite that tone he used, as if this was all the deepest silliness, his hands were like fists around the steering wheel. “You were not tossed out into the street like so much rubbish and I believe you know this well.”
“Was I not? I don’t recall you being there as your men hustled me along. I was given two hours.”
He muttered something in Greek.
“Two hours,” she said again, more distinctly. “And it wasn’t that I needed more time than that to pack, Crete. It was that my lover, whose home I shared, told me that he never wanted to lay eyes on me again. I understand that this may come as news to you, but for most people that is the kind of blow that it takes some time to recover from.”
The real truth, she knew, as she looked out at the narrow lane that he was driving along now—and much too quickly—hemmed in on either side by the hedges, was that she wasn’t recovered. She wasn’t sure recovery was possible.
Wasn’t that how she’d ended up agreeing to marry Julian in the first place?
She glanced over at Crete. His face was set in harsh lines, his lips pressed together as if he was fighting off some of those emotions he would claim he didn’t have.
And this was the trouble. She didn’t like the feeling that she’d actually hurt him. She loved him. Whatever else happened, that didn’t change. That he wouldn’t admit something hurt him didn’t mean it didn’t. She knew that. Just as she knew that all hurting him did was hurt her. Maybe that was love, too.
