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She did not want to experiment with his brand of marriage, much less what he would expect of her physically. Even if he tired of her in six months, that was too long. As she already knew from her time with Crete, six months could be a lifetime.
And imagining a lifetime with Julian made her stomach hurt.
She almost laughed at herself then, though it really wasn’t funny. Even while she and Crete had still been in the conservatory, she’d been telling herself all kinds of stories. First and foremost, that it had been possible to imagine she could suffer through Julian’s attentions when she’d still felt so dead inside. And then she’d tried to convince herself that she would somehow carry the much fresher memory of Crete with her, perhaps so she could retreat into her head while giving Julian what he wanted.
But now, only a few hours later, she couldn’t understand how she’d managed to convince herself that such suffering was possible.
Maybe, something in her suggested, there in the unlit penthouse with only the relentless London gleam outside to light her way,all you really wanted was to punish yourself.
For giving so much of herself to man of steel and concrete, thinking that a few bright colors on a wall could make him love her. For falling in love with him when he was only having sex with her.
For letting down her lost parents by failing at happiness, and love, and hope. Again.
For that overconfidence when she should have known better. Shouldn’t she have known better?
Because surely she should have learned something from losing them so suddenly. From everything that had changed afterward, irrevocably. How had she managed to throw herself at Crete the way she had, so appallinglycertainthat she could make the both of them happy, when she knew better? Happiness could be snatched away at any time. At any moment, like it or not. Life was all about the lie that it might last, but she knew better.
Timoney had known better—but her grief hadn’t been enough to save her.
Not from Crete, but from herself and her own overweening confidence. Her abominable belief that her own feelings, her own heart, could make things end well.
When she knew they didn’t.
She turned back around and headed for the bedroom again, thinking vaguely that she might as well shower, then get dressed again. Then she could wait for whatever next bombshell Crete would reappear to drop on her.
There would certainly be time enough for considering the ways she’d been punishing herself then. In the great stretch ofafterthat would follow this one, last night. Where she could find a way to deal with how raw she felt that did not involve upsetting weddings, surely.
She vowed that she would make a point of it.
But when she made it back into the bedroom that was never truly any kind of a tree house no matter how dearly she’d wanted to convince herself, because it was really much more of a prison cell, she saw what she hadn’t before.
Crete, who had not left her. At least not yet.
He stood outside at the railing at the edge of his terrace, wearing only a pair of low-slung black trousers, as if it wasn’t December.
Then again, this wasn’t just any grubby old flat and he wasn’t risking hypothermia for the sake of showing off his sculpted torso to the uncaring night. The section of the terrace just outside the master bedroom was fitted with heated floors, making it far more inviting to make use of the sauna and hot tub nestled there, high enough above the city that there was no possibility anyone could be spying on what any resident here got up to.
Timoney dragged the soft blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself, then pushed her way out through the glass doors.
And she knew the precise moment Crete became aware that she had come outside to join him. She saw him tense, ever so slightly, and got to watch the muscles play all up and down the chiseled length of his back as she drew closer, the heated concrete warm enough beneath her feet to make the cold air feel like a caress against her exposed face.
It still moved in her like wonder that she had touched every part of what surely was the finest back in England. Worthy of being cast in bronze, at the very least. She felt that same old heat that never left her bloom hot within, making her thighs seem to whisper sensually as she moved. And the core of her pulse with need, as if it was new.
She came up beside him, but he did not glance at her. He kept that brooding gaze of his focused out on the city at his feet.
“You’re really not good at this kidnapping thing, are you?” she asked lightly as the night air made her ears cold and her hair fly about. “I was left to my own devices entirely. I could have made a break for it while you stood out here, none the wiser.”
She didn’t expect uproarious laughter. Not from Crete. But he seemed extra grim, she thought, especially after everything that had come before this night.
“Do you wish to escape?” he asked, far too darkly for her tastes. “Have you woken with second thoughts? And a renewed determination to sacrifice yourself at the altar of two old men’s greed?”
That was a little too close to what she’d been thinking on her own. “And if I have?”
He pushed back from the rail but still gripped it. And when she glanced down at his hands, she saw that his knuckles had gone nearly white.
“Then I will be forced to disappoint you, Timoney. You will not be marrying Julian today. Or any day.”
She could have told him how much her thinking on that had changed, but she didn’t. She could have explained, talked about punishing herself, or even asked him why he hadn’t erased the evidence of her terrible mural, but she didn’t do any of that, either. Because he was straightening, then turning to face her, and the look on his face was...terrible.
