A Feast of You (38 page)

I strolled through the aisles, perusing the shelves filled with products that looked vaguely familiar. I hadn’t put my college French to use for a long time but apparently ibuprofen was the same in every language. But I wasn’t looking for the Advil

I must have looked lost because the pharmacist came out from behind a counter and said something, presumably asking me what I was looking for. After some broken English on the pharmacist’s part and a lot of gesturing to my belly on my part, I left with a French home pregnancy test in a white paper bag and excited congratulations from the man who sold it to me.

I wasn’t sure I wanted congratulations. But I couldn’t put it off any longer. Beckett was right.

I had to know.

I
took my time heading back to the hotel. I walked along the Seine for a few blocks, watching barges glide silently along the dark, still water. I loved all the bridges, and when I walked beneath the Pont des Arts, the one with the padlocks cramming every inch of the railings, I sat on a nearby bench for a while and watched as a young couple kissed atop it. When they drew apart, the boy threw something into the Seine—the key to their lock, I guessed, and the gesture a symbol of their love—and the girl looked up at him with a huge smile. Even this late on a midweek night, Paris was overflowing with lovers. I couldn’t take it anymore and started to weep.

I was in agony without William. When Jace had died, I had been in agony too, but it was a different kind of pain, one tinged with shock and guilt, with regret, and with finality. Jace was dead, and there was nothing I could do that would change that or bring him back. We’d had no chance to say goodbye, no realization that our ‘I love yous’ uttered that day would be our last ones, no opportunity to say all the things I wished we could have. It took me a long time to accept all of that, but I had eventually. Jace would never come back to me no matter how much I wished that he would.

But William had had a choice, and the fact that he’d chosen to push me away rather than draw me closer, that he’d had the chance to tell me how he really felt about everything and refused to take it, that he’d withheld his love when he’d promised me his heart, all of those things hurt more than I could have possibly imagined. William hadn’t died, but he was lost to me all the same, and it didn’t stop me from wishing he would come back to me.

I started walking again, and soon arrived outside my hotel’s formidable light stone building with red awnings. I slowly walked through the spectacular lobby, taking in the over-the-top opulence and riots of colors, my heels clicking loudly on the gleaming marble. I took the elevator up to my floor. Taking a deep breath and clutching the
pharmacie
bag tightly in my hand, I pushed the door to the room open.

And dropped the bag.

William stood near the white plush couch, his thumbs looped in the front pockets of his jeans, his leather coat open, facing the door. His eyes immediately met mine, searching my face. He looked like he hadn’t shaved for a day or two and his beard was thick and scruffy.

All the breath whooshed out of my body, and I couldn’t do anything but stare at him, floored as always by his sheer physical presence.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I managed. I pushed the door closed and leaned against it. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest.

“I’ve surprised you.” He gave me a sheepish look I hadn’t seen before.

“Yeah, you could say that.” I willed myself to take a few deep breaths and calm down. My emotions were so raw, so right at the surface, that I wasn’t sure I could hold back a complete and utter breakdown.

I couldn’t look directly at him, so I tried to focus on the landscape painting on the wall behind him as I spoke. “What are you doing here? Where’s Beckett? I’m supposed to meet him.”

He pulled his hands away from his pockets. “I reserved another room for Beckett. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted...” He twisted his hands together, a gesture wholly unnatural for him. He looked almost nervous. My head spun, my mind creating a million possibilities for his appearance.

One thought kept repeating itself:
He wants me back
. Did I dare hope for that? The man who cooked for me and made me laugh and knew exactly how to look at me to make my body come alive with desire was
here
, in my hotel room in Paris, and there could only be one reason why.
Right?

I took another shaky breath.

William down at me, his stormy eyes as troubled as I’d ever seen them. “I came to apologize.”

I stared at him now, speechless.

“I was wrong to tell you to go. I was wrong,” he swallowed, “I was wrong about so many things. But the one thing I have never been wrong about is you. I love you, beautiful girl. So much.”

I didn’t even realize I was moving until I was in front of him. “William—”

“No.” The look in his eyes was pleading. “Let me say this. Let me finish. I owe it to you.”

I nodded. I didn’t need to hear it. I loved him too. Nothing he did or could ever do would change that. But William needed to say what he’d come to say.

“I love you, Catherine.” We stood facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes, not touching.

“I’ve never felt like this about anyone else. I never
loved
anyone else. Only you. It’s been like this from the very beginning and I can’t believe I ever lost sight of it, even for a second. All of things I said to you? All of things I promised? I promised you that I’d never leave you, and that I needed to take care of you and you needed to let me. And then I...didn’t. I’m so sorry. I know I hurt you. I’m such a fucking idiot.”

The anguish he was feeling was so apparent on his face. His eyes were a restless blue, like the sky before a storm.

My first instinct was to reach out to him, to hold him and try to calm the tempest that I could see was raging inside of him. But I didn’t. I knew my anguish was apparent on my face too. I stood with my arms folded across my chest and let my tears fall down my cheeks. “You broke my heart, William. When you told me to go...” My voice trailed off.

“I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what I was thinking. All the shit with the extortion, with Elin and my parents. And Charles. It’s such a mess. I thought you’d be better off without me. After everything I put you through, it felt selfish to ask you to stay. But I didn’t realize how empty everything would be without you. How empty
I’d
be. I don’t care if it’s selfish. I need you in my life, Catherine. Please come back to me.”

“It’s not selfish to let me love you,” I whispered.

“Oh, but it is. God damn it, I couldn’t protect you. I hate that you were almost hurt because of me. That that crazy bitch wanted to kill you,
because of me
. Of course it’s selfish for me to ask you to be with me.”

William ran his hands through his thick dark curls, mussing them wildly, a sure sign of his frustration. This big strong man who could take on the world and win was leveled by his loss of me.

“It’s all over now. Elin’s in jail and all her crazy plotting and threatening and her fucking with us is over. What are you still scared of?” I asked.

His voice was low, holding that same tone of resignation as it had when he’d told me to go. “Of losing you. There will be another one. There always is. That’s the price of being with me. I know that, but you need to know it, too.”

I gulped. I knew from the start that a relationship with William Maddox Lambourne III would be anything but ordinary. I didn’t expect that I’d become the target of a crazy woman during our first few months together, but who could predict these things? All the recent insanity aside, William loved me. That’s what I still trusted. And I still trusted him, implicitly. I was willing to take on whatever risks came with the man. They were nothing compared with the risk of living my life without him.

“I’m in,” I said, looking up at him.

“What?” William gaped at me, a shocked expression on his face.

“I’m in,” I repeated. This time I couldn’t help but smile.

He looked at me, and I watched as the storm that had been raging in his beautiful eyes settled, and he returned my smile with one of his own. “Thank God,” he said, and he pulled me to him and kissed me deeply.

I was ready for William to sweep me up in his arms and carry me off into the sunset, but he pulled away. “There’s one more thing,” he managed to say.

“What is it?” I asked.

He started running his hands through his hair again, then he exhaled audibly and paced in front of the couch, like he was getting ready to run a race or head off into battle.

“When I found out about my father, I was floored. I idolized him, you know? I’ve spent my entire life trying to do everything he would have wanted me to do. Do everything the way he did it. And then, in an instant, he wasn’t the man I thought. So I didn’t know who I was either.”

“I know who you are,” I said softly.

He squeezed my hands. “And you never stopped trying to reach me, even when I treated you...” He closed his eyes. “God, Catherine. I fucked up so bad. I promise, I’m going to spend a lifetime making it up to you.”

“You don’t need to do that, William. I forgive you. Go on.”

“I had a lot of time to think after you left and while I was on the plane.” He gripped my hands tighter. “I don’t have to be him, I don’t have to follow in his footsteps. I’ve spent my entire life obsessed with something that happened when I was eleven years old. I don’t want to focus on the past anymore. They’re gone and I have to let them go. I can’t give up my future, my life, just so I can figure out their past. My parents, Wyatt, they wouldn’t want that for me.”

“What are you saying?” My heart was beating wildly. I hadn’t expected this.

“I’m making changes. I’ve already started to dismantle WML Capital Management. I don’t want it anymore.”

My mouth hung open. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. William wasn’t walking away from his billions exactly, but he was walking away from the only career he’d ever known, one at which he’d excelled at, all on his own.

“My father lived for the art of the deal. He thrived on the risk of investing. I don’t. I do care about the companies I own, so I’ll find suitable new owners for all of my major holdings. The deal in Kyoto was just the start. It’s going to take a while, but I’ll sell off most of it within the next several months.”

I finally found my voice. “What are you going to do then?”

“I want to build something for myself.”

I nodded. “You should. When we first met, you told me you liked to make things. You
should
build something new, something all your own.”

“I will. And on my terms. The vineyard is a small operation, but I like being hands-on, and I love making wine. And I’ll keep investing in restaurants. And, I’m going to step up my involvement with the Lambourne Foundation. Come September, I can channel more money into it and then make sure it goes to many more worthy causes.”

“That sounds so perfect for you, William. You’ll be great.”

“I want to, but...” He stopped pacing and walked to stand right in front of me, taking my hands in his.

“But what?”

“But I can’t do it alone, Catherine.  I want it all. With you. I want spend my life making you happy and watching you smile. When you’re ready, I want to marry you. I want us to have a family. I want us to have a fucking incredible life. Together.”

Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them back. These weren’t tears of pain but of joy. Complete and utter joy. I smiled. “You won’t have to.” I wrapped my hands around his neck and pressed against him. “I’m in.” The heat of his body flooded into me, and our mouths met in a kiss both tender and filled with longing.

He pulled back. “God, I’ve missed you. I don’t know what to do first—tell you more about my plans or take you to bed.”

I laughed. “Oh, take me to bed.”

William bent and swept me into his arms, solid and secure around me. I pressed my cheek against his chest, and his scent washed over me. In my ear, his heart thumped steadily.

It beat for me.

He really did love me, just as I loved him.

We passed the wall of windows, and the lights of Paris glittered in the darkness. It was like a dream. But if this was a dream, I never wanted to wake up.

The bedroom door clicked closed behind us, and William lowered me slowly onto the four-poster bed. My head settled on the small mountain of pillows and then William was beside me, his warm, familiar form covering me.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he said, his hand stroking over my hair and fanning it over the pillows.

I drew his mouth to mine and slowly feasted on his lips. I took his lower lip between my teeth, gently nipping it, then tracing the seam of his lips until he opened for me. As soon as our tongues met, the blood rushed in my ears, and the last vestiges of my control faded. My hands dug into William’s back as he kissed me deeply, passionately, and without reserve.

Gently, he pulled me up and tugged my T-shirt over my head. I toed my shoes off, while William tugged my jeans over my hips. He pulled them down to my ankles then kissed his way back up, pausing to plant butterfly kisses on the back of my knee

He worshipped every inch of my body—the inside of my elbow, the curve of my ankle, the fluttering pulse at my wrist.

“I love you, Catherine,” he said, his breath warm against my palm. “I love you.”

He quickly undressed then pulled the covers back and settled under them with me. I molded against his big warm body, lit only by starlight and the twinkling lamps of Paris.

His mouth found my shoulder, and he drew the straps of my bra down, one by one. My nipples were hard and swollen, and the material caught on the extended points. William looked down at me, at the scrap of fabric, and took a shaky breath. With trembling hands, he freed my breasts and tossed the bra aside. His hands closed on me, kneading me until my flesh heated and grew heavy. His thumbs rubbed over my extended nipples, and it was like a cord straight to my sex. My hips arched with each slow circle, pressing against his hard cock.