About Last Night (21 page)

But at least she’d learned something from him. She knew the difference now between infatuation and love. Their love was a mistake, but it was real. She loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone else.

She turned in his arms, putting them face-to-face in the blackness. “Kiss me.”

He cradled her head in his hand as he brought his lips to hers, smoothing the other hand down her back to rest at her tailbone, where her daughter spread her wings. There was no urgency in his mouth, but their bodies touched in a dozen places, and all of them ignited.

Her fingertips didn’t need the light to find their way along the familiar path to his shoulder blades, down the column of his spine, tracing the shape of his collarbone, seeking out the hollow of his throat. She knew this body. She loved this man.

They breathed together, moved together, skin sliding over skin that soon became slick and hot and combustible. Everything was the same, but it wasn’t. Each time his mouth met hers, in every movement of his hands, she could feel it. He loved her. He’d loved her for a long time. Maybe from the beginning.

Knowing that what they had was a mistake didn’t make it any less real or any less beautiful.

Cath spread her legs and pressed her hips up, inviting him in. Patiently, he kissed her neck, her throat. His hands wandered, fingers lingering at her nipples and catching on her
hipbones. Cupping her breasts. Counting her ribs. Slowly, thoroughly, he claimed every inch of her, branding her with lips, tongue, palms. Mine.

When she could no longer stand it, she took him in her hand and guided him between her legs. “Please, Nev.”

Poised at her entrance, he paused to kiss her again. Then he moved into her with torturous languor, a protracted possession that stole her breath and her reason. She gasped against his lips, arched into him, and heard him say her name.

Tears filled her eyes and spilled over. Nev interlaced his fingers with hers and raised her arms over her head. The rings he’d given her bit into the soft skin between her fingers. They weren’t lies but promises, however silently made. He wanted to keep her. She wanted to let him. They both wanted for the wrong reasons.

Joined at hands, chest, hips, she could feel his heartbeat, fast and steady, the power he held in check, the banked desire as he waited. She raised her knees, seating him deeper, and wrapped her legs around him.

Still, he didn’t move. He kissed behind her ear, her shoulder. He kissed her cheekbone and found it wet.

“You’re crying, love.”

“It’s okay. It’s perfect, actually. You’re perfect. I’m just a little … overwhelmed. Happy. Terrified.”

“Shall I stop?”

“Absolutely not.”

She felt him smile in the dark. “I wish I could see you,” he said.

“You know what I look like.”

“I do. My beautiful Mary Catherine.”

He kissed her again, long, lingering, his mouth making confessions, his fingers gripping hers tight.

Finally, finally he began to move, and then she couldn’t have talked, couldn’t have
stopped for anything. Each time he pulled out, she went a little crazy with the need to have him back inside her. She strained against him, digging her heels in, chasing him with her hips. Frenzied.

He soon gave in to her urgency, moving faster, pushing harder until they were crashing into each other. Nev let go of her hands to bury his palms underneath her, seeking to bring her closer, to make them one.

They lost themselves and fell apart, each safe in the other’s arms. For now.

Chapter Sixteen

Loud as gunshots against the marble floor, Evita’s heels announced her arrival long before she came into view. Nev had been giving Cath a tour of the house, but they’d only made it through one wing—much of it empty rooms full of painfully beautiful furniture under drop cloths—when his mother showed up and asked if she could “steal Neville away for just a moment.”

He dropped a kiss on Cath’s lips. “You can find your way round, can’t you, love?”

She nodded and watched them go, noticing for the first time the similarity in the way they moved. They had the same confidence. Mother and son. Who would’ve guessed?

When they were really gone, she did a slow scan of her surroundings and sighed. She could not, in fact, find her way around. She got lost in hotels, malls, even parking lots. There was no point in her trying to rediscover the main rooms of the house. Better to wander aimlessly and hope to stumble upon them eventually. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do.

Besides, she could use the break from Nev. She’d fallen asleep in his arms and woken up in mourning. Having made the decision to break off their relationship, every second she spent with him felt like an ending, and the morbid voice in her head kept up a steady stream of doomsaying.
You’ll never share a bed with him again. Never feel the bristle of his early-morning stubble against your neck. Never watch him button up his shirt. Never
.

Part of her wanted to leave immediately, just to bring the torture to an end. But a larger part wanted to stay so she could keep saying good-bye, if only in her head. Good-bye to everything she loved about him, from the way he kissed to the way he bent over to put on his socks. Every gesture and movement and habit. Every noble, wonderful piece of him.

Two hours in his company, and she was emotionally tapped out. She needed some time away to recharge.

The house was a welcome distraction. It went on and on. Handsome enough, if you liked manors, but in her current frame of mind it provoked irreverent questions. Had there been any marble left in Italy by the time they wrapped up construction on this old pile? Had the man who carved all the gorgeous teak woodwork labored in some dimly lit garret before expiring of consumption? What must it cost to heat the place?

She knew that a lot of prominent English families had been forced to sell their ancestral homes because they couldn’t afford the upkeep. The Chamberlains seemed to be holding their own, but if it had been up to Cath, she’d probably convert Leyton into hard cash and buy a nice flat in the city.

Not a respectable position for someone who made her living appreciating old, beautiful things, but then she’d never been a big fan of ostentatious displays of wealth.

She stumbled on the library eventually, where she found the least frightening member of Nev’s immediate family hiding out with a book and a pot of tea. If the parlor was an Austen novel, Richard’s library was
Jane Eyre
, all dark wood, leather spines, and velvet curtains. And hanging on the far wall, an arresting portrait of a young woman in an elaborate hat.

“Holy shit,” Cath said without thinking. “Is that a Gainsborough?”

“It is.” Richard’s tone registered pleasant surprise.

“Wow. It’s … wow.” She knew she ought to say good morning and all that polite happy-crappy, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off the painting. The eighteenth-century master had captured a relaxed quality in the woman’s posture, a lively kindness in her large brown eyes that suggested she’d be fun to hang out with, despite her fussy dress.

“You like Gainsborough?”

“I love him. His people are so alive, I always find myself wanting to strike up conversations with them.”

Richard nodded. “I’ve read that he painted very quickly. Perhaps it helped him capture the essential character of his subjects.”

“Is she— Is this a relative?”

Richard chuckled, sounding so much like Nev that she smiled automatically in response. Apparently, Nev’s dad didn’t have a problem with rude women who burst into his library and quizzed him about his art. “No, when this was painted the Chamberlains were still bootblacks or something equally undistinguished. My grandsire bought the piece later on. And quite a few others as well.”

“Other Gainsboroughs?”

“We have a landscape. There’s a Turner, too, if you like that sort of thing.”

“Is it one of the sunny ones, or broody and apocalyptic?”

“Sort of in the middle. It’s a seascape. Which do you prefer?”

“Oh, I like the broody, apocalyptic ones. I also like the ones where it looks like he rubbed Vaseline on his eyeballs before he started painting.”

Richard laughed again. “Ours might be one of those. Would you like to judge for yourself? I could show it to you, though we’ll have to go clear to the other side of the house. We keep most of the paintings in a special room. Temperature and humidity controls, you know.” He gestured at the Gainsborough. “Even this one most of the time, though I like to have her brought up for a few weeks now and again for a visit. It seems a shame to have art if you’re not to be allowed to look at it.”

“I’d love that.”

Richard rose, and they walked across the house together. Cath tested him out along the way, asking questions about the furniture and the carpets, not making much of an effort to conceal her expertise or her impertinence. She kept waiting for his face to tighten up in shock and outrage, but it never happened. Like his son, he seemed to genuinely enjoy her company. She found herself won over by his easy manner and his knowledge of art and history.

“Have you seen the Gainsborough showbox at the V and A?” she asked a few minutes into the walk. “He painted these landscapes on glass so they could be arranged in a box and lit from the inside.” The showbox thrilled her with its weird uselessness. Outmoded technology combined with timeless artistic skill. She had such a crush on it.

“I haven’t.”

“You should come by sometime, I’ll show it to you.”

“I’d like that. In fact, if they can spare you from your work, I’d love to have a tour. I’ve been through the museum, of course, but I quite enjoy going through collections with people more familiar with them than myself. That way, you get the benefit of all their insights.”

Cath smiled. “I feel the same way. Though I can’t promise any good insights. The only thing I know much of anything about is knitting.”

“Is that so? Then you must be involved in the exhibit they’re working up on hand knitting.”

She stopped and stared at him. “Do you know absolutely everything that’s happening on the London art scene?”

“Not everything, darling.” He offered her a sly, amused smile that was exactly Nev. “I didn’t know about you.”

Flattered, she looked down at her shoes and tried not to blush. “I’m hardly ‘happening,’ ” she said. “But yeah, I work on the knitting exhibit. I’m assistant to Judith Rhodes.” She glanced up, bashful. “I’ve been co-authoring the catalog.”

“Christopher is allowing you to co-author, is he? You
are
something.”

“Not really,” she said, embarrassed but thrilled. Richard was an important donor, a connoisseur, and he thought she was something. She let herself enjoy the feeling for a full five seconds before she sabotaged it. “They’re not even going to print the catalog.”

“Whyever not?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

She explained about the sponsor pulling out, feeling more like a manipulative asshole with each passing second. They’d been having such a nice time. She didn’t want to hit him up for money.

Objectively, she knew, there was nothing wrong with asking a major donor for a donation. It was what Judith would do in the same situation, what anybody in the arts would do. Funding was hard to come by. You had to hustle for it.

But she didn’t want to hustle Richard. She liked him. Already at his house under false pretenses, she hated herself for compounding the sin by breaking out her begging bowl.

And part of her hated Nev for bringing her here and making her do it.

“I’m surprised Christopher didn’t phone me,” Richard said when she’d finished. “I’ll ring him up, and we’ll get you sorted.”

There. That’s what she’d been angling for. Her career, fixed. Her achievements, solidified.

She didn’t want it. Not this way.

“Richard, honestly, you don’t have to do that. I didn’t tell you all this expecting you to make a donation.”

Now you’re a liar, too. Nice, Talarico. Real nice
.

“Of course you didn’t. It’s the least I can do for my new daughter-in-law. Consider it a wedding gift—or as payment for that tour you’re to give me.”

He smiled then, Nev without the shark. She found a way to smile back, but it kind of broke her heart to do it.

Nev finally found Cath in the art room, where she and his father had their heads bent over a Michael Ayrton print. They were so engrossed in their conversation, they didn’t even hear him come in. He took the opportunity to watch them, pleased to see the two people he loved most in the world getting along.

His father towered over Cath, who looked gorgeous in a black skirt and a short-sleeved fluffy pink sweater that made her pale skin glow. She wore tall black boots he hadn’t bought for her. He’d have remembered those boots. The sweater said she was a sweetheart, but the boots promised she kept a whip in the closet. The boots were hot.

When she’d pulled them on this morning, he’d wondered if they were a statement of
some kind. If they were, damned if he could translate it. Something had changed between them last night, but he didn’t know what it was. Cath had been skittish this morning, slipping out of bed to dress before he was fully awake and keeping more distance between them than usual as they toured the house.