Closer (11 page)

He savored the whisper of her breath against his neck and the way the soft contour of her cleavage grazed against his firm chest.  It was enough to grant him hope until she spoke.

“I’m going to undress now, Sven.”

He exhaled and repeated her words in his mind, fondling the metal tab of the zipper on her dress.

“Upstairs,” she asserted, covering his hand with her own.  “By myself.”

He closed his eyes and bowed his head against her shoulder, as if her rejection wounded him, despite the fact that he fully expected it.

“Good night, Sven.”  She softly touched the nape of his neck.

“Good night, Miss Sanchez.”  He inhaled her scent to commit it to memory before permitting her to escape up the spiral staircase to the guest bathroom where he heard the door shut and lock with finality.

Chapter Eight

Sven sat on his sofa, staring at all the blurry water lilies within the Monet painting.  Yesterday, he had strained his eye the entire day, and so it wasn’t a surprise to him when he woke up with a headache and diminished sight.  This morning, he only counted eleven water lilies before giving up completely. 
Eleven
… Things were deteriorating faster than he had ever expected.  Shutting his eyes, he pressed the cold ice pack against the socket of his good eye and exhaled as it numbed him into relaxation. 

He knew it could all change by tomorrow.  If he rested his eye, he might be able to find at least fifteen or sixteen.  That would be an improvement. 
It could all change by tomorrow
. 
Nothing was certain yet
.  Some days were better than others, and not even the doctors were certain he would go completely blind.  No one had any idea what was going to happen. 
Nothing was certain
.

Buzzzzzz
.

The front doorbell.  He sat up straighter and removed the ice pack. 

Inez?

It was a whisper of hope.  When he had awoken this morning, alone and nursing a headache, he remembered how he had propositioned her last night and how reprehensible it had been.  But she had not given in to him.  She remained loyal to their arrangement and proved she was nothing less than the wise, self-controlled woman who he had hired to help him get through the week. 
Yes, she had escaped from him
last night
.  But now, as the front door buzzer of his penthouse rang again, he wondered why the doorman hadn’t rung his phone to announce the visitor before allowing her into the elevator.  It had to be because he recognized her. 
It had to be because it was Inez.

He rose from the sofa, motivated by expectation and anticipation.  It was only nine-thirty in the morning.  He looked down at himself and smelled under his arm.  He was without a shower or shave and wearing only his silk pajama pants.  He hadn’t expected to see her again until this afternoon.  Perhaps she had forgotten something.  Or perhaps she had reflected on the evening, and now, she had come to tell him that she had reconsidered working for him. 

A sudden pang of dread constricted his chest.  He still needed her; there were still so many events this week that he couldn’t navigate without her assistance.  He paced across his living room, summoning the resolve to make her change her mind.  He would convince her to give him a second chance.  He would promise her that he would be a better man.  He would admit that she had seen a rare moment of weakness which had fueled his desire to keep her with him as long as possible.  He was a flawed man, and he wasn’t as invincible as he pretended to be. 

He counted his steps to the front door, vowing to himself not to lose her before he even had an opportunity to get to know her, because the truth was when he woke up this morning, he hadn’t regretted his actions last night.  He only regretted not finding her sooner.

He whisked open the door and felt his heart sink into the pit of his stomach. “Celeste?” His voice wavered before he had a chance to mask his disappointment.

She laughed awkwardly and brushed past him without waiting for an invitation to enter.

“Good morning, handsome.  I know it’s early, but you’re a morning person, so I didn’t think you’d mind the house call.  Unless, of course, I’m interrupting…” Her voice trailed off as she cocked her head, listening for the presence of another person—another woman.

He closed the door, watching her blurry image sashay across the hardwood floor in her electric blue heels.  In the past, Sven had always enjoyed watching Celeste’s long sensual legs and tight secretary skirt follow an invisible tight rope whenever she entered his penthouse.  But not this time.  This time, he lowered his gaze and covered his eye with his hand, feeling the nagging ache returning with vengeance.

Celeste moved into the living room and spotted the ice pack on the leather sofa.

“Long night?” she asked.

“Before the cocktails or after Inez and I left?”  He knew what she was thinking and he didn’t mind letting her imagination run with it.

She scoffed.  “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were trying to make me jealous.”

Silently, he turned away.  There was more truth in that statement than he cared to admit. 
Games
.  It was always a game between them.  When he was dating her, she was one of the few women who kept him both sexually stimulated and intellectually interested.  But now, it all seemed like too much work.  And she had only been there two minutes.

“You’re here for a specific reason, Celeste.  What is it?”  The edge in his voice made it clear that he was in no mood for games.

“Well, no need to sound so impatient.”  She glanced up the spiral staircase, again studying the silence.  When she was certain they were alone, she untied her leopard-print wrap coat and draped it across the high-backed lounge chair.  “I’m here to make peace with you.”  She said it simply, almost sincerely. 

He strained his unpatched eye and focused on her face.  Her sharp cheek bones, high forehead and coral pink lips reminded him that she had paid her way through college working for a local modeling agency. 
Beautiful…no, stunning
.  But more importantly, she knew how to turn her good side towards the camera and use it. 

He had taken too long to respond and she circled away from him, as if his silence made her nervous. 

“I realized after last night that I’m tired of this…animosity between us, and I think it’s time that we both try to reconcile the past.”

“Reconcile the past?  Which part of the past exactly?”

She avoided the emotion in his voice and turned away to gaze out at the skyline. 

“I’m not proud of the way things ended between us.  But you make it sound like it was all a sordid act of malice against you. When you left for Shanghai, I was hurting, too, Sven, you know?”

Was he still hurt?
  It felt shameful and juvenile to still be hurt over her betrayal, and everything that had spiraled out of control after it.  Shameful and juvenile because it had partly been his own fault.

“But you can’t blame for me moving on after I realized you never had any intention of making a commitment to me,” she added.

“We were together for two years, Celeste.  What more of a commitment would you have liked?”

She looked at him like he was the one playing games.

“You mean a proposal?” he replied.

She shrugged. “Your work always came first.  And look at it…isn’t it magnificent?”

Her gaze shifted out the windows onto the stunning view of The Spire.  Her compliment softened the lump of bitterness in his throat.   She had always supported his work.  Even when The Spire had been defiled by the locals; Celeste had been a handful of influential voices in the media who openly defended his ambitions.  And perhaps that was a large part of why he believed he had loved her.

He studied her now.  The sunlight streaming through the windows sharpened the alluring lines of her navy suit jacket and matching skirt.  She stroked the fox fur that trimmed the lapels of her fitted jacket, accentuating her long torso and slender waist.  How many days—just like this one—had they spent together, here in his penthouse?  How many nights had they spent together, naked in his bed like lovers, laughing, kissing, and plotting the roadmap of their own grandiose future?

Yes, he still hurt
.  He closed his eyes, as if he wanted to erase the past from his mind.  But none of it mattered now.  Perhaps that was the realization that hurt the most—so many visceral memories, so many private conversations, so many intimate emotions that, in the end, didn’t seem to mean anything at all.

He touched his eyepatch.  His head ached like his resentful soul.

“I was…am not a perfect man, Celeste.  You said you came to make peace, but the fact of the matter is that you are now engaged to my brother, and so I do not believe it is the past that we must reconcile, but our present situation.”

“And can it be reconciled?” She pushed towards him. “We used to be so familiar and candid with each other.  Don’t you remember all those summer nights we used to spend out on your sailboat, just the two of us, alone and perfectly free with each other?”

His head flinched in pain. “I try not to think of sailing, anymore.”

“Yes, of course.” She paused and stared at his wounded eye.  “You must know, Sven…I want you to know that when I told you about Hans and me the last time we were together on your yacht, I never thought you’d react the way that you did.”

“He’s my brother, Celeste.  And you were my lover.”

“
Were
,” she stressed, like she was asserting her innocence. “You made it very clear that you couldn’t be bothered with making promises to me before you traveled to Shanghai because you weren’t the marrying type.  And it was at that moment that I realized our relationship was over,” she said with a subtle grimace.  “Most girls believe in a certain type of fairy tale, Sven.  And one of those fairy tales is that her Prince Charming will fall in love with her at first sight and love her more than anything else in his life.  But on that day—the day you left for Shanghai—I realized you didn’t love me.  Not like I wanted you to…not like I had always hoped you would.”

Sven fell silent, as if she was describing a stranger. 
Had he been that cold and detached from her
?  It was entirely possible that he had.

“And Hans,” she continued. “Well…dearest Hans was more than willing to lend me a shoulder to cry on.”

“He lent you more than just his shoulder,” Sven shot back.

She threw back her head with laughter.  “Yes, perhaps he did.” She closed the gap between them and reached out to toy with the waist strings of his silk pajama pants.  “But you must know, Sven.  I never meant to hurt you…it’s just that…I was hurting, too.”

She touched his bare chest, her fingernails skating down his flanks.  He exhaled and looked into her smoldering eyes.  She said she had come to make peace between them.  But she wasn’t a woman who inspired peace; she was a woman who inspired vices.

The sensation of her touch made the hair rise up along the nape of his neck.  Celeste always had a knack for soothing his defenses, and after last night, his body was starved for attention.  He noted the sophisticated scent of her perfume—something expensive and Parisian.  For a brief unguarded moment, he considered gathering her up into his arms and testing the sincerity of her innuendos.  It would be the perfect revenge against Hans, and perhaps he would even be able to rekindle some of his attraction for Celeste. 
Wrath and lust—two of the seven deadly sins
. 

In the past, he likely would have done it.  But not now.  Now, the only thing ringing through his head was the sound of Inez’s sarcastic voice. 
Your friends are all assholes, Sven
.  And the only emotion tugging at his heart was disappointment—disappointment that Celeste was the one who was there and she wasn’t.  Inez was right—
they were all assholes
—and something inside him made him want to prove himself different from them. 

He confidently drew Celeste’s arms from around his neck and pulled away from her.  “Celeste, you’re engaged to my brother now, and I have other obligations.”

“You mean like speed dating younger women?” 

He paused and glared at her.  It was a petty insult—punishment for rejecting her physical advances, no doubt.

His cell phone rang out from the sofa where he had left it.  Staring at her, he picked up the phone and deliberately answered the call.  “Hello?  Yes, of course.  Please come up.”

“How sweet.  She’s here now.”  Celeste’s voice was filled with contempt.

He didn’t correct her.  Instead, he retrieved her coat from the sofa, offering to help her into it. 

“She was wearing your mother’s emerald necklace last night,” she noted curtly, slipping her long elegant arms through the coat’s flowing bell sleeves. “Something you never offered me.”

Sven didn’t feel compelled to answer.  In fact, taking about Inez with Celeste seemed dishonorable.  He draped her coat over her slender shoulders before she pulled away and sauntered towards the front door.  Its buzzer rang. 

“Open.” Sven called out, triggering the mechanical click of the lock, allowing the porter to roll in the luggage cart.

“Oh, I see,” Celeste said with a nod.  “You’re bringing her tonight, too?”

“Yes, of course.  She’s my girlfriend.”

The comment rang untrue in his ears, but he didn’t care.  He liked the way it felt to say it, and he wanted Celeste to hear it.

She paused in the doorway, gazing at the two garment bags hanging from the cart’s gold-plated rails.

“Let’s hope she’s better at influencing you than I was.  Eliot Watercross is determined to have you onboard for the Li Long project, even if it means ruining you—just to ensure your participation.  Be careful, Sven.  I would hate to see you making choices that could hurt you and your career.”

Without bidding him farewell, she brushed past the porter and strode out the door.  Relieved, Sven watched her indistinct figure disappear into the private elevator before opening the door of a side closet, fishing through his coat’s pockets, and retrieving a one hundred dollar bill, which he handed over to the young man.