Straightening the papers on his desk, Zach found a copy of the contract that the legal department had worked up. It wasn’t signed yet. And even if Nora signed it today, it wasn’t valid until he signed it. He looked over the terms. J.P. had been very generous. Royal didn’t dole out significant advances very often. Of course, Nora brought her own impressive fan base with her. Zach knew J.P. hoped she would bring a certain libidinous cachet to the rather staid old publishing house. It was a bold move that might actually pay off if Zach did his job right.
Zach smiled as he flipped through Nora’s unsigned contract. When he and Grace had bought their first house, the paperwork hadn’t been half this preposterous. Poor Grace. He remembered watching her at their tiny kitchen table in their first horrid little flat they’d rented sight unseen when they’d moved to London. They’d been married less than a year. She thought she was supposed to know what every word of the contract meant, what every clause referred to. She sat for hours poring over every page. He’d leave and come back and she would have another twelve questions to ask him. What did first right of refusal mean? Did they know the assessed value? Did they need a variance if he worked from home?
It was so damn endearing watching her spend an entire day trying to understand everything as if she thought she should that Zach finally had to come over, shove the papers away and make love to her right on top of their settlement statement. He remembered it so clearly, the shock on her face when the papers scattered to the four winds. She thought he was angry with her. But he remembered her smile when he kissed her so fiercely the table scooted a foot back. He remembered her red hair against the dark wood, how her legs had wrapped around him with almost childlike eagerness as he moved inside her.
He’d heard once there was nothing like buying a house together to make or break a relationship. That was the day he decided they were going to make it.
Zach put the contract down, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Maybe they should have bought more houses.
* * *
An hour later Nora left the hotel and strode to her car cursing Søren under her breath the whole way. She kept cursing, knowing if she let up on the fury for one second, she would collapse into tears. It had been months since they’d spoken. She did everything she could to avoid him. Sometimes she saw him at the club and they only looked at each other across the room while bystanders subtly moved a few steps back like unwitting townspeople caught between two gunslingers. Søren wasn’t on the attack today, however. Worse—he’d wanted to talk.
Nora ran over their conversation again in her mind. The conversation, as all conversations with him were these days, was rather one-sided. She’d sat on the bed like a child in trouble for staying out too late and ground her foot into the plush carpeting as he stood in front of her and ticked off, one by one, all her multifarious sins. Nora had known him since she was fifteen years old. Shocking how much ammunition one could stockpile in eighteen years.
And then near the end he’d revealed why he’d gone to the trouble of setting up the meeting. Kingsley had told him she’d been acting different lately—quieter, angrier, desperate to work one day, reluctant the next. She’d explained she was heavy into revisions on her new book, that her new editor was a hard-ass who was giving her the chance and the challenge of a lifetime. Søren seemed skeptical, asking if there might be something she wasn’t telling him. The hour he’d paid for finally up, Nora started to leave. On her way out the door Søren had stopped her with a word—“Wesley.”
Nora had turned around slowly. Trying to keep her tone neutral she’d asked, “What about him?”
“Next time we meet, little one, we will have much more to discuss.”
Her heart flinched when he’d used his old pet name for her. But she merely stared at his handsome face, hoisted her toy bag and left. After all these years, all the practice, she was getting good at that. Nora sat behind the wheel of her car and closed her eyes. She said a prayer of thanks Søren hadn’t touched her. That’s what had happened on their last anniversary. She’d gone to his home too late in the evening. She’d let him give her a glass of wine. They’d talked about mutual friends and even played a game of chess at the kitchen table he’d made brutal love to her on so many times. For a few minutes she’d let herself forget that she wasn’t his property anymore. One curl had fallen forward across her face when she’d bent to move her bishop. Søren had reached out and brushed it behind her ear. He’d caressed her cheek with his thumb. Within minutes they were in his bedroom and she was strapped to the bedpost. He’d beaten her so hard that night she’d nearly gagged on her own tears. And when he finally gave up on the pain, he’d untied her and let her collapse into his arms. His darkness spent, he laid her in his bed and made love to her so tenderly she’d cried again. In the past when they were still together, he’d talk to her while inside her. Sometimes he would articulate in shocking detail the intensity of his desire for her. Sometimes he would simply claim her, calling her his property, his possession. That night as he moved in her he spoke in Danish, the language he fell into when his heart was its most open. He’d taught her some Danish when she was a restless teenager. It became one of their secret ways to communicate. She’d forgotten a lot of it in the four years they’d been apart, but she never forgot Jeg elsker dig. It was Danish for “I love you” and he whispered it again and again into her skin.
Afterward he’d stayed inside her and pulled them into a sitting position at the center of his bed. Her legs wrapped around his waist; her arms twined around his shoulders. He ran his hands up and down her beaten back as he kissed her bare neck. She rocked her hips slowly, relishing having him inside her again after so long.
“You miss your collar,” he’d said—a statement, not a question. She’d taken it with her when she’d left him four years ago.
“I miss it.” She tilted her head back to give him better access to her naked throat. She bent forward again and he kissed her bruised lips. If she pretended it was only today and that there was no yesterday and no tomorrow, she could stay with him forever.
“You can come back to me, Eleanor. Always.”
“I can’t.” She shook her head. “They need you more than I do. I can’t rip your life in half.”
“It is my life,” he’d reminded her. “You tore my life in half the day you ran from me.”
“Don’t,” she said, and the tears burned bright in her eyes. Her chest heaved and she clung to him so hard her fingernails bit into his skin. “Don’t say I ran. I didn’t run. It wasn’t running and you know it. You know I didn’t want to leave you. I no more ran from you than I’d ever run into a burning building. I could never run from you.”
He laughed at her vehemence.
“Then what would you call it if it wasn’t running, little one?” He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“I crawled.” She tried to smile for him. “It’s what I’m good at after all.”
He wrapped his arms even tighter around her. She prayed he’d chain her to his bed and make her stay there the rest of her life. But she knew he’d let her go at dawn. He wouldn’t keep her against her will even if against her will was what she wanted.
“When you come back to me—” he began and she pulled back to meet his eyes.
“I won’t.”
“If you come back to me,” he said, making a rare concession, “will you run or will you crawl?”
Nora had pressed her whole body into him at that moment. Resting her head on his strong shoulder, she watched as a tear forged a river down his long and muscled back.
“I’ll fly.”
To Søren she knew that night was proof that she still belonged to