He heard her answer a few more yes-and-no questions—with little more than a yes or no, sounding more and more like a child with each one—then heard her promise she would call tomorrow morning at the usual time. Then he heard the sound of her phone flipping closed.
He was about to pull the door to and hurry to the room before she caught him eavesdropping, but he heard something else that stopped him short—the very soft sound of muffled crying.
Something twisted inside him. He wasn’t accustomed to hearing a woman cry. Mostly because he made sure he got involved with women who were as shallow as he was. At least where things like emotional involvement were concerned. Obviously, Della wasn’t shallow. Obviously, she cared a lot about things like involvement. Even if she was currently involved with the wrong man.
Putting aside, for now, the fact that that word probably applied to himself as much as it did Geoffrey, Marcus pushed open the door and silently moved through it. He didn’t know why. It would have been best for him and Della both if he went back to the room and pretended he knew nothing of her conversation. It would have been best if they spent the rest of the weekend pretending there was nothing beyond that room until the two of them had to leave it.
But when he saw her sitting on the stair landing with her feet propped on the carpeted step below her, her arms crossed over her knees, her head rested on her arms, her shoulders shaking lightly, he knew he could never go back to pretending anything. She still had the cell phone clasped in one hand, but it fell, landing with a dull thud when she began to cry harder, and she didn’t bother to retrieve it. Instead, she surrendered to her sobs, muffling them by pressing her mouth to the sleeve of her robe. She was so lost in her despair that she had no idea Marcus stood behind her.
He didn’t know what to do or say, could only stand there feeling helpless. It was an alien concept, this helplessness, and he didn’t like it at all. His instincts told him to flee before she saw him, but his conscience—and he was surprised to discover he actually had one—dictated he do something to make her feel better. He let the two war with each other, to see who would win, but when instinct and conscience kept bickering, he stepped in and made the decision himself. He took a tentative step forward, then another.
As he was reaching down to curl his fingers over her shoulder, she whirled her head quickly around. When she saw him there, her eyes went wide with panic, and she stood so quickly, she almost pitched backward down the stairs. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist as she managed to right herself, but neither seemed to know what to say or do after that. For a long moment, they only stood silently looking at each other. Then, finally, Della stepped onto the landing with Marcus. He released her wrist, but brushed away a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
He had no idea what to say. He, Marcus Fallon, who had never been at a loss for words in his life. The man who could find a quip—whether appropriate or not—to alleviate any tense situation, who could make light of even the most difficult circumstances, couldn’t scrape up one word that would ease the tension in this one. Some knight in shining armor he was turning out to be. But then, he’d never wanted to be a knight in shining armor.
Not until now.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, threading his fingers into her damp hair.
Her eyes were huge, seeming larger thanks to the presence of her tears, making her look vulnerable and fragile. He knew she was neither of those things, and realizing that one conversation with Geoffrey could make her feel that way made him despise the man even more.
She nodded, but said nothing, only swiped at her wet eyes with both hands before shoving them into the pockets of her robe.
“You don’t look okay,” Marcus said. He lifted his other hand and wove those fingers through her hair, too, until he found the nape of her neck and cradled it in his palm.
“I’m fine,” she assured him quietly, sounding anything but.
Knowing it would be pointless to pretend he hadn’t heard her on the phone, he asked, “Who were you talking to?”
She looked at the phone on the floor, then up at Marcus. “How much of that did you hear?”
He thought about telling her he’d heard enough to know she was mixed up with someone she shouldn’t be who was obliging her to do something she obviously didn’t want to do, but that was kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. She shouldn’t be mixed up with Marcus, either. Not being the kind of woman she was.
Namely, the kind whose emotions ran deeper than a sheaf of paper.
“Not very much,” he lied. “I got worried when you didn’t come back, so I came looking for you.”
“Was I gone that long?”
He smiled, unable to help himself. “A few seconds was too long to be away from you.”
When she didn’t smile back, his own fell. “So who were you talking to, Della?”
“No one,” she said. “No one important.”
“He’s the one you were worried about missing you today, isn’t he?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “But not the way—” She expelled an irritated sound.
“Not the way what?” Marcus asked.
“Nothing.” She pulled away from him, then bent down to scoop up her phone and the still-empty ice bucket. She looked at his face, but her gaze immediately ricocheted to the door. “Look, Marcus, can we go back to the room and forget this happened? ”
When he said nothing, she looked at him again, her eyebrows arrowed downward. “Can we? Please?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, telling himself the gesture was not defensive. Marcus Fallon didn’t get defensive. Marcus Fallon was the most offensive human being on the planet. “I don’t know, Della. Can we?”
She glanced away again. “I can if you can.”
Somehow, he doubted that. Because in addition to being the man who currently claimed Della as his own, Geoffrey seemed like the kind of man who wouldn’t let her forget about anything.
In spite of that, Marcus nodded. Once. “Fine. Let’s just forget it happened.”
Still not looking at him, she replied, “You promise?”
“I do.”
When she looked at him again, all traces of her former sadness were gone. She looked matter-of-fact and a little blank. She sounded that way, too, when she said, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
It was only then, when she sounded so formal, that Marcus realized she had, for a few moments, been as familiar with him as she had been with the man on the phone. But now the reserve was in her voice again. When he looked at her, he realized it was in her posture, too. They were indeed back to pretending. He should be relieved about that.
Instead, for some reason, now Marcus kind of wanted to cry.
The mood in the room was considerably darker when they returned, Della couldn’t help noticing. As was the room itself. She strode directly to the window and pulled back the curtains to find her worst fears confirmed. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the snow was coming down even thicker and faster now than it had been when she’d first awoken.
She was never going to get out of here.
But then, what did she care? It wasn’t as though she had anything waiting for her out there. Nothing but a nondescript house full of nondescript furnishings in a nondescript Chicago suburb populated by nondescript families. Middle-class, middle-income, middle America. The area had been chosen specifically