Limited Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What You Gave Her

Chadwick demands to know why she gave Lacey his room number. The fight ends with a kiss she stops and a gala he orders her to attend.

I poured two cups of coffee and set one in front of him, and he didn't touch it.

"Lacey was in my bathroom last night," he said. "In a towel."

"You told me she got the floors mixed up."

"That was a kind guess." He leaned his hands on the kitchen island. "She told me the truth, Eileen. She said my wife gave her the number."

I took a sip of my coffee.

"Yes," I said. "I did."

He had been ready for a lie. I watched him hit the wall where it should have been.

"You did."

"I said it in the hallway, outside the elevators. I told her the front desk would give her a key."

"Why?"

It came out so quietly that I almost didn't hear it.

I thought about the answers I could give him.

The money was the one that was true, and I would not hand him that.

"You two seemed close," I said. "I thought I'd stop being in the way."

"You thought you'd stop..."

"Nobody has to sneak around. That's all."

"Did you know what was in the whiskey?"

I put the cup down.

"What was in it?"

"Something she put there." His mouth went thin. "I drank half a glass before I understood why I felt like that. I spent the next hour in a cold shower, and she was sobbing on the bedroom floor in a towel."

"Did anything happen?"

"No."

"Then I don't see what we're fighting about."

He came around the island so fast that the stool behind him fell over.

"You don't see."

He stopped a foot from me.

His eyes were bloodshot, and for the first time in three years he didn't know what I was going to do next.

"You handed a woman the key to my bed," he said, "and you smiled when you did it. Do you hate me that much?"

"I don't hate you."

"Then what is this?"

"I'm giving you what you asked for," I said. "Freedom. Privacy. No questions."

"I never asked you to..."

"You asked me a hundred times. Every time I checked your phone."

His hand closed around my wrist, the same wrist as yesterday.

He didn't pull. He only held it.

"Do you want me gone?"

My pulse was perfectly steady, and I let him feel it.

"I want you to be happy."

"Don't say that again."

The kitchen was very quiet.

I could smell his cologne under the airport on his skin, the cedar he had worn since he was nineteen.

He moved before I did.

His mouth came down hard on mine, with weeks of silence behind it, and my body answered before I had decided anything.

My back met the counter.

His hand slid into my hair and tilted my head, and I heard my own breath catch against his teeth.

For two long seconds I kissed him back, with my fingers fisted in his open collar, because my body remembered every part of this and had never been the problem.

Then I put my palm flat against his chest and pushed.

"No."

He let go at once.

He stood there breathing hard, with his hair in his eyes and his mouth red.

"Why not?" he said.

"Because I'm not a place you come when she's disappointed you."

"She didn't disappoint me. I threw her out."

"Then you're angry at me, and it feels like wanting."

His face went still.

"It's both," he said. "You know it's both."

I straightened my robe.

"I'll take the guest room until you travel again."

"That's not a punishment," I added, when he opened his mouth. "I'm not mad. I only sleep better there."

"I'm not signing anything, Eileen," he said. "If that's what this is. If you're waiting for me to say it first."

"Then I'll wait."

"For how long?"

"As long as it takes."

He actually laughed, one short breath through his nose.

"You won't last a week."

I picked up the cup he hadn't touched and poured it into the sink.

"Lacey's photo," he said behind me. "Of my hand on the sheets. You said you hadn't seen it."

I turned the tap on.

"I hadn't."

"It was posted at ten-oh-two. I checked."

"Then I was asleep," I said, "wasn't I?"

He watched my back for a long time.

When he spoke again, his voice had gone cold.

"The Higginson Foundation gala is Saturday," he said. "You're coming. On my arm, in front of everyone."

"Of course."

"And Lacey will be there."

"Of course," I said, and dried my hands. "She'll want to see you."

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