Page 1 of Hush Money

CHAPTER ONE

TAMSYN

She’s alive.

I stand at the top of the magnificent, curved staircase and shake my head as I stare at the unfolding scene in the elegant and softly lit foyer below. It’s the only thing I can manage. Suffocating shock prevents me from doing anything else.

This cannot be happening.

Not ten minutes ago, Lucien and I were enjoying each other in the shower of his master bathroom here at his Great Neck estate, Ackerley, unwinding after our long flight back to New York from Barcelona. He was buried deep inside me, our slick bodies arching against each other as the pleasure overtook us. He showed me a new side that I’ve never seen before, not that I know him well. We only met by chance two weeks ago, at the departures lane at LaGuardia. But he started opening up to me now that we’re on his home turf. He was so tender in that shower. He told me how happy he was that I’d decided to spend the rest of the summer here with him following our unexpected and scorching-hot time together on a Mediterranean cruise. We made each other come and he made my heart ache. Then we got out and threw on our fluffy white robes. He went down to the kitchen to grab the late supper his chef made for us before all the staff left for the evening, and I was supposed to meet him there. I was thinking about drying my hair. Then I heard a strange commotion and came to the railing to see what it was about.

And now this.

Lucien stands down there with Daniel, his estate manager, who is soaking wet from the storm outside. And in between them? A tall and beautiful woman with long, dark hair and a bloody gash on her forehead. She’s also drenched, shivering with a blanket around her shoulders and a blank stare haunting her lovely face.

The woman is Ravenna. Lucien’s wife. Back from her presumed death in a boating accident two years ago.

But it can’t be, I think, still frozen with shock.

There’s no way for me to get my head around this whiplash reversal of fortune. Ghosts don’t exist. People don’t just come back from the dead. Nor do people slip into time warps and get spat back out two years later as though nothing ever happened.

But they do. Lucien just confirmed it. It’s Ravenna, he told me. She’s back.

Lucien’s wife is alive. Ravenna is alive. Which means that he’s not a widower after all, but a married man who’s just been reunited with the love of his life.

And me?

My stomach lurches. I cling to the stair rail, determined not to keel over as my stark new reality sets in. I’ve been demoted. I’m nothing to him now. But I always knew, in my naïve little heart, that my time with a rich, sophisticated and grieving man like Lucien Winter would never last once our cruise across the sea ended. Could never last.

I just never thought it would end like this.

“Oh my God,” I say, my hand at my throat. My voice barely works. “Oh my God.”

No one is listening anyway.

“Let’s get her to the bench,” Lucien tells Daniel. They tighten their grips on her arms and shuffle her a few steps sideways. “Easy. Careful.”

They press Ravenna into her seat and settle on either side of her while she continues to stare out at the invisible thing that only she can see.

“Ravenna?” Lucien takes his wife’s shoulders and hunkers down in her face, giving her a little shake. “Ravenna? Say something. I know you’re in there.”

“I think she’s in shock, Lucien,” Daniel says gently.

“Ravenna?” Lucien shakes her again, harder this time. “Ravenna?”

Daniel tries again. “Lucien…”

“I’m talking to my wife,” Lucien barks at him. “I don’t need your input right now.”

Daniel drops his gaze, holds his hands up and eases back.

I don’t blame him. The wild light in Lucien’s eyes is something I’ve never seen before. It scares me a little. He looks unhinged. Another lightning flash highlights all the hard planes and ridges of his handsome face, and Daniel clearly wants no part of him when he’s like this. Neither do I, to be honest.

But what did we expect? Lucien always suspected that Ravenna was somewhere out there in the world, still alive. He told me so. Now that she’s back, he surely wants her all the way back. Not some shell of her former self.

The knowledge knifes me through the heart and all the way down to my gut. Because ten minutes ago, I thought that I didn’t belong here at Ackerley because Lucien and I come from different worlds. He’s rich. He’s older, sophisticated and well traveled. I’m none of those things. But I came here anyway, thinking that maybe something could work between us. We’re so intense together. Something about us just works in and out of bed, despite the odds.

But now I’m staring at the real reason why Lucien will never belong to me. The woman he’s loved since way before I came on the scene. The reason I never had a chance.

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