Page 67 of Hush Money

“Yes.”

I carefully put my mug down. I’m in great danger of dropping it from my trembling hand and drenching myself with hot coffee. “I wasn’t aware that people who’d admitted they’re in love with each other suddenly announced that they’re at a breaking point. For no reason.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have said that,” he says with a vague hint of regret. “The whole love thing and exclusivity thing. It was a bit much.”

The blood rushing into my head blanks out my hearing and vision for a moment. It’s as though my whole existence blinks and threatens to flicker out forever. “The ‘whole love thing’?”

Rueful laugh from Lucien. “I shouldn’t have said it. I got caught up in the moment. Pillow talk does that to a man. As you should know. I’m only human, right? You told me that last night. We had a great time together. It’s easy to get carried away here and there. You understand.”

I emphatically do not understand.

“So… So…” I rub my temples, getting nowhere with my rising frustration and horror. I hate to sound like a sputtering idiot, but it’s a real struggle to sit there making sense of this man taking a sledgehammer to my life. “So, you don’t love me after all? And that’s it? Forever?”

His gaze bores into mine, and there’s not one ounce of mercy in it. Not one drop of human compassion. It’s like staring into the flat eyes of an alligator in the millisecond before it clamps its jaws on your ankle and drags you into the lagoon for a death spiral. An alligator with flinty gray eyes.

“You didn’t really think a man like me would be satisfied with introducing you to caviar and champagne? Sitting around talking about feelings and dead parents all the time? Watching movies and snuggling on the sofa?” He scoffs, the sound a sonic boom in the brief silence. “Come on, Ms. Scott. You’re smarter than that. I’m already getting bored. Let’s tie this up with a nice bow and get on with our lives.”

He’s. Bored. With. Me.

“What are you saying?” I can barely get the words out. My heart and throat have converged around a trapped sob and are threatening to explode. In that dismal moment when he uses every single one of my darkest fears against me with surgical precision—as though he’s ticking off items on a checklist—I wish he’d let me die yesterday. That would’ve been easier and less painful than this if he wanted to get rid of me.

He presses his lips together. “You heard me. Don’t make me repeat it.”

“I don’t want to hear it again. Trust me. But you were very convincing when you said you loved me. So I’m having a hard time understanding you now. Maybe I need you to spell it out for me.”

“Fine.” He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth to continue, but his voice seems to be on a slight delay. “I want to see other people. Why be messy about it? We’re both adults. You probably want to see other people, too.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Well, you should.”

“Just so I’m clear—you want me to fuck other men?”

Yeah, I throw it in his face to hurt him and see his reaction. Which is why I’m not prepared to see his casual shrug. Oh, it takes him another long beat to boot up his words, sure, but I hoped for the mere suggestion to send him into the kind of white-hot rage that would make him swipe everything off the table and send it crashing to the floor. Anything but this glacial indifference.

“I’m not in the market for another wife. I know how naïve young women like you think, so I want to be clear: once I’m done with Ravenna, I’m done. There’s no future with me.”

I sit there shaking my head, trapped so far inside my misery that that’s all I can do for several of the worst seconds of my life. I mean, I’m shocked, but is any of this really a surprise? Of course a sophisticated man like Lucien would get bored with a girl-next-door nurse like me. Of course I’m not smart, sexy, funny or intriguing enough to keep his interest for longer than a baseball season. Of course it had to end like this. Didn’t I know all along that I was no match for a man like him? Didn’t I know all along that this exact heartbreak was racing toward me on a bullet train?

And yet…

There’s something in his rising color. Something about the way his gaze cuts away from mine as I sit there struggling with tears that I’m too stubborn to let fall in front of him. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something. The most maddening thing of all is that I can’t decide if I’d be stupid to believe him or stupid not to believe him. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t soaked up my full quotient of humiliation for the day. Maybe I’m a garden-variety masochist who won’t be happy until the man she loves stomps her into a wet smudge on the ground.

Whatever it is, it makes me reach out and grab his hand where it rests on top of his folder. The unyielding tension running through him makes him feel like some statue carved from a slab of stone. I don’t know how his blood can flow through a body locked up that tight.

He immediately snatches himself free, the signet ring that I put there cold and hard against my palm. But I’m glad I touched him because the contact clarified my doubts. Why is he so tense if this is so easy for him? I need the truth, and I plan to force it out of him if I have to.

“What’s going on, Lucien? Something’s happened. What are you not saying? Was there some new development overnight with Ravenna? Is she still out there? Is this all because you’re worried about her trying to hurt me again?”

“I’m saying everything.” He’s jeering now, barely able to get the words out through his gritted teeth and open disgust. “You’re not listening. How many ways do you need me to say it? I. Don’t. Want. You.”

It takes me a long time to absorb the blow of him deliberately hurting me like this. Even if he thinks he’s doing it to somehow protect me. If it’s possible to die while still living, or to inhabit a body while your soul dries up and sifts away on the breeze, that’s the moment it happens to me. I think about that time Lucien told me that he was a walking void until he met me. It’s a good description for the damage he’s just done. The only good thing about this new, hollowed-out existence is that it leaves just enough room for a sliver of pride to shine through. And I may be ruined in this moment, but I’m also Big Ralph’s daughter. And the one thing she will never do is beg or cry over an unworthy man.

“Ravenna warned me that you were cruel.” I try to match his arctic chill as I unscrew his mother’s earrings and set them on the table. “She said you keep secrets. I didn’t want to believe it.”

There’s the flash of a twisted smile as he watches me. “Yeah? Well. You know the saying: even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

“No!” I slam my palms on the table because I’ve reached my limit. My spoon jumps and my mug wobbles, but I don’t care. “I know what you’re doing. You’re upset about the fire. You’re pushing me away. You’re trying to keep me safe, and this is the only way you think you can do it. I know you, Lucien.”

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