Page 34 of Final Cost

Kindly bemusement flickers across Roman’s face. “No. Ravenna just trashed Lucien’s reputation on national TV on top of the existing investigation. Investors are freaking out. These things don’t wait.”

I nod, feeling ridiculous. Every now and then an issue pops up that reminds me of the vast gulf between my world and Lucien’s, and this is one of those times in glaring neon lights. I don’t know what I expected. Something along the lines of a note from the doctor to get a high school student with a nasty case of the flu out of his calculus final, I suppose. “Right. Of course.”

“And have you heard the latest? We’ve got protesters outside the gates. Calling Lucien a wife beater.” He grimaces. “And worse.”

This nightmare just goes on and on. I can’t begin to imagine how Lucien feels. “Oh, God.”

“Anyway, I’m beat,” Roman says, starting to continue his way. “Time for bed.”

“Actually, I was looking for you,” I call after him.

He turns back, frowning. “Me? Everything okay?”

My cheeks immediately overheat. “Everything’s fine with me,” I say quickly. “I was just wondering… How is Lucien holding up?”

He gives me a funny look. “You want to know how he’s doing?”

Rarely have I felt so lame. “Ah, yes.”

“You mean after losing you, losing his reputation, possibly losing the company our family has spent generations building, burying the resurrected wife that he hated and becoming a suspect in her death? When he’s got people spray paintingmurdereron the gates surrounding our house? How’s he doing afterthat?”

Yeah, okay. I’m a moron. “Roman…”

“Go talk to him,” he says, jerking his thumb at the study door.

He’s right. I know he’s right. But my feet are still frozen to the floor and I’m still the world’s biggest coward. I’m like one of those stupid romance heroines who is too hotheaded to let the duke grovel when he tries. I’m pathetic. I know it. But I’m starting to realize that the thing I’m most afraid of is myself. Because Lucien hurt me and the police suspect him of murdering his wife. Yet I still love him as desperately as I ever did. I’m still willing to believe in him. What kind of fool does that make me that I’m so willing to ignore all the red flags flapping in my face? “He just buried his wife. Maybe it’s a bad time. Maybe he needs space.”

“Fromyou?” He shakes his head, mutters something indistinct but disbelieving, paces a few steps away and comes right back. “I don’t know what’s going on with you two,” he says, and I’m not prepared for the sudden harshness in his voice. “But if I had someone who looks at me the way you and Lucien look at each other…? If I had another chance with the person I love? The one I can’t live without?”

He chokes back his words, blinking furiously. Hang on. Are thosetearsin his eyes? I think they are. Which makes me wonder—is he talking about me and Lucien? Or himself?

“IfIhadyourchance at happiness, you’d better believe I’d put alotmore effort into working things out than you two are doing. I hope I’d be smart enough to know when I had something worth saving. And you’d better believe I’ve already told my jackass brother the same thing.”

He walks off with a final pointed look, leaving me standing there like an idiot, his scathing bombshell still smoldering in my face. That’s when I suddenly get sick of myself. It’s not that I think Roman is right about Lucien and me working things out and getting back together. That’ll never happen. While I may succumb to occasional moments of weakness where my overheated body is concerned, I don’t plan to walk down that road again. But I am mature enough to recognize that I still have lingering feelings for Lucien. It’s been an eventful twenty-four hours. I can put my big girl panties on and go in there and ask him how he’s doing. There’s no shame in that. I’m a compassionate person. It’s what I do.

So I walk the last few steps to the ajar door, where I raise my hand to knock. Until I see him and all my best laid plans scatter.

He’s sitting in front of his computer monitors, their glow casting his face in the harshest possible light. Dark smudges of exhaustion threaten to swallow his eyes. His cheekbones and jawline are all unyielding angles as he sheds the black jacket from his funeral suit and yanks his tie loose. Once he’s tossed his clothing onto the console behind his desk, he leans back in his tufted leather chair and lets his eyes rolled closed, his shoulders slumping with exhaustion. I watch as he stays like that for several seconds, the ache inside me gathering strength and squeezing my heart, no matter how aloof I pretend to be. Then he rests his elbows on the desk and runs his hands over the top of his head until his hair is a wreck. He gives himself two or three seconds of this before snapping himself out of it as though he’s flipped some invisible switch. Then he straightens, opens his eyes, rotates the kinks out of his shoulders and starts tapping away on his keyboard, his usual extreme competence once again firmly in place.

I step forward out of the shadows into his office and clear my throat, praying that by the time I reach his desk I’ll have some idea what to say.

He pauses and glances up, his eyes widening at the sight of me. “Tamsyn.” He says it with the same quiet reverence with which you might sayMadame PresidentorYour Majesty. And something flickers on in his expression that looks a lot like hope. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Mutual staring ensues, punctuated only by my mouth opening and closing as I flounder hard enough to give myself an injury.

“Did you…” He gestures me to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “What brings you down here?”

“I was just wondering how the funeral went.”

Another pause. This one is longer and much more painful because I see that glow slowly leave his eyes. It’s like watching the light from a flashlight extinguish itself as its battery dies, leaving you in the dark heart of a cave by yourself. You’re fucked and you know it. “You want to know aboutRavenna’s funeral?”

“Well…yeah.”

He blinks. Then he nods, those lush lips of his twisting into something cold and sardonic. “Ravenna’s funeral was great. As funerals go. Plenty of white orchids. I had the violinist playAdagio for Strings. The song fromPlatoon. It was appropriately tragic. Ravenna would’ve loved it. There wasn’t a wet eye in the house. Oh, and the police came.”

“What?”

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