Page 127 of Prelude To You

Then an odd thing happened. The beeping from the heart machine increased a notch, and then went back to normal. My own heart missed a beat.

I gawked from Henry to the machine and back again.

“Henry, what was that?”

Of course there was no answer. I stared at Henry, trying to determine whether he might have some knowledge of what was happening around him.

“You’re in there, aren’t you?” I whispered. “And I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying but we have to get you better before they decide to switch off these machines. That’s not a request either, that’s an order. I know you’re the boss of this house and all this money, but here in this room? I’m the boss. When Miss Leyland isn’t here of course.”

Bach was playing again, and I blamed the nurses who did the early-morning shift for that. So the first thing I did was shut down Bach. “I’m going to play you The Carpenters, Jim Croceand The Beatles today. I’m going to get some board games from the library and when I come back I’ll put some movies in the queue for us to watch. There’s simply no more time to waste.”

35

ISABEL

My first mistake in going to the library was turning down the wrong hall. I backtracked and finally found the right path. This was more complicated than I thought, and I felt a little nervous once I stepped over the supposed borderline into the south wing, the “forbidden zone.”

Twenty yards in I found the two big oak doors. I entered the library and stood motionless for a moment, taking it all in again. Light spilled in from the skylight, cascading over the long oak table in the middle of the room.

Once again the sheer splendor of the place staggered me. I couldn’t help but wonder about the history, and the stories of the people who’d been in and out of here over the decades. How many skeletons dwelled in the closets of a hundred-year-old house?

There were two books on the oak table this time. Both on contract law. Whoever was reading them was obsessed with discarding them as elegantly as possible. They were precisely aligned with the edge of the table.

Again I thought it might be nice to put them back where they belonged. I mean this person obviously had no intentionof doing that. It would be easier to find their place this time, because I knew where the books on contract law were.

I climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor, where I felt compelled to peruse some of the classics before sorting through the games to see what there was. It was a given that, being the shrewd mogul he was, Henry would love to play Monopoly. I found a leather box with a chess set inside. It appeared to have had some decent use.

My chess game was elementary at best. Sergei patiently taught me to play during our breaks at ballet practice, but it had been a while since I’d looked at a chess board. And chess wasn’t like riding a bicycle; there was no chance of staying on top of your game when you neglected it.

The last game of chess Sergei and I played was the day I told him that he deserved a woman who loved him, body and soul, and that I was not that woman. To this day the game remained untouched, and it was still in the same spot in his living room, awaiting my next move.

It was Sergei’s placeholder until I returned to his home and his bed. It would forever puzzle me that a beautiful, kind man like Sergei was unable to evoke the feelings in me, that a pretender like Roman had.

I decided to leave the chess set for another day, and grabbed the Monopoly box instead. God help me if I left a mess for any of the staff members to clean up, so I packed the remaining games back on the shelf, leaving things exactly as I’d found them.

The oak doors opened below. I thought it was Nelson looking for me and was just about to tell him I was upstairs. But it wasn’t Nelson.

Not even close.

I stopped breathing, seized by a concoction of horror and disbelief, my entire being invaded by unbridled panic as I watched Roman saunter into this fucking library.

Nope nope nope nope.

This was definitely not happening.

My heart pounded in my ears, and I was almost certain he could hear it all the way down there. I quietly backed up a step to stay out of view. But it seemed Roman was too preoccupied with his own dilemma to notice anyone else was there.

He moved to the exact spot at the oak table where the law books had been. He looked utterly put out, like someone had entered his lair and messed with his stuff.

When my brain started to recover from its sudden lack of oxygen, my first semi-articulate thought was that I had no idea what to do. I was unable to find anything constructive in this scenario, and things were sure to go rapidly downhill from here.

I could only imagine what would happen if Roman discovered me in this library, let alone in his damn house. Because it must be his family’s house, or why would he be here?

I’d had a glimpse of his merciless displeasure at the auction, with that bitchy assistant, and it would be soul-crushing to have him unleash that on me because I’d infiltrated his world without his knowledge.

The only sound was Roman quietly moving about, getting the same two books I’d so thoughtlessly returned to their rightful place. His hair was still wet from a shower, and he was dressed in a classy sweatshirt and sweatpants that looked custom-made, judging by the flawless way they fit him.

Even drenched in fear I managed to picture him for just a moment back in the penthouse, leaning naked against the headboard, watching me as only he could, those piercing blue eyes so blatantly adoring me.

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