Bare devotion, p.7
Bare Devotion, page 7
“And then you met me, what, five years later?”
Something flared in his eyes, but he quickly tamped it down. “We met and I have no regrets, save for the last year or so.”
“It wasn’t just when we started planning the wedding, Henry. We never bothered to do the housework on our relationship that most people do.”
“Do you think it’s because we saw one another every day, all day at work?” His words reminded her that what had been thrilling when they’d been a couple was now excruciating. She dreaded each time she’d see him in the office, wanting to simply work and ignore the rest of the world.
She stood up. “I need something to drink. I can offer you coffee or tea, ginger ale or water. I don’t have anything stronger since I obviously won’t be indulging anytime soon.” He’d never drunk much more than a cocktail or beer once or twice a week, so she knew he wasn’t looking for alcohol on a Saturday morning. But the circumstances were grim enough that she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d asked for something stronger.
“I’ll have a glass of water, thanks.”
She walked the half dozen steps to the kitchen counter and pulled a glass from the single cupboard. His footsteps reverberated through the wooden floorboard, and she tensed before turning around.
He was right next to her, filling her senses with his scent, his concern, his sheer masculinity. Goddammit.
“Henry, I can’t, I can’t go through this every time we’re together. The hating stuff.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Sonja.” The ragged edge of his voice reminded her that he’d been wronged. This wasn’t all about her.
“I can’t say I’m sorry for what I did, either. Am I sorry I waited so long to see we weren’t going to make it? That I left you in front of our family and friends like that? That I disappointed our families and missed out on a great bash with our dearest friends? Yeah, I’m sorry for all of that. But not for the leaving part. I had no business in that church with you.”
“Maybe you were the brave one, for both of us.” His words stunned her but not as much as his fingers, which he lifted to her cheek.
Sonja wanted to turn her face into his hand, kiss his palm, nudge him into a caress.
As if nothing had passed between them.
Chapter 7
Sonja’s eyes were bright, her lips moist, and she emphasized the latter by licking her lower lip. The brief peek of her pink tongue made his hand shake as much as his dick hard. It’d always been like this with them, between them. The insta-lust as he’d jokingly referred to it. Except he had no recourse for it now.
Henry allowed himself to lift his hand and touch her cheek for a split second, allowed himself the soft feel of her skin before he dropped his arm and took a step backward. A sharp pain wrenched his back as he banged into the retro refrigerator, its handle kidney-height. “Christ. Could this place be any smaller?”
“It suits me.” She handed him the water, and he reveled in the way her slim fingertips touched his. Not that he’d tell her.
“It’s not good enough, Sonja. Our—the river house has to be rebuilt and won’t be available for at least three months, minimum. But you have to live in another spot that’s safer for you.” He walked back to the tiny sofa, crouching so that a beam wouldn’t hit his head.
“This is very safe.”
“Not after dark, on weekends. Not when Deidre knows where you live. And how long can you rent this, anyway?”
“The fact that she knew where I live was a little unsettling, I have to admit. The only way she’d know I’m here is by following me.” Sonja’s chin jutted, and he hid a smile. No woman was stronger than she, and he almost felt sorry for Deidre. Sonja must have given Deidre her classic look from hell. He’d been on the receiving end of it enough times to know how uncomfortable it was.
“Trust me, if she followed you here, she’s been keeping an eye on you for a while now. Like you observed, she’s not dangerous but annoying. No boundaries. Typical Deidre.” He gulped his water. He’d have to talk to Deidre, get Sonja off her radar. “But you’re not answering my question about the rent here. How are you going to afford it?”
“Deidre wants you.” Sonja kept ignoring the apartment question. “As far as she’s concerned, you’re single again. She saw it firsthand at the wedding.” She paused. “I mean, the un-wedding.”
“That’s what you’re thinking of it as?” He looked at her, noting how she grimaced, caught. He grinned. “It fits, doesn’t it? The un-wedding?”
“It’s as if it were doomed from the start.” Her dour expression stilled him.
“What was doomed, Sonja?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “The wedding. Us.”
Something tightened in his chest, as if he were bracing against her verbal spear.
“I thought we had a great thing going.” He couldn’t keep his anger at her out of his voice, didn’t even try.
“When it was all fun and great sex, sure we did. When we were winning cases left and right, building your father’s firm into what it is today, yeah, that was incredible.” She put her ginger ale down on a tiny coaster. “But we never looked at the long haul.”
“I’d say buying a house together was a long-term commitment.”
“The house was maybe the smartest thing we did.”
Of course, now they had to rebuild, then sell. His gut hurt at the thought of letting the river house go.
“The house.” Not being together. Not her choosing him.
“Henry. Face the facts. You and I are too high risk in the long run. You want to maintain the status quo in law, with your family. I want to push it to almost all pro bono cases.”
“That’s a cop-out, Sonja. There’s more you’re not telling me.”
She stood up. “Maybe. But I can’t deal with all of this right now. I’m tired, and I need to rest. I’m sorry I called you—I overreacted about Deidre.”
“No, I’m glad you did.” He stood, not wanting to leave but wanting to be a burden to her even less. And he hated how quickly his anger at her for jilting him dissipated in her presence. Nothing he’d been able to count on was steady anymore, as if his life, his family, his relationship with Sonja had all been built on bayou swamp ground.
“Why do you think Deidre really came back, Henry?”
“I don’t know. She sure as hell didn’t know the wedding was going to happen, not until she got the invitation my parents sent. I’m not on social media like you are, and you aren’t in the same circles as she’d be. That must have been its own little thrill for her, to get that invitation.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. Fuck it. If Sonja wanted to know it all, here it was. “There’s something else you don’t know—you need to know.”
Sonja’s liquid brown eyes were steady, her body totally receptive to him. He hated knowing that in one more breath, one sentence, this would be the last time she was ever so receptive to him.
“While we were engaged, it was the end of senior year, Deidre got pregnant. We were both surprised, or at least I thought she was—now I think it was all part of her plan to lock me in—but decided we’d deal with it. Start our family early. She lost the baby very early on. She miscarried.”
“And that’s why you didn’t leave her sooner. You felt guilty.”
“Yes. I would have loved and raised any child I had, at least I hope I would have. Who knows? I was an immature jerk then.”
“Give yourself a break. You were in college.”
“I know that, but it’s never erased my guilt.” He paused. He didn’t have to tell her the rest but owed it to her. “I still feel it at times. When you and I were together and things were going really well, I’d remember how relieved I’d felt when I broke up with Deidre, and I wondered if I deserved to be happy.”
“Why on earth would you feel guilty? Miscarriages happen. Breakups are part of life.” She placed one hand on his back, between his shoulders, and her free hand over her lower belly as if to ward off what had happened to his previous child. It was typical of Sonja to multitask her compassion, both for him and her child. He marveled at how protective a mother she already was.
“My guilt wasn’t over the miscarriage, Sonja. It was over my relief when she miscarried that I didn’t have to stay with her anymore. I didn’t owe her anything but the truth at that point.”
“And she didn’t want the truth from you.” Sonja’s hand went still on his back. “That would be harsh, being dumped after losing a baby.”
“I didn’t do it immediately. And I tried to make a go of it again, hoped that a fresh start of sorts would make a difference.”
“But it didn’t for Deidre.” No censure in Sonja’s words, just an honest declaration.
“No. I thought we were past it, though, when she got married the first time, and then the second. I heard about it through the alumni news and grapevine, basically. I never reached out to her again—I’m happy she moved on and frankly didn’t want to ever risk stirring up the pot again.”
“Understandable.”
“But it seems that this was the wrong time for my parents to decide to invite her to the wedding, and it’s triggered her. Along with her recent divorce.”
“That’s the thing I don’t understand, Henry. You didn’t tell me you were giving your folks those extra invitations, no biggie. We were so slammed with work and wedding stuff, it was the least of my problems. But didn’t you ask your parents who they were going to invite?”
“It didn’t occur to me. Like I said, I only gave them a few. It wouldn’t have made a difference in the head count, for catering purposes. Besides, the invites all had the RSVP cards.” He looked at her, not wanting to be a jerk but Sonja had been the exclusive handler of all RSVPs. It was one way they’d kept the planning more streamlined.
“We did a good job dividing up the tasks, didn’t we?” She looked wistful, as if maybe she hadn’t minded the wedding planning as much as he’d assumed.
“We make a good team. In the courtroom and out.” The words left his lips before he took the time to think. Fortunately Sonja appeared distracted by her phone, scrolling the screen.
* * * *
Sonja listened to Henry with her lawyer self, noting how what transpired a decade ago was relevant to Deidre’s behavior now. Her heart felt every shred of misery, anguish, fear, and regret that Henry had kept to himself. Emotions he hadn’t trusted her with when they were together, she reminded herself.
She withdrew her hand from his back where she’d been rubbing, giving him her support. “That’s in your past, Henry. And it sounds like Deidre might be reasonable, once she faces the truth.” Although the truth was up to Henry now, not Sonja. Exhaustion washed over her. “If you can arrange a sit-down with her—”
“That’s fucking not going to happen.”
“Well, that’s your choice. Look, I’ve got to—”
“I’m not leaving until we establish where you are going to live once this place is rented out again.”
She stared at him. “‘We?’ And how do you know about this place renting out again? And it doesn’t matter—I can move in with my grandmother.”
He laughed. “As bad as it might be between us, I know you don’t want to go back to living with your grandma. You two are too much alike.”
She glowered at him, unable to speak.
“Gus told me—Poppy told him.”
“There’s only one way in here—that door. I’m safe.” For the next six days, anyway.
“And there’s only one bedroom.” He looked at the love seat. “I can’t sleep on this.”
“I don’t need a guard, Henry.”
“Did you have a chance to look at the guesthouse when you went back to see the flood damage?”
“No. I’d only been there a few minutes when you showed up.”
“It’s intact. The flood line didn’t go as far as the cottage. It’s where I’ve been staying.”
“Oh. I thought you were at Brandon’s.” His brother had a guesthouse, too, a much bigger and more modern one. “Poppy never said either way, which I took as a privacy thing.”
“We’re both strapped for cash right now. None of our investments should be touched, and our liquid assets were all in the wedding, honeymoon, and now the remaining funds are going to go to the renovation. You’re pregnant with a child we’ll both raise. We need time to save money so that we can each live in a decent place for the baby. With the private bedroom and sleeper sofa, we can both fit in the cottage. It’ll be tight, but it’s doable.” As he spoke she saw the tiny, cramped house they’d already survived six months in when the main house was constructed. What had been romantic and very doable only two years ago would be hell at the moment.
Not for the reasons she’d give Henry if pressed—too much together time after their breakup, too hard to see one another after the pain they’d tossed at one another like live grenades. No, what made living with Henry in the cottage so difficult was the memories. Memories of their cherished time there already and of the future memories that would never happen.
“Do you really think the cottage will work for us? Now?” She already knew what he’d say but needed time to think. There was no way she was going to give up what little freedom she had, even if it meant going to live with Grandma. Although Grandma hadn’t rushed to tell her she was welcome back there, either. She’d need a bigger place after the baby came, too. There was still time. If only the homeowner’s had covered the entire rebuild!
Time was growing short.
“We have to work together whether we want to or not, Sonja. The house has to be rebuilt so that we can sell it and cash out, if that’s what we decide. I know you’re strapped for cash flow, as am I, since we poured so much into the wedding and decorating the house for the garden party.” He said it so matter-of-factly. Clearly he’d not been as deeply distressed as she by their breakup. Or he was just being a guy.
“You’ve wasted no time figuring it all out.”
He had the nerve to appear as if her words hurt him before he stood up and walked back into the kitchen, as far from her as possible. “Forgive me if I assumed you wanted what I do—to liquidate any of our shared assets.”
Ouch.
“So the house... I thought the insurance company would come in, hire contractors, and they’d repair it?”
“Not quite. First, what we’re covered for isn’t black-and-white. There’s flood insurance, sure, but that can’t overlap the homeowner’s, which won’t pay for natural disasters. There’s a bright spot, though. As you know, while you and I were in law school, my brother was building boats and had his shipbuilding facility constructed from the ground up. He has a network of contractors and contacts who can get the house back in shape sooner than the average predicted time. I’ve already met with them. They’ve come in lower per square foot than most estimates in our neighborhood, too.”
“You’ve already had estimates?”
“I couldn’t reach you for two fucking weeks, Sonja. What did you expect me to do?”
* * * *
Her eyes widened, and he regretted losing his cool, but it was that or cave and tell her the truth. That he’d had to get busy with something or he’d lose his mind. That his heart couldn’t handle losing her, and yet he wasn’t going to try to force her hand in anything. They’d always been a shared-power couple—complete equals.
“I guess I thought you’d be as upset as I was that our dreams had shattered.” Soft but sure, Sonja wasn’t holding back her truth even now when she was more vulnerable than ever. Whether she knew it or not.
“My emotions are beside the point. What’s important right now is that you’re safe, the baby’s safe, and that you both stay safe. Living with your grandmother won’t cut it.”
“I’ll find another place.”
“The cottage is perfect, Sonja. There’s plenty of room for both of us, and you’ll have the bedroom to yourself for complete privacy.”
“What, wait, what do you mean ‘the both of us?’ You can stay at Brandon’s now, right?”
“I could, but it’s getting cramped with Poppy there all the time. They’re like two goddamned lovebirds.” His comment elicited a curve on her lips, and he felt as though he’d climbed Mount Everest. It was the first time he’d sparked her humor since she’d come back.
“That wouldn’t be the best thing to have to be exposed to, after what we—you’ve been through.” Her contrite admission floored him.
He planned to remind her that he’d been the one wronged, that she’d jilted him. Unlike the way he’d felt those first hellish three days after she’d run, however, he had a new awareness that he’d had a role to play in their failed wedding, too. Since before they’d moved in together.
* * * *
“I don’t get it. You’re acting like you’re the one who was jilted.” Poppy’s amber eyes nailed her to her wrought iron bistro chair for two full heartbeats before her expression softened. “I’m not judging here, Sonja. But as close as we are, I don’t know where your head’s at right now.”
“Yeah, well, having mind-blowing sex day in and day out doesn’t leave you a lot of time to worry about me.” Sonja couldn’t keep the note of envy out of her voice. “I’m happy for you and Brandon, boo. You know I am.”
“You miss sex and someone to cuddle with though, right?”
“Hmmm.” Sonja shoved her half-eaten plate of pancakes away and sipped on the ice water that had replaced her morning coffee. “I haven’t been a very good friend to you lately. You haven’t even given me all of the details on how you and Brandon finally got together. Besides the storm.”
“There’ll be time enough to talk about me and Brandon. You haven’t answered my question.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Of course it is. I’ve never known you to make a simple decision.”
