Two Rings And A Grudge

CHAPTER FIVE

Oliver Vane POV

Her pulse was racing under my thumb. She was shaking, and I don’t think she knew.

She wouldn’t look at me. She stared at my collar, her wet hair stuck to her cheeks, eyes red and swollen. I’d noticed it the second she walked up to my booth, and I had told myself it was none of my business.

I was still holding her wrist. I should have let go. My thumb had found the soft inside of it, where her skin was thin and hot, and it was doing something I had not authorized.

“I told you,” she said, her voice rough and flat. “A friend. I’m on her sofa.”

“Which friend?”

“You don’t know her.”

“Give me a name.”

Her mouth opened, then shut. “Does it matter? The landlord I paid my studio deposit to vanished three months ago. He didn’t even own the building. Fifteen thousand pounds, everything I had. So yes, I’m broke. I’m on a sofa. Happy?”

Three months. She said it in one breath, as if she’d practised it.

I know what it looks like when a patient’s family tells me something that isn’t true. They talk too fast. They answer questions I haven't asked. They look at a button on my coat instead of my face. Celeste was doing all three.

The landlord was real. I could hear it, and it made my chest go tight. Five years of her work, gone. She had carried it alone for three months without a word to me. Not that she would have said one. Not to me.

But the sofa was a lie.

I couldn't see the shape of what was under it. A man? Debt? Trouble she was too proud to name? I ran through it the way I run through a scan, and nothing fit. I had spent years learning how to be angry at her face. I had no idea how to read it when it was hiding something.

The parking meter swallowed my last four pounds. I had heard that as an excuse. I’d said, I offered to send my driver, as if it were a joke. She had said she’d rather ride a unicycle through broken glass, and I had thought, Proud as ever.

Maybe she’d been counting coins. Maybe that was all it had been.

I kept my face still. I’m good at that. I do it every time a mother asks me whether her child will live. A muscle in my ticked anyway, once, and I hoped she hadn't seen.

If I said I know you’re lying, she would run. I could feel it through her wrist. She’d walk out of that door, and tomorrow she would be somewhere I couldn’t find her.

I let go. My hand didn’t want to. I made it.

“Fine,” I said.

She blinked. She had been ready for a fight. “Fine?”

“I don’t need the name.” I looked down at Zoe, who was stirring under her balnket, because I coudn’t look at Celeste for one second without something showing. I took my glasses off, pressed the bridge of my nose, put them back on. “You’re stubborn, Celeste. Stubborn to the point of stupidity.”

It came out harsh. It was the only way I could say it without cracking.

“Don’t pity me, Oliver.” Her voice shook. “I’m not asking for anything.”

“I don’t pity you.”

It was true, as far as it went. Pity wasn’t what I felt. I didn’t have a word for it, and I didn’t want one.

I turned back to the booth and tucked the blanket under Zoe’s chin, because my hands needed something to do.

“My father filed a court petition this morning,” I said.

I had told no one but my lawyers.

“What?”

“He’s asking the family court to overturn my guardianship of Zoe. He says a thirty-year-old surgeon who works eighty hours a week can’t raise a sick little girl. He wants her placed in a private care home in Scotland.” I kept my voice flat. It had to be. If I let it move, I didn’t know where it would go.

Some of the anger drained from her face. She looked from me to the child curled on the seat. “He wants to take her away from you?”

“The hearing is next week. If I’m a single man who is never home, the court would listen to him. If I’m married and living in a proper family home, that weighs heavily on my side.”

She was quiet. I watched her work it out. She'd always been quick.

“You need a wife to keep your niece,” she whispered.

“And you need your grandmother’s money, and a roof,” I stepped closer, until I was right in front of her. She smelled of coffee and cloves. Her red eyes were fixed on my chest, and I made the mistake of looking at her mouth, at the small silver bar in her lip, and I made the mistake for a second too long. “It’s a busniess arrangement, Celeste. Nothing more.”

I said to her. I think I also said it to myself.

“Two years,” she said, barely louder than the hum of the diner fridge. “Two years under the same roof?”

“We marry on Friday. We sign a strict prenuptial agreement and a non-disclosure agreement, because nobody learns why we married. Separate bedrooms. No physical contact. No interfering in each other’s personal lives. On day seven hundred and thirty-one, we file for divorce, split the twenty million down the middle and walk away for good. You keep your warehouse. I keep my shares.”

No physical contact. I heard myself say it, and heard how it sounded, with her wrist still burning in my hand.

She lifted her eyes to mine, for the first time. I don’t know what she saw. I kept everything behind my glasses, where it belonged.

“If you ever talk down on me like I’m one of your interns,” she said, rising onto her toes, her mouth inches from my jaw, “I will make these the longest two years of your life.”

The corner of my mouth moved. It was the first time in days.

“My lawyer will have the prenup drafted by morning,”

I took the black key card out of my jacket and pressed it into her palm. Her fingers were ice cold. When mine brushed hers, she didn’t pull away, and neither did I. I held on a moment longer than I should have.

Then I took my hand back and shoved the whole thing into the place where I keep things that don’t help me operate.

“What is this?”

“A key card for the Vane Regency on Park Lane. The penthouse is booked in my name. Go tonight. Order room service.”

I didn’t know what was wrong. I only knew she needed a door that locked and a hot shower. I used her own word, because it was the only one I had.

“Stop sleeping on the sofa.”

She looked at the card, and then at me. I watched her search for a catch. I watched her wonder how much I knew. I wondered the same thing.

“It’s a friend’s sofa,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“I’m sure it is.” I swallowed. “Stop sleeping on it anyway.”

Her jaw worked. For a second I thought she would throw the card at my chest.

“Fine.” Her fist closed around it. “But I’m paying you back.”

“You’re not.”

“Then I’m not saying thank you.”

”I didn’t ask you to.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. One more second, and I’d have said something I couldn’t take back.

I lifted Zoe, blanket and all, and she settled against my shoulder without waking. I collected her medicine from the pharmacy across the street, then strapped her into the back of the SUV.

Then I sat behind the wheel and didn’t start the engine.

Through the rain-streaked glass, I could see Celeste alone under the orange glow of the diner sign, rain dripping from her hair, staring down at the card in her hand.

My knuckles were tight on the steering wheel. I made them let go.

A business arrangemnet.

I said it again, out loud this time, softly, so I wouldn’t wake Zoe. It still didn’t sound true.