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“Three...”
“Byron, please,” Roxie said, gripping the sleeve of his black shirt. “Stop.”
“Four...”
“All righ’,” Bertie wheezed. “All righ’. Lemme go.”
Byron gave it another few seconds, his eyes drilling into Bertie’s skull. Then he released him.
Roxie watched Bertie sink, gasping, to the ground. She felt sick.
Byron’s frame swelled and released over several breaths. Then his brow arched and he reached up to straighten his tie. “Informed decision. There might be hope for you yet, Lothario. Now make the call.”
“What about my car?” Bertie asked, his raspy voice carrying nothing more threatening than resentment. Effectively cowed.
Byron jerked a shrug. “A friend of yours can pick it up in the morning.”
“It’ll have to wait here?” Bertie asked. The incredulity shrank from his face when Byron tilted his head. A simple gesture with surprisingly lethal intent. “Okay,” he said, taking a smartphone out of his jacket pocket. “Dialing.”
They waited, none of them moving. Byron nodded from Roxie to the tavern doors. She shook her head. A stubborn move. Or maybe she just couldn’t get her legs to move.
This was her mess. She’d see Bertie off, if for cognitive reassurance alone.
Not that he said so much as boo to her when, a half hour later, the transportation service arrived. On the way to the van he trampled over the handbag she had dropped when he’d started taking liberties with her. Byron went so far as to open the door for Bertie.
After Bertie climbed inside, Byron leaned in to deliver one last ultimatum. “If I get wind of you around here again, we’ll assume you’ve forfeited the first option and there won’t be a cop in town who’s not on the lookout for your license plate and VIN number.”
Bertie muttered something about good ol’ boys. Byron rolled the taxi door into place and gave the window a few raps. It wasn’t until dust rose in the van’s taillights that Byron strolled to where the handbag lay and picked it up. It was beaded and yellow. In his hands, it looked as delicate as one of those Imperial Russian Fabergé eggs they kept behind glass in the Winter Palace. She focused on it, swallowing, as he dusted it off. Her throat was sore, strained by tension. She expelled a breath, reaching for clarity. “Was the choke hold really necessary?” she asked.
He turned to her. The streetlight fell over him like a halo. His long, rich black hair was smoothed back from his face. It fell to the nape of his neck. It should be illegal to be so effortlessly handsome. In profile, his long face was a half-moon thanks to his large chin. He had an ever-present five-o’clock shadow. His proud aquiline nose was a touch overlong but it spoke of his Mediterranean heritage and suited him well.
At six-five, his broad frame saved him from being lanky despite his trim physique. His shoulders filled his button-up shirt.
It had been ten and a half months since she’d wept on him—and that long precisely since she abandoned any long-held notions of fairy-tale knights, whether they appeared in shining armor or tailored Brooks Brothers.
There was no chance she was going to start believing again. No matter how well he wore that Brooks Brothers.
He scanned her closely. She wished she was steadier. She was mussed—her dress, her hair... The glassy edge of fear was too close to the surface. She raised her chin again, locking her arms over her chest as he looked at her. Really looked at her.
He pushed the air through his nostrils and gave her a short nod. “Yes,” he decided before returning to her, handing her the clutch.
“Thank you.” She opened the handbag, letting her hair fall across her cheek, shielding his view. She riffled through the contents. Everything was there, in place. As she checked that her smartphone was safe in the hidden pocket in the lining of the bag, her hand tweaked. Damn it, that hurt.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, clipped. She stopped, hearing the bite. She mirrored him, breathing deep, trying to unlock the tension. She closed her eyes and shook her head when it didn’t work nearly as well as it had for him. “Really. I am.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. She could feel his eyes on her face, perusing. His hand lifted, as if he wanted to touch her. “Look,” he said, lowering his head toward hers instead, “it’s not your fault.”
She felt something touch the corners of her lips. Something light. Humor? Fighting ghosts of aftershock and hysteria, she couldn’t sort one emotion from another. “I know. I know that. It’s just...a mess.”
“The guy’s a tool.”
“He also happens to be the son of one of the wealthiest hoteliers from here to Fort Lauderdale,” Roxie told him. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t hear from his daddy’s high-powered litigators by the end of the week.”
Byron lifted a noncommittal shoulder. She’d forgotten he’d once been a high-powered litigator, too, and didn’t seem at all concerned with the threat. “What kind of a name is Bertie anyway?” he asked.
“Short for Robert, apparently,” she told him and rolled her eyes. “He’d do better to call himself that.”
Byron scowled. “No, he’d do better to keep his hands to himself.”
In the taut pause that followed the coarse words, Roxie saw him measuring her again. “I’m fine, Byron.”
“Sure,” he said, but closed the distance between them anyway. He reached up to take her elbow, making sure to keep his movements slow so she could track them. “Come on. I’ll buy you that drink.”
A laugh wavered out of her. “That’s kind of you. But all I want to do is go upstairs, take a long shower and down half a bottle of moscato.”
He glanced over her head to the apartment above. “All right. I’ll call Adrian. Or would you prefer Briar?”
“Neither,” she said quickly. When he looked at her in surprise, she shook her head firmly. “I’d rather they not know about this. Any of them.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I feel like I need to...absorb it before I get either of them involved,” she told him. “Plus, if Liv finds out, she’ll go chasing Bertie with her granddaddy’s shotgun. I can’t be responsible for her getting arrested after the babies.”
He tipped his chin toward the windows. “Then let me walk you up.” When her lips parted, hesitant, he spread his hands. “I’m already here. I’ll just walk with you, see you inside.”
Her mouth firmed. “But I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that,” he noted.
As he started walking, her steps fell into sync with his. It wasn’t that she was afraid to be alone with him. There were few people she felt safer around than Byron Strong—though she didn’t know why. But here he was again, witnessing another life fiasco.
His timing was horrendous. He’d borne witness to every low or ugly impasse of the last year.
Why is it always him?
Still, she gave in. She wasn’t steady. And she wasn’t all right. It would be an hour, maybe two, before she could process anything. In the meantime, he was right. She might as well have company. And though she was desperate for the chilled wine in her refrigerator, she hated drinking alone... “Go around back. I have a key to the garden door.”
The walk did her good, as did the shrill blast of icy air that knifed around the side of the tavern. Byron stepped in front of her, a solid wall that blocked the worst of the gale. She trudged along in his silent shadow. She needed that, too. Silence.
She rubbed her lips together. They felt bruised. Yes, she needed the moscato. To numb them. To mask the bitter taste of Bertie’s mouth. She’d need more than one glass if she was going to sleep tonight.
When she fumbled with her keys, Byron smoothly took them from her hand and unlocked the private entrance. He ushered her inside. She led the way up the spiral stairs to the landing. Here she took the keys firmly in hand and thrust them into the lock. Her lips peeled back from her teeth as the pain in her hand shouted in red-hot abandon. Ouch. The deadbolt clicked. She pushed the door open, eyeing her current living quarters.
It was a small space. It had seemed a bit claustrophobic in the wake of the French Colonial that Richard’s grandmother had gifted to the two of them upon their engagement. However, the apartment above the tavern had become that place she ran to for reprieve, for consolation and escape.
She needed the trio now. She needed them like moscato.
“Is there a glass of that wine for me?” he asked as she took a step over the jamb.
She stopped. His hand pressed against the frame of the door. He’d erected a smile. “You drink moscato?” she asked.
“Is it pink?” he asked with a slight wince.
Her smile grew genuinely. Impossible, she thought, bewildered. “No.”
“Good.” He grinned. “If the guys caught me drinking the pink stuff, I’m not sure I’d ever live it down.”
She hid a laugh behind her lips. She sighed over it, over him. Then, without a word, she moved back against the open door. He gave a nod and brushed by her into her space. She took a moment, closing her eyes and letting his sweet, earthy scent of aged ambergris wash over her. It was the essence of calm, of strength.
Nodding to herself, she closed the door and made her way into the kitchen to pour two large glasses of wine.
* * *
“I NEVER THOUGHT I’d be back here again.”
Byron refilled the glasses on the coffee table. He sat back on Roxie’s purple velvet-upholstered couch. Or settee. It was way too fancy to be lumped as a couch. “Where’s here exactly?” He handed her one glass.
Roxie lifted it by the stem. With her feet bare and her legs folded next to her, she looked relaxed. Not defeated. The wine might have had something to do with that. It had brought her color back, made her eyes lazy. The lids were at half-mast as she laid her head against the headrest. She eyed the truffle in her hand. She’d already taken a bite and had been nursing the other half for some time. “Sitting here,” she explained, “eating bonbons, drinking myself into a stupor, rehashing a bad date.”
As she stuffed the rest into her mouth and reached for the tin on the coffee table, which held what remained of the exotic truffle collection they’d both foraged, Byron fought a smile. “It’s not that bad.” When she turned her head slowly to scrutinize him, he raised a shoulder. “I do it every other Friday.”
It had the desired effect—her lips turned up in a smile. She pressed her fingers over them and the truffle behind them. The slender line of her shoulders shook with a silent laugh. As she tipped the wine to her mouth, she said, “I highly doubt that.”
“Why? Guys don’t eat bonbons?”
“Guys eat bonbons,” Roxie asserted. “They just know them as megastuffed Oreos, honey buns and Cocoa Puffs.”
Byron chuckled. “I’m pretty sure the last time I ate Cocoa Puffs I was in tighty-whities.”
“But you have eaten them. Anyway, I’m willing to bet that no man who looks like—” she scanned his face closely before her eyes dipped over his torso, shying “—well, you...has ever had a date blow up in his face.”
Byron contemplated that. “I can’t say what happened with Bertie has ever happened to me, but I’ve had my share of bad dates.”
“Name one,” Roxie challenged. When he hesitated, she tilted her head. “Come on, let’s hear it. If only to make me feel less like a loser.”
“You’re anything but a loser, duchess.”
“I just keep picking losers?” she asked, brow arched. She sipped her wine. “I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.”
“All right.” Byron moved on the couch, bracing himself. “To make you feel better...”
“Please.”
“I threw up on a woman once,” he admitted.
“During a date?” Roxie asked, eyes round.
“Not just that.” He grimaced. “It was after the date.”
She gasped. “Oh, no. Not during—”
He downed the rest of his wine in answer.
“Wow, you’re right,” she said. “That is bad.”
He sat forward over his knees and set the glass on the table with a clack. “Ah, it turned out okay. She was a friend.”
“Not Adrian,” Roxie said, alarmed.
“No, not Adrian,” Byron said. “This was before I moved to Fairhope, back in Atlanta about—” he squinted, counting back “—four and a half years ago? And it was my first time...or my first attempt at intimacy since...” He forced the words out. “Since I lost her.”
“Your friend?”
He let out a breath, feeling some nerves and a disturbed feeling in the pit of his stomach. “No. My wife.”
She stared at him. Her larkspur eyes went round as bonbons. “You were married?” When he nodded, she asked, “How did I not know this?”
“I’m not sure a lot of people do,” he considered. “That was the draw of Fairhope and life on the coast.”
“To get away.” Roxie nodded her understanding. Her throat moved on a swallow. “How did it happen? Can you talk about it?”
“Sure,” he said, though he had to roll his shoulders back to cast off the ready pall. “Her name was Dani. Daniella Rosales. We met in college, freshman year. I saw her and...I was done.”
A light wavered cautiously to life in Roxie’s eyes. “Just like that?” she whispered.
“Just like that,” he agreed. “When I was younger, around fourteen, my center of gravity couldn’t keep up with my growth. I got clumsy. Really clumsy, and angry, too, because I was this big, goofy guy who couldn’t walk across a room without knocking something over. It took me years to work out the clumsy and level the resentment. Then I got to college, I saw Dani and I tripped over her into the fountain outside our residence hall.”
The light in Roxie’s eyes strengthened. “That might be the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I would’ve disagreed,” he informed her. “On campus tours, the guides were adamant that nobody touch the water in the fountain. Because it was said that if you did, you’d never find true love.”
“Did you prove them wrong?”
He grinned. “I was irate with myself—until Dani fished me out, led me back to her room and dried me off. You remember odd things through the years. I remember how her towels smelled. Not like laundry, but like that unknown thing that’d been missing. Only I didn’t know it was missing until I found it...or smelled it.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s dumb—”
“No,” Roxie said with a quick shake of her head. “It’s not dumb.”
“It’s cheesy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a little cheesy. It’s the sort of thing I used to believe in. That I used to have. Or I think I had.” A touch of confusion crossed her face. She dismissed it with a sweep and offered him a rueful grin. “It’s nice, being reminded that it does happen. That it can be real.”
“Real,” Byron echoed. He nodded. “Yeah. It was that.”
Roxie frowned. “You haven’t told me—what happened to her.”
Hadn’t he? Byron shifted on the cushion. He poured more wine and picked up the glass by the stem. He used the thumb and forefinger of each hand to hold the delicate crystal shoot, spinning it slowly, watching each facet flash in the lamplight. “When Dani was little, she had a heart condition. The doctors fixed it when she was thirteen. Or so they thought. As an adult, she was healthy. Active. She was a photographer, so she was never still—on the job or off. My friend Grim used to call her the Dervish. Nothing slowed her down. Then a few years after the wedding we decided it was time to start a family.”
Byron hesitated again. After a moment, Roxie reached out and touched his knee. He lifted one corner of his mouth, though he wasn’t sure it could be deemed a smile. When he spoke, he was subdued. “After her doctors signed off on it, we tried for a while before it took. She was three and a half months along when she collapsed. She went into a coma and it was four weeks before those same doctors informed me and the rest of her family that she’d never surface.”
Her hand stayed locked on his knee. He was grateful for the silence. He’d heard every condolence known to man. Before the move to Fairhope, it had seemed like he couldn’t go anywhere without hearing how sorry everyone was for his loss. Like his clumsiness in youth, the condolences had awakened his ire. It had taken a while for that ire to simmer and for him to confront Dani’s loss, and even longer for him to learn to wholly live life again.
He cleared his throat. “You know as well as I do that when you’re at the altar pledging your life to someone, it’s just that—your whole life. And even though you both say the words till death, you expect death to come later. Much later. It doesn’t enter your mind that death’s coming for you a mere six years, seven months and twenty-seven days later, or that it’s not you it’s coming for. It’s the person standing next to you, the one you’ve promised to love every day that life gives you. And learning to live without that person... It feels so backwards and wrong. It unravels every bit of who you are.”
“Your whole life,” she echoed. She released a ragged breath. “The baby? They couldn’t save it?”
He took a long glug of wine, shaking his head slightly as he did. As he lowered the glass back to the table, he ignored the bad feeling in his stomach that had grown into a full-on internal wail. “If she’d been further along, maybe. And when she fell...there was some internal damage.” He laid his arm over the back of the sofa. There was a knot in the wood trim. He circled it with the pad of his thumb. “It was a girl. We’d only just stopped arguing over what to call her.” At her questioning brow, he confided, “Maree Frances.”
For a full minute, she said nothing. Thoughtfully, she edged closer. Shifting toward him, she fit into the groove under his arm next to his chest. The wail inside him was on the verge of a banshee scream. The wave of lilacs stopped it from reaching fever pitch, beating it back down where it belonged.
She spoke low, almost inaudibly. “Nothing I tell you could ever be enough to say how sorry I am for what you’ve been through. I can’t imagine...” She sighed and pressed her cheek into his lapel. “So I’m just going to hug you.”
“Okay,” he said. It trembled out of him on a short laugh. It warmed him.
As he’d left the tavern after finishing his shift there, Byron had seen Bertie drop Roxie off. He hadn’t liked the look of him—a knee-jerk and instant assessment. The guy drove a luxury Mercedes but ground the transmission when he shifted into Park. And he wore a three-piece suit that screamed easy money.
Byron had taken a moment, studying Roxie from a distance. He’d felt the warmth gathering over his sternum, remembering the sound of her laugh from earlier in the day. Tinny bells. The best kind.
Then Byron had seen the flash of Bertie’s gold signet ring move too quickly. He’d seen the guy’s arms wind too hard around Roxie. He’d seen his body close in on hers and the hard lip-lock that came close on the heels of the not-so-nice embrace.
That’s not the way, Byron had mused. Not with a woman like Roxie. Slow and smooth was more what a lady of her caliber deserved. Hell, it was what she’d need after everything she’d been through. The warmth over his sternum had hardened into a big, black ball of volcanic rock. The back of his neck had turned to fire as it always did when he felt the old anger, the ire, rising up from the black. He moved in, loosening his tie when Roxie’s quick attempt at a punch failed and Bertie kept coming at her.
Was the choke hold really necessary? she’d asked after.
Byron had seen her fear and embarrassment, and the trampled strength behind it.
Yes, damn it, it had been necessary. A part of him still wished Bertie had taken the second option so Byron could’ve implemented a lesson with his fists.
He noted the place of her hand. Right over his sternum, where the warmth for her had built and shied and then built again. It was the same hand she’d plowed into Fledgewick’s face. The same fist she’d given Byron nearly a year ago. The edge of his mouth curved as he touched it.
“Mm.” She winced. The fingers stiffened under his.
Byron gentled his hold. Gingerly, he turned her knuckles toward the light and saw the bruising. “You should’ve let me hit him.”
“What would that have solved?”
“Nothing. But it would’ve felt damn good.”
“Didn’t feel so great to me.”
“Because you aimed for the face,” Byron explained. “Suppose he’d raised his chin or you’d struck his jaw. Your hand would be flat broken.”
“He was drunk,” Roxie reminded him. “I wanted to sober him up.”
“Next time, aim for the liver.”
“I’m no good at this,” she admitted as he caressed her knuckles. “I miss marriage.”
His hand stilled on hers. “You do?”
“Yes. I miss the security of it. The comfort of knowing that I’m safe from all this, from the uncertainty.”
“But that’s all.” Byron frowned. “Right?”
She paused. “I don’t know.”
Byron tried to read her. “Rox. The man failed you. He knowingly failed you.”
“I know he did.” She tipped her chin up and confronted him with a cool expression. “Trust me. I was there. But we were together so long... I don’t know anything else. You and Dani were together a long time. You said learning to live without her unraveled you.”
“It’s apples and oranges,” he noted.
“I know that, too,” she said, tensing.
“Wait a minute,” he said, straightening. She sat up in response. He took a good look at her. “You’re not still in love with the guy, are you?”
Her mouth parted and her eyes glazed in thought. “I don’t know.” She lifted her hands. They were empty. “I know I hate being alone. I know that when it was good, I loved the relationship, and not just the security of it—I loved the unit we built. I know how much of ourselves we put into it. And I know that Richard’s sorry.”
“He told you that?” he asked. “He got down on his knees and begged?”
“No, he didn’t get on his knees,” Roxie dismissed. “But he did try to say he was sorry. The mess was so fresh, the hurt, I couldn’t listen even if he was sincere.” Before Byron could say anything, she quickly added, “What he did was disgraceful, and I haven’t forgotten how it made me feel. But you said it yourself—you pledge your life to someone. Your whole life.”
“He quit his vows,” he said heatedly. “He quit you the second he jumped on her.” When her eyes rounded in shock, he cursed. “I’m sorry. Damn it, I’m sorry.” He pushed off the couch and left the room, taking his glass into her kitchen. He’d had enough to drink. Under the light of the stove, he rinsed the glass then used the tap filter to fill it. He tipped it up and downed the water quickly.
He was a damn fool.
Byron set the glass on the counter and braced his hands on the edge. Leaning into it, he ducked his head and breathed until he felt the heat in his neck subside. Why was the anger rising again? Was it Richard or was it pride?
Either way, he couldn’t go back to her with ire. Even if it was his pride, she’d been through enough without him piling his bruised ego on the proverbial heap.
The small window above the sink drew his attention. He looked out on the listless bay. The lights of Mobile flickered far beyond the inky black waters broken only by the small bits of light from the tavern and the inn. The watery peaks were brushed with hushed gold filigree.
He did his best to absorb the calm and lulling placidity those waters brought with their small, whispering waves. This was why he’d gravitated to Fairhope in the wake of Dani’s death—the serenity.
Calmer, he eyed the dishcloth beside the sink. He grabbed it, balled it up and ran it under cold water for several seconds. He wrung it out and walked slowly back into the living room, where Roxie sat on the settee.
He extended the rolled-up cloth to her. “Here.”
She narrowed her eyes on it as her hand lifted. Questioning, her gaze rose to his.
“Your hand,” he said. He took her wrist and wrapped the cold cloth around her injured knuckles himself.
She sucked in a breath. A line dug in between her eyes.
After a moment, he asked, “Better?”
She gave a nod. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Do you...do you think that there’s one great love for everyone? Just one?”