Page 17 of My One Week Husband
I want to step inside.
I want to feel like I belong, like I deserve to inhale the scent of time, of art, of Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven—of all the violin concertos ever played there. I deserve to smell the rich red velvet of the seats. Gaze up at the chandelier. I bet Scarlett would get a kick out of those chandeliers.
But I need to find the will to look away. My mind cycles to topics that hurt less.
Business.
That’s easy enough.
“Remember our first hotel?” I toss out as we move past the opera house.
“They say you never forget your first time. And of course I remember her.”
A smile tips my lips. “Because it’s a she.”
“All the best things in life are. I remember everything about our one-hundred-and-fifty-room beauty in Tuscany. The views were gorgeous, the rooms sublime, the service impeccable.”
“Like we planned back in university,” I say as we slow our pace at the street corner, waiting at the light as night falls, darkening Paris.
I keep my focus trained entirely on the conversation so I don’t stare lustily at the opera house behind us.
“Thank God you were such a card shark. If we hadn’t teamed up, we would never have planned that bold move,” Cole says as the light changes and we cross the street, turning down an avenue that curves away from the object of my lust.
My chest starts to relax. The tension, the longing unwinds the farther away we go from my unrequited love.
“We also never would have had any cash,” I add, since those games swindling rich kids out of their easy-earned coin saw us through some difficult times.
Cole gives me a most devilish grin. “Neither one of us seemed to have a single cent until we started those kinds of games. Those games that sent us down the path we’re on now. Now we are the rich sons of bitches. Do you think they’d hate us now too? The college kids whose wallets we emptied after two in the morning in the basements of the dorms?”
“I can only hope so,” I say. Then I sigh, a little wistfully, a lot happily. “Money does indeed make some things better.”
But even as I say that, I’m keenly aware of how utterly untrue it is. Money doesn’t bring back your family. Money doesn’t repair mistakes. Money doesn’t ease your regret.
But it does one wonderful, miraculous thing—it makes the here and now delicious.
And since the here and now seems to be all that matters, I like money. I like what it allows. I like how it makes it possible for me to enjoy the twenty-four hours we have each day, and to enjoy them in ways I didn’t think I ever would for the longest time.
Back when my life was ripped from the headlines.
Can you believe what happened to the Culpeppers?
Oh, I feel so sorry for that family.
I wince, the memories lashing me.
I have another name now—Daniel Stewart. One so generic I could be anybody, rather than the survivor named in all those news stories many, many years ago.
“Money certainly makes things easier,” Cole says. “But better?” He deals me a questioning and serious look.
“What are you getting at?”
Cole sighs. “You know what I mean.”
I laugh, because deflecting is easier. “Is this where we have a man-to-man? And you tell me exactly what I need for my life to finally be satisfying, just as yours is now that you’ve met the love of your life?”
“I would think you, of all people, wouldn’t mock someone for falling in love.”
“I’m not mocking you for falling in love,” I say, clapping him on the shoulder, meaning this from the bottom of my black heart. “I am incredibly happy for you, Cole. You met a woman who gives you everything you’ve ever wanted. Who satisfies you. Who fills the empty spaces in your heart and makes it bigger.”
A smile spreads easily on his face, a knowing sort of grin. “She does that for me. We do that for each other. I never knew it was possible to feel like this.” He sighs, the thoughtful variety. “You could have that too, you know.”
I scoff. “Sweet of you to offer, but I’m pretty sure we’re done with the threesomes.”
He rolls his eyes. “Not what I meant.”
I meet his gaze head-on, wanting him to serve it up. Cole and I have known each other for years. We don’t beat around the bush. “What do you mean, then? Are you truly telling me to go fall arse-over-elbow in love?”
My longtime friend shrugs, giving me a small smile. “Is it the worst idea?”
“It’s the unlikeliest. I’m not looking for that. I don’t want that. And I don’t have any empty spaces in my heart.”
If I did, that would mean there were spaces in my heart that are already filled.
Pretty sure mine is totally empty, drained long ago of any feeling.
