Knight 01 Knight And Play (24 page)

Sophie drew herself up to a standing position and met his gaze squarely across the expanse of the desk. His breathing was infinitesimally too fast, and his eyes glittered with suppressed anger, although his tone remained even.

“We can talk about it, if it would help,” Sophie said softly, sensing that they were dancing around something at the very core of Lucien’s psyche.

He laughed harshly. “And suddenly she’s a psychiatrist. It’s a big leap from a PA, Princess.”

Sophie flinched inwardly, hating his sarcastic use of the endearment that up to now had seemed so intimate. “I was just trying to he…”

“I don’t need your fucking help.” Lucien’s words clipped across hers and shocked her into momentary silence. They faced each other across the desk.

“Yet you think I need yours,” she said.

“That’s different and you fucking well know it.”

“Is it?” She leaned towards him. “Why? Because you say so?”

“Yes, damn it.” Lucien thumped the desk for emphasis. “And because you needed my help, and I don’t need yours, or anyone else’s.”

His eyes burned into hers, and his tightly balled fists told her that he was every bit as tense as she was.
             

“He’s dead, Sophie, okay? All of this was too long ago to matter, and it’s no one’s business but mine, but just for the record, my father is dead. Happy now?”

Stricken, Sophie searched Lucien’s face for traces of any expression but anger, but it was all there was. She didn’t understand what lay behind it, but something had happened to this man. Somewhere along the line, something big and ugly had happened to burden him with this heavy chip of utter self-containment he carried around on his shoulders.

She glanced down at the photograph one last time, then up again at the man the laughing child had become. 

“No. I’m a long way from happy, Lucien,” she murmured. “I’ll leave you to your calls.” She turned to walk out of the room.

He was behind her before she made it to the door. He crushed her body against the wall with his own, his hands pushed into her hair. “I’m sorry, Princess. I’m sorry.”

Sophie closed her tear-filled eyes and held him, wishing her touch could melt away the iron tension from his shoulders and the bleak sadness from his eyes. She’d leaned on him hard to find out more about him, and all she’d succeeded in doing was unearthing memories that obviously hurt him to talk about.

She gentled his harsh breathing with tender hands and smoothed her fingers over the silk of his hair, until finally he lifted his head and kissed her. His lips moved slow and sweet over hers, balm to soothe the sting of his earlier harsh words.

“I’m sorry too,” she whispered into his mouth, opening her jaw to let his tongue slide in. She could feel his heartbeat strong against her own, and his erection hardening against her belly. Shaky fingers pulled at clothes in search of the comfort and warmth of naked skin, and they dissolved the tension in the only way they knew how, meshed together on Lucien’s office floor.

Lucien refilled Sophie’s wine glass after lunch, then pushed his chair back. The meal his housekeeper had prepared for them had been delicious, yet they’d both been subdued after their tempestuous morning.

“I need to go out for a while this afternoon.”

Sophie nodded, oddly relieved at the prospect of some time alone. Every moment with Lucien was full throttle, and the experiences of the day so far had left her feeling raw and exposed. Her body ached, and her heart ached even more.

She needed a deep bubble bath to soothe her muscles, and some precious space to think. In less than twenty-four hours she’d be back in London with Dan, and as yet she had no clue what on earth she was going to do. All she knew was that the next few hours felt like a stay of execution.

Lucien rested his forehead against the cold side window of the car and stared at the plain, red brick university hospital building. This wasn’t his intended destination this afternoon, yet he’d instinctively turned along the drive anyway rather than pass on by. He had no intention of going inside. His fingers closed around the letter inside his jacket pocket, not caring about the fact that he was screwing it up to a point where reading it again would be nigh on impossible. He knew what it said without looking at it anyway. 

Dear old papa was in here once again for alcohol abuse, only this time around there was every chance he wouldn’t make it out again. He’d been a dead man walking ever since his wife killed herself; Lucien was only surprised that it had taken him this long. He had no feelings to offer except disgust and hatred, and what use were they to a dying man?

Let the chaplain hear his father’s pleas for forgiveness. Let the cold hand of a stranger be his comfort. Lucien had nothing to give him.

He studied the building and wondered which window sheltered his father. How would he look these days? Lucien had cut all ties with him after his mother’s death, choosing to stay with relatives who bore his troubled presence like a cross rather than stay with the pitiful father who pleaded daily for his son’s understanding.

Yet wherever Lucien laid his hat, the letters stubbornly followed. His father had tracked his progress around the world and stayed in contact every few months, despite the fact that he never received any acknowledgment that his words had reached his son. 

Lucien didn’t want to read them, and for many years, he hadn’t done so. He chucked them, unopened, one on top of the other, into an old box, unsure why he wasn’t just hurling them into the fireplace instead.

As the years slipped by and the letters continued to arrive, Lucien’s protective shell hardened enough for him to be able to open them without being engulfed by fury. He wasn’t that frightened child anymore.

The letters brought him news of his homeland, of family deaths, and of babies being born who shared his bloodline.

Letter by letter, those paper windows onto the minutiae of day-to-day life in the Arctic Circle rekindled his love for Norway, a bone-deep homesickness to lie on his back in the clearing and watch the skies dance once more.

And so he’d rebuilt his relationship with his motherland, made his peace with the beautiful, cold kingdom that held such bittersweet memories. Returning to Tromso as a successful man had calmed the roar of injustice in his heart. He’d come full circle, and after years of running away, it was fitting that Norway offered him the safe harbour and solace missing from his life in London.

Yet still he didn’t contact his father.

He couldn’t do it. When all was said and done, the man was responsible for his mother’s death, and all the talking in the world could never change that.

He flung the balled up letter onto the passenger seat and threw the car into reverse. He put his foot down as he hit the open road, disgusted with himself for even being there in the first place. There was somewhere else he wanted to be.

Sophie lounged in the steaming bubbles and closed her eyes. If she could freeze time, she’d push the button right now. Lucien had transported her into this fairytale of magical skies and sublime sex, but the adventure had to come to an abrupt end tomorrow. Grey skies and marital discord waited impatiently for her, back in London, and the idea of seeing Dan again made her stomach roll with dread.

Her whole world had revolved around him for her entire adult life; he was all she’d known of love.
But did she still love him now?
She turned the question over in her head. Before she’d met Lucien Knight, she’d have answered yes in a heartbeat, but would it have been the truth? Loving Dan was her default setting, but this week with Lucien had forced her to take an honesty pill when it came to her own emotions.

Sophie reached for the dark glass of Shiraz balanced on the ledge beside the bath and drank deeply. The wine warmed her veins and fortified her with Dutch courage to continue her long overdue personal therapy session.

It was curious really, to stand back and look at the bare facts. Sophie had had an idea that Dan had been seeing someone else for more months than she’d care to admit, yet she’d allowed herself to ignore the mounting evidence. It had been alarmingly easy to consider his alternative explanations plausible rather than face the possible truth and all of its associated ugliness. 

Was he aware that she knew? Did he take her lack of challenge as tacit acceptance? Hot shame flushed her cheeks warmer than the steamy bath water. How little must he think of her if that was the case?

She knew in her heart why she’d held her silence. It was simple, really.

She’d wanted him to choose her.

Then along came Lucien Knight, and at one look from him, Sophie had stopped waiting. With one touch, the scales had fallen from her eyes.

Lucien had reminded her how it felt to be adored, and how much she’d missed it.

Memories of Dan tumbled through her mind, and she let them in. Memories of the times he’d been the one taking the time to make her feel adored.

At fourteen, laughing as she rode on the crossbar of his bike all the way home from school. At eighteen, his hair too long and his big easy smile that lit her heart. And on her twenty-first birthday, nervous and down on one knee in the damp leaves as they walked through the park.

Tears slipped from beneath her closed eyelids. Tears for Dan, and for their love that once upon a time had felt too big to break.

Lucien shoved his hands in his pockets and pushed his chin down into his jacket. The cemetery was suitably bleak, and there were no flowers to cheer the grey stone that bore his mother’s name. 

Would she be proud of the man he’d become? Would he have trodden the same path if she’d lived?
He didn’t have any answers, or anyone to ask. She’d been gone from his life for more years now than she’d been there, and his recollections of her were all wrapped up in childish memories of wiped tears and goodnight kisses, of scraped knees and snowy Christmas mornings.

It hadn’t been a conscious decision to wrap his heart up and bury it along with his mother, yet it had somehow happened anyway. He’d stood at this same graveside all those years back, a man-child, barely a teenager, suddenly alone and bereft of love. No one had come close to melting the ice around his heart since then, though many had tried.

He’d grown up beautiful and rebellious, trouble to everyone and desired all the more for it by the girlfriends who’d littered his past.

Lucien reached out a hand and laid it against the cold, hard stone. Her face was indistinct in his mind now; she was more a feeling than an image. Her memory had kept him safe as he’d grown. She was the only person who’d looked at him and understood his heart.

He scrubbed his hands over his face. He’d come here because he needed to talk and there was no one else to listen.

What was he doing with Sophie Black? Why was he trying to save her? What the fuck did he think he was: Knight by name and Knight by nature? And if that was it, why did he feel more and more like she was the one saving him?

Without even trying, Sophie had gotten under his skin in a way that the many polished and predatory women who’d populated his life and his bed before now had never managed. Her softness and her bravery impressed the hell out of him, and finding her in his arms when he woke seemed to still his ever-present need to get up and fight.

He closed his eyes for a second in silent remembrance, and then turned and walked away.

All cried out and resolved to make the most of these last stolen hours, Sophie returned to Lucien’s bedroom and noticed the note he’d propped on the bedside table.

“I’ve fired up the saunarium for you. Try it, I think you’ll like it.”

Sophie wandered back into the bathroom, the note still in her hand. Saunarium? Was that the same as a sauna? She’d noticed the wooden door in there yesterday, but the tiered, planked room had been cool and dry when she’d peered in.

It wasn’t cool in there anymore.

She glanced down at the white fluffy towel wrapped around her body. Her own private spa session was too good an opportunity to pass up. She grabbed a glass of cold water then stepped inside, instantly aware of ambient heat, and thankful that she was able to breathe easily thanks to the clever mix of heat and humidity. So a saunarium was something between a sauna and a steam room, she realised. Trust Lucien to have the best of both worlds.

Sophie breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, then settled herself into the corner of the lower bench opposite the door. Her whole body felt infused with heat, as if the warmest sunshine was kissing her skin. Low lights glowed in the ceiling, turning the room into a blissful cocoon.

A sigh of pleasure left Sophie’s lips as she leaned back and willed herself to relax. Her tearful session in the bath had proved cathartic on many levels. She’d cried out of regret for the loss of trust in her marriage and sadness at her trampled hopes of forever love with Dan. She’d finally taken off her rose tinted glasses and, come tomorrow, she was ready to grab her life by the scruff of the neck and shake it, hard. She had no idea where the jumbled pieces would fall, but she refused to allow herself to be cowed by fear of the unknown.