The Angel (The Original Sinners) (22 page)

Part II

Six Weeks Later

16

If he kept his eyes closed and she didn’t talk, he
could probably go through with it. His hand slid under her silk blouse and
stroked the soft skin of her stomach. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck
while her hands roamed down his chest. With his eyes shut tight, his body
started to respond to the press of her hips against his and the warmth of her
curves. She released an amorous sigh as he started to push her skirt up.

“This might be more comfortable in my bed, Wesley.”

Wesley exhaled and opened his eyes. One sentence from her and
the moment shattered. He shouldn’t have stopped kissing her mouth. Then she
wouldn’t have been able to talk.

Sitting up in the backseat of his car, he ran his hands through
his hair, and rubbed his forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Bridget asked as she tugged her skirt back
down. “You didn’t have to stop. Just saying we should probably finish somewhere
other than in the car.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just…” Wesley didn’t finish the sentence as he
could think of no true words that wouldn’t hurt her feelings.

“Just what?”

He heard the edge in her voice and sighed.

“Just…not ready.”

As he knew they would, the words
not
ready
inspired an eye roll and an unhappy crossing of her arms over
her chest.

“Wes, we’ve been going out for two months. Two
months
. My last boyfriend and I had sex our second
date. You and me? Two months and you won’t even let me touch you.”

“I like taking things slow. I’m…” He stopped and considered
telling her the whole truth. But the whole truth would involve talking about
certain things—and one certain person—he had zero desire to talk about.
“Old-fashioned.”

“Old-fashioned. All right. I can accept that. Maybe. Can you at
least give me an idea when an old-fashioned type like you would be ready to have
sex with his girlfriend?”

He turned his head and gazed at Bridget. Such a beautiful
woman—dark hair with blond highlights, tall and slender, a stunner, as his dad
would say; a stunner seven years older than him.

“You’re Dad’s secretary. I think it’s a bad idea for us to be
involved.” A lame excuse. His Dad had been thrilled to see him and Bridget
flirting. He’d practically ordered Wesley to ask her out.

“If that’s what it is, then break up with me and get it over
with. Stop screwing around with my feelings.”

Break up? For some reason those two words that he should have
dreaded sounded not like a death knell to him but like freedom. Break up—maybe
they should.

“Okay,” he said, nodding.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we’ll break up. You’re right. I’m an ass for being like
this. It’s complicated and I don’t really want to go into it. But you’re totally
right.”

Bridget’s brown eyes widened.

“I didn’t say I wanted us to break up. I only meant—”

“Then why—”

“Why are you being like this?” she demanded. “We’re good
together. At least I thought we were.”

“But you complain the entire time about us not moving fast
enough. Obviously you don’t think we’re good together.”

“I think we could be. Wes…” She held up her empty hands.

His stomach clenched into a tight fist of guilt. If Bridget
felt even a fraction of the misery he felt that day that Nora—

No. He wasn’t going to think about Nora. He’d gone all day
without thinking of Nora and he wasn’t about to let her creep back into his
thoughts. He and Bridget and their problems had nothing to do with Nora or what
he felt for her. Felt—past tense.

“Can we—” he began and stopped. He’d meant to say,
Can we talk about this tomorrow?
But he knew he had to
go through with it, get it over with. Bridget at least deserved the truth. Not
the truth that he was still a virgin. That wasn’t why he couldn’t go through
with it with her. That might even be the least of all the reasons.

“Can we what?”

Wesley took a deep, steadying breath and met Bridget’s eyes
through the dark.

“I’m in love with someone else. And I can’t have sex with you
because I’ll be thinking about her the entire time, and you don’t deserve
that.”

For a long time Bridget said nothing. She didn’t even look at
him.

“Who?” She finally spoke.

Wesley laughed then, a miserable, tired laugh.

“Ever heard of Nora Sutherlin?”

Bridget’s jaw dropped. “That crazy writer?”

Wesley nodded. She stared at him a long moment before shaking
her head and throwing open the car door.

“Dump me if you want to dump me.” She grabbed her purse from
the front seat. “But at least be man enough to tell me the truth.”

Bridget’s high heels clicked across the concrete the short
distance from her driveway to her house. He heard her screen door open and fling
itself shut. Wesley crawled from the backseat into the front of his father’s
spacious Cadillac and turned the car on. Taking Versailles Road he headed out
toward the farm. He hated this drive at night. Too long, too dull, too easy to
let his mind wander places it didn’t need to go. The small castle some weirdo
had built his wife twenty years ago constituted about the only thing of interest
on this stretch of road. Wes glanced at the castle on the right. Yeah, still
there. He kept driving.

The entire way home Wesley berated himself for how badly the
evening turned out. Bridget…she was great. Smart, beautiful, older—he liked
that. A year and three months living with a woman in her early thirties had made
Wesley nearly allergic to girls his age—their drunk texting, their obnoxious
Facebooking, their Ugg boots and their wide-eyed flirting. Nora didn’t wear Ugg
boots. Or play on Facebook. Or drunk text. She wore black leather boots with
straps and zippers. She swore like a sailor, drank like a fish, fought like a
man—literally. He’d watched her box once and she KO’d her sparring partner—a
retired featherweight boxer named Bruce—in three rounds.

And Nora didn’t flirt with anybody. “Flirting’s for people who
don’t mean it, Wes,” Nora had once said. “I seduce.”

Dammit…he’d just broken up with Bridget and here he was
thinking of Nora. Again. As always. As he had every single day since moving back
to Kentucky. He’d never told his parents about Nora—just said he’d decided he
missed the farm too much. His mom had bought it. His dad had been more
suspicious. Of course, he’d been something of a zombie those horrible weeks
after Nora kicked him out of their house. He’d finished out the semester in a
daze, crashing on his friend Josh’s couch and staring at his cell phone waiting
for Nora to call and say she’d made a mistake, that she wanted him home with her
again.

But the phone never rang. And even when he called her, she
never answered. And now thirteen months later, he still hadn’t heard a word from
her. Was she happy? Safe? Was she with Søren right now? Was that bastard hurting
her? Wesley’s heart clenched at the very thought of them together. Only his
hatred of Søren burned hotter and stronger than his lingering love for Nora.

But just barely.

Wesley turned into the drive and paused to punch in the
security code. The iron gates yawned open and he drove through. He checked the
time—11:53 p.m. Mom and Dad had been in bed for hours, thank God. No one would
bother him with questions if he ran into the main house for a few minutes.

He killed the headlights as he pulled into the circular drive.
Ever since coming back home, he’d lived in the guesthouse way out back. But all
the mail went to the big house. He’d applied to Tulane—great pre-med program—but
wasn’t quite sure he could handle NOLA weather. Kentucky summers were bad
enough.

Wesley stood in the foyer and flipped on the lamp by the big
entryway mirror. Glancing at himself he still didn’t quite recognize the person
reflected back. For months he’d put off a much-needed haircut. When he lived
with Nora she would pounce on him about his hair when it got too long, sometimes
literally. Once he’d been lying on the couch reading when he felt a weight on
his chest. His book went flying and he found Nora straddling his hips with her
knees; she had both hands on his chest and a pair of scissors clenched between
her teeth like some kind of guerrilla hairstylist.

“What are you doing?” Wesley had demanded as Nora held him down
with one hand while her right hand wielded the scissors.

“Cutting your hair. You have the most beautiful brown eyes of
any guy on earth and you let your damn hair hide them. Now don’t move unless you
want me to blind you.”

The scissors inched closer and he’d tunneled his head into the
couch cushions as far as he could. Nora only backed off when he swore on the
grave of Anaïs Nin—her personal hero—he’d get his hair professionally cut that
week. Now his hair almost reached his shoulders. His mom gave him hell for his
hair, but her complaining didn’t make him nearly as happy as Nora’s haircut
ambushes. Secretly he thought of his long hair as a source of strength, like
Samson. He hadn’t cut it just to spite Nora. She couldn’t see it, couldn’t care
less. But he knew if she saw him, she’d hate how long it was. And that gave him
a little dark measure of satisfaction. Stupid really. She didn’t care about him,
didn’t love him, didn’t miss him. Why bother?

Wesley flipped through the mail and found nothing of interest.
Nothing from Tulane yet. Still too soon probably. Only sent his stuff in two
weeks ago. He dropped the mail back on the side table and noticed a large padded
envelope addressed to him.

He read the return address and saw it came from somewhere in
New York. Had one of his old Yorke friends sent him something? Wesley tore the
envelope open.

For at least a full minute Wesley stared at the cover of the
hardbound book.

The Consolation Prize
by Nora
Sutherlin.

With shaking fingers Wesley slowly opened the cover. He turned
one blank page…then another. On the title page he found a note in familiar
handwriting.

Turn the page, Wes.

Wesley took a shallow breath. His heart raced wildly in his
chest. Thirteen months of nothing but the silent treatment and now…

On the next page he found the dedication.

Wesley leaned his weight against the front door. He needed
something to keep him standing. The door didn’t work, and he slid to the floor.
He remembered…Nora in her bed, her hair still wet, her face devoid of any
makeup. And she’d never looked so beautiful. The next day was her anniversary
with Søren and as usual she intended to go see him. Finally Wesley had realized
the simply horrible fact of the matter.

“You still love him, don’t you?” he’d asked her.

She’d run her hands through her wet hair and let the water
droplets fall to the floor.

“Many waters,” she’d said.

Many waters cannot quench love, Nor will
rivers overflow it.
Song of Solomon 8:7.

In other words, yes, she still loved Søren.

Wesley stared at the dedication until his eyes watered.

To W.R. Many waters.

She’d dedicated the book to him. Not to Søren, as she had all
her other books. Many waters… She still loved him too.

Underneath the dedication Nora had written him another
note.

Wesley, you twerp, you could have told
me.

Could have told her? Could have told her what?

Wesley looked up. Hanging from the ceiling in the entryway to
his home was a chandelier that had once hung in Versailles—the French palace,
not the town in Kentucky. And the book had come straight to this address, not
his old school one and then forwarded.

“Shit…” Wesley breathed. She knew who he was now. How had she
found out? Well, not that hard really. She must have looked him up on Google or
something. He should return the favor. The address on the envelope wasn’t
anything he recognized. Maybe she’d left Connecticut, left New York City, left
Søren.

Grabbing the book and the envelope, he raced through the big
house and out the back door. At the guesthouse, his house, he could barely get
the key in the lock. Once inside he slapped on a light, grabbed his laptop and
went to Google. He typed in
Nora Sutherlin
and the
city
Guilford.

The very first hit took him to a New York City gossip site.
Scanning the article he discovered Nora had gone to some S&M club as the
date of a guy named Griffin Fiske. At first Wesley’s heart swelled with
happiness that Nora had gone anywhere in the presence of any guy who wasn’t
Søren. Maybe they’d broken up. Wesley quickly Googled Griffin Fiske and had the
unpleasant shock of discovering he already knew him. Or at least knew of him.
He’d seen Griffin’s name in Nora’s cell phone once and he’d casually asked her
who he was.

“My personal trainer,” Nora had answered without batting an
eyelash. Nora’s “personal trainer” was also the obscenely rich son of the
chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, a former drug addict who’d had a couple
stints in rehab, the grandson of the owners of Raeburn Farm, and kind of
obnoxiously good-looking in a tanned and muscley sort of way. God, he looked
like one of those guys in Calvin Klein ads in
Vanity
Fair.
Not Nora’s usual type. She went for guys like her editor Zach
Easton—handsome in a distinguished sort of way, overeducated and usually older
than her. Wesley had never seen Søren, not even a picture of him, but he guessed
that’s what he looked like too. They’d spoken on the phone once and even Søren’s
voice sounded well manicured. Yet another reason to hate the man.

Wesley took a long, slow, deep breath and ran through the facts
in his mind.

Nora didn’t seem to be with Søren anymore.

Nora did seem to be keeping bad company, however.

Nora had dedicated her book to him with the words
Many waters…

Wesley got up and started packing.