“Ready to go,” she murmured. What other choice did she have? No, I’m not all set? No, turn this plane around, I don’t want to go home?
This had only ever been a one week deal. Now it was over and time to get on with the messy business of real life and cheating husbands and ruptured marriages.
Sophie closed her eyes and swallowed the lump that rose in her throat as the plane took off from Norwegian soil. It was a country she’d never imagined that she would even see, yet within a few short days, she’d fallen completely under its spell. Its sweeping vistas, soaring Alps and mystical skies had imprinted themselves on her forever, as had the big, beautiful Viking at her side now.
Warm fingers covered her own clenched ones, and she opened her eyes.
“I’m all right, really. Just sad to leave.”
He nodded. “Today will be okay, Sophie.”
“Will it?” She searched his eyes with her own as panic rose in her chest. “I don’t think I can face him.”
“It’s not too late for me to have him taken care of,” Lucien said, deadpan, but his eyes were gentle and concerned.
“I just feel so guilty, Lucien.”
Lucien shook his head. “Tell me this, then. Would you be here now if he had treated you properly?”
Sophie looked down and studied her wedding ring.
Would she? Could she have resisted Lucien if she’d have been blissfully happy with Dan? She’d have liked to say yes, but she wasn’t so sure. It was a big ask. After a week in his company she was under no illusion about the power of his allure.
He reached out and held her shoulders, forcing her eyes up to meet his. “Why should you be the one with moral fibre, when he’s the one who has been screwing someone else for months?”
But much as he had a point, this wasn’t just about Dan, Sophie thought. It was about her, too. It was about the trail of destruction she was about to wreak on her own life.
“Lucien, I’m going home, and I’m probably about to leave my husband. And I can’t work for you any more, not after this. By the end of today I’ll most likely be single, possibly homeless, and jobless.”
“You aren’t going to be jobless. You have a job.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She stared at him. How could he think it tenable for her to continue as his PA? “Obviously I can’t carry on working for you after this.”
“Why not? We haven’t lied to each other or made any false promises. We’re not kids. We can separate work from play.”
Sophie shivered. Wow. He really was as ice-cool as the land they’d just left behind. So analytical, so free of emotional bonds.
“I’m not like you, Lucien. I can’t neatly compartmentalise my life into work, and sex.” She shrugged. “I’m not a man, I guess.”
Something about her words pierced through the ice. She saw it in the narrowing of his eyes and in the sudden stiffness in his jaw.
“Don’t throw me in with the likes of your husband, Sophie. Yeah, I like sex, but I’m honest about what I do, and who I do it with. I don’t run around behind closed doors getting my kicks from hurting the people I profess to love.”
Whoa. Where did that come from?
“Love.” She repeated the word distractedly as if she’d never heard it before. It was something she felt she knew very little about these days.
“Yeah, love. That thing that causes nothing but misery and heartbreak, then makes people grow fat on too much ice cream and get ill-advised haircuts when it goes wrong.”
Ouch. She was alert again now. What on earth was behind this?
“Have you never been in love, Lucien? Have you never wanted someone so much that your heart roars when you’re with them, and every bone in your body aches for them when you’re not?”
“No.”
“That’s it? Just, no?”
“What did you expect?” He shrugged and splayed his hands out to the sides. “Some sorry tale of my poor broken heart? Sorry, Princess.”
Sophie shrugged, at a loss. He’d managed to turn his term of endearment into a sneer once again. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just…”
“I don’t need to label my feelings as love, or shackle some woman to me just for the sake of a big fucking party and a meaningless piece of tat.” He glanced down at her wedding ring and she covered it instinctively. It had never left her finger since the day Dan had slid it into place, and however much of a sham it seemed right now, the idea of taking it off felt like removing a piece of herself. Like her whole identity being scraped off with a scalpel.
“Don’t say that.” She defensively touched the gold band on her third finger.
“Why not? Because the truth hurts?” Lucien’s mouth twisted in distaste. “I bet your husband takes his off when he fucks his lover.”
Sophie felt his words land like punches. “Do you have to be so blunt?” she shot back at him.
“Yes. Yes I do. Because if I’m not, you’ll walk back in there and listen to his platitudes and lies.”
“But isn’t that my choice? Why does it matter to you what I do, Lucien?”
Lucien thumped the arm of his seat in anger and frustration. “Why are you doing this now, Sophie? Why are you doubting all the things you’ve said and felt this week?”
Sophie sighed heavily. “Because this is my whole life we’re talking about Lucien, not an episode of some TV reality show. I have to listen to him, to at least hear his side of the story.”
“His side of the story?” Lucien’s laugh held no humour. “Is that the part where he falls on his knees and you forgive him?” He gazed at her intently, and Sophie glared right back, noticing the way his throat moved as he swallowed hard. “I’ll show you his side of the fucking story.”
He reached for his laptop, opened it up, and after a few key-presses, angled the screen towards Sophie, who found herself staring at a series of photographs. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make sense of the images in front of her. But they didn’t make any sense. Not here, not on Lucien’s laptop, not in Lucien’s private jet.
Her husband, in an airport with his lover.
Dan laughing in a bar, draped over his lover.
Again on a balcony, his naked lover wrapped around him.
Not wearing his wedding ring.
Sophie couldn’t breathe, her lungs were suddenly too tight.
Unable to take her eyes off the screen, her hands flew to her cheeks in shock. After the days she’d just spent with Lucien, she’d forfeited her right to play the victim, yet still her heart shattered into a million pieces at the sight of Dan’s arms wrapped around another woman. She wanted to reach inside the screen and touch his smile, to twist his head away from that woman and make him look her way instead.