Swan's Grace (30 page)

"Good Lord, Conrad," Patrice snapped.

"I said, enough!"

Tension shimmered through the air as the man and his wife stared at each other. It was clear that Patrice wanted to snap back at her husband, and normally she would have. But something had changed, perhaps in that moment. And after several silent seconds, Conrad looking at her, his gaze hard, she only turned away.

Conrad pressed his eyes closed fleetingly before refocusing on Sophie.

"I will do whatever I need to do to make this right."

"Oh, Papa," she whispered, her throat aching with sudden, unshed tears. "Everything is going to be fine. The betrothal is broken."

Patrice gasped.

"And Grayson has returned Swan's Grace to me."

"Good God, how will we ever repay him?" Patrice wailed.

"You don't have to," Sophie stated. "I will. I have a career as a cellist, and I will repay Grayson Hawthorne every penny he spent."

"Oh, Sophie," Conrad said. "Always so strong. Whether you know it or not, you've always made me proud. That is why I came here today to tell you that, so you could go into this concert without worry."

Her heart lurched.

"You deserve this performance," he continued. "You deserved it long ago. Now it is yours, and I don't want my foolishness to ruin it in any way. This Saturday you will be the tremendous success I've always known you could be." His face lit with a hopeful smile. "Afterward I will find a way to repay Grayson myself."

"Oh, Papa," she repeated.

The concert. She felt sick at the thought. If she couldn't play Bach, then she'd have little choice but to give her usual show.

"I love you, Sophie."

But would he after he saw her play?

As soon as the door clicked shut, she faltered. Her mind felt disjointed with alarm. She couldn't talk, she couldn't do anything but work her way through the Bach suites again and again, hoping that at any moment they would pull together, until her world consisted of little more than notes that threatened to strangle her.

She couldn't perform the spectacle. Not now. Not after her father's precious words.

The feeling welled up in her all at once, the pain and the longing almost choking her. How foolish to let her worth become wrapped up in a single performance.

She had to get out, escape the doubt, out into the open. With frantic steps she left the house and walked up and down the Back Bay's grid of streets, counting, each step taken to a rhythm in her head like the tick of a hall clock.

Panicked, Sophie continued to walk, looking neither right nor left. The air was finally warm, and she walked through the streets relishing the dark as the sun went down. She walked until she came to the Hotel Vendome. Bright and cheerful. She looked up at a front window and wondered if Grayson was inside.

What was he doing? Sipping brandy? Preparing for court?

Did she dare walk into the Vendome and knock on his door?

Grayson sat in his sparse hotel room, the small writing desk covered with documents and contracts. He had a great deal of work to do, files to read, contracts to draft. But he had sat there for hours without reading a sentence or writing a word, his mind filled with Sophie. The feel of her hair, the taste of her skin.

He cursed the weakness. He was an ordered man. He understood that. And Sophie had turned his world upside down. But no matter what she had done, he couldn't forget her.

The solicitor he had hired brought property after property to him for his perusal. Each of them would have been fine for a new office. But he hadn't bought any of them.

He needed to be strong as he had always been, controlling his life with a calm certainty. However, he felt anything but calm. He was furious at himself. At Niles Prescott. The fury was eating away at him. But always in his mind there was Sophie.

His countenance darkened even more when a knock sounded.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded as he pulled open the door.

Henry smiled, then simply stepped past him, strolling into the room and looking around as if he were considering buying the place.

"Hello to you, too. I take back the suggestion that we buy stock in this humble abode, as it is much too… humble for my tastes." He chuckled, then noticed Gray-son's ominous glare. With a shrug he added, "As to why I am here, I can think of many reasons." His smile turned lurid.

"Careful, Chambers, you're treading on thin ice."

The little man shivered and smiled. "You brute, you."

Grayson took a step toward him, but Henry held up his hands. "Don't hit me, at least not before we've talked."

"We have nothing to say."

Henry's smile fled as if it had been little more than a disguise, and he sighed. "But we do. I'm here about Sophie."

Instantly Grayson was alert. "What's wrong?" he demanded.

"You tell me. What happened between you two while we were gone?"

Silence sliced through the room, each man staring at the other.

"That is none of your concern."

"Sophie's too proud to admit it, but she needs you."

"Get out," Grayson stated coldly, his frustration seeping through.

"She does need you, just as you need her. Quit being so stubborn and go to her."

"I said get out!"

Seconds later Grayson stood alone in the room. It was dark outside, the night pressing in around him. He had work to finish. He had a hearing first thing in the morning, and he couldn't afford for anything to go wrong with this case. He needed to sit back down and concentrate.

Instead he slammed out the door.

It was nine o'clock, the horizon dark. At Swan's Grace he didn't bother to knock. He used his key and entered, surprising Deandra, but Henry nodded silently.

"I'll tell her you're here," Dea said, standing from her chair.

"Let him announce himself," Henry responded.

Deandra looked at him as if he had lost his mind. "She'll be furious."

"Will she?"

Grayson didn't wait for the two to stop their arguing. He took the stairs in a few pounding steps, then came to the master suite.

He didn't knock.

He pushed through the door, then stopped in his tracks at the sight of her, her gossamer wrapper sheer against the golden light. She stood in front of the long oval mirror, staring at herself.

What did she see?

"You always take my breath away," he whispered, unto stop himself.

She gave no start of surprise, and she didn't turn to look at him. "Why?" she asked, so softly he almost didn't hear. "Because you think I'm beautiful?" She reached out and touched the glass. "I was never beautiful before. But now men clamor for my attention and swear I am the loveliest woman they have ever seen."

Closing the door with a click, Grayson strode across the room, but stopped just short of her. "They are right."

Pivoting so fast her hair fluttered around her shoulders, she turned to face him. "What is different about me? Why am I pretty now?"

"You were always pretty."

"To you, but to no one else."

What could he say? When she was young, her hair had been unruly, her eyes an indistinct brown. But now that she'd become an adult, those very same features had come together in a way that was striking. Unruly had become provocative. Indistinct had become golden brown.

He wanted to touch her, much as she had touched her image in the mirror. But he kept his hands at his sides. "Now everyone else sees what I saw all along."

"No, they see someone new." Slowly she turned back to her reflection. "I changed. And it's the results of the change that they love. The wildness. The distance I put between myself and them. That is what they crave."

"As you said yourself, every man wants what he can't have," he stated.

Her smile was bitter, and she met his gaze in the silvered glass. "No. Every man wants what he thinks
no
man can have."

Grayson's eyes narrowed against the words.

"Isn't that the truth?" she demanded softly. "They love her as long as she's beyond their reach, then they hate her if they realize she's not so elusive, not so perfect."

He only looked at her in the mirror, his gaze implacable, and that made her furious. "Isn't that how you feel?"

He took her arm abruptly and whirled her around to face him. "Yes, I love your wildness, but I hate it as well. Yes, I want you, but I resent that desire."

"Why?" she demanded. "Because another man had me first?"

"Because you make me lose control!"

The words shimmered violently through the room. They stared at each other, thoughts lost in the startled moment.

"Oh, Grayson, you can't always be in control. Every once in a while we all need to scream and shout."

His jaw cemented, and he let her go as if she burned him. He turned sharply to leave.

"Don't go," she whispered. "Don't leave me."

He bowed his head.

"Leave me tomorrow. I'll understand. But don't leave me now."

He swore and continued from the room, turning the brass doorknob. But he could feel her there, in his mind, in his soul. In his heart.

With a curse, he slammed the door shut and strode across the carpet in a few short strides. He pulled her to him, his mouth coming down on hers, hard. But she took what he gave, her arms wrapping around him as if she were drowning.

He swept her up in his arms and carried her toward the bed.

Sophie felt her heart in her throat. She needed this man, needed to be close. She knew she should have demanded that he leave the minute he entered the room. He already thought so poorly of her. Instead she all but demanded that he stay—proving that she was the kind of woman she had never wanted to be.

But hadn't she already proved that? Hadn't she already known that she couldn't play the music she needed to play? Wouldn't she confirm everything she was afraid she was once and for all when Boston heard the only kind of repertoire she was capable of performing?

He set her down so that she faced him in front of the bed. "I can't stay away," he whispered, his voice strained and desperate.

Her eyes burned with emotion. She could see the accusation in his eyes, and the bewilderment.

"I don't want you to," she answered.

He pulled her to him then, fiercely. In seconds their clothes were tossed aside, and she couldn't help it when she reached out to touch his chest. So strong, so broad, sweeping down into a narrow waist. But he wouldn't stand still for long.

His hands ran down her arms to her hands, making her tremble. With incredible gentleness, he lifted them to his lips, kissing the backs, then her palms. And when his hands drifted up her belly, over her ribs to cup the fullness of her breasts, she did nothing more than sigh.

Winding her fingers through his hair, she gasped when he pulled one nipple deep into his mouth. His tongue laved the bud into a taut peak before taking the other, sucking and laving, a slow lava beginning to churn low in her body.

He traced her body as if he wanted to know every inch of her. Her jaw, her ribs. But when she pulled him back to the bed, he stopped her.

She looked at him in confusion.

"Not yet," he whispered, his voice raw and sensual. "Raise your leg for me, love."

Shock sliced through her.

"Like this," he said, as he gently ran his strong hand down her hip to her knee, then lifted her leg, bracing her foot against the low bench that ran along the end of the bed.

Instantly she felt the heat of embarrassment burn her skin, but combined with that was the heat of sensual yearning.

"Yes," he breathed. "Let me touch you." His fingers drifted to the nest of curls between her legs.

"Grayson," she cried out, grabbing his shoulders.

"Shhh." He gentled her, seeking the lips of her sex. His eyes were dark, penetrating. "Open for me."

He circled his finger slowly until she relaxed.

"Yes, Sophie," he crooned, stroking.

Her gasp rapidly gave way to a sigh that caught in her throat. Her embarrassment fled entirely when the yearning turned into an intense desire, and that made her ready for his touch.

Then he penetrated her with one strong finger.

Her body tensed, but he didn't stop. He stroked her, his finger sliding gently inside her, slowly but intensely, until she sensed her own wetness.

"God, you make me want you," he said in a breath against her skin, then slipped a second finger inside her, cradling her when she trembled.

He stroked her deeply, covering her mouth with his own to kiss her, their tongues entwining. Her body began to pulse, all vestiges of inhibition tossed aside.

But with infinite tenderness he pulled out of her, and her body cried out in disappointment. He only smiled with such love and gladness, then pulled her down on top of him on the thick mattress.

Their bodies came together intimately, touching, but
not
yet joined. He cupped her hips as he kissed her, running his hands up her back. She was timid on top, not certain what to do. His strong hands guided her, his tongue thrusting into her mouth.

Her body was alive with wanting and passion, and a wildness that was pure and not practiced. She wanted him, desperately. And needed him to want her, too.

"Love me, Grayson. Please."

With something close to what she would have sworn was a cry, he came over her, his elbows pressing into the mattress to support his upper body. He stared at her for one long second, his body trembling. "I need you, Sophie. I always have." Then he kissed her deeply, as if he couldn't get enough.

He sucked her tongue into his mouth, stroking her, as he pulled up her knees, settling between her thighs. Calling her name, he thrust inside her. She felt the tension in his body as he waited for her body to adjust to him. Then he began to move, slowly at first, a maelstrom of emotion building until they were both panting and yearning. He cupped her hips, pulling her up to meet his bold, fevered thrusts.

She clutched his shoulders, his face buried in her neck, panting, thrusting, until she felt her body convulse with her release. He cried out her name, and when he did she could feel an explosive shudder rack the hard length of his body.