The Secret (The Evolution Of Sin Book 2) (25 page)

“She can’t have kids,” I concluded in horror. “She always made adoption sound like a choice, not the only option.”

Sinclair nodded jerkily.

Fuck
.

I couldn’t understand why Sinclair would have brought me here to tell me this. I’d already rejected him, why did he need me to feel the true weight of this guilt? Was it to alleviate some of his own or merely so that I knew all the facts? For one brief moment, my passion for him flared into hatred so pure I felt electric with it. How could he have done all of this to my sister?

I glared at him with my teeth clenched so hard my head started to pound. He looked back at me, his expression perfectly neutral, his mouth slightly open as if he was willing to breathe in my toxic breath, to house all of my self-hatred and shame within himself so that I wouldn’t have to.

He reached across the table to place his hand parallel to mine. I couldn’t have withstood his touch in that moment, but his gesture of togetherness was just as comforting.

“I hesitated to tell you because it is really Elena’s secret to share and she is very guarded about it. She feels defective even though that is far from the truth. The ordeal brought us closer and I felt compelled to stay with her, to protect her and care for her because I had done that to her. I took away her dream and the worst part is, I was secretly happy about losing the baby.”

“I told you we aren’t good people,” I said softly. “But not wanting the baby didn’t make the miscarriage happen. You aren’t to blame either, Sin.”

“I know that now. I know a lot of things now.” Finally, for the first time since I had sat down across from him, he looked into my eyes and let his pretty, composed mask fall away.

I wanted to reach out and touch that sharp angled face. Instead, I touched the edge of my pinky finger to his where it lay on the table.

“I know that staying with Elena because I feel that I owe her my love after what happened isn’t fair to either of us. I know that it will take a long time to completely separate my life from hers and I know that she will likely never forgive me. It hurts me to know that, Elle. To know that a woman I have spent the last four years of my life loving will always hate me. I think that pain will stay with me forever and it’s going to ruin me at the most inconvenient times. I may not have been madly
in
love with her but she was my best friend, my partner and confidant.

But I also know that I have never loved anyone the way I love you and I honestly know that I never will. I understand that this is hard on you, that it’s unfair of me to ask you to choose me over your family but I’m still asking you to make that decision.”

I opened my mouth to say something then didn’t.

The waiter arrived with our dishes. When he placed a beautiful plate of seared Dorado in front of me, I blinked up at Sinclair. I felt so vulnerable, I was afraid a slight breeze would dissolve me, scatter me across the air.

“I’m asking you to make the decision but I don’t want you to make it right now and I don’t want you to make it lightly. I want you to know what I know. I have never been so serious or sincere in my life when I say that I want to be with you. I meant what I said in my office, I want to live with you, Elle, and one day I want to claim you as my wife. Some day, soon after that if you don’t mind, I want to have children with you.”

“Sin,” I said as I tore into the fish with the prongs of my fork but didn’t eat. “You can’t expect me to think you’ve done a complete about face on marriage and babies.”

“You’re right. That is why I invited you here today. I wanted to give you fair warning that I am going to woo you, Giselle Moore. I am going to show you who I am and how much I love you every day and I am not going to stop until I’ve convinced you that I am the only family you need.”

“You’re killing me.”

He nodded curtly and competently cut into his steak, utterly polished and confident once more. “It’s part of the process. This is going to kill you, this
has
been killing you all along, but I’m going to pull you out of this hellish situation and I’m going to love you more than anyone ever has every day after to prove to you how much that pain was worth it. We are going to resurrect each other.”

I stared at him numbly. Sinclair’s self-assurance may have drawn me to him originally and his aloofness had tempted me to linger but it was evidence of this, his boundless passion, which lay waste to my resolve. I tried valiantly to digest everything that he said but it felt as if I lacked the education, the fundamental principles needed to answer this mathematically, reasonably. Maybe because there was no way to respond reasonably to such a tangled conundrum.

Sinclair finished his steak in silence. A detached part of my mind wondered how difficult it was for him to restrain himself from ordering me to eat. My food grew cold and congealed, ravaged by my nerves but untouched. Still, I stared, my mind so full of thoughts that it shorted out and left me blank.

Finally, after paying for the bill, Sinclair offered me a small, genuine smile.

“I know this is a lot to take in, which is why I am more than willing to give you time to make the decision. The only thing I am not going to do is give you space.”

He reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, concealing something shiny in his palm. My skin sizzled uncomfortably under the heat from his touch as he gently took my wrist in his and secured something to it. He raised my hand to his lips, brushing his mouth against my fingertips, before releasing me.

I was too caught in his gaze to look at the heavy piece secured to my forearm.

“I own you as you own me and I’m not going to hide it anymore. When you are ready to stand beside me and tell the world, I promise I will protect you from its censure. And I promise to work hard every day to repair our relationship with your family. I don’t want you isolated from them.”

We looked at each other and I felt like his puppet brought to life, a creature with its own will but still tied fundamentally, irrevocably to him.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, my siren,” he said with a full-fledged grin as he stood up and buttoned his blazer. “Oh, and make sure you eat something,
si
? It is hard to make life decisions on an empty stomach.”

It took me a few minutes after his departure to clear the fog of my thoughts enough to look down at my wrist. The gorgeous silver and turquoise cuff I had admired in the Cabo San Lucas market with Candy winked at me under the noon sunlight. I told myself it was the glare that brought tears to my eyes but as I looked down at the gift all I could really think was
I’m fucked
.

Chapter Nineteen.

Sinclair was true to his word.

The following day, a Saturday, I was discussing my finished paintings with Rossi and Eddie in the kitchen of Cosima’s apartment when the lavender arrived. Eddie had offered to answer the door because my hands were full of canvases and the next thing we knew, a team of men and women were carrying arrangements of fragrant purple stalks into the apartment. There were arrangements with white roses in delicately etched glass vases that they placed on every available table, four huge clay pots of it mixed with gorgeous golden grass that swayed in the breeze flowing in from the little balcony, and little silk embroidered sachets filled with the dried flowers that Eddie happily, and noisily, placed in our clothing drawers and closets. By the time they had finished, the apartment smelled like heaven. There was no note with the flowers, of which I was grateful because Rossi and Eddie were forced to accept that it was from Ulrich, the odious man I brunched with at Prune.

I opened the door Sunday to a smiling Santiago who had graced me with a kiss before handing me a brown paper wrapped package. I’d known somehow without opening it that it would be Frida Kahlo’s 1926 sketch
Accident
, the very one I had admired with Katarina at Santiago’s house party in Mexico. It seemed that Sinclair was calling everyone in my life in his quest to woo me. I wanted to be annoyed by it but as I hung Kahlo’s gorgeous conflicted work of art beside my bed, it was hard to be bothered by such thoughtfulness.

Monday was a framed picture of Sinclair and I from the Romani International Gala with a note that explained how he had paid the photographer for exclusive rights to the picture. I could understand why as soon as I studied it; we looked very much in love, or at least in lust, as I smiled up at him while accepting his hand. It was the moment he had asked me to go outside with him and I could clearly remember the swirl of apprehension and giddiness that had coiled my stomach into a sailor’s knot. Later that day another picture arrived, this one tucked into an unmarked envelope. It was of me, captured when I was exiting the gallery. My hair was caught in the breeze, the curls fanning out behind me and my dress pressed intimately to my curves. I didn’t know when he would have taken this or why he sent it to me but I carefully placed it in my bedside table all the same.

Cosima had been deliberately avoiding me but on Tuesday when she accepted a delivery of five packages from Dylan’s Candy Bar, including their Ultimate Chocolate Sharing Sweet Treat Tower, she finally confronted me about the unmarked gifts.

“The apartment smells like Provence, that sketch in your bedroom is worth thousands of dollars and now all this candy from your favorite shop?” Cosima stood before me with her hands fisted on her hips and her yellow eyes narrowed. “Who the hell is this secret admirer, Elle? This is more than a casual crush. Though he clearly doesn’t care about cavities…”

I shrugged and tucked my tongue beneath my teeth as I adjusted the shading on the painting of Candy’s mouth sucking suggestively at an oversized cherry red lollipop.

“Giselle, talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“
Cazzatte
,” Cosima said, calling me on my bullshit.

I sighed and carefully placed my brush on the palette before putting them both down. “Fine, I should say I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Giselle –”

“Hey, if you don’t want to talk about the Mafia-eyed Dante, then I don’t have to talk about this. Okay?”

Hurt flashed across her features before she screwed them shut with a twist of her mouth. “Fine.”

I was happy that she wasn’t home on Wednesday to see the two tickets to watch Miles Davis play in the Rose Theatre at Lincoln Center for his 90th birthday. I clutched the tickets to my chest and tried to temper the rapidity of my heartbeat with deep breaths.

When that didn’t work, I called him.

“
Bonjour, ma sirène. Ça va?
”

His cool voice flowed over my skin like water, immediately cleansing me of my anxieties even though he was the cause of them.

“Sinclair,” I said after clearing my throat and affecting a pretty badass professional tone. “I’m calling to return the tickets.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m sorry, I thought I was speaking to the woman of my heart, Giselle Moore. Not some ungrateful…stewardess is it?”

“They aren’t called that anymore, old man,” I grumped, charmed out of my demeanor before I could help myself.

“And you’ve forgotten your manners, young lady.”

I shivered at the image his words imparted, picturing myself over his lap for a spanking. He chuckled as if he knew what his words had done to me.

“Why did you give me two tickets?”

“I thought you could take a friend.”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“Yes. The tickets were originally for me but I thought you would enjoy it more. I’ve seen him play twice before.”

I shrugged into my grey coat and grabbed my keys from the hall table, unwilling to end the conversation even though I needed to leave for Terry Paulson’s apartment.

“I didn’t know you liked jazz,” I said even though if I had taken the time to think about it, I might have guessed as much.

“We grew up listening to it in the orphanage. Cage actually considered being a jazz singer before the lure of rock stardom called to him.”

I laughed, picturing the sexy, leather-pants-wearing Cage Tracey crooning soulfully over a piano.

“I love that sound,” Sinclair said, casually.

I stopped laughing.

“I won’t take the tickets back, Elle. I want you to enjoy the experience. The Lincoln Center has magnificent acoustics and I like to imagine you there, dressed up in some purple dress with your eyes closed to absorb the music. I only wish I could be there to watch you.”

Watch
me
, not the legendary musician.

I swallowed hard and spoke before I could stop myself, “Come with me then.”

My words were followed by silence and I was just about to blurt out something for the sake of speech when he cleared his throat.

“I would like that very much. I have to work until the last moment but if you could meet me at the office at seven, we can walk to Lincoln Center together, it isn’t far.”

My smile cut brutally into my cheeks. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

We both smiled into the phone.

“I’ll see you soon then, Giselle.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me and hung up.

I was still smiling when Terry Paulson opened the door for me twenty minutes later. She was clad in a bright floor-length kimono with her voluminous hair twisted into riotous curls. Huge hoop earrings adorned her ears and her acrylic nails were a bloody red. My fingers itched to capture her particular brand of brazenness, a sexual appeal that was almost crass it was so bold.

“You look happy,” Terry said, ushering me into her opulent top floor apartment. “I hope I am at least partially to blame. Or am I the only one who has been excited for this all week?”

I laughed at her enthusiasm, immediately at ease despite the intimidation of our surroundings. A crystal chandelier the size of a Smart car hung from the foyer ceiling and nearly blinded me.

“At the risk of sounding like a pervert, I’ve been looking forward to painting you since we first met.”

She laughed loudly, throwing her red tipped hand out to playfully push at my chest. “You are delightful. Now, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve set things up in the master bedroom. Let Gus take your things for you. Did you cab here? I should have sent a car.”

“It was no problem,” I assured her as I handed off my cumbersome easel and wooden travel kit to the stoic faced liveried butler who appeared beside me. “It’s the only work out I get so I actually look forward to it.”

“You can’t be serious,” Terry’s bright red lips parted over her white teeth and I found myself wondering what that wide mouth would feel like against mine.

Sinclair had turned me into some kind of sex machine. 

“I will have to take you to my tennis club. It’s great exercise and good fun. Plus, I think you would look wonderful in a little white skirt.” She winked at me, laughing lightly at my blush as she took my hand to lead me through a large corridor, up a set of marble stairs to the second floor and finally, into a bedroom painted a deep, lusty red.

A tarp covered the Persian rug before us and Gus the Butler had already set up my a small table and my easel. I moved over to the station, relieving him of his duties so that I could set up everything to my tastes.

“I did some research,” Terry explained as she perched on the edge of her massive four-poster bed, “about sex in the modern day art world. Pauly loves art and he’s been teaching me about it for the last couple of years but I didn’t really get into it until Elena mentioned your project. It seems like you are doing something similar to Jack Vettriano, yeah?”

I nodded. “There is definitely a similar theme though there are actually quite a few contemporary painters that explore sexual themes. I really admire Lisa Yuskavage and Jenny Saville too.”

“So it was the trendiness that got you interested in sexual fetishisms and fantasies?”

I bit my lip and moved away from the easel with my large draft book and pencil case. Taking a seat on a conveniently provided stool, I began to loosely sketch vignettes of Terry’s long face, the deep contours of her collarbones and the vulnerable recess between her breasts.

“Not exactly. I probably sound cliché, but I recently had a pretty torrid affair that opened my eyes to how many indecent things there are to indulge in. Afterwards, I couldn’t help looking at people and wonder at their sexual secrets.” I looked up at her through my eyelashes, feeling strangely coquettish. “What are yours?”

Terry smiled slightly and edged herself slowly to the head of the bed. “I’m so glad you asked.” I watched with lowered lids as she reclined against the heap of silk pillow, legs bent at the knee and braced open to reveal the deep shadows at the apex of her thighs. There was a barely imperceptible rattle as she retrieved something from behind the velvet curtains and produced thick metal and leather cuffs attached to the bed frame. “Would you mind helping me into this?”

I painted the New York socialite like that – bound to the headboard by leather handcuffs, legs spread and torso raised like the Queen Of Sheba languishing on her throne – for nearly four hours. She was a beautiful model, barely a fidget in sight and only one bathroom break. We chatted as I traced her curves across thick paper and then even thicker canvas. Her New Jersey accent was at odds with her elegance and I came to realize that even though her husband ‘Pauly’ had taught her the finer graces of high society, Terry was still proud of her Jersey shore roots. She laughingly relayed that Paulson had suffered from ‘insta-lust’ when they’d locked eyes at a function she was catering.

“He liked my nails and big hair,” she explained, her fingers wriggling. “And I may have unbuttoned my top a teensy bit more than was respectable.”

I found myself infusing the painting with semblances of her humor, the glimmer within the depths of her brown eyes, the tilt to her harlot red lips. My forehead was hot with feverish excitement and even as my hand swirled across the canvas, I was thinking of other poses for her.

“Tell me more about your sex life,” I coaxed. “Obviously, you enjoy restraints.”

“We enjoy a lot of things,” she purred, stretching sinuously as I released her from the cuffs.

Without thinking, I gently rubbed the ache out of her wrists. She ran her tongue along her teeth as she watched, her gaze heated. Despite the fact that she was fifteen years older than me and, of course, a woman, I was inexplicably attracted to her. There was something about her intensity and assuredness that reminded me of Sinclair.

“Why don’t you come with me to get my daily snack?” she asked after studying me for a long moment.

“Okay.”

I let her lead me from the room by the hand after gathering my sketchbook, pencils and camera.

“I’m so happy we did this,” she said, her thumb stroking over my palm. “Your sister called both Pauly and I to discourage us but she was worried for nothing.”

Acid filled my gums. “Excuse me?”

“Hmm? Oh maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I think she was nervous that you would scare us off the deal with Daniel Sinclair. Honestly, I can’t blame her, Pauly comes across as a real stick in the mud and he is always bothering them about getting married.” She looked over her shoulder to roll her eyes at me as we descended the stairs. “I swear that man could have grown up in Victorian England, all stuffy on the outside but a real perv deep down.”

My laugh burst forth before I could help it but Terry just grinned. We arrived at a large wood paneled door and she knocked three times in a strange rhythm.

“She’s a nice woman, your sister, though obviously not very supportive. Do you think it has something to do with that gigantic stick up her ass?” Terry asked me with wide eyes.

I laughed again even though the fact that Elena had once again tried to thwart my project made my belly heat with rage.