The List (21 page)

“Shh. Let me give you this.”

She seemed to cycle through tension then relax back into the arousal he coaxed to the surface of her skin. When she lay all the way back, he dropped the rose beside her hip and retraced his steps with his mouth, from her forehead to her lips to her nipples to her abdomen. Her mouth tasted of dark coffee and rich chocolate, and her skin tasted faintly of sweat and musk. The scent of the flowers, the petal-soft texture of her skin, and he was drowning.

He kissed his way to the folds between her legs, but her hand in his hair stopped him. “No,” she said. “Please. Now.”

He sat back on his heels and unbuttoned his shirt, shrugging out of it, pulling his T-shirt over his head, then attacking his belt and zipper. She’d turned her head away. He followed her gaze to the mirror over the dresser, low enough to reflect everything on the bed. Her body, sprawled and flushed among the roses, wearing nothing but her wedding ring. Him on his knees beside her as he stripped.

Their eyes met. Her irises were pewter, fringed by her thick black lashes, and his heart knocked hard against his ribs. He tore his gaze away from the reflection to the woman underneath him as he aligned his cock with her opening and slid inside. Her body arched under his, seating him more firmly. Then he began to move. She was slick and tight and hot around him, burning in his arms, watching them in the mirror. He could feel her drawing tighter and tighter, clasping him inside and out, and risked a quick glance at the mirror. The sight nearly sent him over the edge, the sheer erotic thrill of seeing what he felt reflected back to him, burning into his brain. He saw each thrust in hips and buttocks, felt it glide along his cock and make heat pool in his balls. Tilda’s toes were curled tightly, and the faint gasps he heard made her breasts rise against his chest, before panting out between her parted lips.

He wanted more. He angled his head to capture her lips, turning her head and drawing her into that intimate secret that was making love. Complex sensations buffeted him, fingernails in his back, heels digging into his calves. Tilda gasped under him, tiny stifled sounds all the more powerful for being muffled. But it wasn’t like Tilda to hold back.

“I love you,” he growled in her ear. “Tilda. I love you.”

She lifted under him, her teeth clenched as she came. He slowed, thrusting through the contractions and fighting his own release until she shuddered and subsided under him. Only then did he drop into the abyss. Tilda panted under him, fingers trembling against his shoulders. Aftershocks burned through his muscles as he kissed her cheek, then her chin, then each of her closed eyelids.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, the words little more than a huff of air against his ear. Her eyes opened slowly, like a cat awakening from a long sleep. When they focused on him, the expression was haunted, hunted even. Then she blinked, and it was gone. “When did you do all of this?”

“Earlier today. I took a couple of hours off work.”

“Daniel, I don’t know what to say. It’s so much. You really didn’t need to do this.”

The complex sensations were still swirling in the air. He tried to get a handle on what she was thinking, feeling. “It’s no bother. Or trouble. Or hassle.” Doing things for the people he loved wasn’t work. It was what made life worth living. He reached under the pillow for the towel he’d stashed there earlier in the day.

“Practical as well as romantic,” she said.

Tilda handled the awkward parts of sex as gracefully as she handled everything else. He exchanged the towel for her overnight bag, then made a quick stop in the bathroom. When he came back out, in his boxers, she was wearing the nightgown he’d swiped from her side of the dresser, a practical gray cotton thing. It surprised him. She was so elegant in every other area of her life, but slept in what was basically an oversized V-neck T-shirt washed to softness.

“Do you want to spend the night?” she asked.

“Hell, yes,” he said as he reached for his suit pants to hang them up. “It’s part of the experience. And now, for your present.”

She was rubbing the hotel’s lotion into her hands as he spoke, but she looked up at him, her eyes wide. He straightened his shirt and tie on the hanger, then added his jacket, and pulled the box from the pocket. He hid it behind his back and sat on the edge of the bed.

One glance over his shoulder, and her eyes went huge in her face.

Damn. He’d forgotten about the mirror. “Sorry,” he said and offered her the red leather box, embossed with gold, and the name
Cartier
. “I ruined the surprise.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“It’s too much.”

Probably. The thing cost an arm and a leg, but less than he would have spent on an engagement ring based on the two months’ salary formula, if they’d done anything so quotidian as buy an engagement ring.

“You can’t . . . you shouldn’t have.
Cartier?
” She pronounced it perfectly, the
r
and
t
rolling off her tongue into the softened French syllable at the end. “My God.”

“Tilda. It’s your birthday. It’s our first birthday together. We eloped, so I didn’t buy an engagement ring, and we don’t have a mortgage. You don’t even know what it is.”

“Daniel—”

“Open it.”

She took the box from him and fumbled the little gold button to release the lid. Her fingers were shaking.

“Half their retail sales must go to packaging alone,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

The lid popped open. Tucked into the silk fold was a white gold bangle. She looked at it, then at him.

“It’s a LOVE bracelet,” he said.

“I know what it is,” she breathed.

Of course she did. Luxury goods were her trade. She wasn’t a bling person, but a simple bangle suited her down to the ground. The iconic bracelet symbolized eternal love. Celebrities wore them, grandparents bought them for their grandchildren, lovers bought them to mark anniversaries. He knew nothing about jewelry, but when he came across one during the course of an investigation, the memory got filed away in the back of his brain.
That’s cool. That’s the kind of symbol I like.

The air conditioner ticked on, filling the room with a droning hum. He found the screwdriver that came with the bracelet and unfastened the two screws on either side of the bracelet. “May I?”

Without looking up she offered him her wrist. Without pinching her skin, he slid the slim metal tabs into the slots, then threaded the tiny screws and fastened the bracelet. It was perfect for her, elegant, simple, symbolic.

“It won’t slide off, so you can’t take it off at night or whenever,” he said. It was something she’d wear for the rest of her life, through the births of their children, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, vacations, nights where the only chance they had to talk was over a glass of wine. He could see her, slim and elegant and vibrantly alive at seventy-five, sipping wine and wearing that bracelet. The thought made his entire body tighten with a possessiveness he’d never felt before. “It’s medieval, and of course if you hate it, I’ll exchange it for the removable cuff version. Whatever you want. But . . . I loved it. I love you. I wanted you to wear it,” he said as he lifted her wrist to his mouth and kissed the fine skin. The bracelet felt warm and heavy against his lips.

“I’m completely astonished. I don’t know what to say except thank you.” She leaned forward and kissed him, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Happy birthday, Tilda,” he said quietly, and let her tuck her face into his shoulder. Let her hide.

—

Four weeks later, in an unemotional voice, she asked him for a divorce, then left for yet another trip. Daniel felt like she’d stepped over the cliffs, and this time there was no convenient hidden ledge keeping her from falling all the way to the ground.

Solstice

7:28 p.m.

C
olin parked illegally next to a fire hydrant that also happened to be in the shade under the tree in front of Fifteen Perry Street, and switched on his hazard lights. “We can’t have your husband coming home and giving me a ticket.”

Tilda snapped from the past to the present. Colin’s car, outside her house, after a long morning at West Village Stationery, the bloody therapist’s appointment with Daniel, then an afternoon discussion on the luxury goods trade with Colin. In six hours she had to get on a plane and fly to London. This was the longest day of the year, and the longest day of her life.

“The FBI doesn’t write parking tickets,” Tilda said as she searched her clutch for her house keys, taking refuge in an ordinary task to avoid remembering the look on Daniel’s face when she threw those words at him.
If you really knew me.
There was no quicker way to wound Daniel than to imply he had misunderstood something.

He was trying so hard, and she didn’t want to hurt him, but hurting him was inevitable, and sooner was better than later, right? She should have known better than to get involved with him, did know better. There was a price to pay for taking what she wanted; however, asking Daniel to pay that price was her mistake.

Oh, God. What had she done?

Colin peered past her at the front door. “Is he home?”

She looked out the windshield at the town house, narrow red brick with black shutters, matching black double front door with leaded glass windows. The only light on was the lamp in the front window. He could be home, or he could be at a bar with friends, or on Long Island with his family, or running. Daniel could be at work, making his methodical way through reams and reams of documents, following the root of all evil—money—to the source of the wrongdoing.

Or he could be at home, in jeans and a T-shirt, a beer in hand, waiting for Tilda. When she left the divorce papers on the dining room table, under the paperweight, she wasn’t sure if she liked what she’d started, but she knew she had to do it. Despite her best hopes, they were incompatible. Now, outside their house, she was torn between two powerful emotions: stay, and run.

Eyebrows raised, Colin looked at her, obviously expecting an answer to his extraordinarily simple question. “He often works late at home.”

In circumstances known only to residents of a city where the demand for apartments far outweighed the supply, they were still living together but only because Daniel moved to the guest bedroom on the second floor, conceding the entire top floor to Tilda.

“So you’re not going to invite me in for a drink before our flight leaves.” Colin’s smile was flirtatious, expecting to be turned down, but charmingly hopeful.

“Best not, Colin,” she said.

He glanced at her left hand, bare of the wedding ring she’d worn for six months. She’d taken off both the ring and the bracelet the day she printed the paperwork for a uncontested divorce. “He’s still living with you?”

“The housing market in New York is as tight as London’s,” she said. “It will take some time for him to find another flat.”

“You’re a difficult woman to read,” Colin said. “I can’t tell if I should offer you a shoulder to cry on or steal you away to a very posh hotel to celebrate your upcoming freedom.”

“I’m actually rather allergic to posh hotels, and I’m not divorced yet,” she said, more tartly than she’d intended. She’d never explained that particular allergy to Daniel. He knew she hated spinach, loved the sensation of fine fabric against her skin, and all but hibernated when it rained, but he didn’t know how she felt about posh hotels. Because she’d never told him. And he, acting like any sane man who wanted to show a woman that he loved her, bought her one of the most prestigious luxury items on the market, and took her to the nicest hotel in the city to celebrate her birthday.

Her response was to ask him for a divorce. The memory of his face, shocked into a stillness not even he managed most of the time, made shame crawl up her spine and settle at the nape of her neck. No one asked for a divorce after her husband orchestrated a night like that, but she had. She’d waited a couple of weeks, fighting her fear, but in the end, the bracelet was an unspoken, ever-present reminder of what he felt, and what they would both lose.

The text requesting that she meet him at a therapist’s office in Washington Square only confirmed what she should have known all along, and chose to ignore because this time she hoped things would be different. She would be different.

She owed him an explanation. That was the only question he asked when she handed him the paperwork.
Why?

“Right,” Colin said, unaware of this train of thought. “You know you’re getting exactly what you want from Quality. West Village Stationery will have retail space in every luxury goods shopping hub in every major airport in the world, plus branches in London, Tokyo, and Dubai. They want you, Tilda. They really, really want
you
. Not Kate Spade. Not Tory Burch. You.”

“Yes,” she said. The list of names reminded her that she should have had her LOVE bracelet on. Colin spoke that language, the language of money and sophistication on a global scale. He had the right schools, the right accent, the right connections, and he’d been her advocate through this deal, less impartial than he should have been.

“Again with the unreadable,” he said. “This is a very good thing. You’re what? Thirty?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight, and on the verge of becoming a global household name.”

It was unfathomable, really. No one could ignore her now. “I know,” she said, but even as she spoke she felt the slow stomach loop of a wanting not resolved, transformed into a vibrating tension. She was in her favorite place, on the edge of something, divorce, global launch, getting what she’d always wanted and never been able to articulate. She should feel far more excited than she did.

“Right,” Colin said. “I’m going to go home and pack. I’ll see you at the departures terminal?”

“Yes, of course.” Colin gave her a lingering cheek kiss before she slid out of the car. She trotted up the steps to the town house, and put her key in the lock.

The still air told her Daniel wasn’t home. She stifled her disappointment. The catastrophic appointment this morning only proved she’d made the correct choice. She committed the cardinal sin of a woman entering marriage. She’d expected change, not in Daniel, but in herself, a fundamental reordering of the bedrock of her character.

This was too much to expect.

She paused by the dining room and looked at the papers on the table, underneath Andrew’s expensive paperweight. She’d been foolish to think Daniel would sign them and be gone. He couldn’t be rushed, very rarely got his feathers ruffled, did things in his own time, in his own way.

She climbed the stairs to the third floor, refusing to glance into the open doors on Daniel’s level. In her bedroom she changed into her travel clothes, jeans, a T-shirt, a cardigan for warmth. Her flight to London left just before midnight. Twilight was falling by the time she finished packing, the indigo sky glowing outside her bedroom windows. She’d packed lightly, as it was unlikely she would see her mother on this trip, but she would make the drive to see Nan, check that her foot was healing and she had everything she needed.

Her suitcase packed, she found her phone and called Daniel. The call went straight to voice mail, which could mean he was working and unavailable, or could mean he didn’t want to talk to her and had shut off his phone. A kernel of fear burrowed deep inside Tilda’s chest. Daniel didn’t avoid problems; he was likely working late. But she couldn’t shake the sudden certainty that if she got on the plane and left, things would never be the same, that somehow taking flight would result in a more permanent devastation than asking for divorce.

Her mind was frantic, her nerves jittery, as if she’d begun something and already regretted the choice. To calm herself, she made a cup of tea, and settled at her desk, then withdrew from her leather tote her personal and business mail. There was a single letter to Lady Matilda, the once-steady flow drying up over the last few months as she focused more on business and less on her alter ego. With her sterling silver letter opener, she slit the side of the envelope and pulled out the letter.

Dear Lady Matilda—

I’ve never asked for anything like this before in my life, never mentioned it to another soul.

This was exactly the kind of person she maintained her list for, someone who yearned for connection, but had yet to find the right match. She was good at this, although sometimes she wondered if it wasn’t a primary example of God’s cruelty to give her the gift to connect others, so that every day she had to face her own cowardice. Daniel was the first person to ask what she would ask for if she put her name on her own list. She knew, of course, had always known what she longed for and did not have the courage to take for herself. No direct matches in mind, but there would be. There was always a connection, a match for those who dared to ask for what they wanted.

That’s what she had to do. She had to ask Daniel for what she wanted, the divorce, the same way she expected people seeking introductions to write down their desires, their unmet needs. She had to put it on paper.

That was the last thing she wanted to do.

Pacing between her bedroom and her office, she tried Daniel’s number again, with the same result. She was cold, her stomach churning, which was better than the flip-flops she felt when she looked at her suitcase packed and ready to carry down the stairs, load in a cab, and take to the airport. She wrapped her arms around her waist and bit her lip as she looked at her recent calls list. Her thumb brushed over the screen, sliding back and forth between Daniel’s mobile and Colin’s mobile, then settling on Colin’s.

“Colin, I can’t leave tonight,” she said when he answered. “I need to talk to Daniel about something before I go to London.”

“Having second thoughts?” he asked, his voice suddenly wary.

“No, not at all,” she said hastily. “What I need to discuss with Daniel has nothing to do with the deal. But I can’t leave without having this conversation. I’ll take the eight a.m. flight tomorrow and be in London in time for a late dinner with the leadership team.” So she wouldn’t get any sleep before the meeting. She was beginning to feel like she’d never sleep again.

“I understand,” he said, even though he couldn’t possibly understand what she barely understood herself. In order to make this clear to Daniel, to give him the explanation that he deserved, she would have to write down in explicit detail a series of events that she had described to no other person, not even Nan.

“Thank you.”

She sat down at her desk and withdrew her personal stationery from the desk’s top drawer. The first sheet was engraved with her name, Matilda Davies, blank pages following, blank until she covered them with her handwriting and told the story known only to two other souls, previously inked only on her skin. She felt like she was moving on autopilot, carrying through actions begun not just a few days ago when she asked Daniel for a divorce, not even a year ago when she met Daniel sitting on a ledge, but long before that in a luxury hotel, in a foreign city. The consequences of her actions ten years ago had finally caught up with her, but she’d been run to ground and now there was nothing to do but face them. Writing it out would make it real in a way it hadn’t been before. But it was already real, just as Daniel said the results of the pregnancy test were real, just not known. All she was doing was confessing to a sin already committed.

With one ear pricked to hear Daniel’s key in the lock, or his footsteps on the stairs, she wrote. But by the time she had finished the letter hours later, it was clear Daniel wasn’t coming home. Yes, the case that he’d been working on was moving along at a frenetic pace, but he’d never been called on to work until the wee hours of the morning. According to his best guess they wouldn’t be able to get an indictment until the end of the summer.

She left the letter for him to find when he did come home. She left it on the kitchen counter in the spot where he habitually left his wallet, keys, mobile, gun, cuffs, badge, and the notebook where he kept his own lists, and went to bed.

Shortly after three a.m. her phone vibrated to indicate an incoming text. She snatched it up, but rather than Daniel’s name, a text from her friend Louise flashed on the screen.

Hey got up for a wee Daniel’s still out on our terrace. Is something wrong?

Air evaporated from her lungs. Daniel hadn’t come home because he’d gone back to where it all began, Louise’s rooftop terrace, to the ledge she’d coaxed him onto a year ago. The least she could do was meet him there now, and give him the letter that explained why he was there in the first place. Her hands shook as she thumbed a response to Louise.

Yes. I hate to ask but can I come over? I’m leaving for London in five hours and I need to see him before I go.

Louise’s reply came as Tilda scuffed her feet into her ballet slippers and reach for her bag.

Of course will tell Pepo to let you up and leave the door unlocked xx

Tilda hurried down Perry Street toward Greenwich Avenue and hailed a cab. The ride to Park Avenue South took only a few minutes at this hour of the night, the streets eerily silent and empty. Pepo yawned as he buzzed her into the building. The elevator ride up twenty-two stories felt much the same as the cab ride—enclosed, isolated from the outside world. The silence rang in her ears, an odd, discordant humming that vanished when she stepped out into the hallway and saw Louise’s door cracked ever so slightly. Tilda stepped inside onto the polished marble floors, then closed and locked the door behind her. The hallway leading to Louise’s bedroom and bathroom was dark, so she tiptoed through the living room to the sliding glass doors that opened onto the terrace, and stepped through them.

Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness, so she could easily see Daniel’s back, narrow and straight, sitting on the ledge. What she hadn’t expected was the glow of a cigarette’s tip, the crackle of the paper and tobacco as he inhaled. The soles of her shoes scritched against the slate. He turned and looked over his shoulder, and his eyes widened ever so slightly when he saw her. He stubbed out the cigarette on the ledge and exhaled the last of the smoke into the still, warm air. Shame seared along the surface of her skin. It was a familiar feeling, but the remorse she felt for driving Daniel back to cigarettes was brand-new.