Sutton stumbled out of Edward’s cottage. Her shoes were off and dangling from their straps, but unlike her earlier trip through the grass around the museum building, the porch boards and then the cobblestone path hurt.
It wasn’t as though she cared.
As she bolted for the Mercedes, she was a mass of contradictions, her brain a jammed-up mess, her body all loosey-goosey.
He’d thought she was a prostitute?
But why else had he been talking about money and some guy named Beau? Next week?
Oh, God, they’d had sex …
How had they done that? How had she let …
Dear Lord, his poor face, his body.
Around and around the thoughts spun in her head, until, as if by centrifugal force, everything weeded out except for the fact that Edward was not at all as he had once been. His handsome looks were gone, the scars on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose and forehead making it virtually impossible to reconstruct by memory the perfection that had once been there.
She’d been aware that he’d been treated badly. Newspaper and television reports, her only source of information because he had refused to see anyone, had detailed the lengths of his hospital and rehabilitation stays—and that kind of extensive treatment did not happen without tragically good reason. But seeing him in person had been a total shock.
He’d been a polo player before the abduction. An event jumper. A runner. A basketball, tennis, and squash player. A swimmer. And because Edward had been a golden boy not just in business, but in every other aspect of his life, he had excelled at all of them.
I wish I had done this before. My body was once something worth seeing.
Sutton struggled to open her car’s driver’s-side door, her hand slipping off over and over again like she’d had some kind of a stroke and could no longer grip things properly. And when she finally was able to get herself into the car, she ran out of energy and just collapsed into the seat.
I should have tried to have you before, but I was too much of a coward. I was an arrogant coward—but I could have withstood anything except you turning me down.
What had he been saying—and who had he thought he’d been saying it to? Her heart broke with the idea that he was in love with someone like that.
He’d been so drunk. To the point where right before she bolted, she’d checked to make sure his heart was still beating and he was breathing—because, yes, the idea that she might have killed him because they’d …
“Dear Lord.”
How was it possible that, after years of thinking about it, they’d actually had sex. But only because he’d thought she was a whore he’d ordered from somewhere?
And no, they hadn’t used protection.
Fabulous. This veering off the beaten path thing tonight was just all-around wonderful … especially because, even though he’d been drunk … even though she’d been a head case … and in spite of the physical condition he’d been in … the sex had been incredible. Maybe it was all that pent-up wondering, maybe it was compatibility, maybe it was because it had been a one-time-only, stars-aligned kind of event.
But whatever the reasons, he had just blown away the few men she had been with.
And, she feared, scorched the earth for anybody else.
Reaching forward, she pushed the start/stop button—and as the car’s engine let out a purr, the headlights flared and made her panic. There were other people on the grounds—had to be—and the last thing she wanted was to get caught. She was going to need to figure out how to deal with this, and having the gossip mill get to churning was not going to be part of her coping strategy, thank you very much— At that very moment, another car came down the alley of trees and, instead of heading for one of the barns or outbuildings, it pulled up right next to her.
The woman who got out was … tall, brunette, and dressed in a full-length evening gown.
She frowned as she looked at the Mercedes.
And came over.
Sutton put her window down, because what else was she supposed to do? At the same time, she also started searching for the right lever, button, whatever, to get the sedan into reverse.
“I thought I was on the schedule for this tonight?” the woman asked pleasantly enough.
“I … ah …” As Sutton stammered, a flush ran through her. “Ah …”
“Are you one of the new girls Beau was talkin’ about? I’m Delilah.”
Sutton shook the hand that was offered. “How do you do.”
“Oh, you sound so posh!” The woman smiled. “So did you take care of him?”
“Ah …”
“It’s okay if you did. Sometimes these things happen, and I’ve got two other calls tonight.” She reached up and yanked what turned out to be a wig off her head. “At least I can be free of this. Is he okay?”