Bound to the Greek

CHAPTER THREE

THE room was silent save for the draw and tear of their own ragged breathing. Numbly Eleanor turned away from Jace, from the table with its jostled dishes and spilled wine, and walked on wooden legs to the window.

Outside the sky was the ominous grey-white that promised a storm, the world below a winter palette of browns and greys.

Another man’s bastard. Jace’s words echoed in his ears, over and over, so Eleanor could not frame another thought or even a word. Another man’s bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

She closed her eyes.

‘So you have nothing to say,’ Jace said coldly, and that too was an indictment.

Eleanor shook her head. Her heart was thudding sickly and her knees nearly buckled. She’d never had such a physical reaction to a single piece of information, except when—

Tell me what’s wrong.

No. She wasn’t going to open up that Pandora’s box of memories. Not with Jace in the room, with his ugly words still reverberating through the air.

And she wasn’t going to defend herself either. There was so clearly no point.

Slowly she turned around. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I have nothing to say.’

Jace nodded in grim acceptance, and Eleanor knew she’d just confirmed the worst he’d ever thought about her. Judged again. She hadn’t even realised, ever known, that she’d been judged in the first place. All these years she’d had no idea Jace had been thinking that. Believing the worst. And why? What reason had she ever given him?

She walked back to the table and reached for the attaché case she’d propped against her chair.

‘I’m going to go now,’ she said steadily. She was grateful her voice didn’t tremble or break. ‘I’ll make sure Lily assigns someone else to your party.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jace demanded, and Eleanor almost laughed. Did he actually think she’d work with him now? Considering what had just happened—what he thought—

She shook her head again. ‘Clearly, Jace, we can’t move on from the past, and it’s affecting our—our work relationship.’ What a ridiculous idea, as though they could have any relationship at all. ‘There’s no point continuing this way. Someone else will serve you better.’

‘So you expect me just to forgive and forget,’ Jace surmised, his voice sharp with sarcasm.

Now Eleanor did laugh, a short, humourless bark. ‘No. I’m the one who can’t. Forgive or forget.’ She hoisted her bag on her shoulder and gave him a grim little smile. ‘Goodbye, Jace.’

And somehow, somehow she managed to walk from the room with steady legs, her head held high.

Jace watched Eleanor walk away from him in stunned disbelief. He heard the click of the door shutting, the surprised murmur of his PA, the whoosh of the lift doors. And he still didn’t move.

I’m the one who can’t forgive or forget.

What the hell had she been talking about?

Muttering an angry oath, Jace whirled towards the window. What could Eleanor Langley possibly have to forgive? All right, perhaps he’d been ruthless in the way he’d cut her out of his life, leaving Boston—leaving her—so abruptly and absolutely. But he’d done it because the realisation that she’d been deceiving him all along had been too terrible to bear. He’d felt quite literally gutted, empty and aching inside. And meanwhile she—she had been trying to foist another man’s child on him. Living a lie all along. She’d never really loved him.

Yet apparently Eleanor did think she had something to forget. To forgive.

What?

Impatiently Jace turned away from the window where a few random snowflakes had begun to drift down onto the asphalt. He felt restless, angry, uncertain. The last was what bothered him the most; he’d never felt doubt before. How could he? He’d known since he was fifteen years old that he was infertile.

Sterile. Like a gelded bull, or a eunuch. As good as, according to his father. For what good was a son who couldn’t carry on the family name? Who had been unmanned before he’d even reached his manhood?

What use was a son like that?

Jace already knew the answer, had known the answer since his test results had come back and his father’s dreams of a dynasty had crumbled to dust. Nothing. A son like that—like him—was no use at all.

He’d lived with that grim knowledge for half of his life. Felt it in every quietly despairing stare, every veiled criticism. His own infertility had consumed him before he’d even been ready to think of children, had dominated him as a boy and become part of his identity as a man. Without the ability to have children, he was useless. Worthless.

And yet now, with Ellie’s words, doubt, both treacherous and strangely hopeful, crept into his mind and wound its tendrils of dangerous possibility around his thoughts. His heart.

What did Ellie have to forget? To forgive? What had she been talking about?

Half of him wanted to ignore what she had said, just move on. He’d get a different event planner, forget Eleanor Langley even existed. Never question what she said.

Never wonder.

Yet even as these thoughts raced through his brain, Jace knew he couldn’t do that. Didn’t even want to. Yes, it was saner, safer, but it was also aggravating as hell. He didn’t want to doubt. Couldn’t let himself wonder.

He needed to know.

Eleanor walked all the way back to Premier Planning’s office near Madison Square Garden, oblivious to the cold wind buffeting her face and numbing her cheeks. She was oblivious to everything, every annoyed pedestrian, cellphone clamped to an ear, who was forced to move around her as she sleepwalked the twenty-three blocks to her office. She felt numb, too numb to think, to consider just what Jace had said. What he’d thought all these years.

She stood in front of the building, still numb, still reeling, and realised distantly that she couldn’t return to work. Lily would be waiting, anxious for a report—or worse. Perhaps Jace had already rung. Perhaps her job was already in jeopardy.

Either way, she couldn’t face it. She turned her back on ten years of professionalism and went home.

Back in the apartment she dropped her bag on the floor, kicked off her heels, and slumped into a chair, staring out into space. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that for, without moving, without thinking, but the sky darkened to violet and then indigo, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and that had been no more than half a bagel as she hurried to work. Yet she still couldn’t summon the energy to eat. To feel. Anything. She hadn’t felt this numb—the pain too consuming to allow herself to feel it—for a long time. For ten years.

Finally she stirred and went to the bathroom. She turned both taps on full and stripped off her clothes, leaving her savvy suit crumpled on the floor. Who knew if she’d need it any more?

Twenty minutes into a good soak she felt her mind start to thaw. So did her heart. So Jace assumed she’d been unfaithful, had been labouring under that unbelievable misapprehension for ten long years. No wonder he was so angry. Yet how could he be so wrong?

How could he have thought that of her, considering what they’d been to one another? Even the logistics of infidelity were virtually impossible; she’d spent nearly every waking moment working, at school, or with him.

Yet he’d believed it, and believed it so strongly that he’d judged her without trial, without even a conversation. He’d been so sure of her infidelity that he’d left her, left his entire life in the States, without even asking so much as a single question.

Somehow it was so much worse than what she’d thought all these years: that he’d developed a case of cold feet. In her more compassionate moments, she could understand how a twenty-two-year-old man—boy—with his whole life in front of him might get a little panicked at the thought of fathering a child. She understood that; what she didn’t understand, had never understood, was the way he’d gone about it. Leaving so abruptly. Abandoning her without a word or even a way for him to contact him. Cellphone disconnected. No forwarding address.

It hadn’t been merely a slap to the face, it had been a stab wound to the heart.

And he’d done it not because of his own inadequacy, but because of hers. Infidelity. He actually assumed she’d cheated on him.

The bath water was getting cold, and Eleanor rose from the tub. There was no point letting herself dwell on the recriminations, the regrets. If Jace Zervas had been able to believe something so atrocious and impossible about her so easily, obviously they’d never had much of a relationship at all.

And that was a truth she’d lived with for ten years.

She’d just slipped on her comfort pyjamas—soft, nubby fleece—when her doorbell rang. Eleanor stilled. She lived on the thirtieth floor in a building with two security personnel at the front door at all times, so no one made it to her door without her being alerted. The only option, she supposed, was a neighbour, although she’d never really got to know her neighbours. It wasn’t that kind of building, and she didn’t have that kind of life.