Page 36 of Edge of Secrets (The Edge Trilogy #2)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nell

I t took a long time to find the right button to push, since I could barely see, my eyes were so blurred with tears. I finally got it and held the phone to my ear. “Yes?”

“Nell? Finally! It’s Nancy. Sorry I’m calling so early, but I couldn’t stand to wait. I hope I’m not interrupting anything, you know, delicious?”

“No,” I forced out after a pained little pause. “You’re not.”

Nancy was silent for a moment. “Um ... is everything okay?”

“Fine.” I forced false brightness into my tone. “So what’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with Elsie.”

Elsie was Lucia’s sweet but extremely nosy next-door neighbor. She’d been there decades before we’d come to live there. I was surprised to hear her name.

“I thought Elsie went down to the Jersey Shore to live with her daughter after what happened to Lucia!”

“Oh, but she did. She just spent a full half hour telling me the horrors of sharing a bathroom with her teenage granddaughters. Alison brought her home last night. Elsie had the key Lucia had given her years ago, so this morning she decided to go over and check the place out for us.”

I sucked in a breath. “Yikes. Did you ask her to do that?”

“Hell, no! I told her not to ever do it again. It could be dangerous. But you know how she is. Anyhow, she found a letter under the mail slot, from an Elisabetta Barbieri, in Castiglione Sant’Angelo. Elsie opened it?—”

“Good God,” I muttered.

“I know, I know, but I wasn’t inclined to complain. And besides, it didn’t matter—it’s in Italian, and Elsie’s Polish. So she called me.”

“I’ll go up there right away and get it,” I said.

Nancy made a suspicious sound. “With Duncan, right?”

I squirmed, pressing against the ache in my middle. “We’ll see,” I hedged.

“You be careful,” Nancy scolded. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just really tired, that’s all.”

I closed the call, trying to sound cheerful, and stared through the glass doors at him, leaning over the railing. He’d asked me to marry him. I’d said no. I was nuts.

Could I risk it? I knew he had feelings for me—he just couldn’t admit them or articulate them.

Could I accept a cool, practical “partnership”?

With protection, money, and lots of hot, excellent sex, and constant proximity with a man I was crazy about …

just hoping that someday he’d finally recognize his feelings for me as love?

No. I just wasn’t made that way. Maybe I would always be alone. Maybe I was unrealistic. Or just stupid, letting my chance at passion go by for the sake of semantics.

I wanted my man to love me. Fearlessly. With an open heart.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the terrace.

A gust of wind blew the terry cloth bathrobe open over my legs.

I yanked it closed. I was nude underneath.

Nudity that had abruptly become inappropriate.

In fact, it had become an agony of embarrassment.

“I, um, have to go,” I said to his rigid, muscular back.

“Why am I not surprised,” he said, without turning.

I told him the story of Elsie and the letter. Duncan stared out at the city. “I’ll take you up there,” he said, his voice was stony.

“No,” I whispered.

“No?” He turned, and the fury in his eyes hit me like a punch.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do? Nothing’s changed.

You’ve still got criminals prowling the city, waiting for your guard to go down.

Am I supposed to cut you loose and let you get killed now?

Just because I disappointed you again? Is that my punishment? ”

I shook my head. “It’s not your responsibility, Duncan,” I said. “It never really was.”

“What a crock of horseshit. I get it, Nell. You can’t stand to be with me?—”

“That’s not it!”

“—so I’ll arrange for a car service and a professional armed escort to accompany you.

When you get back with your letter, you’ll check into a suite at the Hilton.

Twenty-four-hour bodyguard coverage. No more Sunset Grill shifts.

Just your university work. And you’ll be covered anytime you leave your room. ”

My mouth dangled, and my head shook helplessly back and forth. “Duncan. That’s insane. You can’t do that.”

“I can do whatever I want. I’ll finance it until you’ve written your fucking thesis and gotten your precious Ph.D. At which point, we’ll reassess the situation.”

“But I?—”

“Consider my position, Nell. Cold and detached as you think I am, I don’t want you to die.

Even if you’re blowing me off, even if I’m not fucking you, I don’t want you to get hurt.

If you got hurt, or died, I’d feel like it was my fault for dropping the ball, and that would suck, to the point of ruining my life.

I can’t allow that. Is that clear? Are we on the same page here? ”

I scrubbed my eyes with the back of my hands and nodded.

“Good. Then stop arguing. I’m sick of it. And I no longer need to bother trying not to piss you off. Wow. What a fucking load off my mind.”

He stood there like some sort of raging, thunderous pagan god in the chilly morning air, the towering cityscape as his backdrop.

His face was rigid with fury. He made a sharp gesture for me to precede him inside.

“I’ll make the calls. Come on, let’s get moving.

This shit is killing me. Get dressed and packed. Fast.”

I dragged my suitcase out of his room into the living room, overhearing snippets of Duncan’s conversation with someone named Braxton as he arranged for the bodyguard. He turned, frowning. “What’s the address of this neighbor?”

“Twenty-one thirty-one Fairham Lane, in Hempton,” I said.

Duncan repeated the address to Braxton. “Put this one on my personal account, not the corporate account,” he said into the phone.

His personal account? Dear God. I’d be in debt to this guy for the rest of time.

Well, in essence, I already was.