THOUGH FUN WAS not her first thought as Indy stood there outside the house, breathing in the summer morning while she tried to take stock of what had just happened.
What she’d just done.
A part of her wanted nothing more than to turn around and race back inside. She’d waited two long years for this and she was bailing already? Surely it made sense to just go back to him and see if she could salvage this somehow—
Salvage what? asked a caustic voice inside her. You know what you’re good at and it’s not this.
She blew out a breath, and started down the road, thinking a nice long walk would suit her perfectly, thank you. It would settle her down and let her think.
Prague glimmered there in the distance as she made her way down the hill, dance music in her ears to remind her that she liked her mood light and her parties never-ending. And it was the beautiful fairytale city it always was, but she hardly saw it. Because she was too busy going over every single thing Stefan had said to her.
Indy had always been a mediocre student. That wasn’t a question. Why had he made it a question? And why now, years after she’d finally graduated, when it didn’t matter what kind of student she’d been in the first place?
Her sister had been the student in the family. And it wasn’t that Indy had set herself up in opposition to Bristol. It was that there was no point competing with her sister for a crown Indy didn’t even want. She’d always thought that Bristol had become serious about her studies to put herself in an unimpeachable place where studying was all she did. Because Indy had been much better at flitting around their small-town schools, doing the popular thing.
There was no point doing things you weren’t good at, was there?
No one’s good at paying bills, Indy, Bristol had cried in exasperation at one point during their time as roommates. I’m not good at being responsible, I just don’t have an option not to be. Why don’t you understand that?
Maybe you don’t have a choice, Indy had replied, hugging Bristol even though her sister tried to shrug out of it, even batting at her a little because Bristol didn’t feel like not being frustrated. But you maybe also love it a little bit at the same time, don’t you?
Bristol had given up. But Indy had taken it as confirmation. She gravitated toward the things she was good at in life and that was why her life was a delight. Bristol might claim to enjoy what she did, but she had sure seemed endlessly stressed out about all of it while she did it, didn’t she? Her grades in high school. Her GPA and course load in college. Her masters and then her doctorate—it was all stress stress stress.
One thing Indy had avoided, as much as possible, was stress.
She couldn’t understand why anyone would want the kind of intensity Stefan had showed her. That just seemed like a whole lot of stress in all the places where life was supposed to be the most fun and she wanted no part of it.
“I’m fine the way I am,” she muttered out loud as she left his street behind.
It took her a while to walk down into the city and when she did, she found herself wandering through the city streets until she found a shop that sold newspapers and magazines in English.
And stopped dead, because there was her sister on the cover of several. Front and center.
Go Bristol, she thought.
She found a place to sit down by the river and read them all through. Then she got her sister on the phone, the way she did as often as she could while Bristol was off adventuring in tabloid splendor. If only for a few moments.
“Did you know that you’re on the front page of every single tabloid there is?” she asked when Bristol answered.
“What do you mean by every tabloid?” Bristol sounded annoyed, but Indy was looking at a whole series of pictures of her face. Soft and open and splashed across the papers—and Bristol was an academic, not an actress. Something in Indy turned over at that. “I’m not comfortable with one tabloid.”
“Then I have some bad news for you,” Indy said merrily. “They’re comfortable with you. And you do know you have a little something called the internet at your disposal, Bristol.”
She laughed, picturing the annoyed expression her sister was certain to be making, off in her Spanish island paradise with one of the richest and most famous men alive. Nice for some, she thought, though she knew she didn’t actually envy Bristol. It was that look on her face in all these pictures, though. It made Indy wish she were different, inside and out.
But she wasn’t. “You can access this exciting new invention with the newfangled handheld computer you’re using to talk to me, in a totally different country, right now.”
“I access the internet all the time, asshole,” Bristol replied in her typically snooty way. All big sister bossiness and the suggestion, right there beneath her words, that Indy was wasting her life. It was oddly comforting today. “And yet, oddly enough, it’s not the tabloid newspapers I look for when I do.”
“Well, good news, then,” Indy said brightly. “You look amazing. What else matters?”
Bristol let out her trademark longsuffering sigh, but Indy could hear that her out-of-character adventure was already changing her. Because Bristol was doing the exact opposite of the things she normally did. She was celebrating finishing up her doctorate and not knowing exactly what to do with the rest of her life by doing something completely outside her normal range. That was how she’d ended up on the arm of Lachlan Drummond, one of the most eligible billionaires in the world.
She even sounded happy.
And as Indy sat there glaring at the river after the call ended, that felt like yet another jolting sort of indictment inside her.
Stefan’s breakdown of what she was going to do once she walked away from him seemed to simmer inside her, taunting her, because she knew he was right. Wasn’t that what she always did when she found herself on her own? Maybe after a long night. Maybe after an adventure where she’d lost track of her companions. She could walk into any bar, anywhere. She often didn’t even have to walk into a bar. A few suggestive glances and she was sure that she could have a man eating out of her palm no matter where she was. But to what end?
She could hear Stefan’s voice in her head. Those empty sugar-high orgasms you like so much, he’d said, and she was very much afraid he’d ruined them for her. Because who wanted hollow junk-food sex when there was...him?
Meanwhile, despite her Bristol-ness, her sister had sounded happy.
Happy.
And for all that Indy had spent her life pursuing fun at all costs, had she remembered to make sure that she was happy while she was doing it?
Do you even know what happy is? asked another voice inside, this one sounding a whole lot like her father.
She called home, smiling when she heard her father’s grumpy voice on the other end.
“Do you know what time it is here?” he asked, instead of saying hello. “Don’t tell me you forgot to look at the time change. I think we both know you do it deliberately.”
“Hi, Dad,” she said, affection for him racing through her and warming her. “You sound deeply stressed out. Isn’t it a Saturday?”
She heard his laugh and could picture him easily, back in that house where she’d grown up. It was a little after six o’clock in the morning, Ohio time, but she knew perfectly well he hadn’t been asleep. Margie liked an extra few hours to catch up on her beauty sleep every weekend, but not Bill. He worked all week, as he liked to say, and therefore liked to be up and at it on the weekends to squeeze out every drip of leisure time available.
“It’s a fine Saturday,” her father said. “I have big plans. The hardware store, a little project in your mother’s vegetable garden, and I’m going to fire up the grill for dinner. Did you call to hear my itinerary? You’re not normally the itinerary sort, are you, Bean?”
Bean. She couldn’t remember why he’d started calling her that, only that he always had. And that something inside her would break forever if he ever stopped.
“I want to ask you a life question, Dad,” she said, and though her voice was pleasant enough, her heart still hurt. Walking down from Stefan’s hillside villa hadn’t helped at all.
“You’re the one gadding about in Europe. Mysteriously. Seems you have it figured out.”
She hadn’t told him—or anyone—where, precisely, in Europe she was. Because everything concerning Stefan had seemed too private. Too personal.
And because if she told them what she was doing, she would have to tell them why. Which could only lead to explaining things better left unexplained. Or, worse, coming back after a night or two and having to explain that instead.
Better not to risk any of that. “What is gadding anyway?” she asked. “No one ever says, oh, I think I’m up for a gad. Come join me in some gadding.”
“Is this one of your internet games?” She heard sounds she recognized. Her father puttering around in the kitchen. The cabinets and the fridge opening and closing as he made himself the English muffin he liked to eat every morning, getting out the honey and butter to use when the toaster made it the exact shade of tan he preferred. “You know I don’t like being recorded.”
“That was only the one time. I told you I wouldn’t do it again. And besides, you were amazing. You still have fans on my page.”
“Then my life is complete,” Bill said dryly. “Every man needs fans on a webpage.”
“Are you happy, Dad?” Indy asked before she lost her nerve. “I mean truly happy?”
There was a small pause, and Indy screwed her eyes shut. But when she did, all she could see was her dad at the kitchen window half a world away, staring out at the backyard and the woods, his brow furrowed in thought.
“Are you in trouble, Bean?” her father asked, his gruff, joking tone changed to something quieter that made the knots in her seem to swell to twice their size. “Because you know that all you have to do is say the word and your mother and I will be on the next plane. No matter where you are. Or what you’re doing.”
And something flooded her then, bright and sweet, because she knew he meant that. Her parents, who had always seemed so deeply content to be exactly where they were—who didn’t take the kind of trips their daughters did, or even their friends did, and never seemed all that interested in far off places—would think nothing of racing to her side if she needed them.
Shouldn’t she be happy with that? Why did she need more? Why did anyone need more? There were a whole lot of people who didn’t even have what she did.
“I’m fine,” she hurried to assure him. “I was just thinking about what happiness really is. And you and mom always seem so content, I figured you must know.”
“You always said contentment was a fate worse than death,” her father reminded her, though he laughed when he said it. “When you were thirteen, you and your sister made solemn vows to leave this town and never come back, because neither one of you had any intention of settling. You were very sure of yourselves.”
“I’m always sure of myself, Dad.” That was true enough, but saying it out loud gave her pause. Why was she so sure? That she was bad at school. That she was shallow. That she only wanted what she knew she could get, and even then, only for a little while. She found herself rubbing at her chest again, though she already knew it wouldn’t keep her heart from aching. “But that’s why I’m calling. I’m asking what you’re sure of, for a change.”
She expected him to shrug that off. Make a little joke, maybe. Keep things light and easy.
“I think that a happy life is earned,” her father said instead, sounding...thoughtful. “Because life itself isn’t one thing or another. It’s not happy or sad. It just is. Like anything, it’s what you make of it. Your mom and I have had some hard times and we’ve had easy times. But the hard times are better, and the easy times sweeter, because of the work we put in.”
“That’s something people like to say,” Indy whispered. “Putting the work in. But they don’t ever say what it means.”
“It means you don’t let your life just happen to you, Indy,” her father said, not unkindly. “You have to live it, good and bad, boring and exciting, one day after the next. It’s not meant to be fun all the time. That isn’t to say you can’t enjoy it, but a life that’s only one thing isn’t much of a life.”
And though she changed the subject then, even talking to her mother for a while when her father passed the phone on because Margie was actually up before nine for a change, it was that part that resonated with her.
A life that was only one thing wasn’t much of a life.
She couldn’t let it go. She tested herself, finding her way into a bar, and, sure enough, letting a few men flirt with her while she sat in it. But she did not take them up on any of their invitations.
Or their candy-coated anything.
Because her life had been only one thing for a long, long time.
And she hated that Stefan had seized on the reason for that being Bristol, because she loved her sister. Adored her. Supported her, cheered her on, and wanted nothing but the best for her. That didn’t change the fact that way back when they were kids, Indy had decided that she was going to go a different way.
Maybe because it was different.
Was it that easy? If you made a decision when you were young were you doomed to repeat it ever after?
But no, she thought as she found herself in Old Town Square again. She watched the statues of the apostles appear in the famous Astronomical Clock, doing their thing while the crowd cheered and took pictures. The statue of death waved. And Indy felt a kinship to the funny old thing. Because the clock put on its show at the top of each hour, and it was wonderful. But the rest of the time, no matter how beautiful and old, it was just a clock.
Maybe, for the first time in her life, she didn’t want to be the same old thing she’d always been.
And she could admit, then, that Stefan was right about this part, too. Intensity terrified her. The things that Stefan said to her, and all the implications, terrified her even more.
But maybe she’d come all the way to Prague to be terrified. Maybe it was good for her. The fact was, if she paid attention to her orgasms alone, the man knew what he was talking about. Everything with him was dialed up to one hundred or more. Everything with him was more. Longer. Deeper.
Better.
What did it say about her that all she’d wanted was to finally come to Prague, to meet him here, and yet she’d run off the minute it got to be too much for her? Was she really that person? Deep down, she knew she’d woken up scared silly that first morning and had been running ever since. Because he’d touched things in her she hadn’t known were there.
Over the past two years she’d convinced herself that she’d imagined the intensity. That it had been the circumstances, not the man.
But the truth was, Stefan still felt like fate.
Like destiny.
She might like to tell anyone who asked that she was shallow and silly, but deep down, she didn’t think of herself that way. And Stefan was the only person she wasn’t related to who didn’t take her at face value. Who looked at her and saw depths. Who saw more than her body or her face or what she might look like beside him.
And she knew she should have been horrified that he’d treated her like a research project, but she wasn’t. Who else had she ever met who wanted to know more about her when they’d already had sex with her? Who refused to accept what they saw?
Even though she’d run off from his house and even though she hadn’t been faking her outrage while she’d been there, Indy knew the real truth was she liked it. All of it.
She liked how intense he was, little as she knew how to handle it. He’d been that intense the first night she’d met him. Despite what she’d told herself since, she hadn’t imagined that part. And she liked what he seemed to be suggesting, that he’d been as shaken by her as she’d been by him. Maybe she just needed time to acclimate to that. To him.
To fate.
Maybe she’d needed to know that she could leave so that she could return.
Because that was what she did, climbing out of a taxi at his front door once again, and this time noticing the security pad on the wall. She let herself in with the key that still hung around her neck, finding the house as bright and sunny as she’d left it. She wandered through the beautiful rooms, amazed that a man she’d met in such a dark and gritty place had made himself a sanctuary like this one. Amazed that he felt the same way, impossibly bright when he should have been something else entirely.
She saw him standing out on the terrace, looking out over the pool toward the city in the distance with his mobile to his ear. He’d changed his clothes, putting on jeans and what looked like a well-loved red T-shirt that made the muscles in his wide back enough to weep over.
He was talking in what she assumed was Romanian when she opened the glass doors and stepped outside. He turned around, his blue gaze coming to her and staying there.
Bright and hard.
He finished his call and shoved his mobile into his pocket, then did nothing at all but regard her where she stood.
“Yes,” Indy said, as if she was making proclamations. “I’m back. I went to a bar, just as predicted. Are you happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
“I did not have sex with the numerous men I could have had sex with.” She studied him for a moment, that face carved of stone that had haunted her for years now. “I think you should take that as a statement of my intentions.”
The light in his blue eyes changed. Like a lightning storm. “I will make a note.”
“I don’t know how to do intensity, Stefan.” That sounded a little more uncertain, but Indy didn’t let that stop her. “I don’t know how to do any of this. This is not the kind of thing I do.”
“But you do, foolish girl. You have from the start.”
She blew out a breath and then crossed her arms, as if that could help her. “That’s very opaque, thank you. Anyway. Here I am. You get your night of wild intensity.”
His smile made everything in her seem to stand at attention. “No. I am afraid that is no longer on offer.”
“It’s not?” And she was... Crushed. There was no other word for it.
But he was still holding her gaze. “A night will not do it. I’m tired of these one-night games. You will give me a month, Indiana. And then we will see where we are.”
“A month?” She thought her teeth actually chattered. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You can,” Stefan told her, and he was sure. He was commanding and certain in all things. She liked that, too. Maybe too much. “Because it is a month or nothing. Which will you choose?”
And when he put it like that, it was simple.