JUNE 2016
There are times in our life when we face fear, and either we defeat it or it defeats us. Fear of life. Fear of death. The first time I experienced death was my father’s suicide. I was angry with him. I was ashamed of him. I was angry with myself for not saving him. And then came the fear. Fear that I was his daughter, and therefore I would become him. Fear that I would never be loved, because if he loved me, he wouldn’t have left me. Fear my mother was so distraught from his loss that she too would leave me. And she did. Years later, but she never recovered from his loss.
See, I believe that when fear controls us, it makes decisions for us. For my mother, fear chose my stepfather. Then my brother chose my stepfather. Then my mother was gone and I chose my brother, but he did not choose me. He turned on me. He deserted me. Shane chose his brother too, and ultimately his brother chose him when he chose me. That’s hard to face sometimes. To know another person gave their life for your life. To know Shane looks at me and sees the woman who replaced his brother. Guilt and blame are almost as evil as fear. But Shane has never once acted as if he blames me, and he seems to know when I blame me and shuts it down. He doesn’t let me feel those things, but his own feelings are another story. He feels guilt and blame, but that’s where I have to shut it down for him as well. Because I choose Shane. And he chooses me.
I still think about my brother though, out there, in another country. And I still feel fear. Maybe because this past month since we found my brother, life has been almost too good. Shane and I have fallen into routines together that we enjoy. We endure random encounters with his parents together. We get excited and angry over business together. We celebrate success together. I think he was as excited or even more so when I managed to recruit the Luc Monroe, who has designed for two of the largest brands in the world, to join our operation.
Some part of me feels like what we share is too good to be true. Like Shane will be ripped away from me, the way so many things in my life have been ripped away from me.
The private jet Shane chartered for us to fly from Denver to Manhattan begins to descend, and I shut my new journal that I bought at the airport a few hours ago, nervous and excited about our arrival. “I can’t believe I’m about to be in New York City,” I say, “experiencing your alternate universe. And that we’re going to visit our designer at his proposed flagship Fifth Avenue store.”
“Alternate universe?” Shane laughs, our jean-clad knees pressed together; his are faded, low-hung, and sexy, while mine are simply black. “Sweetheart,” he adds, his hand settling on my thigh, “there’s no alternate universe. There is just the one we’re living inside together.”
“Now,” I say. “But we’re entering a place that was your world before me. The one you, rather than your father, created.”
“This is our world,” he reiterates. “The one where we have apartments in Denver and New York, and a business that favors an operation in both cities.” He taps the journal in my hand. “You’ve been writing nonstop in that thing since you picked it up in the airport. What has you so inspired?”
“I’ve kept a journal since my father died,” I say, sticking it inside my oversized black Chanel satchel purse that I’ve come to favor these past few weeks because it doubles as a briefcase if I really organize well. “I guess I missed the therapy and creativity it represents more than I realized.”
“I hate to bring this up, sweetheart, but you know—”
“Not to write about Reagan or anything related to Reagan. I know. It’s mostly just my feelings anyway.”
“Feelings?” He arches a brow. “Anything I should be concerned about?”
“You can read it if you want and decide for yourself.”
“That’s your private escape,” he says without any hesitation, “and if anyone deserves that, it’s you. Besides I’d rather you tell me, and show me, what you’re feeling.”
My lips curve. “Show not tell?”
“I like it when you show and tell.”
I laugh, but a thought hits me and my eyes go wide. “My old journals,” I say, twisting around to face him. “I wrote information about my brother and stepfather in them. About the Geminis. What if that has law enforcement hunting for them?”
“Reagan’s death was ruled an overdose,” he says, “so I doubt they read those journals, but we’ll text Seth.” He grabs his phone from the drink holder next to him and sends a text message. He hands me the phone to allow me to read what he’s typed, and Seth answers as he does: All of Emily’s things are in our possession, to be returned to her in the next few weeks. I’m not aware of any journals the police investigated at all. It’s a non-issue.
“There you go,” Shane says, slipping his phone into his pocket and then squeezing my leg. “Don’t start creating a problem where there isn’t one. We’re past that.”
“And yet you still have Cody following me around in Denver?”
His gray eyes darken, those shadows I find lurking in their depths overtaking the blue flecks too often these days. “Let’s consider this weekend a trial run without him.” The plane comes to a halt, the engines’ roars turning to purrs. “And we’re here.” He unhooks his belt, drags a hand through his thick, dark hair, and stands up.
I unbuckle myself but remain sitting, watching first as the doors open, an airport staffer entering the plane. The man seems to know Shane, waving at him and closing the space between us. The thirtysomething man, in a logoed collar shirt, gives me a mock salute and then refocuses on Shane. “Good to see you, man.”
“Good to see you too, John,” Shane greets him, shaking the other man’s hand, and it’s clear there was a time that Shane chartered planes on at least a semi-regular basis.
“What can I get for you?” John asks.
“We have a couple bags here,” Shane says, reaching into the overhead bin, while I find myself watching him, my mind troubled by those shadows in his eyes. My eyes are not at all troubled by the stretch of his tan UFC T-shirt across his broad chest and the way his sleeve tugs higher with the flex of his biceps, displaying the tattoo of the eagle sitting on top of the lion on his right shoulder. It hits me then that beyond the meaning he’s shared with me about knowledge and force, it’s ultimately symbolic of him rising above his father, and even his family name. Something he did by separating himself from them and coming here, among many other things.
I consider his “trial run” comment again, regarding the prospect of life without Cody following us around, and it hits me that if Shane feels comfortable without security here, and not in Denver, our home, we have a problem. Maybe there’s danger in Denver he hasn’t shared with me, but more likely, I think, the very idea of Adrian Martina, and even his father, being a stone’s throw from us is never going to allow him peace. And that too is a problem we have to solve. I just need to find the right moment to dive into that dark psyche of his and take a long swim.
Shane reaches for my hand, drawing it into his. And just like that, he’s successfully wiped out my worry, a shiver racing up my spine that has nothing to do with my bare arms in my thin black V-neck T-shirt, and everything to do with his touch.
“Let the adventure begin,” he murmurs, kissing my knuckles.
I smile, seduced by the idea of an adventure with this man, and even more so by finally discovering part of him I know but have never fully realized. The eagle, not the lion. He helps me to my feet. I settle my purse on my arm and, with his urging, step into the aisle before him. His hand is instantly at my waist, and he is close, kissing my neck from behind before he whispers, “Your ass looks really good in those black jeans.” He follows that declaration by smacking my new pancake-plumped backside that he seems to love, or I’d have already started running every mile it will take to shed it.
Nevertheless, I yelp with the sting on my cheek that he’s intentionally created, and move toward the exit. Stepping to the doorway, I feel suffocated by the late June New York heat. “It’s like being back in Texas,” I say as Shane steps to my side.
“I don’t miss the heat,” he says, but there is this silent inference that he misses everything else, or something else I don’t try to name now, but I will, or rather he will, before we leave.
Side by side, we start down the ramp when a limo pulls forward. “That would be our car,” he says.
“A limo? We need a limo?”
“It’s your first time in New York,” he says. “It needs to be in style. And it has a big trunk for our bags. You packed a lot of shoes.”
“That was Jessica,” I say, leaving the steps. “I should never have let her help me pack. I didn’t even buy those shoes. She did with your credit card.”
“Which is why we’re going to go shopping while we’re here and you can choose your own clothes.” It turns out John is our driver, and he holds the back door open for us. “And I’m paying.”
“Shane—”
He arches a brow, and I become aware of John staring at us. I bite back my words and save them for inside the limo, sliding inside, the tan leather seats a box that lines the back of the vehicle. A bucket of champagne on ice is in the center. Shane joins me and John shuts us inside, a glass window sealed between us and the front of the vehicle.
“I don’t need you to buy everything for me,” I tell him.
He fills two glasses and hands one to me. “Save your money so if you ever get pissed and want to leave me, you and I both know you can.”
“We both know?”
“That’s right. It’s good for us to both know you can leave. Because you can. I just don’t want you to. Ever, Emily.”
My heart squeezes with the rough quality to his voice, and I’m not sure if he’s talking about fights and relationship troubles, or rather death. I’m not sure what to say, because telling him I want to be here won’t erase the real, festering root of that comment.
“I still want you to know that I don’t expect you to take care of me,” I say. “I never want you to feel like—”
“You want my money? Sweetheart, if you wanted money, you would have jumped on your stepfather’s bandwagon. He had money. I have money. I’ve told you this, and I worked damn hard for it, for us.”
“For you.”
“For my future, which you are.” His voice softens. “We share a life, Emily. I want to share all of it with you. I have never wanted that with anyone else. I love you, Emily.”
Emotion wells in my throat. “I love you too, Shane.”
He lifts his glass. “To our first of many travel adventures.”
I touch my glass to his. “To our first—of many?”
“Of many,” he says, clicking his glass to mine. “Where do you want to go next?”
“I think right now I just want to enjoy this trip, and your city, through your eyes.”
“Our city,” he corrects me again, “and I’ll learn to appreciate it all over again through your eyes.”
* * *
We spend the next two hours driving around Manhattan, sipping our champagne and talking, taking in everything from Times Square to Rockefeller Center and much more before we finally end at Shane’s apartment building, an all-glass high-rise across from Central Park. John opens the door for us and I step outside, staring up at the building, which has a central structure and two towers behind it.
Shane settles up with John, having a conversation about our bags and the doorman before he steps to my side. “The building on the right is residential. The building on the left has office complexes and shopping.” He guides me forward and greets the doorman, who seems to know him well, but Shane doesn’t seem eager to get drawn into a conversation. Shane palms him money to deliver our bags to the apartment, and I’m introduced to a security guard, who motions us inside. We step into the building, the tiles shiny gray with swirls, the ceilings high, the lights dangling every few feet, like stars in a dark sky.
A few minutes later I’m registered as a tenant, which is rather surreal, and Shane is holding my hand, leading me into an elevator. We enter, and he punches the twenty-eighth floor before pulling me and motioning to the back of the elevator. My brow furrows in confusion until we start moving and the wall is gone, and I realize that the car is all glass. I’m now staring across Central Park and the Manhattan skyline behind it, with its jutted rooftops of various heights and colors.
“This is amazing,” I say, glancing over at him. “Though if I were afraid of heights, I’d have face-planted into your shoulder.”
He laughs. “I’ve actually seen that a few times.”
“How long have you owned this apartment?”
“Five years.”
The elevator dings behind us and we rotate, exiting the car hand in hand as we hit the tiled walkway and cut right. “Here,” he says, of the double doors on the right, halting to punch in a code. He opens the door and motions me forward.
“Your real home,” I say, starting forward, but Shane catches my hand and turns me to him.
“I never called it home,” he says. “I never called any place home before you, so turn this place into something more than it is.”
I wonder if he’s trying to convince me or himself, but I don’t say that. Not yet. Not when he hasn’t been back here in months and can’t really know what returning will feel like and what it means to him. Right now he’s just thinking of me, which makes him pretty amazing, but that means I need to be amazing to him too. And no one else in his life is amazing to him besides Jessica, which only makes me love her more. So my reply is not words. I lean forward, hand on his heart, and I feel it thunder beneath my palm, telling me he’s more affected than he wants me, and himself, to realize.
I lean into him and push to my toes, pressing my lips to his. He cups my head in that familiar way he does, and his tongue strokes against mine, a slow, sexy caress that ends too soon, leaving us both breathing just a little harder. Slowly, we ease apart, our eyes lingering the way our lips had, the connection broken only when I turn away and walk through the doorway, a dark wooden floor beneath my booted feet. Much like in our Denver apartment, I walk down a long hallway, but this one is narrower, the ceiling above curved, creating a tunneled effect, and when I exit, I gasp at the sights before me and around me.
I am standing in a stunning contemporary space that seems to go on forever both to my left and right, the décor done in grays and blues, with clean, simple shapes and lines that also manage to be elegant. Windows, not walls, encase the room, the design managing to create a feeling of being in the sky, floating on air, while two huge pillars split the living and dining areas. A staircase to the right follows windows upstairs, and one to the left heads to a lower level.
“What do you think?” Shane asks, stepping to my side.
“It makes the Denver apartment look uninteresting, and yet the Denver apartment isn’t uninteresting at all.” My gaze travels the skyline, the sun beginning to set, creating a halo effect above the buildings. “And I thought Denver was beautiful.”
“It is, but Manhattan’s skyline is its answer to the Rocky Mountains. Come,” he says, linking our fingers. “I want to show you my favorite part of the apartment.” He leads me to the stairs to our left, and my hand skims a stainless steel railing while steps of the same dark wood as the floor lead us to an office with a vaulted, completely glass ceiling that I am certain must be our destination.
But we don’t stop there.
He motions for me to walk up a narrow stairwell in the center of the room, and something about his energy has me excited to get to the top. I quickly move ahead of him and climb the narrow path, stepping into a cubbyhole of sorts, encased in glass, that fits only two cozy overstuffed chairs and a small table.
“My thinking room,” he says, joining me, his head nearly touching the glass ceiling. “And the reason I bought this apartment.” His fingers lace with mine and we step to the window, the sky now blue, orange, and yellow. “It’s like you’re on top of the world,” he says.
“I want to sit in this room with coffee and a book and stay for hours.”
“I’ve done that many times,” he says, turning to me, his hands settling on my waist. “Emily.”
“Shane,” I say, suddenly nervous and I don’t know why.
“When I thought of the way I wanted this weekend to happen, I knew we needed to be someplace that didn’t surround us with tragedy.”
“It feels different here, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It does. I knew it would, but I also knew you’d associate this place with my past, and I worried that you’d decide I would rather be living my old life, not my new life. So to be clear: my past made me the man I had to be to face what was waiting for me in Denver. It made me the man I needed to be when I met you. The man who I am right now. The man who fell in love with you. That’s why I wanted to do this here.”
“Do what? You’re scaring me.”
He laughs without humor. “Then this is really not going the way I planned, so let me just get to the point.” He goes down on his knee. “Marry me, Emily.”
Shock rolls through me. “What? I … Yes. No. Oh God. No. You can’t marry me.”
“I assure you I can and will. If you say yes. Let me rephrase: Will you marry me, Emily?”
“But I’m not Emily. I’m Reagan. What if the marriage license application exposes that somehow?”
He pushes to his feet and cups my face. “You are Emily, and I swear to you that one day, if you let me, I’m going to make sure you don’t react to everything with the fear you do now. Marry me, Emily.” He reaches to the table and then goes down on his knee again, opening a blue Tiffany’s box.
I gasp at the sight of a stunning heart-shaped diamond that glistens almost blue in the lights. “It’s incredible,” I whisper.
“This is where you say yes, sweetheart.”
I start crying and go down on my knees with him. “Yes.”
He reaches over and strokes tears from my cheeks. “Why are you crying? Please tell me it’s not fear. I promise you—”
“It’s not fear. These are happy tears, and don’t ask me to explain what happy tears are because I really don’t know. They just are what they are.”
“Then let’s let them exist with your ring on your finger.” He removes the ring from the velvet and sets the box aside before slipping the ring on my finger. “It’s a little big,” he says, “but we’ll size it.”
“It’s perfect and it’s not big.” I forget the ring and press my lips to his.
He lays us on the floor, and only then do I realize there is a fluffy, soft rug beneath us, while the stars and sky are above us. “Emily Brandon,” he says, his leg twining with mine. “I like the way that sounds.” He strokes hair from my face. “I love you, woman.”
“I love you too.” My fingers curl on his jaw. “I’ve never had anyone I trust like you. I’ve never had anyone I … trust. Trust says it all. You even told me when you wanted to kill Martina, when I know you knew how I’d react.”
“That wasn’t completely honorable. There was a part of me that wanted to scare you off if you couldn’t handle who I really am.”
“Good thing I know who you really are,” I say, “because you seem to think you’re your father’s son.”
His voice sobers. “I am my father’s son, Emily.”
“But you are also your own man. The one I love.”
He studies me for several beats, those shadows in his eyes still there, but when he kisses me, I taste the bad still haunting him, and I let him taste the bad that still haunts me. And that’s where I got it wrong in my journal. I thought we were too good to be true. But we aren’t. And I know this because when he strips me naked, and I strip him naked, it’s more than physical. We bare it all, and that makes me believe that maybe, just maybe, we can have it all.