The bed dips when he sits down against the headboard beside me and opens the book.
“Not watching you,” he murmurs. “Happy?”
“Yes,” I say, and think of his arms around me, telling me to breathe. I can’t do the same back. But maybe, in some small way, I helped even out the score tonight.
He turns a page in the paperback he’s holding. Sitting so close, awake… I’m sure there’s no way I can fall back asleep.
But I’m wrong on that count.
It doesn’t take long at all for my eyes to drift closed, and I hear the faint rustling of pages as he reads, and his steady breathing, so different from what woke me up minutes ago.
CHAPTER 47
RAFE
We drive to Lausanne the next day.
It’s usually a calm drive, across the Alps, leaving Italy behind for the familiar Swiss street signs and license plates. But this time I have a wife riding in the passenger seat.
What she saw last night… I knew it was a risk, having her in my bed. But I didn’t have a choice. At first. And then, when there was a choice, it felt like her presence kept them away.
Maybe it was knowing I was heading to Switzerland that triggered the memories. The falling snow. Etienne’s screams and me fighting to reach the surface, over and over again, only for more snow to crush me beneath its icy boot.
He never screamed in real life.
But in my dreams, it’s all I hear.
She accepted it in stride. Talked to me and then fell back asleep. I didn’t. I lay awake reading, listening to her breathing, and got out of bed at dawn.
We both work during the drive. I spend the first half hour talking to Karim on the phone, going through the agenda. Paige answers emails. When the car is quiet again, she makes her move.
“And now that I have you here where you can’t escape…” she starts.
I groan.
She laughs and stretches out her legs farther. She’s pushed her seat back as far as it can go, and she’s wearing some form of miniskirt that leaves those long, tanned legs dangerously on display.
I hate how much I like them.
And how much I want to feel them wrapped around me.
“No, don’t,” she says. “I promise this is good. I want to talk to you about the latest Mather & Wilde updates.”
“We talk about it all the time,” I say. “I manage a lot of other heritage brands, too.”
“Yes, but this is your wife’s,” she says, and pulls open her laptop. She never seems to travel anywhere without it.
I can relate.
I look over again. She’s wearing an oversized crisp shirt over that miniskirt of hers. There’s a monogram on the sleeve.
“Wilde,” I say, and reach out to turn it to the side.R. M.“You’re wearing my shirt again.”
“It took you almost an hour to notice,” she says.
“You have a black card you can use, yet you can’t stop stealing. What does that say about you?” I ask.
“That I love bothering you,” she says. “Do you hate it?”
