13CHRISTIAN
I wait for her answer. I’m as curious about her mind and her heart as I am about what’s beneath her clothes. You can’t just make love to a woman with your body. You need to understand what’s inside her head. Give her pleasure by knowing what she needs, where she’s been, and what will bring her the bliss she deserves.
Already, I can sense Elise has had her heart broken.
She lifts her chin, a little sign of her toughness. “I like our arrangement because I don’t believe everything needs to be over-the-top and all-consuming. I think sometimes things should be planned out and scheduled. Less heartbreak that way.”
“Did someone break your heart?”
She looks away, and that’s my answer. “Doesn’t someone always break our hearts?” She turns back, her brown eyes searing into me. “What are the chances you can skate through life and not have any sort of heartbreak? Except you probably don’t have any. There’s no way anyone can be as happy as you are and have had heartbreak.”
I scoff. “You really think I haven’t had my heart broken?”
“Have you?”
“Of course I have.”
“Who hurt you? I’ll kill her.” She holds up her hands, fashioning them into fists. I laugh, loving her fiercely protective side, and I’m not the least bit surprised she has one. It suits her.
“I think we broke each other’s hearts, mostly because we drifted apart. That’s a kind of heartbreak, isn’t it?”
She nods. “I don’t really think we should judge heartbreak. One isn’t necessarily worse or harder than another. What happened?”
“I was married.”
Her eyes widen. “You were?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“It does. You seem the consummate single man.”
“I do enjoy my single life, but I also loved Hannah. I met her my last year at university. She was in London on an exchange program, and we fell for each other. The way you can only be in love when you’re twenty-one.”
“The stupid, foolish kind.”
“Exactly. But it felt like the real thing. She moved back to the United States, and I had a job on Wall Street, so it all felt like . . .”
Amused, she quirks her lips. “Like fate?”
I laugh at how easily she calls me on it. “I suppose it did.”
“What happened? What cratered?”
“That’s the thing. Nothing and everything. We didn’t work out. We were married for about a year, and I think we both realized we were too young. We didn’t really know what we wanted. I was getting started in the finance business, and she wanted to be a ski instructor and live in Colorado. That’s not to say you have to want the same things to last, but we wanted opposites. She wanted an easy life. I wanted a challenging one. I’m not sure you can truly be with somebody unless you have similar ambitions, or a complete understanding of each other’s hopes and dreams. Neither one of us possessed that.”
“You didn’t understand her, and she didn’t understand you.”
“Exactly.”
Elise lifts her cup and takes a drink, a thoughtful look in her eyes. “Ambition is a strange bedfellow. I want it in a partner, I think.”
“Me too.” Sighing, I rub a hand over the back of my neck. “So, it ended. We didn’t crater so much as peter out. We were like embers in the fireplace, then we turned to ash.”
She inhales deeply, her eyes shining. “Sometimes it’s all so sad. We try and try to come together, but so much gets in the way.” She wipes at her cheek and seems to fix on a smile. “I still can’t believe you were married.”
“Bit of a shocker. But see? I’m not a total cad.”
“I don’t actually think you’re a cad,” she says softly, reaching for my hand under the table.
“Good, because I’m not. I’ve been straight with you from the start. I’m not one of those I’ll-never-get-involved guys. I think I’m more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy.”
“Are you? Because I could use that.”
“Why? What cratered for you?”
She swallows hard and draws what seems to be a fortifying breath. “I was married too.”
I offer a sympathetic smile. “Welcome to the divorce club.” But when I see her stricken expression, I sigh heavily. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“The widow club, actually. And I wasn’t the only widow he left behind.”
“Are you kidding me?” My jaw hangs open.
“I wish. It was a whirlwind courtship. Four months, and he hid it the whole time. He traveled a ton, and he romanced me to the ends of the earth, and I had absolutely no clue. We were married for only six months after a short and very intimate ceremony, and he was gone half the time. I thought, silly me, that he was away on business. He probably was, but that business involved his other wife.”
“Was she in Paris? Another country?” I ask, still shocked that her ex pulled off such an act. I’ve heard stories of double lives, known they existed, but haven’t met anyone who’s encountered them.
“She’s Spanish, like he was. She’d been married to him longer. About two years. They lived in Barcelona. I found out at the funeral when I met the other grieving widow. She’d had no idea either. We actually wound up having coffee a few months later when she was in Paris for business.”
