Page 149

It was her fault, she knew that. Everyone liked to give a lot of lip service to the idea that the modern age had dawned at long last and a woman could unapologetically have as much sex as she liked—intimate or indiscriminate, whatever she wanted, wherever she liked—with no apologies. And that she could then carry on and have a baby on her own without comment.

What was true was that, of course, she could do that and anything else she liked. No one would stop her. No one had stopped her.

But it wasn’t true that a woman could do such things without any commentary. Or, at least, Aeryn hadn’t managed it.

Sooner or later, everyone always wanted to know who Faith’s father was and why he wasn’t in his daughter’s life. Aeryn found that she regretted almost daily that she hadn’t simply said that she had fancied becoming a mother, hadn’t wanted to wait around for Mr. Right or Mr. Convenient to show up, and had therefore gone the sperm bank route. Instead, she’d put the idea of herself having a wild one-night stand in her colleagues’ heads and had been dealing with the fallout of that ever since.

It was entirely her fault that they’d treated her differently, if in tiny little ways. It was more that she felt the difference in their interactions and knew why, though it wasn’t ever spoken out loud. It was as if she wasn’t taken quite so seriously any longer. Some of her colleagues, who’d been jealous of her trips to the kingdom of Liandero in the first place, clearly found her stepping back from her prestigious appointment cause for glee, but even they were unfailingly kind to her face.

Nothing changed on the surface. It was everything underneath that felt different, and had ever since she’d started to show and had been forced to sit down with her mentor and boss and explain her situation.

By making up the lie that had marked her, ever-so-subtly, since.

She’d had to take all that on the chin, and she had. But tonight she’d thought that she’d finally vindicated herself. The gala had raised the most money of any gala in the museum’s history, a triumph by any measure, and everyone had been forced to agree that it was almost entirely due to Aeryn’s tireless efforts. She should have been floating off to sleep without a single thought in her head except her own success in reminding everyone she worked with that she was damn good at what she did—even if she had gone out one night in France or Spain and indulged in some recreation with a stranger, as they all believed. Or possibly she could have fretted a bit about how she would celebrate Christmas with Faith tomorrow in the midst of all this hideous weather as she drifted off.

Instead she found herself wide-awake and staring at the ceiling while the indulgently warm gas fire in the far bedroom wall glowed.

Surely, if she’d made the kind of progress she had truly believed she had in their time apart, she would be immune to this. To him.

Aeryn did not think she had it in her to turn away someone she knew when they looked as rough as he had on her doorstep—or she wanted to believe she couldn’t do such a thing—so she forgave herself that.

But there was absolutely no excuse for the kissing.

It was also incredibly stupid of her—because now it wasn’t a distant memory. Now she couldn’t tell herself that if they met again, she would triumphantly feel nothing. She couldn’t convince herself that having to go off and give birth all by herself, after carrying a baby for the two final trimesters also all by herself, and then having to raise that child by herself would render him completely unattractive to her. The way she’d been certain it would.

She could no longer pretend that his betrayal had made her immune to him.

Now she knew better. Now she knew that Vesuvius was an incurable disease that she would apparently be carrying forever, deep in her bones. No matter what he did. No matter whether he even remembered her or not.

Of course she couldn’t sleep. She didn’t have the slightest idea how she was supposed to come to terms with that knowledge. Or the feeling that tonight, she had betrayed herself.

The hour got later and later. She watched the clock on her bedside table tick past.

Inside her, there was nothing but fire and his taste in her mouth—far more potent than any liquor she had ever tasted.

There had to be something wrong with her. She was sure of it. The man was injured. He had literally walked away from a plane crash, of all things—and she found she didn’t like thinking about that. About what could have happened. What somehow didn’t happen only thanks to some miracle on Lake Michigan.

There had to be something irrevocably broken inside of her that she was seriously considering waking him up from the sleep he desperately needed simply to assuage this wild, impossible need inside of her.

Then again, she thought, he was the one who had put it there.

She didn’t mean to move, and yet she found herself on her feet. She didn’t pull her robe on the way she did when she went to Faith in the night. She wore the same silky little gown she always did that her mother had given her as a gift before Faith was born.

It’s important that a new mother remember that she’s a woman, her mother had said. When Aeryn had started to argue that remembering her womanhood was largely responsible for the state she was in, her mother had only shaken her head. For her own purposes, not anyone else’s.

Aeryn had found that very silly at the time. She’d been enormously pregnant, everything had hurt, and she was fairly certain that her hips were flying apart of their own accord and would never function properly again. The last thing she ever wanted to do was feel like a woman again. Look where it had gotten her.

But it had been not long after she’d given birth to Faith when she’d reconsidered. She had been sideswiped and half-drowned with that helpless love, obsessed with every tiny little thing her baby did, and also more depressed than she’d ever been in her entire life. And one night she’d found herself reaching for that nightgown. She wasn’t sure when she had last showered, the toilet was a precarious situation, and her body felt as if getting hit by a car would have been an upgrade, but somehow, putting that bit of silk on her body changed everything.

That was how she had learned that it was always the small things that made the big things bearable. A little bit of silk to remind her that she was still the same person. A little bit of silk to wake up with, to move against her skin like a caress, and allow her to start to imagine that she might someday desire a real caress again.

That wasn’t to say that a silk nightgown could cure a postpartum depressive episode, but it had certainly helped her. It had gone a long way toward reminding her that her body had all kinds of purposes, and despite the things she was using it for with a newborn, some of those purposes were pleasurable.

She smoothed her hands down the length of the gown as she padded down the hallway on her bare feet. The house was so quiet. Even quieter than usual with the snow outside, taking away the usual sounds of Chicago at night. The only thing she could hear were the sounds of the wind at the windows, sweeping in from the lake only a few blocks east.

Maybe this need in her was because of the storm, she reasoned as she walked. All kinds of things could happen when the weather took over and reminded everyone they weren’t in charge at all.

It was just a storm. It didn’t mean anything.