“Marie.”
And with that one word, said in that distant tone, all her hopes came crashing down. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and turned to face him. “Good morning, Lennox. I didn’t know you cooked.”
“I’ve been known to do so on occasion.”
She risked a glance at him. He didn’t look as if he had slept at all, with dark circles under his eyes and his shoulders slumped. No, she decided. It was not going to end well.
“Listen,” he said.
She held up her hand. “Sit down. I’m not going to hear this with you standing up looming over me.”
He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. She braced herself for what was to come.
“Last night,” he started.
“Was pretty damn amazing,” she finished.
He sighed as if dealing with a petulant child. “Marie,” he said.
“No,” she insisted. “If you’re getting ready to say what I think you are going to say, you first have to admit the truth about last night.”
“Last night was amazing,” he said.
“Last night was pretty damn amazing,” she corrected.
“It was pretty damn amazing.” A small smile tickled his lips, but did not spread to the rest of his face. She wondered if she had the strength to hear what he was getting ready to say. “However,” he continued, “it cannot happen again.”
“Because I work for you?”
“Among other reasons.”
She wasn’t hungry anymore. She wasn’t feeling much of anything anymore. Except angry. “What are the other reasons?”
“I can’t be a Dom again, Marie.”
“You say that like it’s something you can turn off. You and I both know that’s not the case. And whether you want to admit it or not, you are a Dom. Which you proved last night, no matter what you’re saying now.”
“Let me restate, I can’t live as a Dom anymore. I accept that I will always be one.”
She gave a sad laugh. “As much as I expected this morning to go like this, I really wish you would have proved me wrong.”
He shrugged. Obviously not caring that he was stomping all over her heart.
“Tell me this,” she said. “Do you really think you being a Dom forced Winnie into that car?”
“No. I don’t think it forced her to the car, but I believe if I were vanilla she would still be here today.”
“That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”
“That doesn’t make it untrue.”
She took a deep breath. “Are you really so egotistical that you think you hold the power over life and death?”
His head shot up. “I don’t think that.”
“Don’t you?” She stood up and scraped her dish into the trash. If this was the way he was going to be, she was going back to the island. Maybe there she could pretend like last night didn’t happen.
But even as she thought it, she knew it wouldn’t work. The night before had been the most incredible one of her life. There was no way to pretend it didn’t happen. Maybe, though, the memories wouldn’t be so raw on the island. God, she hated the mainland.
She turned to walk out of the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Lennox asked.
“Not that it’s any of your concern, but I’m going back to the island.”
“In this?” he pointed to the window. It was raining. Hard, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
“It’s a little bit of rain. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s coming down hard and it’s forecasted to get worse.”
“Then I’d better get going so I can still call for a boat.”
Lennox pushed back from the table and stood up. “No academy boat is going out in weather like this and you know it.”
Yes, she knew that. She also knew she had to get out of the cabin. “I’ll drive to the dock and wait for the rain to let up.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“And I really don’t care what you think.”
He reached out to her, but she jerked away. “Marie.”
“Don’t Marie me. All you had to do today was show a little bit of kindness and affection. Just a little. Prove to me that the man I was with last night is buried under those layers of horseshit you pass off as feelings. But you can’t do it, can you? Maybe you don’t have feelings after all.”
She had to calm down or she was going to start crying, and the one thing she did not want to do was to cry in front of him.
“Let me go, Lennox. If you feel anything for me, let me leave.”
He didn’t stand in her way this time. She walked past him and grabbed her purse and her keys from the foyer table. She didn’t have anything else with her. He followed her to the front door, looking as though he wanted to say something but was unable to get the words out.
She pushed the front door open and was hit in the face by a gust of wind. The rain had picked up a bit, too. It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t take too long to make it to the docks. There was a café nearby where she could sit until the rain slacked off. Anything was better than sitting in the cabin with him.
She jogged through the rain to get to her car and shivered when she made it inside. She sat for a few minutes, rubbing her hands together as the heater warmed up. Finally, she inched her car forward. Driving in the rain was not her favorite thing to do, but it was part of life in the Pacific Northwest.
Thankfully, traffic was light and it took her no time to get on 101. She had just started to relax when the car in front of her slammed on the brakes and swerved off the road. Too late, she saw the wooden pallets in the middle of her lane. She jerked the steering wheel to avoid hitting them and hydroplaned.
Brakes squealed.
Someone screamed.
Then nothing.
• • •
LENNOX GAVE HER a fifteen-minute head start, then he grabbed his keys to go after her. Damn foolish woman. Driving in this mess. He’d catch up with her at the docks and hopefully talk some sense into her.
Her comment that all she needed this morning was a bit of kindness and affection struck him deeply. He shouldn’t be cold to her. She deserved better. He knew he could never be who she needed him to be, but that didn’t mean he had to be cruel to her. Especially after last night. In one night, she’d torn down every wall, every barrier, every mask he’d created, and she’d shown him how much he was missing.
Their night together had been glorious. She’d been the embodiment of every fantasy he’d ever had. Better than any fantasy, actually. The way she’d submitted to him? He now knew what he was giving up by denying his true self. He was only hopeful that the memories would be able to sustain him.
He’d not been on the highway long when sirens sounded and he saw an ambulance approaching in his rearview mirror. An overwhelming sense of dread filled him, even though he told himself it was ridiculous and uncalled for. The emergency vehicle could be going anywhere, for any number of reasons.
The cars in front of him started to slow down and the feeling of dread grew worse. Obviously, there had been a car accident. He told himself it didn’t mean anything and that his imagination was running away from him.
The traffic slowed further, eventually coming to a complete stop. In the distance, he saw the ambulance pull to the side of the road. He took his phone and called Marie. Just to see if she was stuck in the same traffic, that was all. Or at least that’s what he told himself as the traffic began to move slowly. And just because she didn’t pick up didn’t mean anything serious. There were a number of reasons why she wouldn’t answer her phone and none of them involved her being the person who needed the ambulance.
The crash site grew closer and traffic inched slowly around the