Bare Devotion Read online

  Christ.

  “Can you let go of Deidre? She’s nothing to me other than an ex at this point. Hell, she’s my parents’ friend, not mine.”

  “A friend who showed up at our wedding, ready to wreak havoc.” Her expression faltered. “Look, I’m not blaming her. I feel awful for her, in truth. The fact that she still has feelings for you—no, don’t argue this point, Henry. No ex goes to a wedding in such a sneaky way unless she wants to get back with the groom. But you didn’t even give me a warning that you’d invited her in or tell me that she’s a goddamn lunatic. How was I supposed to feel when I saw you and her in an embrace at the cathedral?”

  “It wasn’t an ‘embrace’ for fuck’s sake. She came up to me, caught me off guard.” He threw up his hands. “I knew I couldn’t count on you to be reasonable about any of this.”

  “Reasonable? You do remember that I left you at the altar, right? What’s so reasonable about that?”

  “I don’t need a reminder of what you did.” He stared at her, unable to imagine anything sadder than the sight of the woman of his dreams standing in the middle of a room stained from the storm floods. In what had been their dream retreat from the world but now smelled like the dankest parts of the bayou. The stagnant parts—the places that didn’t get any circulation.

  “About that, Henry, I have to tell you something.” A flash of her pearly front teeth as they tugged on her full, lush lower lip.

  “Save it. The only talking we need to do is at the office.” He turned to leave, or at least, he thought about it. But he couldn’t take his eyes from hers. Sonja was the goddess he’d fallen for as she stood there in what he knew was one of her least favorite work outfits. She’d always complained that the two-piece skirt suit was too big in the waist. The golden silk jacket and skirt were set off by a creamy underblouse—more of a camisole. He knew because the last time she’d worn this suit he’d practically ripped it off her before they made love in her office. After hours, of course. They always did everything by the book. He was tired of following rules.

  He mentally corrected his memory of their making love. They’d had sex. The love hadn’t been mutual, couldn’t have been. Someone who loved you didn’t leave you with your goddamned heart pulsing in your fucking hand.

  “Henry, I don’t expect you to want to listen to me, or to be ready to believe me about anything, not now.”

  “Not ever.”

  “But there are still some things that you should know, things I have to tell you.”

  He stared at her and wondered how the sun always hit her rich mahogany skin just right. Sonja looked ten years younger than she was, and he suspected she’d always be beautiful like this. His dick started to respond, and not only to the memories that flooded his thoughts but to the here and now. He ripped his gaze off her. “I know all I need to.” He walked over to the kitchen counter. How had their house been destroyed, had Sonja walked out on their wedding, his life blasted to hell, all within only three weeks?

  “Henry.” Her hand was on his forearm, and he thought his skin would blister from the heat. “I should have talked to you sooner.” Her voice was raspy, the way it got after she cried. Or when she was wet and ready. His cock swelled, and he damned his erection, damned whatever it was that kept him attuned to this woman even after she’d made an absolute fool of him.

  “Don’t, Sonja.” He wouldn’t take her hand away, sucker that he was. He turned and looked into her eyes and saw sorrow, confusion, and a shadow of—regret?

  She pulled her hand back and hugged herself. It was Sonja’s go-to defensive posture. She never did it in the courtroom or law office, not while she was working. But with him, with either of their families, she’d assumed this posture countless times. When she doubted her gut instincts.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here.” Her chin jutted the tiniest bit. Nothing he’d have noticed if they weren’t standing so goddamned close. He turned away from her and took a few steps into the kitchen, unable to trust himself.

  “I never expected you to bolt from our vows the way you did.”

  She had the decency to turn away then. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Try me.” The words came out of a primal place, as involuntary as his sexual need for her. She’d dragged his heart over shattered glass, and it still beat loud in his ears with his want.

  Her eyes widened, and she reached out for the island counter, her long elegant fingers splaying over the slab of granite they’d handpicked to match the tiled floor.

  “Henry...”

  “You know what really gets me, Sonja?” His anger simmered, but still it wasn’t enough to dampen his desire. He took a step closer, and she swayed backward but didn’t move her feet.

  She shook her head. “No.” A whisper. She still felt it, too.

  He advanced another step, closing the distance he’d put between them. Of its own volition his index finger traced the line of her cheekbone, her soft skin dewy from the high humidity that blew in through the open French doors. “What keeps me up at night is how you were able to continue to live with me, sleep in the same bed as me, and never once mention that you had second thoughts about the wedding. About marrying me.” His finger traced down to her mouth, and some part of his rational mind thundered at him to stop, drop, and roll. Get the hell out of the house, away from this woman who’d destroyed his belief in forever.

  Sonja’s lips parted, and he knew she was trying to keep her breathing steady. The same way he was trying to keep his hard-on from running the show.

  “Theeeere you are, Henry!” A high-pitched Southern drawl pierced through the sensory curtain that always seemed to drape over them when they were together and made their sexual chemistry more than sex. A heavier curtain dropped down in Sonja’s gaze, smothering the heat in her eyes and revealing only her hardened distrust of him. For what she thought she knew about him, and the woman who’d crashed their wedding. Deidre Jones walked into their shared home as if she owned the place. Could his life get any shittier?

  He stepped back and looked at the woman who had hoped to strike the death knell to his marriage to Sonja. As much as he wanted to blame her, if he and Sonja had been better connected, communicating more, not even a narcissistic witch like Deidre would have made a blip on the screen of their future. “What the hell are you doing here, Deidre?”

  The petite blonde gave him her full-wattage smile, the one he’d been stupid enough to fall for back in college. “I was in the neighborhood checking out my parents’ villa and saw your car in the driveway.” She pointedly looked between the two of them. “This isn’t a bad time, is it?”

  “It’s a perfect time.” Sonja picked up her bag and headed for the stairs. “I’ll be upstairs putting together a few things.”

  Henry shoved his fingers through his hair. It was a sad replacement for what he wanted to do—shove his fist through the drywall that was going to have to be stripped back when the renovation started. How sad was he that he only felt it was okay to punch a hole in an already damaged wall? Sonja was right. He not only had a stick up his ass—it was up his whole damn life.

  “Henry. Talk to me.” Hell. He’d paused too long. The icy cold hand on his forearm wasn’t Sonja’s, and wasn’t welcome. He shook free of her grasp.

  “Again. What the hell are you doing here?”

  Deidre blinked, her ridiculously long eyelashes reminding him of tarantula legs. “I told you, I was—”

  “No, not what you said, Deidre. Why are you breaking the restraining order?”

  Chapter 2

  Henry glared at the woman who’d destroyed so much of his life during college and right after, and had returned to lay waste to his wedding to the one woman for him. The woman he needed to be upstairs with. “Why, Deidre?”

  “That’s years old, Henry. Isn’t it expired by now? And you know yourself, your parents invited me to
your wedding. I’m so glad I was there to help you through the rough patch.” Her brow rose in an over-the-top, practiced way. If he hadn’t caught her rehearsing her expressions in the mirror that one morning over a decade ago, he’d have never believed how deeply self-centered a person could be.

  “You know I had it renewed last week. You need to leave. Now. And I’m reminding you to stay away from me. Come near me again and I’ll report your restraint violation. We do not have a relationship.”

  “But your parents disagree. They were happy to see me.” Deidre picked at some imaginary thread on her sundress, and he tried to have a flash of compassion for her. He wondered if it’d be easier if she were mentally ill and not the hard-boiled narcissist she was. Would he have been able to overlook her destructive manner?

  “You tricked them into inviting you. For your sake I never told them what a lying, manipulative person you are. I regret that now.”

  Her head jerked up, and she stared at him.

  “I didn’t need them to invite me. I would have come to the ceremony no matter what. I knew that once you saw me again you’d realize that we—” She halted, readjusting her hunt. Classic Deidre. If she channeled her intelligence into something more fruitful than making every man’s life who’d ever dumped her into a living hell, she’d be unstoppable.

  “There are more natural ways to handle things, you know. Like what’s between us, still.” She said “things” as if she were talking about the weather and not her severely messed up moral compass. Fuck.

  “There is nothing between us, Deidre, except a restraining order.” He pulled out his phone, intent on calling the police. “Please leave, Deidre.”

  She picked up the designer bag she’d dropped on the kitchen counter, and he briefly wondered how she afforded it, when it had to be difficult for her to hold a job down. Not his problem anymore, and he’d proved once that all he did was enable her, prevent her from hitting the bottom of whatever the hell was wrong with her. Which his parents had unwittingly done by inviting her behind his, and Sonja’s, back. Not that their motives were anything but selfish and destructive.

  “I’ll call you, Henry.” She gave him a little wave. To an uninformed observer, Deidre looked like any other thirty-something single, dressed nice for work, if a little skinny. Her power of self-control about everything, including her diet, was as impressive as frightening.

  “Please don’t, Deidre. Goodbye.” He closed the door behind her and threw the deadbolt. As soon as he saw her drive away he went and locked the back French doors. Deidre had been a master of unwelcome entry when they’d first broken up, and he doubted she’d lost that skill.

  For the millionth time since the wedding day, he asked himself how his past had come calling in the cruelest manner at the exact moment he thought he was going to begin the happiest part of his life.

  * * * *

  Upstairs, Sonja allowed her fury to fuel her packing. Thankfully the upstairs didn’t smell as mildewy as the main floor, and she’d stored her suitcases in her closet. She blindly grabbed whatever outfits looked like they’d be comfortable, eschewing her favorite skintight sheath dresses and higher heels. She found no reason to linger or wallow in her self-pity as long as Miss Let-Me-Fuck-Your-Jilted-Groom was in the house. With Henry.

  “Son of a bitch!” Her hands shook, and she grasped the side of her largest piece of luggage, willing herself to not break down. Hadn’t she shed enough tears? Crying over her stupidity that led her to believe Henry was in love with her and not using her to help him prove to himself he was different from the boy who’d people-pleased his parents was one thing. Sobbing over the vacuous perfect Southern belle who all but pulled kneepads out of her huge leather designer bag? No. Not happening.

  The back of her neck burned, and she whirled around. Henry stood a couple of feet into the room, his hair uncharacteristically sticking up, which was difficult with the usual short crew he kept.

  “Leave me be.” She opened the nearest dresser drawer and grabbed handfuls of underwear.

  “No. Not until you hear me out.”

  “Hear you out? I think I’ve seen all I need to.”

  “God damn it, Sonja. You’re the one who left me. We already know your side of the story. Let me tell you mine.”

  She went into the master bathroom and began to clear the vanity of her cosmetics. Her fingers touched the edge of the bottle of her favorite perfume, and the perky designer shape seemed to mock the woman she was only two weeks ago.

  “Say what you have to say. I’m listening, but I don’t have time to stop packing, Henry.”

  He stood on the tiled bathroom floor, watching her as if he didn’t know what to expect next. Good.

  “I did not invite Deidre to the wedding. That was my parents’ doing. With help from Deidre.”

  “Really? And you’re telling me that such a well-bred Southern belle like her decided to show up without having received a formal invitation?”

  Red crept up Henry’s neck to his much longer hairline. “I, ah, I think my parents sent her a real invite, but she would have showed up anyway, from what she just told me.”

  Confused, Sonja paused. “You mean they used their invitation?”

  “They asked me for a few extra invitations. I gave them five.”

  “And never mentioned it to me.” Another chink in the armor she’d invisibly knit over her heart. She waved her hand under his gaze. “This isn’t the issue. The issue remains what it was a month ago.”

  “Twenty-three days.”

  “Fine. Twenty-three days ago you hadn’t told me that your former fiancée had not been just a bad breakup. That you had a restraining order against her, that she’d stalked you and the women you’d dated, and she may have had her sights on me!”

  “But she didn’t. I mean, yes she broke her restraining order, but that’s not the issue, Sonja. The issue is that you and I aren’t, haven’t been in forever, communicating. Talking.”

  Sonja’s gut twisted at that one. “The main reason we should never have considered marriage is that you never, ever were completely honest with me. You’ve only told me what you had to in order to keep me pacified, Henry.” And she’d let him pacify her, an issue she was doing her best to dissect.

  You weren’t honest with him, either. She hated her conscience in this moment.

  He didn’t answer and dropped his gaze after several seconds.

  Sonja opened the linen closet and pulled out two towels. “Ugh!” Covered in what looked like a black powder, the once pristine white cotton gave off a telltale stench of post-storm mildew. She dropped the towels into the master bath.

  “Stop, Sonja. We’re going to have to throw it all out, whatever we can’t clean. By the way? The homeowner’s doesn’t begin to cover most of the damage.”

  “Do you think I honestly give a flying fuck about material damages?” As if to agree with her, the baby chose that time to make her hormones jump and her nausea swell.

  “What?” Henry must have seen it in her face.

  She felt hot and sweaty and had about five seconds to make it to the toilet. Sonja slammed the door to the tiny commode room behind her and let the dry heaves come. She’d already tossed her breakfast in the crepe myrtle. And now Henry was witness to her “illness.” Shit.

  * * * *

  Henry heard Sonja throwing up and guilt sucker-punched him. He’d made her so upset that she was puking, for fuck’s sake. Her stomach was strong as an iron drum when it came to spicy Louisiana food, but get Sonja emotionally riled up and it went to her gut.

  He stared at the empty bathroom counter, save for her large cosmetic bag that she’d stuffed to the gills with her beauty stuff. How had what he’d thought was a rock-solid relationship blown to smithereens in one act of poor judgment on his part?

  Henry sank onto the floor, his back against the brass claw-foot tub. Deidre h
ad shown signs of stalking him again, or rather, stalking Sonja, for the past six months. He’d meant to tell Sonja several different times, but he didn’t want to rock the smooth sailing they’d had since they’d moved in together three years ago.

  Even that was a lie. There’d been rough patches that he’d maneuvered by going over-the-top in his adoration of Sonja. Told himself he was distracting her with his charm.

  All he’d been doing was avoiding his own discomfort at how gullible and blind he’d been to Deidre’s manipulative actions. He destroyed Sonja’s trust along with the incredible bond they’d shared from the moment they’d met. While his hopes of a future with her were gone—he’d never trust her again, either, not after the spectacular way she’d dumped him—he didn’t want to leave things so acrimonious between them.

  The door swung open, and Sonja didn’t spare him a glance. At the sink, she threw cold water on her face.

  “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.”

  Her eyes were bright and fierce as she glared at him in the mirror. “I feel fine.”

  “Liar.”

  She ignored him as she looked around the room for a clean towel. Of course there were none. “Hell.”

  “There’s a roll of paper towels under the sink.”

  “They’ll be moldy, too.” She wiped her hands on her skirt and lifted up her makeup bag. “See you at the office.”

  He got to his feet, feeling awkward and unkempt next to her polished finesse. Even in what he knew she considered her worst-fitting suit, Sonja was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.

  “Wait—we aren’t done here, Sonja.”

  The look she threw him was a potent combination of certainty, hate, and sadness. Definitely no regret.

  “I’d say we are, Henry.”

  He watched her take her larger suitcase off the bed and pull it through the door and into the hallway. As the thump thump thump of her dragging it down the steps echoed in the hot, damp house, he couldn’t ignore the weight that pummeled his chest. Desperate for a distraction, he walked back into the bathroom, pacing, opening and closing the vanity drawers. She’d taken all of her stuff. Every last bit.