LOGINHe stretched out his arms, grasping her shoulders firmly and in a protective manner. His face showed clear signs of painful and deeply felt sincerity as he made her look directly into his eyes. "Wife me now, tomorrow, or at any time you choose—just agree to marry me."Elizabeth blinked as her mind was thrown into a state of confusion by the sudden flood of statements. "I— What do you mean, another baby?"She slowly turned her head, shifting her look away from Henri's dark eyes and instead fixing her brother with a cold, demanding look.By the distant wall his brother stood there, looking surprisingly small even though he was wearing a tailored suit. His arms were held rather oddly at his sides and his eyes were wide as he shifted his feet in the manner of a child who was guilty and caught lying. He tried to speak, shut his mouth again, and then opened it once more, obviously finding it difficult to come up with words that could justify what he had done."I told him that you had lost t
Elizabeth's muscles jerked into a state of sudden shock. She managed a sharp breath, and before her mind had had time to fully grasp the three words which she had longed to hear for months, her attention was drawn to some movement close to the threshold. She then quickly turned her head towards the open doorway.His brother was located just inside the room, his shadow extending across the linoleum.The old man's face was expressionless and stiff, and his gray suit was perfectly pressed with not a single crease out of position. Nevertheless, although he looked neat, the deep shadows under his eyes and the troubled, haunted expression in his eyes showed how heavy the decisions he had made in the past twelve hours must have been.The idea struck her suddenly and coldly: had he told Henri about the baby?"You lied to me, you left me, and yet I still love you," Henri went on, his voice becoming thicker and more rough, taut as if the words were being painfully forced out of his throat. He h
"Is my brother in the hall, nurse?"The previous evening Elizabeth had been moved to a small, private room in the west wing of St. Jude’s Memorial. That night she experienced a series of fluorescent flashes, the constant low hum of the monitoring machinery, and the ongoing, cold sensation caused by the IV needle which had been firmly taped to the back of her hand. Morning came in the form of pale, overcast grey light, slipping quietly through the narrow blinds, but the one face she longed to see—the one that could possibly provide her with a sense of familiarity in this difficult situation—had not yet appeared. All she wanted was to go home; she felt utterly exhausted, irritable, deeply lonely, and completely ruined, even though the nursing staff appeared to be determined to postpone her discharge by carrying out an endless number of checks and chart reviews and giving polite evasions.The nurse, a woman of middle age having a most unexpectedly mild and kind voice, fidgeted by the fo
With a sigh—just a sound of profound exhaustion—he pushed his heavy chair around and looked across the long, dark expanse of his office. Along the right wall there was a neat arrangement of a dozen plasma television screens. During market hours the screens kept the room alive with a continuous flow of news, financial tickers, and flashing lights; tonight, however, they were dark and lifeless, giving the room an atmosphere of solemnity which Henri considered to be exactly in keeping with his current mood.In fact, a morgue would have been just the right sort of place to match his mood.He rose, his limbs weighing heavily on him, and walked out of his private inner office into the reception area. He went straight to the slim wooden desk which was located just outside his door. It was her desk. Her personal things were still neatly laid out on it. He looked over the smooth surface, which had been polished until it shone like a mirror—all the items were in order, reflecting her exacting a
Henri was alone in his office and, standing in his executive leather chair, stared out through the floor-to-ceiling glass window.The 19th floor was completely unoccupied and was filled with a thick, unnatural silence. It was 3:00 a.m., yet nothing on this earth, nor any power in hell or in high water, could make him go back by himself to his empty apartment tonight. Never had his penthouse seemed so immense or so bitterly cold since Elizabeth Stone had left.His entire house was filled with the memory of her being gone. The clean silk sheets still bore the faint, clear smell of her lavender perfume. More terrible still, earlier that same hour he had knelt on the cold floor of his bathroom and discovered a tube of her usual nude lipstick lying underneath the sink. Never, throughout all the years of his coldly calculated behaviour, had he experienced such intense sorrow. The deep and continuous loneliness that followed from that simple and unexpected discovery was incredible and create
The heavy door to the executive suite closed with a soft, metallic click and thus cut the room off from the noise of the corporate floor.Sebastian went in, hanging his wool travelling coat over one forearm and holding a neat leather briefcase in the other hand. He stopped just inside the door, looking at the mess of the room. Spread out over the large floor area, the executive desk was a scene of chaos: the legal documents were scattered about like fallen leaves, a fountain pen was leaking black ink onto a leather blotter, and the large desk chair had been knocked off its position. Behind all this stood Henri, his hands flat on the polished mahogany and his head bowed as though he were attempting to recall the precise instant when a bomb had exploded in the room.Sebastian said in a quiet voice that he had met Elizabeth in the lobby; she seemed as though she had just walked away from a structural collapse and, from the condition of your desk, you had been right in the middle of the b







