Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard #4) (36 page)

Her eyebrows rose, eyes twinkled with interest. “It sounds like this is not a strictly professional call?”

“It’s not. But . . . it is, too.” Sighing, I explained, “I’d just prefer the flexibility.”

She laughed, retrieving her jumper. “Well, this is a shock of a lifetime. A personal discussion with Niall Stella. I can certainly make time for that.”

We walked to a small café on Pembroke Street, using the trip to catch up a bit on the past two years. The topic of Ruby’s future hung heavily around me, and despite Maggie’s best efforts at small talk, my answers to her benign questions were tight and brief. I was relieved when we reached the café and ordered tea and croissants, before sitting at a small corner table.

“So,” she started, smiling across the table at me. Steam curled up from her cup. “Enough small talk, I gather. What’s this visit about?”

“It’s about a student who has applied to your program, who was an intern at Richardson-Corbett.”

She nodded. “You mean Ruby Miller.”

“Yes,” I said, surprised that she knew immediately whom I meant, but then realizing I’d said “who
was
an intern.” Clearly, Maggie had read Tony’s letter. “I didn’t work directly with her. As you know, she reported to Tony.”

“I got his letter,” she confirmed with a frown. “He didn’t think all that highly of her.”

My blood ran hot and I leaned closer, realizing as soon as she glanced at them that my hands had formed tight
fists. “Well, that’s just it,” I said. “I think he may have thought rather
too
highly of her.”

“Bloody Tony.” Maggie’s expression cleared in comprehension. “And you were the distraction Tony mentioned.”

“Please understand,” I said, with urgency, “I wouldn’t ever speak to you about this matter if I didn’t feel that it impacted a professional decision on your end. Tony handled this terribly. As did I, I suppose. But in this instance, I worry that you would miss out on a wonderful student if you heeded Tony’s advice. Ruby is bright and driven.”

Maggie studied me, sipping her tea. “May I ask you a personal question?”

Swallowing, I nodded. “I’ve imposed on you simply by coming here. Of course, ask me anything.”

“Are you coming here because Ruby deserves a spot in my program or because you’re in love with her?”

I swallowed and struggled to maintain eye contact as I admitted, “Both.”

“So the affection wasn’t only one-sided.”

“It was, and then it wasn’t. I didn’t know she had feelings, and she admitted them only after I had some of my own.”

She nodded, looking past me at a line of students marching past the café. “I’d never expected you to ever speak on behalf of a girlfriend. I’m not sure if I’m more surprised or thrilled for you.”

“She’s not,” I managed. Maggie turned her face up to me, confused. “She isn’t my girlfriend anymore,” I clarified. “The loss of her job, the loss of her spot in your program,
my inability to handle emotions all that well . . . I suspect in the end it made her reprioritize.”

“ ‘Reprioritize’? The ‘loss of her spot in my program’?”

“Tony thought it wise to send Ruby a copy of the letter he wrote for the application. Given that Tony is your former student and completing an engineering internship is generally a critical requirement for your consideration, she said she suspected she wouldn’t get in.”

“Niall,” Maggie began, setting down her tea. “Excuse me for being blunt, but please do not insult me by suggesting I would cast away a good student for having a crush at work.”

“Not at all, Maggie, I—”

“Or for being young and unable to always put aside personal for professional. I appreciate you coming here, but the net effect of that was my satisfaction over seeing you actually in love with a woman, not help for Ruby. Ruby’s application is brilliant. Her other letters of recommendation are positively glowing. Her grades are perfect, test scores put her at the top of her incoming class. Her personal statement was one of the best I’ve ever read.” Leaning in, Maggie shook her head at me. “You see, her spot was never jeopardized by Tony’s letter. Do you think I’ve known a different Tony than everyone else these last fifteen years? He’s a brilliant engineer but a complete arse.”

I closed my eyes, laughing. “Touché.”

“If I may drop the professionalism
entirely
for a moment?”

“Of course,” I said, feeling oddly hungry for her wisdom in a way I hadn’t expected.
“Please.”

“You have known me as an instructor, and then quasi-mentor, and now as a trusted colleague. But I am a woman first, Niall. I was married at twenty, for five years, and then divorced. I married again when I was in my late thirties. With the distance of age and wisdom, I am able to tell you as gently as possible that your reason for this visit is wildly presumptuous. Ruby doesn’t need you speaking on her behalf. In addition to all of these accolades I’ve already mentioned, she’s also come to see me.” Maggie’s eyes smiled. “Quite amazing, that one.”

I felt my brows rise to my hairline. “Truly.”

“Ruby doesn’t need a knight in shining armor. She needs a partner, I suspect. She needs to know that she is seen. And loved. And, occasionally, the inner mechanics of
how
she is loved. She is an engineer. Show her how you are put together. Show her the bolts, and wires, and map of your thoughts when you can.”

I didn’t bother going home or to the office after my conversation with Maggie. The hour-long train ride was a form of torture. I wished for the gift of flight or the ability to teleport. What Maggie had said was true and so obvious: I had to tell Ruby how I felt.

I climbed the slate steps to her flat, hesitating outside the door for a hundred pounding heartbeats, before holding my breath, and knocking.

She opened the door, wearing a smart skirt and fitted
sweater with a neckline that showed the top swell of her breasts. I can’t imagine what my expression was when I took her in fully, but when I searched her eyes, I saw a tenderness there that surprised—and thrilled—me.

“Ruby.”

“You okay?” she asked, eyes searching.

I tried to draw a breath deep enough to feel calm, but couldn’t. “No.”

“You look terrible.”

I nodded, letting out a short, wry laugh. “I’m sure you’re right.”

She looked over my shoulder, face tight with anguish. “Why are you here?”

“Because I needed to see you.”

She looked back to me, her eyes scanning my face. “Part of me wants to pull you in, and kiss you like crazy. I miss it, and can’t pretend I don’t still feel it.”

“Then don’t push me away,” I begged her, taking a step closer. “Ruby, I should have told you how I felt that night we made love. I
felt
it then; I just didn’t know how to name it, or whether I trusted myself enough to believe it.”

She was shaking her head, eyes glassy with tears, and I could tell she didn’t want me to say it, but I needed to.

“I love you,” I whispered, urgency making my voice thin. “I am desperately in love with you.”

“Niall—”

“I knew it at Portia’s. I felt sick being there. I don’t know why I went, but if nothing else it clarified everything for me.”

Ruby laughed, a little humorlessly. “It clarified things for me, too.”

I groaned. “Please, Ruby, forgive me.”

“I want to. I really
do
. But I don’t know how to move past that feeling of humiliation and this deep, exhausted frustration. All of it: trying to figure out what you needed, trying to be everything for you in every moment. Then telling you I love you, hearing you say ‘you’re lovely’ in return, losing my job, and then—the worst—being told you were going to have dinner with Portia to discuss your marriage . . . I just still feel really raw.”

“I think I felt like I had to close this one door,” I tried to explain. “Or, maybe I just had never heard Portia sound so emotional and a very dark part of me was morbidly curious. But I didn’t consider your feelings really until I went, and it was terrible of me. As soon as I got there I knew there was no conversation to be had, no long-buried truths to be shared. I felt unfaithful to you just being there—”

“Because you
were
.”

I closed my eyes. It was shattering to see her like this. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know you are,” she said, nodding. “And I think I get it. But I can’t help it. I’m mad at you.”

Wiping my hand across the stubble on my jaw, I whispered, “Please let me in.”

Looking up at me, she said very quietly, “Is it weird to feel like I need to say no? Like, I need to make sure I
can
? I gave you time to work through every tiny hesitation. I tried to be understanding and patient, but as soon as you had the chance, you didn’t give my feelings the same consideration. I lost myself somewhere in the last six months. I told you to trust me to tell you where my limits are. This is a limit. You disregarded me, and so
obliviously
.” She dropped her voice, looking straight into my eyes, and said, “I thought that wasn’t the kind of relationship you wanted anymore.”

This was a knife to my gut and I pulled back, pained. And even though her lip trembled and her hands shook at her sides, even though I still saw every ounce of the emotion in her eyes that she had only a week ago, she didn’t take her sharp reprimand back, not with words or expression.

I could push her. I saw it now, and another man—a more aggressive man—may have stepped closer, taken advantage of the pain in her eyes. If I kissed her right now, she would kiss me back. I could sense it in the way she watched my mouth, the way she continued to shake.

Ruby still loved me as I loved her.

I could press my way inside, put my hands on her body, peel away her clothes and give her pleasure, taste her sweat. With my mouth and hands and words I may even have been able to convince her for a night that I truly did love her.

But she already was struggling with how much she’d lost the sense of herself in her feelings
for me. I couldn’t manipulate her like that.

I pulled at my hair, completely torn. “Tell me what to do. If I leave, you’ll think I don’t feel for you. If I stay, I’m not listening to your wishes.”

“Niall,” she whispered. “I can barely be this close to you without feeling like I’d give you anything. It’s your turn to be patient.”

I swallowed thickly and stepped back, walking two paces without turning. “Come to me,” I said, begging quietly. “When you’re ready, I’ll be waiting for you. Let me catch up in
my
time spent longing if you need me to. Distance from you won’t extinguish what I feel.”

She nodded, eyes filling.

“Promise you’ll come to me when you’re ready. Even if it just means you’re ready to tell me it’s truly over.”

Ruby nodded again.
“I promise.”

April was hell, but May was worse. At least in April I could replay, again and again, the memory of how Niall had looked coming to my flat, eyes wild and anxious. I could still hear how his voice sounded—so deep and hoarse and desperate—when he’d said he loved me.

But in May, I hadn’t seen him in a month, and it was nearly impossible to convince myself that his affection hadn’t begun to dissolve.

The Number of Days I Needed Niall Stella to Give Me Space: unknown.

I’d felt like the needy, frantic girl, waiting for him to have dinner with the ex and then decide if I was the better option. I’d never been so desperate for a late-night phone call as I was the night he was at her place for dinner, but when it came . . . I ignored it. Not until he realized what I’d known all along—that Portia had never been good for him, that in fact
I
was the
best thing
for him—did I realize that I was . . . really, really
mad
.

I knew I was capable of taking things in stride
in a way that surprised Niall. It surprised people my whole life. But that evenness didn’t mean I couldn’t get hurt, be angry, feel betrayed.

Somehow, even with the heavy pulse of heartbreak in every step I took, I had managed to piece little bits of my life back together. I was determined to salvage my chances at getting into Margaret Sheffield’s program. So, in early April, after days of sleep and silence, of nibbling sandwiches made from stale bread and hard cheese and sleeping in my clothes, I’d pulled myself together and taken a train to Oxford.

There, Professor Sheffield had assured me that Anthony’s letter could only hold so much weight, that my grades and reputation from San Diego were impressive. But although she’d given me no indication that the
distraction
my former boss mentioned in his letter would lead to my rejection from the program, she hadn’t said I was a sure thing, either.

While I waited to hear, I stayed in London. I was lucky enough to find a firm on the South Bank in need of an engineer to cover an early maternity leave. It was an easy solution and paid well, but on my very first day I decided to walk home rather than take the Tube, only to then realize I would pass just two blocks away from Niall’s flat.

Gut punch.

So of course it became impossible to choose to take the Tube rather than walk. Every day I felt my body tilt that way, as if pulled by some enormous heart
magnet. And when I would press on, heading straight instead of right, it would hurt all over again.

His distance and reserve really had been so impossible to take; everything was logical to him: Portia was ready to speak so he should listen. I had always encouraged him to communicate with me, and so of course that should apply to Portia, as well.

I feel obligated to at least hear what she wants to say.

I suppose I’m trying to have an open mind. I owe her that, at least
.

That last day it seemed emotion hadn’t come into play for Niall at all, until it felt too late. But for me, it was nearly impossible to get the echoing pain out of my head.

Even when he’d found me in the office, packing up, and begged me to forgive him. Even when he’d come to my flat and told me he loved me.

I was an idiot for sending him away. I knew it at the time. But more than that I knew that if I let him in that day, there would be a proud, resolved piece of myself I wouldn’t ever get back.