Danielle Steel - Matters of the Heart

She left her suitcase in the car, bounded up the front steps, and saw Winfred as soon as she walked into the house. He touched his brow in a gesture of respect, smiled broadly, and went out to get her bag, while she rushed up the steps to their bedroom. Suddenly, she was excited to see Finn. It was as though all the terrible things people had said had disappeared. They couldn’t be true about Finn. She loved him too much for any of that to be true about him. It was all a mistake. It had to be.

She tiptoed to their room and opened the door. It was dark, he was asleep in bed, and there was an empty scotch bottle on the floor beside him, which explained why he hadn’t responded to her text message the night before. He had obviously been drunk.

She slipped onto the bed next to him, looked at his handsome face for a long moment, loving him all over again, and gently kissed him. She was under his spell again the moment she saw him. He didn’t stir until she kissed him once more, and then he opened an eye, saw her, and gave a start, and then he beamed at her and pulled her into his arms. He reeked of scotch, but she didn’t care as he kissed her. He smelled like an open bar, which worried her for him, but she didn’t say anything about it. She wondered how the writing was going, and how close he was to delivering at least one of the two manuscripts he owed them. They were going to uphold the lawsuit if he didn’t, and she didn’t want that to happen to him.

“Where did you come from?” he asked with a slow, sleepy smile, stretched, and then turned over.

“I came home to see you,” she said tenderly as he put his arms around her and pulled her closer, and as he did, all the good advice she’d been given was forgotten, as Robert Bartlett knew it would be. But he also knew she’d have it in her head when she needed it, at the right time.

“Why didn’t you call me? I’d have come to pick you up,” he said as he pulled her into bed with him, took her clothes off, and she didn’t fight him.

“I wanted to surprise you,” she said sweetly, and he forgot about what she was saying. He had a much better surprise for her, but it was no surprise. Their sex life had been fantastic from the first, which was part of the excitement of being with him. It was irresistible, even if she knew better than to fall for his seductive charms again. He was hard to resist. And minutes later they were making wild, passionate, insatiable love, as though the world was about to come to an end, and for a moment it always felt as though it might.

It was afternoon when they got up, bathed, dressed, and he looked at her. He was being so sweet to her again. It was hard to believe that he could ever tell a lie, hurt anyone, or make anyone unhappy, even her.

“I missed you so much,” he said, and she could see that he meant it. He really did. She had found five empty scotch bottles under the bed. He had drowned his sorrows while she was gone, or his fears. He was like a child sometimes.

“I missed you too,” she said gently. And then they went downstairs together and went for a walk before dark. It was snowing lightly, and looked beautiful. They were going to spend Christmas there alone. Michael was going skiing in Aspen with friends. And Hope had no one now. Only Finn.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that with Paul. It must have been rough.” He looked sympathetic and she nodded, as they held hands and walked. She tried not to think about it, or it would have panicked her that Paul was gone. And then he asked her a question that startled her in its bluntness. He wasn’t usually that crude. “What’s happening with the estate?”

“What do you mean?” She looked at him, shocked.

“You know … what happens now? … do they just give you the money, or do you have to wait until they sell stock or something?”

“That’s a strange question. What difference does it make? It takes a while to probate the estate. Months, a year. I don’t know. I don’t care.” And she didn’t know why he would. They weren’t dependent on Paul’s money. Hope had enough, from what he had given her before. More than enough, as Finn knew only too well, since she had told him. “I just miss him,” she said sadly, changing the subject. His interest in her money, and now Paul’s, unnerved her and brought reality home to her again.

“I know you do,” Finn said sympathetically, and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. “You’re all alone now,” he said, although he didn’t need to rub it in. She was well aware of it herself, too much so. “All you have is me.” She nodded and said nothing and wondered where he was going with what he was saying. “We have each other. That’s all we have.” She thought of his old fusion theory. He hadn’t mentioned it in a while.

“You have Michael,” she reminded him. And the next thing he said hit her like a punch in the solar plexus, and he was a big man and packed a powerful punch.

“And Mimi’s gone,” he said softly, as Hope tried to catch her breath and steady herself from the blow. It was his stock-in-trade now, putting her off balance and making her unstable, hurting her when she least expected it, in all the ways that hurt most. “That just leaves me,” he repeated for emphasis. Hope didn’t answer, and they walked along in the falling snow. But he had hit his mark. She felt even sadder than she had before, and then they went back to the house. He had been reminding her that she was dependent on him now, and without him she was alone. It was a shot across her bow. And she suddenly found herself thinking of Robert and his many warnings. They had agreed that he wouldn’t call her, so Finn didn’t get angry or upset. But if she needed Robert, she knew where to reach him. She had all his numbers in her purse.

She and Finn cooked dinner together that night, and he went upstairs to work while she got things ready, and he was wearing an odd expression when he came back downstairs to the kitchen in the basement. They still needed to restore that. It was functional, but grim. Most of the time they used the pantry on the main floor, but not that night.

Just as they sat down at the kitchen table where the servants used to eat, Finn turned to her with a glint in his eyes, and she wondered if he’d had a drink after their walk, or maybe even before. He was drinking way too much these days. He never used to, but he did now. She wondered if the pending lawsuit was causing him to drink.

“Where were you last night?” he asked her innocently.

“On the plane. Why?” She could feel her heart race, and looked blank as she served him pasta from a large bowl.

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking her in the eye.

“Of course I am. Don’t be silly. Where else would I have been? I got here this morning.” She dug a fork into her pasta, and he slammed her passport and a notepad onto the table next to her plate.

“Tell me about it. You stayed at a hotel in Dublin. I found this notepad in your purse when I was looking for something. I called them. And you were there last night. Your passport says you arrived in Ireland yesterday. Not today.” And then he produced the piece of paper with Robert’s numbers. She had written down only “Robert,” no last name. Finn was an excellent detective. And Hope felt like she was going to have a heart attack. It was hard to explain. She had taken the notepad off the desk at the hotel without thinking. And Finn had found it. It never occurred to her to ask what he was looking for in her purse, she was too scared. Her night in Dublin was going to be hard to explain.

She had no choice but to be honest with him. She always had been until now. It was the first time she had ever lied to him, about her arrival, or anything else. “You’re right. I arrived yesterday. I wanted a night to myself in Dublin. And I met with an attorney from my New York law firm. They thought I should see a lawyer here, about taxes, residency issues, this house. I met him, stayed at the hotel, and drove here this morning. End of story. I’m sorry that I lied.” She looked remorseful, and she was not going to tell him about dinner with Robert, or Finn might go into a jealous rage, and there was no way he would believe it was innocent. He never did. In spite of herself, Hope looked frightened and was shaking.