Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion by Dani Collins, Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER NINE

“FORAFOUR-HOUR train trip?” Nina looked around the extravagant stateroom that was their private car. “This looks like something from the Orient Express.” She trailed her fingertips along the beveled edge of the cherrywood dining table, wondering what he must have paid to have this car added since she doubted this route typically had sleeper cars.

“I tried to book a helicopter. You said no.” He hung his jacket in the closet.

“Because I thought I would be traveling alone and would buy the ticket myself.” When he’d asked her in New York how she wanted to travel to Luxembourg, she had thought he was making conversation, trying to avoid talking about their kiss at the showroom. “I wanted to go by train so I could watch the scenery.” She peeked through the closed drapes.

“We’ll open them once we get going. At least in here, we don’t have to see anyone, not even the conductor. Unless there’s something we don’t have.” He glanced in the well-stocked refrigerator and checked the labels on the wine in the racks. “Hungry?”

“We just had breakfast.” She glanced around the jut of a separation wall. The top of it was clouded by etched glass, and the bottom was cherrywood paneling that matched the rest of the room. There was a very plush-looking double bed tucked behind it.

“We could go back to bed,” she suggested.

They had been doing little else other than making love since last night. Dinner on the Seine had been canceled, and they’d made do with the charcuterie board for dinner. They had wound up fooling around on a dining room chair and then having sex on the sofa. They’d dozed there, then had a bath together—along with a couple of orgasms. Sometime after midnight, they’d woken and come together in a wordless fog of simply needing to be joined.

They’d both risen achy and sore this morning, agreeing that it had to stop. But they’d showered together and landed on the sheets soaking wet, groaning each other’s names as they drove each other to another lofty pinnacle.

It was the best possible madness, and also a type of hoarding for the cold winter they were both avoiding any mention of.

“You’re not going to see much from the bed,” Reve chided, his eyelids already drooping with the drug of lust.

Nina lifted her chin. “Depends what I want to see, doesn’t it? For instance, I have had it with that tie.” She pointed. “Get rid of it.”

“I pity the conductor,” he said as he loosened the red silk with its subtle paisley pattern. “Having to go home to his wife and tell her he found a couple today who had literally screwed themselves to death.”

“We all die of something. Pick your poison.”

He barked a laugh. “You. It has to be you.” He tackled her in a handful of steps, tumbling her onto the bed beneath him.

This immersion in each other was pure denial of reality, as well as deliriously exquisite.

Also, it turned out to be exactly what they needed. They conked out immediately after climaxing and jerked awake when a bell sounded. A voice announced, “Arriving at your destination in fifteen minutes.”

“Is this one of those hibernation capsules, and we’ve traveled through space and time?” She rose to dress, her brain barely functioning. “I am definitely not going to earn the fashion designer’s secret handshake if they see the way I treat my new clothes.”

She shook out her chiffon culottes—an old standby that a Tokyo designer had given a chic makeover. They hugged her waist and hips then fell in loose, flirty pleats to accentuate her calves and ankles. Her muslin blouse by a Vancouver designer was a deceptively simple peasant style that had its own billowy grace.

When she’d gone through her things from Reve’s storage, she’d found and reclaimed her lace-up retro-looking saddle shoes. They’d served her well on the endless sidewalk commutes of New York so she’d brought them for what she expected would be a lot of footwork in the tiny village near Mondorf-les-Bains.

The spa town had sprung up around the discovery of a hot spring back in the eighteen hundreds, but a smaller, more exclusive “retreat” had been built among the neighboring vineyards a hundred years later. It hadn’t had thermal waters, but it did have top doctors charging top dollar for discreet services.

As the train slowed, she glanced up from fixing her hair to see Reve watching her with a sober expression as he knotted his tie. Each rock of the carriage was a slow tick of their time winding down. They both felt it.

“Don’t look like that.” He came over to squeeze her shoulder and kiss the top of her head. “Nothing in life stays the same.”

He was right, but it still put a lump in her throat.

She donned sunglasses and a hat, but if there had been any interest in Oriel’s connection to Luxembourg, it was long over. No one seemed to give them a second glance as they disembarked. A young man waited with a key fob and directed them to a sedan outside the train station.

Reve programmed their destination into the navigation system, and within minutes they were traveling east toward the German border, leaving the city for softly rolling hills and picturesque villages.

“Was there no border check when your mother came through?” Reve asked as the Moselle River came into view. “Did she realize she was leaving Germany?”

“It was already a very low-key system. She stopped to ask the border guard where they could eat while she figured out how to get back to where they were going. He suggested the café where she wound up collapsing.”

“The investigator said there were private houses in the area that were a cottage industry—pun intended. They provided discreet accommodation for the celebs who used the clinic, but he wasn’t able to find which one Lakshmi stayed at. Most of them are still operating, serving the wine tour crowd.”

“Is that where we’re staying?”

“Actually, he found a vineyard owned by the family of the doctor who signed your birth certificate. I had to pay triple to get another reservation bumped, but I’m hoping to succeed where the investigator failed. Get some answers.”

“That’s a lot of money for them to take one look at me and refuse to say anything without a lawyer present.” Her stomach was nothing but snakes and butterflies as the car ate up the miles.

“We’ll see.”

“Are you enjoying this?” she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

“A little.” He side-eyed her. “It’s a puzzle. I’m curious. And I want you to have answers.” He reached to squeeze her hand.

That sounded a little like he was emotionally invested, but she didn’t tease him over it. She let the sparks of possibility dance in her, even though she knew it was an indulgence she couldn’t afford.

A short while later, they stepped from the car in front of a villa surrounded by rows upon rows of grapevines. A dog wagged itself nearly to pieces as it waddled up to them.

A middle-aged woman came out of a stone cottage nearby. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel. Her smile fell away into shock.

“When they said a high-profile couple from New York insisted on staying here, I didn’t realize...” The woman gave Reve a confused look, perhaps expecting Oriel’s Indian husband, before mustering a fresh smile for them both. “I’m Farrah. Let me show you into the house. My husband, Charles, will bring your luggage if you’d like to give me the key to the car.”

“Reve Weston. And—”

“I know who you are.” Farrah flipped her tea towel onto her shoulder.

Reve left it at that and said, “We’re hoping to speak to the doctor’s family. Are you...?”

“No relation.” Farrah shook her head. “Charles and I arrived ten years ago. Answered an ad. The family needed someone to run things because the doctor had passed away and he was the one with the passion for the vineyard.”

“Dr. Wagner?” Nina cocked her head. “The one who worked at the clinic?”

“That’s what I was told. Like I say, before our time, but I understand he came from Austria every week or so and had all sorts of famous clients.” Farrah opened the door into the villa. “His family still lives in Austria. I run this as a vacation rental. Charles manages the vineyard.”

Inside, the house was bright and well maintained if slightly dated. It had a beautiful terrace with expansive views of the vineyard and the silver river below.

Charles came in with their luggage and Reve asked him to leave it by the door. He took back the key and they drove straight into the village. The investigator hadn’t had much luck at the café, but Reve went in while Nina stayed in the car, sunglasses on like an undercover cop on stakeout.

Reve came back with pastries and the news. “The owner will ask his father if he remembers a pregnant American woman collapsing twenty-five years ago, but the old man’s memory is failing. We shouldn’t expect too much. I left him my card.”

“Humph.”

They tried the small medical clinic that serviced the village. The receptionist had no desire to tell anyone the names of any retired medical professionals living in the area. Then they drove to the spa, which was swarming with tourists and didn’t inspire Nina to believe there was much they could learn there, either.

They returned to the vineyard and took a walk to stretch their legs and breathe the warm, earth-flavored air, but she was feeling very disheartened.

“It was a waste of time to come all this way, wasn’t it?” Not to mention the cost to him.

“You wanted to know what you could find. Now you do. Did you expect it all to become crystal clear the second we arrived?”

“Kind of,” she said glumly.

“Come here.” He drew her into his embrace.

It felt so natural to be with him like this, leaning on him and lifting her mouth for the kiss he lingered over. How could this be anything other than the way they were meant to be?

“Where do we go from here?” she asked with a forlorn pang in her throat.

“I’ll call Oriel’s husband if you want.” His hands roamed her back, but his touch didn’t soothe the prickles of anguish gathering within her.

“I can do that.” She drew back. “And once I do... Where do we go?”

He dragged in a pained breath, and he gripped her arms briefly before setting her away from him. “This is what I was trying to avoid,” he muttered.

“I know. And I’m not blaming you or trying to pressure you into anything, but I don’t want to say goodbye, Reve. I...” She clutched at her elbows, feeling hollow inside. “I feel safe with you.”

He swore under his breath and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t. I feel as though I’m losing every part of myself when I’m with you, and that’s terrifying.”

His words set fire to her chest.

Whatever anguish came into her face made him wince and turned away.

“I can’t be like you. Open and trusting.”

“Because of her.” She meant the woman who had posted his sex tape.

“Her, my father, my aunt. Anytime I’ve let myself believe in others they have always let me down.”

“What happened with your aunt?”

“Nothing,” he said flatly, his profile sharp as chipped granite. He squinted as he looked to the past, and his voice grew raspy. “She turned up looking just like the photo I had of my mother. I remember this shred of hope coming awake inside me. I thought, Now things will get better.” His face contorted with helpless anger. “But she looked around and asked my father, ‘How can you live like this?’ and left me there.”

His bitterness was so tangible she tasted it on her own tongue. She felt his crushing disappointment as a profound weight on her chest.

“And then I left,” she said with anguish, hating herself for doing that to him.

“What were you going to stay for?” he asked with self-disgust. “I broke what we had. You’re right about that. I am broken.”

“Reve, don’t.” She started toward him, but he stiffened in rejection and she halted. “You’re not. I never should have said that. I was being cruel because I was hurt.”

“It’s still true. I’ll never be able to give you what you want, Nina. I could go through the motions. Marry you and give you kids, but you want more than a couple of boxes ticked. You want things inside me that just aren’t there.”

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” she cried, unable to imagine finding happiness with someone else when the price was him.

“You do.” He rounded on her. “You want the kind of love you’ve always known. I won’t let you compromise yourself and settle for less because we happen to be good in bed.”

His voice was so harsh and final that her mouth began to quiver. She couldn’t stand here and start bawling like a child.

“I’m going to run a bath,” she choked, and hurried inside.