Chapter 3
Iris crossed the room and knelt in front of him, not because she meant to, but because her legs no longer seemed interested in holding her upright. She reached for his hand.
He pulled away.
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
His jaw tightened. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m already gone.”
Her face changed, and he regretted it immediately.
Iris opened the kit, took out gauze, antiseptic, bandage tape. “Give me your hand.”
“No.”
“Give me your hand, Nicholas.”
He blinked.
She had never called him that before.
Not in the house. Not out loud. Not with that quiet command in her voice.
For a moment, he looked less like a billionaire, less like a man whose name could move markets, and more like someone who had been standing alone in a burning building and had just realized another person had entered through the smoke.
He gave her his hand.
Iris cleaned the cut carefully. Her fingers were steady, but her breath was not. Nicholas watched her, watched the dark lashes lowered over her eyes, the small line between her brows whenever she concentrated.
“You’re angry,” he said.
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m dying?”
“Because you let me find out from her.”
His mouth pressed shut.
Iris wrapped the gauze around his palm. “Who is she?”
“Camille Ardent.”
“The actress?”
“Former fiancée.”
Iris’s fingers paused for half a second before continuing.
“I didn’t know you were engaged.”
“Nobody did. Not for long.”
“What did she want?”
He looked down at their hands.
“To be remembered in my will.”
The answer should have disgusted Iris. It did, in some distant place. But what she felt more strongly was a cold, sharp sorrow.
“And did you?”
“No.”
“Is that why she called you selfish?”
“No.” His voice dropped. “She called me selfish because I asked her not to tell the press.”
Iris looked up.
Nicholas’s face was pale, almost gray beneath the sharp bones and the beautiful cruelty of features people photographed from a distance. For the first time, she saw how much effort it cost him to remain composed.
“She wanted to sell it?” Iris asked.
“She wanted to control it. There’s a difference, apparently.”
Iris finished taping the bandage and sat back on her heels.
Nicholas flexed his fingers once, then stared at the bandage as though it were an object from another life.
“I should have told you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know how.”
“That’s a terrible excuse.”
“I know.”
“And not very original.”
That corner of his mouth moved again.
There it was. The small almost-smile. The one no one else ever saw.
May you like
Iris hated that it hurt her.
For a while, neither spoke.
