And he was glad for it. He wanted to be angry. He did not intend to keep a very tight hold on his control. If it snapped, he’d welcome it.
“Don’t move,” Prentice repeated.
“The children,” she said.
“It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t –”
His mouth found hers and he kissed her quiet before murmuring, “Elle, baby, trust me.”
He heard her pull in a soft breath and watched her shadowed head nod.
He threw the bedclothes aside and the bell buzzed again.
Jesus, the bastard was impatient.
Prentice wanted to make him wait. However Carver could wake the children, both also deep sleepers like their father, and Prentice courted this if he delayed.
So he didn’t delay.
He also didn’t put on a shirt but walked to the front door only in a pair of pajama bottoms.
He did this on purpose.
He wanted Carver Austin to be confronted with Prentice and Elle’s intimacy. He wanted that man’s imagination to run wild. He wanted him to know that he’d pulled Prentice from Elle’s arms, from her bed. He wanted him to wonder what they might be doing there.
It didn’t say much about him but he didn’t care.
After what that man did to Elle and took from the both of them, Prentice wanted Carver Austin to be tortured by every conceivable way Prentice could make Elle happy.
Prentice weaved his way around the many obstacles to the front door.
They’d been in Chicago three days and there were boxes everywhere. They spent the mornings packing or, Elle, Prentice and Jason did, Sally spent it mostly digging through stuff, showing treasures she found to Elle and asking, “What’s this?” and alternately chattering. They spent the afternoons seeing the city.
Sightseeing was strange, not unpleasant but not as pleasant as it could be and this was mainly because people recognized them everywhere they went. They gawked, they whispered behind their hands and more than once they opened their phones and took photos.
Sally seemed not to notice a thing.
Jason found it funny and once made a face at one of their impromptu photographers.
Prentice found it startlingly easy to ignore.
It would be easier to ignore if it didn’t make Elle visibly anxious.
All of this partly had to do with Elle already being famous, partly the photographers who’d already sold their pictures but mostly it had to do with f**king Hattie Fennick.
Hattie Fennick had sold Prentice and Elle’s story to a rag and it was printed the day before Prentice, Elle and the kids flew to Chicago.
Hattie had fortunately painted Prentice and Elle as star-crossed lovers, torn apart by a wicked, evil man and thrown back together by fate.
Knowing Hattie, who could be vicious but who wasn’t stupid, Prentice reckoned this wasn’t the picture she wanted to paint but the only one she could if she didn’t want to be stoned by the villagers.
At his office where Dougal had arrived unexpectedly to show him the spread in the magazine, Prentice had been surprised to see two photos of Elle and Prentice taken twenty years ago mingled with the others.
Which meant Hattie had also given them photos, photos Prentice didn’t know she had, intimate photos of Elle and Prentice that made Prentice feel unsettled that Hattie had at all.
One was at a party at the beach. He remembered that night though he couldn’t recall Hattie being there. The night was, as always with Elle, a good night. The photo was obviously shot without Prentice or Elle knowing it was being taken. They were standing by the bonfire, her arms were around his neck, his hands were resting at her waist. She was pressed against him, gazing lovingly up at his face. They were both smiling.
The other was on the pavement in the village. He remembered that day as a good one too but again couldn’t imagine why on earth Hattie had a photo of it. The photo was also shot without Prentice or Elle knowing it was being taken. Elle had been horsing around and had jumped on his back. She had her thighs tight to his hips, her arms were around his chest. He had his arms behind him, his hands on her ass. She was leaning into his back and his neck was twisted to look at her as she peered around his shoulder. They were both laughing.
Seeing the photos he realized with disbelief that he’d forgotten exactly how beautiful Elle used to be when she was younger.
He thought he’d remembered but he had not.
Also seeing them he was stunned at how much more beautiful she had become. Especially now, when she slept deep and peacefully every night and had gained back some weight.
He would have thought that was an impossibility but it was not.
Those photos were mingled with others he hadn’t seen but he knew they likely existed, these taken recently. One, shot the day Sally left the hospital, showed Prentice lifting his daughter to put her in the Rover. Elle was close to them, Jason close to Elle. There was also a photo of Elle and Sally standing on the pavement talking animatedly to Denise and Gordon. Another was at Jason’s football match showing Elle standing in the curve of Prentice’s arm, her head tilted back, her face smiling as they spoke to each other. Sally was gazing into the distance but her arms were wrapped around Prentice’s leg.
And finally, there was another photo of Prentice and Elle that Prentice wasn’t aware it was being taken, shot only days before the article ran. They were alone at the beach, Debs had taken the kids for the day.
The final photo was almost an exact replica of the first one, except it was day rather than night and there was no bonfire. They were in each other’s arms, looking in each other’s eyes and they were smiling.
The magazine the article ran in (and the article got it mostly right, though it dramatized some of it and made Carver seem even more of a monster than he already was which was quite a feat) was popular and had a huge circulation.
The bad news about this article was that there was a possibility that Jason and Sally could see it or hear friends talking about it. They didn’t know Elle and Prentice had a history and Prentice didn’t want them to know, not now. He would find a way to tell them later, when things were settled, when Elle was settled, which she gave too many indications that she was currently not.
The good news about the article was the possibility that Carver had seen it.
But even if he hadn’t, it was now obvious Carver had seen the photo of Elle holding Sally’s hand, her other arm around Prentice’s waist, Prentice holding her close with his arm around her shoulders and Jason walking in front of them but looking back. All of them were laughing as they came out of a restaurant the first night they were in Chicago.