CHAPTER 59
He expounded further, leading Darius away.
“Ma’am?”
Nathalie turned. It was Jenny, the petite redhead, with a box in her hands. “I wrapped two cups. One
for each of you. They’re my design.”
“Thank you so much, Jenny. You should be very proud of what you do.”
“I am. But no one’s ever appreciated our work the way Mr. Spencer does. Or you.” She had a
bright, sweet face that made Nathalie feel years older. “Please thank him for all of us.”
“Of course.”
With a wave and a smile, Jenny went back to her painting table.
For a moment, Nathalie stared after Jenny, her mind stuck on what the girl had just said. No one’s
ever appreciated our work the way Mr. Spencer does. Just as no one had ever appreciated Zion the
way Darius did.
And her. No one had every truly appreciated her.
Not until Darius.
Every step of the way, he had shown her how special he was. He wasn’t some ruthless billionaire
CEO who raided pension plans. People—and their happiness—were important to him. They didn’t
have to be rich, they didn’t need to have something he could use or exploit. She didn’t doubt he
could be a hard ass when he needed to be, but Darius never exploited the small cog.
He was a good man.
A man worth loving.
* * *
Soon, Nathalie found out that Darius had done one better than even she’d imagined. He and
Birhams had negotiated their contract over dinner, which Darius had been very happy for her to sit
in on. As if they had no secrets. As if they were partners. And he’d totally floored her—and Mr.
Birhams—by adding in a stipulation about employee bonuses. The artists would earn a special
commission on every piece of theirs that sold, above and beyond the generous amount he was
already going to pay them to do the work.
And it made her love him even more.
She didn’t know how she could have been so blind. Or so stubborn. She loved him, and she needed
to tell him. But she wanted the perfect moment. The ride back to Knightsbridge wouldn’t do. His
driver would hear everything.
She’d planned to tell him the moment they entered his penthouse flat. But when Darius lifted her
into his arms while doing those incredible things with his mouth, she couldn’t think, couldn’t hold onto anything except how much she wanted him.
How much she needed him.
And when he took her again, holding onto her like he never wanted to let her go while stroking hard
and fast inside her until they reached the peak together—the words were right there on the tip of her
tongue. But she didn’t want Darius to think she was only saying them because her world was
shattering in ecstasy.
The jet lag finally caught up with her as he gathered her into his arms, but all she could think, as sleep came to claim her, was that she needed him to know just how wonderful she thought he was.
“I love you.”
And then, utterly contented, with his lips brushing her cheek—and his own words of love echoing
back to her—she slept.
I love you.
Three simple words had just rocked Darius world in a way nothing else ever had.
He hadn’t thought Nathalie was ready. He’d been telling himself he could wait. But when she said I
love you, he’d realized he hadn’t truly believed she’d ever come around to loving him—all of him,
the good and bad, the past and the present.
Just hours ago, he’d been planning to show her his favorite parts of the city, like the old pub sitting
next to some of the last remaining stones belonging to the original Roman wall of London. Special
places he’d found and wanted to share with her.
But then she’d said she loved him, and suddenly everything changed. It meant he could bring her
back to London again and again. He could take her to his house in Paris, his flat in Sicily, his
cottage in the Swiss Alps. All the places he’d never shared with anyone special except his Beverick
family.
Now he had Nathalie. And they had Zion.
And everything was suddenly so much better.
Better, at least, as long as she meant the words. As long as she felt them.
He tried to relax his muscles, tried to convince himself that it was okay to believe that Nathalie
loved him...and that he was worthy of her love. But it was hard going when the truth was that he
hadn’t believed himself worthy since he was a kid.
“No one will ever love a little shit like you,” his father used to say. “Not unless you can figure out
how to be faster and smarter and sneakier than everyone else. Then maybe you’ll be worth
something.”
So that was what Darius had done—he’d figured out how to be fast and smart and sneaky. It wasn’t
until he’d finally come to trust Sally and George and the Bevericks that he’d figured out how to
love. And of course he loved them with everything in him, even if he’d often wondered how they
could possibly love a fast-handed, sneaky smartass like him.
Thankfully, the tension in his body didn’t wake Nathalie. She stayed right there in his arms, her skin
like silk against his, her leg thrown over him, her foot between his calves. And bells were ringing.
No, not bells. His phone.
Unwilling to let her go, he fumbled around on the nightstand, finally feeling it beneath his fingers.
“Hello.” Though his voice was low, it sounded sharp in the quiet room, with only Nathalie’s soft
breaths breaking the silence.
“Mr. Spencer, it’s Ben.”
His driver Ben was shuttling Zion to and from work. In an instant, Darius heart began to beat fast
and out of rhythm. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find Zion.”
No.
Please no.
Nathalie was still asleep. Still oblivious. While Darius lungs felt like they’d been flattened by a
speeding, out of control car.
“He was supposed to be in front of the building,” Ben said, his voice fast, nervous. “That’s what we
arranged. But he wasn’t there. And I couldn’t find him upstairs in the office. No one remembers
seeing him after three o’clock.”
Darius glanced at the bedside clock. It was five-thirty in the evening back in San Francisco. Which
meant that Zion had been missing for over two hours. It took everything Darius had to figure out
how to take that breath he needed so desperately.
“Darius?” Nathalie finally shifted, his name sleepy on her tongue.
She’d just told him she loved him...and now he had to tell her that he’d lost the most precious
person in her life.
“Have you called the police?” he asked Ben, each word sharp and hard.
“No, sir, we looked everywhere we could think of and then I called you.”
“Call them. Now.”
Nathalie sat up. “Darius.” Sleep was gone—terror had invaded. Utter terror
.
“But sir,” Ben said, “they won’t look for missing persons until it’s been twenty-four hours.”
Darius threw his legs over the edge of the bed, and planted them firmly on the floor. He clenched
his teeth so hard, he thought they might crack. “Tell them he’s disabled.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Darius?”
Her strangled whisper damn near broke him in two. But he needed to finish. “And get Security to
check every room, closet, bathroom, and stairwell in that building.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Darius.”
“Have your phone with you at all times. Call me back as soon as you have anything new.”
“Yes, sir.”
The need to roar, to blame Ben and everyone else back in San Francisco, clawed at his insides. But
he managed to keep the phone in his hand instead of throwing it across the room. For Nathalie, he
needed whatever cool he had left.
She’d stopped saying his name. He turned, just enough to see her. And, like a coward, he thanked
God there wasn’t enough light coming through the windows to show him her full devastation as he
told her, “Ben can’t find Zion. He wasn’t waiting outside when Ben arrived, and no one in the office
knows where he is.”
She’d gone completely still, and he swore he could hear every single worry she was thinking. Every
fear she was feeling. Because he was thinking and feeling all of them, too.
“You said he’d be safe.”
His guts twisted. What the hell have I done?
He reached back to turn on the light. He couldn’t keep hiding from her in the dark. “We’re going
back. Now. I’ll call the flight crew. I’ll call the cops myself. And I know a good private detective.
I’m on it.”
But that was a lie, because his nerves were on fire. Every inch of him, inside and out, burned with
uselessness. Helplessness.
“How could he just disappear?”
Her question sounded so lost. She wasn’t crying, was showing no emotion at all. There was just a
slackness in her features, as if everything had drained out of her.
Darius had never hated himself as much as he did in that moment, watching Nathalie break. He’d
broken her. And Zion, too. They’d been doing just fine until he came along, until he punched his
way into their carefully constructed lives and upended everything.
“We’ll find him.” He wanted to touch her, but he couldn’t, didn’t deserve a touch, didn’t deserve to
comfort her. He didn’t deserve those three sweet, beautiful, damning words she’d given him such a
short time ago. All he had left were the meaningless sounds falling out of his mouth. “I promise.”
“You promise?”
If she’d yelled or screamed or thrown a lamp, maybe he could have pretended he hadn’t heard. But
the low hush of her voice said it so much more clearly than her rage could have.
His promises meant nothing.
How could they, when he’d broken the most important one he’d ever made to her? He’d wanted her
to come to London with him, so he’d come up with the plan, laid it out for her, convinced her.
And now he’d failed her, because he hadn’t kept Jeremy safe.
* * *
How could everything have gone so wrong in just twenty-four hours?
Nathalie was curled into a tight ball of stress in her seat as the jet flew out over the endless ocean.
This time, there was no filet mignon, no mousse, no crystal, no china. No laughter. No talk.
And definitely no love.
She’d left Zion alone. She hadn’t called him to check in since they’d landed in London. God help
her, the truth was that she’d barely even thought about him in almost twenty-four hours. And now
he was gone.
What was happening to him right now?
Where was he?
Nathalie thought she might be sick right there in Darius elegantly appointed lounge.
He was on his phone. He’d been on it almost constantly since they’d run out of his London flat.
They’d slammed their bags shut, and whatever wasn’t in them got left behind. It didn’t matter. All
that mattered was back in San Francisco. Somewhere.
God only knew where.
“Yes,” Darius said, “he has a cell phone. Unfortunately, my driver found his jacket in a locker at the
office with the phone in it.” Darius listened to the person on the other end of the line and glanced at
her. “Do you have any photos of Zion on your phone?”
“I didn’t bring it with me because I don’t have an international calling plan.” Her voice was hollow,
but she couldn’t put any life into it. Not when she was so scared. “And I knew he had your
number.”
These past few years, her job had been to figure out every single thing that could possibly go wrong
for Zion, and then do whatever she needed to do to make sure it didn’t happen. But ever since she’d
connected with Darius, she’d taken her eye off the ball more and more. And now, for this trip, when
she should have run through all the possibilities, all the things that could go wrong, she’d done the
exact opposite. She’d let Darius handle the details for her brother so that she could have fun in her
sexy fantasyland.
“I’ve got a couple of pictures I can send,” he said to his caller, “but we were working on a car, and
he’s not looking straight at the camera.” He paused. “Yeah. Sure. As soon as I hang up.”
They’d taken off half an hour ago, after Darius had awakened the flight crew in the middle of the
night and obtained clearance to fly within the hour. He had everyone back in San Francisco looking
for Jeremy—his staff, the police, the detective.
But he couldn’t change the fact that they had to sit on this plane for almost ten hours. While Zion
was out there. Alone.
What if something terrible had happened to him?
What if she never saw her brother again?
“Anything to report?” Darius had his phone to his ear again as he signaled the steward, pointing at
the coffee service on the sideboard and miming that the man should pour a cup for Nathalie. Even
now, Darius was taking care of her, taking care of everything.
“Call the minute you hear anything, find anything.”
She wanted to blame him. For making her come to London. For taking Zion out of the grocery store
and into that job up in the city. She wanted to scream at him, shout that it was all his fault. If he’d
never come into their lives, if he hadn’t seduced Zion with his cars and his friendship, if he hadn’t
touched her, everything would have been fine. Had she been able to make the blame stick, she’d
have done it in a heartbeat. She needed someone else to condemn so badly that she felt bile push up
from her stomach.
But she couldn’t blame Darius. She’d understood who and what he was right from the beginning. A
man who knew what he wanted and hacked through whatever obstacles stood in his way.
This was her fault.
Hers alone.
She’d forgotten the one thing she knew to be true in her life—Zion had to come first. Her mother
had drilled that into her long ago, after Zion had come out of the coma and they’d known he’d
never be the same.
“Zion’s going to need all the help you can give, Nathalie. He needs you. And if anything ever
happens to us, you’re going to have to take care of him.”
Nathalie had always done everything in her power to take care of her brother. Until now. Until she’d
allowed herself to be wild and free.
To fall head over heels in love.
She was Zion’s guardian. She was all he had. But she’d let the rush of speed, and Darius charm,
blind her to her responsibilities.
Darius didn’t know how Zion sometimes reverted to a frightened little boy. Darius didn’t
understand how utterly trusting her brother was. He would believe anything a stranger told him.
Darius had wanted to give him more freedom, more challenges. But she was the one who knew
Zion’s limits. And she’d let it all happen.
She’d seduced herself with the attention, with the nights in Darius arms, and she’d started wanting
more than she should have. Started thinking she could actually have more.
The steward set their coffee down, with cream and sugar for her, black for Darius. She looked at the
milky coffee without picking it up, realizing that she’d forgotten the two china cups back in Darius
London penthouse. And she was glad, because they would always remind her that while she’d been
off having wild sex in foreign lands, something bad had happened to her brother.
Darius laid his phone on the table between them and turned the handle of his cup to pick it up,
thanking the steward. When they were alone again, he said, “We’ve got a long flight. Why don’t
you get some sleep in the cabin? I’ll stay by the phone.”
“I can’t sleep.” Her voice sounded dull and totally without emotion.
