The Virgin

“Hang in there. You want some crackers?”

The mention of food sent her stomach rumbling. Without answering him she raced to the bathroom at the back of the bus and vomited hard into the toilet. She prayed no one had heard her getting sick. People would remember a young white woman in a Mets cap on a Concord bus puking her guts out. But she couldn’t worry about that yet. When she was done being sick, she rinsed her mouth out and splashed cold water on her face. Then she pulled her pants down and checked her bleeding. It was heavy and thick. She tried to feel sad, feel remorse or regret. Instead, she felt only relief. She held on to that relief as she made her way back to her seat.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. The man in the seat next to her patted her clammy hand and she opened her eyes. He placed three saltines in her palm. For the rest of the trip she nibbled on her crackers. In her weakened state and on her empty stomach, they tasted like manna from heaven.

“Thank you,” she said. He reached out and patted her shoulder. A kind, grandfatherly touch. She ached so much for human warmth right now she wanted to sit next to him and lean against him. When another cramp slammed into her back, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“It’s all right,” the man said in a low voice. “We’re almost there. I get carsick too sometimes. Especially if I try to read. You’re gonna make it.”

She smiled so he knew she heard him, but didn’t tell him the truth. She wasn’t carsick. Elle Schreiber did not get carsick. Any car, any kind, she could drive it. She’d been driving since she was twelve years old. She could hot-wire a car in under fifteen seconds. She could shift like a race car driver. She felt more at home in a car than she did anywhere else on earth—except for Søren’s bed. Carsick was the last thing she was.

When the pain passed, she lifted her head and rested back against the seat. For a few minutes all she did was breathe. Long breaths. Slow breaths. Breaths that filled her lungs and emptied her mind. At first she didn’t realize what she was doing. Then she remembered.

“Little One, take deep breaths when you’re on the cross. Deep full breaths. Fill your lungs and empty your mind. When I beat you, it’s for us, for our pleasure—yours and mine. Don’t be afraid. Never be afraid of me.”

“Never ever, sir,” she’d whispered back to him.

But now she was afraid.

“You running away from home, young lady?” the man in the seat next to her asked. She could hear the joking tone in his voice.

“I don’t run,” Elle said. “It’s not running away from home if you’re not running, right?”

“That’s a good point. Visiting friends or family here?”

“A friend,” she said. “I think he’s a friend. I hope he is.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

“I broke his heart once,” she said, smiling again.

“You look like a heartbreaker.” The man nodded sagely and Elle laughed.

“I don’t mean to be. I never mean to hurt anybody,” she said. “But I do.”

They’d been joking the way strangers packed into a crowded elevator or jostled about on an airplane joked. But what she’d said was too true and too somber, and he gave her a look of curiosity and compassion.

“A little girl like you couldn’t hurt a fly,” he said kindly.

Elle looked up and took a breath. If he only knew.

“I could hurt a fly,” she whispered.

After six hours and two bus changes, she finally arrived in New Hampshire. She wasn’t done with her journey yet. At the station she followed a young woman to a parking lot and offered her a hundred dollars to drive her forty miles. The woman seemed skeptical at first, but Elle held up the money. That did the trick.

Elle sat in the backseat of the beat-up Ford Thunderbird. The front seat was taken up by a child’s car seat, and Elle was happy to sit in the back and not look at it. She thought about asking the woman where the kid was, but she didn’t want to talk, especially about children. She apologized for her lack of conversation. Still recovering from car sickness, Elle said. The woman turned on the radio to cover the silence, and Elle kept her eyes closed all the way there.

A little after one in the afternoon, she arrived at her destination. Elle almost wept with relief at the sight of the long curving driveway she remembered so well, the columns, the stairs, the rows of windows in this old Colonial mansion.

The woman seemed stunned that this house, this mansion, was her destination.

“Old friend,” Elle said by way of explanation. “I hope.”

She paid the woman her one hundred dollars from the cash in her duffel bag. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t last very long, but a deal was a deal.

The relief Elle felt faded as she walked up the long, curving cobblestone driveway to the house. Her back spasmed with every few steps and the heavy duffel bag dug into her shoulder. The blazing sun followed her every step. She took off the Mets cap and ran her hands through her sweat-drenched hair. As she walked, she wondered...would he take her in? Would he help her? She’d broken his heart, yes, but she’d also helped him when he needed her most.

Elle rang the doorbell and waited.

As rich as he was, no one would have begrudged him a housekeeper or a butler. But it was the master of the house who opened the door. His blue eyes widened as he looked at her and took in her paleness, her exhaustion and her fear.

“Oh my God...Eleanor. What did he do to you?” he asked.

Elle almost laughed. If she’d had the energy, she would have.

“Don’t ask, Daniel,” she said as she walked past him into the house. “Just don’t ask.”

4 (#ulink_feaf03d4-a704-52a7-9dcc-e78891666ab9)

DANIEL GAVE HER tea and put her in the downstairs guest room. The entire time she was in his presence she stared at the gold band on his left hand.

“Where are Anya and the baby?” Elle asked. She hadn’t seen either when Daniel brought her into the house.

“Upstairs in the nursery. Marius has the flu. We’re taking shifts. She’s on the day shift. I take the night shift so she can sleep.” He smiled and she saw the contentment on his handsome face.

“God, you’re so married.”

“I am. Again,” he said and smiled.

“Enjoying it? Being married again? Being a dad?” Elle asked as she pulled the blanket to her stomach.

“You show up on my doorstep with no warning and nothing but a bag and the clothes on your back and you want to talk about me right now?” Daniel pulled a chair up to the bed. It was barely two o’clock in the afternoon, but Daniel had seen right away that all she needed right now was rest. “Eleanor, please—”

“Elle,” she said.

“What?”

“I told him the day I met him that I went by Elle. Not Eleanor. My whole life my mom called me Elle or Ellie. That’s who I am. But he called me Eleanor anyway. He calls me Eleanor. I prefer Elle.”

Daniel looked at her, rubbed his hands together.

“Elle,” he said. “Please tell me what’s happening. Can you do that for me?”

“You don’t want to know.” She tried to smile. She hoped he appreciated the effort that took her.

Daniel met her eyes, and she held the gaze. Back when he was a regular player in Kingsley’s world, his blue-eyed Dominant glare was the stuff of legend. His late wife, Maggie, had even named it—The Ouch, she called it with equal parts fear and affection. When he gave her that look she knew she’d be saying “ouch” the next day, maybe the next week. But it wasn’t the infamous Ouch he gave her now. Instead, he looked at her steadily with curiosity and compassion. And pity.

She hated pity.