Warmth struck Sophie first, followed swiftly by the touch of Lucien's fingers, a slow upward drift from her knee to the top of her thigh. He leaned in as she opened her eyes, tasting her lips for a few moments, the briefest slide of his tongue against hers that set her body on instant high alert. She stroked her hand down the back of his hair, then eased her head away and scooched up a little. Cradling the cognac glass he passed her, she rested her hand on his shoulder.
"You okay?"
Her words were simple, deliberately so, to give him the option of opening up about his father if he wanted to, or not. He shrugged, sighing heavily as he swilled his brandy around in the glass. It was a while until he spoke again.
"I shouldn't have told you he was dead," he said eventually.
Sophie didn't answer, just continued her steady massage of his shoulder in the hope that it was in some way helpful.
"I haven't spoken to him since I was thirteen years old."
"Wow," she said softly. Her own parents were a constant in her life, a given that she'd never had cause to question or rebel against.
"I found her in the kitchen when I came home from school." Lucien didn't lift his eyes from his drink and the unbearable weight of desolation in his voice broke Sophie's heart. "When I was thirteen years old."
Every fibre in her body ached to reach out and hold him, but she sensed that he needed to get to the end of this story first. So she massaged his shoulder and held her silence, her head full of images of the blonde child from the photograph on Lucien's desk and the horror he'd carried around in his heart for all these years.
"She was cold, Sophie. So very, very cold." Lucien closed his eyes for a few seconds and shook his head slowly. "There were pills everywhere, I could feel them crunching under my boots... I was too late."
This time she couldn't hold back. She slid down next to him, her hand against the warmth of his bent neck.
"You were just a baby, Lucien," she said softly. A million questions raced through her mind. What had happened to drive his mother to such desperate measures? Sophie couldn't imagine ever deliberately leaving a child alone, motherless.
He exhaled grimly. "Not after that, I wasn't. I grew up that day. I still have the screwed up picture of my father that they had to prise from her fingers."
He sighed; a heavy, broken expulsion of air as he scrubbed the heel of his palm between his eyes.
"She was fragile. Gentle." Lucien finally lifted his harrowed, bleak eyes to meet Sophie's gaze. Her heart contracted painfully when he reached out and stroked her hair, his mouth a grim twist. "His affair broke her, Sophie." He paused, agonised. "Love broke her." The slow, tender stroke of his thumb across her bottom lip spoke volumes. "I don't want to break you," he whispered.
The catch in his voice brought an answering lump to Sophie's throat, and she reached out and clasped his face between her shaking hands.
"You won't break me." Tears scalded her cheeks as she closed the distance between them. "You won't break me," she said again, her lips trembling as she kissed him. He kissed her back. The most bittersweet, poignant of all kisses. The kiss of a grieving man. His arms moved around her, gentle and then fierce, his breath a strangled rasp of emotion in his throat. Sophie held him close, wishing she could take the pain for him. It was little wonder the idea of love scared him stupid, he'd carried his burden alone for so long. To him love was destructive and ugly; it had taken away the one person he needed more than anything else in the world at an age when he was far too young to understand.
They held each other for a long time, the crackle of the fire the only sound in the room. Sophie opened her eyes and watched the flames, stroking Lucien's back as she pieced him together in her mind now that she understood his demons. She might not be able to fix the past, but she was willing to spend a lifetime showing him what love could be: beautiful not ugly, uplifting not destructive, and more precious than diamonds.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The universal smell of hospitals assailed Lucien as he made his way through the hushed corridors towards his father's room, a vague whiff of disinfectant to sanitise the less pleasant odours.
Talking things over late into the night with Sophie had given him the final push he'd needed to come here. She'd listened without judging him, offered to read the letter to him, even. After all, he'd come to Norway the instant he'd heard of his father's deterioration; there was little sense in making the pilgrimage if he wasn't willing to see it through to the end. If nothing else, it would give him closure. Completeness, Sophie had called it. He'd turned down her offer to accompany him, but that didn't mean he wasn't bolstered by the knowledge that she was waiting for him back at the lodge.
He ran his hand inside his coat, double-checking that the unopened letter was still there. What would it say? The prospect of reading it weighed like a stone around his neck, but the prospect of not reading it in time weighed heavier still. He'd spoken with the nurse caring for his father that morning and the gravity of her tone when she'd suggested that he come sooner rather than later had conveyed how very sick he was.
He slowed his step, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets as the numbers pinned to the closed doors indicated he was nearing the one his father lay behind.
So this was it. Eighteen years had passed since Lucien had turned his back on his father, and he'd never accepted any of the olive branches that had been held out in the intervening years.
Where his father was concerned, his feelings hadn't progressed beyond those of that scared, bereaved boy; barely a teenager, yet forced to make life changing decisions. His gut reaction back then had been to lay the blame at his father's door, and the benefit of maturity had done little to mellow his viewpoint.
He paused, cleared his throat, and then pushed the door of his father's room open resolutely.
The nurse attending to his father's drip looked up as he entered the room, startled by the sudden appearance of this outlandishly beautiful visitor to her patient.
Lucien nodded to her briefly, a distracted greeting before he lowered his eyes slowly to the man lying in the hospital bed. His eyes were closed. It was impossible on first glance to know if he was unconscious or merely sleeping. Lucien studied him, trying to reconcile the man in the bed with the man in his memory. Where there had been bulk and muscle, now there was only skin and bone. Where there had been vitality and laughter, there was only dullness and paper-thin skin; the grey death mask of a man barely clinging to life.
"Are you his son?"