The Secret (The Evolution Of Sin Book 2) Read online

  Chapter Nine.

  “You seem to be spending a lot of time with Daniel.”

  I paused, my hand hovering over the canvas precariously. I could see my hard heartbeat shake my hand.

  “Huh?”

  Cosima’s gold eyes swiveled my way but she didn’t move a hair out of position. “I said, you seem to be spending a lot of time with Daniel.”

  I focused carefully on adding a dab of burnt umber to the mixture on my palette, darkening the shadow beneath Cosima’s round breasts and between her proudly braced legs. The painted woman that stared out from the shadows of the canvas peered at me with the exact same expression as her real life counter part, unerringly direct and more than a little disconcerting.

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I was holding when she shrugged and said, “It’s nice that you get along. He has been part of my life, of the family, for so many years it is weird to think you two only just met.”

  Only just met… Well, we had only met two months ago almost to the day, but it felt like so much longer. And we had been spending a lot of time together, too much really if we wanted to fly under the radar. Sinclair had assured me that Elena worked too much to notice and that he often spent his free time with Cosima. Luckily, Cosima had been wrapped up in her own world for the last ten days, probably with the dangerous-eyed Dante.

  “Yeah.” I forced my voice to be casual. “He is a nice guy, if a little stuffy.”

  She ignored my attempt at criticism and broke her pose to open the door behind her. We were in her kitchen/dining area again, which had lately served more as my studio than anything else. Canvases were stacked against the island and sketches were taped to the wall beside the door. In the last two weeks I had finalized sketches of Cosima, Sebastian, Cage and even one of Mama, hovering over the stove in a damp robe with the sheen of sweat on her soft skin. She hadn’t blushed at all when I suggested the idea. I wanted to explore the tried and true roles of older women and exploit the sensuality they still retained despite the domestication. Mama had laughed joyfully at the suggestion.

  “I have to admit, I’m a little surprised. You are my favorite human on the planet.” Her smile poured over me like sunshine. “But Daniel doesn’t like change. I think the last friend he made was Elena.”

  My skin itched. I was always careful not to ask too many questions about their relationship but this was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

  “How did they meet?”

  “Why don’t you ask Elena? She should be here in ten minutes or so and I have to get ready to leave for Miami.”

  She slipped on the translucent black robe laying on one of the stools but something in my face made her hesitate on the way to her bedroom.

  She sighed and came over to cup my face in her warm hands. “We have all been apart for a long time, Gigi, and we are all used to keeping ourselves to ourselves, yes? So, if you want to know something, you must not be afraid to ask it or else you will never really know.”

  I nodded but didn’t meet her eye as I moved away to clean my brushes before Elena arrived. Cosima’s signature sigh punctuated her exit and I was grateful for the few minutes alone I had before my older sister arrived.

  I hadn’t seen her since the day Sinclair had invited me fishing but we had spoken over the phone about her appointment today. Though we hadn’t talked yet about her sexual hang ups, I was already picturing her standing tense and rigid before a background of wood planks, naked but for the magazines, something like Playboy or Sports Illustrated, held tight to her private areas. It wasn’t an unusual feeling, the inferiority complex that could make a woman as stiff as a board, but I knew my sister had it in spades. I wasn’t judging; before Sinclair, I had been very much like that too.

  After washing my brushes gently in solution, I set them out to dry and moved my easel to face the wall, so that it would remain private until its completion. I grabbed my large sketchbook and my tin of charcoal before settling on a stool at the counter to do some preliminary drawings.

  My mind wandered as my hand swooped across the thick page, inevitably settling on my situation with Sinclair. In just over two weeks we had lunched together twice, gone to see Cage play a solo set at a new bar in Soho, and attended an art show in Brooklyn. We had been careful though, not to be anywhere private. After what had happened at Cosima’s apartment, I think we were both wary of our control. It was also the reason why I hadn’t asked him to sit for me even though Elena wanted his portrait done in less than a month. Instead, I chose to work from picture and memory. There were enough photos of him on the yacht in Mexico and online, that I felt confident enough to produce his likeness.

  I would see him tonight too, at the Romani International gala but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. He would be there with my sister, his girlfriend, on his arm. They made a beautiful couple, immaculate as wedding cake toppers.

  Even though we hadn’t touched inappropriately since I had stroked myself at his behest after the club that night, the electric current between us was constantly charged and I wondered if we would be able to mask it well enough to fool our families tonight.

  “Giselle.”

  I looked up at Elena and tried not to sigh in defeat. She stood before me in a gorgeous grey cashmere coat that perfectly complimented her long artfully curled bob. Her heart shaped face was exactly the same as mine but her features were more refined, delicate and small like a China doll. Only her eyes, a deep grey under slightly heavy lids, could have been anything but classically pretty, maybe even sexy if she let them be.

  I shook myself as I stood up to give her a kiss on each cheek. “You look lovely. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  She shook her head and swallowed. “It’s after four, isn’t it? I’d love some whiskey.”

  My eyebrows shot up before I could help it. “Uh, sure. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and I’ll get us some glasses.”

  We were quiet as I puttered about the kitchen looking for the alcohol and tumblers but she was thinking so loudly it rivaled the buzz of the refrigerator.

  I smiled gently at her as I sat down and handed over her drink. “I know you might be uncomfortable but we should talk about your, um, sexual preferences before we get started.”

  “I don’t like it,” she blurted out, her eyes enormous with horror. Her hand clamped over her mouth as she shook her head.

  I watched her mutely as she took a long sip of the burning whiskey and straightened her shoulders. “I apologize. I meant to say, I don’t really enjoy sex.”

  What!? How could she not enjoy sex with Sinclair? Of all the things she could have divulged, I never would have guessed it was this.

  “I understand that men need it,” Elena explained calmly, as if we were taking about the weather. “But I’ve never really understood the appeal.”

  “Have you never orgasmed?” Again, I couldn’t fathom that Sinclair, the man who had unraveled me so thoroughly in Mexico, could have failed to bring any woman the ultimate pleasure.

  I felt a little sick, talking to Elena about Sinclair like that but I had trapped myself in a corner and could only pray that we ended the conversation quickly.

  She stared into her nearly empty glass and swirled the contents. Her face was slack with unspeakable sadness.

  “Do you remember Christopher?”

  A shudder racked my body. Why was she bringing him into this? I nodded.

  “When you left he came back for me, still wanted to marry me.” Her accent had slipped back into her words, a silk ribbon strangling her speech. “Mama approved. She didn’t know about what had happened between you and he.” She shot me a look, not accusatory – I could have dealt with that – just sad. “She let me stay with him a lot, because we were going to be married. He took advantage of it, keeping me for days at a time.”

  “What did he do?” I whispered.

  I knew what Christopher was capable of.

  She shrugged soggy shoulders. “A lot of things. Things that I don�
��t have words for. One day he went too far. Luckily, Cosima was in town. She came to take us to America.” She laughed wetly, her sloe-eyes glistening. “I still don’t know how she found me, but that was the last time I ever saw him.”

  We were silent. My hand trembled as I poured her more whiskey.

  “Anyway, I can orgasm and, trust me, with Daniel, I do. But the desire for it.” She shrugged. “It’s just not really there.”

  I stared down at my sketchpad for a few minutes as I tried to digest our conversation. The silence wasn’t awkward though, and when I looked back up at my older sister she was biting her thumb nail like she had done as a child.

  “Hey Elena?” I murmured, waiting until her low-lidded eyes met mine. “Do you want to go out for a drink?”

  “Well, what about the painting?”

  I stood up and winked at her. “I’d rather get drunk.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Elena grinned too. “Let’s do it.”

  We didn’t get drunk. After all, I was drinking with Elena, a notorious stick-in-the-mud, and we were only a few hours away from a highly publicized charity gala. But we had a few glasses of delicious Italian wine at a ridiculously chic bar Elena had chosen not far from the apartment. We talked about work mostly because it was one of the only things on the very short list of acceptable topics to talk about with each other. Her passion for the law came through in her suddenly expressive hands and the way her speech slipped and swayed into broken English in her haste to explain the legal profession to me. When she tried to deviate, I choked a little.

  “Excuse me?”

  She shrugged elegantly. “You seem to be very close with him. I was just curious, are you sleeping with him?”

  “Elena!” I laughed nervously and watched as she took it the wrong way, thinking it was true, that I must be sleeping with the sexy French singer.

  I didn’t know what to do. How could I tell her it was because I was sleeping with the sexy French businessman instead?

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Cosima, her dramatics are rubbing off on you.”

  “Oh calm down, I was just shocked that my conservative older sister wants to discuss my sex life. Sebastian would be in hysterics if he heard you now.”

  She frowned and I took a moment to notice how the expression barely creased the skin across her forehead, besides her eyes. She was so perfectly modulated that it was like interacting with a robot, one dressed very tastefully in a Club Monaco sheath dress.

  I sighed. “I am not sleeping with Cage. He’s just a good friend.”

  “A very handsome one.”

  “Are you saying handsome boys and girls can’t be friends, Elena? That seems like pretty simple thinking.” I couldn’t help the little barb, insulting her intelligence was the weakest chink in her armor.

  “I don’t believe they can.” She sniffed. “And anyway, I don’t know why you would want to spend time with such a barbarian.”

  I laughed. “Cage is hardly a barbarian. Now who’s being dramatic?”

  “Who is being defensive?”

  I glared at her. “Listen, Elena. I’m not comfortable talking about my sex life with you but that doesn’t mean I’d lie about being with Cage. I am not.”

  She pursed her lips and stared at me intently as I swung my coat over my shoulders and collected my bag.

  “Please don’t tell me I’m the only one in our family without some weirdo fetish.”

  My head snapped back so quickly it hurt but I masked the pain, and my horror, so that I could look at her unaffected. I wondered briefly if Sinclair was rubbing off on me.

  “Weirdo?” I echoed.

  When she remained unfazed, her eyes wide and filled with insecurity infested waters, I realized that my older sister, a pillar of strength, was terrified of being found wanting.

  I sighed and leaned over into her personal space to press a warm kiss to her cheek. It was something Cosima would have done, or Seb, but I was beginning to understand how much more eloquent touch could be than the spoken word.

  “You’re perfect, Elena. No comparisons necessary.”

  She smiled and patted my hand where it lay on the table. I watched her awkward movements with a raised brow and she sighed lightly before entwining our fingers. A lock of beautifully curled hair fell across her white forehead like a wine stain on a fancy tablecloth. She was so lovely in her timidity that it took my breath away.

  “I’m not very good at this communicating thing,” she said, waving a hand through the air to illustrate her lack of eloquence. “To be perfectly frank, you make me uncomfortable. I know you don’t mean to, but that is the way I’ve always felt.”

  “Um, okay,” I said, because while I appreciated her attempt to open up, what else was I supposed to say to that?

  She squeezed my hand before releasing it. Our increased physical distance seemed to calm her skittishness. “What I mean to say is, family is important to me and I would appreciate it if we could both make a greater effort to get to know each other again.”

  The portion of my soul that was supposed to house my moral compass was achingly empty and hollow against the knock her words had rung upon it. My hand shook slightly with the reverberations as I reached for my glass and swallowed the last of my wine.

  “I’d like that, Elena. Very much.”

  She smiled, a slight but genuine tilt of her closed lips. “Good. As an olive branch, I would love to set you up with a wonderful friend of mine. His name is Ulrich Wick, he works in finance and he has the loveliest head of hair.”

  I bit my lip against my protest because as far as olive branches went, it was relatively harmless and honestly, it would probably do me good to go out with someone new.

  “That sounds lovely.” I leaned in to give her a hug and smiled slightly when she gave me her customary pat on the back.

  “Does Wednesday work for you?”

  “Sounds great,” I said I donned my coat and began to walk towards the door. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Excellent. Oh and Giselle?” she called after me. “Try to wear something more appropriate for daytime.”

  I waved my consent at her over my shoulder and pushed through the door into the welcome city bustle.

  Despite the awkwardness, I was glad we had spent some quality time alone. It didn’t change how I felt about Sinclair, it hadn’t lessened or intensified my guilt, and, honestly, it hadn’t made me feel any closer to Elena.

  It was strange how indifference could cripple a relationship just as assuredly as animosity.

  Still, I hadn’t spent quality with my eldest sister in years and it was interesting to catalogue her growth and sameness. She went for a manicure every ten days but still picked at her hangnails when she was nervous, and she spoke with a perfect English accent but the wrinkle between her brow when people spoke too quickly belied her aptitude with the language. She was such a writhing mass of contradictions I wasn’t sure how to read her, let alone get along with her. And I was okay with that.

  Did it make me a terrible person that I found my time spent with Elena most lent itself to my relationship, or lack of one, with Sinclair?

  Because I could understand now how he could love her, how very compatible they were even if it was artificially. The superficiality of their likeness was exactly the point of their relationship; they both liked to live life behind a meticulously honed mask of respectability and elegance.

  I looked in the mirror as I carefully applied the last of my lipstick, a deep reddish pink that complimented the dark grey, silver threaded dress Cosima had helped me choose earlier that week. The silk flowed down my curves like rainwater over steel, binding my waist and baring a deep square of flesh between my breasts. My auburn hair, lighter than it had been since my sun kissed summers in Napoli, spiraled softly around my lightly freckled shoulders.

  “It’s good.” I murmured to myself in the mirror, sucking in a deep breath and adjusting my full breasts in the tight panels to show them off to their
best advantage.

  But I didn’t feel good. My heart was fragile and dry in my chest, something that had been set aflame and with each beat turned slowly to ash. I wished Cosima was here to press a fragrant kiss to my cheek and tell me I was beautiful or Brenna, who would have already popped the champagne and made our preparation into a party. I wasn’t used to dressing up but it felt sad and a little wrong to do it alone, especially when I was already wretched with the thought of facing Éclair (my couple name for Elena and Sinclair).

  I grabbed my jeweled clutch and slipped my feet into delicately strapped black shoes before opening the door to leave.

  “Mind a tag-along?”

  My head whipped up, a lock of my hair sticking to my eyelashes, to see Sebastian decked out in a gorgeous black tuxedo. He held a box of sweets from Dylan’s Candy Bar and a small silver flask.

  “This is to get us through the night.” He indicated the flask and then held up the candies. “And this is your reward for afterwards.”

  “A handsome man comes to my door bearing gifts? I’d be a fool not to take him.” I slipped into his arms for a spicy scented hug and closed my eyes for a second to absorb how good it felt to be with my brother again.

  We stood like that for a moment before I murmured, “How did you know I’d need you?”

  He hesitated and pressed a kiss to the top of my hair. “Cosima might have suggested it.”

  My heart stuttered. I knew Cosima was perceptive, but how much had she surmised about my relationship with Sinclair? Could she possibly know?

  “Come on Cinderella, you’ll be late for the ball.”

  Sebastian gently pulled me from his arms, placed the candy on the side table and locked up the apartment with his spare key.

  We traveled in Sebastian’s town car, a luxurious Bentley with cream leather interior that still retained its new car smell. His driver, a short stocky man with vibrant orange hair, greeted me in a thick Scottish accent before Sebastian put up the privacy screen.

  He opened the flask, took a long swig and passed it to me, watching me with narrowed eyes as I swallowed a burning mouthful.