Nadine hadn’t been able to find a flight from London to New York for the crew until the day after they arrived in from India, so Ben had given her the go-ahead to book them into a hotel for the night. She had also reserved a flight for him to London, as well as a room at the same hotel. There was no possible way he could wait even one extra day to hold Lauren in his arms again, and he planned to be waiting for her and the others at Heathrow. And if Nadine had thought his request a bit unusual, she’d been too wrung out from the day’s events to question him.
He had sent Elle a text to let her know that the crew was safe and well, but that he wasn’t sure when he would be able to leave the office. He walked up the stairs of the brownstone quietly to the second floor, not wanting to wake her if she was already asleep. Elle lived by the old adage “early to bed, early to rise”, and he knew she usually attended a early morning Pilates class.
Her rooms were dark when he reached the landing, so he took extra care to be quiet as he entered his own rooms. Despite his exhaustion, he was still too wound up to even think of falling asleep just yet, so he set his alarm, grabbed a duffle bag from the closet, and began to gather up the clothing and shoes he’d need for the quick trip across the Atlantic.
It was only when he walked inside his bathroom to assemble a few toiletries for the trip that he noticed a dim light coming from his office. Ben frowned, because he hadn’t even been inside that room for over a week. He poked his head around the doorway and almost recoiled in surprise.
“Elle. What are you doing in here?”
She was sitting at his desk and staring blankly at his computer monitor, which he sure as hell hadn’t left on this morning. And she looked as though a ghost had just flown through the room – pale and clearly upset. Her eyes were wide with some unnamed emotion as she slowly lifted her gaze to his.
“You lied to me, Ben,” she whispered. “Over and over again. She lied, too. Both of you have done nothing but lie to me from the very beginning.”
He walked into the room, momentarily ignoring the fact that she had chosen to invade his privacy by using his computer – an agreement that she had actually been the one to instigate right after he’d moved in. Elle was intensely private about her work, had both her laptop and desktop password protected, and they had both agreed never to use the other’s computers unless specifically agreed to by the other party.
And yet here she was, having rather flagrantly ignored that agreement, staring at something she’d found on his PC.
“What are you talking about, Elle?” he asked impatiently, definitely not in the mood tonight for one of her scenes. “And why are you using my computer? I thought we agreed - ”
Ben stopped in mid-stride and in mid-sentence as Elle abruptly turned the monitor around so he could see exactly what she’d been staring at in near-horror – row upon row upon row of photos of Lauren. His very personal, very private collection – the one he had quite intentionally placed into a folder with a very cryptic file name. The vast majority of the photos had been taken six years ago in Big Sur, but there were others that had been added far more recently – last December’s holiday party, the photos he’d copied from her Facebook page of Julia’s wedding, another of Lauren on her motorcycle, a candid shot that Chris had taken of her in profile on one of their recent trips.
“How could you?” asked Elle brokenly, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. “How could you lie to me that way, Ben, cheat on me - ”
“I haven’t cheated on you,” he interrupted. “I told you more than once that I wasn’t having an affair with Lauren and that’s the truth. Those photos – most of them, anyway – are six years old. I knew her back then, met her one summer in Big Sur. But I left and we didn’t see or hear from each other again until I took the job at National Geographic Travel.”
“That’s why you took the job, isn’t it?” she accused. “So you could be near her again. So you could start your dirty little affair back up.”
“No.” Ben shook his head firmly. “When I accepted the job I had no idea she already worked there. I hadn’t looked her up at all over the years, had no idea where she was living or working at the time. And what we had, Elle, was about as far from a dirty little affair as you could possibly imagine, so stop calling it that.”
Elle gasped, a hand flying to her throat. “My God,” she breathed. “It’s her, isn’t it? Lauren is the girl you were so crazy about when I met you, the one you were so broken up over. Oh, God, how did I never see that, never guess?”
Ben wondered wildly how much shittier this day could possibly get, and ran a hand wearily through his hair. “Yes,” he told her quietly. “Lauren was the one. She’s the woman I told you about, the one I fell in love with.”
Elle was shoving her hands into her hair, pulling strands out haphazardly from its previously tidy knot. “I knew it,” she mumbled, as though to herself. “I knew there was something going on between the pair of you. And both of you lied to my face. You and that bitch.”
Ben’s jaw clenched in annoyance. “When did you speak to Lauren about this? And should I assume you were the one to tell her that we were as good as engaged?”
Elle’s bottom lip trembled as she raised teary eyes to his. “We should be engaged,” she murmured. “We’ve been together long enough, it’s the next logical step in our relationship.”
“Except that I don’t feel the same way, Elle,” he reminded her gently. “I’ve always been honest with you about my feelings, have offered time and again to move out, let you get on with your life, and find someone who can love you the way you deserve. I was never going to be that man, and you know it.”
“Because of her!” she burst out. “You couldn’t let yourself love me because you were still in love with that awful woman! And I don’t believe either of you, Ben. I knew, just knew, that you were sleeping with her for months now, maybe ever since you saw her again.”
“I haven’t,” he denied tiredly. “There was one time – just one – when we kissed. But that’s as far as it went.” He didn’t add that the kiss would, in fact, have gone a whole lot further if Lauren’s queasy stomach hadn’t provided a timely interruption.
Elle shook her head. “I still don’t believe you. If there wasn’t anything going on between you, then why didn’t you tell me you’d known her before? I gave you plenty of opportunities, Ben.”
He sighed. “I know you did. And believe me, I thought about telling you many times. But then you’d get upset when a waitress or a store clerk smiled at me, would become hysterical even. And I couldn’t even imagine how you’d react if I told you about Lauren. But I can see now that I was wrong. Regardless of how upset you might have been, I should have told you about her a long time ago, and for that I apologize. I was just trying to protect you, to spare your feelings.”
“Spare my feelings?” Elle spat out. “Well, if you were so intent on doing that, then why in hell did you keep all these photos of her on your computer? And – oh, God – the ones in the bottom rows. They’re more recent ones, aren’t they? This one here – it was just taken in December at the office party.”
Ben was almost ready to collapse with fatigue by now, too wrung out to have this particular conversation with Elle. But he knew there was no hope for it now, that there was absolutely no way she’d let it go until she had the answers she sought.
“Yes, some are recent,” he acknowledged reluctantly. “Which brings up another point entirely. Why are you even looking at my computer, Elle? Especially since you’re the one who insisted we always respect each other’s privacy and leave the other’s computers alone. And I know I didn’t leave this on this morning. I haven’t even used this computer for almost two weeks.”