I exited the bathroom as stealthily as possible. Not too difficult on carpet and with bare feet. I dressed quickly, tossing my nightie to the bed. I slipped on loose drawstring pants and my favorite comfy sweatshirt with the words Schrute Farms scrawled across my chest. It was definitely my stay-at-home-and-lounge-all-day-wear.
I could call room service for breakfast, but that would take forever. It would be quicker to go downstairs myself. Shoes on and handbag slung over my shoulder, I eased open my bedroom door and peered out, holding my breath as though he might hear even that. He was a bodyguard, after all.
The small living area was dark for whatever reason—maybe the drapes were thicker and less light crept into the room from the window. His door was still open. Of course. He hadn’t closed it last night after rescuing me from my nightmare. My face burned hot at the memory of that. The light of day did not spare me from or lessen that embarrassment. I was not eager to face Moretti after he had very nearly launched me into orgasm. The entire incident was mortifying. Especially considering he had been the one to end it. He had been the one to come to his senses. Not me. I would have merrily gone ahead and fucked him.
The sound of a shower running alerted me to the fact that I wasn’t the only one awake early. He was in the shower, which meant this was the perfect time to take off. Less worried about the noise I made, I propelled myself through the door and out into the hall.
The dining room was fairly empty this early, and I soon had my food.
I ended up ordering a traditional English breakfast replete with fried eggs, back bacon, sausages, mushrooms, beans, grilled tomatoes, and buttered toast. It was lavish and decadent and probably a million calories, but I did not care. I stopped counting calories right about the time I left Charlie.
I took a hearty bite and chased it with a sip of orange juice. I was halfway through my plate when I spotted Moretti in the threshold of the restaurant. He did a quick scan and then his eyes landed on me, narrowing faintly.
I lifted my coffee cup in salute to him and called cheerfully, “Mr. Moretti! Join me. Would you like some coffee?” I motioned for the waitress to bring another cup. There was plenty of steaming coffee left in the carafe.
He sank down in the chair across from me. For a big man, he moved with grace and ease. He set his hand on the table, his long fingers splayed on the surface in idle repose, and yet he emanated an air that was the exact opposite of calm and relaxed. For all his silence and stillness, he brought to mind an animal ready to spring at provocation. Last night I had felt his strength and power as he had pinned me down. I reached for my juice, suddenly desiring a sip of something cool and sweet.
A waitress deposited a coffee cup in front of him. “Can I get you something to eat, love?”
His gaze flicked to the food spread before me and I tensed, ready for some judgy remark about the bounteous amount of food. Instead, he said, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Thank goodness he wasn’t one of those boiled eggs with a side of fruit kind of men. I thought he might be, given the lack of body fat on his person. He could probably do with two English breakfast platters.
“Very good.” The waitress nodded distractedly and looked to the doors. A large family with rowdy children had just entered.
“Thank you,” he murmured as she departed.
I watched his hands lift the carafe and pour himself coffee. He dropped in several cubes of sugar into his cup. An odd thing. I couldn’t help think a no-nonsense man like him wouldn’t need to sweeten his coffee. With a quick stir, he settled back in his chair, bringing the cup to his lips for a slow sip.
He settled his dark eyes on me. “You left without alerting me.”
I arched an eyebrow. Suddenly, I realized he was mad. This was him mad . . . which wasn’t that different from him not mad. It was very nearly imperceptible. A subtle tension on the air. His voice remained even and composed. He was a little more broody, but that was it.
I stabbed at a sausage. I’d stayed in the hotel. It wasn’t as though I took off to a restaurant across town. “I’m not required to report my comings and goings to anyone.” It had been a long time since I lived under my mother’s roof—and four years since I had last been married. I was my own person now and that wasn’t going to change.
He traced the edge of his cup and I followed the slow movement of that finger, imagining it trailing over my skin. “You need to let me know when you’re going somewhere.”
I snapped my gaze back to his face. We stared at each other for a long spell in silent battle. Several colorful replies danced at the tip of my tongue, but I miraculously refrained. Readjusting my grip on the fork and knife in my hands, I vigorously sawed into the sausage I had pinned with my fork. “I was hungry. I did not think I needed permission to eat breakfast.”
“You don’t. Of course.”
I ate a bit of grilled tomato, chewing thoughtfully.
He leaned forward slightly in his seat, his fingers setting a soundless staccato rhythm on the table’s surface. The motion seemed somehow . . . agitated. I was agitating him. The realization made me smile.
“Do I . . . annoy you, Mr. Moretti?”
His nostrils flared a fraction. “Of course not.”
“Hm.” I picked up my toast, letting the corner of bread drag along my bottom lip.
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
“I’m here to accompany you,” he said tightly, the sound of his voice oddly strained. “Where you go, I go. I can be useful. Let me be. Last night—”
“Last night won’t happen again.” Heat flushed through me. I did not think he would be so bold as to mention last night. I wanted to believe it had been an aberration instead of proof of my vulnerability. He probably thought I was randy and his for the taking. “I don’t usually have nightmares,” I rushed to add. And I didn’t usually react like an oversexed divorcee immediately following them when I did.
“But you did have a nightmare.” His gaze roamed my face. “What was it about?”
I wasn’t about to tell him.
I looked down at my food, arranging and rearranging it until I had the perfect forkful—a combination of fried egg, sausage, and tomato. I chewed and then took a bite of buttered toast. “This is really good.”
Something flickered in his eyes as I savored my food. Just a ripple of something and then it was gone. His dark eyes returned to their normal obscurity.
The waitress returned and placed his food before him. He wasted no time tucking in. He didn’t savor it with same enthusiasm I did, but he ate with such whole-hearted focus that I knew he approved of his food. Even though he started after me, we finished at the same time.
I leaned back in my chair, finishing my coffee.
He wiped his lips with his napkin and looked back up at me. “Do you have plans today beyond the agenda I received from your publicist?”
“I thought I would pack and get ready for the event this afternoon before catching the train this evening.” I didn’t feel up to visiting all the sights on my wish list with him beside me. That would feel too intimate. Like we were friends. Like he wasn’t someone hired to be with me.
“We’re not taking the train.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The train is too crowded. Too many unknown variables. It’s safer to drive.”
Unknown variables?
I set my coffee cup down. “I have a reservation—”
“I’ve already cleared this with your publisher. I will be driving you to Edinburgh. It’s only a few more hours by car.”
I was seething. Now we were doing a road trip together? He was fully entrenched in my life. “Any other surprises you want to spring on me?”
He continued, “Does it really matter how you get where you need to be as long as you get there?”
Did he have to sound so very reasonable?
I breathed in and out of my nose. What mattered was that a man was calling the shots in my life. Again. That was intolerable. You
would think Melani would know that. She had edited my book, after all.
I dropped my napkin on the table and pushed back my chair, ready to stand, ready to escape. Even if I couldn’t.
Even if I was stuck with him and the completely confusing way he made me feel. I alternately wanted to run from him and climb him. Yeah. Totally confusing.
“I’m sure you can handle the bill. You seem to be handling everything else.” Except my orgasm. He’d failed on that score last night, ending about ten seconds too soon when he suddenly remembered that we weren’t supposed to boink. “I’m going to get ready and pack.”
He nodded as though he had come up with that idea himself. “Yes, I’ll take care of that, I’d like for us to get on the road as soon as your event ends.”
I stood without giving him the courtesy of acknowledgement. I wasn’t in the mood for courtesy right now. Not when things felt so very out of my control.
Chapter Five
The library was packed. Over a hundred people were arranged before me in chairs. It was a relief, of course, and I could breathe a little easier. An empty house was always a niggling worry for an author, especially when it was your first book stop on a publisher-sponsored book tour. You wanted a full house.
The library’s event coordinator had requested that I perform a short reading. Perform wasn’t really the right word, although I did feel as though I was putting on a show. Reading words I wrote four years ago as I was reeling from divorce number three and flitting through varying states of numbness, shock, and rage always felt a little strange now that I was content with myself and my life. I suppose I asked for this though, when I sat down and starting writing.
It definitely felt as though I was on exhibit, broken open and exposed, as I stood before the crowd reading a passage.
“ . . . in the aftermath of my marriage, I did not feel alone. Someone else was there beside me. It was me. Just a memory at first. Then a shadow that grew and took form into the girl who used to dance alone in her room, who read Sherlock Holmes late into the night without a care that the light from her bedside lamp might wake her husband at any moment . . . who ordered cheese pizza with mushrooms because that was the way she liked it. It was me again and I had missed this girl. A lot. I was glad to have her back.”
I closed the copy of my book with a muffled thud and faced my audience. For a long moment no one said anything. No one moved, and then a woman clutching my book to her chest timidly lifted her hand slowly in the air.
I nodded at her. “Yes?”
One of the library’s staff rushed over to her with a microphone. She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to say I really enjoyed your book and I was hoping I could ask you a question.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
For some reason a movement in the back caught my attention. Moretti stood there, easing against a column. He scanned the room almost casually, appearing unaware of my words or me.
It was deceptive, of course, because he was not casual at all and he was aware of everything. He was on the job. He was wholly aware of our surroundings, and that included me. I could only hope, however futile, that he hadn’t been listening closely as I read out loud. I felt rather insecure knowing he had been listening. Absurd, of course. They were words I had put out there for all the world to feast upon. Anyone could read them. Perfect strangers did read them. Sure. When I started writing the book it had just been something for me alone, an exercise in self-indulgence, but once it became published it no longer belonged to me. It belonged to the world. It belonged to every reader.
I fixed my attention on the nervous woman before me.
“What do the initials V.M. stand for?” she asked.
Of course it was a question I was not inclined to answer.
I smiled to soften my rejection. “V.M. Mathers is my name.”
“But they are initials.”
“Yes,” I acknowledged, determined to leave it at that. My name wasn’t up for public consumption. There was a reason I went by Vee. I wasn’t about to put the name my mother gave me on the cover of a book. I’d been harassed enough over it as a child. I did not need to endure it as an adult, too.
The woman took a breath and moved on to another question. “Are you really happy being single forever? I mean . . . do you never want to meet someone and fall in love?”
All eyes fastened on me, waiting for my answer.
“But I have fallen in love. With myself. I like myself in a way I never did when I was married. It wasn’t until I was single and on my own that I finally flourished.”
Several women in the audience nodded as though they commiserated.
The woman asking the question persisted. “But what if the perfect man, your soul mate exists, and he’s out there waiting for you?”
I scoffed. “Fairytales. The kind we’ve been fed all our lives.” More nods in the audience. “If we’re good enough, sweet enough, patient and obedient little girls, our Prince Charming will arrive and save us. Well, I say wait no more. I say save yourselves.” I shrugged. “I don’t need a man to be whole. I don’t need a man to be happy. I don’t need a man to—”
“Orgasm!” a woman cried out.
The audience cheered and clapped and hooted at the interruption. It was probably the most commotion to ever occur inside this library.
I chuckled. “I believed we’ve now moved on to chapter eight.” Smiling, I gave a slight shake of my head. It was the chapter everyone wanted to talk about at these things. “But this is true. Three marriages and I never had satisfaction. No orgasms. Not like what I have now at my own hand. A woman does not need a man for sexual fulfillment.”
Applause.
My face heated even though I had spoken on this topic at several gatherings. You could take the girl out of the small town, but you couldn’t take the small town out of the girl. It always felt strange to admit such a thing in front of strangers—in front of an audience no less than a hundred deep. But again, I had asked for this when I wrote about such private matters. That anyone cared about my thoughts and opinions still left me in awe. For so much of my life my voice had not been heard or appreciated when I asserted it. Now I was heard, and unbelievable as it seemed, I was helping other women take control of their own lives and bodies and pleasure. Any small amount of embarrassment was worth that.
My face was still uncomfortably warm as my gaze moved over the audience, seeking him again. This time Moretti wasn’t scanning the room. He was looking directly at me with his alert eyes, his frame rigid as stone.
There was no mistaking that he had been listening to me. He had heard every one of my words.
A woman does not need a man for sexual fulfillment.
His dark eyes drilled into me as though challenging me . . . challenging my words. As impassive as his expression remained, I felt his incredulity, his disbelief.
Several hands flew up in the air during my pause. I looked away from him and called on a young woman sitting in the front row.
She straightened in her chair and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Uh, Yes. First thank you for your book. It was revelatory to me.” I smiled at her. “I want to know though . . . how hard was it to leave your husband? To leave everything you had?”
I nodded slowly. Each time a marriage ended it had been hard, but the last time was the one in which I had unequivocally walked away. I’d left him. My first two marriages, I’d been the dumpee, because I still hadn’t figured out how to put myself first—I still didn’t love myself. Charlie had been different though.
My third marriage was the one I left. I’d decided I’d had enough and that I deserved more. Better. Charlie had a hard time accepting we were over. He’d wanted to cling to our union, glaring defects and all.
“It was hard. But no harder than staying. It’s better to be happy alone than miserable with someone.” For some reason my gaze drifted to Moretti again. He stared back at me, his gaze inscrutable.
“Blasphemer!”
The a
udience turned and twisted, searching for the source of the outraged voice. He wasn’t hard to locate. I might have noticed him sooner if I hadn’t been so attuned to where Moretti was in the audience.
He stood at the back, near the doors to the library’s entrance. He was an older man, holding several books in his hands as though he had just checked them out from the library. That happened sometimes. Occasionally, when the venue was at a library, people checking out books stopped out of curiosity to listen to me speak. The library was still open to patrons even as they hosted my event.
This guy wasn’t going to buy my book. He had not come to hear me speak, but he had heard me talking. He had heard and he was not impressed. That was his right. But it was not his right to hurl insults at me.
“Jezebel! Harlot! You speak filth.” And then he quoted Exodus, “‘ . . . your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you!’” He gestured to the crowd. “Do not taint these souls with your wickedness. They may yet be saved.”
He advanced, swiping a hand through the air as though he would slice me in half. There was a mad light in his eyes. A zealousness I had seen before. My second father-in-law was particularly avid in his political views. There was no middle of the road for him, and if anyone said anything contrary to his beliefs he would go off like a bomb. His eyes would get all glassy and bright and I would find an excuse to leave the room whenever he erupted like that.
Suddenly Moretti was there. He moved quickly, blocking the angry man from my view and murmuring something that silenced him. With a minimum of fuss, Moretti escorted the gentleman away, looking so damn hot in the process that I felt a little out of breath. As though I had been the one dispensing the man. Moretti was good. He’d diffused the situation before it could even become a . . . situation.
I exhaled, my pulse steadying at my neck. I was grateful I didn’t have to hear him spouting his poison anymore.
A few people sent lingering looks back to the rabble-rouser. Most returned their attention to me, however. I tucked shaking hands into the pockets of my dress and refocused my attention on the crowd with a smile fixed to my face.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 17