Naked Love

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  “I didn’t twist your arm into buying a historic building, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It’s not.”

  My mouth is dry from exhaustion and dehydration and paint fumes. He kissed me once, when I was high on the stuff. It won’t happen again. “This wasn’t about revenge. No. I would have done this for the library. For me.” For Sutton.

  “Are you going to chain yourself to the front doors?”

  That makes me laugh a little. “I don’t have a death wish. Not anymore.”

  He absorbs that for a moment. “Sutton isn’t here.”

  “I can see that.” His hair would glint like spun gold in this light. His blue eyes would dance with a thousand things to say. His absence is as loud as a shotgun. “He’s at the office?”

  “Not likely. He quit after you left.”

  It’s like falling two hundred feet and landing backward in the water. Like having the breath knocked out of me. “What?”

  “He didn’t send me his itinerary, but I figured he would be in LA by now.”

  “No,” I whisper, because that means I’m too late.

  “He can’t exactly pull his money out. Can’t close the barn doors after the horses have been let out, was the way he put it. But he can resign his position. That was him choosing you over money, in case the grand gesture wasn’t clear.”

  There’s no air at all in my lungs. No air in the warm morning mist. I’m left to sink and sink, unable to breathe. Unable to think. Sutton did that for me. He left everything—for me.

  The grand gesture I always wanted from Christopher… Another man gave it to me. It makes me wonder how much of the world I’ve been ignoring in my tunnel vision. How much of life I’ve been hiding from in pursuit of a man who doesn’t want me as much as I wanted him.

  Suddenly I can’t stand to wait a second longer. Whatever threads of love I felt for Christopher Bardot, they fall to the concrete outside the broken library. Gone.

  It doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like being free.

  Is Sutton in LA, knocking on my mom’s condo right now?

  Except she would have called me. And he would have had time to arrive if he followed me quickly. Maybe he hadn’t come for me, no matter that Christopher thought he would. He might have left for good, the way a sad little boy tried to do with a wild horse a long time ago. There would be no water’s edge to stop him this time.

  Christopher studies the painting through his sunglasses. “Cleopatra?”

  There’s a hardness to his jaw like it pains him to speak, and as much as I’ve fought him, I can spare him that. This painting won’t be enough to save the library. Nothing will.

  “She knows what’s coming,” I say, softly so no one else hears.

  He huffs a laugh. “As it turns out, Sutton was right. You do have the skills of diplomacy we need. You can convince people to do anything. Unfortunately you convinced them to hate us.”

  I look away and manage a small smile. “And it turns out you were right. It doesn’t matter whether they hate you. You have the deed and a wrecking ball.”

  “It didn’t have to be like this,” Christopher says, his jaw tight. There’s a muscle that works. A slight flare of his nostrils. The slightest signs that he’s upset. He had those same signs the day the will was signed, but he would not be swayed then. Not now, either.

  Strange, the way I can admire his resolve even as it tears us apart. “It was always like this.”

  “You can probably make them riot,” he remarks, his voice even. “An angry mob.”

  “To break the windows in? To steal the books? A little counter to the purpose.” Besides the breakfast tacos were too delicious. No one could be in a rage after eating breakfast tacos.

  “Or they could form a human chain around the building. It would delay construction, if nothing else.”

  “And cost you money,” I say, gentle now. “If nothing else.”

  “There’s that.”

  “I’m not going to do that. I made my point.”

  “Which is what?” He looks genuinely lost. It isn’t part of advanced economics theory, what’s happening in the streets tonight. It’s community. History. These are things he doesn’t understand.

  “The protest isn’t to stop you. It isn’t even about you, not really. Protest are a voice for people who have been told not to be quiet. It’s the only way we can speak.”

  I’m not so different from Mrs. Rosemont. We protest in different ways, through the historical society and connections to city hall. Through a painting and somewhat less lofty friends I’ve made in Tanglewood. Both of us overruled by bribery.

  Money has the loudest voice of all.

  He finally takes off his sunglasses, revealing eyes that are dark from lack of sleep. It’s been gnawing at him, this act. Even that won’t stop him. That determination of his is going to break more than the building. It’s going to break him, one of these days.

  Once upon a time it broke me.

  “That’s it? You tell me it’s wrong and then you leave?”

  I look back at my Cleopatra with her sad eyes. She looks resolved to her fate. It’s the best art I’ve ever created. Maybe stronger because I knew it would be destroyed.

  Medusa had been different. She’d been angry. Christopher had looked at all that fury and understood it. No, he’d felt it too. The hurt she felt had wrapped itself around him until he felt what she did. If he can understand her then maybe he can understand Cleopatra. It’s not rage she feels, though. It’s determination in the face of unbeatable odds.

  “You could stop,” I tell him, one last attempt.

  A protest may be a voice, but it’s up to him whether he listens. Up to him whether he lets her strength wrap around him. Up to him whether he looks down at me with admiration in his eyes and kisses me like the world could end around us.

  He turns and speaks to the men in the construction crew. Take the day off, he could be telling them. Instead one man gets into the big yellow vehicle with a crane and a wrecking ball that’s taller than me attached. Part of me despairs that Sutton isn’t here with me.

  That was him choosing you over money, in case the grand gesture wasn’t clear.

  He should be standing beside me, holding me. It’s too personal, my relationship with this library. My relationship with Christopher. As if he’s going to plunge that wrecking ball through my heart, instead of the freshly painted face of an ancient Egyptian ruler.

  The construction workers move the crowd back, clearing space for them to work.

  It’s a random construction worker who climbs into the yellow machinery as the crowd boos and shouts. A mover of levers and knobs. It’s Christopher who gestures with his hand. Begin, says that hand. From the moment he was bent over his textbook in that cabin, it’s been leading to this moment. This moment when he would destroy everything.

  A crane extends higher and higher, beyond anything else in sight. Taller than any of the buildings around us, including the library. It brushes up against gray clouds.

  My stomach pitches forward. The crowd falls silent as the crane pivots and pulls the ball away from the library. Cleopatra’s eyes watch it swing toward her, steady, steady, steady.

  The crash might as well be a physical blow. It crushes my lungs and slams into my gut. I’m left reeling, unable to breathe or think or feel anything but pain. Concrete and metal buckle around the ball, which suspends for a moment inside. As it moves away, it leaves a crater so much bigger than its size. Broken wood and brick. Shards of glass.

  Cleopatra is gone. Only the shell of her is left—only the outer edges of her sleek black hair, the bottom of her chin. A work that took a whole night to create, gone in a second. It took longer than one night to paint like that. It took my whole life to dream of something more than business and money and power.

  It’s only by slow degrees that I realize hands hold my arms. They’re keeping me back, behind the barricade, which means I must have tried to run forward. I didn’t mea
n to. It wasn’t conscious thought. Survival. That’s what it felt like.

  The crane pulls back and swings again. Only a little more destruction this time.

  It will take much longer to reach the inner sanctum with the wood counter and the carved wall and the bookshelves. I’m not sure I can watch that long.

  The wrecking ball breaks me a little bit every time it swings.

  A car pulls up at the perimeter, noticeable only because it’s sleek and black and long. A limo, like the kind Daddy used. For a wild second, made uncertain from lack of sleep, I expect to see him step out. He would stop this. Except I’m not sure the real Daddy would have. He probably would have invested with Christopher. Only in my daydreams would he help save it.

  It’s not Daddy who steps out of the limo, of course. Sunlight limns golden hair. Wrinkles shadow a white dress shirt. The crowd parts for Sutton Mayfair as easily as breathing. He has a way of commanding the world without having to say a word.

  Even the man in the crane hits the lever to stop the wrecking ball from a third run.

  Somehow Christopher is beside me when Sutton approaches.

  He holds up a piece of folded paper. “An injunction.”

  “Let’s see it,” Christopher says, his words crisp. He doesn’t sound particularly surprised, nor does he sound particularly angry. This could be a discussion over the weather. He reads the length of the paper with an impassive expression.

  “Turns out the Tanglewood Historical Society had teeth, after all.”

  Christopher folds the paper. “This won’t hold up on appeal.”

  “Maybe not,” Sutton says, accepting the possibility. “But we’re done here for today.”

  Tears prick my eyes. “You’re too late.”

  Sutton looks at the library where there’s no hint a painting had ever stood. Through the heavy dust and wreckage you can see the beautiful carved wall, still standing. “We can repair what’s happened here. There wasn’t any load on those glass turnstiles. Nothing permanent.”

  It feels like something permanent has cracked inside me, but I force myself to focus on what he’s saying. We can fix the front of the library. It’s saved, at least for now.

  “You did this?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

  Sutton shakes his head, slow. “It was Mrs. Rosemont who filed with the court. I gave information in testimony, but it was her connections that made this happen.”

  “But why… why would you help stop this? Why did you resign?”

  Those blue eyes could reach across the entire city, that’s how far he lets me look. This man I doubted. This man I desired. He lets me see the deepest parts of him. “For you,” he says, simply.

  My throat clenches hard. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do this. I couldn’t—”

  “You didn’t have to ask. I couldn’t be a part of this once I saw how much it meant to you.”

  “But your investment.”

  He gives me a small smile. “This one wasn’t business. It’s personal.”

  And then there’s no way I can hold myself back.

  I launch myself at him, feeling every square inch of muscle on him, made tired from whatever he did this long night. He folds me up in his arms. There’s relief and gratitude—and love, in a form more pure than anything I’ve known before. Love without expectation. Without greed. Without jealousy, which I didn’t think was possible. There’s clapping and hooting in the background, but all I can hear is his murmured words in my ear.

  “For you,” he whispers again, fierce.

  He may show up with a legal document and a casual smile, but it was no small thing. It broke some principles inside him, the same way that wrecking ball broke some old hopes inside me. We aren’t whole people who hold each other. We’re each cracked and bruised, but we have each other. God, we have each other.

  It’s only when Sutton turns again, holding me close, that I see Christopher’s dark form against the jarring yellow of the construction equipment. He speaks to the men in quiet terms, his movements decisive and maybe a little stiff. It must have hurt him, this injunction.

  It must have hurt him, to lose his business partner.

  Did it hurt him any to lose me?

  He speaks to me again only when most of the crowd and the construction crew have left. I’m standing in the large foyer of the library, which is quite a bit brighter now that the whole front wall has turned to rubble. Sutton didn’t want to let me in—not until they’ve had engineers to make sure it’s structurally safe, but he let me in as long as he stands beside me. There’s probably something important about that. He’ll let me do anything as long as he can stand beside me. I don’t plan to stay long, since I’m quite certain he’ll throw himself bodily over me if a brick were to fall down.

  The beautiful panes of art deco glass have shattered completely, leaving only misshapen metal in their wake, a skeleton without any flesh. It makes me shiver, looking up at that.

  Rocks shift as Christopher steps into the space. He leaves several yards between us. Does he despise me now? My stomach clenches. I care about him more than I want to, even now.

  “You’ve won,” he says. “For now. The crew decided to start another job.”

  Sutton was the good-old boy who convinced them to wait for this project. For all his money and power and determination, even Christopher couldn’t make them wait any longer.

  It strikes me again that he doesn’t seem angry. Remote, is how I’d describe it. That makes me worry for him even more, like maybe he’s going through shock. A million dollars is a huge amount of money. Is it gone? Bile rises in my throat. It can’t be gone.

  “I’ll buy the library from you,” I say, impulsive.

  Before I can realize that Christopher would never accept that, any more than he would dip into my trust fund all these years. That would be unethical. For a man I don’t trust, he’s remarkably trustworthy.

  “No,” he says, his voice hard. “Thank you, but no.”

  Then he turns and walks away, leaving the two of us in the rubble.

  There’s a sense of loss so wide and so deep, my legs feel weak. My eyes close. Sutton is there to catch me this time, his embrace warm and understanding. I’m not the only one who lost someone. “You were friends,” I say, looking back at him. Sutton’s eyes are shadowed to a dark sapphire, his brow furrowed.

  “We were.” There’s finality there. “He’s the past. You’re the future.”

  And I know he isn’t only talking about his friendship with Christopher. He’s talking about my relationship with Christopher, which has always been too complicated to define. Maybe it doesn’t need to bother me anymore, the amorphous shape of us. It’s over now.

  I turn around in Sutton’s strong arms, tilting my head up. “You’re my future.”

  He pulls me flush against him, and I feel him harden. His lids lower. Electricity runs from the center of his body to mine, making me ache and flush everywhere. “Christ, I want to take you back to that counter and finish what we started.”

  My cheeks turn warm. “There are still people outside. And no doors.”

  A low growl vibrates over my skin as he nuzzles my neck. “And strictly speaking I don’t own the library anymore, the company does, and I don’t work for it. We’re trespassing right now.”

  Something spears my stomach. We don’t have a right to know what happens to this old library anymore. We gave that up, along with Christopher. Ironic, because he’s the one who wanted to destroy it. There’s nothing here but history and potential.

  There’s nothing here for us right now.

  22

  Pile Of Rubble

  In the days that follow I’m alternately called a vandal and a grass roots activist by the local media. The Tanglewood Historical Society invites me to speak at their meeting, which I find ironic enough that I decide to go. Besides, Sutton lives here. We’ve gone out every night the past week—to Thai restaurants and burlesque clubs. There’s no part of the city we don’t want to explore,
so I might as well put down some roots.

  My speech is short and sweet and encourages change through art. There’s a small reception afterward with tea and bourbon croissants, which makes me think I might come back to another meeting. If nothing else I’d like to show them we aren’t all fist-fights at theatres.

  Mrs. Rosemont doesn’t seem to hold it against me. She greets me warmly and thanks me for my work in helping save the library. “We thought it was hopeless, near the end.”

  “I’m glad you had the idea for the injunction,” I tell her, sipping the English breakfast tea. It soothes my throat, which feels a little worse for the wear after my speech.

  She pauses, looking uncertain. “It wasn’t my idea, dear.”

  “Oh.” Sutton must have been modest when he said she filed the paperwork. “Someone suggested that you file the injunction?”

  That makes her laugh. “Suggested? No, he wrote it himself. Had the society’s name on the paperwork. All we had to do was bring it to the courthouse.”

  “Sutton can be efficient when he wants to be.”

  There’s a long pause, where Mrs. Rosemont studies her cup of tea as if it holds the secrets of the universe. “I’m not sure I should tell you this.”

  Unease moves through me. “Tell me what?”

  Her gray eyes are soft. “It wasn’t Sutton who wrote that injunction and gave it to me.”

  “Then who?” Except I already know. There’s only one person who would figure out the exact method of stopping construction. Only one person who didn’t seem at all surprised that it happened. “Christopher.”

  She nods. “Mr. Bardot called me that night. We had to wake up a judge, which was something I helped with. There were other things we needed—the testimony of the partner, for one thing. Sutton Mayfair was called in for that.”

  My hands feel cold. And then numb. “I don’t understand.”

  “I asked him why,” she says, her voice thoughtful. “He didn’t explain himself. I don’t think a man like that explains himself very often.”