Eyes rushing to meet the floor, he crosses his arms in front of his chest. His stance is far too square and defensive.
Son of a bitch!
“You’re staying here.” Casper leaves no room for argument with the finality in his voice. “With all of us.”
Fleur’s irate laugh echoes around him. A part of me wants to protect her from his hulking frame. Side by side, he swallows her small stature.
“It’s funny that you think you can tell me what to do, big man.” The soles of her shoes slap softly on the wood, getting lower the farther she walks away.
Fists clenching, he goes after her, only stopping to scowl at us. “Figure that shit out.”
Awkward silence fills the room when he disappears.
“Fucking Spanish…so archaic in every way,” Freddie grumbles. “Incest is so outdated.”
“The English and Germans were the incestuous prats.” Arabella shows him the finger as she turns to Leo, hands on her hips and a hard set to her delicate features. “We’re fucking even.”
“Nowhere fucking close.” Snapping right back at her, he begins pocketing the balls left on the table, smashing them hard into the netted holes.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I plug the pocket he aims for, catching the ball with an audible crack to my palm. The polished sphere reflects a distorted and squished panorama of the room. “Huh?”
“It’s none of our business.”
“It’s every bit of our business,” Arabella barks at him. “He’s my brother and…and…”
The anger radiating from her is bright and hot. Her chest is heaving.
“And if your suspicions are right,” I sigh, trying to diffuse their argument, “we can’t have him chasing the wrong tail.”
“Jesus! Will you stop trying to make her out to be the enemy? Fleur’s been there for everything.”
“Exactly.” Freddie leans over the side of the pool table, looking at the photos of the crash that could’ve killed Cassie and then farther down the table at the edge where a small photo of the bloody scene from the same night lies. There’s almost no detail. Just midnight-glossed tarmac. Black crimson rivers and estuaries puddling the London road where everything changed. Me, Arabella, our future…
“Why didn’t she get in that car with you and Cassie?” Freddie looks up at Leo, his cheeks sucked in with the scrunch of his brow. “She’s permanently glued to Cassie, but she conveniently leaves her in the bathroom before she’s taken?”
“That doesn’t mean anything? I was there too. I left her too.” Arabella shakes her head. “You’re reaching.”
A spark warms my chest at her vocabulary because it’s a testament to the amount of times she helped me prepare for a moot at uni. Those mock trials were the bane of my fucking life at the time. Even now, thinking back, I’d take the real thing anytime. There’s a thrill in it that can’t be replicated. Holding the future in your hands is a feeling that never gets old. It’s like an aphrodisiac to life.
“She knew where we would be all those times. She knew the security measures. She knew the plans.” Freddie’s dry, bitter chuckle vibrates around us. “Tell me you don’t think it’s strange that she’s been there every single time and somehow she’s come away unscathed.”
“This is ridiculous.” Leo starts for the door, freezing when Benedict storms inside with Dad on his heels and Lucian following.
The three fucking musketeers.
The fourth one is missing though. Charles.
Heaviness blankets the already strained air in the room.
Marching to the table, Benedict throws a wad of printouts onto it. Disgust is rife in his grimace and the look he’s throwing Arabella’s way.
The fact that he’s here is enough to tell me shit’s hit the fan. But his narrowed gaze on me and Arabella has him looking ready to blow a fucking gasket or two.
Anger from our last encounter simmers deep in my gut, and I have to keep pushing it down. I remind myself that if he’s here, something is severely wrong because there’s far too much going down in parliament for him to be here for anything other than business.
“We have a problem.” Nodding down at the pile of papers on the table, he spreads them across our own.
The vision that greets me hits me right in the gut, cutting me deeper than any of my previous thoughts or assumptions of what was going on with Arabella and the Russian.
Unable to say anything that won’t make me out to be a prick, I grab the papers and turn them over only be met with a full page of obscenity.
“That’s not me!” Arabella pushes past me, collecting the image from the table and crumpling it up in her shaking hands. “We never…I never…that’s not me…”
My stomach twists, acid burning up to my mouth. Ripping the ball of paper out of her hands, I do something I probably shouldn’t. The picture is grainy as I pull it open. The tangle of limbs is shadowed just enough that nothing too explicit is on show, making it perfect for the media, but painting a scene that renders me dumbstruck with disgust.
“You have to believe me, Christopher!” Manic words break with tears. “I never let him touch me like that.”
Like that.
But you still let him touch you. Looking at her, I bite my tongue. I refuse to say it out loud in front of everyone. It would break and humiliate her further, and I won’t do that to her. This is already crushing her.
The hunch of her shoulders makes her smaller.
My gaze flits to the table, to the papers now awkwardly scattered over all the research we were going over.
A RUSSIAN AFFAIR
A BILLIONAIRE AND A GENTLEMAN
RUSSIAN ROMP
THE SEVEN MONTH ITCH
Sordid headlines blare up at me, and all I can do not to completely lose my shit is pull Arabella closer. I curl her into me even as I study the image in my hand and all the headlines strewn before me.
Freddie rounds the table quick smart. Standing beside Arabella, he shuffles the papers together, into a scrappy pile.
“I can take them all down before the evening is through.” Squeezing her shoulder, he nods at me. “It’s easy.”
“How do you propose we go about the hard copies?” Benedict barks at him, throwing down the early prints of the tabloids he was still holding on to.
“Let’s start with what we can do and figure the rest out.” Dad breathes out, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes with exhaustion. His hands are swollen; he can barely move them with the bandages. His stance is rigid, and just looking at him makes my body sore.
“You should be resting.”
“I’m fine.” Nodding at me, he comes closer. “We have business to take care of.”
“We can handle it,” Freddie tells him.
“Oh please. You can’t handle shit!” Benedict snaps at him. “I’m still cleaning up the fucking mess you made with Jack.”
“We handled it just fine.”
Leo stands beside me, tall and serious. His arms bulge as he crosses them over his chest, touching mine. “If you’re that bothered, maybe you should’ve taken care of him earlier.”
“He would’ve talked!” Slamming his hands down on the table, Benedict glares at each one of us.
“Bullshit.” I lower myself down to his level, meeting his eyes dead on. “He was waiting to be let go. Kingsley would’ve pulled all the strings he needed to…”
“It wasn’t your problem!” Nostrils flaring and spit flicking from his mouth, he shouts.
Kingsley Fairfax is every bit my problem. He betrayed us all, he almost killed Cassie, and he took Carina away from me and Arabella.
He’s my problem all right, and when I find him…when I get my hands on him…I’ll drain every drop of blood coursing through him. I won’t stop until he is grey and lifeless in my hands.
“He’s all of our problem,” Lucian murmurs, bracing over the edge of the table. “He’s the link. He knows everything because he’s the one moving the money. And they’re right, J
ack wouldn’t talk because he knew who the players are.”
Dad stays still, stuck to the spot he’s on. It’s obvious he’s in discomfort. Opening his mouth to speak, he flinches as he takes a step forward, a hoarse cough bursting from him.
“You need to take it easy,” I tell him again. Blood pumps fiercely through me, my frenetic heartbeat swelling in my extremities as I squeeze the balled paper in my hand.
“We need to discuss this,” he croaks out with a wheeze.
“There’s nothing to discuss. They’re fake. It’s not the club. I only ever saw him at the club.” She’s panicked and enraged.
“Belles…”
“I did everything you told me to.” Her voice tremors as she looks at our fathers. “That isn’t me!” With a growl, Arabella takes the scrunched-up paper from me and rips it to pieces before walking out of the room.
I thought my heart had done all the breaking it could take, but it appears I was wrong. Pain splices my chest, and I’m unable to watch her walk away without following her.
“Isn’t that just the grown thing to do?”
Ignoring Benedict’s words, I keep walking. One foot in front of the other until I’m out of sight and Arabella’s sobs are the only thing I can hear in the whole house. Following their sound through to the kitchen, I find her in the boot room, pulling her coat on.
“Where are you going?”
She looks up at me with dark smudged eyes and shrugs. Anger, sadness, and disappointment bleed all over her beautiful face like watercolours on wet paper. Without a single word, she goes outside before I’ve had a chance to put on my own coat. Instead of walking off, she sits on the covered porch step, huddled in on herself.
“I was careful. The club was safe…secure…”
Zipping up my coat, I sit beside her. “Stop crying. It doesn’t change anything.”
“I’ve tried. I fought. I lost. Now I’m done. I have nothing left.”
“If you’ve got enough in you to cry, you have it in you to keep fighting. And you have me.” I curl my arm around her shoulders, pressing and nudging her into me until she relents and rests her head on my chest. “Don’t let them win, Belles. We haven’t finished with them yet.”
“Those photos…why? Why would anyone print them without verifying the facts first?”
“Are you really asking me that? This isn’t the first time they’ve printed some shitty story about you or me…or anyone. The press are hungry dogs—they don’t care what you feed them; so long as their pockets are full, they’re happy.”
“We have to do something!” Her fist comes down hard on my thigh. “If people see that…”
Shuffling onto the lower step, I kneel in front of her. The storm brewing inside me quietens as it recognises her need for my calm. All the volatile feelings burning inside me dim, and all I feel is the love I have for Arabella.
Stroking her cold, flushed cheeks and trying to clear up the mascara smears around her eyes, I tell her soberly, “It doesn’t matter who sees it. It’s not you. I’ve seen every fucking inch of you, and that girl has nothing on you. She doesn’t have your air or your spirit. Her skin isn’t as golden as yours, and more importantly, her body doesn’t have the history yours has etched into it. She’s nobody, and you are somebody.”
I want to rip myself open and clothe her with my being so she can feel the weight of and know all the things she is to me. I wish I could show her the true extent and meaning of her existence to me. “You are everything to me.”
“But that’s not what everyone else will think. That’s not what they’ll see.”
“Fuck everyone else. Fuck what anyone else thinks. It doesn’t matter.”
My chest aches with the rampant rhythm of my heart. I hate feeling her hurt.
“What do we do now, then?” Running her fingertips over my jaw, her thumbnail scratches over my stubble.
“We become bigger, badder, better monsters than the ones trying to destroy us.”
Arabella smiles.
I smile back.
Without loosening my hold on her face, I kiss her lips softly. They’re so cold that her warm breaths scorch the air between us.
When I pull away, she nods. “Okay.”
Taking her hand, I hold it tight in mine as I stand and bring her up with me. We get back in the house, lose our coats, and head back to the drawing room.
Chapter 38
Arabella
It feels strange being back at the Sinclair house. At one point it felt like home, but now all I can think is of the room next door that was meant to be Carina’s nursery. The hairdresser finishes curling my short hair into relaxed waves as the make-up artist smokes out the dark cocoa liner he opted for with the gold-and-coffee toned shadows he’s used.
I don’t want to go to the event Cassie and Leo’s mother have put together. Good cause or not, I would rather write out a juicy cheque and avoid the whole show. But that’s exactly what we’ve been ordered to do to fix the damage the headlines have done.
A united front. A perfect marriage. Unspoiled.
“All done.” The hairdresser smiles. “The gold on the ends is really coming out now. It looks fabulous.”
“It does.” I smile, but the tug of my lips only makes the tension in my chest grow deeper.
“Now I know you said subtle.” The make-up artist takes a step back, pulling a familiar black bullet out of his paraphernalia belt. “But it’s Christmas, and with the gold in your hair and on your eyes…I think a vintage wine red would go beautifully with the red velvet of your dress.”
Looking at the red ankle-length number hanging on the back of the glass shower wall, I sigh. “It would, but I think something neutral would be better for tonight.”
He comes closer, uncapping the lipstick he has in his hand. “Don’t cower away. That’s what they want. If they see any weakness, they’ll feast on it.”
Nodding, I try to smile a little wider.
“Besides, you have the perfect lips for this colour.” Taking a small pencil brush, he lines my lips with a dark shade of red before taking a wider lip brush and filling the rest of my lips in with a slightly brighter shade. “Now, a gloss would make it killer sexy, but the matt…very Elizabeth Taylor and less pin-up.”
He puts the bullet into my hand and squeezes it shut. The hairdresser starts packing her utensils away with the exception of her tongs and hairspray.
“Remember, you dab the top-up, no swiping. It keeps it classy.”
That makes me laugh. It’s always the last thing he says before he declares me all done.
“Do you need help with the dress?”
I almost nod, but then the vision of my scars has me shaking my head.
“That’s for me to do,” Christopher announces from the now open doorway.
The air in the room heats as I take in his tall, lean form propped on the doorjamb. His dark charcoal grey suit is accented with a white pocket square with deep red embroidery. The white shirt is stark beneath the skinny burgundy tie. With the way he has one leg bent, his toes butting to the floor, you can see the red sole of his shoe. The black leather although matt is supple and smooth.
Standing, I try to calm my erratic heart. Unable to control the need pulsing at my core, I cross my legs, raising onto my tiptoes so I can better press them together.
Both the hairdresser and make-up artist leave us. Quiet stills the room, but my insides buzz, apprehension for the evening mixing into a toxic cocktail with the lust pounding through me.
With a low whistle he comes closer, a shallow grin tipping his features up on one side of his face as he thrusts his hands into his pockets.
“Looking beautiful as ever, morena,” he murmurs into the gap between us. His hot breath s at my stinging lips.
I want to kiss him so bad. To drown in the strength of his body.
Carefully, Christopher runs his fingertips over the waves framing my face. Caressing my jaw with the point of his index fingers, when they meet in the middle, th
ey stroke down the column of my neck. And although the urge to close my eyes and luxuriate in the feeling burns me up, I can’t take my eyes off him.
The way the flutter of his lashes punctuates every exhale brings my body closer to his.
“You are the most precious thing. You know that?”
Closing at the base of my neck, his hands squeeze lightly, thumbs stroking up and down the hollow of my throat.
This time when I smile, nothing aches. Nothing hurts. All I feel is need and love and lust and him.
It is perfect. And I don’t care if anyone else sees it, because he’s right—no one else matters apart from the two of us.
Pressing his lips to my forehead, he shuffles on the spot, moving me with him. A low melodic hum vibrates his chest, and I feel his soft smile broaden on my skin.
A slow churn tightens in my belly. Nausea followed by a wave of suffocating heat. My anxiety over tonight rears its ugly head, and although I try so fucking hard to push it away, I can’t.
“You won’t leave me tonight, will you?” Murmuring into his chest, I make a point of flattening my hands over his pristine shirt so I don’t get lipstick on it.
“No fucking way.”
“Even when you have to mingle?”
“You can mingle with me.”
“And if they try to separate us?”
“You’re not leaving my side.”
I believe him. Christopher leaves no room for doubt as he squeezes me to him, his hands smoothing over the lilac silk of my robe. Over my shoulders to my back, anchoring me firmly beneath his arms like he’s shielding me from the world awaiting us.
“We’re going to be late,” I whisper, hoping that somehow we’ll get lost in the moment and miss the charity art auction.
“Cassie might actually kill us for stealing the limelight from their cause,” he breathes.
“We don’t want to do that.” Taking a step back, I miss his warmth the second the cool air engulfs me in its absence.
Meandering to the shower, he takes the dress off the hanger and looks over the limp material in his hands. A soft, sad smile flits across his features, honeyed eyes darkening.
Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2) Page 32