Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  As if I was being honest with myself.

  Earnestness barely made a blip on my radar.

  I needed to touch her to soothe an ache that the contact only made sharper.

  “Okay, Logan. You win.” She nodded and let the curtain drop, looking up at me with warm amber eyes, close enough for me to see the renegade dot on the left one. “We play it safe.”

  Reluctantly, I let my hand fall from her shoulder. “Good. I think that’ll make it easy in the end.”

  “Yeah.”

  I was about to suggest we pull the car all the way back so we could move her stuff into the guesthouse. Then maybe dinner. Lock down more of our story. Review a schedule of events I had coming up.

  But the doorbell rang.

  18

  ELLA

  When his hand slid away, my shoulder went cold. I wanted him to touch me again, fold me in his arms, tell me how I wasn’t losing my life and everything I worked for, but gaining space to start fresh.

  But it would have turned into more than that. The night before, an overwhelming passion had landed us on the hood of a car. It was still there, crackling between us.

  The guesthouse was the right choice. Once I moved my stuff in there, it would be easier. Day by day, we’d cool off.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” I asked.

  His house was open to the street. Any Jehovah’s Witness or political campaigner could ring the bell.

  “No.” He took out his phone and checked the doorbell camera. “Shit.”

  I peered at the glass and recognized the man in the backward baseball cap, bouncing as if the cars passing thrummed a baseline and the birds tweeted EDM.

  “Well,” I said, “are you going to leave him standing there?”

  * * *

  “I’m, like, real sorry, man. It’s just for temps, until I save some cash for a place.” Colton had both feet on the floor and half an ass on a kitchen stool, rocking it back and forth on the edges of the legs.

  Logan’s face was tense, waiting for Colton to crash onto the tiles. If Colton stayed too long, he was going to take years off my husband’s life.

  “How much cash?” Logan asked, pulling a bottle of wine from the glass-doored cooler in the center of the refrigerator.

  “Nah, nah. Dad said no handouts from you guys.”

  “Oh, did you think I was going to offer you money? I was asking about time.”

  “Give me, you know… a month or two. I figured I’d house-sit while you’re on your honeymoon.”

  “Honeymoon’s on hold until next year,” Logan said.

  I was about to ask Logan which glasses to use, but as the lady of the house, I could get whatever I wanted. I pulled down three wine glasses and made eye contact with Logan, who nodded as he drove the corkscrew.

  “Cool, cool. I’ll stay out of the way. I’m not trying to witness all your”—Colton waved his hand from me to Logan—“newlywed shit.”

  “Not our kink,” Logan replied before yanking the cork with a pop.

  “Did he just, like, make a joke?” Colton asked me.

  “You didn’t laugh.”

  “Still.” He pushed one glass toward Logan. “Fill ‘er up, brah.”

  * * *

  Logan stood behind me at my bedroom window, looking at the guesthouse. Colton had all the doors open and the lights on, walking around the pool with the phone to his ear. We’d unloaded his car into the back and taken my things upstairs.

  “Well, good thing I kept my studio.”

  “Good thing.” When he spoke, I felt his breath on the back of my neck.

  “How long do you think he’ll be around?”

  In the window’s reflection, Logan shook his head, watching Colton kick off his shoes and sit at the edge of the pool to splash his feet.

  “We’re in virgin territory here.” He touched the base of my neck, and the skin under his fingers came alive with such force, I had to close my eyes. “You’re going to have to wife it up when he’s around.”

  There was no telling how often that would be, but I’d made a promise, and I was going to keep it. “Slippers and a martini waiting for you when you get home.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “I’m going to be the best wife ever,” I said, turning. “But we’re locking that door. The one between our rooms.”

  “I have all the keys.”

  “You won’t use them.” I laid my hand on his chest and gently pushed him away. “Not if I don’t want you to.”

  He smirked. “I know what you want.” He took my hand off his chest and kissed it, then let go. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Downstairs, Colton laughed.

  Part II

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  19

  ELLA

  I’d gotten my husband a pair of slippers for his birthday. It was a joke only Logan and his mother laughed at, and when I’d set them at the door the first time, we laughed again before he went to a dinner meeting.

  Byron was still in the picture. Logan had fulfilled his part of the deal by getting married, so he was in charge. Finally at the head of the table with Ted in an advisory role. But his wedding had happened so quickly and unconvincingly, his brother hung around so that Logan was able to “enjoy his marriage.”

  Logan was doing his job. My job was to spend a year being perfect.

  I filled six months’ worth of days with Logan’s life, his plans, his demands. He doled out his companionship in teaspoons, still working every hour, and I was the perfect wife for a guy who was never around. My art was a “hobby,” and my friends were available for lunch. Papillion survived without me, as did Bianca, who called on holidays.

  Life was perfect and fine, and I was bored to tears, unfulfilled, uncomfortable, and invisible.

  I was a landmine he brought closer to detonation every time we were in public. He brushed my skin with the backs of his fingers, kissed me for show, held my hand, and gently stroked the back of my neck. Sometimes, even when we were alone, he moved a lock of hair out of my eyes or put his arm around me.

  At Doreen’s birthday dinner, he’d kissed my neck and I’d shuddered so hard I had to close my eyes.

  I thought it would get easier. I’d get bored of his touch, his little affections, but it had gotten worse by the halfway mark. Without a job outside our marriage, I could barely distract myself from the thought of him and the memory of the way he’d moved when he was inside me. My body was basted together and the stitches were slipping. I was going to explode before this was over.

  Every morning, we met in the kitchen. As usual, Logan was already showered, shaved, and wearing his work clothes when I came down. I didn’t know when he actually slept. If he snored, I never heard it through the door, but then again, I slept like a dead thing.

  “You’re up early,” he said. “Coffee?”

  My morning drink changed from day to day. He knew to wait before pouring mine, and I knew he wanted to get it right.

  “Black, two sugars.”

  He handed me my cup, properly sweetened and lava hot. “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah, what time did you get in?” The Wall Street Journal was open to the stock ticker. I scanned down to the PPON.

  “Late.”

  “Papillion’s down,” I said.

  “Not enough.”

  That was his excuse every time. He was going to wait until Bianca drove it into the ground with her shitty T-shirts.

  “What are you doing today?” he asked as if it was ever anything interesting.

  “Lunch with Mandy at Scopes.”

  “Say hi for me.” He stood at the island, hands circling his cup as if he could crush it.

  He had something to say. I knew him at least that well.

  “What?” I said. “Say it.”

  “The Malones are going to be in town.”

  Mike and Twyla Malone owned a swath of land in Tennessee that the Crownes wanted to lay pipeline th
rough. They were in a constant state of almost-but-not-quite making a deal. The last time we’d seen Mike Malone at a business event, he’d gotten drunk and—when Logan’s back was turned—suggested I looked sexually frustrated. He offered to help me out with that. He was right about my dissatisfaction, but that was beside the point.

  I hadn’t told my fake husband about it until the next day. It had taken all morning to convince him not to burn down the Malones’ house.

  “You said Malones plural,” I said. “Twyla too?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you need me to do a thing?”

  “Dinner. You don’t have to.”

  “I’ll go. Just don’t leave me alone with Mike.”

  “Like hell,” he snarled before changing the subject. “I was going to have Selma Quintero join us.”

  I almost spit my coffee.

  “I take that as a yes?” he asked.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “She’s an art dealer. You’re an artist. What’s the problem?”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “It’s dinner.”

  “What the fuck, Logan? What if she wants a studio visit? I have nothing! I’m absolute shit!”

  He took me by the shoulders and bent down to look me in the eye. His face was strength, confidence, the pure willpower to spend six months behind a locked door knowing he had the key. “You’re Ella Papillion, and it’s just dinner. We have six months to make you all the connections we can before we break up.”

  “Before you what?” Colton’s voice came from the back doorway. The fucker was like a cat.

  Logan let go of me.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be wearing the cowbell we got you?” he asked.

  “Dude.” Colton swirled the coffee around the pot. “This coffee or mud?”

  “You have a kitchen.”

  Colton had lasted two months before begging for a job. Ted and Logan put him in the mailroom. I’d warned Logan it didn’t pay enough to get his brother out of our guesthouse. Not with rent in Los Angeles being what it was. He replied with typical rich-person ignorance. How could that be true when the current staff had places to live?

  He wouldn’t budge. Neither did Colton. Six months after showing up, Colton was still in the back house, but now instead of sleeping late, he’d been coming into the front house in the morning to go to Crowne with his brother.

  I enjoyed Colton, but Logan worked eighty hours a week, and morning coffee was the only time I knew I’d see him, and Colton’s presence during that time of day added a level of complexity. Logan and I couldn’t exist as we were normally. We couldn’t just be friends fighting sexual tension. In front of his brother, we had to playact at being married. More touching. More kissing. More reminders I was living with a man who had agreed to never love me.

  “I gotta get going.” Logan drained his coffee.

  “Me too,” Colton added.

  “Take your own car,” Logan said. He put his hand on the back of my neck and looked me in the eye for only a moment.

  Fuck Colton and his new morning routine. I was trapped in Logan’s gaze because of him. He was saying he was sorry he had to do this, but not sorry. Not sorry at all to grip the hair in the back of my head and pull me close. Or kiss me tenderly with lips that lingered. He was so sorry this was harder than it had to be, and not sorry one single bit.

  “I’ll see you tonight?” Logan whispered, still close enough to kiss me again.

  The question was for Colton’s benefit. He wouldn’t get home in time to see me.

  “Sure.”

  He kissed the pierced side of my nose.

  Colton slurped his coffee like a filling toilet tank.

  20

  LOGAN

  Every morning Colton was in our kitchen, I kissed her goodbye.

  Every evening event, every gala, every birthday and family dinner, I showed her the affection of a loving husband.

  Every day I did the same thing with her I did with every woman I’d ever been with—I went through the motions. Except with her, it was different.

  Every day it got harder to lie to myself about why I was touching her. When we were alone together, I reached for her and pulled back. Unless I didn’t. Sometimes what I wanted wasn’t aligned with my body’s interests, and I touched her in spaces where no one needed to be convinced.

  The last time had been only a week before. Morning coffee. She had black ink on her fingertips like a Victorian-era poet. I reached for her hand without thinking and stroked her palm open to see the faded gray splotches.

  “What’s this?” I’d asked.

  She’d shuddered, then jerked her hand away. “Nothing. Ink. I’m working on a thing. It’s terrible.”

  Six more months, give or take. In the corner of my computer screen, I kept a countdown of the days until we filed for divorce. Ostensibly, in the front of my mind, it was a countdown of the days I had to buy up Papillion stock. But the 174 days were the interval before she wouldn’t be a temptation. I wouldn’t have to stay in the office to avoid a constant hard-on. Every time I walked in my house, I wouldn’t feel the rush of her heady jasmine scent.

  She’d be relieved. She didn’t want me touching her anyway. Once we were done, she’d have her dead father’s fucking company and the job of running it.

  I checked the stock ticker.

  Maybe it was time to tell my broker to start buying.

  Byron rapped on my open door. “You in?”

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  Byron dropped onto the couch on the other side of the room, propping his feet on the table. He never sat in the chair on the other side of my desk. That would imply he was in an inferior position and Byron was never, ever the subordinate.

  I sat in one of the chairs across from him.

  “So,” he said. “You seem happy being a married guy.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “Deal was, you’d be in charge and I’d back off.”

  “I am in charge.”

  “What you don’t know is, Dad asked me to stay on.”

  I wasn’t surprised at the deception “for my own good” or the fact that Byron was telling me. The circumstances of the marriage weren’t ideal. I had time to make them so.

  “Mom loves Ella. He’ll come around.”

  “But no tingle still.”

  “Don’t get me started on that shit.”

  “I know, I know.” He took his feet off the table and crossed his legs, putting his arm over the back of the couch so he could take up more room. “We’re gonna close this pipeline deal soon.”

  “You’re an optimist.”

  “I’m an opportunist. We bought a lot of land to lay that pipe on, and some of it is very, very viable for other uses.”

  “Such as?”

  “Residential.”

  Jesus, he was going to throw risk on top of risk because he had nothing else to do.

  “Hear me out,” he said, reading my mind as only a brother could. “This is going to be the safest pipeline ever built. It could leak in ten places, shit, it could crack in half and not a single butterfly would die. It’s safe to live right on top of it, so why not?”

  “What’s Olivia say?”

  She was an environmental attorney and wasn’t the type to pull punches.

  “She agrees.”

  “And Dad?”

  “I came to you first.”

  That had never happened before. Byron liked to come to me with our father already sold, which meant I had to work twice as hard to unsell him. The only reason he’d switch it up would be because he didn’t think he could get Dad to say yes.

  “Why?”

  “Because…” He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, rubbing his hands together between his knees. A real Ted Crowne gesture. “I want to build shit, not move numbers around. And Dad’s the same as you. Doesn’t like risk, and building’s a risky business. So I propose this.” He rubbed his hands faster, then stopped. “I lease the land from C
rowne under my own corp. Release you from liability. Build shit.”

  “That’s not going to work if you’re an officer.”

  “I’ll back off the pipeline.” He sat back again. “There’s plenty else to do around here.”

  Byron was a live-in nemesis and a shrewd businessman who bent the truth whenever it suited his goals. He couldn’t actually think this was going to fly with our father, even if I advocated for it. He would have to choose between this scheme and running the business with me.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked. “I can smell brain cells burning.”

  “Trying to work out your angle.”

  “My angle’s personal. Olivia’s sick of me frowning. I’m a lot more use to her and Garrett if I’m doing something I love.”

  Olivia was a wise woman and he was smart to listen to her. They knew each other well. They could nudge each other toward happiness. Encourage decisions for the good of the family.

  What was good for Ella and me?

  It didn’t matter. First and foremost, I had to get rid of Byron. Getting behind this meant he’d have to go. Once he was out, I could do for Ella what he was doing for Olivia. Make her happy. Give her what she wanted.

  “All right,” I said, standing. “Let’s talk risk.”

  I went through the motions of hashing out the details, but I was phoning it in. The puzzle I was really solving was how to nudge Ella toward happiness.

  * * *

  Malibu was a wreck of traffic at lunch. Supposedly, it was impossible to get a table at Scopes, but I’d never had a problem. The parking lot of the trendy Asian fusion place was full, but the valet guy promised to find a safe spot for the Merc.

  I looked for Ella and Mandy at the communal tables, but found them sitting at one of the few separated from the crowd.

  “Logan!” Mandy cried when she saw me, standing with her arms out. “What an awesome surprise!”