by Laura Carter
“Aye, alright, Gregory.”
“Moving on to Constant Sources. This is an English incorporated company with offices in England and France. Nick Henshaw, as you all know, retired his directorship two months ago. Since then Tim and Jean-Paul have been taking care of operations. Which of you will be picking up the presentation?”
“I will, Gregory.” Jean-Paul is still brownnosing after the episode with Nick Henshaw. He knows the only reason I kept him and Tim is because they do a good job with that company. He also knows one wrong move and he’s gone.
“Alright, take the floor Jean-Paul.”
Jean-Paul turns to Williams, asking him to move the slide presentation along. His movement causes his black hair to fall into his thick brows. He needs to cut that mop, he looks shabby, it gives a bad impression. Williams clicks over the slide presentation to a graph I’ve already seen and Jean-Paul starts talking through the figures, justifying the drop in net profit with various R and D investments.
My attention appears outwardly to be focussed on the financials illuminating the room but her face comes into my mind. The look in her eye when she asked me why? I told her she needed space to think, away from me, to decide if she wanted to be with me. On some level, I think I wanted that to be the case. In truth, I knew as I was typing an email to her boss, telling him Scarlett wanted to take the Dubai secondment, that her stubbornness, her pride, her insecurities about me, would make her end it. She was right when she called me a coward.
I took the easy way out because I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t tell her I don’t love her.
It’s never been a problem before. When women have swooned and fallen in love with me in the five minutes I’ve kept them around, I’ve told them straight. The thing is, I can’t fall in love. I won’t fall in love. I’ve loved people. I’ve loved two people and that turned to shit. My mother nearly died being beaten to a pulp by my father, all because of me, because I hid. And the other...
Get a grip, Ryans. AGM. Focus. Jean-Paul. Constant Sources.
“...it’s called Black Diamonds. It’s extremely similar to our game, Jail Run. It’s a very similar concept but Black Diamonds is cheaper to download. It’s burst onto the scene in a big way in just a matter of weeks and it continues to grow. It would be fair to say it’s going viral and it could really put a dent in our Jail Run profit margin.” Jean-Paul has moved onto his SWOT analysis for 2016—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on the horizon.
Nick Henshaw is still fishing around, trying to get his claws on more money for the shares he sold back to the company when I forced him to resign—there’s a threat I’m still fending off.
“Who’s the owner of the Black Diamonds software, Jean-Paul?” The question comes from Zara Vanderbilt-Delores, the only female director. Sometimes I wish there were ten of her. She’s shit hot. Really knows her stuff, gets markets and business. Her knowledge tears strips off some of the men and God is she vicious when she wants to be. She’s in camp You’ve Got to be a Bitch to Get Things Done. I would’ve said that was true of all successful women before Scarlett Heath. As a lawyer, Scarlett knows her stuff, she’s quick and her advice is pragmatic, she’s rightfully a high-flyer but she’s not a bitch. She’s territorial. She’ll fight for the people she loves. But she won’t hurt someone until she’s pushed to the edge, she won’t shit on someone just to get what she wants.
Stick with it, Ryans, eye on the ball.
“That’s the crazy thing,” Jean-Paul responds. “It seems to be a young man, a boy. Nineteen. Zimbabwean.”
“Let’s buy it,” I bite, taking my frustration out on Jean-Paul.
“Ah, err, we’ve tried, Gregory. The boy’s lawyers aren’t interested.”
“How much did you offer?”
“Five hundred thousand. They wouldn’t even speak to us.”
I internally snarl at him. If you want a job done properly... “Set me up a meeting. I’ll close it.”
“We’ll need a lawyer,” Williams says. His voice is wary. As it should be. I know what he’s thinking.
“Then find one.” I glare at him, daring him to challenge me.
“What about—”
“No.”
Lawrence breaks the stand-off by announcing the next company on the agenda. I watch the slides click over to another financial graph that I’ve already seen.
All eyes focus on me as I push my chair out and move to the window. I nod and the room gets back to business as I stare at the first drops of rain dusting the glass pane in front of me. She thinks she loves me. She doesn’t know me. She knows the man who gets impossible tickets to the Dame Judi Dench play she’s desperate to see, the man who whisks her away to a vineyard because she used to enjoy fine wines with her father, the man who flies her to the opera. I don’t even know where that man came from.
She doesn’t know me. Maybe I should go to Dubai and tell her. Tell her everything. Tell her who I really am. Then she’ll see that I’m not a man to be loved and I’m a man who can’t love. I should’ve told her. She wanted to know. She kept pushing and I was too...what...afraid? If I’d told her it would’ve ended us. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. Just like I wished I’d left her alone after she first pitched to be my lawyer. But I couldn’t.
Who am I kidding? She’ll have moved on. I’m the fucking idiot still pining after a woman who I knew for a matter of weeks. Soon I’ll have been without her for as long as I was with her.
A sudden ache strikes my chest and I have to push my palm against my pec.
“Do you have a view, Gregory?” Zara is burning two big dark-blue eyes into me when I turn to face the table.
Fuck! She was last on the agenda.
“Zara, we’ve discussed this before. Your role is to head up Corporate Social Responsibility within the remit I give you.”
“I appreciate that, Gregory, but we’ve followed the same charities for four years running. I think it would be a positive message if we spread our funding to some other areas of need, open up to a fair procedure, ask charities to pitch to us.”
Is she challenging me? Seriously?
“No. We stick with the children’s hospital and domestic violence in Africa. Consider that item closed.”
Zara’s mouth opens. For a split second, I think she’s considering pushing my buttons further. She wisely backs down. She thinks I’m a dick. Good. I am.
Lawrence closes the AGM and dials reception to have lunch brought through. I don’t hang around for small talk.
Loosening my tie a notch, I take a seat behind my desk. The live feeds to the Dow Jones, FTSE and other markets in which I dabble are playing on flat screens around the room. On my screen saver, Scarlett looks truly mesmerising in her black gown, the diamond choker around her neck outshined by those devastating eyes. It’s a press shot. We’re on the red carpet outside my mother’s house. The annual gala. That night.
I remember how awkward she felt, how she didn’t want to get out of the Bentley. She was nervous she wasn’t good enough. What a joke! She was the most beautiful woman at the gala. Screw that, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out. The fucking dull ache throbs in my chest again.
“Greg.” Williams opens my office door and walks straight in. “Where were you today? Because you weren’t in the AGM.”
I give him a sigh that reflects how truly exasperated I feel. “I’d already seen the papers.”
He stalks towards me and takes a seat on the opposite side of my desk, pulling up his trousers at the knee as he sits.
“I’m not in the mood to hear it, Williams.”
“Well, you’re never in the mood, old boy, so now seems as good a time as any. Amanda speaks to her every day, Greg, she’s a mess. She loves you. She’s in love with you.”
She doesn’t know me. But does t
hat mean there’s hope? No, Ryans, you pushed her away for good reason. Forget it.
“It’s over, Williams. Done. She’s better off, she just doesn’t know it yet. Now, we need to talk about that hair of yours.”
“Changing the subject?”
“Too right, changing it to something you can control. That fucking hair has got to go before you’re a dad. You look like a fucking gap year student.”
He chortles and, despite myself, my lips turn up, too.
“Speaking of which. We had our first scan. Want to see?”
“Ja, of course.”
He pulls out his iPhone and shows me a black and white image, a picture of a picture of a large baked bean. But he’s beaming at me, so proud he might burst, so I smile back. “That’s a damn cute bean.”
We talk for five minutes about the bean and how Williams is coping with Amanda moving into his place. Then he leaves and I can get back to staring at the picture on my screen. Everything about her is perfect and effortless. She’s a natural beauty, not like the dolls walking around my offices or the women who bat their lids in restaurants, bars, wherever I go. All those women see is my exterior and my money.
I came close to falling in love with her, too damn close. But it could never be true. I don’t fall in love. She made me want to be something I’m not. She made me want to be a decent person and, hell, I wanted to tell her the three words she was so desperate to hear. But it would’ve been a mistake.
I knew the night she got drunk and told me about the Dubai secondment, I knew then if she couldn’t see it for herself, I had to make sure she went. We had to get the murder charge over with first. She had to see that the CPS wouldn’t charge me, that we’d be free because no matter which one of us took the fatal shot, it was self-defence, my father would have killed us. She had to see that so she could move on knowing she’d done the right thing in the eyes of the law.
Then she told me she wanted to confess to sending my bastard father, my black past, to hell. She wanted to save me, again. It tore me up inside. The thought of losing her. The thought of her locked behind bars for doing nothing other than falling in love with me and getting caught in my web of darkness.
When John Harrison called with the CPS decision, everything came crashing to me, everything I’d felt for the last twenty years. I hadn’t cried since I was ten years old but holding her in my arms, knowing it was over, that she could move on and, yes, that I hadn’t lost her, I sobbed. It’s not manly. It’s not Gregory Ryans but I couldn’t stop the tears from fucking falling. I knew then. I knew I was going to send her away because I’d let it go too far, I had to be fair to her. She’d had enough. I’d broken her and she was better than that, better than me.
I shouldn’t have taken her to the opera. It was selfish. I convinced myself it was for her, so she could have one night, the fairy tale. But damn it, I just couldn’t let her go. And all night I fought with myself. I had to remember the plan but, Christ, I wanted to say those three words she needed to hear. I wanted to say them so damn much it killed me not to.
Chapter Two
I made the right decision to take the first flight out, checking into an airport hotel once I left the Shard. I held it together long enough to look sane at check-in. Then I got to my room and broke down. At some point, sleep took over, because when Reception called to wake me for my taxi to Heathrow early the next morning, I was still dressed.
That was five weeks ago. I’ve gotten better. Since the first week, I haven’t cried myself to sleep every night. Now grief comes over me only in waves, though when it comes, it brings with it the same excruciating pain in my abdomen and the same crippling ache in my chest.
I’ve developed a routine in Dubai. Sunday through Thursday I’m in the hotel gym around five in the morning. I mull over the international newspapers in the main restaurant and take coffee with continental breakfast. Then I head to Mr. Ghurair’s office around eight. With two deals running concurrently, I have more than enough to keep me busy all day.
I’ve gotten used to the dry heat I’d found stifling when I stepped off the aeroplane and took my first steps on the dry Middle Eastern ground. Despite the winter, the temperature is in the midtwenties Celsius and a dramatic hike from the below freezing temperatures in England.
After work, I call Sandy or Amanda—or both—and head to dinner. I try to rotate between the four restaurants in the hotel so I don’t get bored of eating the same thing, although half the time I only push the food around my plate. In fact, the chef in Hoi An, the Vietnamese restaurant, has started giving me smaller portions so I don’t insult him by leaving his food. After dinner, every night except Thursday and Friday when it’s a little more rowdy, I head to the outdoor pool bar. I order a drink and sip it, sitting on a white leather sofa staring out at the lights of Dubai and the magnificence of Burj Khalifa. The menacing spike of the tallest building in the world dominates the opulent skyline. Like everything in Dubai, it’s big, it sparkles and it screams money.
On Thursdays and Fridays I take my drink indoors, in Broadway, a 1940’s New York-themed restaurant/bar. It’s quirky, dark wooden rails separate sections of the bar and there’s a stage at one end of the room where theatre shows take place. It’s different to the marble floors and elegance of the other public areas of the hotel. Tonight is Thursday, so I’m heading to Broadway, having enjoyed two small plates in the Michelin-equivalent Indian restaurant—spiced scallops and soft shell crab.
I spot Paddy behind the bar and give him a half smile, then hitch up the hem of my fitted cream dress and slide onto a red leather stool in the corner of the bar, placing the toes of my strappy heels on the rim. The lights are dimmed for the production of Chicago that’s about to start.
Paddy finishes making a Manhattan by topping the drink with a Maraschino cherry, then slides it towards a waiter to serve.
“Hey lady,” he says with his cute Dublin accent as he makes a beeline for me, tossing a white cloth over his shoulder. With the back of his hand he knocks a rogue brown hair back into his messy mass of chin-length waves.
Paddy rotates shifts between the hotel’s pool bar and Broadway. He doesn’t like working in the pool bar when the DJs are pumping out tunes on Thursdays and Fridays, so he moves to Broadway those days. He’s not, incidentally, why I rotate but I can’t deny it’s nice to have someone to talk to.
“Hi Paddy, how are you?”
“Not bad. Tired. I’ve already worked breakfast and lunch today. How you doing?”
“Fine.”
He shakes his head on a short laugh. “The lady is always fine.”
“I’m not in the mood for counselling, Paddy.”
“You never are, sweetheart, but one day you’ll tell me what broke your heart.”
I lean a forearm on the bar and turn my stool, subtly angling away from him. “What makes you think I have a broken heart?”
“Oh, let me see. You sit alone every night looking miserable, nursing one cocktail for an hour, sometimes two cocktails on a weekend, heaven forbid. You never want to talk about it. You’re always fine and those eyes of yours drift off to another place. Ex-pats come to Dubai for two reasons. One, tax relief. And you’re not getting that whilst you’re on secondment. Two, to cure a broken heart.”
“Mmm-hmm, well I drink alone because you’re the only person I really know in Dubai. I am fine and I drift off because your conversation is monotonous.”
“Oh, she’s in feisty mode tonight. I like it,” he says with a cheeky wink, making me laugh. “Dry or dirty?”
“What did I have last night?”
“Dirty last night, dry the night before that, dirty the night before that, dry the night be—”
“Okay, I get the point. Dry then, please.”
“Sure thing.” He moves down the bar, pulling a bottle of Tanqueray and a bottle of vermouth fr
om the mirrored wall.
“My finest,” he says when he places the cocktail on a black napkin in front of me. He plants his hands on the bar, waiting for me to taste test.
“Fine,” I say with a smirk as the first sip travels straight to my head.
“You’re a tough woman.”
“Thanks. So, what about you? Tax or heartbreak?”
He flashes me a look that says he’s not giving me an answer, so I change course. “What’s your real name?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?”
“Because I don’t believe you’re really called Paddy. Too stereotypical.”
He laughs and moves off to serve, casting me an amused look across his shoulder as he goes.
I sit back into my stool and sip my dry martini as the curtain rises on the opening scene of Chicago.
This is the most dangerous time of my day. It’s the time, without fail, that my mind finds Gregory and the pain comes back—my stomach, my chest, my head. It’s when I think about how lost I am, how nothing makes sense without him.
I miss everything about him. All his personalities and quirks. The way he would pull the cuffs of his shirt slightly lower than the edge of his suit jacket. That stance. His hips flexed slightly forward so his strong calves pull the material of his trousers taut. His shoulders back, tall and broad. That half smile. God, he could liquefy me with that half smile. The way his hair feels like silk through my fingers when we’re making love.