“Grab a shower,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder and turning her toward the bathroom. “I’m taking you out.”
“It’s Christmas Day. Nothing will be open.”
“You’d be surprised.”
He gave her a gentle shove. She dug her heels in.
“I don’t want to go out.”
“Tough.”
“Martin—”
“I’ll carry you in there and hose you down like the shower scene from First Blood if I have to.”
For the first time since he’d arrived her body softened.
“You’ve got five minutes,” he said.
“As if. Fifteen, minimum.”
“Ten.”
She was ready in twenty, emerging from her bedroom in a pair of narrow-legged, skin-tight jeans, a red fluffy sweater, and red patent leather stiletto boots. She smelled good, and her hair hung loosely over her shoulders in soft waves.
“If you take me to McDonalds, I’m going to be really annoyed with you. Just so you know.”
“Noted.”
He helped her into her jacket and wrapped her scarf around her neck. She flicked a look up at him from beneath her lashes and he saw the uncertainty in her. The doubt.
A completely unexpected wave of protectiveness washed over him. He didn’t know what or who had wounded her and inspired the puffy eyes and chocolate binge but he wanted to wrap her in his arms and assure her that whatever it was, it would be all right.
He contented himself with adjusting her scarf, tugging her hair free from beneath it.
“There,” he said.
Then he kissed her, one hand cupping the curve of her cheek. She tasted of toothpaste and she leaned into him, one hand fisting in the fabric of his sweater.
After a few seconds he broke the kiss, rubbing his cheek against hers briefly before stepping back. “Come on.”
It was getting dark as they drove to Bloomsbury. Violet gave him a look as he parked in the mews behind his apartment.
“I thought you were taking me out.”
“I am. This is out.”
“I guess it’s better than McDonalds.”
She’d never been to his apartment before and he was aware of feeling nervous as she followed him through the door. By her standards the dark leather club sofa and armchairs were probably impossibly dull, as were the rust-colored velvet drapes. One wall was given over to a built in book case, full of books and various pieces of art and memorabilia he’d picked up over the years. He watched as her gaze swept over it all, pausing here and there.
“Well?” he asked.
“Better than I thought. At least you haven’t got a stuffed deer’s head.”
“Wait till you see the bedroom.”
“God, I hope you’re joking.”
He walked through to the kitchen, shedding his coat and leaving it draped over the back of one of the dining chairs.
“Oh, this is cool,” she said when she caught sight of his Birdseye Maple Art Deco dining suite.
“I think so.”
She smoothed a hand over a curved, sinuous chair back. “And here I was, expecting a baronial setting.”
“I’m saving my pennies for one.”
Her gaze sharpened as he started pulling food from the fridge. A chicken, a cellophane sleeve of tarragon, potatoes, baby carrots.
“You’re cooking for me?”
“That’s right.”
She took off her own coat and slowly unwound her scarf. It was an innocuous enough move, but everything Violet did was sexy and he felt himself growing hard.
“Can you cook?” she asked as she slid onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter.
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
“Can I have something to drink while I wait?”
“Help yourself.” He waved her toward his wine fridge.
She crossed the room, checking the bottles through the glass door.
She whistled. “You’ve got a Chateau Margaux in here.”
“Two, actually. We can open one if you like.”
She grinned, shooting him a challenging look. “I should hold you to that, just to teach you a lesson.”
He slid a drawer open and grabbed the bottle opener, offering it to her. She stared at him.
“That wine has to be worth £500.”
“Closer to £700, actually.”
“You seriously spent that much on a bottle of wine?”
“I did.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I thought it would make me a better person.” He said it dryly so she’d know he was joking, but she tilted her head to one side.
“Did it?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’ve always been a pretty amazing person.”
They stared at each other for a long beat, the only sound the ticking of the wall clock.
“Pass me the bottle,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes for a second. “You should know that I always win games of chicken.”
He cocked an eyebrow. She shrugged and opened the wine fridge, easing the bottle of Chateau Margaux from its cradle. She handed it over with an I-dare-you glint in her eye.
He used the knife on the opener to slice through the foil seal. She made a small, distressed sound in the back of her throat.
“You okay there?” he asked.
“No.”
He pressed the tip of the corkscrew into the cork to get good purchase. He started to twist. Violet shot out a hand, grabbing his wrist to stop him.
“Wait. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t you save it for a special occasion?”
“This is a special occasion. We’re having dinner.”
Her hand tightened on his for a second, then fell away. “Okay. It’s your wine.”
He uncorked the bottle and poured two glasses, sliding one across the counter toward her.
“Merry Christmas, Violet,” he said quietly.
His glass kissed the rim of hers.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, her golden brown eyes suddenly solemn.
“Why aren’t you with your family today?” he asked, unable to bite his tongue a moment longer.
“If you think a £700 glass of wine is going to turn me into a sloppy, confessional drunk, maybe you need to pour this back into the bottle,” she said, offering him her glass back.
He waved it away. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Reverse psychology won’t work, either.”
“Okay.” He took a mouthful of his wine, then started peeling an onion.
Violet watched him warily, as though she was waiting for him to spring a trap.
“Sit down and drink your wine, Violet,” he said, not looking up from what he was doing.
She half obeyed him, taking a sip of her drink.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t pay more than £400 for it.”
“Give it a little time to get some air on it.”
She smiled faintly. “It’s lovely. Really nice.”
He chopped the onion, being careful to keep his face away from the fumes. After a few seconds she slid back onto her stool.
“My stepmother thinks I’m a bad influence,” she said.
He stilled. “Sorry?”
“My stepmother thinks I’m a bad influence. That’s why I don’t spend Christmas with my family. I have two much younger half-sisters—15 and 18—and she doesn’t want me tainting them with my Jezebel ways.”
He paused with his knife above the onion.
“She said that to you?”
“It’s been a while, I can’t remember her exact words. But that’s the gist of it.”
She said it easily, glibly, but he bet she remembered exactly what her stepmother had said to her all those years ago. Word for word.
“And your father agrees with her?”
“My father is a busy man. He doesn’t have
time to run a business and a family.”
“When was the last time you had Christmas with them?”
“Ten years ago.”
He did a quick calculation. She was a year younger than Elizabeth, which meant she must have been only nineteen when she’d been given her marching orders.
“What happened?”
“I packed my bags and left.”
“No. What happened before that?” Because there had to be more to this story.
She smiled, a cynical little curve of her lips. “What did I do wrong, you mean?”
“I meant what I said. What happened?”
She looked down into her wine. “When I was sixteen, I got involved with one of the teachers at my school. Some of the other girls found out about it. I got called to the Principal’s office. My father was away on business, so Diana handled everything. I was sent away to boarding school afterward, but word got around. It always does.” She shrugged.
His blood ran cold. “What happened to the teacher?”
“I don’t know. Diana wouldn’t talk about it with me. She said I’d already caused enough trouble.”
He set down the knife, anger making his movements jerky. “How old was this guy?”
“In his late thirties, I guess. He was our drama teacher. At the time, I thought I was pretty hot stuff because he noticed me.”She gave a humorless little laugh.
“So let me get this straight. Some sleazy, twisted creep with a teaching degree seduces a schoolgirl and you get sent into exile?” He could hear the outrage in his own voice. He was outraged. What kind of woman packed her stepdaughter off to live with strangers when she’d been abused by someone she trusted?
“You’ve got to understand, Martin, I was a precocious girl. Early developer, flirty. Always interested in boys. I was one of those girls who went looking for trouble and found it.”
He knew without asking that the words belonged to Violet’s stepmother.
“At the risk of repeating myself, where was your father in all of this?”
She swirled the wine around in her glass. “I guess he was just too busy to notice. I did my best to fix that, though, don’t you worry. Over the next three years I got kicked out of four schools. I bleached my hair, pierced by lip, my nose, my ears. I brought home every long-haired loser I could get my hands on.”
He raised his glass. “Bravo to you.”
She’d fought back with the only weapons she had: her body and her spirit.
“Thank you. It worked, too. I had his full attention when Diana gave him her ultimatum—I went or she did, because she was not having her girls grow up under the same roof as me.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“Excuse me?” He braced his hands on the counter and stared at her. “What do you mean, nothing?”
“He refused to get involved. He told us to work it out amongst ourselves. So we did. I left. And I haven’t been back.”
There was pride behind her simple words, and deep hurt. He tried to imagine how it must have been for her—exploited by a trusted mentor, abandoned by the people who should have stood up and protected her.
“You got dealt a shitty hand, Violet,” he said quietly.
“It wasn’t great for a while there. But Elizabeth made sure I got through. She stuck by me through all the drama and scandal and expulsions, even though her grandparents wanted her to distance herself from me. She never backed off or let me down. Not once.”
She blinked rapidly and he realized she was on the verge of tears. He rounded the counter to get to her, trying to understand. She’d recounted all the ugliness of her teen years with dry eyes, shedding not a single tear for her younger self. Yet now she was talking about Elizabeth she was coming undone...?
“Violet,” he said, sliding his arm around her shoulders.
She looked up at him, her eyelashes spiky with moisture. “Elizabeth rang this morning. She’s not coming home. She’s staying in Australia.”
The tears spilled over then, rolling down her cheeks. He pulled her into his arms, aware of a tightness in his chest. Not because of what she’d just told him about Elizabeth, but because she was hurting and he didn’t know how to make it stop.
“I’m sorry,” he said stupidly. “I know how much she means to you.”
“She’s my best friend. My rock.”
“I know.”
She turned her face into his shoulder. He rested his hand on the nape of her neck and stared at the kitchen wall. If there was anything he could say or do to make things right for her, he’d do it, in a heartbeat. But there wasn’t, so all he could do was hold her.
He thought about what she’d just told him, filling in the blanks, joining the dots. Whether she knew it or not, her grief over losing Elizabeth was tied up with the hurts from her past. She’d put all her eggs in Elizabeth’s basket because she had no other baskets, and now Elizabeth was abandoning her, as so many other people in her life had.
For a moment he was filled with an irrational anger toward Elizabeth. She must know how large she loomed in Violet’s life, how important she was. How on earth could she walk away from Violet, knowing her history and how alone she was?
The rational part of his brain knew that Elizabeth was entitled to her own life. He was uniquely placed to understand how much she’d earned the right to seek her own happiness, on her own terms—even if that meant moving half way around the world. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to shake her.
Violet stirred in his arms, sniffing loudly. “Do you have any tissues?”
“I have handkerchiefs. Hold on and I’ll grab you one.”
He stepped away from her, his chest getting even tighter when he saw how woebegone she was. He strode up the hallway to his bedroom and grabbed a handful of handkerchiefs from the tallboy, quickly returning to the kitchen.
Violet was wiping tears from her cheeks with her finger tips and looking faintly embarrassed when he entered. He handed her the handkerchiefs. She wiped her face and blew her nose. Finally, she made eye contact with him.
“Sorry for dumping all that on you. Way to ruin an expensive bottle of wine, huh?”
“Shut up,” he said, then he kissed her, because there was no other way of conveying how he felt.
Protective and aroused and amused and admiring were only the tip of the iceberg. Every minute, every second with Violet was a revelation. She was astounding—strong and fragile, fiery and gentle, shy and bold. A walking, talking contradiction. A puzzle. A mystery a man could spend a glorious lifetime unraveling.
The thought made him break their kiss and take a step backward. Violet’s eyes were closed and she opened them slowly. He stared into their amber depths and felt the foundation stones of his very existence shift out of alignment.
From his earliest days, he’d had so many fixed ideas about the way he’d wanted his life to be. So many boxes he’d wanted to tick.
He’d never had the courage or breadth of imagination to conjure up Violet, to imagine a life with her by his side.
More fool him.
He took another step away from her, a little frightened by his own thoughts. “I’d better get this meal on or we won’t be eating till midnight.”
Chapter Nine
Violet sipped her wine and watched Martin move about his kitchen with surprising, revealing confidence. She’d never dreamt that he cooked, but he clearly did. He enjoyed it, too, as evidenced by the well-used chopping board and his extensive spice collection and the comprehensive selection of cookbooks she glimpsed when he opened the pantry.
She peppered him with questions about their meal as he worked, partly because she was fascinated by this new glimpse into him and partly because she was embarrassed after losing it all over his shirt front.
She shouldn’t have told him about her family. It didn’t reflect well on anybody, least of all herself, and it was ancient history. A little raw today, perhaps, but still ancient. As for Elizabeth’s news... There wer
e a million kinder ways she could have broken it to him. Not that he seemed devastated by the revelation that Elizabeth wouldn’t be coming home.
But then he would hardly share that kind of reaction with Violet, would he? Not when they were sleeping with each other.
She swallowed more wine and tried to simply let it all go. She couldn’t do anything about the past, and she couldn’t do anything about Elizabeth, and she couldn’t take back the things she’d just told him.
“It’ll be all right, Violet.”
She glanced up and found him watching her steadily. Reassuringly. She’d heard the same words hundreds of times over the years, but they gained a new power when Martin said them. He was so certain. So solid and real and determined.
She nodded, feeling somehow lighter.
“Why don’t you go into the living room and find something to put on the stereo?”
She dutifully collected her glass and wandered into the living room.
“CDs are on the far left of the bookcase,” he called.
She spotted them and headed over. She quickly discovered that his taste was surprisingly eclectic. Bach and Beethoven, Springsteen and Simon and Garfunkel, Coldplay and Adele. Her eyebrows rose as she spotted a familiar bright yellow CD.
“Since when did you like the Sex Pistols?” she called.
“Since I was fourteen and surrounded by skinheads and angry, disenfranchised youth.”
She smiled to herself as she pulled the CD free and slotted it into the player. Not your traditional holiday fare, but this was hardly a traditional celebration.
She was about to head back to the kitchen when she spotted a crisply folded invitation displayed on the mantle. The opening, crashing chords of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ filled the room as she gave into curiosity and stepped closer.
It was an invitation to a Spring Equinox dinner at the Savage Club. She grinned, knowing how hard Martin had worked to position himself for membership to the exclusive club. Her father had been a member for years and she’d heard enough about the stuffy goings-on there to know beyond a doubt that she would be bored senseless by it all, but it meant something to Martin. How wonderful that he’d finally got what he wanted.
She wondered idly who he would take. Elizabeth was going to be a tough act for any ordinary mortal woman to follow.
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