The Price Of Success (Fighting For Fireworks)

by Lee, Corri

  He threw his phone and keys down onto one of the Chesterfield couches and paced towards me quicker than I could evade, grabbing me by the waist and lifting me into the air to spin me around before engaging me in an impromptu swing dance, which he performed surprisingly well.

  Cooking became a team effort of pirouettes and quick steps between cupboards, as well as playful nudges and pinches to distract each other from our culinary tasks. It didn’t really matter that the food went cold when he lifted me up onto the island to make love, because we satisfied our hunger with each other.

  I smiled up at him as he passed me my breakfast, which had become substandard through reheating, and curled my naked lower half underneath me to make space for him on the couch, where he’d generously provoked my twelfth orgasm of the day. We ate from our laps like we were both ‘normal’, when in fact we were the two most abnormal people in London. Or at least that was what it felt like.

  “You’re playing truant, Alexander.”

  He nodded and raised an eyebrow, opting to eat his bacon with his fingers rather than cutlery. “Somewhat. There was a pressing matter I had to address outside of the office.” I stared at him inquisitively and narrowed my eyes when he licked his fingers and dug his hand into his jeans pocket. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving earlier, but you looked fairly comatose.” He referred to the way that I’d collapsed and begged ‘no more’ during our wake-up tryst and instantly passed out into an over-sexed heap. “ ‘Shagged out’ as Isaac would put it.” He grinned and balanced a small box on my knee.

  I stared at it, mouth agape having been opened with the intention of scrambled egg insertion. “Is that…”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I rested my fork back on my plate and rubbed at my neck apprehensively. “Jesus, Nathaniel. Way to catch me with my pants down.”

  He frowned at me scornfully and tutted. “Did we learn nothing from your telling off about being sardonic earlier?”

  “Yes,” I smirked, “that bad behaviour is rewarded with mind-blowing sex and punishments are administered through recreational seminal deposits after a generous probing of my most sensitive erogenous zones,” I picked up a sausage and bit into it with a wink, “and therefore neither are an effective form of positive reinforcement or discipline. Grade F, do not pass go, do not take two hundred dollars, try harder next time, consider spanking.”

  “How do you make pillow talk sound so clinical but still so sexy?”

  “It’s a talent.” I sighed and wiped my greasy fingers on my shirt, swiping the box up from my knee. “So seriously, you’re doing this?” He nodded nonchalantly and leaned back coolly, threading his fingers together across his stomach.

  I winced as the box snapped open to an outrageously stunning wishbone ring laced with alternating diamonds and sapphires. From what I could tell, the band was platinum, and had a simple engraving through the inside curve.

  Mrs Alexander-to-be.

  “Holy sh-…” I raised a hand to my mouth to stop myself mid-word- for some reason it didn’t seem appropriate to curse in front of ‘the ring’. “… shag-piles” I gushed and slapped my head. Carpet related inferred profanity had to be as bad as ‘shit’.

  “It’s not the usual diamond solitaire affair, but it’s the ring my father used to propose to my mother.” I instantly snapped the box shut and passed it back to him, shaking my head.

  I folded my arms over my body and scowled. “You’re out of your mind, Alexander. You’ve known me less than three weeks- it’s bad enough that you woke up and proposed without brushing your teeth or giving me coffee, but you can’t give me a family heirloom.”

  “Shut up, Cecelia.” I scoffed in disbelief and yanked my hand away when he grabbed for it and shoved it behind my back out of reach. Nathaniel calmly removed the plate from my lap and took a breath before he lunged at me and tickled my ribs until my arms wriggled free.

  The moment the opportunity arose, he pinned my hand under his arm and grabbed the ring box, not freeing me until the wishbone ring was firmly on my finger. I blinked at it impassively, face taut, trying to keep a lid on the bubbling mixture of emotions pleading to be released.

  “Just do it,” he laughed at me, draping his arm over the back of the couch, “I’ve been in enough restaurants and seen enough proposals to see how women really react to this. Just do it. It’ll make my day.”

  I huffed, closing my eyes to roll them under my lids, before venting my emotion in an ear-splitting shriek and throwing my arms around his neck, knocking the wind from his sails.

  “I’m still keeping my bloody name,” were the only words I was allowed to speak until we reached the office at lunch time.

  Bethany had taken her lunch break at noon as usual, which meant that our arrival at half past was free of interrogation. Heads rose from desks as we scurried across the office floor, hand in hand and giggling like horny teens, but nobody dared to question us.

  It had been a joy to watch Nathaniel dress into his suit after we’d showered together, even if I’d killed the moment by telling him that he was a hypocrite for having a secret stash of casual clothes after he’d seen to having Bethany burn mine. He argued that I couldn’t be trusted to not recede back into bad habits and emerge in his office one morning wearing skinny jeans and a Marilyn Manson hoody. He was probably right.

  The cherry red tie he’d worn purposely to coordinate with my slightly creased shirt no longer reminded me of pain and blood, instead it reminded me of love and the night he’d stolen me away and taken me ‘home’. You couldn’t be our song anymore, it just didn’t fit.

  “Are you quite sure you have to go to work tonight?” he whined at me, pulling his travel kettle out from behind his drinks cabinet while I set to unpacking our modest lunch of beef broth and freshly baked white rolls.

  I glanced over my shoulder at him with a scowl. “Yes, Nathaniel. I won’t be a kept woman. It’d drive me mad to exist just to hang from your arm.” I could just picture myself sat in a fuchsia velour tracksuit with French tipped acrylic nails and fake breasts, spending my days sipping wine at the dining room table of a white picket fenced three storey house in suburbia, and lusting after the gardener through boredom.

  “I could pay you the same as the bar. Or you could pay me in kind.” I screwed up a paper bag in my hand and tossed it over my shoulder at him. “At least say I can have Derek collect you after your shift and bring you to me.”

  “Derek?”

  “The gloomy fellow who drove us home last night.”

  “Ah. Yes, alright.” I sat myself down at his desk and swept a napkin across my lap, fold facing towards me, of course, while I waited for Nathaniel to take his seat opposite me. He paused for a moment to examine me, fingers drumming across the wood mindlessly. I knew what he was thinking- I had looked at him the same way multiple times that morning. “No catch.” I smiled warmly and tore a chunk of bread from a roll while he looked at me with an expression rife with confusion. “No catch except that I’m very stubborn and I have a highly addictive nature.”

  “Highly addictive is right.” He scoffed and poured my coffee slowly, watching me with a grin as I practiced good dinner etiquette with my soup. “When can I leak our engagement?”

  I glanced down at my left hand quickly and frowned slightly. “When my book is on the shelves. I want people to think that you’re marrying me for my brain, not that I’m marrying you for your ability to make me successful.” Nothing would have wounded me more than being labelled a gold digger.

  “So the United Kingdom release or the North America release? What time frame am I looking at here?”

  I stared at him blankly and rested my spoon down on my side plate, folding my fingers under my chin with a cough. “Come again?”

  “You said you wanted your work available to everyone, so it will be. In five languages.”

  “Holy shit.” I stared down into my bowl, suddenly petrified. When I imagined being published, I thought a few paperback copies in a
n independent bookshop or two, not worldwide attention. “Why have you gone above and beyond for me?”

  “Because I have faith in you.” That was all I needed to hear- it was enough. If he’d said it was because he loved me, it would have been too much. If he’d said it was because he could, it wouldn’t have been enough. But to say that he believed in me- that was the cherry on top of the magnificent twenty tiered sugar-craft covered Nathaniel Alexander cake.

  I finished my soup in silence, rapt with quiet awe for him. Not just because he was powerful enough to have my naked body strewn across billboards in Times Square, but because he was modest enough to love me. I was honoured and humbled. I would hang from his arm with pride knowing that I was the only woman who had ever made the grade.

  Nathaniel bestowed upon me new knowledge of the process of publishing and why he had so little to do with a novel after it left his office- he was artistically and financially inept, opting to hire expensive accountants to manage his billions and generously paid graphic designers to handle cover artwork. He was quick to assure me that he’d expressed a specific interest in every aspect of my novel and that nothing would pass without his approval if his minions valued their jobs. And then he promised that I wouldn’t be disappointed with the final product. Who cares, I thought, when I already have the grand prize?

  No aspect of his life or business was protected from me while I was in that office- I helped him file paperwork and checked his emails. I even saw his bank balance- Christ, ching ching!

  “You haven’t worked in here for days, Cecelia.” I mumbled my agreement as I scoured the bookshelves with intense scrutiny, baffled by the incredible volume of religious tomes.

  “I don’t have my laptop today, I can bring it with me tonight.”

  “Um, no.” I raised an eyebrow and turned to him slowly. “I told you, last night- you’ve been breaking the rules and neglecting yourself. Separate work and leisure- that’s always been a standing statement.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and spread myself out across the chaise longue, coffee in hand. I couldn’t have looked more at ease if I’d sprawled out naked across his bear skin rug. Oh, wait… “I hope you have rocket fuel in the form of coffee at home if you want me to churn out all of the changes for the final draft tomorrow.”

  An incredibly sexy smile spread slowly from ear to ear across his face. “Home?” He asked me with a tight hushed purr that made my toes flex.

  “Sure, that big swanky pad with a fantastic view that we have, that may possibly have a flat surface somewhere that we haven’t screwed on yet.” He sighed at me in ridicule of my raging libido and turned to his laptop to open a folder, before leaning over and setting it down on the escritoire.

  “Here. I have the same copies of all the chapters that you do. I can email whatever you do now while you’re at the bar.”

  “What about you?” I stared at the laptop like someone had placed a unicorn down in my lap and asked me to saw its horn off. I could work on it and harness it’s incredible supernatural powers but doing so was a mortal sin. Get over it. I shuffled across the chaise longue lazily to reduce the distance I’d have to walk and heaved myself over into the seat of the escritoire.

  Nathaniel quickly jumped into my pre-warmed place of preference, nestled in the lush red velvet and wriggled down with his arms crossed. “I’m going to watch you. I like to watch you work- you make the cutest face while you’re concentrating.”

  I groaned at his gushiness and switched my brain into writing mode, noting all the memories that Aiden had reminded me of the previous day in a blank document. As soon as I thought of his name, I remembered that I’d taken pictures of the view from Nathaniel’s bedroom but not sent them to him. Something had distracted me, couldn’t for the life of me think what…

  “I don’t want to be a pain,” I pouted prettily, “but could you please MMS Aiden the pictures I took before you ensnared me in your loins? I promised him scenery that he could wax poetics about- literally.”

  “About Aiden…” I stopped in my tracks and let my head fall backwards against my seat. This conversation could go so wrong so quickly depending on Nathaniel’s next words. ‘Is he the man in your book?’ ‘Did you ever love him?’ ‘Did you sleep together yesterday?’ “I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite-…” he narrowed his eyes slightly, “again, but will you please stop taking the drugs he offers you? You worried me last night in Cherry Vine.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at my hands in surprise. That was not the question I was expecting so I wasn’t even slightly prepared for it. I enjoyed the way my recreational habits made me feel but I could understand why he would want to me refrain. Eventually I nodded and said, “Alright, no more illegal substances. I would say ‘narcotics’ but I’d have to dump you” and set back to work on my novel. This was a rare occasion when I was happy to compromise if it made him happy.

  Nathaniel watched me contentedly as I typed without pause for thought or refreshment, motivated only by my desire to prove that his blind conviction in my ability was not ill-placed. He interrupted me only once to show me Aiden’s reply to the pictures:

  NO. FUCKING. WAY.

  But sat as the most elegant and ornate statuesque observer I could hope to have enraptured. I didn’t feel unsettled by the way he watched me unblinkingly, with a curt smile permanently etched over his features, nor did I let the fact that the way he brooded made me want to rip his clothes off distract me.

  He simply watched me with a serene admiration that made me feel like I was the first and only women he’d ever set eyes on. It was an interaction I’d only ever witnessed before by one other couple.

  “My dad used to look at my mum like that,” I muttered, keeping my eyes fixed on the screen, “like she was his alpha and omega. Do you know how she responded?”

  “Enlighten me.” I frowned for a moment and pulled back from the laptop, completely flabbergasted. Nathaniel returned my expression and rose from the chaise longue to rest his hands on my shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  “Of all the things you could have said… That was exactly how she replied. She’d catch him staring and say ‘enlighten me’. That was… weird.”

  He slid his hands down my arms and leaned his cheek against mine, swaying me slightly. “I would call it a good omen, bearing in mind how happy your parents were.”

  An unwelcome distraction came in the form of a ringing phone, something of an oddity in Nathaniel’s office. All of his calls were screened by Irina on the front desk and only matters of definite urgency reached him. His displeasure was wholly apparent in his uncharacteristic curse and brisk collection of the receiver.

  “What is it, Irina?” He snapped, jaw tightening with anger. “What? Put him through.” The masque of anger slipped into confusion and that nagging voice in the back of my mind started to whisper again: this is where it all goes wrong. I hoped that female intuition would fail me just once.

  Nathaniel mouthed an apology and crouched down beside me, reducing the windows holding my work and clicking an icon on his home screen labelled ‘APH SURVEILLANCE’. “At ten minutes past one, are you quite sure? No, I’m checking now, but are you sure it’s her?”

  The word ‘her’ made my blood run cold. What was I about to see? A stalker, a ghost from his past, a woman whos heart he’d broken? My god, a woman whose heart he had- a secret lover? I rubbed my stomach to ease the knot that formed there and threatened to make me ill.

  A black and white image of an office flashed up on the laptop and nothing but morbid curiosity kept my eyes transfixed. He scrolled through the footage until two people entered the room and immediately flew into an intimate tangle across the desk.

  “Yes, I’m watching.” Paper flew around them and ankles flew over shoulders. The man was heavyset and dark haired, while the woman was slender with a shock of what looked to be white hair. My hand clapped to my mouth when they shifted into an upright position and her face came into view.

  “Bethany” I gas
ped and looked up in horror at Nathaniel, who closed his eyes and let his head drop and hang loose for a second.

  “Yes, it’s her. Thank you, Scott.” He threw the phone down on his desk and splayed a hand out across my back as though it was a comfort just to touch me. “Is that the man you caught her with on Friday?” He scanned through the footage to find a good shot of his face.

  My voice dropped to a shamed whisper. “No, not the same man.”

  “His name is Joe Michaels. Married, two kids, and old enough to know better.” Nathaniel’s disapproval was wholly apparent in his tone- I didn’t need to look at him to see it.

  I slumped back in my seat and shook my head in embarrassment. I was so ashamed of her. “Married with kids- does she know?”

  He bit his lip awkwardly and closed the footage window with a grimace. “I should say so, considering she was screwing on his wife’s desk.” I looked up to meet his gaze slowly and sighed. Bethany had always been so compliant and straight-edge, now she was a jezebel. I’d made my fair share of bad decisions and blunders but what she had done was tasteless and unforgivable. I would never touch a taken man, or even a man I thought was taken, even if it was to my detriment. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to look her in the eye again. “I don’t usually monitor the office surveillance, but as Bethany is a person of interest to my life, the security company alerted me as soon as it was detected.”

  “What do you mean ‘person of interest’?”

  Nathaniel rolled his eyes and opened my work again to save the progress and shut down the laptop. “The other significant woman, Cecelia. I told you before that two of them were joined at the hip. There are concerns over further media scandal if the footage is leaked. Now her busty physique is pinned up all over the world promoting your work, it would reflect badly on all of us.”

  I cradled my head in my hands and rested my elbows on my knees, struggling to comprehend the information. “But her lunch break was twelve until one. Eleanor goes mad if she’s late back.”