by Megan Mulry
“You sound like you have a prostate problem, for Christ’s sake. Where is my reckless brother?”
“Very funny.”
Chapter 16
“Oh my, this is even worse than I’d imagined.”
Devon was holding the door open to his flat. The sun was setting across the Thames in crystalline splinters, reflecting in glorious, fractured bits of light against the glass walls, stainless steel surfaces, and blond wood that cut at right angles throughout his modernist apartment.
Sarah continued into the middle of the living room and sat down on a beautiful, angular though surprisingly comfortable Italian blond wood chair. “I feel like an éclair balanced on the head of pin,” she pouted.
“Exactly the effect I was going for.”
Devon dropped their two bags just inside the entryway and shut the door behind him, locking the deadbolt, then turning back to see Sarah in situ.
“What? The effect of a very round woman sitting self-consciously on a very square piece of furniture? I feel like a superfluous jumble compared to all this immaculate perfection.”
He walked across the (immaculate, perfect) wide plank wood floors and took both of Sarah’s hands in his, lifting her from the (immaculate, perfect) chair. “You are the immaculate perfection and everything else is a superfluous jumble, Sarah.”
“Go on…” she started kissing his neck.
He pulled at the back of her shirt, tugging it from the waist of her pants, and she raised her arms to let him pull it up over her head. “Don’t be fooled by appearances, love.” He slid her right bra strap down one shoulder in a tantalizingly slow gesture, kissing the bare part of her collarbone where the elastic had been pressed into her skin. “I want everything to pale in comparison to you.”
“That sounds good… what else?” She stretched her neck and shut her eyes.
“You are a greedy minx.” He kissed her again down her exposed neck.
“What is a minx, anyway?” she wondered absently.
“I have no idea,” he growled as his kisses trailed down between her breasts. “A cross between a mink and a lynx?”
The reverberation of her laughter came through to his lips as he kissed her.
She put her hands on his cheeks and lifted his face so they were eye to eye. “Sorry to distract you, but I need food.”
He gave her a crooked half-smile. “Do you want to eat in or out?”
“I think in,” she said as she pulled her bra strap back into place and picked her shirt up from the edge of the chair where it had fallen, half touching the floor.
Devon watched as she walked, practically topless, across the Spartan room to her luggage, extended the handle of her wheelie bag, held her shirt over one shoulder, and then turned back to face him. “So, where is my room?”
“You are hilarious. Our bed is that way, and our bathroom is in there.” He pointed toward the half wall that separated the living area from the sleeping area.
Here, alone with him, all this fantastic intimacy and the implications of eternal permanence were exhilarating, but the reality of, well, reality was niggling quietly but persistently at the very, very back of her mind. She liked having her own room. Of course she wanted to sleep in the same bed, but a guestroom where she could spread out her clothes and makeup and go to the bathroom… ugh. Maybe she was more like Letitia than she cared to admit. She had a momentary vision of herself as Scarlett O’Hara, pulling at the flounces of her nightgown and calling to Rhett from her bed that he was now allowed to come into her bedroom. She sighed and set her bag down in the very exposed corner of Devon’s bedroom.
Sarah missed doors.
She went into the bathroom to shower and change into comfortable clothes while Devon unpacked his bag, ordered dinner, and fired up his laptop in his small office at the other side of the flat.
They ate dinner at the marble kitchen counter, spicy Indian tikka masala and a couple of bottles of Kingfisher beer. After dinner, Sarah spread her work materials out onto the dining room table and spent an hour reviewing the latest cost overruns on the London shop construction. Devon wandered back and forth between his office and his bedroom, putting a load of laundry in one time, unloading the dishwasher the next.
Sarah savored seeing these little acts of domesticity. Devon Heyworth Does Dishes—the headline flashed across her mind’s eye—or Devon Does Laundry. She was smiling when he passed behind her and trailed a finger along her neck.
“Stop trying to distract me,” she said, ignoring him.
“I’m not trying to distract you. I just want you to remember that I’m here,” he said.
Such a little boy, she thought. “How could I forget that you’re here? I’ve had to read the same stupid cost analysis four times because my mind starts to wander, contemplating profundities like, how can he manage to look sexy while doing laundry.”
“Really? I do?” He smiled the sexiest damn smile that Sarah had ever seen—just like that, snap, right on cue—and looked down at his low-slung striped pajama bottoms and bare chest. “In this old thing?”
“Stop fishing for compliments and let me get to the bottom of this once and for all.”
He remained standing behind her back, spying the spreadsheets. “Do you want me to take a look?”
She looked up at him with new eyes. “Would you want to?” She sighed. “I’m reaching the end of my rope.”
He pulled one of the metal chairs away from the table and turned it around, the back coming up between his legs, his forearms resting on top. “What’s the gist?”
“I just don’t know where the money is going,” she admitted. “And the scheduling, even more than the finances, is making me so crazy. Why does everything take so long here? It’s like, if I want a leather sofa made in New York, I just dial an 800 number and two weeks later I have it. Here?” She barked a quick laugh. “It’s like, that will be nine weeks, madam, while we hand-shear the wool from the sheep that will be used for the batting, and another seven weeks while the tannery hand-dyes the skins, and then we will have the upholstery hand-sewn in our four-hundred-year-old factory on the moors outside of East Bumcrack. And then we will pack it into a wooden crate of the finest construction and have it hand-carried to you on the backs of our third-generation porters.”
Devon laughed at the image she was creating. “It’s not that bad!”
“It’s worse,” Sarah laughed over her words, picking up steam. “I told the carpenter last week that I wanted a half wall near the front door—to create a sort of entryway feeling—nothing much, just about four feet high and eight feet long, and I mean, that should be like a three-hour job, and the next day, I get in and he’s hand-sawing oak! I was like, what’s wrong with plywood and drywall? Seriously!”
Devon laughed but took the side of the carpenter. “Well”—he shrugged—“if you want it to last…”
“Oh! Stop! I want the shop to open! If it’s not ready by September, I’m going to be furious.” Her voice softened. “And in a serious financial mess.”
“Where are we? Let me see.”
He held out his hand and she slowly started handing him the sheaf of papers—the very guts of her business, the highly detailed financial reports that revealed every aspect of her company—then had a moment’s hesitation. She smiled ruefully. “I think I might be more afraid of exposing myself right now than I was the night we first met.” She held the documents poised in midair, then placed them meaningfully into his waiting hand.
“Sometimes it’s easier to give your body,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
And then he was gone.
His body remained sitting there beside her, but she watched as his mind flew away, clicking and cycling around the different documents. At one point, he reached for the pen and yellow legal pad Sarah had been using to take notes; he didn’t even look up from the financial pages, just took the pen and paper. He was completely oblivious to her mere inches away. He took the occasional note, marki
ng down random numbers and dates.
He looked up, his eyes revealing nothing. He was a machine. “May I write on here?” Devon used the tip of his pen to point to one of the documents.
“Sure. I have other copies. Go for it.”
Then, with a sure hand, he began making quick computations in the margins of various spreadsheets.
“What are you doing?” she asked at one point when he was reworking some of her long-term projections. “Those net present values are—”
“Sarah.”
“What? Why do you sound so serious?”
“It’s not good.”
“What do you mean ‘it’s not good’? Thank God you are not a doctor because your bedside manner is atrocious.”
He smiled, remembering she was Sarah, then his eyes went dark again. “These numbers are not consistent. They are almost a form of pretzel logic, perfectly accurate within the self-referential world they inhabit, but they are not true.”
“I don’t even know what you are saying.”
“Who does your accounting? Are they totally reliable? Do you trust them?”
“Of course they’re reliable. I use the same firm that’s been doing my father’s company’s books for generations.”
“Is there anyone within your organization that might be, you know, skimming a bit off the top? Do you ever borrow personal funds against assets—”
“Give me those documents right now.” She grabbed at him and he held them back.
“Sorry. That was unnecessary.”
“How dare you accuse me of stealing from my own company. It doesn’t even make sense. It’s all… mine… why would I steal from myself?”
“You’d be surprised. It happens all the time. Shareholders want their shares and owners don’t always feel they’re entitled to quite so much—”
“Give me the papers. Now!”
She gathered up the reports, tapped them into a neat pile, and put them into a manila folder, then put the manila folder into the trim briefcase that held her iPad and portable keyboard.
“You might also want to have your hard drive wiped on your iPad and iPhone.” He got up from the table and went to the refrigerator and took out a beer. He popped the top and threw it out in the bin under the sink, then turned to face her, leaning against the kitchen counter.
She scowled at him.
“What?” he asked innocently.
“What?! You basically just raped me… or made me watch as you raped my company, and then you just mosey off to the kitchen for a refreshment and say, what? That’s what!”
“I don’t understand what you’re on about. It’s just numbers. Numbers don’t mean anything.” He shrugged again. “I was just manipulating the numbers. I wasn’t manipulating you. And it’s obvious that someone else has beaten me to it. Those numbers are compromised. They have been raped, if you must stick with that hideous analogy. But I’m the one who can help you find the perpetrator. I’m not the perpetrator.”
She tried to still the rising tide of anger that was coming over her. He was completely unable to see the link between those numbers and the very fiber of her being. “Those numbers mean something to me, Devon.”
It was as if he had been in a trance of some kind and then, in that nanosecond, snapped out of it. Her voice had cracked with emotion over the importance of those stupid numbers: the numbers that proved she was worthy of her father’s respect, the numbers that attested to her value as a member of the fashion industry, the numbers that validated her.
“Oh God, Sarah. I’m so sorry.” He was across the room and sitting directly in front of her in seconds. He forced her chair a quarter turn so they were facing each other, knee to knee. “I didn’t mean it like that. Of course they represent everything important and meaningful.”
She wiped viciously at a stupid tear that was trailing down her left cheek.
He kissed her wet lashes. “Please forgive me. I’m a robot… a machine… I’m a brute.”
She swallowed and tried to explain, as much as she could explain what she barely understood herself. “We don’t need to get into any Freudian claptrap, but my company is really, really important to me, Devon. My father has basically ignored me for the past fourteen years, since my mother died, and this business is the one way—” She coughed or choked, she wasn’t sure which.
He held her hands in his, rubbing her knuckles with his thumbs, trying to massage away her worry or sadness, whatever it was. “It’s okay, love. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”
“I want to,” she whispered, “but I just can’t—” She felt the pressure of impending tears throb against the back of her eyeballs as her throat seized and silent tears slid down her cheeks.
She felt so vulnerable. So exhausted. It wasn’t as if he was telling her something she hadn’t been suspecting for months—she’d hired a forensic accountant months ago—but the fact that Devon could glance over the most complex reports and come to that conclusion in a matter of minutes somehow reduced all of her hard work to something foolish. Trite.
He was so lost. Devon had no idea how to navigate a proper relationship. He’d never cared about anyone the way he cared about her, and still he was an ass. He reached his hands up to her cheeks. “Sarah.” He kissed her, trying to take away her sadness, her need for anyone’s approval. At the height of desperate arrogance, he wanted to shake her and say, But you don’t need any of that anymore now that you have me! He’d offer to take a swing at her father if he could negotiate that into the bargain.
She pulled away slightly, looking into his eyes. “I’m so tired all of a sudden, Dev. I know you meant well, and we can talk about it, maybe, in the morning. But for now, can we just go to bed… to sleep?”
“Of course.”
He helped her up from her seat, holding her protectively against his body. He hit the main light switch that turned out all the lights in the central part of the apartment and guided her across the loft toward his enormous, spotless white bed that appeared to float over the bare, blond wood floor. Like everything else in his world, the bed appeared cool and uninviting at first glance, but once she slipped between the sheets, Sarah thought the mattress and the linens might be the most luscious she had ever felt. Devon undressed her like he would a toddler, untying the drawstring waist of her pajama pants, then sliding them off, and then carefully unbuttoning the front placket of his white Oxford shirt that she had purloined from the back of the bathroom door and put on after her shower. The Egyptian cotton sheets were like cool velvet against her bare skin. She moaned in grateful relief.
“This bed is just like you, Dev: all the outward appearance of bare-bones utility but warm and delicious and luxurious on the inside,” she said.
“That mattress took months to make, just so you know, Miss-I-Want-My-Shoddy-Half-Wall-Right-Now.”
“Mmmm.” She hummed her pleasure and snuggled deeper under the covers. “I bet it was despicably expensive.”
“It was. And seeing you in it makes it worth every penny.”
She was starting to fade. “I’m sure you’ve seen lots of girls in it,” she taunted.
“No…” He folded his arms and she rolled onto her back and looked up at him. “I’ve never had anyone else in this bed.”
Sarah’s smile was broad and grateful. “Really?” she squeaked. “I have to confess I’m glad to hear it.” Then she made a mock frown. “I won’t ask about your hotel bills.”
He laughed and tucked her in. “I’m going to do a little work before I turn in, sleepyhead.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You good?”
“Sooooo good.” Sarah shut her eyes and was slowly overtaken by the exhaustion that always followed her infrequent bouts of raw emotion. Eyes still closed and half-asleep, she whispered to no one in particular, declared really, “I love Devon Heyworth.” And then a small smile stole across her face and she was asleep.
***
Devon took a step back from the bed, afraid for a second that he might actuall
y stumble, then righted himself and stopped. He stood there staring at her for what might have been hours. So much had passed between them in the past few days, he didn’t even feel like the same person who’d stood on the Millennium Bridge, contemplating the worth (or worthlessness) that life on earth might provide.
He finally wandered back out to the living room and looked around as if for the first time, seeing his spare existence through Sarah’s eyes. She was a woman who embraced color and texture and light and variety and took it all in, bent it, transformed it, created. How barren he must seem. He shook his head and refused to let his love of spartan simplicity represent more than a design aesthetic. He was delicious on the inside, after all.
He smiled at that, then turned toward his office. He spent a couple of hours running the final numbers on the structural capacity of the Chilean bridge project. He tried to resist the temptation to check on Sarah’s server activity in the United States, but was unable to suppress the urge. He ran a new battery of tests based on some of the information that he had gathered that night (at Sarah’s invitation, he reminded himself, trying to rationalize). He decided to set up a series of equations that could run for several hours through the night and that might turn up a pattern or clue of some sort by morning, now that he had access to the actual numbers that were being manipulated. He set the program running, turned off the light in the office, and crossed the length of his flat. He brushed his teeth, stripped off his clothes, and crawled into bed alongside Sarah.
She didn’t wake, but her hungry body sensed his warmth and rolled closer to his, her backside nestling into his front, and she sighed and exhaled with a sleepy breath of satisfaction.
I better not screw this up, was the last fleeting thought that skittered across his mind before he fell asleep.
***
The next morning, Sarah woke up to the smell of coffee.
“Here you go, lovely.”
She opened her eyes and Devon was standing there naked with two mugs.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” she whispered.