He’d be surprised if she even called him today. The phone he’d sent her yesterday morning had no sweet note attached to it, like he knew she’d want, just his card and “Call me at three” written on it. What a fucking arsehole. Why the fuck he was doing this to her was still a quandary, but it had been the only way he could think straight at the time. There was no denying that the possibility of less intrusive questioning was far more calming than the normal persistent force she used. Not that she appeared to do it to piss him off or cause more turmoil. It was just her way, her beautiful and angelic way of finding him, maybe even trying to keep him safe from the world and look after him. And fuck, he’d never felt safer than in those arms of hers, with her body wrapped around him. She pushed away the horror for a few minutes. To be there in that house and feel anything close to safe was fucking astounding. Did she even know she’d done that for him?
He sneered at himself and looked to the floor.
This shit was more than likely not going to end well.
The doors pinged open and he made his way through the blue and white foyer, slightly lifting his lips at the ostentatious sculpture of a laptop on its glass stand in the middle of the space. It continued to amuse him every time he saw it. Conner’s ability to go over the top on just about everything was legendary and the sculpture just seemed to scream, “Look at me, I’m a fucking genius!” He was probably right but that was beside the point.
Striding across to Linda, he nodded at her as she smiled and waved her hand at the doors.
He entered Conner’s office and found him on the phone, laughing and giggling like a child. He quirked an eyebrow at the new hairstyle with its spiky pink tips, drowning out his normally only blue hair. Shaking his head, he took a seat on the couch and dug out his phone. The bloody thing had vibrated at least thirty times in the ten-minute journey over here.
While busily emailing varying contacts and texting Louisa with orders and new account details, he overheard two words come from Conner’s mouth that he thought he’d never hear again. Love you. His own frown and smile hit him at the same time and he couldn’t work out whether he should acknowledge the statement or not so he simply continued with his thumbs and stared at the phone.
“Fuck off, you cock,” Conner said with mirth a few minutes later. Alex threw up his head and glared at him.
“What the hell? I didn’t say anything,” he responded as a smirk rolled over his mouth.
“You didn’t fucking need to. I could feel the hilarity pouring off you from twenty feet away,” Conner said as he stood and walked over to the couch. Slumping himself down, he put his feet on the coffee table and tipped his head back. “Anyway, I can’t help it. She’s just awesome. I never thought I’d find someone who challenged me so much and made me feel intrigued permanently.”
“Well I can understand that. It appears the Scott girls are rather good at getting under your skin and messing with your mind,” he replied with a sigh, throwing his phone onto the table.
“Problems? Don’t tell me you can’t get it up? Nice suit by the way. Tom Ford, I presume? You always did look better than me in a suit, you bastard,” Conner asked, lifting his head and looking toward him, grinning like a bloody idiot. This love thing obviously suited his friend just fine.
“Nothing I can’t handle, and my equipment is working just fine, thank you,” he said with a smile. “So what was so important that you made me come here? And what the fuck is going on with your hair? Pink? Really?”
“She said I wouldn’t do it for her, so I did. It seems her little games are the only way to get her to acknowledge my seriousness about her,” he replied while running his hand through his hair. Alex began to speak again but Conner held up his hand and silenced him as Linda entered with a tray of coffee. When she’d left and the door was closed, he wandered across to his desk and then returned to lock the door.
“Jesus, is there something covert going on that I should know about? Locking the fucking door? Are you expecting the police or something?” he asked in genuine bemusement. Given his past, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility but he was pretty sure everything was currently okay, and why the fuck would Conner have anything to do with all that anyway?
He stiffened a little and narrowed his eyes as he watched Conner amble back towards him with an unusually nervous expression. It didn’t bode well at all.
Conner sat back down and placed the brown folder on the coffee table. Sighing, he gave Alex some coffee and relaxed back against the couch.
“Do you promise me that you’re not going to go all wanker ballistic on me?” his friend asked.
“Why? What have you done?” he replied with a frown, suspicion immediately flowing over his skin. He hated the feeling, especially where Conner was concerned.
“I haven’t done anything. I think I might have just found something you need to know about and I’m not sure how you’re going to react. We both know what an utter twat you are when you’re all riled up and I’m actually quite in love with my face,” he replied with grin. True, but he didn’t need a fucking reminder, dick.
“Conner,” Alex growled. “Just fucking say it, whatever it is. I’ve got two more meetings and a phone call to Shanghai to prepare for and you know how much I hate speaking to those damn lawyers.”
“Oh, yes, and there’s that temper I’m so fond of,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Well, I got to meet my new senior consultant a few days ago, you know the one who sent me that code I couldn’t break? I did eventually, by the way, tough though. Anyway, the moment she walked into my office, I was gobsmacked. I honestly couldn’t think and I ended up making an utter arse of myself.”
“For fuck’s sake, Conner, did you drag me over here to tell me about another conquest? Couldn’t it have waited?” he shouted in frustration, cutting him off mid-sentence and moving to stand.
“If you’d let me finish, you snippy bastard, I’ll get to the point. And no, this one is definitely not a conquest. I don’t think I could deal with that shit at all. You see, the problem would be that I’d be fucking someone who looked just like you,” Conner said quietly, screwing his face up a bit and edging away, ready for a defensive block. He watched the reaction with an inner chuckle. The man knew him well.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Alex asked with a very intrigued frown.
Conner simply nodded at the folder and indicated that he should have a look so he leant forward and opened the folder. The first thing he saw was his own intense cool blue eyes staring back at him. He felt the inward gasp of breath as he tried to process the rest of her face. Black hair tied up elegantly and a jawline that reminded him of his father. Her mouth had the same lines as his own but it was fuller and more feminine. He dragged his vision back up to her eyes. They were bewitching in their hypnotizing gaze, a gaze he knew so well, the one he used on so many people to entrance them. He noticed the small darkened flecks in the lighter blue and took in her softer brow line with that questioning rise of the right eyebrow. The same as his - the one that said, “Go on. Try me if you dare.” She was him, obviously more feminine, but everything about her shouted that she was related to him somehow. It wasn’t possible, though. He had no family, only his father and that son of a bitch never talked of other children. She looked younger than him and her skin was lighter but other than that, he couldn’t deny that she could easily be his sister.
Leaning back onto the couch, he stared at the picture and frowned again.
“How you doing, man?” Conner asked nervously from the side. He chuckled at him and continued to gaze at her features.
“I... I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. She could be anyone. People look the same as other people all the time,” he said calmly, still regarding the photograph. Why he was denying anything was fucking preposterous to him.
“No, man, it’s more than that. She just is you. The way she moves, the way she talks. Christ, she even questions me with the same distaste as you do. She i
s so unbelievably confident and self assured it borders on conceit, not unlike someone else currently sitting in the room. Honestly, dude, I was thrown by her as soon as she moved into the room. I mean, yes, she’s incredibly beautiful and normally my cock would have been twitching instantly, but it was just too bloody spooky for words.”
Alex’s frown deepened as he wondered if it was possible that his father had an affair. He supposed it was. The man clearly had never had any form of morals with regard to the people around him.
“What else do you know about her?” he questioned, putting the photo back into the folder and closing it.
“Not a lot really. Her name’s Evelyn Peters. She’s probably as talented on a keyboard as I am, possibly better, which is fucking ridiculous. She comes from Cumbria or somewhere near there, and she’s taken over my whole consulting department in a matter of days because she couldn’t stand the way the department leader worked. She simply told me how crap he was by showing me some of his inaccurate algorithms and programmed some new systems with shit I hadn’t even contemplated, so I sacked him and promoted her. She’ll be a pretty wealthy woman soon with the amount I now have to pay her. I still can’t believe she manipulated that much out of me,” he said with a chuckle and poured some more coffee.
Alex stared at his friend for a moment, analysing his demeanour. He was impressed and that really didn’t happen much with Conner.
“She’s really that good?” Alex said, raising an eyebrow and thinking of the photo again, memorizing the facial features that mirrored his own at that moment.
“Alex, it’s like she’s a female version of you. Each bit of her glides together effortlessly and she just radiates a charm that blows me away. Actually, I’m a little bit threatened if I’m honest. You should see the way her fingers move over a keyboard. It’s like she’s part of the machine. A machine I wouldn’t want to piss of any time soon, by the way. I swear those fucking eyes could even scold you if pushed.”
Alex chuckled and tried to imagine what a female version of himself would be like. The thought made him smile and he couldn’t help but be intrigued by the thought of meeting her or at least seeing her from a distance.
“Is she here?” he questioned, sincerely hoping she was.
“No, I made sure she wasn’t, didn’t want you bumping into each other in the elevator or something. That could have been a little fucking awkward, don’t you think?” he said, standing up and moving back across to the desk. “It could be nothing but I thought you had a right to know, that’s all.”
“Yes. Thank you,” he said quietly.
“What are you going to do about it?” Conner asked, sitting down behind his desk and squeezing his frustration ball. The bloody thing went everywhere with him.
Alex rubbed his chin for a few moments as he mused the best way to make a meeting happen. He realised he wasn’t ready to actually meet her until he had more information on the matter, but he definitely wanted to see her.
“When’s your Christmas party booked at INK?” Alex asked, knowing it was the perfect opportunity to be able to see her in real life and study the way she handled herself.
“Three weeks away. Why? What are you thinking?” Conner replied with a nonchalant smile.
“That I’ll see her there,” he said sarcastically as he rose and picked up his phone and the folder.
“Man, we’ll all be there, I mean Belle and Beth, and you won’t be able to hide yourself from her if you don’t want to be seen,” Conner said with a genuine care to his voice. Some part of him warmed to that emotion that Conner often delivered. Actually, it began to flow across him like water and he smiled at the thought of genuine feelings.
“I’ll know by then whether there’s any truth in it. If there is then the time will be right and if there’s not then it won’t matter, will it?” he replied as he made his way to the door. Hesitating before he unlocked it, he turned back to Conner and looked at him with something that presumably felt like brotherly love. His friend had saved him from a miserable life and now he’d possibly found him a family he never knew he had.
“I owe you a lot, you know? I don’t think I’ve ever told you how grateful I am,” he said, never removing his eyes from Conner’s shocked face.
“Christ almighty, Mr. White, was that an emotion I heard there? Jesus, if I didn’t know better I’d think Beth was softening you up.” Conner chortled as he walked toward him, slapped him on the back and a pulled him in for one of those quick man hug things he was fond of. “It suits you, you know.”
“What does?” Alex responded in surprise.
“Being happy. You should try it more often. I like this non-explosive new Alex,” he said with a smile and a wink. “And thank you. You know how I like my ego stroked every now and then.”
Alex inwardly winced at the mention of the word explosive and lowered his eyes to the floor. Conner was about the only person who could read shame when it was etched into his features, even when he was trying his hardest to hide it. It didn’t happen often but occasionally these things did occur, even to him. And he was so furious with himself for scaring her on Tuesday night that the regret was firmly stuck inside of him, still eating away at him and making him question everything that he’d done.
“I have to go. I’ll call you when I know more about Miss Peters. I might need more information from you about her,” he said, turning for the door. Conner gazed at him for a moment and he could feel the question before he even spoke. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“What have you done, Alex?” Conner asked with a frown.
There was no point trying to hide it. Conner would see straight through his lies anyway and probably give him a mouthful for trying, so he removed his hand from the door and sighed, turning back towards his friend.
“I screwed things up a bit, that’s all. I’m trying to fix it,” he said with a shrug. “The rest of it is none of your fucking business.” He tried to keep his eyes fixed on Conner’s but the unyielding glare that met him felt unsettling and unusually, he found himself feeling strangely apprehensive as to what was coming next.
“Tell me you didn’t sleep with someone else? God, you’re a prick. I told you not to fuck her over. How could you do that to her? I knew I shouldn’t have let you through to her. She is far too good for your perverted sense of acceptable. You really are a twisted son of a bitch,” Conner sneered angrily as he shoved his hands in his pockets and continued to glare. His gut constricted slightly at being berated by his friend but he knew it was deserved. The only thing he could do was tell the truth.
“I haven’t been with anyone else, Conner. I took her to that bastard’s house, and then when she got too close to the fucking bone, I lost my temper. She didn’t deserve it and now I am trying to do something to alleviate the tension,” he stated. “Do you really think so little of me, that I would take the closest thing I’ve even known to perfection and destroy it for my own amusement?”
Conner’s mouth twitched up into a smile and his stance quietened as his eyebrows shot upwards.
“You took her back there? Well shit, that’s... Christ... Well, I suppose if you did that I don’t need to worry about anything. But you have to see my point. You’re not known for your monogamy, are you?” he said with a chuckle as his body visibly relaxed again.
“I’ve never had a reason to be monogamous,” Alex countered with a smirk.
“That’s just plain argumentative,” Conner chided.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Alex said with a smile. “Now if you’ve finished with your damned lecture, I’d better go.”
“Cool, just let me know what you need,” Conner said, reaching around him and unlocking the door. They nodded at each other and then Alex ambled towards the elevator, noticing the gaze of a rather cute but probably dull brunette sitting in the waiting area.
“Miss Oliver, come in here now,” Conner shouted fiercely across the room. The little brunette jumped up, swung her eyes off him and over to Conner. Alex turned his h
ead back to Conner and raised an eyebrow. Conner smirked and winked at him, holding the door open, then lowered his eyes to the brunette’s backside and followed her in. Alex chuckled all the way to the exit and made his way to the car.
Sitting in the car as they made their way back across town, he noticed the time. Ten past two, fifty more long minutes and he’d get to hear her voice again, that voice that simply melted into his soul and filled him with feelings of warmth and joy. The last time they’d spoken, he’d done everything he could to remove the emotion from his voice and to level the unconscious yearning he had for her. When she’d got on her knees and told him how she felt, it had hit him so hard that he’d almost lifted her from the floor and taken her to bed immediately. That a woman as superior as her could have fallen for him despite his faults was mind blowing to him, but to have shown her that he felt the same would only have escalated the feelings again and then there would have been more emotions to deal with. No, better to move the balance of power back towards himself so he could try and regain some sense of control over the relationship and more importantly, his own emotional response to it. Who the fucking hell did he think he was kidding? He was so desperate for her, it hurt. He could feel the heat burning through him at the thought of just touching her this evening and watching her fall apart for him. His thoughts were completely irrational, highly problematic and so incredibly consuming that every nerve ending buzzed with the possibility of the more she was offering.
Quickly making the decision that he couldn’t be bothered with meetings, he emailed Louisa to tell her to cancel them and rearrange for a different day. He could do the phone call to Shanghai at home, but first he needed to contact an old colleague. Thumbing through his contacts, he found the number for Mark Jacobs and dialled.
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