by Imani King
This is how I thought from Scotland to that moment on the airplane when I looked out the window and down at the cold, blue Atlantic and finally let myself feel the truth: I was never going to see Darach or Cameron again. Not only was I never going to see them, they were going to think of me as a dishonest thief unless I could somehow manage to convince them otherwise and the truth was, that looked doubtful. Darach obviously believed that I'd stolen from him - he wouldn't have had me sent away otherwise - what motivation did he have to hire people to look for fingerprints or study e-mails? Not much. I hunched over in my seat with my face in my hands, defeated and forlorn and wishing my grandmother was still alive to wrap her arms around me and reassure me it was going to be OK.
When the plane landed in New York I went straight to my friend Simone's apartment - there was nowhere else to go. Thankfully, she was home and all it took was one look at me to know something was very wrong.
"Simone. I've been traveling for over twenty four hours. Can I please just borrow your couch for a little while? I promise I'll tell you everything when I wake up."
So I put my bags on the floor and lay down on Simone's lumpy sofa with a hot, humid New York breeze blowing over me and went to sleep for fourteen hours.
Chapter 13
Simone agreed to let me stay with her until the fall semester started. I hated asking but there really was no choice - my salary was supposed to be paid at the end of my contract with Darach and I knew there was no way I was getting it now.
I waited a couple of days to log in to my Gmail account and change the password. I didn't usually take the time to log out, which is what must have made it so easy for whoever it was to send e-mails from my account, probably to another account they'd created themselves. When I did log in, I didn't have the heart to check the 'Sent Mail' folder. I backed everything up, just in case, but I couldn't read it. The depression was starting to descend again, unsurprisingly. I was out a job, a lover, my good reputation with a family I cared about and my salary, which was supposed to go towards next semester's college tuition. As soon as school started I planned to go straight to the student health services and talk to one of the mental health doctors - I was desperate to avoid sinking back into the unhappy grayness I'd been in for two years already - forget toughing it out this time.
Two days after I returned an e-mail from Darach appeared in my inbox. I saw the subject line: "READ THIS" and deleted it, unread. The next day two more arrived. One of them had a phone number in the subject line and another all caps message: "RING ME, PLEASE." They were all quickly deleted.
I wasn't going to call Darach. I wasn't going to do a single thing Darach McLanald wanted me to do. He didn't have the right to ask any favors of me. He was probably regretting what had happened, I knew that much. Probably missing me. I hardened my heart against the fact that I was missing him, too. You can't let people push you around. You can't let people treat you badly and then take their calls or their e-mails when they decide they don't want to be without you.
Simone came home one night a couple of days later with Chinese takeout for both of us. She knew I was ashamed of needing her help and she tried to reassure me.
"Jenny, chill, it's just food. I know you'd do the same for me, it's really not big deal - it's nice to have company!"
I almost started blubbering at her kindness.
"By the way, are you going to be around tomorrow?"
There was something in her tone - something stilted. Simone wasn't a good liar.
"Yeah, why?"
"I'm having a package delivered in the morning. I don't know, around eleven? If I'm not around can you sign for it?"
Simone kept her eyes on her Chinese food as she spoke, not looking up. I knew something was going on but I didn't have any idea what it was. I agreed to sign for the package and we went on with dinner and gossiping about the other interns at the office where she was spending the summer.
That night, there was an e-mail from my bank informing me of some wire transfer fees that had been taken out of my account. Maybe Darach had decided to pay me for the work I did? I logged in to my bank account fully prepared to send it right back and felt my eyes widen when I saw the balance. Two days earlier it had been at $123.48 - that night it was at $489,401.00. The wire transfer was from the Bank of Scotland. It had to be Darach. My first instinct was to send it right back but there didn't seem to be a way to do that. My second instinct was to take a moment and ponder the amount of money that was. More than I had ever seen in my life. It was enough to pay off all of my student loans, pay for my final year and still have a lot left over - enough to give myself a head start at the life I'd dreamed of having for so long but never quite allowed myself to believe in. A modest house in the countryside, somewhere cheap and close to where my grandmother raised me. A small yard so I could grow vegetables in the summer and a room with a window that looked out over the yard where I could write in peace. How much was my pride worth?
I decided against making any rash judgments - it could wait until tomorrow or the next day - at least until it sunk in what kind of money that was - and until I figured out if in fact my pride did have a price.
Simone was gone when I woke up the next morning to another muggy day. I made myself a cup of coffee and went online to browse for jobs - for anything that would allow me to support myself until classes started up again. I still wasn't counting on keeping the money - I was actually starting to lean towards not keeping it. Try as I might to convince myself that my grandmother would have approved of my keeping it I knew she wouldn't. Maybe with an apology. Maybe. But I wasn't about to start opening the e-mails from Darach - I was too emotionally vulnerable, just barely managing to hold it together by keeping my mind occupied and refusing to think about the things - and people - I'd lost.
When the doorbell rang at almost noon I remembered what Simone had said about the package and ran to answer it. As soon as I opened the door and saw Darach standing there, towering over me as usual in one of his expensive suits, I tried to close it again. He quickly wedged his foot in between the door and the frame, preventing me from slamming it in his face.
"I have nothing to say to you." I said coldly, fighting the tears that were welling up at the sight of him.
"Jennifer, I didn't know. Listen to me, I didn't know."
Oh how I wanted that to be true. But how could it be? How could he not have known?
"Go away, Darach. Please. Please."
"Jennifer!"
Darach pushed his way into the room, easily overpowering me and taking my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him.
"Listen to me! I didn't know. Do you hear me?"
Of course, I started bawling immediately. Darach bent down, kissing my tears off my cheeks and whispering:
"Jenny, please let me explain."
I caught his eye, desperate for him to be telling the truth but burning with anger at the likelihood that he wasn't.
"How couldn't you know?! The police came! They dragged me out the front door like a criminal, Darach! How couldn't you know?"
I was screaming at him, clutching at his suit jacket and trying to shake him.
"Jenny. Beautiful Jenny. I'm so sorry. Come sit down and I'll explain it all."
"NO! Explain it here, right now!"
Darach still hadn't let go of my face, he was still looking right at me, refusing my attempts to pull away.
"Jenny, Mr. Clyde is in charge when I'm away. That's always been the policy - I trust him to make any and all important decisions."
"Well I guess you fucked that up," I interjected, sucking in a shaky breath that made me sound like a small child and terrified that Darach was lying.
"Yes, I did," he said, quietly. "By the time I found out, you were gone. I tried e-mailing you but you weren't opening them. So I found your friend's number on your phone and told her everything. And now I'm here to tell you I'm sorry and that I think you might be the best thing that's ever happened to me. I refuse to allow Dian
e to ruin this for us." I haven't been as happy as I was with you since I was a child, Jenny - and you said the same thing to me.
I had said the same thing, lying in the heather with him one day after we'd spent all afternoon in bed together. It was true. It was still true. He felt me stop resisting and go limp in his arms.
"If you're lying, Darach..." I said, my voice muffled against his chest as I breathed in the scent of him.
"I'm not lying, Jenny. I'll tell you everything. Everything you need to know."
I looked up at him. "It was Diane?"
Darach nodded. "Of course it was Diane. She had some help from one of the new staff - one of the gardeners I think it was - but yes, it was Diane."
I remembered catching the groundsman coming down the stairs from Darach's room. I thought he'd given me a strange look and it made sense now.
The roller-coaster of going from dejection to the euphoria of being in Darach's arms again was disorientating. All I could do was stand there, looking up into his blue eyes, speechless with relief and happiness.
"Come back to Scotland with me, Jenny. I'll make this up to you - I know how awful it must have been for you. I'm not asking you to make any promises, just come back for the rest of the summer - not as a employee. As mine."
I didn't want to turn Darach down, which was lucky because even if I had I wouldn't have been able to. I stood up on my tiptoes and wrapped my arms around his neck and he lifted me off my feet, holding me so tight I could hardly breathe.
"Now get your things, Jenny. I've got a hotel for tonight and I'm taking you out for dinner. Do you have a cocktail dress?"
I gave him a look. "Do I have a cocktail dress? No, Darach, I do not. I have a dress - one dress. It's red and it's cheap. Will that work?"
Darach ran his hand down to my ass and gave it a smack: "I don't know, does it show your arse off?"
"No, it doesn't show my ass off," I replied, emphasizing my pronunciation of the word 'ass.' "you're in America now, you have to say words the right way."
"It doesn't sound like this dress of yours is going to do the trick, Jenny. So get your things, we'll have to go shopping first."
Chapter 14
Darach had arranged a town car with a driver and I spent the entire drive to Neiman Marcus floating on a cloud of joy, snuggled up tightly against him and half-wishing we were on our way straight to the hotel room.
When we got to Neiman's he leaned down and kissed the top of my head.
"I don't even want you looking at price tags, Jenny, alright?"
I nodded, already feeling like a princess and still not entirely convinced it wasn't all a dream. In the end and after much trying-on I settled on a cream jacquard sleeveless Alexander McQueen dress with a full, flouncy skirt that fell only to about my mid-thigh. It wasn't at all the kind of thing I was used to wearing.
"Are you sure?" I asked Darach, "I feel so...exposed." I was also worried about the color - so pale and perfect and prone to stains.
"Jenny, it's gorgeous. Look at that color against your dark skin, it's striking."
He wasn't wrong - stain-prone or not it made me glow. It also made me feel beautiful, with the hem swishing around my thighs expensively and the internal structure making my breasts look ripe and perky even without a bra.
"Alright, now for the shoes." Darach took the dress out of my hands and draped it over his arm and we headed for the shoe department. It took over an hour for me to settle on a pair of light gray patent Louboutin Biancas that managed to straddle the line between pure, iconic sexiness and my need to be able to walk.
We had to go back to Simone's apartment after buying the shoes and the McQueen dress so I could shower and then spend about three hours moisturizing, doing my hair and make-up and just generally making sure that every part of me was smooth and primped. I knew that after dinner we would be heading to the hotel and I knew what was going to happen at the hotel - that was if I managed to make it that far without jumping on Darach.
"Where are we going?" I asked in the car when I'd finally felt ready to leave the house.
"Le Bernardin - have you heard of it? I always eat there when I'm in New York."
Le Bernardin. Of course Darach always ate there. It was one of those places I knew about and always just assumed I would never see the inside of - it had three Michelin stars, a world-famous chef and a clientele I imagined was made up mostly of Russian oligarchs and the oldest of old money.
I felt like a rock star exiting the black town car and walking into Le Bernardin but the best part was the look on Darach's face. That was it. That was the look I'd waited my whole life to see on a man's face - a mixture of pride, happiness and naked lust.
"Damnit, Jennifer. I'm not sure I can last through dinner. Maybe we should just go to the hotel right now?"
I giggled and walked ahead of him into the rarefied air of the restaurant, very conscious of his hand firmly on the small of my back. Before that night I'd always found the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a single meal faintly absurd, even for people who could afford it. But it was perfect, a series of moving parts all working together so well that it almost appeared effortless. I ordered salmon carpaccio to start and Darach had caviar.
We talked over our meal, only stopping when some new, wonderful thing was brought to the table and I had to take a few minutes to marvel over how delicious it was. Darach told me that he'd hired a new lawyer, one based in London this time and specializing in family law.
"Diane is going to be charged with fraud - Declan, the gardener, has agreed to testify against her in exchange for not being charged. The lawyer is almost certain Diane is going to prison but at the very least she's already lost her temporary custody of Cameron - she can only see her in Scotland now and it has to be supervised."
"I bet she won't come," I said, certain that Diane wouldn't bother making an effort to see her child if the opportunity to pour poison into her ears wasn't there.
"No, she won't. I would be very surprised if Diane ever showed her face at Castle McLanald ever again, actually."
I suddenly remembered the recording on my phone and asked Darach if he - or the police - still had it.
"Yes, the police gave it back and I brought it with me - it's back at the hotel with my things."
I told him about the conversation with Cameron that I'd recorded and asked if it might help the custody case if Diane ever tried to fight it. Darach was grim-faced.
"I always assumed it was something like that. But Cameron would just clam up whenever I tried to coax her into talking to me about what her mother was telling her."
"But you said she seems much happier now, right?" I asked and Darach nodded.
"Yeah, she's tearing around like she used to, getting into everything - the only thing she'd change is having you back, you know."
I couldn't wait to see Cameron again. But in the meantime, I had her father all to myself.
Darach leaned over the table at one point after watching me eat my first oyster:
"We have to get out of here, Jennifer. I'm so hard I'm going to have to walk out with my jacket held in front of me like a horny schoolboy."
I could see from the slightly glazed look in his blue eyes that he wasn't joking.
"Are you?" I asked, teasingly.
Instead of answering Darach picked up his phone and dropped it under the table, making sure it landed close to my chair.
"Oh dear, can you get that for me?"
A waiter appeared out of nowhere but I waved him away and bent down to grab the phone myself. A quick glance in Darach's direction was all I needed - he had his hand on his cock, which was standing out against the dark blue fabric of his pants very obviously. When I sat back up the smile on my face was gone - not because I was unhappy, but because I needed to be alone with Darach, soon.
"Darach," I whispered breathlessly, leaning across the table so no one else could hear me, "we need to go back to the hotel."
That's all he was waiting for. H
e signaled the waiter and handed him his credit card.
"Sir, is everything alright? There are still two courses to go - and dess-"
"Yes, it was wonderful as always, Jean-Pierre. We'll be back very soon, but something has just come up and we really must leave right away."
"Very good, sir."
We rushed out to the town car giggling and barely got the door closed behind us before Darach's hands were all over me and he was pushing his tongue between my lips.
I reached down and ran my fingers along the length of his erection, watching the look on his face change as he exhaled and leaned back in the seat, pushing his hips forward.
"Oh, God, I missed you Jennifer."
"Yeah?" I kissed his jaw and his warm neck. "Did you?"
I'm surprised we managed not to have sex in the back of that town car. I knew if we kept going we were going to so I pulled back and scooted over on the seat a little. Darach mouthed two words to me:
"Show me."
I glanced guiltily at the driver but his eyes were on the road and he was studiously avoiding looking back at us in the mirror. So I did what Darach instructed me to and opened my knees a little, slowly pulling the hem of my dress up my thighs. I ran my fingers over my sex through my panties, knowing he wanted more.
"Jennifer..."
He wasn't asking. I slipped my forefinger into the crotch of my panties and pulled it aside for a few seconds, allowing Darach a glance at what he wanted to see.
"Jesus Christ, how long is this going to take?" he barked at the driver, visibly angry with frustration now.
"Not long sir, a couple of minutes."
I loved the anger in his voice. I loved the maleness of his frustration and the single-minded intensity of his need. When he reached down and adjusted himself in his pants I felt a twinge between my legs.