Checkmate

by Diana Nixon

  “Good. Say hi to your Sweetie.”

  “Be sure I will.” I hang up the phone and turned to Scarlett, who also seemed to be a little disappointed to hear that I needed to leave.

  “Oliver?” She asked, sitting up.

  “Yeah. Needs me for something urgent, or so he says anyway.”

  “I figured,” she said solemnly.

  I rose to sit next to her, and put one arm around her waist to pull her closer to me.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, placing a soft kiss on her lips.

  “Don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I get up.”

  I smiled and kissed her again, deeper this time. “Let me know if you can still walk. I will have to come up with something more inventive to keep my promise from last night.”

  She giggled and shook her head, blushing slightly. “I can’t believe we did that… how many times?”

  “I stopped counting when it was around four in the morning.”

  “If I fall asleep in the middle of the workday, it will be your fault,” she said, rising to her feet.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, frowning. I was definitely not ready to step into the new day and for reality to suddenly break into our perfect world.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I take a shower?” She asked, dropping the sheet half-way to my bathroom.

  Christ, if only I could think straight, while staring at her perfect back, hips and legs that I still remembered from last night wrapped around me.

  “Not at all,” I mumbled, watching the door closing behind her.

  It only took her ten minutes to take a shower and dry her hair, while I was making coffee for us.

  “Smells like heaven,” she said, entering the kitchen.

  I turned to the sound of her voice and once again, caught myself thinking about how gorgeous she was, wearing nothing but my white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

  “It’s still too early to go to the office, why don’t you stay here and wait for me?” I said, handing her a mug of coffee.

  “I need to go home. I can’t go to work, dressed up like a stripper.”

  I laughed under my breath. “Actually, I don’t mind seeing you entering my office in nothing but a corset and high heels.”

  “Oh what, you don’t mind everyone else seeing me dressed like that?” She said with an eye-roll.

  I grimaced, feeling a wave of uneasiness and something else, running down my spine. “I don’t think so.”

  “Can we… keep what happened here a secret?” She asked, taking a seat at one of the chairs.

  “I thought we had already discussed that.”

  “We did, but I still want to be sure that you won’t-”

  “Make a billboard with a detailed description of everything that we did last night?”

  She laughed, a little nervous. “Exactly.”

  “Don’t worry. I know how to keep my mouth shut. Especially,” I said, leaning to her lips, “if you help me keep it shut.”

  “I remember one more thing that you promised me last night.”

  The pictures… “What was that about?”

  “You know what.”

  I sighed, trying to come up with a more or less believable reply. “Can I keep them?”

  “What for?”

  “Just to have a chance to see you when you aren’t around. I won’t show them to anyone, not even to your father.”

  “Promise?”

  Again, I was surprised to know how much she trusted me. And again, I regretted lying to her. Too many regrets. Something was seriously wrong with me…

  “Promise,” I said, and immediately was awarded with a kiss.

  Chapter 8

  My thoughts were a mess. I couldn’t even make myself get behind the wheel, so I asked Tom, my driver to take me to Oliver’s. I was too distracted to drive, especially in New York. I would probably end up causing a multi-car accident.

  I had a few important things to do this morning, but I couldn’t concentrate on any of them. My mind still refused to think about anything but Scarlett. The memories from last night flashed in my mind, and I almost growled at how much I still needed her. For the first time ever, my body and mind agreed on that opinion.

  Never in my life have I been so attracted to anyone. Even what I felt for Pamela was so different from my feelings for Scarlett. Gosh, did I just say ‘feelings’? I must have been totally out of my mind…

  I sighed and closed my eyes, throwing my head back against the seat. I didn’t know how to define what was going on with me. I didn’t want just one night with Scarlett, and for it to be the last night we spent together. Maybe I should have taken it slowly instead of so fast and hot and heavy, like a racehorse on the track ready to bolt out of the gate as soon as the gun is fired. Like start with a movie and chocolates, as if accidentally left on her desk. Maybe I should have asked her out, for a real date? I remembered her father’s words and the feeling of uneasiness formed inside me. Would he approve of his Sunshine dating someone like me — a man whose face appeared on Page Six more often than there were days in a year? A man who could hardly offer her anything but sex? A man who was so fucking scared of obligations?

  “Here we are,” Tom said, stopping at the high, fifty-story building.

  I blinked, and looked out of the window absently.

  “You okay, Sir?”

  “Not even close,” I mumbled, getting out of the car. “Wait here, I don’t think whatever Oliver wants from me will take that long.”

  If only I knew his problem was actually mine…

  “I truly hope you didn’t drag me out of bed just because you wanted revenge in a game of chess,” I said gloomily, entering his apartment.

  “I wish it was just about chess,” he said, waving for me to follow him into the living room.

  The first thing I saw there was a head of red hair that I remembered very well. I froze. “Pamela?”

  She turned around at the sound of my voice and something flipped inside of me, as if I were transported five years into the past, looking into the bright-green eyes that I used to love so much...

  “Hi, Dom,” she said, rising to her feet.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked in a cold voice.

  She looked behind her and smiled slightly at something I couldn’t see.

  “I will leave you two alone,” Oliver said, stepping back.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I snapped, taking a step closer to where Pamela was standing.

  “Mom, why is this man so angry?” Said a young voice that I didn’t know.

  My eyes travelled to a little boy sitting on the floor, playing with one of my brother’s toy guitars.

  “He’s not angry, Honey,” she said, kneeling in front of him. “He’s just a little upset.”

  “About what?”

  She looked up at me and something in her eyes told me that I wouldn’t like whatever she was here for.

  “Why don’t you go, find Uncle Oliver?”

  Uncle Oliver?

  The boy rose to his feet, looked at me curiously and left without another word.

  “Now, would you be so kind as to answer my question?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  My memory didn’t do justice to Pamela’s beauty. She was wearing a knee-length dark-green dress, highlighting the color of her big eyes, and contrasting with her long flowing red hair. She was slim but not supermodel slim; she was still very curvy. She had these full hips and breasts that could make almost any man walk into traffic. She always knew how to look great. And right now, I was a little surprised to realize that her beauty didn’t affect me anymore. I didn’t feel anything but anger. I was still angry at her for cheating on me, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to show it.

  “I thought it was time for you to know something,” she said, playing with the belt on her dress. She looked a little nervous, and I didn’t ever remember seeing her like that. She has always been a great example of composure.

&
nbsp; “The morning I saw the picture of you and that brunette woman kissing, my heart broke,” she said in a trembling voice.

  No shit? I was even a little curious about how far her pretence would go. Obviously, she didn’t know that I saw her fucking with a guy whose name I didn’t even want to know, and now she looked so offended, as if it was me cheating on her two weeks before our wedding.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she proceeded. “I left for Washington, hoping that my family would help me get through the shock.”

  I was about to start laughing, but then I thought I should hear the entire story first.

  “A few weeks after I left, I found out that I was pregnant.”

  She looked at me again, and my heartbeat accelerated, as if I already knew what she was about to say next.

  “Max is your son, our son, Dominick.”

  My mouth opened and closed again, and I didn’t know what to say, I was at a complete and total loss for words, entirely speechless. For a moment, I even thought I would never be able to speak again.

  “What did you say?” I stared at her, hoping she would take her words back, but no, she only smiled and took a step closer.

  “We have a son.”

  Thank God, I didn’t lose my balance. I was as shocked as any other man would be hearing that he had been a father for almost five years and never knew about it.

  “Why… Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought you wouldn’t want to have a baby. I thought you would tell me to-”

  “To what? Get rid of him? Are you out your fucking mind, Pamela? What kind of a person do you think I am?”

  A few tears rolled down her cheek, and I couldn’t believe she could actually be such a fabulous actress.

  “Let me make myself completely clear,” I said, sick and tired of her lies. “I know that you were cheating on me. Yes, I saw you; you and that guy,” I spilled, disgusted, “sleeping in your bed. And don’t tell me that I got it all wrong, because I saw everything with my own eyes, and there was no fucking way I would marry a slut!”

  Her eyes got wider. “You… I… Let me explain!”

  “No, Pamela. I don’t need any explanation. You should have known better — people need to pay for ruining someone else’s life. And you didn’t just ruin mine, you killed every good feeling that I ever had for you. You killed the human in me! And it’s your fault that I can’t love anymore, because you showed me how pointless the feeling becomes when it’s not mutual. In short, I don’t trust you, or anyone else for that matter, because of you.”

  “But I still love you, Dominick! I never stopped loving you!” She took one step closer and ran one hand down my cheek. “Don’t you remember how good it was to be together? Just you and me, locked in each other’s embrace-”

  I flinched, watching her in disbelief. Could any woman ever be more deceitful?

  “If you think I will buy this bullshit, then you obviously don’t know me at all,” I said. “If this boy is really my son, I will give him my name and everything else that he deserves. But first, I need a DNA testing proving that you are not lying.”

  “How can you be so blind? He has your eyes, and he looks just you when you were his age!”

  “Sorry, Darling, but I’m not a hopelessly-in-love-with-you puppy anymore. I trust black words written on white paper.”

  “Fine. If you want evidence, I will give it to you.”

  “Good. Let me know when you are ready to go to the laboratory,” I said, giving her my business card.

  Then I turned around and was just about to leave when she said, “Don’t you want to know more about your son?”

  I stopped, my hand on the doorknob. “I want proof first.”

  “How can you be so heartless, Dominick?”

  My blood was boiling slowly in my veins and it took every ounce of my self-control to not kill her with my bare hands, because at that very moment, that was exactly what I wanted to do.

  I smirked. “You of all people should know how easy a heart can be destroyed. So thank you for destroying mine, Pam. No offense, but the only way we can make it work now, is through a doctor and my lawyer.”

  I waited for Pamela and the boy to leave, I didn’t even go to say good-bye, and when Oliver returned to the kitchen where I had been waiting for him, his expression was as dark as a storm-cloud.

  “A kid? Seriously, Dom? How could you not know that you were a father?”

  I gave him a cold look, and slammed my hands down on the counter. “How would I know that I had a kid, if she never bothered to inform me that she was even pregnant?”

  “Didn’t you two have mutual friends that would know that she was pregnant?”

  “I didn’t know any of her friends. And since she moved back to Washington, I haven’t heard anything from her. Why did she come to you, anyway?”

  “She said she didn’t have your new cell phone number or your address.”

  “Right.”

  “Jeez, man do you even realize what a bomb it will be if the press or even worse, our parents, find out about it?”

  But the only person whose reaction would really worry me now, was Scarlett. Somehow, I was sure the news wouldn’t help me make things work with her.

  “I need to go,” I said, heading for the door.

  “By the way,” Oliver called after me, “who was the chick lucky enough to wake up in your bed this morning?”

  “None of your business,” I spat back.

  “Do I know her?” He never gave up easily.

  “No.” I turned the knob and went out the door, and back to my car.

  I slammed the car-door shut behind me and said to Tom, “Office.”

  I seriously doubted my life could be even more screwed. Pamela was right, I didn’t need any tests to see how much the boy looked like me. But I still wanted to be sure that she wouldn’t drag me into another trap. I had plenty of reasons to not trust her.

  The first thing I wanted to do when the elevator stopped at my floor, was to see Scarlett. I went to her office and knocked.

  “Come in,” she replied from behind the closed door.

  “Hey,” I said, standing at the threshold. I was so glad to see her again, my heart thumped loudly inside my chest.

  “What are you doing here?” She asked, a little nervous. Her cheeks flushed and I loved it.

  “Just wanted to stop by and make sure that you made it to the office, safe and sound,” I said, crossing the distance between us.

  “Despite the fact that last night you did your best to exhaust me to make sure I didn’t arrive at the office at all, I found strength to get home, change clothes and come here.”

  “Mmm, last night.” I sighed, leaning to her ear. “I can’t stop thinking about it.” I started placing kisses down her neckline, and immediately was rewarded with a soft moan, vibrating under my lips.

  “This is insane,” she said, standing and placing both hands on my chest.

  “You say it as if it’s something bad,” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist.

  “I’m not sure we should continue doing this.”

  “Doing what? Spending nights in one bed together? Kissing and making each other scream in ecstasy?”

  “Uh, you aren’t really helping, you know that?”

  “All I know is that I want more,” I said, covering her lips with mine.

  I didn’t even realize how much I needed that kiss. It was like being back to some secret place, where nothing but peace and pleasure reigned. The moment my tongue slid in between her parted lips, my inner world exulted. I sucked them lightly, feeling her body leaning closer to mine. There was no way I could leave now.

  She wrapped her arms around my neck and deepened the kiss that I couldn’t even imagine being any more sensual than it already had been. My hands travelled down her hips and I pressed them harder against me, I wanted her to know that I was more than ready for night two.

  “Do you
know what I want to do now?” I asked, slipping one hand under the hem of her skirt.

  “I have no idea,” she breathed into my lips.

  “I want to finish what we once started in my office.”

  “Save that thought for later. I have a meeting with Moonlight designers in-” she looked at her watch, “five minutes.”

  “Do you think I can make you come by that time?”

  She giggled, shaking her head. “No.”

  “No? Don’t you ever underestimate my talents, ma Belle de nuit,” I said in a whisper, feeling my fingers touching the smooth fabric of her panties.

  “I don’t doubt your talents, but I’m not sure I will still be able to think straight after whatever it is on your dirty mind.”

  “How long are you going to be at the meeting?”

  “No less than two hours. We have a lot to discuss.”

  “Okay, then how about you come have lunch with me?”

  “Lunch with you?” She asked, watching me with a mischievous smile, playing on her lips.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Will it be as not-to-have-anything-to-do-with-food lunch as the breakfast that we had two days ago?”

  I smiled, kissing her lips again. “Perhaps.”

  “I will think about it,” she said, watching me intently.

  “Miss Wilson, are you there?” The voice through the speakerphone asked.

  Scarlett’s cheeks flushed again, she turned to the phone on her table, pressed the red button and said, “Yes, Stevie. What is it?” I couldn’t help but admit that I already missed her, knowing that I wouldn’t see her until noon.

  “The Moonlight Design team is here. Shall I accompany them to the meeting hall?”

  “Yes, please. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Time to go?” I asked quietly, pressing her back against my chest.

  “Yes. We are still at work, remember?” She didn’t look like she wanted to go, and I was more than glad to admit it. Her head rested on my right shoulder, exposing her perfect neckline, and collarbone that I couldn’t seem to stop kissing.

  With my hands on her hips, I placed a small kiss right under her ear, and took a step back. “Go, before I lock the damn door and make you miss your important meeting.”