by Nina Milne
‘Are you OK?’
Another silence. Then, ‘Not really. I just need five minutes and I’ll be back at the table. Please go before we draw attention to our joint absence.’
Marcus hesitated, then realised he really couldn’t linger in here, nor force her out. ‘OK...’
* * *
April pressed her hands against her eyes. No more tears...please, no more tears. But Rafael’s speech had plumbed the depths of her soul, forced a replay of her past.
Vivid images had flickered in her brain.
Standing in front of Edward’s cot, trying to protect him from Dean’s rage. The sound of thunder in the background—a prelude to the storm and the tragedy to come. The dense grey pounding rain and the lash of wind against the windows. The pungent smell of alcohol and hatred that had emanated from her husband. The pain when he’d punched her out of the way and the deadly, deadly fear when he’d snatched Edward up. Her desperate pleas as she’d tried to stop him, reaching up from the floor in supplication...
Somehow she’d dragged herself after him, heard the roar of his sports car as he had gunned it away from the kerb. And then a few hours later the police had been on the doorstep, deluged by the rain...
So in the here and now she’d left the table, knowing she was about to break down, and had made it to the sanctuary of this cubicle, where she had allowed herself to weep silently. She’d swallowed down tears when Marcus had entered and pulled herself together. Now she needed to keep herself together—no more unravelling.
She pushed the cubicle door open and headed to the basin, staring at her reflection in the ornate gilt mirror as she washed her hands and inhaled the scent of rose petals that permeated the air.
It seemed ludicrous now that at the start of the evening she’d almost had a sense of anticipation—had held a small bubble of optimism that it might even be a tad enjoyable. How could it be? Social events invariably brought about conversation that evoked poignant memories—a minefield that she had to prepare herself for. Worse, they prompted the need to dissemble, to erase years of her life, her marriage and her son. Quite simply to pretend her beautiful baby hadn’t existed.
Stop. Before Marcus returns to find you.
Somehow the thought of Marcus steadied her, and with one last glance in the gilded mirror she turned and headed for the door. Pulling it open, she screeched to a halt as Marcus pushed himself off the adjacent wall in one lithe movement.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you.’
‘I told you to go back to the table.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘No one told me you were in charge,’ he murmured, and the small smile on his lips goose-bumped a little shiver over her skin.
Right now the attraction was a welcome distraction from her grief. For a second she wondered if he somehow knew that.
‘So what do you want to do now?’ he asked. ‘If you like I can drive you back to the hotel.’
For a second temptation beckoned, but she knocked it back. This was a work assignment and she would see it through.
‘I appreciate your concern but I am fine. Really. I want to go back in.’
‘Then that is what we will do.’
Grateful for his acceptance of her decision, she followed him back down the corridor, re-entering the ballroom as Rafael announced that the dancing would now commence.
‘Shall we?’ Marcus asked.
For a second she gaped at him. ‘Shall we what?’
‘Dance?’
Refusal would be the sensible option—she knew that—yet the simple word No refused to materialise on her lips.
‘I’m sure your readers will be interested in how I acquit myself on the dance floor.’
He had a point, but deep down she knew that wasn’t the true motivation for her desire to dance with him. Right now the pull of attraction was moving her away from the cusp of despair. She wanted to be held in his arms...wanted to be up close and cocooned by his strength and powerful aura.
Dammit. When there was so much heartache in the world, so much tragedy and grief, right here and now it felt important to acknowledge the sheer life-giving force of physical attraction.
‘You’re right.’
What harm could there be in one dance? Especially when she could kid herself it was for research purposes...
But from the second he placed an arm around her waist and they stepped onto the dance floor research went out of the window. It seemed nonsensical that his touch could burn though the lacy material of her dress, ridiculous that desire should strum her body with a riff causing a fever of combustible proportions.
Her head spun as if she had gone through a portal into a more rarefied atmosphere—a world where she could somehow manage to shut out everything but the here and now. Memories, guilt and despair were all still out there, but they couldn’t get into this insulated bubble where all she could be aware of was Marcus.
The beat of his heart under her fingers, the strength of his chest, the feel of his arm around her waist, his clasp light yet firm and somehow full of promise, the smell of him, his proximity...
She looked up at him, fascinated by every molecule of his skin. Instinct dared her to move her hand and brush the nape of his neck. She heard his intake of breath as he pulled her closer—so close she knew he was as aroused as she...
Then memory sheared through her insulation, superimposed an image of the past...ten years before...a college dance...a different time, a different man. A man who had seemed to empower her but in fact had enslaved her, had somehow made her dance to his every tune. Dean. She had fallen for him, sucked in by his looks, his charisma, by the arrogance that she had mistaken for confidence. In that dance, that evening, she had believed herself to be on top of the world—whereas in reality she had been on the brink of ruin.
Never again would she let desire shut out all else.
Somehow she managed not to wrest herself from Marcus’s grasp. Instead she dropped her hand from his neck to his shoulder and unglued her body from his—there was no other word for it. Shame swathed her. Somehow she focused on a point over his shoulder and tried to suppress the seething sensation inside her.
‘April...?’
His voice tested her resolve but didn’t break it. All she had to do was conjure up a vision of Dean—not the Dean she’d first danced with, but the man he’d turned out to be and the horrific chain of events that dance had precipitated.
‘You OK?’
‘Yes. Actually, no.’ To her horror, she could hear the anger in her voice, the frustration and the sheer emotion. ‘This attraction is wrong. Unless, of course, I’m imagining it?’
Right now she would almost prefer the humiliation of being told it was all one-sided.
‘You aren’t imagining it and it isn’t wrong. It’s just unfortunate.’
Unfortunate? Ouch.
Totally perversely, hurt was added to the anger that swirled inside her.
‘It’s too complicated, given our situation—given that you’re researching an article on the “real” Marcus Alrikson.’
April frowned. She got why this attraction sucked from her viewpoint, but from his...? Then the penny dropped.
‘You think I’ll kiss and tell?’
‘It’s a possibility I have to consider.’
Now her anger upped its ante and turned into rage. Common sense attempted to indicate that he had a point, but she lasered it down. He should know that she would never do anything so grubby.
Curbing the urge to really give him something to consider—like a knee straight where it hurt most—she narrowed her eyes. ‘I assure you there will be no “tell”, because there will be no “kiss”.’
He opened his mouth and then closed it again, and she wondered what he had been going to say. Whatever it was he’d clearly decided against
it. Instead he gave a small nod and said, ‘That works for me.’
April wasn’t sure how she got through the rest of the evening, but spurred on by pure anger she forced herself to circulate, to talk to as many people as possible about their opinion on Marcus Alrikson.
She gritted her teeth as she heard the words ‘dedicated,’ ‘committed’, ‘drop-dead gorgeous’ and ‘unapproachable’—that from a woman who had once tried to ask him out. There was also ‘ruthless’, ‘arrogant’, ‘fair’...
Finally the orchestra played its penultimate dance. Then Cora Derwent took the stage, thanked everyone for their generous donations and announced that there would be one final speech before the last dance—from Marcus Alrikson.
April blinked and sudden guilt touched her. This event had been in memory of Axel. In her own grief she hadn’t really thought about how Marcus must be feeling.
He climbed to the podium and stood, at ease, confident that everyone would listen to his words.
‘First, don’t worry—I’ll keep it brief. Second, don’t worry—I’m not after any more of the contents of your wallets. I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for your generosity tonight, and I want to say a few words about Prince Axel. And I am not speaking to you now as Chief Advisor to the Prince, but as Axel’s best friend.
‘Axel was a good man—and I mean that in all senses. He had a sense of honour and he truly cared about Lycander and all its people. He had a vision, and it is a true tragedy that he never had a chance to turn that vision into reality. But that aside, what grieves me most is the knowledge that his life ended way too soon. I grieve because I will never hear his laugh again, never have another beer after a game of squash.
‘Axel lost his chance to grow older, to marry and to have children, to feel the Lycandrian sun on his face. For that I grieve. But I promise, Axel, my old friend, that your memory will live on; I miss you as a friend as well as a ruler I would have been proud to serve.’ He lifted his glass. ‘To Axel.’
April blinked back tears, wishing with a familiar fierceness that somehow she could change her past. Those words echoed her own grief—that Edward would never grow older, play football, attend school...
Applause broke out as everyone in the room lifted their glasses, and then the orchestra started to play the last tune of the night and people began to congregate on the dance floor.
April headed straight to Marcus. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘For not realising this evening must be hard for you, too. Because of Axel.’
His gaze sharpened, and too late she realised her slip: the addition of the word ‘too’ had been a tacit admission of her own state.
‘Yes, it is. But I know that charities like DFL work hard to prevent similar tragedies. Axel would have approved of that.’
‘I get that, but it’s still hard.’
‘Yes.’
April took a deep breath. ‘Can we forget about earlier?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have been so tactless.’
There was a small silence and then April looked up at him. ‘Can I ask you something? Off the record?’
‘You can ask.’
‘How do you deal with the grief?’
Marcus hesitated. Then, ‘I’ll show you.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS THEY CLIMBED into the chauffeur-driven car Marcus wondered if this was a good idea. Then again, were any of his ideas with regard to April good ones? Somehow he thought not. That dance? Very bad idea; his body still hadn’t got over it. His agreement to her writing an article on ‘the real Marcus Alrikson’? Also not one of his better moments.
And now he had chosen to prolong their time together. But he could sense her pain, her grief, and like it or not he wanted to help in some way.
‘Alrikson Security, please, Roberto.’
As the vehicle made its smooth way through mostly deserted roads Marcus leant back against the leather seat.
‘When Axel died, at first I quite simply didn’t believe it. It didn’t seem possible that a man I had spoken to mere hours before could be gone. The sheer surrealness of it stunned me. It seemed impossible that I couldn’t do something to change fate’s decree. That I couldn’t turn the clock back.’
Just as he hadn’t been able to after the fire—hadn’t been able to alter the moment when he hadn’t gone back in.
‘When I finally accepted he was gone, I raged.’
He had contemplated drowning his grief in a bottle; he’d known from observation that alcohol could numb everything, wipe it all out. But he’d also known that that way lay addiction and misery—his genes might point to that option, but he would never make the choices his parents had made.
‘What did you do?’
The car pulled up outside the sleek headquarters of his company and they alighted. Marcus keyed them in and led the way to the lifts, pressing the button for the basement. Minutes later they were in the underground gym he’d had installed.
‘I took it out on a punch bag. For hours.’ Until sheer exhaustion had temporarily anaesthetised his pain. ‘Day after day.’ A pause. ‘Do you want to try it?’
‘Me? Punch a bag? I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s... I’d feel stupid. I’m hardly fighting fit—I doubt I’d make much of an impact. I can’t remember the last time I went to the gym.’
‘It’s not a competition or a test. It’s a way to unleash all those feelings. The anger, the grief, the rage...’
She shook her head. ‘I’d rather not feel them at all.’
‘At the end of a workout you’ll be too numbed by exhaustion to feel anything.’
He could see that the idea appealed. But, ‘I couldn’t do it anyway. Not in this dress.’
‘You can borrow some of my workout clothes. It’s up to you. If you don’t feel comfortable, don’t do it. But don’t worry about looking stupid or being weak. You’re neither. It’s a way to stay in control. You control the feelings; they don’t control you.’
April stared at the punch bag and then nodded. ‘OK. Thank you. I’d like to give it a try.’
‘Changing rooms are this way.’
* * *
April looked at the T-shirt and, succumbing to temptation, held it to her face. It smelt freshly laundered—not even the faintest Marcus scent discernible. Yet the idea that this material had once touched his skin added a frisson to the emotional whirlpool that already twisted inside her as she tugged the soft cotton garment over her head.
She closed her eyes. What was wrong with her? Had she completely lost the plot?
That was a no-brainer. The plot had been left behind long ago that day—possibly in Gabrielle’s boutique. Now she appeared to be winging it without a script.
She tried to picture herself actually aiming a punch, and to her own surprise felt a strange thrill course through her body at the prospect. Because right now she was all over the place and she loathed it. If she really could rid herself of the intensity of these sensations then it was a win-win situation. Because once they were gone she would make damn sure they didn’t come back.
The thought propelled her into the oversized shorts. Tugging at the cord, she cinched them round her waist, and a couple of expert rolls of the waistband rendered them acceptable. The movement was a reminder of those carefree school days when she and her friends had hitched their school skirts to madly short lengths the moment they were out of parental sight. Days so long ago, when her life had stretched before her full of glorious possibility.
And then Dean had entered it...
Emotions swirled again, and she left the changing room and headed back to the gym, where she halted on the threshold, frozen into immobility.
Just great!
Marcus, too, had changed—into tracks
uit bottoms and a T-shirt that seemed moulded to his upper torso. Honed muscles were on display, and suddenly her mouth was dry and her lungs seemed to have forgotten their function.
‘Hey.’
He smiled at her and she forced herself not to close her eyes.
‘I thought it would be easier if I show you the best way to do this, as well as explain it. There are some things you need to know before I can let you loose.’
His common-sense tone was exactly what she needed to make this whole situation less surreal, and she listened as he explained, his deep voice full of reassurance as he reiterated the importance of not tensing up and maintaining balance.
‘So now I’ll show you...’
April tried to treat it as a lesson, tried to focus only on the technical aspects, but it quite simply wasn’t possible. Not when the sheer glory of his sculpted body was on display and his grace, agility and clean movement as he jabbed the punch bag caused havoc with her insides.
‘You ready?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
With an effort she calmed her breathing, tried to pretend this was all research for an article, but for once her brain let her down, left her unable to formulate sentences.
‘I’ll tape your hands to protect them, and don’t forget—’
‘To keep my wrists straight,’ she finished.
However hard she tried, she couldn’t disguise the tremble in her fingers as she held out her hands—couldn’t hold back the audible intake of breath as he wrapped the tape around them. Every movement felt like a caress.
‘OK. You’re good to go. Remember—not too forceful the first time.’
She pulled back and hit the bag, jarred her hand.
‘Keep it easy. Imagine getting rid of the anger, the grief, but remember you’re the one in control—you’re in charge.’
The deep timbre of his voice washed over her, calling to something inside her. The punch bag came into sharp focus, and somewhere inside her feelings began to burgeon. Grief rolled out its black carpet alongside anger...rage that life had inflicted such tragedy on her, fury with herself for her own culpable part in it.