by Holly Hart
I let his return to formality slide. I realize that he’s probably just as uncomfortable with this situation as I am. His job was to drive me somewhere, not counsel me about my issues!
“It doesn’t matter… I half say out loud, half-whisper. “Thanks for the ride.”
Stan inclines his head and departs.
What now? I wonder.
I don’t have to wait long. After just a couple of minutes, the unmistakable clamor of rotor noise washes out over the tiny airport. I don’t pay it any attention at first, but it grows louder and louder, until I’m forced to search out the source.
I peer out of one of the cabin windows, and almost choke with surprise. A huge helicopter – I couldn’t say what brand – slows to a hover just thirty yards away from the private jet I’m sitting on. The Wolfe Capital branding makes it obvious who the occupant is.
“You, Skye,” I mutter – vocalizing my nervousness, “are in way over your head.”
The helicopter sets down, kissing the asphalt skillfully without even making a bump. A second later, Harlan almost jumps out, a perfectly tailored gray suit hugging his frame as though – as I’m sure it was – it was made for him. A man follows behind him with a couple of suitcases.
Suitcases! Where the hell am I going?
And, I hope he packed something for me…
“Skye!” Harlan exclaims after he’s climbed the stairs. He spreads his arms wide, and his gray eyes glitter on that perfectly chiseled face. He seems – if it’s possible – even more confident than the last time I saw him. “You made it…”
My cheeks burn as I remember exactly when that was…
“I wasn’t under the impression,” I mutter. “That I had a choice…”
“You always have a choice, Skye.” Harlan smiles mischievously. I think – and this is my therapist’s voice talking – that Harlan Wolfe knows exactly what he’s doing to me. He’s taken me here to throw me off balance.
And it’s working.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“It’s a secret,” Harlan grins back. “But trust me – you’re going to love it.”
“I have patients, Harlan,” I say, purposefully injecting a little bit of bitchiness into my voice. In truth, it’s hard to stay angry at a man like Harlan. He has a way of ingratiating himself wherever he goes and whoever he sees. And it’s working on me…
But regardless, I need to let him know that I’m not the kind of woman who lets just anyone push her around.
Harlan walks toward me, and behind him I see the stewardess stowing his cases and closing the private jet’s door, dragging the stairs in first. Harlan lowers his voice.
“Have you ever had sex at 30,000 feet,” he asks, purposefully glancing behind him to make sure the stewardess didn’t hear – or maybe to find out whether she did.
I put my foot down. “I’m not sleeping with you, Harlan.”
Harlan’s eyebrow jumps. “No?”
I shake my head grumpily. “No. In fact…” I pause, stalling for time. “In fact we’re going to have a session. What do you think of that?”
Harlan takes my coldness in his stride.
He shrugs.
Charmingly.
With his suit ruffled from the ride in the helicopter, and his hair wind swept from the road to wash, he looks startlingly like a British prince. God, it’s going to be hard to resist him if he comes on to me. A girl’s only got so much self-control…
“Well that’s why you’re here, of course,” he smiles.
“It… Is?”
“Of course, we can’t exactly do my sessions at the office.”
“Why is that?” I ask – now on the back foot. I wonder if it’s accidental, or whether Harlan has skillfully – and intentionally – maneuvered the conversation in this direction.
Harlan spreads his hands wide, takes a step forward and slumps onto an enormous armchair opposite me. “I run a multi-billion-dollar corporation, Skye,” he says as though it’s the most obvious point in the world.
“The second word gets out that I’m in –,” he pauses, as if he’s loath to admit what this is, even to himself – “Therapy, the share price will drop a hundred points. The smart money will get out quick, and the dumb money will follow close behind.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” I protest. “And besides – not everything is about money…”
Harlan grins. “I don’t care about the money. I’ve made more than I could ever spend.” He pats the seat beneath him. “This baby costs me twenty thousand dollars per hour to fly – and that’s just the fuel. But I make fifty thousand bucks an hour just having my cash sitting in the bank. So – ”
My mouth drops open so wide a fly could buzz its way in. I close it sharply, breathing out as I realize what point Harlan is trying to make.
“Even if you never worked again, you could fly this plane forever without running out of money… without even spending the interest!”
Harlan nods, seemingly pleased. “That’s it exactly. These days money is just about keeping score.”
“So why do you bother?” I ask, stumped. “Why not just take off,” I say as the jet’s engines whine behind us, “and spend the rest of your life in some island in the Caribbean?”
Harlan frowns, and states “because Wolfe Capital is my baby, of course.”
I lean back into my seat and study Harlan’s face. I don’t think he’s lying to me. For all his love of flash motorbikes, private planes and expensive meals, I think he is telling the truth. The money really doesn’t matter to him. Of course, what the money can buy is another matter entirely…
But it makes me think. If it’s not the money, then what is it? Why all the bother? There’s something here that doesn’t make sense, and I’m determined to find out what it is.
“How did you sleep last night?” I ask.
“Like a baby,” Harlan says quickly – too quickly for it to be true.
“So, you were up every forty minutes needing the bathroom?” I ask archly.
Harlan’s eyebrows dart up for a second. “Okay, you got me. I slept like shit. You want to know why?”
I wince, realizing that my laptop case – and notebook – is out of reach. I think about calling the stewardess, but decided against it. If Harlan’s on the verge of opening up to me, than the last thing I want is to interrupt him.
And anyway, Harlan Wolfe doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who will respond well if I make the treatment environment too clinical. He’ll just shut down, and that’s the last thing I want. I decide to play the game on his terms.
“Shoot,” I say.
“I was up all night thinking about you, Skye,” Harlan growls, raking his eyes across my body. His tongue flicks out and wets his lips. “About the way you looked with your legs spread. About how much I want to – ”
“Don’t say it,” I whisper, my voice choked. I know what was about to come out of Harlan’s mouth. “Fuck you.” I hear the words echo in my head regardless. I picture Harlan – naked – standing in front of me.
“Why not, Skye,” Harlan says, his voice softer now. “Why hold back when you know you want it?”
“Because I don’t want you…” I whisper. “Not like this.”
Harlan’s forehead furrows. For the first time he looks truly stumped. “Like this?”
12
Harlan
The silence between Skye and me grows thick and heavy with tension. Unfortunately, for both of us, this time it’s not sexual tension. The plane’s engines grow louder and louder, and the jet begins to coast down the runway.
“What you mean, like this?” I repeat.
Skye chews her bottom lip. She seems tense, maybe unsure whether to delve any further.
“This,” she whispers, waving her arm around my jet’s luxuriously appointed interior. “All of this. I want you to be different, Harlan. I want you to be open to me, to us, because otherwise, what is this except a fling, an affair?”
I frown, sli
ghtly offended. “What do you mean? I am being open.”
Skye actually laughs.
Her face lights up with a smile, and I see the most beautiful girl in the world. Her blue eyes seem to glow as she looks at me, and then the laughter fades, and the warmth in her eyes dies with it.
“No, you’re not,” she says. “This is the exact opposite, Harlan – don’t you see that?”
I feel on unsteady ground for the first time in a long time. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m the most powerful person in any room. But in this arena – a stadium of emotion and fear and – I’ll admit it, even in the silence of my own head, a desire for Skye, a longing to know her better, I’m nothing more than a novice.
“No,” I admit.
“It’s you, Harlan,” Skye says, pausing for a second as if she’s straining to figure out the best way to say what’s on her mind. “You have this – this shell built up around you. It’s like you built a wall, and you’ll do anything to avoid letting people in.”
I stay quiet. What Skye’s staying is uncomfortably close to a truth I know – but have never really admitted, not even to myself.
“I want you, Harlan,” Skye says frankly. “Ever since the first moment you walked into my office, I’ve imagined the two of us together.” She flinches, as if she’s only realized that right now for the first time.
“But I can’t have you like this. I don’t want you like this. I want you to –,” she winces, “to fuck me, Harlan. I want you to take me to a place I know only you can. But I won’t just be a one night stand. I can’t just be a one night stand.”
“You won’t – ”
Skye cuts me off with a bitter laugh, and it cuts deep because I know she’s right.
“I will,” she says with brutal honesty.
“That’s exactly what I’ll be – because, unless you open up to me, unless you admit how you became the man you are, then I’ll never know the real you. I can’t bear that, Harlan. I can’t bear being so close, and yet so far.”
Skye slumps back, as though that admission took all the energy she had.
I believe it.
I feel drained as well, because Skye Warren is right. I brought her here – onto this jet – to impress her.
The story about the share price – that was true. But it was a half-truth at best. I could’ve met her in any one of a dozen apartments across Manhattan, had someone pick her up and spirit her to me in complete secrecy.
No, the reason she’s here – on my plane – is I thought that by dangling this shiny object in front of her, I could buy her trust – buy her desire.
But Skye’s not like that. She’s better than that.
Better than me.
That’s the truth, and it hurts. But I can rise to the challenge she’s setting up for me without knowing she’s thrown down the gauntlet.
Or does she know it?
Maybe I don’t give her enough credit. Maybe Skye knows exactly what she’s doing.
Maybe this is what she planned all along.
I take off my jacket, eyes fixed on Skye, but looking at a place a continent away – a dusty place, full of bombs, bullets, and men with guns. I feel the warmth of Skye’s gaze upon me – curious, now – but I don’t see it.
“You know where I served,” I say. My voice sounds quiet, as though I’m speaking from the bottom of a well. “You know there are things I can’t tell you.”
I pause. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats.
“But there are other things… that I can.”
“At your own pace, Harlan,” Skye says softly. Her voice is calming, almost singsong. I latch on to it, let it guide me. “Just tell me what you feel comfortable sharing.”
My mind idly wonders whether this is what she sounds like when she’s conducting a session – without realizing that’s exactly what she’s doing.
“I’ve killed men,” I admit.
“How many billionaires out there can say that? Sometimes I sit around a boardroom table, and I feel like a stranger. I feel like I don’t belong. How can these people understand what I’ve experienced? Do they even try?”
Skye stays silent. I’m glad of it. Strangely speaking those words was a relief. I’ve kept this heavy truth bundled inside me for far too long. There’s no one I’m able to share it with – my daughter?
No way.
“I’ve had brothers die in my arms. I’ve called down airstrikes on my own position, knowing that I could die, but accepting it because my men would be saved.”
“And –?”
“How did that make me feel?” I spit bitterly, anticipating Skye’s question. My eyes are closed now, and I can smell the cordite in the air now, and hear the helicopters clattering in the distance.
“I wasn’t going to say it in so many words,” Skye says softly. “But your way works too, I guess…”
In spite of myself – and the seriousness of what I’m talking about, I can’t help but smile. Skye didn’t start all this by taking my shit, and she sure as hell isn’t planning to start now.
“It made me feel like shit,” I admit. “Powerless. I resolved that I was never going to feel that way again.”
Something – I don’t know – flashes inside of me. It’s like a light bulb switching on. I feel a kind of lightness inside me, but I can’t for the life of me work out why.
“And that,” Skye says, “is the heart of it, isn’t it? It’s why you are the way you are. It’s why you try to control the world around you – why you try to control me.”
“I – ”
The second word of my protest – don’t – dies in my throat. It dies because I know that Skye is right. This whole trip – this whole time, I’ve been trying to control this beautiful, fiery headed, fiery souled woman.
And this whole time, whether I realized it or not, she’s been controlling me. Shaping the way I think, shaping the way I feel. My eyes are already shut, but I let the darkness envelop me in a desperate attempt to hide from my embarrassment.
I’ve been such an ass.
“Don’t try and deny it,” Skye says. But her voice isn’t hectoring, it isn’t accusing. In fact it’s masterfully pitched. Whoever hired her got one thing right. She’s the goddamn best in the business.
“Okay,” I breathe.
In truth, I’m bristling. Bristling from the memories of the things I’ve been through, bristling from the memories of the men – and women – I left behind.
“Tell me the truth, Harlan.”
“The truth?”
I hear her nodding. Or maybe I imagine it – but I’m sure that my ears pick up the sound of her hair whispering as it kisses her face.
“Tell me the thing you’re hiding from me. The thing you’re hiding from yourself. Whatever it is, I don’t care. You’ll never be able to move past your –,” her voice breaks, “issues without coming to terms with it.”
I pause for a second. Somehow, perhaps in the way Skye said those words, she gave me an insight. I think when she speaks, she reveals as much about herself as about me.
My throat is gripped by a sudden burst of emotion the likes of which I haven’t felt in years.
I’m Harlan Wolfe. I’m cold, ruthless – a killer. I’m the kind of man who’s deadly for America’s enemies, and now I’m as ruthless when I make money in her markets.
And yet today, with Skye by my side, I’m a different Harlan Wolfe. I’m the kind of man not afraid to give into my emotions. The kind of man who’s afraid, that if he doesn’t give in, then the goodness in his life will seep through his cupped hands. I don’t mean my money:
my daughter.
“I –,” I take a deep breath, preparing myself for a truth that no one in my life – bar one person, one angel – knows.
“You can tell me, Harlan,” Skye whispers.
And in her voice I hear something different than anything I’ve ever heard before – I hear acceptance. I know that no matter what happens in life, Skye will never judge me, not like some. She’s
not in it for my money. If she was, she wouldn’t be doing this. She’s doing this because she wants to help.
“I had a wife,” I croak, “Ashley Ward, then Wolfe. She was a medical corpsman, Charlie Company in the Marine Corps 1st Combat Medical. The best woman I’ve ever known.”
To her credit, Skye doesn’t let my revelation interrupt her, not even for a second. She’s just heard my deepest secret without blinking.
“What happened to her? To Ashley?” She asks.
“Her squad was doing a run, clearing IED’s from some dusty road in the middle of fuck nowhere,” I say, losing myself in my past once again.
I hear the satellite phone ringing in my head. I hear the call that gave me the news the turned me into the man I am today.
“They were stretched – too many bombs, too few men and women. They didn’t have enough guns on perimeter security. By the time the quick reaction force got to them, it was too late…”
“Harlan,” Skye whispers. “I’m so sorry…”
I clench my jaw, doing my best to ward off the tears. But it’s useless. I feel like I punctured a dam inside me, and now hot lava streams out of my eyes, and I’m incapable of stopping it.
But I’m glad of one thing. I’m glad Skye hasn’t tried to reassure me with empty words. I’ve had enough people tell me that my wife died a hero. I don’t need that from Skye as well.
“And that’s why you are the way you are,” Skye says.
I’m so wrapped up in my own grief that I’m not sure I’m hearing right, but she sounds closer to me.
“That’s why you built Wolfe Capital – because you felt powerless over the death of your wife. There was nothing you could do to save her. You never wanted to be in that position again.”
I nod, and hot tears drip down my front as they are shaken loose. Now it seems like after a decade of hiding from the truth, now I can’t stop talking.
But there’s one thing I hold back. I’m not sure why – maybe the same need to be in control. I don’t tell her about my daughter. Not yet.
“When I heard the news, I was in the field. I got the hell out, sweet talked and bullied my way onto half a dozen choppers and planes. Benefits of being in spec ops,” I say with black humor coloring my voice, “people think you’re important. That there’s somewhere you’ve got to be.”