by Corri Lee
What a crock. If I’d let him, Henry would have been so tightly wound around my little finger it would cut off the blood supply.
“I won’t,” I promised, “just don’t bully me into finding an assistant or we’ll be having words.”
Blaze called Esme to arrange a late lunch together. I was happy to find Chris, Daniel and Jonathan sitting with her when we walked into Esme’s but more distracted with surprise to see the bar itself.
It was still the same classy speak-easy style but with a little more razzle dazzle. The main lounge had been fitted with a low stage with an impressive backdrop painted with the classic view of the Hollywood sign. The floors had been waxed so they shone and the seating completely reupholstered in lush red velvet.
“Wow, look what you did to this place!”
“I take no credit in good conscience,” Esme confessed, but jabbed at Blaze’s biceps. “Those, however, I do. He did most of the work.”
“Most?”
“All right, all of it.” I turned to Blaze and cocked my head. He’d worked pretty freakin’ hard for a man who apparently hadn’t been able to function.
Growling, he nipped at my jaw. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like you sat on your wonderful derrière moping , either”
“No, she kicked some serious ass.” Jonathan winked at me across the table, pulling his attention from his smartphone. “Speaking of ‘serious ass’, have you spoken to Callowank yet?”
“Don’t call him that,” I admonished, too achingly aware of the fact none of my calls had been returned. “But no. I turned my international calls on earlier and tried to reach him but his phone is off. That’s not like him. Not even his assistant knows where he is and he needs her. She knows binary.” My friends’ laughter was the only thing that stopped me feeling bad for making a poor joke at Calloway’s expense. “But seriously, his voice mail is full and he’s not due back in New York until Tuesday. I’m not sure if he even knows I’m here.”
Chris stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Email him?”
Esme and I winced simultaneously. “An email Dear John? Ouch. Tactless. Isn’t my black widow reputation bad enough.”
“What the hell have I missed?” Blaze shifted around and twisted a strand of my hair around his finger. “Nobody asked me for interviews, I promise. I’m sorry if you got bad press anyway.” No offers? I found that hard to believe—harder when I saw the looks traded between my four friends. They’d blocked the reporters, of course they had. In every way, they’d shielded him from ever finding out where I was and with who. It was good of them, but I didn’t know if it had done more harm than good.
“I got some. But I think I got good press, too, because I was keeping my promise.” That seemed to settle him. The reactions to the public scoldings I gave Cal ranged from calling me a modern day heroine to be being super-bitch, which I wasn’t entirely convinced was a bad thing where Mr. Ryan and his reputation were concerned. And I wasn’t going to deny Blaze his right to get up to date now I was back.
“So what will you do about the Devil himself?”
I rolled my eyes and pinched at the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know. Rich guys like him don’t just vanish. I guess I just keep trying and hope I get to him before he reads the bad news on Page Six.”
“Hah, can you imagine! ‘Calloway Ryan downtrodden and dumped for ex by sassy Brit misandrist’.”
“I am not a misandrist! I like men. Too damn much apparently.”
“Hold up.” Blaze grabbed my hand, which grabbed my attention. “Your piece of ass is Calloway Ryan?”
I nodded. “Sure. Remember that day we... Well, you know. I collapsed on him and he gave me that—”
“Money clip. Yeah. I remember that. No wonder Chase told me to get on the first plane available.” He turned away and dropped my hand, face displaying something near disgust.
“Hey.” I shoved his shoulder, making sure I looked as pissy as I felt. “You don’t get to judge me for anything I did in New York because it’s your fault I was there at all. Yes, Calloway is kind of a pig, and yeah, he’s nearly as hot as you which, must be annoying, but the media have him so wrong. I had that shit handled, and I was helping that poor guy get over his own eating disorder and self-harm problems. He put up with sleeping in separate beds and the fact I was blatantly thinking about you to reach orgasm—I think the guy deserves a little slack.”
Startled, Blaze looked at me for a second and visibly processed the orgasm comment before he nodded slowly and said, “Okay, you make a valid argument in his defence. I’ll just let all the women who had him charged with physical and emotional abuse know that he had a good reason for slapping them around.”
“He... What?”
“Calloway Ryan has a little known reputation for being a woman beater, Emmeline. The last woman to go to court against him got millions in compensation because he made her cut and bleach her waist-length brown hair, get a tattoo over her unsightly appendectomy scar, hired her within his company so he could pull her into his office for a fuck on a whim whether she wanted to or not, then dragged her out of an airport by her hair when she tried to go to her father’s funeral because he needed company to a business lunch.”
My head spun. I’d known he had a habit of trying to force his influence on women, but to treat them worse than animals?
“Worst part of it is, the woman still loved him through it all and is still his PA. They stayed together until he decided he’d prefer to take a crack at his new Russian dentist.”
“Matilda?” I quickly thought back to the uptight brunette I’d spoken to just that morning—the way she’d encouraged me to turn my back on him at Madison Square Garden. She knew better than anyone what might have been waiting for me. “He beat her?”
“Her and others. He paid out millions to make sure the stories never got out but everyone has their price.”
“Oh my God...” I felt sick to the stomach and suddenly hated that I couldn’t drink. It didn’t make sense that Calloway would have opened up to me and treated me so well after those first initial conflicts, but to know what he was capable of... Where was a burning hot shower when you needed one?
Blaze relaxed his stance and brushed his fingers across my hand. “Tell me he didn’t hurt you.” I shook my head and rubbed at the cramp in my stomach. I could have gotten beaten... “Emmeline, I mean it. If he laid a single finger on you—”
“He didn’t.”
He exhaled harshly. “Good. If I’d known who you were with, a confiscated passport wouldn’t have stopped me. I would have found him and—”
“Gotten yourself killed.” I gripped onto his fingers, desperately trying not to put mental images to the upsetting and inevitable consequence of that possible scenario.” He’s a juggernaut, Blaze, and he thinks you stole me from him. He would have killed you before you hit the ground and he’d probably make sure I saw him do it.” A violent shudder ran through me, making me suck in a breath so sharp it made my teeth ache. “Dear John by email it is.”
“Jesus, I’m so sorry. To both of you.” Daniel reached over and laid his hand over both of ours. “If we’d known what could have happened...”
“Don’t.” I knew that they wouldn’t have let me stay. He didn’t need to say it. Everyone had made bad judgement calls over the last three months and now we all needed to just lock it away like a bad memory. There was no point on dwelling. No point in shifting blame. All that mattered was that I’d come back unscathed.
Esme had another surprise up her sleeve. The bar now had a kitchen out back and a fabulous chef who’d come in to work overtime especially for the occasion of lunch. Apparently he’d heard a lot about me and my pernickety eating habits, so was well prepared to serve me the perfect steak to make up for the one I’d eaten cold through distraction at the winter ball.
There were no more serious conversations and no more mentions of New York. We laughed and chatted through our meals in the huge empty bar like we’d never been apart.
Maybe, in a way, we never were.
Blaze and I found our way back to the flat after far too much food and one glass of wine too many. He massaged my feet in the taxi while I composed my tactically written email to Calloway.
... I promise that this has nothing to do with you. You were wonderful to me. I just feel that London has more to offer spiritually. It was hard to be away from my family and friends, and visiting them just made me see how hard it would be to leave them again.
Don’t hate me for going. Hate me for staying as long as I did. Hate that I was too weak to say no to an advantageous old friend.
I will value and remember the time we had, always.
I really meant that. Sure, it made me sick to think about the possibilities that could have arisen, but they hadn’t, and I was glad that I at least got to help him. At least I thought I had.
My email made me think about another past nuisance.
“Was Hunter invited to lunch?”
Blaze squeezed my feet and slipped them back into my shoes just as we pulled up outside the flat. “He was. He’s sulking after his telling off last night.”
“Oh.” I could only just remember what I’d said but I didn’t really feel bad about it. We used to spar verbally over the phone all the damn time and it was usually me who ended up licking the wounds. “Why?”
“I guess the truth hurts more in person.” He had me there. Face to face, it was possible to avoid the barrage of hard hitting home truths. It was easy to terminate a phone call or delete a message—not so much when the words were being screamed in your face.
I couldn’t even reasonably justify why I’d gone off at him the way I did. Plumbing it down to a bad mood was a shameful excuse, and he already had enough on his plate with his relationship problems.
“I should butt heads with him before he goes,” I said, trudging through the snow and clinging onto Blaze’s arm for support, “I want to wipe the slate clean and start off anew with no complications. It’ll be easier to talk to him now I don’t have the whole school girl crush thing clouding my mind.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm? What hmm?” It took all of half a second to decipher the less than verbose ‘hmm’. “Oh, come on,” I scoffed. “You’re worried about me being around him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” The minute we were through the door, I launched at Blaze—jumped up at him and wrapped my legs around his waist. “So why are you looking all serious and pouty? Why are you all snappy? Would it help if I nibbled your ear and said sexy things in a husky voice?”
“Emmeline...”
I dropped down and sighed at him. “Blaze, if I wanted him, wouldn’t I have gone to Japan or, I dunno, thrown myself at him the minute I knew he and Siobhan were separated? Do you think I’m spiteful enough to make you watch us all night while I cooed over him?”
“No.” Blaze cupped my face and rested his forehead against mine. “Of course not. I’m just still pissed that he was allowed to come for you.”
“He brought me back to you. He’s on your side. And I don’t want him anymore, I just want you. Almost as much as I want a shower.” I smacked a wet kiss on his cheek and skipped—yes, skipped—to the bedroom for the scrub down I’d been needing since I found out I’d been cohabiting with a woman beater.
Blaze followed me into bathroom and ogled me unashamedly when I was down to my underwear. “Fuck. Me.”
“Later. Shower first.” I grinned and catapulted my bra at him. “I have to wonder what you’re thinking when you’re looking at me like that.” Like he could eat me alive. Like not throwing me over his shoulder like a caveman and dragging me back to his cave to mate was near impossible. Like the way I was going to look at him when he finally let me see him with his damn clothes off.
“I’m wondering when the other arch angels are going to arrive.” I blew a raspberry and reached into the shower unit to turn the water on. Blaze caught my waist and caged me against it. I was completely naked and him fully clothed, yet I knew exactly how this would go. “I’m not kidding, Emmeline. I don’t know what they put in the water in New York, damn girl, you well hydrated.”
“Oh, God.” I rolled my eyes and wriggled out of his grip, “now I really need a shower.”
My freshly painted toes wriggled as I stretched across the couch, holding my laptop steady across my belly. Blaze had insisted on pampering me, playing pedicurist and hairdresser while I worked a little to the hum of the television. I figured it was as much compensation for not pouncing on me in the shower as it was comfort for him. At some point, I would have to make him stop grovelling, but he’d looked so at peace while he’d been rolling my hair into finger curls. Frankly, it felt good to feel like I was centre of his universe for a while, even if I wasn’t.
My fingers stopped and hovered over the keyboard when my reason for leaving sprang unpleasantly to the forefront of my mind. He’d told me that his wife owed him, that he’d ‘earned’ her estate. I hadn’t really taken that seriously before, and it had never really registered when he’d told me that I couldn’t understand. Whatever his reason for caring for her, he was keeping it from me on purpose.
Already, our fresh start was being muddied with complications and secrets. Technically, with her out of the picture, the problem was just a past deterrent and irritation. He’d given up whatever mission he was on to be with me.
But what could make a man who was already well off cling to the promise of money like that? What hold did she have over him?
The endless list of options formulated in my mind all night, making it hard to fall asleep. My agitation wasn’t helped at all by the Blaze wearing a t-shirt again, despite the fact I’d opted to sleep nude. There had been no sheet-shredding sex at all between us, just the slow lazy love we’d made that morning. I needed that skin on skin contact with him to feel, like he had needed too, that he was real. At a time when my life should have felt so right, it was starting to feel so wrong.
I stood there, pillow in hand, looming over the lifeless body of a faceless corpse I didn’t know. Her glassy eyes stared up at me, blank and still shining with tears, hand hung over the side of an extravagant four-poster bed decorated in filigree and royal blue velvet fabric.
A scene I was beginning to know too well.
And as I stared over her, I smiled. I was proud of myself, sickeningly so. I hated that woman deeply and I’d learnt the reason for it in that dream world. I killed her out of selfishness. I killed her in self-defence. I killed her because—
“You deserved it.”
I lurched awake from the nightmare somewhere in the early hours of the morning. The abnormal lightness filling the room came only from the snow reflecting the orange halogen glow of the street lamps around the building. My hand rubbed over my heart, trying to steady it’s pounding, and the sweat on my forehead dripped down, over my nose onto the sheets pooled around me.
Blaze still slept soundly, unbothered by my abrupt awakening. His pillow was clutched lengthways under his head and bundled up in his arms, the sheets bunched up around his waist. He was almost in the foetal position, which I thought was quite cute.
Carefully, I slipped out of bed and crept into the bathroom to splash the last traces of the nightmare away with cold water. Those eyes—cold, dead eyes—seemed to follow me wherever I went. I was going to have to find a new psychiatrist to talk through it with me.
When my senses were gathered, I sneaked back into the bedroom and moved to climb back into bed. Blaze mumbled and squirmed when I pulled up the sheets. Pausing until I knew he was still asleep, I inched closer and got one leg in before he rolled over to face me.
As he stretched an arm out towards me, the hem of his shirt slid up to his ribs...
... And exposed the unmistakable battle scars of a man who’d cut himself for comfort.
The next morning dawned in a haze. I’d gotten back into bed but hadn’t been able to sleep through the images of Blaze hurtin
g himself burdening my thoughts. It explained why he’d not let me see him undressed, but it didn’t explain why he’d done it. Was he trying to be symbolic, marking himself to invite more hope? Was it comfort or more? I’d sat up several times and tried to look at his wrists in the semi-dark to see if he’d done any damage there but given up around five in the morning and gotten out of bed.
How long did he think he could get away with me not seeing them? If he’d done it in depression, he might not have even considered that. Was he planning to wait and see if they’d fade? They wouldn’t if he’d done it properly...
Ugh, ‘properly’. It pissed me off to think like that.
I found myself looking at tattoos on the Internet, remembering Calloway’s suggestion to cover my own scars. I’d been dead against the idea, but if I’d done it before, Blaze never would have seen them. His own new blemishes were in the same place as mine—in the place I’d told him couldn’t be seen.
It was my own fault for not pointing out that I’d believed there to be a purpose, that I thought I could cut out slabs of my own fat. The memories of burning needles over candles and soaking them in vodka so they’d be ‘sterile’ just in case I could actually do it and stitch up the wound was too painfully clear; I hadn’t targeted that specific area to be deceptive, it had just been... problematic.
I really didn’t know how to broach the subject. It broke my heart that he’d been at the point of self-harm, and he’d been there because of me. It made me wonder if I should use my ticket to fly back to New York that afternoon after all, getting far, far away from him.
But I couldn’t. I loved him too much, scars and all. Still, I didn’t know how long I could play dumb.
I felt myself lifted off the couch and tucked up in bed when it was light outside, but my head throbbed too much to open my eyes. I knew it had to be late in the morning and I needed to work, but I just felt too heavy and raw. Prewarmed by Blaze’s body heat, the bed felt safe and womb-like. Almost like a protective cocoon.