by Corri Lee
I didn’t doubt that. I knew him well enough to know he was a loyal man who was driven by obligation because he wouldn’t let himself leave a job half-finished. God knows that had been what kept him with Natasha. He said himself that had he walked away, he’d have wasted years where he could have been touring the world as a rockstar.
Jesus Christ. He was an ex-rockstar and he wanted to spend weeks helping me dress myself. Talking about kicking a man when he was down.
But I didn’t get chance to object because his phone rang. I felt his groan hum through his body, one of resentment and apprehension. That groan stopped the minute he answered.
“ ...Yes, that’s me... I am... Oh.”
Daniel rushed forward to help me sit forward so Blaze could escape from behind me and take his call out in the corridor. Everyone stared at me, like I was supposed to know what was being said. I didn’t, but all the possibilities ran through my mind.
He was barely out of the room before he turned back on himself and stared down at his phone. “That was the police.” So I’d considered every possibility but that one.
“Did Natasha cry statutory rape already?” My dear uninformed mother squeaked with alarm, her bloodlust on fire. Things like that were a scandal for our family, which is exactly why Natasha had come out with it over dinner. She knew it would tear us apart somehow and for all intents and purposes, it just might.
“Um... No.” Blaze set his phone back down on the tray and leaned on the end of the bed, arching so slightly towards me. “If it’s okay, I need a word with Emmeline. In private.”
“Why?” I couldn’t believe I was actually questioning him. I knew why, if I admitted it. “What’s happened?”
He looked at me with all simplicity and obviousness in the world. You know what’s happened. “I’d rather discuss it in private.”
“Please, just say it.”
And he did. From his tone alone, I understood what I’d let myself believe, the harshest surreality I couldn’t have honestly expected to be true.
He had no idea what I’d done before I’d tried to kill myself. Nobody did. When they’d spoken of unforgivable acts and horrible crimes, they’d meant the damage I’d inflicted on my loved ones, not the abhorrent pillow smothering that had led to it. Of course they didn’t, I’d have been questioned by now.
How foolish of me to believe my father and lover would protect me over something so callous and evil. How naive to believe I’d committed the perfect crime.
With two simple words, my life was over.
“Natasha’s dead.”
I could hear the power of four minds churning over those words until they started to make sense. All the while, Blaze kept his eyes on me, and that was more unnerving than anything. As emotive as the man usually was, he was giving away nothing. He looked as lively inside as a fallen tree and that emptiness was directed right at me.
Of course he’d never say he’d forgiven me if he’d been aware of the truth. I was a fucking murderer and he now he knew it.
My friends hadn’t figured it out. My parents thought so well of me it wouldn’t even occur to them. They couldn’t possibly have raised a child so immoral.
“Oh my God, when?”
Blaze didn’t look away from me when he answered Esme’s question. “In the early hours of yesterday morning.”
“You mean—”
“Yeah. Around the same time Emmeline...”
Losing the end of that sentence, I closed my eyes, disgusted with myself. What if he’d gone to her bedroom instead? He could have saved her instead of me. That would have made sense; she offered him comfort and stability. I offered nothing but uncertainty and drama.
“A moment with her. Please.”
The room quickly emptied out, though they all lingered outside. The tension between us was so thick you could see it—a massive wall building higher, brick by brick, with every passing second. The longer we were silent the harder it would be to breach it so I blurted out—
“I’m sorry!”
“No, you’re not.” Puffing out a withheld breath, Blaze dropped back into an unsteady pace around the room. His arms and legs swung with each step; he was working up to something, I knew it. “I knew it was going to happen.”
“You knew?”
“Well... Yeah.” Gaping at me like I was an idiot, he snorted a laugh and sank down onto the bed next to me. “I knew she was dying, didn’t I? I’m just shell shocked at her timing. Talk about being an attention whore.”
“Sorry...” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “What?”
“You nearly die and she has to go one better. That’s Natasha all over. Or rather it was.”
“But she... Oh.” Oh, hell. He hadn’t figured it out. He didn’t know I’d done it. Too trusting Blaze had been screwed over by her lies about multiple sclerosis handing her a death sentence and now he was buying my bullshit, too. Did I correct him? Would they figure it out anyway? Should I have told him before it became a murder investigation?
“That explains all the voicemail messages I have. Jeez... The relief nurse found her when she started work at nine yesterday morning. I feel like I should tip her.”
“I can’t believe you’re making jokes.”
He smiled softly and took my hands in his, brushing his thumb over the emerald engagement ring I’d worn through every bitter second of the past two days. “But I’m glad she’s gone. She really would have screwed things up for us, cupcake. She might have tried to put us through something we might not have survived.”
“She has put us through something we might not survive.” When the truth came out... My God.
“Emmeline...” Squeezing my hands, Blaze inched closer to me and took a wary look out through the window into the hallway. Esme and Ivy tried to act like they hadn’t been watching. “I realise this is in poor taste—which is why I sent everyone out—but if the past couple of days have taught me anything, it’s that every moment with you is precious. I’ve got to get proactive to make the most of you, because just look at how fleeting life is.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying...” He sighed and adopted his never-failing puppy dog eyes. “There’s nothing holding us back now. Let’s make our life together. I want to marry you, Emmeline. Soon.”
I recoiled back a little, mortified to be having this conversation on the tail of his wife’s death. “What’s the rush?”
“You’re the rush. I don’t know when you’ll try to leave me again, or if I’ll get you back a third time. I want to find a new house for us both, start planning a family, and get married. Soon.”
His neediness made me feel light-headed. “How soon?”
“We said we wanted to marry in the spring, in my mothers garden under the cherry blossoms. That gives you eight weeks to find a dress.”
“Eight weeks?!” I yanked my hands back from him and took an inward look at myself. Even if I hadn’t killed Natasha, I wasn’t ready to get married. I was twenty-two, stupid, and I barely knew who I was. I’d never been in a rush to say my vows and I’d been mentally working with a timescale much more generous than two months. “My wrists will barely be healed by then. That won’t make for pretty pictures.”
“Anyone looking at your wrists rather than your face is a fool. Please...” Gripping my chin, Blaze urged me to look at him and leaned forward to nuzzle his nose against mine. “I’ll take care of everything. You just need to find a dress nearly as gorgeous as you and turn up.”
“You’re going to care for me, arrange a funeral and organise a wedding in eight weeks? Talk about burning the candle at both ends, Blaze.”
“I’m delegating the funeral to Mona and Patrice. After Natasha’s parting shot, I might not even turn up.”
“You’re her next of kin.”
“Then maybe she should have treated me with a little more respect.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. She’d spent more than six years lying about her health and thrown her
toys out of the pram when it looked like she might lose him. Their marriage was almost based on blackmail.
Would ours be much better based on a lie?
“Before you think about saying no,” he warned me, “remember how much I love you. What I’d give up for you, what I’d lie down and take. What I have taken. What I’ve done. I’m utterly committed to you.”
“You’re trying to bully me into marrying you?”
“Is it working?”
I huffed and folded my arms, trying to look affronted. It was so damn hard when he was giving me one of his sweet, goading smiles. Aware that I really wasn’t that offended or distressed, I knew that the only thing stopping me was still Natasha.
“You don’t know what you’re committing to.”
“Neither do you.” Huh... He had me there. In spite of our time together, I knew the basics about him and his family, which was really very little in the grand scheme of things. “We have plenty of time to find out. Please, Emmeline. Everything I’ve ever truly cared for I’ve loved unconditionally and it’s been taken away. The only permanent people I have in my life are you and my mother, but you’re too easy to find slipping through my fingers. At least give me a reason to make it harder for you to disappear.”
God, that was his motive? “You don’t need me to sign a piece of paper to prove I’m ridiculously devoted to you. Seriously.” He had no idea...
“Don’t I?” Stroking my forearms, he stared wistfully down at my bandaged wrists. “Signing a marriage certificate pales in significance to what I’d do to keep you with me. Even if you say no, I’d stay by your side forever. You have no idea of the lengths I’d go to, to assure that. This is the only thing you could ever do to let me know we’re on the same mutually obsessive page.”
That would have been a really good time to correct him—point out that I would and had gone to great measures to abolish things that could interfere with our future. But something about seeing him sit there, head low and begging me to be his wife, made me even less keen on the idea of coming clean.
He’d lost too much because of Natasha and now she was gone, he didn’t even have anything to hate. Before I’d walked into his life, resenting her for keeping him tied down might have been his reason to live and I’d taken it away. If he felt like I was his new cause...
“You really want this?”
“Yes. You have no idea how badly.” No... I thought I did.
I reached out and stroked his face. He was so savagely gorgeous and he wanted me so much, in spite of my multitude of flaws. What the hell was I complaining about? Even with my own reservations in mind, I was lucky that he still wanted me—it was nothing short of a marvel that he’d ever wanted me at all.
And all I had to do to make him happy was buy a dress and say a few lines. I could do that. “Eight weeks it is.”
“Carefully does it... Slowly... Ah. Shit. Sorry.”
I rolled my eyes as my foot caught on yet another doorframe. After another two days in hospital, a few false starts and several repeated diagnostic tests on my mother’s insistence, I’d finally been discharged and was homeward bound.
Well... Apparently not that homeward, it seemed. I’d been looking forward to returning to my little cave of a flat, kicking back in bed and watching a sci-fi marathon on my ancient television. Instead, we’d been driven to one of Henry’s hotels and pushed up to a suite.
Yes, pushed. My legs still weren’t cooperating. It was probably only a matter of time before I made a full recovery, I was told. ‘Probably’ made me nervous. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I could move them; why the hell couldn’t I stand on them?
“I thought you were trained for this.”
Too carefully, Blaze pushed me around the door into the lounge area and helped me out of the chair onto a couch. Most of my favourite creature comforts were waiting for me—coffee, some of Esme’s butter cream cupcakes and a sketch pad. My sketch pad, actually. How odd...
“Never had a wheelchair user under my care before, Emmeline.”
“Hey, I’m not a wheelchair user. The wheelchair is using me.” He laughed and scurried around the smaller rooms of the suite, hitting switches in the kitchenette, grabbing blankets from bedrooms and barking orders down the phone to the front desk. I watched him as he moved, noticing more and more of my personal effects scattered around. “How long are we staying here?”
“Umm...” He made a face he thought I didn’t see. “Not long.”
“Blaze...”
“Ah, okay.” Hissing out a breath, he slumped down onto the couch next to me and worried a fleece blanket between his fingers. “I don’t know how long we’ll be here. As long as you’re in the chair, at least.”
“Is that why so much of my stuff is here?”
Wincing, he tipped his head just slightly to a stack of boxes I hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t just some of my stuff; everything I owned had been packed up and moved into the suite. His, too. Dread slithered through me, freezing every cell it touched.
“What have you done?”
“I didn’t... It wasn’t... We thought you were...”
I held up a hand, then used it to cover my mouth. He didn’t need to say anything else, I could fill in the blanks myself. “The moment that DNR was put in place, Henry let out the flat to someone else. Oh my God...” Why was I even surprised? There was a waiting list as long as Schindler’s for a vacancy in that building and my dear old dad was all about making an easy buck.
“It wasn’t quite as shallow as you think.” Blaze wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and encouraged me to get comfortable. Like that was even possible in a neck brace. “There are too many stairs in that place. We have no idea when you’ll be able to tackle them, it was crammed to the rafters with our stuff and you know...” He ran a hand through his hair and quickly shuffled away to the kitchenette. “We need the extra space. I don’t care about any of the stuff in Natasha’s house except her grand piano. I want to keep it.”
“But you arranged this before you knew she was dead, didn’t you?” He ducked out of view before I could catch his gaze. “So that excuse doesn’t work for me.”
The roar of a boiling kettle cut me off. Helpless, I sat there and took in the opulence of the suite. It really was very nice, all very upmarket and A-list. I could tolerate a couple of days in it, but weeks might make me go crazy. It was just too... posh.
“So eight weeks to get my legs back, arrange a wedding, organise a funeral and now find a new home...” I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed them. “Great...”
“I told you, the funeral isn’t my problem.” Leaning around me, Blaze passed me a glass of water with one hand and a colourful selection of tablets with the other. “And the wedding isn’t yours.”
That just wasn’t true. I might have agreed to it but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a massive problem for me. The more time I had to think about it, the more I thought it was a horrible idea. The reasons to do it, for a start, were terrible. The small amount of time until it happened was obscene. The constant fear that he’d find out I’d killed Natasha in the early days of our marriage and accuse me of luring him in under false pretences was paramount...
“Could you please find my laptop?” I gulped down the tablets and took the coffee he offered moments later—my first cup in nearly five days. The chambers of my brain felt like they’d been collapsing from the caffeine withdrawal and the sight of that steaming java made me almost cheerful. “Henry booked a meeting with his financial team about those discrepancies for in three days time. I’d like to be there.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Blaze didn’t speak again until I paused to look at him. “You just died. Four times. You’re not working again yet.”
“Damn it...” Not wanting to argue but determined to not become a vegetable, I took a fortifying gulp of coffee and braced myself for a fight. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing for weeks on end. My brain will stagnate and if I did, as you sa
y, die four times, it needs the exercise.”
“But—”
“Blaze. Please. It’s a few spreadsheets and one meeting under the care of my dad. What’s the worst that can happen?”
He squinted, sighed, and then turned on his heels and paced away into the master bedroom. Figuring I’d lost the battle, I settled back and tried to figure out how I’d win the war.
I didn’t share my mother’s inclination to be a kept woman. If I was going to have money, I wanted to work for it. The way Henry earned his money—through the endless scamming and screwing of associates—had always made me avoid his business before but since I’d become a part of it, I wanted to be invaluable.
Which I was. Nobody had noticed the hundreds of thousands of pounds being drained out of his business accounts until I’d dug into a gut feeling I’d had. I didn’t want to find out the truth through the grapevine. This find was my baby.
Blaze strode back into the lounge area, took my coffee away from me and deftly swept me up off the couch. Only the fact he’d caught me off guard stopped me screaming at him, ‘My coffee, damn it!’
“The meeting will be moved back to next week; you rest today, start working tomorrow and if you’re still in the chair, I’m going with you.”
Stuttering, I glared at him while he tucked me up in bed, brusquely kissed my forehead and dimmed the lights. “Are you shitting me right now?”
“No, Emmeline.” He paused in the doorway and shook his head. “You’ll do as your told while I’m responsible for your wellbeing. Understand?”
I did, and what really surprised me was that I wasn’t exactly distressed by the idea. For most of my twenty-two years, I’d fought to be an independent woman who made her own fate, yet his uncharacteristic caveman behaviour made me feel settled. He’d always treated me like his equal, but now to treat me like a child...