Pride and Papercuts

by Staci Hart

“Yes, you.” Maisie leaned in to press a kiss to the corner of my lips. “It’s driving her crazy not to know what I’m doing, who I’m seeing, but rather than admit it, she just makes snide comments about how it won’t last.”

  “She’s wrong.”

  Chin down, she looked up at me with a sweet shyness that made me want to throw my Chinese food over my shoulder and get her out of my shirt.

  “About what?” she chanced.

  “Everything,” I answered.

  I was rewarded with a flush of her cheeks and the happiest of sighs. “When you say it like that, I believe it.”

  “Good, because I’m generally right.”

  She swatted at my arm, laughing, and I feigned flinching.

  “How’s the property search going for Harvest Center?” I asked, changing the subject before I really did end dinner early.

  Maisie lit up like a lightbulb, lowering her forgotten carton to her lap. “It’s going well. There’s one in particular that I love, if we can get the permits and permissions we need from city council.”

  “Where is it?” I popped a piece of chicken in my mouth.

  “Hell’s Kitchen. There’s a vacant lot next door to a commercial building that I think would be perfect. I’m going to see it tomorrow, and I … I don’t know. It just feels right, you know?”

  I swallowed hard and smiled sideways. “I know the feeling. One look, and you’re a goner.”

  That flush again. God, she was so pretty when she blushed.

  “I wanted to go today, but I was so busy with meetings and paperwork. Oh!” she exclaimed, rolling out of bed while somehow keeping her food upright. She did not, however, keep my shirt in place. The flash of the cleft of her ass and the shadow of promise beneath it stirred my attention.

  I set the carton on my nightstand without any plans to pick it up until I had dessert.

  She knelt to rummage in her bag rather than bend at the waist—a tragic loss—and when she found what she’d been looking for, she bounded back, leaving her dinner on the floor next to her things, chopsticks on display like bunny ears.

  Maisie climbed back in bed, crawling toward me with a packet of papers and an envelope in her hand. She handed over the envelope first, and as I opened it and unfurled the letter inside, she nibbled on her lip.

  “When I came home yesterday, I saw this in her trashcan next to her writing desk in the foyer where she opens her mail. I figured it was nothing, but then…well…”

  I frowned as I scanned the letter from the judge’s wife to Evelyn, recounting all the ways she’d convinced her honorable husband to side with Evelyn in our case. This was followed by a full page of garden club gossip.

  “A letter? Who even writes letters anymore?” I asked, flipping it over curiously to see if there was anything on the back.

  “They’ve always done it. Mother said it started as an exercise through cotillion. Thank God they didn’t make us do it when she made me go through the debutante ball.”

  One of my brows rose, amused. “You were a debutante?”

  “How on earth does that surprise you?” She laughed.

  “I need pictures of you in a white ballgown and satin gloves.”

  “Not on your life. Those photos will never see the light of day.”

  My eyes found the papers in my hand again. “This isn’t good.”

  “No, it’s not. Surely he won’t take her side. Will he?”

  “I hope not. We’ll find out soon enough. If we build a compelling enough argument, I think he might have to. I can’t imagine he’d be willing to tarnish his reputation as a judge for his wife’s place in the garden club pecking order.” My lips flattened. “You don’t think she’ll miss this, will she?”

  Maisie smirked. “I put a dummy envelope in the trash just in case she noticed it was missing.”

  “Look at you. See, you’re more Carmen Sandiego than you think.”

  “It’s the trench coat. Pretty sure it has magical powers.”

  Her smile faded as she offered me the pack of papers still in her hand, and I took them, immediately worried again.

  “So I was going through some paperwork, trying to get myself reacquainted with the finances for the center, and I found these,” she said, sitting on her feet, knees together. “I don’t know exactly what to make of it.”

  I frowned, skimming the details of the invoices and fund reporting. “That’s because it makes no sense.” I flipped the page. “Where did you find these?”

  She tucked that lock of hair behind her ear again, and it almost immediately slipped loose. “Jess had finance send over ‘light records,’ which ended up being four banker boxes full of paperwork. I’ve been digging through them for a week, trying to get my head around the monthly costs and income, making notes, and I realized these didn’t match.”

  My frown deepened, bringing my brows together as I added up the missing money. “This has to be a bookkeeping error. Did you find more than this?”

  “No. But I can’t help but wonder if there’s more.”

  I made a noncommittal sound. “Did you ask Jess?”

  “Not yet. I will though. And I’ll talk to accounting too. Someone has to know. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “That’s very trusting of you,” I half-teased. “What if someone is misappropriating funds?”

  Her eyes widened. “Jess? Do you think she’d do that?”

  “I don’t know her, so I couldn’t say. Would she have a reason to?”

  “I … I don’t know. I want to say no, but …” She shook her head. “There’s some reasonable explanation, I’m sure. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy before I went accusing anyone of anything. If my mother caught wind that someone was stealing from her company, she’d flay them in the lobby, and I’d hate to be some poor accountant’s executioner.”

  She took the papers from my hand and tossed them off the side of the bed with a thump. A wanton smile curled her lips as she crawled over, affording me a convenient view of her body in the gape of my shirt, and before I could fully appreciate that, she slung one leg over mine, settling into my lap.

  My hands slid up her thighs until they rested in the juncture of her hips.

  “Had enough work talk?” I asked, my thumbs finding another juncture, the one split over the hard column of my shaft.

  “Mmhmm.” Her hips rocked in a long stroke, and mine rose to meet her.

  “Good, because I was about to pop every … single … button … of my favorite shirt,” I said, unfastening each one with a snick until she was naked.

  And I spent the rest of the night doing another sort of work altogether.

  One that involved far less math.

  16

  Ace in the Hole

  MAISIE

  A few days passed, marking a long and lovely week spent working in the charity I loved and luxuriating in Marcus’s arms.

  Almost every day, the second I could get away from work, I headed straight here. Marcus had given me a key since twice he’d had to detain his mother to make sure I got in unseen. A few hours at night, one in the morning, and the occasional extended lunch. In the mornings, I’d sneak into his place with the sun—Mrs. Bennet was not a morning person, apparently—and at the last possible second, I’d hurry off, catching a cab only once I was around the corner and out of sight of Longbourne.

  Life, at present, was goddamn glorious. And for the first time in a very long time, I found myself blissfully, blindly, blithely happy.

  Just as I was at the moment.

  I sighed, leaning back into Marcus the second he righted the zipper of my dress, eyeing the potted ivy on his dresser.

  “That little guy needs a drink. Look, he’s wilting.”

  “He sure does.”

  “And your palm over there is being overwatered. Look at the tips of its leaves,” I said with a sorrowful sort of tone.

  He kissed my neck, chuckling through his nose in puffs against my skin. “Maybe you can help me get them on the
road to recovery.”

  “Nurse Maisie, at your service.” With wistful longing, I said, “I wish I’d woken up here instead of coming this morning.”

  “You can come here every morning as far as I’m concerned.” Another brush of his lips at my neck, this one coupled with a hot sweep of his tongue.

  “Be careful what you wish for. I’d hate to become a nuisance.”

  “You are many things, but a nuisance could never be one of them.”

  I turned in his arms, smoothing his tie. “Will I see you tonight?”

  “I’d hate to break the cycle. I’m afraid I’ve become accustomed to having you here.”

  “It’s only been two weeks,” I teased.

  “Sure, but what do you think about skipping a night?”

  My lip slipped out in a pout.

  “Exactly.”

  “I hate sneaking around. Last night, Mother was in rare form. I don’t know what’s gotten into her, but I swear I thought she was going to follow me. So I took the subway. She’d never step foot in a station, never mind getting on a train.”

  “Smart thinking. Was she waiting up for you?”

  “Yes, but so was Dad. They alternated between glaring at each other and Dad shutting her down. I escaped to my room, unscathed.”

  “Bless that man,” he said.

  “Amen to that. One of these nights, I’m going to spend the night here and give her a stroke.” I glanced at the clock. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but she’s been impossible about my not going to work with her. I can’t wait to tell her about us and get it over with, come what may.”

  “You’ve decided to tell her?” Marcus asked carefully.

  I didn’t miss the note of hope and smiled.

  “Oh, I was always going to tell her. I was sure before, but now it’s indisputable.”

  “What?”

  “How I feel about you.”

  He descended for a kiss, a kiss touched with depth that defied words. It was a pact and an appreciation, one that I met in full.

  I broke away, smiling up at him. “Any more of that, and I will be very, very late.”

  “If it wouldn’t get you in trouble with the devil, I’d say fuck it before fucking you.”

  The word from his lips sent a scandalous streak of heat straight between my legs, a space only just empty of him. Never before had I dated a man who would openly state his intent with that kind of language, and I found I liked it very much.

  “Well, in eight to ten hours, you can fuck me all you want.”

  “I’m glad you said so because I was already planning to.”

  With a laugh, I stretched up to press my lips to his. And regretfully, I left his arms in search of my shoes.

  I found one on the stairs, another in the entryway, my panties somewhere in between. My shoes I slipped on. The panties I tossed at him.

  “Something to remember me by.”

  He tested the fabric between long fingers, smirking. “As if I need a reminder. But I’ll take one all the same.”

  My thighs clenched as I watched him slip the silk into his pocket, leaving his hand right there with them.

  “I don’t want to go,” I whined.

  “How about you text me when you leave Harvest Center? We’ll call it a long lunch.” He stepped into me. “We can meet here.”

  “By the time I get here from Midtown, I’ll only have”—I did some quick math—“twenty minutes.”

  “I can do a lot with twenty minutes.”

  The kiss he laid on me promised the truth of that statement.

  That beautiful jerk kissed me until I was wiggling against him with my arms locked around his neck.

  He pulled away as much as he could for my death grip, smiling down at me like he knew exactly what he was doing. “Now, there’s something to remember me by.”

  “God, you’re the worst, you know that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Now, put on your disguise and get out of here before somebody sees you.”

  I chuckled, pulling on my long coat and donning my silly hat. Glasses were last, and with a few final cloak-and-dagger looks out the window, I left, turning in the opposite direction of Longbourne to get off Bleecker as quickly as I could. And moments later, I slipped into the cab and gave the cabbie the address to the center, sighing happily as I removed my disguise.

  Between my time with Marcus and my progress at work, I found myself feeling more productive and whole than I maybe ever had. Mother upheld her promise to let me do what I wanted with the charity, and so far, I’d used that time to find a new site for our first expansion and pull together an initial proposal. She dragged me to legal meetings, and I passed on every little scrap I’d learned to the Bennets. Marcus’s lawyer filed a motion to have the judge step in on discovery and leash my mother’s team, and our dreaded hearing on the matter rapidly approached. I despised the thought of being in that courtroom, sitting next to the herald of hatred, on the wrong side of Marcus. My only hope—the only hope any of us had—was that the judge would see reason and side with the Bennets.

  Otherwise, we were all screwed.

  And my mother would win.

  That constant companion of my anxiety piped up, as it so often did. When we were together, nothing else seemed to matter. Nothing else existed. In the safety beyond his front door, it was just me and Marcus and the magic. But we lived under the shadow of our circumstance.

  And that circumstance was a house of cards.

  No one could find out, my mother least of all. And not for my own neck. For the sake of the Bennets. She might make my life miserable, but she would reduce the Bennets to rubble. For the time being, she was using legal channels, but God knew what lengths she would go to. I’d spent far too much time considering just what she might do to punish them, and my imaginings covered everything from permit meddling to arson.

  And then there was the subject of Mrs. Bennet.

  I knew exactly how my mother would react when we were found out—with the vitriol and vengeance of a flaming, fallen angel. But Mrs. Bennet was a mystery to me. I didn’t know if she would accept or deny me, and the thought of her disapproval did something undesirable to my stomach. Maybe she would accept me if things were different, if I were just any girl. Literally any other girl on the planet.

  But there was a secret I held, one kept quietly in the deepest chamber of my heart. A secret that couldn’t even be acknowledged, certainly not aloud and barely to myself.

  I desperately wanted her approval because without it, I could never be a Bennet.

  It was silly and childish. It was indulgent and decadent and a thing I wasn’t allowed to wish for. But the little girl I once had been, the little girl who lived in my heart, listened to stories of the Bennets with the longing and hope I’d felt in fairy tales. Theirs was a model family, the kind I’d dreamed of as a child and believed with unwavering cynicism didn’t exist as an adult.

  The theoretical plans Marcus and I had discussed, should I decide to tell my mother, was more of a flow chart than a list—each avenue existed as a result of the action before it. If his mother found out, then we would sit down with her and try to explain. If my mother found out after the trial, we would see where her wrath left us, and I would likely leave her once and for all. If she found us out before the trial, our hope would be lost. She would ruin us, the Bennets most of all. At least if we waited, it’d just be me who would pay.

  That I could live with. The alternative I could not.

  The only faint chance at a happy ending we had was that my mother would somehow accept what I’d done—what I’d keep doing, if I had my way. Maybe she’d assume it was temporary, a rebellion, a thing to work out of my system. That I’d get bored and fall back in line. This was likely the best outcome I could hope for—acceptance based on disbelief of my dedication to the cause.

  Our worlds were shaped by perception, and hers was so wildly skewed that our Venn diagram didn’t even overlap by a sliver. In fact, we existed in s
uch a state of deep misunderstanding, there might have been space between the circles.

  As such, we all knew anything but nuclear warfare was a long shot.

  But for now, I’d keep that hope quietly shining in my back pocket. I’d work at the charity. Help the Bennets escape my mother’s clutches. Plan for two futures—one with Bower and one without. And if I didn’t get to keep any of it, at least I would have Marcus.

  When we pulled up to Harvest Center, every other thought slipped out of my mind and into the ether.

  I didn’t know what struck me most about the sight of this place that I’d missed so much. The sunlight dappling the gardens or the twitter of spring birds in the air. The warmth of the day after an endless winter or the people coming and going from the place I’d helped create. But any way I colored it, I was struck with a bolt of rightness that this was the place I belonged.

  It felt nearly identical to the feeling Marcus gave me.

  Eyes followed me as I entered, but I didn’t recognize any of the faces I found as I took happy stock of the full tables and soon-to-be full stomachs. It had been so long since I left. A pang of sadness struck me at how far away I’d drifted and a covetous sort of joy at the prosper here that I’d been no part of.

  Jess stood at a stock pot next to an older man I barely recognized, but when I heard him laugh, I knew.

  “Jacob?” I said, and they turned to smile at me.

  Two years hadn’t aged him at all. In fact, he seemed to be aging in reverse. When I knew him before, he wore a scraggly beard shot with white, tattered and thinning clothes, an expression of exhaustion so deep that the lines of his face seemed to be etched all the way down to his soul. He’d started by coming for food. Then to volunteer. Just before I left, he joined our support group and stopped drinking—a road I’d hoped he reached the end of.

  By the looks of him, he had.

  Now he wore a clean-shaven jaw, neatly combed hair, fresh clothes. And those lines of strain were no longer deep, smoothed by his health and erased by his levity.

  “Miss Maisie, I can’t believe it. Will you come give an old man a hug?”