“Before you go getting on your high horse and getting your knickers in a twist, he only called me because he's worried about you, Ambs. He’s a guy; they don’t know how to deal with emotionally freaked out females. They have a chromosome or something missing from their genetic blueprint… It’s true,” she said when I rolled my eyes at her. “I saw it on the science channel or something.”
“Yeah, whatever! Anyway it's clear I'm not as bad as he made out because I’m here, am I not?”
“You are, but you look like shit.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. There was nothing like getting hit with the truth from your best mate.
“You know me; I don’t beat around the bush. I’m going to say this once and once only. I am sorry you have lost your brother. That just sucks. It really fucking sucks. But life goes on, Amber. You have a life, a job and a man who loves and adores you beyond all reason. I know you’re feeling all kinds of shitty guilt over James, and I get it, I do. But, You. Are. Not. To. Blame. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it and I’m sorry I’m adding to the vomit inducing verbal diatribe, but it’s true. I will not let you drown in self-despair again, Amber. It’s not going to happen. I’m throwing in the life preserver and dragging you out.”
I sat there staring at her, unsure what to say.
“When you went through the initial bullshit with Dickhead, you tried to pretend the world was still rainbows and unicorns, when in your own head it was dungeons and dragons. You’re not locking yourself in the bleakness of a cold, dark self-imposed prison sentence, I won’t let you. I know you won’t go to the doctor and I know you won’t ask for help, so I took the liberty of doing it for you,” she said looking at me pointedly.
“What do you mean you took the liberty of doing it for me? What did you do?” I asked nervously. Knowing Becki, she had probably forged paperwork or impersonated me somehow to get me an appointment with a top psych thinking I was about to do something silly.
“Knowing how you were last time, and knowing where you were probably heading with this, I spoke with a friend at work who suffers with ‘bouts of unhappiness’ as she refers to them. I asked her how she gets through them and she said she swears by this herbal concoction she takes when she’s really low. She said since she’s been taking it, she has been on top of the world and can’t rave about it enough. I took the liberty of getting the name off her and brought you some. Here.” She handed me a small plastic bottle of pills and gave me the strict instructions to take one every day.
“What’s in them?” I asked dubiously. I’d never been one to believe in new age fads and alternative medicines. In my mind lots of money and research went into proper pharmaceuticals so I trusted them more.
“I don’t know,” she whined. “What the fuck does it matter? They work, that’s all you need to know. So don’t bitch and whine and just take the sodding things, because I swear to God, Ambs, if I get any hint of you going down that same path again I will be personally carting you off to your nearest quack.”
Looking at the tablets again, I decided they couldn’t do any harm. After all they were only made of herbs right? “Okay, okay. I’ll take them, anything to keep you off my back.” She looked at me grinning in triumph. If these worked, if they helped pull me out of this funk, she’d be gloating for months. “So anyway, enough about me and my woes, tell me how things are going with you and Scott.”
We moved onto the much safer subject of Becki’s sex life and spent the rest of the evening chatting like old times. As much as I loved and needed Craig, being out with Becki made me realise how much I relied on her friendship.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Craig
There were things I should have been doing, people and things I should have been organising. We were due to be presenting a bid for a massive account we are gunning for the following week, and I needed to be prepared for it. If we won the contract, CAS Technologies would become one of the leading suppliers of IT products, services and support in the South of England. It would catapult us above our leading competitors. Instead I was sitting around worrying about my downtrodden fiancée.
It had been hard leaving Amber in the morning, not knowing what kind of mood she would be in when she woke up alone in the house by herself. I was glad I had managed to bring her out of herself for a short while the previous night, and the sex had been phenomenal. But I knew what a bitch guilt and grief could be and would often come back to strangle you just when you least expected it to. I was under no illusions that one mammoth sex fest was going to banish those spectres from her confused and hurting mind.
Instead of going over projection forecasts and everything else that goes into contract bids, I sat there staring out at the dark London skyline.
“Craig, I have Max for you on line one,” my assistant, Margaret said through the intercom system. “And I’m off in a minute. Anything else you need before I go?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks Margaret. Have a great weekend,” I said into the receiver and then pressed the button to accept Max’s call.
“Max,” I greeted my lawyer, slash investigator, slash general go to guy.
“Craig. How is everything? How’s Amber doing?”
“She’s hanging in there… just. I’m sure you didn’t phone to catch up on the gossip Max. What’s up?” Max had never been one to beat around the bush before. That was why we got on so well and why he was such a fantastic lawyer. He told it as it was and had no problems calling people out on their bullshit. When he let loose he was like a rabid pit-bull and was feared by many he went up against.
“I just wanted to update you on my investigation.” The previous night, whilst out running, I had called up Max and asked him to use some of his connections to have a dig around James’s attack.
“And?”
“Nothing so far. None of the usual suspects knew him or of him. I might need some more info to go on.”
“What do you need?” I walked over to the window and looked down at a young couple arguing along the banks of the River Thames.
“Anything that might give us more of a clue about who he associated with. Where he lived, friends, work, anything. The shite you gave me yesterday isn’t going to lead me to anything but dead ends.”
“And how the fuck do you propose I get all this information? If I start asking Amber about James she’s going to get suspicious and start asking questions. I need to make sure she’s protected from this, Max. As far as she’s concerned the police are looking into it and that’s all she needs to know.” I knew the police weren't going to come up with shit, at least not in the short term. Amber needed answers and she needed them now. How could she move forward when unnecessary guilt over what happened was dragging her back?
“I don’t know, Craig. But until you can get something credible to me, something that we can work with, I’m afraid the truth to James’s death died along with him.”
With an exasperated sigh I kicked over the waste basket on the floor and sat on the edge of my desk. “I’ll see what I can do. Amber wants me to go with her to James’s flat tomorrow to pick some clothes up or something. I’ll see if I can pick anything up from there, how’s that?”
“Whatever you can get Craig. All it takes sometimes is the smallest of leads to get us what we need.”
After we hung up I stayed sitting on my perch on the edge of my desk. I wasn’t sure it was worth all that effort, we didn’t even know for sure that the attack involved foul play. For all we knew it had been a random incident and James had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In my gut, though, I knew that James had got himself involved in something heavy and the price he’d paid was with his life.
My office door opening had me lifting my gaze from the small rug lying askew on the floor in front of my desk. Irritation bubbled beneath the surface when Jenny from the main reception walked in, closing the door behind her. Jenny and I had once had a thing, and when I say a thing, I mean I fucked her senseless one night against the same door
she was standing in front of. She’d been coming onto me strong for as long as she had worked at CAS and one night, after a particularly stressful day, I’d caved in. It was only the once and hadn’t even been a particularly enjoyable experience for me. It had rocked her world, though, because she’d been trying for a repeat performance ever since.
“Jenny,” I greeted her roughly. There was no point in giving her any reason to believe I wanted her there. “What brings you up here?”
“Well,” she said, dropping her usually scratchy voice into what I could only assume she thought was a seductive purr. In reality she sounded more like a hoarse hyena. “I heard the sad news and wanted to come and offer my condolences.” She began skulking across the room toward me, twirling a piece of her auburn hair around her index finger.
“Thanks, that’s considerate of you, but I didn’t know the guy. He was my fiancée’s brother.”
She came to a stop a few feet in front of me. “Ah that’s right, the mighty Mr Silver has finally been tamed. And who is the lucky lady, anybody I know?”
“That’s none of your business,” I said standing and gesturing toward the door. “If you don’t need anything else, I have a ton of paperwork I need to sort through,”
She ignored me and took a step closer so we were almost chest to chest. “Oh come on Craig. I just want to give her my personal congratulations. She must be a very special lady if she finally got you to keep it in your pants. I have to admit, Craig, I never saw you as the settling down type.” As she said it, her hand darted out and rubbed along my crotch causing me to flinch and stagger sideward. How times had changed, in the past I would have relished the feeling. Since Amber had entered my life, unless it was her delicate little hands on me, it made me feel sick.
“Jenny, I suggest you get the fuck out of here right now before I do something I might regret,” I growled, taking a further step away, wanting as much distance between us as possible.
“You know as well as I do that she won’t keep you interested for long, whoever she is. It’s not who you are,” she said, skulking toward me. “Let me show you what a real woman can do for you.” Real woman? She had to be fucking kidding me. She wouldn’t have a clue how to be a real woman if her life depended on it.
I’d heard and seen enough of her act; I needed her out of there. “Get the hell out of here, Jenny. You and I once was a huge mistake, and one I didn’t even enjoy. You and I again would be like the parting of the red sea, it isn’t going to happen again, ever!” I spat, and angrily brushed past her. She stumbled on her ridiculously high heels and fell back on her arse.
Jenny dragged herself to her feet and looked at me scowling. “You’ll regret this, Craig. We could have had been good together.”
“Just get the fuck out Jenny. And close the door behind you.” I turned away and walked back over to the window, looking out at the dark evening sky.
“Have it your way, Mr Silver. Mark my words, though, you’ll come begging when everything has turned to shit. You’ll fuck up, she'll see the real you and then kick you to the curb,” she said, her voice deepening with rage. I then heard her heels clicking against the wooden floor and the door slamming as she left.
With a deep sigh I leaned back against the wall. I hoped Amber was having a good time with Becki, because at that moment I just wanted to be at home, curled up with her. I needed to bury myself deep inside her, letting out my frustrations and relaxing as only she seemed to be able to help me do.
That wasn’t about to happen, though, so walking back to my chair I took my seat, wiggled my mouse and tried to get on with what I should have been concentrating on.
Amber
I knew the following day would be difficult, so when I got home I grabbed a bottle of cold water from the fridge and took myself off upstairs. After a quick shower I brushed out my tangled hair, moisturised all over and pulled on one of Craig’s T-shirts. Back in the bedroom I remembered my phone had been beeping to let me know it needed charging, so I grabbed my bag off the dresser and rummaged through for it. As I was pulling the phone out, I caught sight of the bottle of tablets Becki had given me. I put my phone on charge and then took a seat on the edge of the bed. The label on the bottle was pretty innocuous with some English but mostly Chinese writing on it. A couple of herbs listed were renowned for their healing properties so I decided to just go for it and start taking them. If nothing else they would help prevent me getting a cold or something. I opened the lid and tipped out a single cream coloured tablet into the palm of my hand. It looked like any other tablet. With the help of a sip of water, I swallowed it, along with the hope that they might do something to or for me to help bring me back to my old self.
Exhaustion hit me so I climbed into bed, snuggled under the duvet and closed my eyes hoping to relax.
“Amber… wake up, you’re dreaming. Come on, baby, wake up.” Firm hands gripped the flesh of my upper arms and shook me, jostling me around. My eyes flew open and as I frantically glanced around the room, disorientated I wondered where the hell I was. As my eyes began to adjust to the muted light, I studied my surroundings and began to recognise where I was. “Are you okay, Baby? You were shaking and sobbing.” Turning my head to the sound of the voice I came face to face with a worried looking Craig.
“Was it the same dream again?” I nodded.
Since James’s attack I’d been having this recurring nightmare that the person lying in the hospital bed was Craig. He’d been beaten and stabbed and wouldn’t wake up. He didn’t move, he just lay there, pale and cold. Over the previous few days they had turned more horrific, with the sounds of evil laughter and screaming babies. All the while Craig continued to lay there despite my desperate pleas for him to wake up.
“You came to bed without me,” he whispered against my hair as he settled himself in behind me and threw an arm over my body. “I went to check on you and you’d already come to bed.”
I shifted backward so his chest was flat against my back, and hugged his arms tight to me. "I was just tired. I thought I'd come and chill up here while you were working.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. This bid is going to kill me. How was your evening?”
I twisted around so I could face him. “It was okay. Becki seems to have this impression, for some reason, that I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She wanted to medicate me out of it so she gave me some sort of herbal concoction to take. She made me promise to take them.”
“Tablets?” he queried, sounding surprised. “Do you need to take tablets? Are they really going to make you feel any better?”
“I don’t know. Becki seems confident that they’ll stop me from jumping head first into a pit of despair, so I guess I’ll give them a try. They can’t hurt; they’re just herbs and natural stuff.” I turned around again snuggling against his chest once more.
With a reverence I craved from him, Craig started stroking his hands along my arms and around to my stomach soothing me back to sleep.
Why the bloody hell had I agreed to do this? Did it really matter what James was wearing? He was in a coffin for God’s sake and about to be buried six feet under. He didn’t give a shit if he was in a shirt and tie, or a tatty Tee, he was dead!
Waking up that morning finding myself alone in bed, I had been grumpy as hell. I’d emerged downstairs expecting to see Craig in the kitchen or working in the study, but he was nowhere to be found. It had taken me quite some time of stomping around and cursing him, before I realised his trainers were missing so he must have gone for his run.
Looking at my watch for the hundredth time I noted that once again Craig had been gone longer than usual. He needed to hurry his arse up, because we were expected at James’ place in forty five minutes. Dad had spoken with the landlord who had advised him that James didn’t live alone and his housemate should be there to let us in and help us out. Again, that fact threw me and highlighted what little I knew about my brother.
I opened the front door to look out for him an
d there he was, jogging up the road.
“Hi, Baby,” he said as he jogged up to me and placed a kiss on my cheek.
“Where the hell have you been?” I snapped.
Craig’s head jerked back and he looked at me, confusion marring his ‘too handsome for his own good’ features. “Where does it look like I’ve been?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask. But seeing as I didn’t know because I wasn’t told, I had to ask.” I knew I was being bitchy, I couldn’t help it.
“Someone’s touchy this morning. Have you not had your coffee yet or something?”
“Or something,” I whispered under my breath. “You should have let me know Craig. I wasn’t sure if you were going to be back or if I would have to go to James’s by myself.”
“Someone got out the wrong side of the bed this morning,” he chuckled as he walked past me.
“It’s not funny, I didn’t know where you were and you were out far too long again,” I whinged following him inside.
Craig skidded to a halt at the foot of the stairs and turned to look at me. “What? Are you timing me now?” When I didn’t respond he took a few steps toward me. “For fuck’s sake, Amber. I went running, like I do most days. I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to do so. What has got into you?”
What had got into me? He was right, he didn’t need my permission to go running; he didn’t need my permission to do anything. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Craig. I guess I’m just an emotional, hormonal wreck at the moment. I didn’t sleep well and I'm not relishing the thought of going to James’s place today. Do you forgive me?” I dropped my eyes to the floor, embarrassed by my actions.
His voice softened. “Hey, there is nothing to forgive, you don’t need to apologise. Just try not to rip my head off, okay? It’s the only one I’ve got.” When I raised my eyes to look at him, I saw him smiling down on me, with laughter in his eyes. “I know today is going to be rough for you, and I’ll be right by your side. You won’t have to do anything by yourself, I promise. I’m going to go shower and then we can go. I won’t be long.” Turning around he jogged up the stairs to the bedroom.
Silver Dove (Silver #2) Page 9