The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  After about an hour of meaningless conversation, and after the main meal was taken away, I had just about reached the end of my patience.

  “How about we have drinks down in the bar?” Lawrence suggested after Simon had finished regaling us with a long-winded story of his latest trip to Thailand. I was sure that if I had not been there, the story Lawrence would have heard would have been very different.

  I shot a thankful glance at him and stood before Simon even got a chance to respond. “That’s a great idea,” I said with forced cheerfulness. Simon and Jewell got to their feet, no doubt in response to my movement, and I grabbed Lawrence’s hand and just about towed him through the restaurant.

  “We’ll meet you in the bar.” Lawrence shooed Simon and Jewell out the door while we waited near the front, so that Lawrence could finalize the bill. It threw the staff somewhat that we had come to them, but we were in a hurry.

  I curled my body up against Lawrence’s as we waited near the door so that I could speak quietly to him without being overheard. “Dear God!”

  “Tell me about it,” he agreed, with a squeeze of his arm around my waist.

  “I swear, if she giggles at me one more time, I’m going to slap her.” Rather than including herself in the conversation around her, Jewell had this habit of just adding a strategic giggle, but it was usually totally out of context. It was starting to set my teeth on edge.

  Lawrence’s chest rumbled against my own. “Could you imagine living with that every day? Makes me thankful I have you. I’ll take damaged over that any day.”

  “Oh, you’re so sweet.” I fluttered my lashes at him, and he laughed in response.

  We had booked dinner that night in a hotel restaurant that was on the second floor of the old building. There was a fair-sized bar on the ground floor that was more old school than modern, and by the time that we found our way down to join Simon and Jewell, there was quite a crowd in the place.

  Lawrence guided me through the masses of people with a hand on my back, and we eventually found Simon and his wife standing with a group of other people, about a dozen of them, by one of the bars at the back of the room. Simon made a quick round of introductions, most of which I missed; however, Lawrence seemed to know a number of the men in the group, and interestingly, a striking redhead returned his greeting with a more-than-familiar glance.

  Her name was Isobel, and over the course of the next few minutes, she had worked her way around the group and managed to squeeze herself up beside Lawrence. It was so skillfully done that I had to give her credit. I almost laughed aloud but caught myself and had to make a hasty retreat.

  “I’ll just get us a drink,” I told Lawrence, and without waiting for a response, I slipped off through the crowd.

  It was quite obvious what she wanted from Lawrence, and it was also just as blatantly obvious that it wouldn’t be the first time they shared such intimacies, but I found myself unaffected. I wasn’t jealous; I probably should have been, but I was secure enough in who I was to know that if that was what Lawrence wanted, then he could have had that at any time. He had probably had more than enough of that.

  It had nothing to do with me what he did or didn’t do with that woman, as long as he didn’t do it at the same time he did me; and he was gentlemen enough to never be that crass.

  It took a while to order at the bar; there was a crush around it and, as usual in bars, not enough staff to cover the demand. But I wasn’t in a hurry, so I settled into a space and waited.

  “Do I know you?” a voice asked from beside me.

  I spared the voice a quick look, and nothing rang any bells in my memory, so I smiled and gave him an apologetic smile. “I don’t think so.”

  “You look familiar, and I can’t work out where I know you from,” he continued. He was mid-thirties, young to be in this place; but he was dressed impeccably and had that air about him that bespoke money and influence. He was attractive, fit, and wealthy; anyone else would have been instantly attracted to him.

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Nope, sorry.”

  “It’s not a pickup line, I swear.” He raised both hands in surrender.

  “It’s a pretty bad one if it was.” I grinned back.

  “Oh, I’ve got much better ones than that,” he assured me, with a cheeky grin that set two dimples alight in his face.

  “I bet.”

  “I’m Nicholas,” He said, and offered his hand.

  I hesitated for a moment before accepting it. “Lilly.”

  “Please to meet you, Lilly,” he said with a grin. “Now next time we meet, you’ll remember me.”

  I laughed. “It’s doubtful,” I teased.

  He pretended to take offense. “I’m deeply saddened that I’m so unmemorable.”

  If only he realized what he was up against. Most people were unmemorable compared to Lawrence. “I doubt that we move in quite the same circles,” I told him, rather than giving an outright denial. I figured that if I hadn’t run into him in the last year with Lawrence, it was doubtful that I would in the future.

  “And what circles would those be?” he queried.

  I ignored the question and thankfully at that moment the bartender decided it was my turn and asked for my order. I wasn’t thirsty so I just ordered Lawrence’s Scotch, which elicited a surprised glance from Nicholas. Moments later it was deposited onto the bar before me.

  “Leaving already?” Nicholas followed me as I walked back through the crowd, abandoning his position at the bar before he got a chance to order his own drink.

  “That was silly,” I commented, not really thrilled that he had decided to follow me.

  “Hardly.” He shrugged. “Not if there’s a chance I can continue to talk with you.” He looked confident that I’d say yes.

  “I’m with someone.” Let’s cut to the chase. I really didn’t want to have him follow me all the way back to Lawrence.

  “Really?” He sounded skeptical.

  “Really,” I assured him, and then turned and made my way back through the crowd.

  When I got back to where Lawrence had been, I found myself without either Nicholas or Lawrence. He, and it looked like Simon, had both disappeared. With no other alternative, I settled in beside Jewell who seemed to be having a grand old time chatting with the group of men. It was her or Isobel, and considering Isobel was giving me a glance that was far from friendly, I opted for the more bland Jewell. At least she didn’t seem to want to do me physical harm.

  In no time at all, I wanted to escape from that laugh. I noticed that the more Jewell drank, the more that laugh increased, until there were very few words that actually came out of her mouth at all. God, she was irritating. Regardless of the fact that she didn’t actually say many words, she managed to engage the men in the group quite effectively. It was really something to witness and made me realize just how shallow these men where.

  “When you said you were with someone, I naturally assumed it was a man.” The words were spoken very close to my ear, and I could feel the large, warm presence of a body just behind me. “I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or intrigued that I’m wrong.”

  I turned around and came face to face with Nicholas. It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. “God, not with her,” I snapped in exasperation. “Seriously!” I was over men, especially the men in this room.

  Nicholas grin was filled with amusement. “I’m sorry to hear that. It could have been interesting.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I huffed, and turned away from him, but the sight of all the rest of the group I was with was more than my nerves could take. I downed Lawrence’s Scotch in one swallow; then, without a word to anyone, I stalked off through the crowd. Charlie and Frost wouldn’t be very far away; if I walked far enough, one of them would find me and we could get the hell out of here.

  “Where you going?” The persistent voice followed me through the crowd.

  “Nowhere that concerns you.” Now I remembered w
hy I didn’t go out like this. Men just thought that it was OK to follow me, that I would automatically welcome their attention. I also realized how much protection it gave me just to be near Lawrence. He was a definite deterrent for other men.

  “Who are you looking for?” he asked, as we reached the edge of the room. I scanned around with my eyes.

  “My guards,” I replied vaguely. Where the hell was everyone? And where was Lawrence?

  “You have a security detail?” He seemed genuinely surprised and intrigued, and I realized too late that it was a bad thing to have admitted. Now he really wanted to know who I was.

  I ignored him and got my phone out of my pocket.

  TEXT: Where r u?

  LAWRENCE: U ok?

  “Who are you texting?” Nicholas tried to get a look at my phone.

  TEXT: Depends how long u will be.

  LAWRENCE: Back soon. Marshall being difficult.

  I knew Lawrence wouldn’t want to be away, and if he admitted that Simon was being difficult, then he really meant it. I didn’t want him to be worrying about me while he was trying to deal with that issue.

  TEXT: Im fine. Find me when ur finished.

  I resisted the urge to change the word “find” to “save.” I took a deep breath and finally looked at Nicholas. He was the lesser of two evils, I decided. “Fine,” I huffed. “Buy me a drink.”

  He looked inordinately pleased with himself and walked with me back to the bar. It didn’t take us anywhere near as long to get our drinks—juice for me this time, my head was already spinning from the scotch—and then Nicholas led us over to the side of the room, where he stepped past a rope barricade and into a private seating area of the club.

  I raised a questioning eyebrow, and he just shrugged and indicated for me to sit in one of the plush lounges. We were alone, or as alone as it was possible to be in a club this crowded.

  “So, tell me about yourself,” he prompted.

  “Nothing to tell.” I so wasn’t going there.

  He looked skeptical. “I don’t believe that for a moment.”

  “You can believe what you want, but I’m not telling you anything about me.”

  “What about a last name?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “Lilly. Just Lilly.”

  I nodded.

  “You know, I can find out other ways,” He reminded me.

  “Do whatever you want.” By the time he did find out anything, I’d be long gone.

  He watched me carefully while I sipped my drink. “You’re different from the women that I usually see here.” He finally admitted.

  I shrugged. That was probably accurate—the fact that I wasn’t fawning all over him was probably a fairly good indication of that.

  “I lived in Sydney for four years,” he said, surprising me with the change of subject. It was a safe topic, and I latched onto it to keep him away from other questions.

  “Did you like it?” I asked. He had obviously placed my accent.

  “Loved it,” he affirmed. “It’s an amazing place. Hot.”

  “It is that.” I grinned in response. “It’s definitely different than London.”

  “Most everything about it is different. It’s much more relaxed a country than anywhere else I’ve been. No one seems to take anything seriously.”

  “We’re a very lazy society.” I meant it in a good way. “What were you there for?”

  “I have business there that required me to hang around for a little while. By the time I’d been there a year, I just kept finding excuses to stay longer.”

  “I find that with London,” I confessed. “I love it here. It just seems to fit with who I am. I’m comfortable here.”

  “How long have you been in town?”

  “Only about two years, but on and off.” I told him. “I travel a lot, but I like to think of London as home, at least for the moment.”

  “Have you been back to Australia recently?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not for a long while now.”

  “Do you live here in London, or are you more a suburbs girl?” he asked with a grin.

  “I’m a city girl,” I said. “I love how alive it is.”

  “It does tend to have a pulse all of its own, doesn’t it?”

  It was the best description he could have given it. It was exactly like that. It lived and breathed independently from the people who moved around it. This city was alive like that.

  “Are you from Sydney originally?” he asked.

  “No, Newcastle. Did you go there?” It was only two hours north of Sydney, and a popular day trip for Sydneysiders, so it was possible that he had been there.

  “Oh, yeah.” He nodded enthusiastically. “Great surfing.”

  “You surf?” I raised my eyebrows at him. He could almost have pulled it off; he had the tan and the blond hair, but I wasn’t sure he could do casual that well.

  “Not as well as I ski, but if you give me a board and a wave, I’ll have fun.”

  A tray of drinks materialized on the table beside us and with a wave, Nicholas indicated that one was for me. Interesting that this area of the club had table service. I picked up the pink concoction and wondered what it was. Definitely not juice, and I could hardly claim that I didn’t drink considering, he had watched me skull a glass of scotch. A cautionary sip left a pleasantly sweet aftertaste; it couldn’t be that bad as I couldn’t taste any noticeable alcohol in it.

  “You must not get to surf much here,” I said.

  “No, not much. But I do get to Spain every few months, and then there’s the Alps for skiing. I get to do a lot of that in winter.”

  “So what exactly do you do?” I was warming to him, ever so slightly.

  “I’m into property,” he responded vaguely, and I knew that if I wanted more details, I would have to divulge something personal about myself. I wasn’t warming to him that much.

  The drink went down well, and faster than I would have expected, but as soon as I put the empty glass down another replaced it. I tried to drink that one more slowly, but it just tasted so good.

  “Do you live in London?” I asked him later.

  “Generally,” he replied. “I have homes in several cities, but like you, I seem to always gravitate back here.”

  “I was in New York last week.” I had no idea why I told him that.

  “Did you enjoy it?” He didn’t seem to notice my stumble.

  “Not really.” I shook my head and was somewhat surprised when the room continued to move after my head stopped.

  “Would you like to dance?” He was pulling me up before I even realized what was happening.

  Standing was not a good idea. Whatever was in those drinks was nasty stuff. I was drunk, more drunk that I had been in a long, long time, and I wasn’t enjoying the feeling.

  I found myself standing in a small space behind the lounges where we had been sitting, and rather than the more contemporary music that had been playing out in the club, we were listening to jazz music, slow, sultry, and moody.

  Nicholas’s arms were around me, and his body was pressed far to intimately against mine. Some part of my brain was telling me this was an unwise situation to be in, but that part of me was very quickly ignored while the rest of me struggled just to stay upright.

  “Oh, please, stop moving,” I begged. I stopped dancing and tried to extricate myself from Nicholas’s arms, but when I realized they were part of the reason I was standing, I grabbed hold of them again—but tried to keep a distance between our bodies.

  “You’re drunk.” He laughed in surprise.

  “You got her drunk? Jesus, Nicholas!” Lawrence’s voice broke through the fog of my brain. I turned toward him—which, it turns out, was a really stupid thing to do, because I had to grab for Nicholas again to stop the room from swaying.

  “You’re here with him?” Nicholas sounded astonished.

  “What the hell took you so long?” I pulled myself from Nicholas’s arms and
walked the few steps to Lawrence and collapsed against his chest. “I’m drunk.”

  “I can see that,” he responded as his arms steadied around me.

  “I don’t drink.” I reminded him.

  “I know.” He adjusted me so that I was tucked into his side. “Yet here I find you, well and truly on your way to being smashed. Care to explain how she ended up this way, Nicholas?” There was an underlying tension to Lawrence that I’m sure Nicholas could feel.

  “I didn’t know she didn’t drink.” Nicholas held up his hands. “When I met her, she was ordering a scotch at the bar.”

  “That was my drink, you ass.” Lawrence ground out.

  “Well, then where have you been for the last few hours?” Nicholas challenged.

  “I want to go home.” I pressed myself closer to his body. Seriously, I wanted to die.

  Lawrence’s arms tightened around me before he answered Nicholas. “It’s none of your business.”

  “If you want to keep what’s yours, then maybe you should take better care of it.” Nicholas wasn’t impressed with Lawrence’s accusations.

  “I didn’t think that I’d have to guard her against men trying to get her drunk, but then I guess we have different ideas about a willing woman, don’t we?”

  I pushed against Lawrence. “Let’s just go,” I pleaded. There was a very good chance that I was going to be sick, and I really didn’t want to disgrace myself here. “It’s not his fault. Let’s just go.”

  “Good night, Lilly.” Nicholas’s voice followed me. “If you ever want to talk more, come back and see me. I promise I’ll never ignore you.”

  I felt Lawrence hesitate, fury flooding his body, so I pulled him with me, and we moved around the edges of the room and eventually left the club and the hotel behind us.

  The trip home was harrowing: the stopping and starting, the corners…dear lord, it was all designed to make me feel awful. Even the elevator to the apartment was an experience that I never wanted to have again. That was the closest I came to losing the contents of my stomach.