Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission

by M. J. Lawless

  “Oh, sorry,” she said apologetically. At least her smugness had rubbed off, being replaced with an application to her job that was probably somewhat surprising to her boss. “I was just catching up on the Chiado account. I can get the first lot of reports to you this afternoon if you want.”

  “That would be great,” Mark replied absent-mindedly. His eyes were flicking from side to side and she noticed with some humour that the shiftiness of his expression had moved to his feet, causing him to move from one foot to the other. He asked her a few banal questions about the insurance details and then turned to the subject that was really on his mind.

  “And how was your date last night?”

  “Inconclusive,” she replied. It was, in many respects, an honest answer.

  “Good.” The relief on his face was palpable, and for a second Kris felt rather sorry for him. Then she remembered what a selfish shit he had been before she left and her smile froze on her face.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked. “There’s quite a lot of work to get on with here.”

  “I thought you said that Jenny was up to scratch with it.”

  “Well...” Kris’s mind moved quickly. “Yes, she’s done a lot, but I realised that there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. We need to show them we’re professionals, don’t we? I have a suspicion that a lot more work could come out of this if we get it right.”

  Mark’s mouth opened slowly. He had never seen her like this before—indeed, Kris realised that she had never been like this before, at least all the time she had been at HBS. Some of her old confidence was kicking in, and she enjoyed the sensation of a mild adrenaline rush that coursed through her veins.

  “Quite,” he said at last. He turned to go and then paused, his eyes glancing around the room again to make sure that no one else was in listening distance. “Don’t suppose you fancy a drink this evening, do you?”

  “Oh, Mark,” she said, lifting a hand to her face and staring at him intently, a trick she had picked up from Daniel. “There’s nothing I’d like more, but I think I’m going to be busy with this for some time and I really need to rest. I think this is going to test me a lot over the coming days.”

  Confused, he left her to her work and she returned to her tasks with a secret sense of exultation. This must have been the first time that she had ever been smiling while actually engaged in work, although she could not resist picking up her phone and checking it every five minutes. Still no messages—at least, none she wished to respond to at the moment.

  Her phone became more and more of a distraction as the day progressed—not because it was going constantly. Quite the opposite. She tried not to think about Daniel at one point, but while talking with colleagues she was distracted, though at least she considered it a blessing that Mark was avoiding her. By the late afternoon, even the realities of the Chiado Shipping account were beginning to become a chore, but she could not resist searching for more information on the mysterious Daniel Stone, for all that his silence was beginning to irritate her.

  After about an hour of looking, it was what she discovered on a news web site that caused her mind to perform a series of mental gymnastics. It had occurred to her to do a search for Karen Stone: again, that had turned up a series of trivia but, when she combined this name with Daniel’s she found something that shocked her.

  The story was an old one, from over a decade before, and was buried in the archive of a local newspaper in the south east. It related how Karen Stone, 24, had been killed in a car crash. The driver of the other vehicle had also died and, when a post-mortem had been performed, it was found that he was more than twice above the legal drink drive limit. The driver of the car that had been carrying Karen survived but was in a critical condition for a period of time: he was her husband, Daniel Stone.

  This itself was such a shock that for a while she did not even process another important piece of information. Karen had been six months pregnant when she died.

  Raising a hand to her mouth, Kris felt a deep pang inside her. For a while, she simply stared at the screen, only hurriedly closing the window when one of her co-workers walked by. Hurried searching for more information turned up nothing, but at that moment she merely wanted to phone Daniel, to speak to him, to hear his voice. It didn’t explain everything, but she was starting to have glimmers of understanding as to what kind of man he was.

  It was not until she returned home that evening that her phone rang. A new number. She answered it immediately.

  “Hello.” That same voice, soothing at the same time that it excited her. She wanted to blurt out, but instead she decided that she had to keep things cool, at least for a little while.

  “Hi,” she responded, realising that the breeziness in her own voice sounded a little brittle. He asked her some polite pleasantries, then: “It was good to see you last night. Let’s not leave it so long next time.”

  “No,” she agreed, glad that he couldn’t see her blushing.

  “How about Le Maître’s. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, of course. I go there all the time. Though whether it’s to eat, dance, or drown my sorrows, I haven’t a bloody clue.”

  He laughed at this. “It’s a restaurant.” He gave her an address on Mayfair and she realised that she had walked by it several times before while window shopping. Very, very swanky. “That sound good to you?”

  “Perfect. I’m sure I’ll be able to understand about five percent of the menu.”

  “Good. Tomorrow, at seven? I’ll send Jarvis to collect you.”

  “No,” she interjected. “It’s fine. I’ll make my own way.”

  “It will be no problem...” he began to tell her.

  “Well, it will for me. Really, I’d prefer to make my own way. I’ll see you tomorrow, at seven.”

  The following day passed in a daze, and Kris was much more anxious than she desired to be when she arrived at the restaurant shortly after seven o’clock. Stepping from the taxi, she paid the driver who had irritated her all the way into central London then stood in front of the place looking at the windows nervously. She had decided upon a long red dress, split at the front so that her legs were elegantly exposed. Over her shoulders, she wore a dark jacket that covered her arms but which she left open at the front, the low cut of her dress revealing her cleavage in a way that she was beginning to regret now—nonetheless, she intended to make an impression on Daniel Stone (as she was slowly getting used to thinking of him).

  Peering inside, she saw that Daniel had already arrived and so she made her way to the front door. The restaurant itself, set in the corner of a high-class Mayfair hotel and thus accessible from the main street, was exquisite, far beyond the sort of usual establishment in which she was used to dining, and she felt even more self-conscious as she stepped inside. Cream coloured chairs, most of them occupied, were arranged around white tables, and the cream and gold walls were immensely tasteful and guaranteed to both impress and intimidate her.

  The maitre d’ came forward to greet her, inclining his head ever so slightly and beaming broadly when she announced who she was here to meet. As he led her to the table, Daniel stood up and, once again, Kris cursed slightly that even her heels did little to make her feel tall enough next to him.

  Daniel himself insisted on holding her chair and, as she sat down after passing her jacket to the attendant, he returned to his own seat on the other side of the table. She presumed that he had taken off his own jacket and looked at her for a moment, smiling, his shirt open at the neck.

  “I hope you didn’t have any difficulty finding the place,” he commented politely.

  She shook her head. “I’ve been past this hotel plenty of times before,” she told him. “Not that it ever occurred to me to enter the restaurant.”

  Again he smiled. “Well, it’s more informal than it looks—good French cuisine, but they’re not too stuffy.”

  “Somehow I don’t think you’re the kind of guy who eats out a lot in
Pizza Express,” she remarked, glancing away from him and looking around at the other customers, all of whom looked much more at ease in the restaurant than she did.

  “You’d probably be surprised,” he said, “though, no, I tend not to eat in that establishment too much. But as you remember, I’m more than happy dining much more roughly than in a fancy London restaurant.”

  “And would that be how you would describe feasting on me? Dining roughly?”

  His hazel eyes glittered momentarily. “Rough diamonds are always meant to be the best,” he observed, raising his glass. Kris noted that it was water.

  “From what I understand, you generally tend to prefer the finer things in life.” She could not help a tinge of bitterness entering her voice as she spoke, recalling what Elaine Christiansen had said to her. “Taller and thinner ones.”

  He frowned at this. “And who told you this?” he asked. “Or can I mark it down as feminine intuition?”

  “Normally I’d just put it down to you being male, but in your case I can hardly class you as a normal man.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that—at least, I think I am. Anyway, what put you in bad sorts?”

  “It was something your old headmistress said.”

  A slow smile spread across Daniel’s face. “Well, as you so rightly guessed, my own background may be that of a rough diamond.” At this, Kris’s ears pricked up, wondering whether this was the moment when some other secrets of his past would be revealed. However, he deftly avoided such a revelation, saying instead: “In any case, as I told you when we last met, she liked you.”

  “That was why you got me there so early, wasn’t it. You wanted her to vet me.”

  “Something like that. And you passed with flying colours. As I told you, I’m a private man, and there are few people whose opinion I really trust.”

  At that moment, a waiter came to take their orders. Although Daniel declined wine, he insisted that Kris drink some. When she made a dismissive comment (as much through fear of revealing her ignorance) he quickly intervened with a recommendation, which riled her slightly, and then suggested—in a fashion that suggested he was not used to being contradicted—that the duck confit and Pyrenean lamb were probably the best dishes on the menu.

  Kris was unsure as to what she should make of this. The truth was that she was out of her depth in such an establishment, but she was quickly understanding that Daniel Stone was a man who had become used to privilege even if he wasn’t born to it.

  She had to admit, however, that both the starter and wine were delicious. Other issues, however, were burning her more intensely than the flavours in her palate.

  “So do you really have such issues with trust?” she asked in what she hoped was a suitably light fashion.

  He shrugged. “It’s a professional inconvenience, and one that unfortunately spills into my personal life.”

  “And is that why you left so suddenly? I’ve started to understand that the real world has more demands on you than a rural fantasy, no matter how... accommodating I may have been.” Kris blushed as she said this. Daniel smiled but said nothing, so she continued: “I have some idea about what it is you do. The company I work for has a contract with Stone Enterprises—well, one of your subsidiaries.”

  “Ah, yes, the Lisbon contract. I’m surprised you haven’t got yourself allocated to that one yet. You would have been perfectly suited, I would have thought.”

  Kris was thrown for a moment, less by the compliment than by the fact she did not have to explain what she was talking about. “You intrigued me greatly, miss Alvarez,” he told her. “When you returned, I set about finding out everything I could about you. Well, strictly speaking, I set a researcher on the task.”

  This made her feel a little uncomfortable and, noticing it, he lowered his fork and looked at her with concern. “That sounds wrong in so many ways. Please, it was really intended to demonstrate that while I may have appeared uncouth and brutal to you when I left, in actual fact...” His words trailed away and he sat back.

  “You must understand,” he told her. “Comrie is a haven for me, where I go to be alone. I’m sure you will have tried to find out about me, but I use my influence and money to retain my privacy as much as possible. Wealth and celebrity are not the same thing, not at all. And then a young woman appears who... well, I won’t lie. You know why I noticed you, but then, beyond that, you fascinated me in so many ways. Not just sexual, though...” For the first time since she had known him, Daniel appeared almost shy for a moment. Catching himself, he hastily summarised his train of thought. “It would be too easy for you to be an obsession for me.”

  “So you ran away, is that it?”

  Frowning, Daniel picked up his fork and turned his attention back to the dish before them. Then he relaxed. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I guess that was it, really.”

  “I hadn’t realised she was pregnant,” Kris said.

  Daniel’s eyes shot up. His mouth was fixed.

  “I found an old news story. You're right, there isn’t much about you, but... well, I started digging as well.” She was apologetic: this wasn’t going at all how she had thought it would. “You’re right. There isn’t a lot about you, and most is very... well, superficial. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to reopen old wounds.”

  He smiled, sadly, and she almost thought that his eyes were beginning to moisten as he looked at her. “I’m afraid that you open them simply by being you. I suppose I shall have to get used to it.”

  Again she blushed at this. “Were you married long?” she asked, wondering how much she could probe, unable to leave the subject now it was out in the open.

  He shook his head. “Three years, though we had known each other longer. We met at university.”

  His tone muted her curiosity, and all she wanted to do then was reach across the table, to take his hands and stroke his face. Instead, however, they ate the rest of their meal in relative silence, both of them lost in private thoughts.

  When they had finished, he looked at her very differently, a gaze that made her skin prickle with anticipation. “I didn’t want to leave, you know,” he told her.

  “I didn’t want you to,” she responded quietly.

  He placed one hand beneath his chin and stared at her frankly. “You’ve seen Comrie,” he said. “How about coming back to my pad in Chelsea for a coffee?”

  Kris could not refuse this. Even though she had told herself for two days that she was going to take her revenge, however petty, on him, her body thrilled with anticipation at the very thought of him. Taking out his phone, Daniel spoke briefly to Jarvis and, fifteen minutes later, they were being taken through the streets of London and past Marble Arch.

  “Jarvis is another of the other few people that I trust completely,” he told her as they sat together in the back of his car. Placing his hand on hers, he squeezed it gently and she felt her final resistance to him melting away.

  The apartment was in a private residential area gated away from the rest of the city. As Jarvis deposited them beside the old, brick buildings that had been tastefully renovated, he led her inside where a doorman greeted them and summoned the lift. The block was not especially tall, but Kris felt her excitement rising as they stepped out not, as she had expected in a corridor lined with doors leading to other people’s homes, but straight into a penthouse suite that obviously dominated the entire top floor.

  “It may not be much, but it’s home,” Daniel said with mock dismissal.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped, looking out at the Travertine marble floor and walls adorned with contemporary artists, a few of whom she recognised immediately, exquisitely arranged furniture scattered before her.

  “Fucking hell!” she squealed, racing forward and forgetting herself. “That’s a Damien Hirst, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning as he watched her race from artwork to artwork like a kid in a candy store. “Over-rated, I think.”

  She stopped and glowered at him.
“And to think I let you look at my crap.” She shuddered as she gazed around her.

  Crossing towards her, he lifted his hand and touched her hair very gently. “Anything I say now is going to come across now as patronising, but I will add this. Most of this is just stuff. No matter what else I see, it... affected me that I became an artwork for someone else, someone who wasn’t looking for the usual kind of patronage. In any case,” he said, letting his hand fall to hers and leading her to one of the large windows that looked out across the city. “This is the real artwork.”

  Exulting, Kris looked down towards the river, past the lights that shone across London at midnight. The city was more alive to her now than it had ever been, and she realised that she had never really looked at it this way during the hours of darkness. When Daniel came and stood beside her, placing his hands on her shoulders, her body began to tremble and something inside her opened up.

  It was she who kissed him first, putting her fingertips to his scarred cheek and guiding him down towards her mouth, sliding the warm creature of her mouth into his, exploring him, seeking him out. He was still gazing at her—she realised he was measuring her, waiting to see if this would be her moment of revenge, but all thoughts of that were gone now. Instead, she closed her eyes and slid her hands down the hard muscles of his chest, kissing him with all her passion.

  As his own hands moved to her breasts, she moaned, and she let her touch drop further, tugging at the belt around his trousers. The thought of a similar belt in a very different place made her shudder with ecstatic longing—but there would be another time for that. Now she simply wanted to allow her body to experience his.

  He was still watching her with that intense gaze of his that made her tremble as she lowered onto her knees, her lips parting slightly, the edges of them glistening where she had licked them as she looked up at him with large, blue eyes. Her fingers, normally so small and nimble, were fumbling slightly now as she tugged at his zip, her own desperation making her nervous. As she dipped her hand inside the fabric of his clothes and felt what was inside, hot and heavy, stretching forward, she groaned and her sex began to flower.