Canada Square (Love in London #3)

by Carrie Elks

  I can remember Lara telling me the same thing about her experiences working in the financial district. There was constant pressure to excel at everything, whether that was getting the most prestigious projects or being able to handle alcohol. Somehow it’s hard to picture Callum—this strong, big man—having to fight his way to the top. In my mind he was always there.

  “But something changed?”

  He clears his throat. “I changed.” He pours another splash of whisky into his glass. “I got bored of doing the same thing, day in day out. I wanted to be awake at work; I wanted to give my clients everything I had. I didn’t want to just coast along. A year later I was offered a promotion and a great job in the Edinburgh office, and I asked Jane to come up with me.”

  “Did she?”

  He looks down. “She didn’t want to. She liked being in London, she liked the party lifestyle. She found it a lot easier than I did to get up in the morning after a heavy night out. It took a long time for me to realise what she was doing to help her function.”

  My heart catches in my throat. I know exactly how people cope with alcohol consumption on a night out. I’ve seen it before—the traces of powder, the glassy eyes. Cocaine can be an excellent anti-hangover cure.

  “She was a user?”

  “She didn’t see it that way. She thought it was a casual thing, something she did just to help her through the day. She swore she could stop whenever she wanted.” He laughs harshly. “Idiotic isn’t it? All addicts say the same thing, until somebody actually challenges them.”

  “Did she stop?”

  His pupils dilate as they take in light. He blinks rapidly as if to acclimatise himself. “We agreed to make a fresh start in Edinburgh. We got engaged, bought a flat, and started our new jobs. I thought everything was fine, that she was happy. I’d forgotten how good she was at hiding things.”

  “But you got married,” I prompt. “So things must have been okay?”

  “As I said, I was oblivious. Too busy at work, too busy trying to get my next promotion. I didn’t realise how unhappy Jane was, nor how she was trying to deal with her depression. We were both too ambitious to accept we could be anything less than perfect.”

  I close my eyes, picturing that wedding photograph. The beautiful couple, their beaming smiles. It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t genuine. How often do we hide our emotions behind a fake smile?

  “Two years ago, things came to a head again,” he continues. “I was running late for work and barged into the bathroom to clean my teeth. She was leaning over the sink, snorting a line of coke. I went fucking ballistic, told her it was over, that I couldn’t take it any more. I said some things I regret, shouting I’d never have kids with her, that she’d be a shitty mother. By the time I left for work we were both boiling over.” His voice cracks. Regret seems to seep from his every pore.

  I relax my hold on him, moving my hands up to cup his face. “It’s okay,” I whisper.

  It’s as if he doesn’t hear me. “When I came home from work that night she was nowhere to be seen. I did what I usually did, ate some dinner, cleared my emails, went to bed. I didn’t bother calling her, didn’t bother trying to find out where she was. As far as I was concerned, she wasn’t my problem any more.”

  He pulls my head to his, until our foreheads are touching. “I took a couple of sleeping pills—prescribed by my doctor for anxiety—and fell asleep. According to the police, they think Jane came home around one in the morning. They had witnesses to say she was in a bar on Rose Street until midnight. They thought she took a taxi home, though the driver never came forward.”

  I shiver, in spite of the flames burning in the open fireplace next to us. Callum puts his hands over my own, holding them there, as if he’s afraid I’ll let him go. But I don’t want to release him; I want to touch him until the anguish disappears. I want to make everything right, I just don’t know how.

  “I didn’t wake up until the alarm went off, just before six. The clock was on Jane’s side of the bed, and she always used to sleep through it. Normally I’d just roll over her and reach for the snooze button. But this time I couldn’t move.” He shudders, caught up in the memory. “The pathologist says I woke up at the worst time, just as rigor mortis was setting in. She’d been dead for four hours.”

  This time it’s me who starts shaking. I can’t begin to imagine waking up next to a dead body. Especially somebody you loved.

  I press my lips to his cheek. “She died next to you?”

  “Officially it was classed as Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, although cocaine usage was a secondary factor. The reason I couldn’t move was because she was half-lying on me, her body weighing me down. It wasn’t until I was fully awake that I realised she was gone.”

  “Is that why you woke up tonight?” I ask. “Because I was cuddling you?”

  “It just reminded me...” He breaks off. “I didn't want to think of her with you lying next to me.”

  When he starts to cry I kiss away the tears, tasting their salty sweetness. I kiss him all over, on his mouth, his nose, his forehead. I stroke his face and murmur softly, telling him I’m here, that I’m not leaving.

  That’s where we stay for the rest of the night, until the morning creeps its way in, reminding us that even when our lives are rocked, the world still goes on. In the course of those pre-dawn hours, as we talk and caress, I realise I’m in love with Callum Ferguson.

  22

  There's something truly magical about realising you're in love with somebody. It's as if the world becomes a pretty backdrop made just for us, and the surrounding people are simply a cast of extras. For the past week, I've spent the days waiting until I can see him again, and the nights in his bed.

  On Monday, Callum catches me as I'm walking to a meeting, dragging me into a breakout room for a heated kiss. We're getting careless but the lure is too strong. Falling for someone is funny like that. It makes you feel invincible, the resulting adrenaline an anaesthesia that protects. So we flirt and we kiss, and pretend we're living in our own universe, hoping nobody will notice the passion growing between us.

  Of course, somebody always notices.

  On Thursday, after a meeting where Callum seemed more intent on eye-fucking me than troubleshooting, he sends me a text asking me to meet him back at his place. I accept readily, stuffing my papers into my bag so I can leave the office on time. That's another thing that's changed—for now at least—we're both leaving earlier than we ever have. No more late nights squinting at the laptop or on endless video-calls to the US. We prefer to spend our evenings wrapped around each other.

  I take the underground to his house, pushing my way through the evening commuters to emerge onto his street. Winter has finally set in, twisting her icy fingers around the city, and I pull my scarf around my face to stave off her chill. When I get to Callum's house, it's dark and empty, so I take out the key he pushed into my hand a few days ago, feeling excited and nervous about letting myself into his house. It makes everything feel real, knowing he wants me to be able to come and go, and I like the way the trust is building between us.

  Everything changed after that night in his living room. The final door has been opened, and all our secrets have escaped. There's this man—this beautiful, strong, vulnerable man—and it makes my chest feel full to know he's mine.

  The frostiness of the outside air follows me, and I keep my coat on when I step inside. Dropping my bag, I flick on the hall light, and make my way to his kitchen to put on the kettle.

  Even the floors are freezing, but I'm not sure how to turn on the heating. I glance at my watch and hope he'll be home soon, that he'll build a fire like he has every day this week, laying the wooden logs in a carefully ordered fashion. There's something very sexy about his Boy Scout obsession with fire, and the way his face lights up with achievement when the flame starts to burn, that makes me want to throw myself at him every time.

  Most of the time I do exactly that.

  The kettl
e is coming to a rolling boil when I hear his key slip into the lock, and the front door open. I hear him drop his case on the floor, hang up his coat, and the thud of his dress shoes landing in his cupboard.

  He walks into the kitchen, his tie loose around his neck and his top few shirt buttons open, revealing his chest. He leans on the granite work surface, tilting his head to the side, smiling at me as I take another mug from the cupboard.

  “What?” I'm smiling, too. “Don't you want a cup of tea?”

  He folds his arms across his chest, his hip steadying himself against the wall, and nods. “Yeah, I'll have one.”

  “I can make you coffee if you want?” I take an exaggerated look at my watch. “Although it isn't quite nine o'clock yet, I don't want to make you angry.”

  Callum raises his eyebrows, silent for a moment. Finally, he steps towards me, his movements strong and intent, trapping me against the work surface, as he cages me in with his arms.

  “Are you ever going to let me forget that?” he murmurs. “I just wanted to show you who was boss.” He presses his lips to my neck, and I jump at the coldness of his skin.

  “You're freezing,” I protest. He laughs, pushing his hands beneath my shirt. Their iciness makes me squeal as I try to escape, but there's nowhere to run. “I'm not a bloody hot water bottle.”

  He laughs. “Says the girl who spent most of last night with her feet between my thighs.”

  “It's not my fault you're too miserly to have your heating on all night,” I retort, trying hard to ignore the way his hands are feathering up and down my sides. When my nipples harden, it has nothing to do with the cold.

  “If you think this is cold, you should try living in Scotland.” He unbuttons my shirt as he talks. “Ice on the inside of the windows and snow drifts eight-feet high. This is Hawaii compared to that.”

  “I've never been to Scotland.” My words catch as he reaches behind me and unclasps my bra. When he slides his hands inside the cups, his ice-cold fingers create a kind of pleasure-pain that makes me squeeze my eyes shut.

  “We'll have to remedy that. We should fly up to Edinburgh for the weekend, I'll show you my old haunts.”

  I can't understand how he’s so calm, so methodical, while I'm slowly being wound into a frenzy. He keeps the one-sided conversation going, telling me about the Royal Mile, about his apartment, the bars, the beautiful view from the Castle. He only quietens when he captures my nipple between his lips, sucking hard enough to make me arch my back.

  The next minute we're running into his bedroom, burying ourselves beneath his white duvet, tearing each other's clothes off and throwing them on the floor. By the time he's inside me, all thoughts of ice and cold are forgotten, replaced by burning need and desire.

  * * *

  Later that night, we're sitting in front of the fireplace, eating pale fluffy omelettes and listening to his stereo. I take a sip from a large glass of red wine—decadent for a work night—and push my bare feet between his firm thighs.

  “I told you,” he says, capturing my feet between his hands. “Have you got some kind of thigh fetish?”

  I smile because it's a Callum-fetish I'm suffering from. “Once again, Scrooge McDuck, I refer you to your miserliness. If you cranked up the heating I wouldn't need your body warmth.”

  “Where would the fun be in that?” he asks. His hands rub at my soles, the friction defrosting them. “Maybe I like having your feet close to my cock.”

  “Who's the one with the foot fetish now?” I murmur. Then I move my feet, feathering them against the hard ridge beneath his pyjama pants.

  Callum grabs my toes again, this time stopping me from touching him. “Hey, I wanted to prove to you that we can have a conversation without it ending in sex.”

  I arch my eyebrows but don't struggle, repeating his words from a moment before. “Where would the fun be in that?”

  We tease each other for the next hour, with our words as well as our touch. Then we climb back into bed—still unmade from our earlier, unplanned visit—and he holds me closely. The second night I slept here, the one after his confession, I'd tried to keep my distance so I wouldn't stir up his memories again. But he'd dragged me across the king-size bed and refused to let me go as we fell asleep.

  Since then, I've draped myself around him every night, for the closeness as much as for the warmth. His nightmares, when he's had them, have been mercifully short and fast to dissipate.

  “I meant what I said about taking you to Edinburgh,” he whispers, running a hand lazily through my hair. I prop my chin up on my hand, as my elbow presses into the mattress.

  “Okay.” I can't hide my excitement. A dirty weekend with this gorgeous man in his home town? Hell yes.

  “We could go next week, except there's that bloody party on Friday. Maybe we can travel on the Saturday morning after we get up.”

  Though there's a glow inside when I realise he's taking my staying over for granted, it’s soon chased away by the thought of Caro Hawes’s party. “I haven't been invited,” I confess.

  Callum frowns. “What?” he asks, his voice disbelieving.

  “I haven't been invited, Caro hates me. I think it's because I wasn't born a duchess, or maybe my accent. I don't know, but she's had it in for me from the start.”

  He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth. “That's sorted then, we'll travel up on the Friday night. I'll book our flights in the morning.”

  “You're willing to miss out on the party of the year?” I ask him. “She won't be very pleased about that.”

  “I don't really give a fuck whether she's pleased or not. If she's a being a bitch to you, then I'm more than happy to ruin her bloody party.”

  I hide my smile in his chest. “Then Edinburgh it is. Are you serious about booking the tickets tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure. I'll ask my PA—” He stops abruptly. “Ach, yeah, probably best not to do that, right?”

  “Best not to,” I agree, still grinning. “I'll book them, you useless privileged bastard.”

  He rolls over on top of me, pinning me to the mattress. “Less of the useless, sweetheart.” He presses his hips to mine. “I may be privileged, and I'm definitely a bastard, but I think you'll also find I'm very bloody useful indeed.”

  * * *

  The day before we're due to fly to Edinburgh, I find myself cornered in the canteen by Caro and her sidekick, Miranda. I've just slid my tray onto the trolley reserved for dirty dishes when I turn to find them in front of me. For a minute I'm reminded of that scene in The Shining when the little boy sees the dead twin girls in a corridor. Only Caro and Miranda are much scarier than that.

  “Amethyst,” Caro says when I fail to speak first. “How are you?”

  “I'm fine,” I say, not bothering to inquire after her health. “On my way to a meeting, actually.”

  “In that case I won't keep you long. It's my birthday tomorrow and a few of us are going out for dinner. A space has come up and I know you'd love to join us.”

  She speaks as though she's doing me a favour, without the merest hint of irony. I keep my smirk to myself when I realise the spot she’s referring to is Callum's, and only I know the reason for his change of mind.

  “Oh that's a shame,” I reply. “I'm already busy, otherwise I'd have loved to join you.” I wonder if my sarcasm is laid on a little too thick. “Try to have a good time without me though, won't you?”

  Caro frowns, three lines criss-crossing her dainty forehead. “I'm sure it's nothing you can't cancel. Everybody will be there, it would be really good for you to network.” She leans in as if she's doing me the biggest favour. “You won't get a chance like this again.”

  It's difficult not to laugh. The knowledge I'm going to be spending the weekend with Callum buoys my confidence. “I'll have to survive somehow.”

  “Where are you going that's so important?” she asks. There's a sneer in her expression that I want to wipe off, I hate the way she talks down to me.

  “My boyf
riend's taking me away,” I say. “It's been planned for weeks, so there's nothing I can do.”

  “I thought you'd broken up with him,” she replies. “Or is it one of those tiresome on-again off-again relationships?” She exchanges an amused look with Miranda, who's been silent for the whole encounter. “I heard he cheated on you. It's sad that you have so little self-esteem that you'd take him back.”

  I’m tempted to tell her to stuff her opinions up her own behind. But I remind myself that I have so much more to lose than she does, and if I can lie enough to take her suspicions away, then that’s what I’ll do.

  “I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment,” I reply. Maybe that’s why I’m here, talking to you.

  “Well, if you’d prefer a weekend with a cheater to an expensive night out with a work colleague, so be it.” She rolls her eyes. “Next time I won’t bother to ask you.”

  “I think that would be for the best.” I keep my composure. “We’re never going to be best friends, are we?”

  She wrinkles her nose, as if I’ve suggested she eat a plate of dog food. “No, I don’t think we will.”

  “In that case, I’d better get to my meeting.” I look at my watch with an exaggerated gesture, trying not to reveal I’m talking about an imaginary appointment. “I’ll catch you around.”

  With that I push past Caro, leaving her and Miranda behind with the dirty dishes and messed up trays. The image of her face, marked with disdain, puts the biggest smile on my face.

  23

  Our flight lands in Edinburgh a few minutes before eleven. Although it took little more than an hour and a half, my back is still aching from sitting in one position for too long. I rub it as we join the line to exit the aircraft while Callum pulls our bags from the overhead lockers. Even without looking at I feel him frown.

  “Are you hurting?” he whispers. His accent sounds broader now we’re back in his home country. I can’t help but find his burr sexy.