Had they been intimate twenty minutes ago? Had he looked into her eyes with love? Was it love? Or was it something else? Davonna sat on the wall, the sun-warmed bricks pierced through her damp jeans. A film of dust and debris from the scurrying winds covered the patio. The white paint on the intricate metal table flaked off in large tumbling chunks. The windows at the back of the house were covered with the same grime, so thick you could only see hazy distorted outlines of furniture. Davonna sighed and hung her head.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve finished the plans. It shouldn’t be more than a week, enough time for you to get settled,” Megan said, as she and John completed their tour. Her arm was still through his and her face was flushed. She looked alive, sensuous, tempting.
Davonna scratched behind her ear and pulled loose strands of her hair out of her mouth. They fell limp on her shoulders. Megan tore her gaze from John to consider Davonna. Out of the corner of her eye appraising Davonna like a racehorse she was sure would lose. It was disconcerting. There was no humor, no light of interest, but a simple calculated stare. She looked away with a half smirk and allowed John to lead her into the house.
“It was lovely to meet you, Megan,” Davonna said.
Neither John nor Megan seemed to hear her; they didn’t turn around at any rate. But Davonna was sure Megan’s back stiffened and her arm curled around John’s.
The front door opened and closed and John sauntered back indoors. He strode through the glass doors and stretched in the sun. Davonna couldn’t help herself. The words spilled out before she was conscious of them.
“What were you doing over at her house?”
John looked at her, confused.
“I went to ask her to come over to look at the garden. Why?” His tone was light, but there was hardness in his eyes, flatness, a warning.
“I saw you kissing her.”
“Where did you see us from?” he said, craning his head to look at the house above them. “Oh right, the master bedroom. You can’t see a thing at that distance. We hugged. Greeks are affectionate.”
“I … ” Davonna started. She fiddled with her fingers, twisting her thumbs around each other.
“You shouldn’t have been spying,” he drawled, turning away.
Davonna stared at his back. The tension was palpable, the air stilled, waiting with bated breath. “I wasn’t spying,” she whispered.
John rounded on her, crossing the space between them in a single stride. She shrank from his onslaught.
“Let’s keep it that way.”
Davonna’s knees rattled, cold rushed across her forehead and neck. John’s hands balled into fists. He leaned over, his breath hot on her face, like a boxer leering at a weaker opponent. He smelled like Megan’s cloying perfume. The impeding violence rose and billowed like a storm around them, cackling and booming.
The doorbell went off like a shotgun blast in their ears. John stepped back, blinking, and Davonna let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. John dashed off to the front of the house. When she strode up behind him, the open doorway showed a massive moving truck and four men flitting like bees around it.
John turned towards her as she stood watching, “You can handle this, can’t you?”
He tacked them on, those last two words. A cutting remark. Tears welled behind her eyes, but Davonna was determined not to cry. She couldn’t let him know he’d won. He smirked, and strode out in the bright sunlight, swallowed by the truck and the workers and the incoming furniture.
#
“I have an opportunity,” John said the next day. They sat at the dining table, boxes and wrapping paper helter-skelter around them. Davonna froze, her spoon halfway to her mouth. “The owners of the hotel want to sell and have approached me, to see if I want to buy it.”
“That’s …”
“I could get loans, but it would be so much easier to use what’s in your savings,” he said and shoveled a heaping forkful of roast chicken into his mouth.
“My inheritance?”
“Yes. We might have to rent this house and live in the hotel for a while,” he said. His eyes glazed over, dreaming already of the future - of his kingdom.
“John … the account I put the money into … it’s frozen for another twenty years. I can’t touch it.”
“I’m sure you can get around it. This is our future.”
“I’m not sure, John. We don’t need it right now … if it was an emergency.” Davonna faltered under the look John gave her.
“Isn’t our future an emergency?”
“I don’t know that the bank will see it that way.”
John stared at her and she quailed. His eyes were flat with suppressed anger. Davonna’s heart raced under the weight of his stare. It was as though, in a moment, the air had gone from the room.
“I’ll try to call,” she said.
“Do more than try.”
“What should I say to them?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of a way … that bright mind of yours,” he cackled, and left the dining room, padding across the hall to his office.
Davonna stood and took her phone into the library. She dialed the seldom-used number of her London bank.
“Davonna Fitzroy,” she said, “I’m calling about a question on my account.”
“One moment, Ma’am,” a bright Sussex accent said.
Davonna peered out the window at the garden and tried to rehearse her request. What would make the banker override the terms of the account?
“Mrs. Fitzroy, what may I do for you?” The banker’s voice was calm and cultured, and Davonna took a deep breath.
“I’d like to see if I might get the funds from my inheritance.”
It wasn’t what she’d planned but she couldn’t think, not while John’s seething face played in her mind.
“I see,” the banker said. Keys clacked away in the background. “Mrs. Fitzroy, I see the terms you agreed on were that the funds would stay frozen until your fiftieth birthday, or if severe financial hardship had befallen your family.”
“Yes, I understand,” Davonna said. “But we want to invest in a business opportunity and need these funds.”
There was silence on the other side of the line and a small, nearly imperceptible sigh. “Mrs. Fitzroy, I am sorry, but I can’t release these funds to you. I wish I could give you another answer, but you signed the paperwork. We retain these policies for our clients’ protection.”
“Yes, but my husband …”
“Mrs. Fitzroy, is something wrong? These policies are on the books for several reasons … spousal interference being one of them.”
“Oh no!” Davonna blurted. “No.”
“I see. I am sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. If you could give documentation of a dire financial state, the funds can be released.”
“Please …”
“Is something wrong, Mrs. Fitzroy?” he repeated.
Davonna shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see her, and blinked herself back to reality.
“Thank you for your help,” she said and hung up.
Davonna stood, facing the garden, and saw none of it. Her arms hung and her chest heaved. She turned on unsteady feet and walked across the hall to where John reclined at his desk.
“They won’t release the funds, John.”
John looked up from his phone. His face darkened and his eyes flattened into slits. “What did they say?”
“I can’t access the money until I turn fifty or unless we are in dire financial straits, proven with documentation.”
“Well, isn’t that perfect,” John said, slamming his phone on the desk.
“I’m sorry,” Davonna whispered, frozen in place. Her knees knocked together. Her head went warm.
“Don’t even talk,” John growled, and flicked his fingers at her, as though she was a piece of dirt on the floor.
Davonna fled, went to the kitchen, and sat huddled in a corner. A moment later, John’s voice rang ou
t through the first floor. He was on the phone, laughing. It was a strange sycophantic laugh, which rose and fell with nervousness. Davonna sighed and an hour later, no less worried, she retreated upstairs and waited for John to follow.
But he came to bed late, whistling under his breath and fell asleep virtually at once. She couldn’t remember the last time it had happened … a respite from him, from sex. He didn’t say a word about the money the next day or ever again. It was as if the whole episode was erased from his memory … eclipsed or supplanted by something else.
Lives Paris Took Page 31