Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1

by Blair Babylon

  Arthur nodded. “Except I’ll teach you to avoid detection.”

  “By your mystical means?”

  “Desensitization, essentially.”

  “Oh, I get it. Look, I’m just your pretend girlfriend. You’re not going to get any ass.”

  “I meant to avoid detection in court or social situations. At the charity events we attend, you draw yourself away from the men that you meet, but not the women. Upon observation, it doesn’t seem cold so much as frightened.”

  “I don’t look frightened,” Gen argued, but she was just arguing for the sake of arguing. Sometimes, her back felt sprained from coiling herself into a spiral to get away from them.

  “It draws a certain type of man like flies. You don’t want to be the prey of that sort of man. Here, take my hand.”

  He held out his hand and laid it, palm-up, on the car seat between them.

  Gen frowned at his open, grasping hand on the seat. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Take my hand.” His voice lowered, not in anger, but what he said now sounded like a command that she wanted to obey.

  Except that she didn’t want to touch his hand.

  But she did. She wanted very much to touch his hand. At the charity events during the evenings, she both looked forward to and dreaded the obligatory waltz.

  And now his hand was sitting open, right there, on the car seat between them.

  Gen tapped his palm with two fingers and pulled her hand right back, but his fingers didn’t trap hers.

  Arthur said, “Again. Longer this time.”

  She touched two fingers to his palm.

  His hand stayed flat on the seat.

  With his other hand, Arthur knocked on the window for Pippa to return to the car. Pippa snapped her paperback shut and walked around to her door.

  “Keep doing it,” Arthur told Gen as Pippa walked around the car. “Keep doing it all the way back to my apartment. Longer each time, and then hold it.

  Gen poked his palm, then slapped at it with her whole hand.

  With every time she batted at his hand like a nervous barn cat, the stupid panic retreated a little.

  At first, Arthur watched the city slide by, and then he glanced at her hand.

  Finally, when her hand was resting on his hand, her palm and fingers stretched out over his, he gently curled his fingers around hers.

  He said, “Good, pet.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Oh, nothing, but that’s good. Good job.”

  He held her hand the few blocks farther to his apartment. He smiled at her as the car tipped into the underground garage and they withdrew their hands.

  She asked him, “So what are you going to make me do next?”

  He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  TEA TIME

  After attending all those snobbish charity events with Lord Severn, Gen finally understood how the upper-class pupil barristers like James Knightly and Hayley Cheslyn must be put out by having to pour high tea for the senior barristers like groveling servants.

  Gen didn’t feel put out, of course. On her father’s side, she came from a long tradition of bartenders and diner waitresses. It was probably why she was better at it than the pretentious upper-crusties.

  Beside her, James Knightly was pouring a cuppa for his pupil master, Leonard Boxster. Two chocolate biscuits were already on the saucer. James whispered to Gen, “So I hear that you’re putting in quite a few billable hours with your favorite client.”

  “Yep,” Gen said, pouring tea for Octavia, who was across the room, sitting with her shapely legs crossed and gazing up at Leonard Boxster as if he were saying something interesting. Considering what Octavia said about Boxster behind his back, Gen doubted that was the case.

  James blew vigorously across the cup of tea to cool it. “So many billable hours, so late into the night.”

  “Yep,” Gen said. She wondered if James knew that he was spitting in his pupil master’s tea, and then she wondered if that was the whole point.

  David Trent wandered by and accepted a cup of tea from Gen, patting the bulk around his middle when Gen offered him a chocolate cookie.

  James snarked to Gen, “You must be in deep consultation with His Lordship Arthur Finch-Hatten.”

  “Sod off, James,” David Trent said. “You don’t know a damn thing.”

  NOTHING LESS

  Gen was sitting in her tiny office, squinting at her computer screen.

  A headache was taking shape behind her eyes, a needling knife of pain.

  No matter. Arthur had booked them to attend a small supper for a political candidate he supported that night. If this fundraising supper was anything like the last few, the room would be dimly lit, easy on the eyes, and she wouldn’t need to squint at anything all evening long except Arthur, who was also easy on the eyes. She had to be careful that his puckish sense of humor and glimpses of his inverted-triangle silhouette, not to mention the fine contours of his butt, didn’t make her too giggly.

  Or maybe it was the wine he poured in her glass during these evenings that made her so giggly and blinky around him.

  Whatever it was, she was getting a bit better at keeping her composure around him, or maybe her liver was just training up.

  But she had to finish this brief before she could run back to his penthouse apartment and dress for the supper that night.

  She’d been working on the Bloomer v. Limner brief for the last two hours, paring it down to a sleek dart of a document.

  On the inside of the folder, sweet old Horace Lindsey had written, Come, let’s away to prison; We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage . . . and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news (Lear).

  Horace had been set to retire the next year and had talked to Gen often about a little place by the sea that he had wanted to buy to spend his remaining years in peace and quiet with Basil.

  Horace hadn’t realized that he didn’t have time.

  Corky Niles stuck her tousled head in Gen’s door. “You busy?”

  Gen and Corky had been casual friends at Oxford and during the bar course. Not close friends, but definitely more than nodding acquaintances. Corky was a sweet woman, a little precious, a little flighty, but nice. Gen had been glad that they had been picked up by the same chambers for their pupillages, hoping it meant that her pupillage would be a little more cooperative and bit less cutthroat.

  Yes, Gen had been that naive. At least Corky didn’t engage in the backstabbing.

  “No, not busy at all,” Gen lied. “Come right in.”

  Corky hopped in and sat in the other chair, fidgeting. “So I hear James Knightley is going around and telling everybody I’m pregnant.”

  “I hadn’t heard that. To be honest, I don’t listen to much that James Knightley says.”

  “It’s not true. I don’t have a bat in the cave.” Corky grabbed a hunk of her hair and twirled it. “He’s trying to sabotage me.”

  “He tries to sabotage everyone. I don’t think the senior barristers listen to him. He’s doing himself a disservice every time he opens his fool mouth.”

  Corky was holding a thick sheaf of paper in her hands.

  Gen asked,”What have you got, there?”

  Corky said, “Just a brief that I’m doing for my pupil mistress, Felicity Macdonald.”

  Gen tilted her head sideways to get a better look at the thick handful of paper. “That’s all one brief?”

  Corky said, “This one is only eighty-four pages.”

  Eighty-four pages? Had Corky lost her mind? Gen asked, “Are all your briefs this long?”

  “Oh, no. Most of them are much longer.”

  Oh, Lord. Gen couldn’t let Corky turn that in.

  A small, evil voice in the back of Gen’s head noted that a pupil barrister who wrote eighty-four page briefs wouldn’t be offered tenancy, cutting the field from six candidates to five.

  That was the part of her b
rain that was not Atticus fucking Finch.

  Gen said, “Hand it over. Let’s take a look at that and see what we can do to cut it down a little. Octavia says that judges generally don’t like briefs that are over ten pages. And shorter is even better.”

  “Ten pages?” Corky squeaked. She handed Gen the heavy pile of paper.

  Gen closed her laptop and spread the paper over her small desk. Even at a quick glance, she could see paragraphs and even pages that could be slashed down to just a sentence or two.

  “This could take a while. I need to text someone.” Gen swiped her phone to open it and texted Arthur, I’m really sorry. I can’t make it tonight. Caught at work. A friend needs help with a brief, and I can’t let her turn it in as is. It would ruin her.

  Gen and Corky worked on the brief far into the night. When it was done, Gen was sure that Corky had a much better grasp on what to include, what to leave out, and how to say all of it as briefly as possible.

  Corky thanked her and left Gen’s office at about three in the morning.

  Gen picked up her phone to call a cab.

  Arthur had texted back, I would expect nothing less. It’s not an important event. I’ll stay home, too. Call me when you need a ride.

  Nothing less?

  Gen wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  She did call him for a ride, though.

  A very sober Arthur picked her up at her office door, drove her back to his apartment, and shook her hand good-night in the kitchen, joking and laughing the whole time while she rubbed her eyes and giggled at him.

  ANOTHER LUNCH

  Gen was sitting with Arthur, eating lunch in a health food bistro because she felt guilty for eating so much rich food at all the charity events that he took her to. In the evenings, every course had a sauce, and the sauces were thickened with butter or cream or both.

  Red and pink construction paper hearts taped to the raw wooden beams decorated the small cafe because Valentine’s Day was the next week.

  “You seem to know everyone at those charity things,” Gen said, just making conversation.

  “I’ve lived in London for seven years, now. The usual suspects turn up at many of them.”

  “It does seem like we keep seeing the same people. At least you get to see your friends often.”

  Arthur stabbed his fork into his Buddha bowl of quinoa, tofu, and vegetables. “I wouldn’t call them friends.”

  “What would you call them?”

  “Acquaintances, perhaps.”

  “Do you have friends that you go out with, rather than to these black tie events where you just see acquaintances?”

  “Yes, but I must be a good boy for the cameras.”

  “What, are all your friends strippers?”

  He laughed. “No. Most are lads. A few birds. You wouldn’t want to meet them.”

  “Maybe I would.”

  “They’re a little rough around the edges,” he admitted.

  “Like, fight club friends? You don’t sport enough black eyes or split lips to be in a fight club. Although there was that one ‘car accident—’” She used her fingers to make sarcastic quotation marks.

  “Nothing so physical.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Perhaps we’ll have a pint with them one of these days if we can manage.”

  “Pints, huh? I thought you stuck to vodka tonics.”

  “Charity events require strong medicine. When I’m out with the lads, I drink stout or lager.”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES

  After yet another interminable charity event where Arthur dumped significant amounts of his ancestors’ hard-won wealth, he and Gen walked into the darkened apartment across from Hyde Park. The clock read ten-thirty, an early night for them. They were usually out at least an hour later, sometimes much later.

  The next day would be Thursday, which meant that Arthur would not see her until they met again that night. No intimate lunches for him, tomorrow. He had to run down to Vauxhall Cross tomorrow for a meeting with Elizabeth, and then the next day, he needed to go all the way out to Benhall in Gloucestershire for a meeting with his other masters. That would have been a five-hour drive each way if he didn’t own a plane, which he did. The earldom’s private plane was one of the few reasons that he was allowed to live in London rather than in the countryside. That, and because he had originally been recruited by Elizabeth before his true talents with the computers had become evident.

  Also, if they hadn’t accommodated both his lifestyle and his other responsibilities, he would have been useless to both his sets of masters.

  But the fact remained that he had a few busy days scheduled, which meant his time spent with Gen would be minimal.

  He wasn’t quite ready to give her up yet for the evening.

  Arthur asked her, “Watch some television?”

  Gen startled and hopped away from him, just like she always did when he suggested anything.

  His chest constricted a little. If Arthur ever found the asshole who had hurt her, Arthur would erase all evidence that the predator had ever existed on the Earth, and then he would kill him.

  Arthur said, “Let’s just sit on the couch out here and watch the news or something. Maybe a comedy show.”

  Gen glanced at the clock. “All right. I guess it’s not too late.”

  “Just for a few minutes. Not a long-term commitment.”

  She smiled at him, and his skin warmed. She said, “Well, no, it’s not a long-term commitment. That’s the benefit of being a barrister instead of a solicitor. We’re just hired guns.”

  He laughed. “Come sit, and we’ll find something to watch.”

  Arthur clicked a button on a control panel on the wall as he walked past.

  A huge television rose out of a console by the far wall. The first time he had activated it, the sudden movement had started Gen, like everything did. When she saw what it was, she had laughed her bell-like laugh, and everything was fine again.

  He wished that he could take the fear away from her. She was so vibrant, so lovely, so intelligent and sharp most of the time, except when something budged up against those memories.

  It was probably best that she had never been specific about what had happened to her. He might have picked up salient details and ferreted out the guy, and then Arthur might have gone to jail. Killing a British citizen on British soil wouldn’t go away, no matter how much paperwork he did.

  Paperwork. He shuddered at the thought. Several hours of each day were occupied by paperwork.

  They flopped on opposite ends of the couch with about three feet of space between them.

  Gen nudged those sexy, red-soled shoes off of her feet and stretched. A film of pantyhose covered her toes.

  Arthur retrieved the remote control from the bowl beside the couch and spoke into it, finding a comedy news show for them to watch.

  He couldn’t watch the regular news anymore. He knew too much about what was happening and how it happened. The dumbed-down reporting of the facts with the implications that they had somehow just happened made him angry.

  If the news were presented as comedy, however, he could laugh at it.

  The first segment poked fun at politicians, always a plus.

  They laughed at it for a while, looking over at each other to share the laughter. Gen’s big, brown eyes glistened with laughing tears, and he felt like he could stare into them forever.

  Her arm was lying on the back of the couch, and he touched her fingers while they were laughing. He didn’t grab, just touched.

  Just stroked.

  Gen flinched, pulling her hand away.

  Arthur muted the television. “Time for some more desensitization therapy.”

  Gen looked around the room, looking for an escape or help.

  He said, “I won’t hurt you. We’ve been alone dozens, if not hundreds, of times.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, as much to herself as to him. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “You shy away from men l
ike we are all made of scalding acid. You don’t do it with women, just with men.”

  “I don’t even notice I’m doing it.”

  “When men look at you, you rear back like they are reaching out to grab you.”

  “I’m just putting some space between us. I like my personal space. That’s not weird.”

  “You’re doing it right now,” Arthur said.

  Gen frowned and looked at her lap.

  “Like I said, for some men it’s not the chase, it’s the fear they like.”

  “That’s not good,” she said.

  “Quite an understatement.”

  “Do you like the fear?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t like the fear at all. It makes me want to chase down the bloke who did it and see the fear in his eyes.”

  To see the fear in the bloke’s eyes for a while, at least.

  Then nothing.

  Gen laughed. “Oh, you’re joking.”

  He laughed with her. “Oh, I am.” He wasn’t. “So let’s practice.” Arthur turned himself on the couch so that he was facing her. “Look at me.”

  Gen struggled and managed to wrench herself around on the couch. “So now what do we do?”

  He let his voice drop lower until deep bass tones resonated in his throat. “Come closer.”

  Yes, he knew what that voice was and what it meant, even though it could never mean that with Gen.

  However, she responded to it very well.

  That made him consider what else he might tell her to do.

  On your knees, pet.

  No, not with Gen. The chances of it going wrong were too high.

  Lift your skirt, pet. Show me those luscious legs you hide from everyone.

  Arthur blinked, trying to pull his mind back.

  Gen was scooting closer to him on the couch, struggling with her long, red satin dress where it was binding her legs.

  Take off the dress, pet. Sit on the floor, naked, at my feet.

  Gen was almost over to the center cushion of the couch, and her skirt was riding up over her calves. She grabbed the material and dragged it up and over her knees.