Control Freak

by Brianna Hale

  Total control. I need it in every aspect of my life. Some would say that makes me an asshole. A freak. But as long as everything’s exactly how I want it, I’m completely flexible.

  I’m kidding.

  Okay, I’m not kidding.

  Lacey needs someone in her life who’s bigger and scarier than her demons, and she wants that man to be me. Her boss. The Viking in a suit.

  I hope she understands what she’s getting into. This daddy isn’t going to pat her on the head and tell her she’s a good girl for nothing. Especially not when she’s spinning out of control.

  CONTROL FREAK by BRIANNA HALE

  Copyright © 2019 Brianna Hale

  | All Rights Reserved |

  Cover design by Maria @ Steamy Reads

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief quotations for reviews. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any similarities between persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  COME TO DADDY

  THE PROTÉGÉ

  Also by Brianna Hale

  About the author

  Pour, Für & För Xenia

  Avec amour et gratitude

  Mit Liebe und Dankbarkeit

  Med kärlek och tacksamhet

  From Brianna, Frederic, Reinhardt and, now, Stian

  Playlist

  Intro—The xx

  dont ask dont tell—Tove Lo

  Delicate—Taylor Swift

  Power and Control—Marina and the Diamonds

  Greyhound—Swedish House Mafia

  Figure 8—Ellie Goulding

  Perfect Now—Sarah Blasko

  Losing My Mind—Beacon

  Young Bride—Midlake

  There Is No Such Place—Augie March

  Better Now—Post Malone

  Technicolour Beat—Oh Wonder

  Mystery of Love—Sufjan Stevens

  https://spoti.fi/2wpN793 or search “Control Freak” on Spotify

  One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.

  SOPHOCLES

  Pronunciations

  Blomqvist—BLOOM-kvist

  käraste—SHAR-asta

  Chapter One

  Stian

  CONTROL FREAK.

  The words are keyed in eight-inch spiky letters down the length of my BMW. My top-of-the-line, very new BMW. I push my sunglasses on top of my head and look up at the parking garage ceiling, counting the nearby security cameras. Five. That should be enough. Not that I don’t already know who did it.

  As I turn onto Tottenham Court Road in my graffitied car, my fury smolders. I’m neck-deep in organizing the Laxos exhibition and my assistant did nothing but argue with me at every turn. Why couldn’t he just obey?

  There’s a parking space directly outside the glass-fronted Mayfair gallery and I pull into it, contemplating the art and people inside with little pleasure. As museum director of the Albright Collection, showing up and shaking hands with people I don’t like is my least favorite part of the job. I glance at my watch. Chris Petrou and his ghastly modern art can have no more than fifteen minutes of my time.

  Inside, I pick up a catalog and read the descriptions, ignoring the waiters with champagne and the art world people who attempt to snag my attention. I weave through the crowd to the artist himself, who throws his arms into the air when he sees me.

  “Stian! You made it.”

  I shake his hand, murmuring a greeting. We’re not friends, but it’s thanks to him that the Laxos Archaeological Museum loaned me most of the artifacts for the exhibition, so I have to make nice. The Greek government can be touchy about loaning artifacts to Britain since the Brits stole half the surviving marble statues from the Parthenon. That was two hundred years ago, but governments have long memories. It also didn’t help that the British never gave them back. Being Swedish, I enjoy the convoluted explanations from some of my colleagues about why this is actually fine.

  A few feet from us on a podium is a jar containing the artist’s urine and a prayer card bearing the image of the Madonna. I search for something complimentary to say about Petrou’s exhibition that I actually mean. “The catalog descriptions are very good.”

  Petrou eyes the flyer I’m brandishing and then bursts out laughing, no doubt putting my words down to dry Scandinavian wit.

  “That was Lacey, my daughter. She organized everything. Did an amazing job, all things considered.”

  My silence isn’t an invitation to expand on this, but he takes it that way.

  “She’s had some health issues. Done some silly things. But she’s a good girl, of course.” Petrou says this offhandedly, as if good girls are ten a penny and just waiting to fall into your lap.

  If only.

  “I’m sure she is,” I murmur, more out of politeness than anything else, my eyes wandering onto a painting of a man with his hands on his hips and contemplating his flaccid penis.

  Petrou gestures airily with his glass of champagne. “She gave her mother and me a lot of worries. Eating badly at university. But she’s going to therapy now. In fact, she’s here somewhere…” he adds, glancing around.

  If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t speak so blithely of her health issues. Eating disorders aren’t merely eating badly, but I hold my tongue. As Petrou looks about for his daughter, the crowd parts and he catches sight of my car through the glass windows of the galley.

  “Stian. Isn’t that your car?”

  I don’t turn and look. I know it’s my car. “Yes.”

  “But what—

  “Just someone letting off steam.”

  He turns back to me, scandalized and delighted at the same time. “Who?”

  I imagine telling Petrou to mind his own fucking business. “I fired my assistant this morning.”

  “Why?”

  Because he’s a lazy little know-it-all who couldn’t take a single direction without arguing with me, and I haven’t got the time nor the patience to explain my every decision to an entitled little shit. “Clash of personalities.”

  Petrou attempts to look sympathetic. “Right in the middle of organizing the exhibition, as well. You must be panicking. I couldn’t have managed any of this without Lacey.” He pauses, and I can see the dots connecting in the air around him. His daughter, whom he clearly believes is a problem child, needs a job, and I need an assistant.

  As he’s opening his mouth, I speak over him. “Excuse me. I want to see your work and then I have to report the damage to the police. Good night.”

  I do a lap of the space as fast as I can without seeming rudely inattentive. The exhibition continues upstairs. I spend two seconds looking at half a dozen sculptures, and then I decide I can leave
.

  As I walk to the stairs I notice a young woman heading the same way, digging into her handbag as she walks and completely oblivious to the staircase in front of her. She’s tall and slim and wearing high heels with a knee-length dress. Her legs are lovely, but they’re not what’s distracting me. It’s the fact that she’s walking blindly toward a steep drop.

  Look where you’re going.

  You’re going to miss that first step, look up. She keeps walking, scrambling frantically in her bag.

  “För i helvete, look up!” I bark. Her high-heeled shoe slips on the top step and she teeters over a chasm of empty space. In that instant, I see what two dozen hard steps and a long fall would do to her body in vivid detail.

  I lunge forward and pull her back, my heart pounding hard in my ears. I turn her around to face me, giving her a little shake. “You could have fucking died. What were you thinking?”

  The young woman stares up at me, visions of her near-death experience dancing in her eyes. She’s terrified, both of the fall that nearly swallowed up her life and of me, the strange man towering over her with death-grip on both of her upper arms.

  “S-sorry, um. I—”

  “Look where you’re going. Use the handrail. Find a way to get through your life without being attached to that device like it’s your pacifier.”

  Indignation starts to bleed into her terror. She hates me for making a scene in front of everyone, but I cannot begin to express how much I don’t care. Watching a woman fall to her death for a ridiculous non-reason isn’t part of my planned existence.

  “Got it? Good.” I let her go and head down the stairs, several dozen eyes staring reproachfully after me. Behind me I hear people murmur in kind tones to her, asking if she’s all right, probably more in response to my ferocity than her nearly falling to her death. They can do the kid gloves thing and fuss over her if they like. I hope she remembers me every time she sees a flight of stairs.

  The traffic in the West End has thinned and it only takes thirty minutes to drive home to Wimbledon. I eat, and then deal with the shit that today has thrown at me.

  A few hours later I put down my phone, having placed several calls to the police and the security desk at the museum. They’re going to forward the tapes to the police. I’ve identified the person in them. As I suspected, it’s my former assistant, Eric. He couldn’t even get this right. He was careful to keep his hat pulled low and his head down as he walked to my car, but halfway through the R of CONTROL he’s startled by someone walking by, and looks up. Right into the lens of a security camera. Idiot.

  I head off to bed, and once I’m between the sheets I notice that I have an email from Petrou.

  Stian, just had a thought. Lacey’s been invaluable in helping me with my exhibition. Why doesn’t she come along for the summer to assist you before she goes back to her Masters? She knows all about the pieces thanks to her coursework and can organize everything for you. Her attention to detail is better than yours.

  I groan and rest the phone on my chest. I haven’t got any interviews lined up yet for Eric’s replacement and tomorrow my schedule is full all day. Petrou made his daughter sound like a train wreck at the exhibition, but what actually irritates me is someone else trying to fill the gaps in my life. Only I know what I need.

  If she had a hand in organizing her father’s exhibition, Miss Petrou could potentially make an adequate assistant. Now I wish I’d had the chance to meet her while I was there.

  I consider it for a moment longer and then reply. I can see her at the museum at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.

  I put my phone on the bedside table and switch off the light. If that’s too early for Miss Petrou and she doesn’t show up, I will have saved us both a lot of hassle.

  Early mornings are going to be the least of her problems if she works for me.

  Chapter Two

  Lacey

  I hurry up the steps of Russell Square Tube station toward the Albright Collection, and the summer morning is warm and still. My stomach clenches uncomfortably around the muesli and yogurt I forced myself to eat in the bathroom at home.

  The anxiety was bad this morning. My old habits crowded around me, eager to latch onto me while I’m weak. Even just thinking about going without breakfast and restricting myself to three hundred and fifty calories today made adrenalin surge through me; made me feel powerful again after dad sprang this interview on me at nearly midnight last night.

  I was already feeling raw after a Viking in a suit grabbed me and shouted in my face. I know I did a stupid thing by digging in my bag for my affirmations while I was fleeing to the bathroom. If that man only knew the circumstances, could only feel what I feel. I needed that list.

  I am not my eating disorder.

  I will be gentle with myself.

  I am aware of possibilities for improvement, but I don’t want to be anyone else.

  Every day is a constant battle between what I know is good for me and what my anorexia wants. She’s always with me, spitting insults and cruelty and telling me I’m unlovable, fat and greedy. I’ve been able to construct a box in my mind and trap her in it, but she’s never truly silent. I can hear her in there, rattling the lid and screaming in frustration.

  Each day is supposed to bring me closer to full recovery, but I’m just so tired. I know I’m going to slip up. It’s just a question of when, and how badly.

  At the traffic lights, I take a deep breath and a slow look around me, trying to be present. Trying to mentally prepare myself for a job interview I never asked for.

  I am grateful for this opportunity.

  New experiences lead to personal growth.

  I do love this area, the center of Bohemian London a hundred years ago. It’s not far from my university so I know it well. The narrow rows of Victorian terraces open up onto jewel-box garden squares. The weather has been hot and dry, and the grass is already going brown at the edges even though it’s only the end of June.

  The Albright Collection is an ultra-modern and slick building with an original redbrick Victorian façade. I hurry up the steps and the security guard in the foyer directs me to Mr. Blomqvist’s office on the top floor. I find a waiting area with no one around, just several sofas, a desk where an assistant must sit, and a closed door which bears a plaque that reads, STIAN BLOMQVIST, MUSEUM DIRECTOR. I wonder what he’s like. Probably frail with spectacles and papery skin, like some of my professors at university.

  I’m getting a paper cup of water at the fountain when a man strides out of the elevator, tall, strong, blond, dressed in a suit and with a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. He stops dead and stares when he sees me.

  It’s the Viking from last night.

  I want to kick myself. I heard his accent, and I should have guessed that the man who shouted at me for nearly falling down the stairs was Stian Blomqvist. How many Swedes were there going to be at dad’s opening night?

  Mr. Blomqvist, so self-assured, so wide awake and full of purpose at this early hour, has been caught off guard by me, and I can tell he detests the sensation.

  “Miss Petrou,” he says, recovering. “This is my office. Come inside.”

  His voice is gravelly, and consonants sound hard and heavy in his mouth as if he’s carving them onto stone as he speaks. I watch his broad back retreating. I should probably just leave because I don’t want to work for him, and he won’t want to hire me. We’re going to spend twenty or so stiff minutes going through the motions of an interview for a job both of us know I’m not going to get. I can picture the look my therapist will give me if I leave, though, and dad will go on for hours about how I’ve disrespected his friend, and I don’t actually want to get better.

  Inside his office, I sit down in the chair Mr. Blomqvist offers me and watch as he takes out his laptop and various devices. He’s got Nordic blue eyes and fine blond hair, shaved at the sides, and longish on top and swept back.

  When he finally sits down and looks up at me, he’s oddly still.
Like he’s been carved from stone as well as his words. Even his eyes don’t flicker, but rather he stares.

  “Your father tells me that you helped organize his exhibition.”

  “Yes,” I say loudly, over the trumpeting of the elephant in the room. Oh, yeah. Only I can hear that.

  Mr. Blomqvist is silent, so I start reciting what my duties were at the gallery. He laces his fingers together on his desk, and I notice there are markings on his knuckles. Tattoos. They’re Nordic runes, and there’s some sort of animal prowling down the back of his left hand. A wolf, I think. I wonder where else he has tattoos. If they’re on his hands then they must be all over his body. They’re so at odds with his immaculate appearance that I start to become distracted, because while he’s a jerk he’s kind of a gorgeous jerk, with a sculpted face and a generous, surly mouth. I like the way he says dis and dat instead of this and that.

  “If the curator of another museum wanted to borrow a piece from us, what would you do?”

  The question blindsides me, and I force my gaze back up to his. “I would pass on the request to the collections manager.”

  “And if they demand to know how much we paid for a piece or if any other museums wish to exhibit it?”

  “That wouldn’t be my place to say.”

  He asks me several more questions of this sort, and I give him my answers. They’re all common sense questions, and I think he’s trying to establish whether I have good judgment. If that’s what he cares about most, I can probably do this job standing on my head. My only poor judgment is for myself.

  “The work is glorified admin, but if you want to get a foot in at the museum, or any museum, it’s a start. I understand you’re completing a Masters so the contract will be for two months.”