by M. O’Keefe
Looking over everyone it struck me, not just because I was a little tipsy. But I was so bored. So terribly bored with the dresses and the conversation. It wasn’t just people being sorry for my loss, it was the conversation about trade deals and Supreme Court nominees. It was the traffic out of the city and where to eat and drink the best whatever-was-popular-now.
Who cares? I wanted to ask them. Are we all so shallow that this was all that mattered in our lives? Wasn’t there more than this?
I can build a shower! Can any of you assholes do that?
“Hello, Princess.”
Like I’d summoned him out of my boredom, there was Ronan.
In a tuxedo and his fallen-angel face.
He isn’t boring.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said, and his eyebrow kicked up.
“Are you drunk?”
“Let me check,” I said with a sigh and pretended to think it over. “I do believe I am.”
His blue eyes glimmered, but his mouth was set in a frown. My Irishman didn’t approve.
“It’s a drinking game,” I explained. “Every time someone offers their sincere condolences, I have a drink. It’s been effective.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking.”
“Yeah, I considered that. Do you know,” I said, “your eyes are smiling, but your face is not. How do you do that?” I attempted to copy his expression, but all I did was squint.
“You’re going to be a problem for me,” he said in a low tone. He gestured for a server, asking him for a cup of coffee and a plate of food.
“I’m not going to eat,” I said.
“Of course not.”
The coffee arrived, and he put in some sugar. A splash of cream.
“That’s not how I drink my coffee,” I said, like the joke was on him.
“It’s not for you,” he said and took a sip. He made a sound in his throat like it tasted good, and suddenly I wanted some coffee. But I was onto his reverse psychology.
“You work for Caroline,” I said.
“I do.” Another sip of coffee.
“What do you do for her?”
“Whatever she needs.”
The last of my champagne went down easily, and suddenly at my elbow there was a cup of coffee.
“I’d like another glass of champagne,” I told a passing waiter, but beside me Ronan shook his head. A tiny imperceptible movement, but I was conditioned to see those little things. The danger, I’d learned the hard way was always in those little things.
“Fuck off, Ronan,” I said under my breath and walked right past him. He caught my arm, touching me at the fragile bend of my elbow. His palm was big and wide where my skin was tender.
I gasped at the exquisite realness of it. The audacity of it.
“Poppy,” he said, and I blinked, trying to pull out of his grasp. I was . . . raw where he touched me. I felt too much.
“I never told you my name,” I said.
“You never had to.”
“That night. Did you know who I was the whole time?” I whispered, asking a question that had sat in the back of my brain like a thorn. Unasked, but there. Steady and hurtful.
“Was I only nice to you because you were marrying the senator,” he said. “Is that what you’re asking?”
I said nothing, breathing hard through my nose, looking at the starched white collar of his shirt where it met the black silk of his lapel.
“No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know who you were until the senator came to the door.”
His blue eyes caught me. Held me. And I couldn’t pull against him. I could barely even breathe. It wasn’t fear that held me. No. Not at all. It was something worse. Something I didn’t have the slightest clue how to manage.
I felt the touch of his gaze on my face. My lips, and they parted so I could pull in a breath. My chest lifted, and he glanced down and away. His jaw tight, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know what this was.
A game. A trick.
Real? A lie?
He let go of my arm, his hand clenched in a fist at his side. And I reached for the coffee, drinking it down in three big sips. It burned my mouth, but the pain cleared my head.
This was some new game, and I didn’t know the rules.
I pulled my skirt back and stepped around him, a wide berth so no part of me brushed up against any part of him.
“Poppy,” he breathed, and my name in his voice, that low timber, that dark accent, it held me like no grip on my elbow ever could. He didn’t finish the statement, and I looked over at him.
His cold mouth was not folded in some charming smile. His eyebrow wasn’t lifted in a sardonic curl. Everything about him was sharp.
“What?” I asked. For a moment, a razor-thin one, there was something he was going to say. I could feel it.
“No more drinking,” he said, and just like that, he was gone.
Again.
By the time the lights dimmed and Caroline got up on the small stage to present me with the senator’s award, I’d had two more champagne glasses. And, frankly, I was feeling all right. I should have been drunk at all these events. Justin came up beside me, and I wasn’t sure how he managed to still look like someone’s assistant in a thousand-dollar tux.
“Are you ready?” he whispered, pressing the neatly typed notes I’d approved a week ago into my hand.
“Sure,” I said. How hard could this be? I’d done it a million times and, frankly, no one cared. I was doing it, and I didn’t care.
“There are some changes,” Justin said, and that jerked me into caring.
“What?”
“Caroline approved them.” He pointed down at the cards. I only had a second to look before Caroline on the stage was calling my name and smiling at me in the spotlight.
“I’m sure it’s great,” I said and lifted my skirt to climb the steps up to Caroline’s side. There was a round of polite applause, and I was just drunk enough to wonder were they applauding my dead husband or me? Certainly not me. What had I ever done to earn applause?
“Thank you, Caroline,” I said and took the small plaque she held out to me. I cradled it in my arms while lifting the notes so I could read them. The spotlight was blinding and hot, and I could feel a couple hundred eyes on me in a way that made my skin crawl.
Did they know? I wondered. That every single thing in my life was a lie?
“Poppy?” Caroline whispered, and I realized I was just standing there like a statue.
After clearing my throat, I read the notes – prattling on about the senator’s commitment to struggling families. School lunch programs and affordable day care.
“But that was the senator’s public life.” This was new. All new. “In private, he was just as caring. Just as compassionate. Just as kind.” These lies rattled me, and I felt an old coping mechanism slipping over me. The deep retreat into my body, where no one could touch me. Where no one could even know me. “All Jim wanted was to serve this great state and to have a family.” My voice broke, and I looked at Caroline who only smiled at me, the way she usually did. Like she hadn’t just driven over me with a Mack truck. “Unfortunately, in the brief time we were married, my pregnancies ended in miscarriage. And since he died before we could achieve one of those goals . . .” I kept reading, the words meaning nothing. They were new and not at all what I’d approved. And they split my private life right open. Part of me wanted to stop. But the lights and the eyes and the way I’d been trained for the last two years to never, ever make a fuss . . .
The words just kept coming.
We were creating a new foundation, Caroline and I. Better Families, Better New York. Millions of dollars to help struggling families in New York State.
I read off the card, and the crowd applauded, and Caroline was there taking the microphone away from me.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, baffled and shocked.
“Giving you purpose,” she said and led me off the stage.
“All that stuff about Jim and me?” I asked when we were in the shadowed area beside the podium, and I could see Justin keeping people away from us. “That was private, Caroline.”
“It’s not private if everyone knows,” she said, and I gasped, my hand against my stomach like she’d stabbed me.
“Poppy, this is the real world. And you’ve got to live in it. Come to my house tomorrow and we’ll talk about everything.”
And then . . . she was gone. And I was left bitter and fuming, holding a plaque with my abusive husband’s name on it. Having told the whole room about my private heartbreak. And secret relief. A waiter walked by with an empty tray, and I put the plaque on it.
“Ma’am?” she asked.
“Throw it away. I don’t care.”
Another server came by with the champagne I needed, and I took two of them with me as I headed for the door. My purse, I thought, but didn’t care. I wouldn’t be touching up my makeup. And what did I need cash for? Nothing. I floated above cash. Above keys. It was just me and millions of dollars that I somehow kept selling my soul for. How many times could I do this to myself? For money I didn’t care about? How many times could I just be a pawn in another person’s game?
When was I going to grow a pair and figure out what I wanted?
“Poppy?”
It was Ronan, and there was a spark in me. A dangerous dark spark that even as it blazed I did my best to put out. That spark would only lead to humiliation. Embarrassment. Pain.
The first glass of champagne went down easily, and I just dropped the glass soundlessly on the carpet. The other glass I only drank half of it before doing the same. Wild, I felt wild. Just a breath away from being out of control, and I could sense him behind me. A heat. A force at my back.
Ignoring him was delicious.
I was electrified by his following me.
“Poppy,” he said, and then once we were out of the ballroom he grabbed me by my elbow and pulled me down a darker hallway. I fought him, yanking my arm free, only to have him grab it harder in a grip that would leave a red mark on my skin.
I was an expert in such grips.
But still I kept fighting. If this guy was going to hit me, let him. Let him try and hurt me. There was nothing left of me to hurt.
“Poppy, goddamnit, stop,” he said, and so fast he had a key out. He swiped it through a door, and we were in another room. A dark office with an empty desk. No windows.
All right. Now I was a little scared.
“What are you doing?” I asked, putting my hand over my elbow where he’d grabbed me.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, watching me touch my skin. God. I not only felt outrageously alone with this man. I felt stupidly naked. This dress was nothing. Where was a suit of armor when you needed it?
I reached behind my back, pressing the doorknob lever, but he was there quick, putting his hand against the door right beside my head, keeping it shut. His breath stirred the small hairs escaping my too-tight bun.
The champagne only gave me so much courage, and I looked, not in his icy blue eyes but at his square chin with its five o’clock shadow. There was a scar there, just beneath his jaw line. It ran a straight line near his ear to nearly the point of his chin. Another jump from a window, I wondered. Or worse. Because Ronan seemed incredibly capable of worse.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I said, my voice only a little shaky. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a second to catch your breath,” he said.
“Well, I was leaving, so why don’t I just do that?”
He reached over and turned on a small lamp, the golden pool of light illuminated his face. And I’d talked to this man for what? A half hour, total in my life. A half hour over two and a half years. I owed him nothing. I pushed down the lever and pulled open the door.
“You’re making a fool of yourself out there,” he said, and I gasped in outrage, turning to face him.
“Fuck you.”
“It’s the truth. And you know it. You can’t show them how much they’re under your skin.”
“What the hell do you know about anything?”
“I know I’m under your skin.”
Said skin blazed hot and undoubtedly red. Right. This was the expected embarrassment. The humiliation right on cue. The ice cold look on his face melted and what was left was something so much worse. Something horrible.
Pity.
“Don’t,” I spat at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like the rest of them look at me. Like all I am is something to be pitied and whispered about. Something to be used and shuffled around.”
“I’m not—”
I shoved him. My hands against his rock-solid chest, and I shoved him. Hard enough he stepped backwards, and everything ignited in me. Everything. I looked at my hands, surprised they weren’t flames.
He smiled, as if he could see the chemical reaction rippling through my body. And he liked it.
“I’m leaving,” I said. Slightly scared of this. Slightly scared of myself. And him.
“You don’t want to leave,” he said, stepping closer, and the fire in my hands and my chest exploded between my legs. Desire like I’d never felt, like I’d never been allowed to feel fueled by rage and champagne and his Irish accent rippled all the way through me.
“You don’t know a single fucking thing about me,” I snarled.
“I know you don’t want to be pitied. And I know you just got fucked around pretty good up there in front of a thousand people.”
I breathed hard through my nose.
“I think you want to fight,” he said, a breath away from me. If I was another person I’d kiss him. Grab him by the silk lapels of his tux and pull that wicked mouth to mine. But I wasn’t that person, for a million reasons. His eyes assessed me, and the longer I was silent, standing there burning and wretched, the pity came back.
“Or maybe I’m wrong about you,” he said. “You don’t have any fight in you. You are exactly what they made you.” He reached for the door, and I knew he was going to let me go. Whatever test this was, I’d failed. “I’ll make sure you get home.”
I smacked him. I smacked him so hard my hand hurt. It burned and tingled. There was a print of my hand on his skin and that was the first time I’d ever done that, and part of me wanted to be horrified, but deep in my fully rioting soul, I was pleased.
So pleased.
The dark wing of his hair fell down over his eye, and he turned to face me, sweeping it back.
“There you go, Princess,” he said. “That’s what you need.” He smiled at me like he suddenly recognized me as kin. Something long lost. But I felt undone. Incomplete. Something had started, a domino tipping over and setting off a chain reaction. And I needed him to complete it.
Or stop it.
Bursting right out of myself, I grabbed his lapels, pulling us into each other. Our bodies collided and sparked.
And I kissed him.
8
It was that moment between action and reaction. The longest second in the world. Where there are a thousand different outcomes, and the universe was peeling its way through all of them. His lips against mine were open, like he was breathing me in, but he didn’t kiss me.
He was just breathing. In and out. Against me.
I’d been a virgin on my wedding night. Something that seemed important to the senator. He’d touched the blood between my legs when the brief sex of our wedding night was over. He’d touched the blood and rubbed it between his fingers and said, in a satisfied way. “You’re mine.”
I’d been speechless with pain and disappointment, and so I said nothing, which was what he liked best, though I didn’t know it at the time.
Before the senator there’d been a guy I worked with in the library in college. A boy in high school. But nothing prepared me for the senator, and nothing about the senator prepared me for Ronan.
For this feeling
right now.
This ache. This need. I wanted him to kiss me.
“Poppy,” he said, his voice a groan of regret. He was about to push me away. To end this.
So, I pulled him closer. Licked at his lips, waiting for him to snap or break. Push me away or kiss me back. Anything. Anything but this pitiful saying of my name.
His hands let go of the door and touched me. Feather-light like he was feeling his way across my back. I expected boldness from him. Wanted confident and sure and rough. I wanted him to be in control, and these careful touches weren’t enough. Weren’t nearly enough.
But I didn’t know how to get more from him. How to incite him to more. How to ask for it.
He lifted his hands from my body, and I could feel him pulling away. “Ronan,” I groaned, clinging to him. Trying to stop the inevitable.
And then suddenly he wasn’t kissing me. He turned me away from him and pushed me up against the door. His body hot and hard against my back. Against my . . . ass. I could feel him there. Hard through his tuxedo pants. Proof he did want me. A shuddery relief went through me.
“What do you want, Princess?”
I pressed my forehead against the door and my ass against his cock and we both made a sound like we were being tortured. He cupped my breast in his wide rough palm.
“Say it,” he groaned in my ear.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
His chuckle against my neck sent shockwaves through my body, and my knees buckled. He leaned harder against me, holding me between the door with is body. “I think you do,” he said, his hands still. His hips still. “I think you know what you want. You’re just too scared to say it.”
I arched as best I could against him. I didn’t know what to do. How to seduce a man. How to make him want me. I was clueless and stupid.
And still I wanted him to touch me.
“Don’t you want me?” I whispered, hating the words. Hating myself for saying them.
“Why would I want you?” His words were a slap.
I went still, pulling myself deep inside my body. Where I couldn’t be hurt.
“You’re a pawn. A mouse,” he whispered, and I pushed away from the door trying to get away from him and his hands, both of them came up to the bodice of my dress. Reaching between my skin and the silk to cup my naked skin in his hands. I gasped. Torn down the middle by his words and his actions. The silk of my dress tore as he shoved it down, baring my breasts to the cool air.