Beautiful White Lies Duet

by K L Clare

  The thought of discovering more betrayal unnerves me. And the thought of what it would do to Will if he were to learn that his brother lied to him further sickens me. He doesn’t know this photo exists.

  I can’t see him hurt again.

  I sent a copy of the photo with Caroline Brown Nielson tonight, and she has promised to deliver it to her brother, the commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Service.

  Commissioner Brown interviewed me after your death to satisfy US authorities, and I knew the moment he entered the room that day that he was someone who would be kind, a compassionate soul who would help me.

  I pray the commissioner agrees to assist me now in getting to the bottom of this photo. Not only does he have the necessary resources, but also he knew Ethan. I’m quite sure of that.

  8

  The kitchen was bustling with activity when Elle and I entered from the great hall after arriving late the night before. Mrs. Bates’s brother had driven her back to Eastridge the evening before, and she had happily reinstated herself at the center of the commercial range, where she now fried eggs, back bacon, mushrooms, and sausages.

  Elle peered over Mrs. Bates’s shoulder, placing her hand there for a moment—something the rest of us would never dare to attempt. “The bacon smells wonderful. Can I help with anything?”

  “Not in this house, you know. Your toast and jam are on the table with the coffee. Go on, then. Mary and the children will be down any minute.” Mrs. Bates patted Elle’s hand and gestured to the opposite end of the enormous kitchen with her chin. “The lads were made to wait as you asked, William. Everyone eats together this morning,” she added.

  “Won’t you leave the rest of the cooking to your staff and join us, Ina?” My mother approached from behind and opened her arms wide for Elle. “Ellie, dear, come here. I have missed your company.” Mother pulled back from their embrace and surveyed us both. “The two of you look quite well. How much time do I get with my daughter before you whisk her back to the city?”

  “We have three or four days, Mum. Thomas and John will be home this afternoon,” I said, and she smiled, unshed tears filling her light-brown eyes.

  Nothing that mattered existed outside of this family for my mother, and that was one of the reasons she and Elle got on so well. Mum had married my father quite young, and they had started their family immediately. She was now only fifty-four, and I sensed a growing restlessness about her.

  When Lissie and Chelsea were in school, she passed time managing her flower shop, but she would give up the store in an instant if one of us needed more from her. She shared Elle’s passion for art, and whenever we were home, Elle worked with Mother, teaching her to paint.

  “Ben and Jessica finished up early with the US estate matters I sent them to handle, so they will be back today as well,” I added. “You’ll have your full house for the weekend.”

  She kissed my cheek before joining my wife, who stood gaping at the piece of furniture we had designed together when we were last home. It was a twenty-four-foot-long custom breakfast table made of Scottish oak that seated twenty people.

  “It’s here. . . . My God, look at this magnificent table, Will,” Elle said. “Now we can all be together here in the kitchen.” She wandered round the entire table, running her hands along the length of the polished wood. Her blissful smile damn near took my breath away.

  And not a moment too soon did Lissie run into the kitchen and straight into Elle’s arms.

  “She isn’t growing much,” I muttered to my mother, watching the reunion ritual with Elle on her knees and Lissie clinging to her neck. “What did the physician say?”

  “He says she’s fine, that we should continue as we’re doing and stop worrying over it. I’ve purchased the best organic supplements available, though he and I are likewise certain she has never suffered malnutrition. He believes it may have something to do with Isobel’s pregnancy, but there’s nothing to be done about that now, is there?” She added, “She will grow, William. She’s thriving within our family and in school. Look at the happiness in her eyes.”

  I bent with my arms wide open to catch Lissie as she launched herself at me.

  “Uncle Will, I missed you quite a lot,” she exclaimed next to my ear, her words delivered with an ever-increasing English accent.

  “I miss you always, princess,” I said, squeezing her a bit too hard.

  She grunted and pushed back to meet my eyes with her intense blue gaze. “You’re getting superhero strong like you used to be. Does that mean your hurts are better?”

  “Of course. Your auntie takes good care of me. How could I not feel better?” I winked at her, and she giggled while hooking her arms round my neck for another hug. “Shall we drive you to school this morning?”

  “Of course,” she repeated in the same pragmatic tone that I had used.

  I grinned as she let go and slid to her feet. Lissie parroted Elle in most ways, mimicking her moves, the toss of her hair, a hand on the hip, the wrinkling of her nose. . . . So whenever she picked up something from me, however small, an overwhelming sense of pride hit me.

  “We eat first, then to school,” Elle said, taking us both by the hand and leading us to the new family breakfast table, where she had already settled Chelsea.

  Members of the Six who were on-site began to drift in from the basement training center. As far as we were concerned, those men were also part of our family, and they were welcomed at all meals in our homes. Christ, they were veteran soldiers and would always be treated with respect under my employ. They never complained about the back-and-forth between Eastridge and Kensington, nor about how much of their own lives had been consumed by the job.

  My financial status allowed me to pay them well, and Joe Taylor was resourceful with scheduling personal time on a rotating basis. Ben Scott, who had served as head of my family’s security operations for almost a decade, filled in for members of the Six whenever he was needed. But because he was my childhood best friend, it was rather difficult for him to shift his allegiance from me to my wife. And that was a condition required of everyone on my wife’s safety team. I needed to know that each of Elle’s personal protection officers would serve her, not me, and instinctively risk his life for hers.

  Ben had a great head for property administration as well, so he also dabbled as my estate manager. It kept him close to home so he could be present for his three-year-old daughter. Ben’s wife, Jane, lost her battle with cancer just after Chelsea was born.

  Together we came to the conclusion that he should remain head of security ops but not serve on Elle’s safety team on a daily basis, though he had come to love and respect my wife as the generous, loving woman who was helping to raise his daughter.

  “It will be so nice to have Thomas and John here with us at the table tomorrow morning,” Elle said, pulling me out of my head. “I can’t wait to hear some of John’s stories from Loughborough.”

  This young family, as unconventional as it might be, was my legacy. And at its core, sitting close on my left, at the center of our great breakfast table, was the woman who could make me a better man. She nurtured my soul, excised the demons that dwelled there, and guided me towards kindness and light and love.

  We leaned in for each other’s lips at the same time as if we’d been drawn there by some transcendent force, and after I placed a soft kiss on her mouth, she whispered close to my ear, “Our own children will sit at this table someday soon.”

  9

  The next day came in a rush. I slipped out of bed without waking Elle and found my brothers waiting in the gym. Thomas was right. It was quite possible that I could no longer kick his arse. I had taken a blade to the shoulder and a bullet in the side several months back, and those injuries left me with not only scars but also permanent muscle damage. I had been at the top of my game, my strength incomparable.

  John popped up from the thick mat covering a section of wood flooring in the gym, where I had put him on his back. “So you’
re a little leaner these days, but Christ, you’re still a fucking beast, old man,” he said.

  I wiped the sweat from my neck and lifted my arm to stretch the weakened muscle tissue beneath it. “Careful, boy. Your tongue grows rather sharp.”

  His eyes dropped to the floor, and he mumbled an apology.

  “Hit the shower, John. The three of us will talk about the ink this afternoon.”

  My youngest brother was turning eighteen soon, and he was anxious to get the same tattoo on his right shoulder that our father had inked onto mine. Thomas had the shield as well, as had Ethan. It was a Hastings rite of passage, but what was more, it committed the men who wore it to the pact made centuries ago between two families. Wearing the tattoo was a pledge to protect Elle’s bloodline from reformations of the Order. In the present, the pact meant one thing—the protection of Elle and her children. Our children.

  Thomas waited for John to head for the locker room before speaking up. “He’s going to be a relentless shit about the ink. Have a think about creating something different—something symbolic but with new meaning that we can give to John and the next generation.”

  “It is a good idea, but do you believe John would accept something different than what you and I have? I don’t want him to feel . . . well, less. Shit like that could affect his behavior for the rest of his life.”

  “We start with our sons, then,” Thomas said. “I worry for John, is all. He’s been shaped differently. He never endured our father the way we did. The way you did.”

  I gripped my brother’s shoulder for a moment and shoved away the mental image of my father’s fist connecting with my abdomen, one of the countless blows that had taken away my breath and had left me on my hands and knees, waiting for my eyesight to return.

  Shame rushed through me. Because I never fought back. I had allowed my father to create another monster in his own image. Shame . . . because I had done the same to my brothers.

  No fucking more. I won’t punish them with my fists again.

  “You and I will meet privately for about an hour this afternoon before the security team joins us in the war room. Let them know to be there, Thomas. And make sure no one misses Elle’s brunch beforehand.”

  I walked away without hearing whatever it was he said.

  I needed my wife.

  * * *

  Elle was in the shower facing the gray-and-white marble wall when I made it back to our bedroom suite. The length of her wet hair fell down her back and teased the sensual dimples where her backbone met her hips. Her curved arse widened perfectly from that point into the shape of a heart. I worked like hell to burn the image into my brain. It was another that I would use to block out the rest of the fucked-up world when the weight of it bore down on me.

  “I know you’re there . . . watching.” She turned her head to meet my stare over her shoulder. “Are you going to stand there in your gym shorts, or are you planning to join me?”

  “Witch,” I said in response to the beautiful, mischievous smile on her lips.

  My stiff cock and aching bollocks howled for a fast, hard fuck, but my heart needed more than that. I dropped my shorts and approached her slowly through the center opening of the glass barrier. My fingers burned with the need to feel her skin. I flexed them and waited for her to turn to me. I used my height to hover without touching, rounding my shoulders until she was confined within my space.

  Our bodies were so close. I could feel the heat of hers reaching out to mine.

  Warm water rained down over us from multiple showerheads and rinsed away the sweat from my body. We held each other’s gaze, her soulful eyes diving into mine with an intensity that told me she could see into the depths of my ugly mood.

  “Need you,” I said hoarsely.

  Elle nodded. “All of me is yours, and I love all of you much more than I can say. Touch me . . . please.”

  I skimmed my hands along her wet curves, and my eyes followed. “There are no fucking words good enough for you.”

  “No words,” she repeated, lacing her fingers together behind my neck, pulling my eyes back to hers. “We don’t need them. We’ll never need them.”

  “Promise you won’t ever leave me.”

  “How could I? We’re bound in so many ways. I could never live without you, Will.”

  Soothed by her words, I let go of the past and the future. She was mine, and I was about to take everything from her to make myself whole again—to come out on the other side as the man she needed. The man who would crush the present to give her everything.

  I moved in tighter and pressed her back against the smooth sheet of marble. I removed her hands from my neck and gently raised her arms above her head, locking both of her wrists in one of my hands as I pushed my hard cock into her stomach.

  “Elle. I’m going to touch you . . . taste you . . . love you.”

  Her lips parted, and a soft moan slipped past them.

  “Spread your legs.”

  She held my eyes while obeying my command, spreading those long legs to the extent that she could with the weight of my body confining hers, then circled her hips to create friction against my erection.

  I used my free hand to force her hips still and growled a reprimand close to her mouth. My mouth watered from the thought of how sweet her tongue would taste when I kissed her.

  “Do as I say, nothing more.”

  “Make me feel you,” she whispered, her breath sweeping over my lips.

  “Oh, but you will, my angel.” My ego—the self-righteous bastard who had remained in hiding all morning—joined the party, and I smirked. “You’ll feel all of me, and after you scream my name, you will beg me to stop touching you.”

  She knew there was utter truth in my words, so she tugged against my hold on her wrists. “Let me touch you first. Let me go down—”

  I shook my head and cut off her words, the smug smile still plastered on my face. “You can do that later. Right now? You’ll do as you’re told.”

  Whenever she took me into her mouth it was mind-blowing, but right then, I wanted the first sensation that hit my cock and flowed through me to be the rapture that came with the initial thrust into her tight little cunt. Nothing would ever beat that.

  Elle relaxed her arms and lifted her face to mine.

  I claimed my wife’s mouth, kissing her soft lips tenderly before leading us into a fiery, endless abyss. She broke the kiss. I lowered onto my knees and fucked her with my tongue and as promised, she cried out and pleaded with me to stop touching her there.

  Allowing her to catch her breath would have been the right thing to do. But I didn’t do that. Madness consumed me. I jerked her into my arms, seated her on my cock with a harsh thrust, and took all of her heaven.

  10

  I pounded my empty lowball tumbler on the wood conference table in the war room and jerked my chin towards the large, yellow envelope. Thomas had reviewed the contents a few days earlier at the office. He’d examined the photos and profiles of two men with potential to reform the Order, but he hadn’t seen everything. I received another photo from an anonymous source by courier that morning, and my brother needed to see it.

  Thomas dumped the contents and snatched up the new photo. “I recognize Isobel from Ellie’s framed prints. . . . But who’s the bloke next to Ethan?” he asked without diverting his eyes.

  “Simon Parker.”

  He squinted at the photo. “You mean Parker as in—”

  “That’s right. The Simon Parker who was a member of the Order and the gunman who murdered Isobel and their grandmother.”

  “Shit. Where did this come from?”

  “The courier had no idea, but he’s been paid well,” I said. “Flip it over.” A handwritten message on the back of the photo was scribed in one of the old intelligence codes that our father had taught me. A phone number was revealed in the translation. “Let’s ring that fucking number right now.”

  Thomas retrieved a burner phone from the storage locker. �
�Director Martin, you think?”

  “Too careless for Martin. He would never courier something to Eastridge.” I interpreted the digits from the code to Thomas. He tapped in the phone number, activated the speaker function, and set the device between us.

  The male voice on the other end of the line asked for the raw code to be read back to him before he identified himself.

  “Commissioner Brown here, Hastings. Is your line secure?”

  “Yes, we’re good. What is the meaning of this—where did you get this photo?”

  “From your wife, sir.”

  “What?” I was stunned.

  “My sister delivered it to me at the direction of the countess. Mine is a copy, as is the one you now have. The original remains in your wife’s possession.”

  What the fuck? Elle had her hands on evidence so explosive it could implicate my brother as a potential traitor to my family, to me. And she had never shared it with me.

  I had done well controlling my temper since returning from the States—to please Elle. But this time, she wasn’t there to curb the anger that consumed my thoughts and laid waste to that control. Even worse, she was the trigger for it.

  Betrayal hurt like hell, and in that moment, I couldn’t reconcile the pain and the truth. My lungs accelerated, and I shot to my feet. Grabbing the chair I’d been sitting in, I launched it across the room.

  Christ, I could hardly draw breath. I gripped the center of my chest as I fled the house.

  I sped down the ridge in my car.

  He betrayed me.

  She lied to me.

  Who was the true source of the pain coursing through me?

  You, motherfucker. It’s on you. You allowed her to lie. You created this situation.

  * * *

  Three hours and three-quarters of a bottle of whisky later, I watched Thomas pull into the otherwise-empty car park at the fishermen’s beach beside me and step out of his vehicle. I was perched on the bonnet of my car, facing the turbulent English Channel.