Soul and Blade (7 page)

I close my eyes, forcing myself to like it. This is something I like. I even tilt my head to the side so his reach is better and his kisses get deeper into my neck.

His greedy hands grab and massage, as the car takes off from the curb.

I almost make him stop, but I force myself to stay with it, to let it happen. I need this man and I need to remember how much.

I start to participate, lifting my hands up to his cheeks and cupping his face, contradicting the haste and pressure of his movements. He grabs roughly as I smooth my fingers along his neck. He jerks his pants open, fumbling for the zipper and button as I softly place kisses along his jawline and suck his bottom lip. I am slowing the pace and fighting him on his attempts to be rough with me.

We don’t do this. We don’t do slow.

“Open your eyes,” he whispers into the small space between us. I shake my head. “Open them, Jane. I mean it.” His tone is soft, but I can tell he senses something is wrong.

I force one eye open to see disapproval on his face and quickly close my eye again, blocking it out. I can lie to myself, to us both, in most areas, but not about our intimacy or the passion we share.

“What’s going on?” His words even sound disappointed.

“Nothing. I just want soft.”

He sighs. “Can you not bring him in here with us?” His words bite into me and before I can really think about it, I slap and thump on the partition. The car stops and I hop out, pulling on my sweater and stomping down the road.

“
Jane
!” he shouts after me, but I break into a run, hurrying around a corner and getting lost in the crowd.

The street is busy, so busy you feel alone. The honking and crowd conversations create a sea of noise that hides his voice from me.

I wave down a cab and jump in, leaving him on the road yelling at me.

I don’t look back.

6. CUPID’S CHOKEHOLD

A
ngie gives me a once-over before nodding. “Ya look fine, but I don’t understand why he wanted ya to go over with me. Is Dash all right then? Or you two having a row?”

“He’s fine. I think he wanted to talk to his mother,” I lie, smoothly and evenly.

Her I can lie to. It’s to protect her anyway. I cannot bear the idea of telling her why I froze up mid–limo sex.

She shrugs. “His mother
is
a bit of a twat.” The word forces a grimace from me and my face forces a laugh from her. “Ya know what I mean. She can’t even help it.”

“I feel like she can. No one needs to be that rude.”

“Right, hence the twat.”

“Right,” I confirm and spend another half second staring at myself. My reflection tells me I look great, perfect even, with my dark hair pulled into Angie’s half-assed knot that somehow looks classy, even on me. Even my eyes are Angelina Jolie’s—those cat eyes from
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
.

A Google search taught us that red lips and a black cocktail dress are about as good as it gets on pale brunettes. All that is helped out by my heels, boasting an extra four inches.

But my eyes hunt out imperfections. It’s my way of seeing myself in there. The flaws are me.

My heart hurts just a little and my insides ache from the way he said what he did. I have to push it all away to make it through the night. I need to be me to do that.

My lack of relationship experience has me curious if this is me acting like a giant baby again, or if what he said was as off base as it feels. There’s a large part of me that thinks I might have the dress and shoes to go with my dramatic girlie tantrum and sudden lack of self-confidence.

I sigh and give Angie a once-over. She does look perfect. The idea of a redhead in a red dress seems like it shouldn’t work, but it does. She’s got one frilly strap on the right side and her entire left arm and shoulder are bare. She even has side boob. She catches me focusing on the creamy flesh and scoffs, “It’s acceptable. I’m single. In society only single ladies are allowed a little side boob.”

“What about a lot of side boob?”

She sticks her tongue out before smearing on more of the lipstick that matches the dress. “We look smashing,” she says in a perfect English accent.

“I like your
ochs
and
twats
.”

She wrinkles her nose. “The Queen’s English is fun for a piss, but that’s about it.” She loops her arm in mine and I forget about everything else. “Now, shall we venture down and see if there’s a car waiting for us?”

In that moment there are no Rorys or Dashes. There are no evil mothers-in-law and no British Barbie waiting in the wing to steal my man. There’s not even a man. It’s just my friend and me. All the other things are swept away and labeled as unimportant.

We look beautiful. We are both safe from the man who had us fooled. I am free of that prison, and even if this is a mind run, I don’t care. “I wish we were going somewhere fun instead of out for dinner.”

She gives me a sidelong look. “We can.”

The mischief in her eyes tells me she’s serious, but I can’t do that to Dash. “No, and you know it. Standing them up would never go away. That one act would haunt us the rest of our days. Or not, because Dash would never speak to me again.”

“That’s a true story if I ever heard one. And we are nearly late, look!” She points at the clock and I grab the door handle.

We hurry to the hotel elevator. I nearly pause when I see it, wishing
we could take the stairs as I did on the way up. But that had been in comfy shoes, not heels that were trying to murder me. If I had some intense adrenaline I might be fine, but I’m not feeling either frightened or alert at all.

When we get inside the small space, I take deep breaths and push away all the walls that try to close in.

“Ya have been looking off since ya came out of Rory’s head. Ya all right?”

“No.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “It was a tough one.”

“I don’t want to know, I’m sorry.” She says it looking up, avoiding the mirrors and my eyes. “I wish to tha gods I could help ya, but I canna.” Her accent thickens when she’s emotional.

“I don’t blame you. I don’t want to know either.”

Her response is a squeeze of my hand and that is all. She’s there for me, but she wants this one kept silent. She wants her clean start from that world.

When the elevator lands on the main floor, we step off into a crowd of people. Even through them, all I can see are his eyes, hunting for me. I have seen the face he’s wearing, the “angry, but sorry he was such a dick” face, a few times. Yet never have I observed it from a hiding place. His green-gray eyes are dark now, not lively. Worried. We’re late and he thinks maybe not coming. He’s been blowing my phone up since I ran from the limo, but I’ve ignored it.

When he sees Angie, that face fades away and he offers a wave and a smile. I can actually see the tension fade when his gaze meets hers. There is still something lingering behind his eyes, but he’s hiding it, even when he finally sees me.

“Guess Dash’s meeting us here and riding over to the restaurant with us. His family must have gone on ahead.” We walk to him, but when he offers me his arm, I stay next to Angie.

She remains oblivious, chatting on. “The reservations said they were for eight, but I had hoped we would be a wee bit early. Yer mother likes to make everyone feel late, even when they’re on time. Have ya ever noticed that?”

Dash nods, smiling a little. “I have. She’s the master of making you feel bad. It’s why I like showing up a bit late. She’s already going to make it hard on you.” Dash walks to my side, taking my hand in his. The grip means we are going to be talking far sooner than I imagined we might be. I figured he would try to keep it in his pants until after dinner.

He leads us out to the car, the very same one I ran from. The valet at the entrance to the hotel gets the door for us as we all climb in.

Angie looks around the backseat, offering Dash a disappointed look. “No champagne?”

His lips attempt a grin. “There will be plenty, you know that.”

She shrugs coyly. “I suppose that will have to do.”

Dash focuses on me. “How was your walk?”

“Fine.”

And there it is,
fine
. I’ve said it without thinking. Immediately Angie gives me a look. “Walk?”

“I wanted some fresh air. So I grabbed my dress from the shop I was picking it up from and brought it to your hotel room. I needed to get ready with you anyway. Dash isn’t great at makeup.”

She gives me a look that tells me she understands now that Dash
hadn’t asked me to get ready at her room and he didn’t ask me to meet him
at the restaurant. I hope she’ll forget and not ask me any questions about it.

“You both look lovely.” Dash offers his best attempt at the American
lovely
, a normal
lovely
. It is one of the few words he doesn’t manage to pronounce without some inflection from the British accent he’s tried to shed while living in America. When he shouts, that accent comes through, fully. He is an angry British man and a calm American. It’s quite distinct when he’s drunk as well.

My phone buzzes in my purse, almost scaring me. I pull it out, not expecting anyone, since the person who has been ringing me all day is with me, but when I answer, I get the person I expect the least. “Hello?”

“Jane?” The voice belongs to Henry, Dash’s brother and lover of underage prostitutes.

“Hi.” I don’t know what to do or say. What do you say to a man who is in jail because of you?

“If my brother is right beside you, please don’t pass him the phone. I need to speak with you. I need you to ask my father to take some of my calls. He’s avoiding me, as is Dash.”

“I’m not interested, thanks.”

“Wait.” He pauses. “I’m cut off without a penny to my name and no one will touch me as far as barristers go. I need some help. Can’t you just ask them to at least hear me out?”

“Um, no thanks.”

“Jane, I am begging. I know a strong girl like you gets off on that.”

I squeeze the phone as if strangling Henry, but keep my comments to myself. I don’t even know how he got my number.

“Please, just ask my father to hear me out. I have got something of a defense here. I just need some funds to cover the barrister. We have been given one through the special UN courts, but I need one who will make this go away for good. I was there as a guest—I didn’t traffic the damned girls, Jane! I went because I was invited. I assumed it was regular prostitution. I didn’t know it was human trafficking and slavery. I never would have gone to a brothel like that, ever.”

“Sorry, I don’t think I’m interested.” I press “off” and put the phone back in my bag.

“Was that a telemarketer on your mobile?” Angie asks with her brows lifted.

“Yeah. Weird.” I wonder how he knew I would be seeing his parents tonight, though I know he knows about the wedding.

The car stops before I can even really give it much thought. Angie climbs out, even though Dash should climb out first. He stays, pinning me by blocking the door. “We need to talk.”

I have a thousand things to say, but I don’t want to talk. I want to slap him around first. I turn with an annoyed sigh and climb out the other side—the wrong side, where I have to open my own door.

The driver looks affronted and Dash looks pissed, but I don’t give a damn.

I click away in my heels and tight pencil skirt of the dress, thanking the men who get the doors for me as I step inside the restaurant.

Dash is right behind me when we get to the maître d’. He presses himself against me obscenely. “The Townshend party is expecting us.”

The man smiles and offers a subtle bow before turning and leading us to our table.

Dash’s parents are there, beaming and laughing with their friends. It isn’t the intimate dinner I expected. Melody is there, along with several people I have never seen before in my life. For some reason even a family meal during this trip is enough for his mother to create an event. I doubt they ever just sit and read the paper and eat potato chips from the bag.

The men stand and Dash’s mother offers a smug grin.

“Mother, Father, Melody, nice to see you again.”

His father points at the people beside him. “Benjamin, my dear boy. So glad you could make it. These are all old friends of ours from Cheltenham, actually. Lawrence and Clarice Underhill. Surely you recall them. They are across the pond looking at a venue for a wedding in Nantucket.”

“Of course, lovely to see you again.”

They both nod as Dash’s mother laughs in a way that makes me want to stuff a dinner roll in her throat. “A wedding in Nantucket? It sounds like a murder mystery weekend.”

The woman, Clarice, who is clearly Dash’s mother’s age and equally snooty, offers Lady Townshend a look that tells me she doesn’t fancy a stay in Nantucket. “It is positively uncivil to ask one’s relations to travel such a distance and then offer only mediocre accommodations. We have been greatly disappointed by what we have seen.”

I can’t even stop myself. “Where did you end up deciding on staying for the wedding?”

She squints her eyes at me, no doubt annoyed, as we have not formally been introduced. “The Wauwinet. It’s not open yet, but they let us have a look.”

“That’s a five-star hotel, isn’t it?”

She sniffs at me. “We found it adequate, though I do not understand how it can possibly be a Relais and Châteaux designation. There was a man with a large white beard and a flannel shirt sitting on some sort of scooter on the deck, in the cold.”

Her husband’s movement to meet my gaze is the only thing that suggests he is even alive and breathing. “He was a beast of a man. No one ought to grow to that size.” His jaw barely moves with his words.

Angie grabs my hand, squeezing it once. I remind myself I need to see this as a mission and I need to keep my cool.

“I’m sure the wedding will be lovely, having the ocean on either side of you.” Dash tries to end the conversation.

“That is some wind they get there,” I add. Silence falls at my comment and we sit, letting the staff push our chairs in for us.

“And of course this is Silas and Darlene Noble. They’ve come to escape the rain for a few weeks.” Dash’s mother points at the couple at the other end of the table, a younger and more posh-looking couple than the old snooty ones to my right.

I wave awkwardly as Angie extends a hand. “Very nice to meet ya.”

“And this is my future daughter-in-law, Jane Spears. And her very dear friend Dr. Angela O’Conner, a colleague of Benjamin’s. We have known Angela for some time.”

Everyone greets us as warmly as they are able.

I don’t know what to expect from any of them except Dash’s parents, so I don’t say anything else.

His father decides dinner for us all. We drink the wine he orders, but only after he spends ages discussing the entire event with the sommelier. It feels like something they could have discussed before we all arrived.