by Anna Bloom
“Work?” I ask, but my head is getting real heavy which is strange when lying down.
“Work. You know that thing people do, normally whether they like it or not, and then someone pays you.”
“Whatev—”
A startling buzzing pulls me out of black dreams. “What the hell?” I raise my arms as though I’m warding off an attack. My muscles screech and ache. Shit, that hurts so bad.
I want to open my eyes, but what happens if I still can’t see? In my dreams, her voice was telling me I would be blind. A tap of a walking cane filled my head. Maybe I can still hear it now. Tap, tap, tap.
Shut the fuck up, Dan.
I’m an idiot.
Three, two, one. I force open my eyes. It’s bright again, too bright, and I search around desperately for anything telling me I’m not blind; that I will see something other than bright lights and shadows for the rest of my life.
She’s there; sat on a chair in the corner of my room, her legs tucked up and a laptop balanced on her knees. Tap, tap, tap.
Thank God, I can see.
I watch her for a moment. What the hell is she doing here? Even my best friend left, so why did she stay? Why was she here in the first place? Maybe if she hadn’t knocked on the door, I wouldn’t still be here. Maybe this would all be over.
“Hey,” I croak, my throat stinging. I try to focus on the rest of the room. The curtains are shut, and actually now my eyesight has adjusted, I can see the room isn’t bright. There is daylight behind the curtains so we must be a way into Saturday by now. My luck could change and it’s Sunday and I’ll have successfully lost a day. “How long have I been asleep?”
She glances at her computer screen. “Twelve hours.”
Twelve hours? I can’t remember the last time I slept that long without the thoughtful aid of a coma or pills.
She eyes me with a sharp gaze, and I resist the urge to lift the duvet and hide under it. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
Dropping her focus on the laptop, she glances at something on the screen and then closes it with a gentle click. When her eyes return to mine, I notice for the first time how vividly green they are. Not just that run-of-the-mill green, all wishy-washy with tones of moss and horse shit. More grass on a spring morning. And not the grass you smoke, although I sure as hell could do with some of that now to wipe out the agony crippling my body.
“I came for work. I wanted to ask you some questions.” The grass green gaze is withering. “Looks like you were lucky I turned up.”
I fall back a little, the effort of holding myself slightly up to see her is not without pain, no matter how easy on the eyes she is. “Unlucky, more like.”
A rustle of movement fills the empty bedroom. Walking over, she stands next to the bed. Her legs are impressively tall, but the jeans covering them are ill-fitting, too loose at the waist and hanging down on her hips. Noticing where my gaze is settled, she pulls them up. “I borrowed them from your friend.”
“Why?”
“Because I was wearing a fucking dress and you covered it in blood, you ignoramus.”
“Sorry.” Although I’m not that sorry, the jeans are exposing an expanse of skin across her middle. She’s taller than Abi and the vest top isn’t long enough to meet the waistband of the jeans. “I need to get up.” I try to move but my body won’t listen to the commands of my brain. It won’t do anything.
“The doctor will be here in half an hour.” She peers down at me, as though inspecting an unusual insect. Her smell is the same one I’ve been fighting off for days. If I wasn’t such a lazy bastard, I would have washed the sheets and dealt with the issue.
“Doctor?” I blink at her, trying to make sense of what she’s saying. I’m sure it would be easier if there wasn’t an axe in my head.
“I called a doctor.”
“What the fuck? You called my G.P.? I don’t want that useless moron here.”
Her eyes squint into slits, her lips tightening into a small bud—she’s still totally fuckable. “I called a private doctor; someone who might do more.”
I slouch back into the mattress, not that I had moved that far, but the tension in my body dissipates a little.
“Thanks.”
Why the hell is she here? It’s freaking me out.
“Why don’t you want the G.P. here?”
“Herman? Nah, the guy’s a twat.”
“Any reason why?”
To my utter horror, a small prickle of a tear darts at the edge of my right eye. I try to lift my arm to hide my face, but I can’t move the damn thing. It hurts too much.
“Because he failed to see how sick my dad was, okay? What else do you want to know?”
I stare at the window, unwilling to meet her gaze. “I’ll go and get you some soup.”
“Just leave. I don’t need you.”
She’s walking for the door, but she’s close enough she must hear me. She doesn’t say anything, and I’m left in an endless silence.
Better to be by myself.
I prefer it like that.
I close my eyes and just wait for the hours to tick away.
So when she walks back in after what most only be a few minutes, I’m surprised. “I told you to go.”
“Last night you told me you loved me, but I’m thinking that was delirium talking.”
Well, that’s embarrassing. I check her face to see if she’s joking, trying to engage me in conversation, but this woman must be an excellent poker player.
“Here, stop sucking lemons for a moment and help me try to sit you up. How do your ribs feel?”
“Like something broke them on top of them being broken already.”
She nods. “Yep, that about sums it up. Sorry to tell you this, Mr Dan Smith, but you aren’t going to be going anywhere for a long while.” Bending over and filling my head with her scent again, she pushes her hands under my armpits. “If I lift, can you try to move a little and then I’ll plump the cushions, so you’re supported.”
She doesn’t give me much choice in the matter, as her hands jam in my sweaty pits. She counts to three and then I try to move.
Then I want to die. Holy fuck, do I want to die. There isn’t a part of my body that doesn’t hurt.
Once I’m up, she holds a cup in front of me. “It’s just tomato soup. I’ll need to visit the shop to get anything better.”
“How do you know so much about looking after invalids like me?” I manage to take the mug, although I don’t know how long I’ll be hold it for. Almost as though she knows what I’m thinking, she perches one slender hip on the edge of the mattress and places her palm under the base of the mug. It’s a fucking cup and I can’t quite hold it.
Good one Dan.
Her eyes flash a little, but she meets my gaze. What must she see when she looks at me? A loser with bruises and no will to live? I couldn’t try to look like anyone else even if I tried. “I’ve had some experience.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Friend of the rugby team.” Her lips curve into a smile but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“All of them? I didn’t have you pegged as that kind of party girl.”
“I didn’t have you pegged as a suicidal lunatic, so I guess we were both wide off the mark.”
I scowl and lift the cup a fraction higher still unable to get my lips to the rim. “Here.” She thrusts a straw in.
“How did you know?” I manage to raise a painful eyebrow.
“As I said, I’ve got experience.”
We stare at one another for a moment. “What are you doing here?” I shake my head although my brain throws a hissy fit and rattles around in my skull. “Like the other night was fun and all that, but come on, why are you here?”
She pauses, her teeth catching her lower lip, pulling it in and nibbling on it. Her pale green eyes watch me studiously through long, dark lashes.
I can confirm there is one part of my body that isn’t broken. Coughing, I shift uneasily.
“I had to come to Brighton for work. I’d thought about you a couple of times, so I figured I’d start here.” Her cheeks tinge with a faint blush of pink. She’s being honest here; she’d been thinking about me.
I’m not going to lie, the memory of banging her has looped around my head a few times as well. I blush too, which is embarrassing considering my boner is growing at a great rate of knots and I only seem to be covered by a sheet.
“What sort of work?” I sip the tomato soup up the straw and my stomach does that thing where it’s so hungry that at the first taste of food it floods my mouth with saliva and a wave of sickness batters me from all sides.
“Do you want to know? Like really want to know, or is it going to make you go jump in front of a train or something?”
“I was at a fight. I didn’t jump on the tracks.”
“Tell your body that.” Her gaze is still on me. Her eyes are extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything quite like them. They aren’t just one colour; they’re made of tiny flecks of green, all different colours. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Uh. Oh. Um I wasn’t.” Just shoot me. Someone put me out of my misery.
“Okay.” She relaxes a little. “I was just checking you weren’t having a stroke. You got me worried there for a moment.”
“More worried?”
“Well, it’s not often I spend the night playing nursemaid to a near stranger.”
“Near stranger?” My lips curve a little. “I’m mortally wounded. Is that all our night of relentless passion meant to you… I’m a stranger?”
She giggles, her eyes widening with surprise, and it makes me smile like an absolute dickhead.
“No. Don’t smile.” She reaches forward and dabs at my lip with her finger, pulling away and showing me a bead of blood. “You will split your lips.”
We lapse into silence and I take another sip of soup. This time, thankfully, I don’t respond by wanting to hurl all over my private nurse.
“So, what work?”
She sighs, worrying her lips between her teeth again. “I’m trying to find evidence to help Faith’s case. The prosecution has dropped it because of a witness that’s come forward.”
With my limited movement, I nod, knowing this already. Unfortunately, I was there for that bombshell.
“She thought it was her dad. She thought it was payback for the fact she inherited half of my shop,” I say, cringing under the green gaze. I’m talking about Faith, the girl I’ve always been in love with, while maintaining a half-decent semi-slacker erection for the woman on the edge of my bed.
“I’m trying to find any evidence, from anyone else, that Aiden might have done the same to others.”
I try to sit a little higher. “But I thought he only victimised Faith because she was there under his roof?”
She nods and a little pounding kicks up in my chest. “Possibly. That’s a definite possibility; but I won’t accept that as the case until a lack of evidence convinces me otherwise.”
“You think you might still get him to trial?”
The hot chick holding my cup of soup nods slightly. “Think you can manage not to get yourself killed and help me?”
I meet her gaze, my semi-slacker growing by the moment. So much so, she drops her gaze and glances at the sheet. Fuck.
“I can try.”
Her gaze is warm when it comes back to mine. “That’s a start.”
Six
Sienna
Of all the stupid ideas I’ve had in the last few years, I think agreeing to stay in the house of a manic-depressive on a suicide mission is one of the dumbest.
Especially one with a hard-on that big.
Hell, it got me a bit hot; which is so many levels of wrong, I can’t even contemplate. Especially, considering the rest of his body is spectacularly broken.
There is something about him. Intriguing? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely. Maybe I just feel sorry for him. Maybe I want to heal him like that puppy I once had. Maybe I can’t.
I stand in his kitchen and stare around, unable to see a single thing that moved or changed since I was here days ago. I wasn’t doing a white glove test when I last rushed through and left him that note, but I’d expect at least a couple of dirty plates, a mug even.
The doctor is upstairs looking him over. I told him just to send the bill to Melissa. She handles my invoices and accounting. And everything else. Life in general. Speaking of which, I pull my phone out and check the battery. It hasn’t been charged since the drive down yesterday evening. Was it only Friday yesterday? It seems like days ago. It was a long night. I scrub at my face, my skin dragging under my touch as I assess if I have enough battery to make the call.
“It’s me,” I say when Melissa answers.
“Where are you?”
“Brighton. Elijah needs me to wheedle out some sources out here.”
“What’s going on, Sienna? He’s in a mood like I’ve never seen.” Melissa has been Eli’s receptionist and personal assistant since he came to the Bar. I’m lucky she does my expenses and diary for me for free… or maybe he pays her… I don’t know. I should probably check that out.
“Problems with Faith. I’m sure they can work it out.”
“Have you seen all the scandal about her in the papers?”
“Don’t believe it all, Melissa. I know you love trashy gossip, but she’s a good woman.”
Melissa sighs. “Maybe I’m just jealous he’s not in love with me.”
“Don’t be.” I chuckle a little as I open up the cupboards and try to find some food. “He’s a pain in the arse.”
“Talking of trashy gossip, I haven’t seen you in black and white print recently. Normally The Sun likes to snap a candid of you in your tracksuit buying your milk at the weekend. Have you not been attending any events with your father?”
My stomach clenches with a will of its own. “Not as many as I should, but I think people have lost interest in me since Elijah and I called it off.” Oh crap, my stomach lurches. I ignore her muttering about whether I’m talking about the real engagement with Elijah which was part farce or the actual pretend second one. “Shit.” I cut her off. “I’ve got lunch tomorrow at my parents.”
There’s an expectant pause which Melissa fills. “And? That’s not a problem is it? As foul a mood as Elijah is in, I don’t think he expects you to work all weekend.”
“No, I guess he doesn’t.” My teeth automatically munch on my bottom lip. The problem I have is that I don’t want to leave the angry man alone. I don’t trust him not to reduce himself to a corpse at the first available opportunity. Not that I should care. Not that I do, anyway.
“What’s going on? You sound funny.”
Shaking my head, I try to lighten my tone. “Nothing, gossip queen. Listen, I’ve got to go.” The fall of steps on the stairs echoes through to the kitchen and I peer around the edge of the doorway. I wave to the doctor as he comes around into the kitchen.
“I’ll be sending some bills through to you. These are mine and payment needs to transfer from my personal bank account. Don’t put them through the Richards' finances.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound sure though.
I go to hang up, but then have another thought. “And can you tell Saskia I can’t make sushi on Tuesday?”
“Sure. Anything I can help with?”
“No. I’ve got to go.” I hang up before she can ask anything else. No one can know where I am. Especially not my father.
“Hi,” I say to the doctor. “Sorry, I was just discussing your payment with my secretary. Thanks for coming again. He seems better, doesn’t he?”
The doctor, Findlay, nods but his expression speaks volumes. “He should be in hospital, really.”
“I know. He would just rather be here. I can help and you can call again can’t you if we need more help?” This isn’t really a question at all. I’ll pay so he will call. It’s not up for discussion.
“He says he has no history of substance
abuse, but I don’t know if I believe him. If that’s true though, you need to keep him on regular medication to allow him time to heal.”
“Yes.” I nod. I know this. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know four-hour painkillers were the only way to put on a normal face.
Findlay hesitates and his professional demeanour slips. “The young man upstairs seems deeply troubled. He needs help. I can refer him to a counsellor if you need it.” He pauses and lets out a breath. “Or he needs hospitalisation for mental instability. And I’d say soon.”
I nod understandingly, but my heart is hammering a rapid pace. It’s not like I haven’t thought it—but having him confirm my suspicions makes me uncomfortable inside. “I will let you know if I think we need the referral.”
“Within the next couple of days.”
I nod. Wow, he’s not taking this lightly.
“Yes.” I slide him the piece of paper with Melissa’s email on. “Can you bill me here please?”
Findlay nods and tucks it into his briefcase. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Regular painkillers.”
“And fluids.” I add.
He looks at me with interest before snapping his indifferent mask back into place.
I see him out and then run back up the stairs.
“What did he say? Am I going to make it?” Dan looks drowsy and sounds drunk.
“He says you’re an utter dickhead.”
He sneers but it’s half-hearted. “I could have told you that.”
Unable to stop myself, I step closer and run my hand across his hair. His eyes flutter shut almost instantly, and I assume Findlay has given him something for the pain.
I lean down, my face close to his. “Dan, you aren’t a user, are you? I can’t be here if you are.”
One eye opens. “Clean as a whistle, apart from what the doc just gave me.”
Without knowing what I’m doing, I lean forward and plant my lips against his forehead. “Good.” Then realising I’ve just kissed a near stranger, a damaged one at that, I straighten up. One thing for sure, is that what Dan needs right now isn’t that.
