by Anna Bloom
“Perfect. We will see you at three.” She hangs up and turns as I get up off the chair and shift into the space alongside her. “Some people just don’t know what the fuck they want.”
“I know what I want.” My fingers are in her hair, pulling at the dark strands, tilting her mouth to mine.
“You’ve got a customer due in five.”
“Don’t care,” I mumble the words against her lips. It’s been agony watching her all morning as she’s organised the shop, cleaned all the surfaces, dealt with all the customers. I’ve just wanted her in my arms and my lips on hers.
“Is it always this busy?”
“Dad had a good gig going here.”
“Yeah, but people are coming back for you.” She tilts her chin up so I can skim my lips along the warm skin of her throat. Fuck, is the day over yet already?
“Maybe.”
“Didn’t you do a lot of Faith’s work?”
“Some of it. Dad some, Faith a little.” Why the hell is she talking about Faith while I’m pressing my arousal into her hip?
“She will be on television soon with her new art show. Dan, do you know how many people will want ink by the guy who made her look like that?”
I stop kissing her for a moment and meet her eyes. “That’s not what’s it about.”
“You don’t realise. The papers are already talking about her. She will be a huge star on that show.”
My gaze narrows. “What do you mean the papers are already talking about her?”
“Eli called me this morning while you were out getting breakfast. The stories have broken about Aiden and what happened.”
“What?” My fingers clench into tight fists.
“Dan.” She smooths a hand around my face. “It doesn’t matter. If anything, it might help with the trial, because public awareness will give it more severity if it gets there.”
“I don’t want people knowing what that bastard did to her.”
The air in the shop gets sucked away from my lungs.
“I think he’s thought it through. Why are you so upset?”
“Because I don’t want people knowing I failed her.”
Sienna shakes her head, but it does nothing to ebb the rage pulsing through my veins. “I don’t think anyone is going think that.”
“No? What if I think it?”
“Then why don’t you help? Why don’t you give her father the half of the shop he thinks is his? You could set up anywhere. Look how popular you are? You’ve been open for one morning, yet you haven’t stopped working.”
“This is my dad’s shop. I can’t leave it.”
“Not even to help Faith get justice? If this all comes down to money and what he thinks is his?”
“Elijah’s loaded. Why doesn’t he pay him off? That’s what he does anyway, isn’t it?”
“Because her dad doesn’t want cash. He wants the shop he believes is his.”
“Well, she wouldn’t want to share it with him; she hates him.”
“That’s for her to decide. You could do this and set it in motion.”
“Why are you pushing me on this?”
She folds her hands across her chest. “Why won’t you consider it? I’ve come up blank here, Dan. I don’t know how to help her and neither does Reggie nor Elijah.”
“It’s my dad's.” I stare out the window at the same view I’ve been looking at for years. The same view that’s been my winter life since childhood.
“Your dad isn’t here.”
I gasp in a breath. “I know.”
“You could earn five times the money in London.”
“I don’t want to live in London. I hate it. Where would I live? Ask Faith to lend me her little flat in Islington?”
She steps back.
“Tell me the truth. Why won’t you sell?”
My shoulders slump. I don’t know why she’s making me say this shit. Or why I just can’t let go. “What if she comes back and I’m not here?”
The phone rings but we stare at one another, the seconds ticking by. Sienna has her lip between her teeth, her gaze guarded as her chest heaves up and down. “That’s my phone.”
The magic of the morning disintegrates with every step she takes towards her bag. She turns to face me as she answers. Her stare on my face, unflinching, like she’s not going to let me hide. I want to hide, I want to slip into the shadows and the darkness where I don’t have to admit anything to anyone, not even myself. I want to take sanctuary in their forgiving depths and for everyone to forget me.
Darkness pulls me down.
I turn, surprised by a movement at the front door. Elliot, one of Aiden’s bastard cronies is smiling; no, not smiling, he’s grinning at Sienna and me. “Lovers tiff, mate?” His eyes settle on Sienna, looking at every inch of her skin-tight jeans and the t-shirt she has knotted over one hip.
“Stay away from her,” I hiss.
I launch forward, my fist raised, but he’s laughing and stepping back down into the street. He nods at her. “Tell her it was good to see her again.”
What?
He’s gone before I can ask what he’s talking about and I turn to Sienna, glimpsing my face in one of the big mirrors on the wall. It's etched into confusion.
She’s staring at me, her expression blank and pale.
“Sienna, when did you talk to Elliot?”
She shakes her head.
“What wrong?” I step up, our argument forgotten.
“It’s my mum.” Her shaking hand almost drops her phone. I grab it and put it on the top of her bag.
“What’s wrong with her?” That awful tight suffocation I used to get when Dad used to go to see his consultant engulfs me.
“She’s in hospital; she’s had a fall.” She looks at me and her face says it all. She didn’t have a fall at all. “Dan. I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
She places her hand on my chest, firm and soft all at once. “Thank you. And I do mean thank you. I’ve had the best time with you. And I’m sorry I was such a bitch just then.” A tear glistens against her lashes and I watch it fall. “I’ll get my car from yours.”
“Sienna. Wait—”
Her head shakes from side to side just slightly, and I know she’s silently begging me not to say anything else.
So I don’t.
I just watch her leave.
Fourteen
Sienna
It’s impossible to ignore the expression on the two nurses faces and I push my way through the door. It’s a private room—but that goes without saying. Only the best for the Richards.
On the drive up from Brighton my heart had wanted to bleed out.
This was me.
All on me.
Stepping closer to the bed, I pull at my jacket and t-shirt, hoping to hide the fact only an hour ago I had my t-shirt scrunched up high revealing my stomach, exposing myself in ways that aren’t deemed good and proper.
I shut off my mind to Dan and that dark tormented look in his eyes when he raised I was leaving. Stupid argument. Stupid time spent thinking my life could be anything other than what it is.
“Mum.” I bend and kiss her cheek. There’s no hiding the bulging bruise across her cheekbone or the split on her lip. “I’m here now.”
I perch on the chair, my palm sticky as I lift her fingers and grasp them in mine.
“She’s been asleep a while, the doctor gave her some strong pain medication. She landed on her hip when she fell and for a while there, they thought it had broken.”
“But it’s not?” I look up at the nurse whose fiddling with the drug chart and the blood pressure monitor.
“A hairline fracture, which with your mother's slim build isn’t as much as a relief as you’d think.”
I turn from the nurse and glance at mum. She is slim. I mean she’s always been slender and perfectly groomed. What's expected of her. But now she’s lying flat, her face in repose, I can see the angle of her hips through the thin
hospital blanket. Her fingers are bony, her rings spinning loose with the slightest push from me.
“What does it mean?”
“It means, she will need care and a lot of rest. If she falls again before the fracture is healed then it will definitely go into a break.
Then nurse meets my eyes and I know she’s read the records. How many falls my mother has had the last few years. I nod. I can’t even bring myself to lie. My shit tolerance is at its absolute bottom. I don’t even know if I can lie anymore. Dan has done something to me. With those dark bruises and darker soul, he’s brought me out into the light. I can’t explain it.
I shut him off from my thoughts. I need to forget about him.
Sooner rather than later.
Making my mind up, before I can wallow anymore, I grab my phone out of my bag and dial Melissa.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, Mum’s taken a fall. I’m at the hospital with her.” I’m not surprised when Melissa has nothing to say. She is no more stupid than the nurse. There are only a certain amount of times you can say something and people believe you. “I need you to call Scott Harrington and tell him I can make a drink after all.”
“Si—”
I cut her off. “Melissa, just do it please, for me. I’m free tomorrow. Then can you ring Dad’s secretary and tell her I can make an early dinner on Friday.”
“Sure. And Brighton… you won’t be going back there?”
My teeth bite hard on my bottom lip, but it stings no more than the dull thud in the centre of my chest. “No. I’m done in Brighton. There isn’t any more information I can get there.”
I wish Dan had gone for my idea. I wish he hadn’t told me that he was waiting for Faith to come back. I wish I hadn’t been there and upset my dad so that now my mother was paying my price for me.
“I’ve got to go.” My words catch in my throat.
“I’ll tell Elijah.”
“Thanks.”
I hang up and throw my phone into the bottom of my bag. I’d hate to see it ring and for it to be Dan. But then with a wry laugh, I realise we haven’t even swapped numbers. I’ve been with him for days, giving him everything, showing him all my secrets, and I don’t even have his number.
Well that’s good, it means I won’t have to go through the pain of deleting it.
Settling back, I grab Mum's hand. It's going to be a long while until she wakes up. What I’m going to say to her when she does, I don’t know.
I don’t know what to do. What to suggest, or how to say I’m sorry, and I hate that more than anything.
“Will.” A tear trickles down my face. But I don’t even have anything to give to my brother who I always assume is up there somewhere watching down on me. “You bloody git.” And then I let my head fall and cry like I haven’t done since I watched his body all grey and blue get lifted out of a Scottish river.
Maybe he’s not there, anyway.
Maybe he’s just gone.
“You’d have liked Dan, I think.” Mum’s still sleeping, but I can’t stand the silence any longer. I’ve dozed myself, but in my dreams I’m still in a tattoo shop. Still laughing and answering the phone. I’m still watching with fervent admiration as the broad shape of Dan curves itself over and swiftly and confidently puts pen to skin.
I wish he’d marked me. Wish it down in my soul.
“He was so tortured. I saw Will in his depths, that silence that used to emanate from him. Dan had it too. Like he was waiting for everything to come crashing down and then surprised when it didn’t. Do you remember the day Will passed his A-levels? He almost looked disappointed he hadn’t managed to fail himself. Dan looked like that when he woke up that morning. He looked surprised, but not relieved.” I pause, my heart sinking. “He was so handsome once he was up and about, Mum. That smile. God, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It just spoke to me. And the way he kept calling me darling, because he knew it pissed me off, when really…” I run out of words there. Mum doesn’t need to know how when he called me darling, his voice dripping with latent sarcasm, it make me hot on the inside and wanton on the outside.
No, my mother definitely doesn’t need to know that.
“Maybe it would have been nice to have him around a few more days.” I shrug to myself. “I’d love to have known about all his tattoos. He was like a masterpiece. I probably should have told him.”
Mum’s fingers squeeze mine and I stop talking. There in the small hospital room, with the air warm and stuffy, I let go of my wild dreams of Dan Smith and the brush of the Brighton sea against my skin and that wild and hot sensation of freedom.
I let them go and then I focus on the room and what my family need of me.
“Sienna, you look truly fabulous.” I hold in a breath as Scott Harrington leans in towards me and gives me a kiss on the cheek. I don’t want to smell if he has alcohol on his breath. I’d rather not know if he had to be drunk to see me.
“Sorry, my secretary was a bit muddled. I was working on a case and didn’t know how long it would take.”
I keep my smile in place. He doesn’t need to know that I slept on a high-backed chair in a hospital last night.
“You’ll be pleased to give it all up won’t you when you get married?”
Honestly, what century do these men my father finds me live in? “Well, probably not at first.”
“So tell me. We didn’t have time to speak, what with all that unfortunate business with your brother.” He rubs his hand on his knees. “I apologise if I made you uncomfortable. I genuinely had no idea.”
“No one does, Scott. My father had it all hushed up.”
“So there are people out there who have no idea Will is dead?”
“Not close people, not family friends. I mean the Faircloughs for example came to Will's funeral. Elijah was a rock to me then.”
Scott leers a little, but I ignore it.
“Well,” he blusters. “It’s probably best if something like that is kept quiet. Scandal when it gets out can be damaging.”
“Damaging for who?” I take a tiny sip of my champagne. I don’t really want to drink, I rarely do.
“Well, everyone. The papers pick up on these things, and you, little Sienna Richards are quite high profile.”
I grimace and take another sip. This one longer. “You mean my social status?”
“Fascinating.”
“What’s fascinating? The fact I’m known as a socialite and no one knows that I actually work hard for a living, and more than that, I care about what I do?"
“Ah, but Sienna, darling.” I scowl at his overfamiliarity. “You don’t have to work. Your father has told me about your trust fund and the fact you have half of Will’s too already in line for your own children.”
“He had no right to share that information with you.”
“Well we’ve discussed finances, taking into allowance what more would be transferred over to me should we marry.”
My mouth flaps open. The champagne isn’t going to be enough. I wave at a waiter and motion him over. The staff at The Ritz are always keen to please. It had been Elijah’s idea to suggest this as a venue for my rendezvous with Scott. Once he’d got over laughing at the fact I was meeting Slimy Scott in the first place. But then I’d told him about Mum and his laughter had stopped pretty damn quick.
I order a whisky without asking Scott what he wants. I’m sure he’s had enough, anyway.
He merely chuckles at my behaviour like I’m some child who needs calming down. Maybe a time out followed by some strict guidelines on how to behave in an appropriate manner.
My memory skips back to the way Dan had made me remove my clothes in his living room the other night. He got it. I don’t need to be told what to do. I like to be told what to do in certain situations.
Scott here would never have the balls to Google dominant sexual practices to learn what I like. He’d just assume he’d know.
“Anyway, anyway, we are getting way ahead of ourselves. Nothi
ng is set in stone yet,” he said, but the florid tinge on his cheeks tell me that everything about this is set in stone. I’m an investigator, this is what I do. I read people. And sadly, Scott Harrington has as much depth as a 'celeb' magazine.
Tomorrow night I will see my father and it will be set in stone.
Mother is in hospital. And I will be told—in no uncertain terms—that I shall do as is asked otherwise a price shall be extorted.
A tight band wraps around my chest and my ability to breathe is severely restricted. I know now—more than at any other time in my life—that I will probably never be able to be free again.
I will live my life like my mother.
“Nothing is set in stone,” I gasp taking another sip of my drink.
“Well,” he leers some more, “I’ve taken the liberty of calling your office and telling them I’m taking you away for the weekend and that you won’t be in on Monday. I have a hefty investment in a hotel in Venice and I thought it would be a nice way for us to rekindle our acquaintance.
Oh God. I’m going to puke.
“Sound wonderful. I’ve never been to Venice.”
“Oh, it’s awful, stinks like sewage, but the hotel is top notch and we’ll be treated like a king and queen.”
I don’t want to be treated like a king and queen. I want to be a receptionist in a tattoo shop down a back street in Brighton. I want to spend every day watching art created by someone who has it flowing in their veins. Whose smile is enough to make me do a wild cartwheel of happiness.
“Sounds lovely. I have drinks with my father tomorrow evening though.” I swallow hard. “I can’t miss them.”
Scott's eyes harden on my face. “Oh, I know you can’t. Your father and I have had a discussion about the best way to run a family.” He chortles and leans back in his chair, quaffing his champagne like a pig. “Believe me, I think his ways are outdated, but I can see they have benefits.”
I lean forward, my pulse thudding. “Are you threatening me?”
