Taking His Own

by Jessica Wildblood

  “Beer, then. Whatever you’ve got.”

  He opens a bottle and passes it to me. It’s weirdly reminiscent of the times we spent down at the park as teenagers, when James used to buy beers for me and my friends before we turned eighteen. I almost smile at him. His serious expression stops me.

  Chance’s hand is tangled up in the back of my hair, gently stroking my neck. It doesn’t help the tension in the air. We catch each other’s eyes, grin, and look away. I doubt anyone would appreciate us giggling.

  “Go on, then,” says Chance. “You’ve obviously got something on your minds.”

  Mariam opens her mouth to speak, but James gets in ahead of her.

  “Alright. Hear me out until the end and don’t interrupt, any of you. We had enough trouble getting it straight between ourselves earlier. The story is that this one,” he says, pointing at me, “ditched you by email ten years ago the minute she got to Malaysia. Didn’t take her more than a few weeks to find someone else. Guess she preferred having something close to home. A real shitty thing to do. Laid it out really clear, didn’t want to ever hear from you again, broke things off for good. Never replied when you asked her why she did it. Right?”

  My eyes widen. I stare at Chance. “What?”

  James snaps his fingers at me. “I said no interruptions! Sure, you called up a few times. But you’d made yourself damn clear. So by that time I’d taken his phone off him. And trust me, after what you did – no hope anyone was giving you the time of day after that. Except, Chance, here’s the thing.” He looks at Mariam for confirmation, who nods eagerly and waves her hands for emphasis. “Her sister says she never sent that email.”

  Now it’s Chance’s turn. “I… I don’t understand.”

  “You bet your lying ass it’s true!” snaps Mariam. “God knows I tried to persuade her to ditch you. I thought you were a total waste of space. But I remember pretty damn clearly that the first Zara knew about you deciding she wasn’t worth your precious time was when you stopped taking her calls. Ghosted her. The king of all shit ways to dump someone. She never got a single word of explanation. Do you know how much that fucks someone up? I do.’ She shakes a finger at the two of us, but her eyes are blazing at me. ‘And now look at you, Zara, reliving the same happy teenage mistakes all over again. If you’re hoping I’ll be here to pick up the pieces this time –”

  Chance’s hand has fallen from the back of my neck. He looks a little pale. “What’s going on here?” he asks me quietly.

  I reach for his hand. “I never sent you an email. I didn’t break up with you.”

  He stands up abruptly and walks out into the hall. James looks at me with an unmistakeable air of triumph in his eyes.

  “Let’s see what you have to say when you see the evidence in black and white, you cheating bitch.”

  “James, please!” snaps Clarissa. She stands up, Annie murmuring in her arms. James looks guilty.

  “Clarissa, if you knew –”

  “Even if your side of the story is true, you’re talking about a mistake someone made ten years in the past. Aren’t we all supposed to be older now? Wiser?” She reaches out a hand to me. “Zara, please come and help me put the baby to bed.”

  I get up and follow her into one of the bedrooms. It’s blessedly quiet and peaceful in there. Clarissa’s set up a cot with a little hanging aerial above it, which she gives a gentle knock so that the tiny toys start spinning, casting soothing shadows across the room.

  “I’m so sorry about all this,” I say – or try to. Tears spring into my eyes before I can finish the sentence. Before I know it, Clarissa’s arms are around me.

  “Don’t say another word. Chance will sort everything out. And if he’s forgiven you, then he’s forgiven you. He doesn’t hold grudges. He’s a wonderful person like that.”

  I sob onto her shoulder. “But I don’t know what they’re talking about out there! I didn’t cheat on Chance! I – I’ve never met anyone else! No-one like him, I…”

  Clarissa gives me a warning squeeze. I look up to find Chance standing in the doorway, on the phone, with a strange, tight expression on his face. “Thanks. I’ll get the details to you tonight,” he says, and hangs up. “That was Jack Morgan in the Critical Response Team. They investigate hacking incidents and security breaches within the company. If you still have the password to your old email address I can have him look into it for you.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  Chance opens his mouth to answer, but sees the baby sleeping in the cot and instead beckons me out of the room. We walk past my sister and his brother, who are arguing over our business again. He leads me up the stairs onto the rooftop, where a balcony juts out over the cliff edge so that it feels as though we could fall straight into the sea.

  “I spent years believing I meant nothing to you,” he says. He sounds so angry I can hardly bear to listen to him. I don’t know whether I want to shout back at him or run away to bed and hide under the covers. It’s all too overwhelming. “All that time when I couldn’t get you out of my mind, when I was hopelessly stuck still in love with you, I had to carry on with my life knowing you’d forgotten me. Do you have any idea what that was like?”

  “I almost went crazy when you left me!” I wail. “I didn’t eat for months. Why do you think Mariam’s so upset now? She’s frightened of what will happen to me if I lose you again!”

  Chance taps the edge of the balcony in a harsh, sharp rhythm. Every muscle in his body is tense. Ready to fight. “I didn’t leave you,” he says.

  “Then you have to believe me,” I choke, fighting back more tears. “I don’t understand what’s going on. I didn’t cheat on you, Chance. I didn’t send you any email. All I know is that one day you stopped calling me, and I – I died a little that day. Part of me died and never came back.”

  He’s scanning the horizon. Night has shrouded the sea in darkness now. It’s just as impenetrable as this contradictory mystery from our past. “A lot of men had a lot of money invested in me staying in the UK ten years ago, Zara. I never told you that, but it’s true. At the time I didn’t want to put any pressure on you. And I didn’t fully understand the world I was getting into.” He sighs. “Now I know it all too well. There are dangerous people out there. The more money they have, the more…corrupt…they seem to be. Nothing’s ever enough for them. They don’t seem to have the same moral code as everyone else does.” He turns to me, finally, and there’s a fire blazing in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. “Zara, if my new world – this world where no-one values anything but money – has hurt you, I promise you I’ll –”

  “Just believe me,” I tell him, pressing a finger to his lips. Chance flinches away from the touch of my hand, but it’s only with surprise. He catches my fingers and kisses them, one by one, closing his eyes to savour the sensation against his lips.

  “I have to go,” he says. “Give James the details of your email address. He’ll pass them on to Jack Morgan. I’ll either be back soon, or…”

  He doesn’t need to tell me. Either he’ll come back, or he won’t believe me. And I’ll never see him again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chance

  I’ve changed into an old pair of jeans and a slightly torn t-shirt under my leather jacket for this visit. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to myself.

  Pentonville Prison is made up of four long, grim and grey buildings spreading out from the central entryway like the fingers of a grasping hand. This is where Bruce Green is serving out his prison sentence for, among other crimes, making a bomb threat to the Hotel Argente to disrupt our shareholder’s dinner more than a year ago. A little act of revenge against me and my brother. And to think our business relationship started off so well.

  I can tell by the expression on his froglike face that he doesn’t get many visitors. By the time he sits down on the chair opposite me, however, his expression has smoothed itself out again. Back to a business-class suavity that hasn’t been marred by t
he months of prison. That’s the mark of a first rate mobster. I should’ve listened to James about this one all those years ago.

  I sit back. Let him speak first.

  “Well, well. Chance Madison. What an unexpected pleasure.” He’s lost weight in jail. The jowls which once were full of blubbery fat are hanging loose from his jaw. “To what do I owe this great honour?”

  He’s barely disguising the fact that he hates me now. But I can tell that underneath it, he’s pathetically intrigued. Bruce has been dumped by most of his old friends in the business world since he brought misfortune crashing down on his own head. Prison time doesn’t make you any money, after all.

  I lean in. “Zara Jacobs.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl who moved to Malaysia. It’s been a while, Bruce. Do I need to find a way to jog your memory?”

  His fat face quivers. “And not so much as a how’ve you been.”

  “I don’t care how you’ve been,” I snap. He frowns, affronted, and shuffles his hands in his lap.

  “Yes, I remember that you mentioned the girl once or twice. What about her?”

  I roll my eyes. “How about a cup of coffee, Bruce?”

  “And a packet of cigarettes.” He smiles the way he used to when he had a particularly tricky investor flapping on the end of his line.

  I buy him the coffee and the cigarettes. “You’re a smoker now?”

  “There’s nothing else to do in here, Chance. And I’m an old man. One who’s not much interested in living beyond my natural span.” Bruce rolls a cigarette lovingly between his fingers, but doesn’t light it. “So. Zara Jacobs. Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Try me.”

  “If I recall correctly, you were quite taken with the girl. You were planning to leave the business for her.”

  I don’t say a word. Bruce keeps rolling his cigarette. A spasm of emotion crosses his face. It could be guilt, it could be pride. I don’t trust him enough to bother reading into it.

  “I’m afraid that would have seriously damaged the value of my investment, Chance. James is very good at what he does, to be sure. But you were the real genius behind Kelsey Technologies.”

  “I’m not here to be flattered.”

  “Of course. Of course. Well, I wasn’t about to let my prize stud get away. I was a different man back then, Chance. I spent too much time with my work. Neglected my family. Neglected…every other aspect of my life. You have no idea how I regret –”

  “Get to the point.”

  “Very well. I had one of my staff…look into the matter for me. A man with talents almost as prodigious as your own. We couldn’t touch your computer, of course. For all we knew you’d written yourself all kinds of security programs we’d never even heard of. But the girl was quite, quite easy to hack into.”

  I take a breath. “You sent me an email.”

  “Oh, not only that. Carlos then put in a redirect protocol so that nothing you sent would reach her again. He was quite clever. It wasn’t the first time he’d cleared up a little…problem for me. I used the same method when my daughter began dating. Although, as you know, Karen did not turn out –”

  “I don’t give a shit about your personal life.” I stand up. A flicker of desperation flares in Bruce’s eyes.

  “Chance. Wait one moment. I want to say that I –”

  I consider punching him. Smearing his pudgy nose into red oblivion across his cheeks. I could land some serious damage on him before the prison guards reach us.

  But that light in his eyes. That tiny flame of misery. That stops me.

  That tells me that walking out of here, leaving him alone, is the worst thing I can possibly do.

  So I turn around. And I go.

  “Chance!” calls Bruce. I hear the chair scrape back as he stands up, and guards rush forward to take him back to his cell. “Chance? I can explain – let me talk to you – Chance!”

  As I walk back out into the pale grey of London’s suburban sunlight, I feel bizarrely lightheaded.

  An old wound has suddenly healed over. As though it was never even there. A pain that I’d grown so used to feeling I barely even noticed it anymore has suddenly gone.

  I feel so light that I might be walking on clouds, not these uneven paving stones with their light smattering of chewing gum and litter.

  Bruce Green feels so far behind me that our meeting might already be years in the past. My mind’s on the future now – a future that suddenly feels so close I could reach out and grab it with both hands.

  But it’s my immediate future that’s slowly beginning to take over more and more of my thoughts. I can be back in Cornwall by this afternoon. I can run into my own house and kiss Zara without anything telling me to stop. Those perfect lips, soft and pink, that I had the barest taste of yesterday – I’m going to re-learn exactly the way they like to be kissed. I’m going to rediscover over her entire body, remembering every single curve and hollow. I’ll take it as slowly as I can bear but, god knows, I don’t have much patience left anymore.

  Finally, there’s nothing in my way. I’m sure – as sure as I can possibly be – that Zara needs me as much I need her right now. We’re going to prove it to each other tonight as we make love so furiously it makes up for all the time we’ve lost. Suddenly the fastest of my cars doesn’t feel nearly fast enough. I’d call up the private jet if there was a landing strip near the beach house.

  I’m going to get to my girl as quickly as possible and show her exactly what she’s been missing all these years.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Zara

  Thank god I can spend this day out in the surf. There’s a rhythm and a flow to the ocean that gets into your bones out here. Paddle out, wait, feel the swell, lose yourself in the tug and rush of the waves and watch for that perfect one. Salt spray burns the taste of Chance out of my mouth. Adrenaline pushes every thought of him out of my mind. I fly on the back of the waves I catch, my mind clear and free.

  It’s only when I come in for a break and I happen to glance up at the house that I see his black Ferrari parked outside and all my fears collapse down on me again.

  “He’s back,” says Mariam, seeing a pallor in my cheeks that has nothing to do with the cold seawater. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Right,” I say. I wish I could tell the same thing to my juddering heart.

  Shit. I’m wearing a wetsuit. The opposite of sexy. I could unzip it, but I’d freeze half to death walking up that hill. I grab my board and start walking.

  Chance is watching me from the balcony. I see him from a distance. He gives me a wave and goes into the house. What does that mean? Does it mean anything?

  I try to tell myself it’s going to be ok. I know that I’m innocent in all this. I never did anything wrong. I don’t know where he went last night, but there’s no possible way he could have found out anything bad.

  Unless… The things he said before he left, about cold-hearted businessmen and their plots and their endless lust for money, that scared me. I have no idea about the depths someone like that could sink to. I have no idea how far something like this could go.

  I step into the anteroom and peel out of my wetsuit. Grace has hung towels up on the radiator and I’m grateful for the warmth as I towel off my hair.

  When I come out, a towel around my body, Chance is waiting. There’s no-one else in the house but us. I’m glad – the way his eyes rove over my body make me feel as though the towel I’m holding is completely see-through. A flush of heat rushes up from my core.

  “You look like the fucking queen of the ocean out there,” he says, his voice deep and husky. “Watching you surf is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  I almost drop the towel right there and then.

  “So we’re good?” I ask him. He smiles and comes towards me.

  “I have three things to tell you. One. I meant everything I ever told you. Every last promise still holds true.” He bends down to kiss
me. My body, wet with salt water, crushes tight against his. His tongue enters my mouth, an electric connection that sends a streak of lightning all the way through me. My nipples harden. I’m suddenly very aware that under the towel I’ve got nothing on but my bikini.

  “Mm,” Chance murmurs, pulling back and stroking my face with the back of his hand. He puts his arms around me, pulling me into him tightly, possessively. “Two. You’re mine, Zara Jacobs. I’m never letting you out of my sight again. Losing you once was too much for me. Do you understand?”

  I nod, dumbstruck. Chance smiles and bends towards me again, this time leaving a tingling line of kisses from the corner of my mouth down my neck. I gasp. His teeth graze my collarbone, and I feel myself start to get wet in a way that’s nothing at all to do with the sea.

  “Three,” Chance growls in my ear. “I’m about to make you come harder than you’ve come in ten years.”

  I let go of the towel. It falls to the ground between us. Chance kisses his way down my neck again. His hot breath hovers over my breasts. I arch towards him. I’m starting to get desperate to feel his mouth on my skin – all over my skin.

  Chance grins and takes my hand. “Let’s get you into the shower.”

  It’s already running and hot, the air in the huge bathroom full of steam. I step straight into the jet of water, letting it cascade over my shoulders and back. I turn around. Chance is watching with lust burning in his eyes.

  I crook my finger at him, beckoning him to follow.

  Chance pulls his t-shirt over his head in one smooth motion. His chest is ripped, taut, solid. When he saved me from drowning in Malaysia I thought I was hallucinating that perfect set of abs, but now I can see they’re deliciously real. It’s all I can do not to drag him into the shower with me before he’s finished undressing.

  I reach behind my back and unclasp my bikini top, letting it fall to the floor. Chance’s pupils dilate as his eyes fall on my breasts, small and pert, and my small round nipples.

  He sinks to his knees, pulls me towards him without a care for the water soaking through his jeans, and licks his way softly around my right nipple. Hot bursts of pleasure ripple through me. My fingers convulse in his hair. It feels fucking incredible. He turns his attention from one breast to the next, sucking and licking until I’m moaning and gripping at his head, my legs shaking with the pleasure.