by Cynthia Dane
He kissed her hand and then her forehead. “If you need anything, let me know. I have to take a shower and wash off all this cigar smoke.”
That made Alice giggle. She had been smelling that foul stench on him ever since she came home. “You do.”
Monroe let their fingers entwine. “Everything will be fine. Before you know it, we’ll be the rulers of the universe.”
He released her hand before heading to the bathroom, shirt already off his body. “You’ll be the hottest emperor ever,” Alice said.
Her compliment earned her a wink. That tiny gesture alone was good enough to calm her for the rest of evening. Now, to do something about this hand. A nice bruise had formed near her wrist. Here was hoping she didn’t have a ton of documents to sign over the next few days.
Oh, who was she kidding? When a woman was spending millions of dollars a day for her business, there was always something to sign!
Chapter 16
Both Alice and her husband were up early the next morning since neither could sleep. He was having nightmares again. At first Alice woke up to mild thrashing and the pathetic groans of a boy begging his father to stop being an abusive shitstain on humanity. Then she woke up to the covers yanked off her body and thrown to the floor, Monroe’s head rolling back and forth on his pillow. Alice had sleepily gotten up and went to the bathroom without turning any lights on. By the time she went back to bed, Monroe had stilled, snoring.
She never returned to sleep. The sun came up, and so did she. With a robe wrapped around her sore body, Alice laid out her husband’s clothes. So much for trying to be quiet. Monroe was up fifteen minutes later, grumbling about coffee. Alice went into the kitchen and started a pot since Lissa was still in bed.
Monroe ate only a banana before meeting up with the morning shift bodyguard and going outside in a sweatshirt and basketball shorts. Alice went to the living room window overlooking the river and watched Monroe and his bodyguard take off for a morning run along the riverbank.
It was not unusual for him to go out on morning runs. If the weather was good, if his morning schedule was relatively light, if he had trouble sleeping, if he had something heavy on his mind… they had only been living together a few weeks, but Alice was already used to the routine her husband followed.
What made this different was the look on his face before he left.
Something’s troubling him. Something worse than usual. Probably had to do with Alice’s tumble down a flight of stairs the night before. She did some stretches against the back of a couch, determining the elasticity of her muscles and whether anything was badly injured enough to go to the doctor for.
Nothing in particular stood out. Aside from a wallop of a cramp in her stomach, anyway.
“Fuck,” she muttered. As good a time as any to go back to bed.
She still couldn’t sleep, and she would have to be up in another hour anyway. Still in her nightclothes, Alice sat down at the desk in the bedroom. She fired some texts to Alisha regarding that day’s scheduled events before going over a stack of files one more time.
By the time she got up to start picking her clothes for the day, Monroe had returned.
He entered the bedroom teeming with sweat. Splotches littered his gray Princeton sweatshirt, those basketball shorts hanging so loosely around his knees that Alice wondered how they stayed on. Must have a tight drawstring. She wouldn’t mind popping it open.
Once she caught the hungry look in his eyes, she had a feeling such a chance was coming.
“Enjoy your run?” she asked cheerily, gesturing to the suit she had brought out hours before. “You might want to shower before putting your corporate clothes on, though.” Damn, how hard did he run? Monroe’s chest was still pumping air through his lungs. While he wasn’t wheezing, he was definitely winded. The bodyguard was probably halfway to passed out on one of the couches. “Can I help you, Mr. Monroe?”
Why was he standing there catching flies with that open mouth? He looks like he smells… handsomely. No Jean Patou on his body yet, but that was okay. Sometimes Alice wanted to smell nothing but man coming from her husband. The more she thought about it, the more she was into the idea of him rubbing that masculine sweat all over her body.
“Yes, you can.” He lunged forward, grabbing her, pulling her into his heavy embrace. “I need you. Now.”
She may have been entertaining sexual ideas a few moments ago, but they were mere fantasies. Alice didn’t actually want some nookie before going into work that day… let alone twelve hours after she fell down some stairs.
“What brought this on?” She wiggled out of his hold and wandered to the other side of the room. Wasn’t the river lovely this morning? Even if the fog didn’t burn off later, it would still be a nice day. Ah, it was officially turning into autumn, wasn’t it?
Two hands slammed against the window. Alice smelled Monroe before his breath hit the back of her neck. No surprise when his hardening cock urged her to press against the window with him. “You brought it on, Alice. Every time I think about you, I want you. I need to have you. I can’t start my damn day without you moaning on the other end of my cock.”
She shuddered. Pleasure? Derision? Both? Pleasurable derision… that’s a thing, right? “Maybe I’m not in the mood.”
“I spent my whole run thinking about you. About what I was going to do to you when I came home. I kept hoping you would still be up, but I would’ve woken you up either way.”
He mauled her shoulders with bruising kisses. Alice took it passively, watching an early breakfast boat pass by on the river. She was too high up to see any of the people on deck enjoying their scrambles and bacon. Bacon sounds good. Do I get to eat bacon if I’m pregnant? Man, Alice needed some coffee. The horndog trying to sex her up demanded energy on her part.
“You don’t always get your way, you know,” Alice muttered. She opened the front of her robe and let the silk spill down her arms. She still wore her lavender negligee beneath, but her nipples were already poking through as if they had any right to. “Sometimes you’re going to have to deal with me not wanting your cock for once.”
“You’ll always want it.”
She turned beneath him, forehead meeting his nose. Damn, his breath was hot. “No, I won’t, Damon. Did you hear me? No. Sometimes you’re going to hear the word no.”
“You saying no now?”
She smiled. Well, hadn’t he caught her in a certain position? “No,” she said, smiling. “I’m not saying no.”
“I have no idea what that means, but if I get to fuck you against the bedroom window, I’ll take it.”
She kissed him first, but he finished for the both of them within ten minutes.
***
“Here’s all I could find on Clarise Livingston.” Alisha handed her boss a thin folder of papers. “Sorry it’s not more. Took me an hour to find that much.”
Alice snatched the folder, legs swinging over the edge of her office couch as she sat up to flip through the papers. “You’re amazing. I wasn’t expecting even this much so soon.”
Alisha shrugged. “I had insomnia last night and decided to do some work. It was either that or watch Doctor Who for the millionth time.”
“Seriously. This is great. Whatever you’re being paid, you need to be paid more.”
“Technically,” Alisha began with a scrunched face, “I’m under your employ. So, you would have the power there.”
“Then remind me later to give you a raise. With any luck, I’m going to be the richest bitch around in a few weeks.”
“Based on how many shares you’ve been buying from people recently? I should hope so.”
“Shh.” Twice a day Dee did a sweep of Alice’s office for anything suspicious. She had yet to find anything, but the risk was always there. “Besides, it’s going to be a while yet. I’m far from having enough.” She went to her desk and sat with the folder. “This might help, though.”
“Hope so. By the way, do you want to go over the n
otes from this morning’s meeting before I type them up?”
Alice pressed her injured hand against her desk while her assistant went over dialogue and the subtleties included. Between the soreness of her hand and the cramps still lingering in her stomach, Alice was too distracted to pay attention. Besides, there were a million other files for her to go through. So far her post-lunch work had been nothing but reading and writing up her own scribbly notes. Boring. She had half a mind to interrupt her husband’s multiple Friday business meetings and demand some attention. Instead, she sent him a text implying to go blow off some steam that night.
“You should see what I’ve done with The Dark Hour so far. Ahem.”
She didn’t receive a reply. That was fine. She knew he was in a serious meeting.
“Ma’am?”
Alice looked up from her phone. Alisha was less than impressed that she had been talking to a brick wall for the past two minutes. “Sorry. My brain’s all muddled right now. I’m sure you heard about my little tumble last night.”
“Yeah. Sorry to hear about that.” Alisha, always business, pulled out her tablet and opened a document full of charts and graphs. Great. So much fun. “Anyway, do you want to talk about your Married Women’s Alliance meeting next week?”
“Suppose we should.” Alice had decided to go to the complimentary meeting she had been invited to. Lunch at the country club. Her first time going. No big deal. No pressure. It’ll be fine. Right?
Alice lived a life of complete discomfort for the next hour. Her cramps got worse, but she was dubious toward taking any medication without knowing what was going on. So she put up with the pain, shoving any concerns she had out of her mind in favor of focusing on work. Almost feels like my period. No way. For one, Alice was pretty damn sure she was pregnant, and for another, if she wasn’t then her period wasn’t due for another few days. Considering how stressed she had been lately? Aunt Flo should’ve been stuck in traffic.
The only thing that cheered her up was Monroe visiting her later in the afternoon, as he usually did when he had no other appointments. He sat a respectful distance away, checking his phone while Alisha and Alice finished up their discussion about the Married Women’s Alliance. Alisha collected her things and went into the main office to type up notes before going home for the weekend.
Finally, Alice had time to read her dossier on Clarise Livingston. She swung her shoeless feet into her husband’s lap. He took the hint and gave her a light foot massage. Give me a full stomach massage while you’re at it. Monroe would probably interpret that as needing to fuck her. Again. Because this morning wasn’t enough. Her husband had not been gentle as he pounded her against their bedroom window, his insane need for her overwriting any fatigue he felt after such a long and hard run. Then again, he was apparently an athlete beneath his clothes, whether those were a three-piece suit or gym wear.
“Did you know that your great-grandmother was Irish?” Alice mused.
Monroe scoffed. “Why do you care so much about that?”
She knew what he meant, but decided to go in a different direction anyway. “Because if I’m having your little Monroe babies, I would like to know their heritage. This is especially juicy since your father made a point of mentioning that my family has an Irish background as a reason I’m unfit to be your wife.”
“He says whatever comes to his mind first.” Monroe sighed, squeezing one of Alice’s feet. “Do we have to talk about him? He spent half of today trying to get me to go on a date with some other woman. Can you believe it?”
Yes. “Be that as it may, he said something about me being Irish first. That came to his mind before anything else.” Her husband may not be making the connection, but Alice sure as hell was. There’s something about this woman. I know it. A few photos were printed on the last page. Clarise Livingston’s appearance could only be described as plain, conservative, and hard. Oh, and blond with high cheekbones. Sounds familiar. Like someone I see in the mirror every time I glance at one. “Your father hates women. I could sit here and pontificate about the patriarchy, but I’ll bet the twenty million dollars deposited into my bank account today that it’s a lot more transparent than that when it comes to him.” Alice pulled her knees up. There. That helped the cramps a little. “If he was primarily raised by a woman he didn’t like, then hey, maybe there’s something to it.”
Monroe opened his mouth to say something certainly haughty, but before a single word could come out, he stopped, amber eyes widening in surprise.
“Alice,” he said with a clipped voice.
“Did she hurt him? Did she make his life miserable? What the fuck could it be?”
“Alice.”
“Why…”
“Alice.”
His tone was more demanding than Alice expected while they relaxed in her office. Yet there wasn’t a damn thing sexual about it. Alice was compelled to lower her papers and catch the pallor of his face. “What is it?”
Monroe swallowed….
And pulled her legs apart.
“What the fuck!” Alice smacked him with the dossier about his great-grandmother. “Not cool, Damon!”
“Alice!” He grabbed her wrists and pried her thighs apart. Oh my God! He’s lost his mind! Fear gripped her. Fear for her husband for the first time since they met. He wasn’t going to… was he? “Look!”
When she realized he wasn’t trying to get sex out of her, Alice calmed, but her relief was temporary. For when she glanced down at what he was so concerned about, a shriek of dismay burst from her lips.
Blood. So much blood all over her nice couch.
***
Doctors were useless. That was the conclusion an incredibly numb Alice came to hours later as she awoke from her stupor.
She was home, in bed. Again. This needs to stop happening. Her stomach still hurt, a painful reminder.
No… no it can’t be. Her brain and heart instantly shut down the moment the word miscarriage entered her head. She couldn’t deal with it.
It also felt so damn wrong.
Her new doctor told her it was still too early to tell anything. He even suggested it could be her period. Useless! Unless her temporary birth control had really fucked with her, Alice could safely say that she never had a period come that hard and heavy in her life. Not even when she was a teenager jacked up on so much estrogen that her cramps lasted days.
Useless, useless, useless.
“Period. Scare. Miscarriage.” Stupid. “Come back in a week or two and we’ll do an ultrasound and take another test. Until then, try to wait.” Wait for what? For her baby to die?
Alice was greeted by a soft light shining on her nightstand. Beside her, a head of curly red hair moved. Julia? What was she doing here?
“Good evening,” Alice’s mother-in-law said with a faint smile. It was hard to tell how purposely faint it was, though. The burns had killed more than a few nerves across her face. “Are you feeling any better?”
Alice said the first thing to come to her mind. “Damon told you, didn’t he?”
Ah, now she was truly sad. Julia looked down at her hands in her lap, fingers twiddling. “He told me after you went to the hospital last week.”
So, someone else knew about Alice’s pregnancy. “Where is he? What time is it?”
“It’s about seven in the evening.” Julia sat back in the seat she had dragged to Alice’s bedside. “Damon… he’s holed up in one of the guest rooms. He’s taking this hard.”
Alice slumped back down against her pillow. Her memory was a bit fuzzy, but she clearly recalled her overprotective husband shouting for a doctor before carrying his wife to his office. He raced through the whole floor of the building with me in his arms. More than one person had turned to watch, whether from their cubicles or from the waiting area. Alisha was gobsmacked when she heard what might have happened. The only one to keep a neutral expression throughout the spectacle was Sarah Clayborn, who called the doctor on the Monroes’ behalf. Alice was wrapped in
her husband’s jacket on one of his couches when the doctor entered. Only then did Alice find out why she had been carried to Monroe’s office instead of staying in her own. The walls were so soundproofed that nobody outside of the room could hear him rage in disbelief.
“Thank you for coming.” Alice wondered if she should phone her own mother. Ah, Candice could get there more quickly, couldn’t she? But the phone was still in her purse, wherever that was. “You didn’t have to.”
“When Damon called me, I knew I had to come. I don’t know how emotional he usually gets, but my son was losing his mind over the phone.”
Was he? Alice rubbed her stomach. Had the bleeding stopped yet? Or would this be an ongoing process from hell? What did her gut say? Her intuition had exploded in power since becoming a Monroe. I feel like I’m siphoning it from my husband.
Alice put both hands on her stomach and pushed down. You still in there, little fighter? First she had to convince herself she was pregnant. Now she had to convince herself that she was still pregnant? Did that make her delusional or desperate?
“He’s usually in control of his emotions.” Alice couldn’t help the uniformity of her voice. Speaking of being in control of emotions… “While I have you here, can I ask you a question?”
Julia raised one eyebrow. She probably wanted to raise the other one while she was at it, but… burn scars. Was probably a miracle she even had some semblance of brows left there.
“Forgive me. I’m trying to take my mind off things.”
“I see. Of course. Ask me anything.” Julia’s eyes never left the wedding ring on her daughter-in-law’s finger. She’s remembering when she used to wear this same ring.
All part of the plan.
“Do you know anything about Clarise Livingston? The woman who raised my husband’s father?” Like she was going to refer to him as anything more familiar.
Julia did not react, aside from taking her daughter-in-law’s hand. “I met her, of course. She was the only one in Russell’s family still alive when I married him.”
