One Night: Unveiled

by Jodi Ellen Malpas

  Chapter 19

  It’s the first time I’ve seen Ice completely empty.

  Miller lifts me onto a stool and spins me to face the bar before making his way around and grabbing a sparkling tumbler from one of the glass shelves. He slams it down with force, seizes a bottle of scotch, and pours the glass to the brim. Then he downs the lot, gasping, his head falling back. Slowly, he turns and collapses back against the counter, looking down at his empty glass.

  He looks defeated, and it scares the hell out of me. ‘Miller?’

  He concentrates on his glass for a while before tortured blue eyes finally meet my gaze. ‘The guy in the supermarket. That was Charlie.’

  ‘The immoral bastard,’ I say, willingly showing my understanding. He’s exactly who I feared he was, yet my conclusion of the man, having been told about him by Miller, doesn’t do him justice. He’s terrifying.

  ‘Why won’t he just let you quit?’ I ask.

  ‘When you owe Charlie, you’re indebted for life. If he does you a favour, you pay forever.’

  ‘He got you off the streets years ago!’ I blurt. ‘That doesn’t justify your lifelong commitment to owing him. He made you a prostitute, Miller! And then promoted you to the Special One!’ I nearly fall from my stool as a result of the sudden anger bubbling in my gut. ‘This isn’t right!’

  ‘Hey, hey, hey.’ He swiftly discards his empty glass and slaps a palm on the bar as leverage to flip himself over to my side. He clears it with ease and finesse, his feet landing silently in front of me. ‘Calm down,’ he placates me, cupping my hot cheeks and pulling my face up to his, scanning my welling eyes. ‘Nothing about my life has been right, Olivia.’ Spreading my thighs with his knees, he moves in close, lifting my face farther to accommodate him towering over me so our eyes can remain locked. ‘I’m too fucked up, sweet girl. Nothing can help me. Me and my club are gold mines for Charlie. But it isn’t only my profitability and the convenience of Ice for his dealings that dictates things. It’s the power trip, too. It’s principle. Show weakness and the enemy will have you by the bollocks.’ He breathes in deeply as I take it all in. ‘I’ve never considered quitting because I’ve never had reason to,’ Miller goes on. ‘He knows that. And he knows if I were to ever walk away, there would be good reason.’ His lips straighten and his eyes blink lazily, an action I usually find comforting, spellbinding. Not today, though. Today it’s just adding to my trepidation because that slow blink, accompanied by another deep inhale, is an attempt to gather the strength he needs to utter his next words. When he drags his lids open, I hold my breath, bracing myself. He’s looking at me like I’m the most precious thing in his universe. Because I am. ‘They will eliminate that good reason,’ he finishes quietly, punching the breath from my lungs. ‘One way or another, he wants you out of my life. I haven’t been acting like a neurotic lunatic for nothing. I belong to him, Olivia. Not you.’

  My poor brain explodes under the pressure of Miller’s brutal explanation. ‘I want you to be mine.’ I utter the words mindlessly. There’s no thought behind them, just desperation. Miller Hart is unobtainable, and not only because of the guarded exterior he holds firmly in place.

  ‘I’m working on it, my gorgeous, sweet girl. Believe me, I’m working fucking hard on it.’ He presses his lips to the top of my head, inhaling me into him, getting a dose of the strength that he siphons off me. ‘I have a request.’

  I don’t vocalise my confirmation to the request that I know is coming. I need to hear it. ‘Anything.’

  He picks me up from the stool and sits me on the high bar, like he’s placing me on the proverbial pedestal. Then he muscles in between my thighs and looks up at me, circling my waist with his big hands. My fingers brush through his waves, all the way through the top until I’m kneading the back of his neck. ‘Never stop loving me, Olivia Taylor.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  He smiles a little as he drops his face into my chest and moves his hands around to my back, pulling us closer, blending us together. I stare down at the back of his head, stroking comfort into him. ‘How sure are you?’ he asks out of the blue.

  My stroking hands pause as I muster the might to face another one of our shocking revelations. ‘Sure,’ I reply simply, because I am. Just like everything else, I can’t and shouldn’t be hiding from this.

  He slowly releases me and holds the test out, watching as my eyes flick between him and the box. ‘Sure isn’t good enough.’

  I reach and take it tentatively.

  ‘Go.’

  I say nothing as he lifts me down, and leave him at the bar pouring another drink. I follow my feet to the ladies’ room and brace myself for the confirmation in black and white. My actions are mindless, from entering the stall to exiting it. I try to ignore the few minutes’ wait I’ve read it takes to give me the result and spend that time washing my hands, also trying to ignore the possible reaction I’m likely to get from Miller. At least now he’s aware there’s a possibility. But will that lessen the shock? Will he even want it? I slam a lid on those thoughts before they run away with me. I don’t expect him to be dancing on the ceiling over the pending confirmation of my pregnancy. There’s no room for celebration in our lives.

  Turning the test over, I stare down at the tiny window. Then I wander out of the restroom and back into the main club, where I find Miller waiting, tapping the bar. He looks up at me. He’s expressionless. Once again, I can’t fathom a bit of his thought process. So I hold the test up, watching as his eyes flick to it. He won’t be able to see from all the way over there, so I murmur one word. ‘Positive.’

  He deflates before my eyes, making my stomach turn. Then he cocks his head, silently demanding I go to him. I’m cautious, but I do, reaching him in a few strides. I’m lifted onto the bar and his body moves in, his head resting on my chest, his palms sliding onto my bottom.

  ‘Is it wrong for me to be delighted?’ he asks, shocking me. I honestly expected a Miller-style meltdown. Because my sole focus has been on my own shock, plus what I thought would be a negative reaction from Miller, I’ve not stopped and considered the potential of being happy by this news. I’ve seen it as being another thorn in our side – another pile of shit to deal with. Miller, on the other hand, sounds like he’s seeing it from a whole other perspective.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I admit aloud, when I only meant to silently wonder. Can we be happy about this amid all the darkness? Is he seeing brighter light? My world has become just as dark as Miller’s, and I can only see more gloom on the horizon.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ He lifts his head and smiles at me. ‘Anything you bless me with I see as a gift, Olivia.’ A smooth palm strokes my cheek. ‘Your beauty to look at.’ He scans my face for an eternity before slowly dragging his hand down to my chest and tracing wide circles around my breast. My breath hitches, my spine lengthening. ‘Your body to feel.’ He tries to pull back his smile as he takes a glimpse up at me. ‘Your sass to deal with.’

  I bite my lip through my budding desire and refrain from telling him that, ultimately, he is the source of my sass. ‘Elaborate,’ I demand unreasonably. He’s made himself pretty clear already.

  ‘As you wish,’ he agrees without hesitation. ‘This –’ he plants a kiss on my tummy, humming as he does – ‘is another gift you’re giving me. You know I fiercely protect what’s mine.’ He looks up at me, and I lose myself in the sincerity of his telling eyes. ‘What’s growing inside of you is mine, sweet girl. And I’ll destroy anything that tries to take it away from me.’

  His strange way with words, his way of articulating his feelings, it’s irrelevant now because I’m fluent in Miller’s language. He couldn’t have put it any more perfectly.

  ‘I want to be a perfect daddy,’ he whispers.

  Happiness sails through me, but through that bliss, I reach the very solid conclusion that Miller was referring to Charlie. It’s Charlie he’ll destroy. He knows about me. And he saw me with a pregnancy test in my hand. I’m a goo
d reason for Miller to walk away, even more so now. Charlie eliminates good reasons. And Miller will destroy anything that tries to take me away from him. Frighteningly, I know he’s perfectly capable.

  Which means Charlie is on death row.

  A loud rapping brings me around, whipping my head in the direction of the club entrance.

  ‘Anderson,’ Miller mutters, his mask slipping into place, our happy moment being cut too short. He breaks away from me, giving my thigh a little squeeze before he strides off . . . and my sass appears from nowhere and bites me on the arse.

  ‘Why’s he here?’ I ask, slipping from the bar to my feet.

  ‘To help.’

  I don’t want to see him. Now I know for sure she’s in London and he hasn’t got Miller holding him back, he’ll want to talk about her. I don’t want to. Suddenly feeling claustrophobic in the mammoth space of Ice, I pace around the bar until I’m staring up at rows and rows of the hard stuff. Burn the anger away. That’s what I need to do. I reach up and snatch down a bottle of vodka, mindlessly unscrew the cap, and pour myself a triple. But when the cold glass meets my lips, I don’t tip the contents down my throat, mainly because my mind is distracted by a mental image.

  An image of a baby.

  ‘Damn,’ I sigh, slowly taking the glass back down to the bar. I just stare at it, swivelling it around gently until the clear liquid is still. I don’t want it. Alcohol has served a purpose of late – a silly attempt to blank my woes. Not anymore.

  ‘Olivia?’ Miller’s questioning tone pulls my tired body around, revealing my hopeless face . . . and the glass. ‘What are you doing?’ He steps forward, uncertainty creeping onto his face as he flicks his eyes from me to the glass.

  Guilt joins my hopelessness and I shake my head, full of remorse for even pouring the damn thing. ‘I wasn’t going to drink it.’

  ‘Damn straight you weren’t.’ He strides around the bar and viciously swipes the glass from my hand before throwing the contents down a sink. ‘Olivia, I’m dangling off the edge of insanity already. Don’t give me the nudge that’ll tip me.’ His warning is stern and serious, yet the soft expression suddenly rife on his face defies every word of that command. He’s pleading with me.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking,’ I start, wanting him to know that I poured that drink in a blind temper. I’ve barely been given the opportunity to let this news sink in. ‘I’ve no intention of drinking, Miller. I would never harm our baby.’

  ‘What?’

  My eyes widen in response to that shocked yell, and Miller virtually snarls.

  Oh. My. God.

  I don’t turn around and face the enemy. If there’s any scrap of sass within me, it’ll be stripped down to nothing with a look of disgrace or the delivery of some scornful words. So I keep my guarded eyes on Miller, silently begging him to take the lead. There’s nothing right now that can shield me from William Anderson, except him.

  The long silence that stretches becomes painful. I’m mentally willing Miller to be the one to break it, but I close my eyes tightly when I hear William draw breath, accepting that it’ll be him instead. ‘Tell me what I’m thinking is wrong.’ I hear a soft thud and see William collapsing to a barstool in my mind’s eye. ‘Please, tell me she’s not.’

  The words I am bubble in my throat, along with and so what? But they remain exactly where they are, defiantly refusing to put themselves out there. I’m mad with myself, mad that I’m rendered useless when I want to be wielding some bravery and unleashing it on William.

  ‘She’s pregnant.’ Miller’s chin rises, his shoulders squaring. ‘And we’re ecstatic.’ He’s daring William to continue.

  William dares, though.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Anderson spits. ‘Of all the stupid shit you could pull, Hart.’

  I wince, not liking the slow-building heaving motions of Miller’s chest. I want to join him, stand united, yet my damn body refuses to take me to him. So I remain with my back to William while my mind continues its assessment of the perilous situation looming.

  ‘We agreed that if Charlie didn’t have anything concrete on Olivia already, he would soon. Soon is now.’ He reaches me and links an arm around my neck, encouraging me into his embrace. ‘I said if he even breathed near her, it would be the last thing he did. He just breathed near her.’

  I can’t see him, but I know William will be matching Miller’s hostility. The frosty vibes are crawling all over my exposed back.

  ‘We’ll discuss this later.’ William dismisses it too easily. ‘But for now you keep this between us.’

  ‘He knows.’ Miller’s confession draws a shocked gasp from behind me, but he continues before William can interrogate him. ‘He found Olivia buying a pregnancy test.’

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ William mutters, tensing my shoulders. Miller catches my reaction and moves his palm to my neck. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that you’ve just doubled his ammo.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Where the fuck were you?’

  ‘Being sent on a treasure hunt.’

  I bite my lip and nuzzle farther under Miller’s chin, feeling so guilty and even more stupid. ‘He was friendly.’ My words are muffled against Miller’s suit jacket. ‘Or trying to be. I knew he was bad news.’

  William lets out a snap of sardonic laughter. ‘That man is friendly like a poisonous snake. Did he touch you?’

  I shake my head no, certain I’m doing the right thing by keeping that little piece of my encounter with Charlie to myself.

  ‘Did he threaten you?’

  Again, I shake my head. ‘Not directly.’

  ‘Right.’ William’s tone has taken on an edge of decisiveness. ‘Now’s the time to stop thinking and start doing. You don’t want to go to war with him, Hart. If it’s not too late already. Charlie only knows how to win.’

  ‘I know what needs to be done,’ Miller states.

  I don’t like the sense of William tensing behind me, nor the increased thump of Miller’s heartbeat under my ear.

  ‘Not an option,’ William says quietly. ‘Don’t even go there.’

  Glancing over my shoulder to him, I find sheer refusal on William’s face. So I take my questioning eyes back to Miller, and though he knows damn well that I’m looking at him in confusion, he doesn’t tear his cool impassiveness away from William.

  ‘Don’t go all sentimental on me, Anderson. I can see no other way.’

  ‘I’ll think of one.’ William spells the words out through a tight jaw, revealing his disgust. ‘You’re thinking the impossible.’

  ‘Nothing is impossible anymore.’ Miller moves away from me, leaving me feeling exposed and defenceless, and takes down two glasses. ‘I never thought someone could claim me so entirely.’ He sets about filling the glasses with scotch. ‘I never even thought about it because who wants to consider the impossible?’ He turns and slides one of the glasses over to William. ‘Who wants to dream about what they can’t have?’

  I can see with perfect clarity that Miller’s words are striking an emotional chord in William. His silence and the slow wrapping of his fingers around his glass say so.

  A relationship with Gracie Taylor was impossible.

  ‘I didn’t think there was someone out there who was capable of really loving me,’ Miller goes on. ‘I didn’t think there was someone out there who defied everything I knew.’ He takes a long swig of his drink, keeping his eyes on William, who’s shifting uncomfortably on his stool, playing with his glass. ‘Then I found Olivia Taylor.’

  My heart leaps in my chest and I vaguely register William downing his drink and swallowing hard. ‘Is that so?’ he asks. He’s on the defence.

  ‘That’s so.’ Miller raises his glass to William and finishes his drink. It’s the most sarcastic toast in the history of toasts, because he knows what William is thinking. He’s thinking he wishes he could turn back time. I, however, don
’t. Everything that has happened has led me to Miller. He is my destiny.

  All of William’s regrets, my regrets, my mother’s mistakes, and Miller’s dark past have brought me to now. And though this situation is destroying us, it’s ultimately making us as well. ‘I’ll tell you something else that’s not impossible for me,’ Miller continues, like he’s getting a thrill from torturing William, making him live through his regrets. He points a blind finger in my direction. ‘Fatherhood. I have no fear because no matter how fucked up I am, no matter how scared I am that some of my screwed-up genes will pass down to my flesh and blood, I know Olivia’s beautiful soul will eclipse it.’ He looks across at me and steals my breath with his sincerity. ‘Our child will be as perfect as she is,’ he whispers. ‘Soon I’ll have two bright beautiful lights in my world, and it’s my job to protect them. So, Anderson –’ his face hardens and he returns his attention to a silent William – ‘are you going to help me, or am I taking on the immoral bastard alone?’

  I wait, full of apprehension, for William’s answer. He looks just as taken aback by Miller’s little speech as I’m feeling. ‘Get me another drink.’ William sighs heavily, pushing his glass towards Miller. ‘I’m going to fucking need it.’

  I catch the bar to steady myself, my relief making me dizzy, and Miller gives a sharp nod of respect before pouring William some more scotch, which he knocks back just as fast as the first. They’ve both fallen into business mode. I know I won’t want to hear any of the plotting, and I know Miller won’t want me to either, so I step forward to excuse myself before I’m ordered to leave. ‘I’m just going to use the toilet.’

  Both men turn worried looks onto me and I find myself spilling my desire to remove myself. ‘I’d rather not hear how you plan on dealing with Charlie.’ I refuse to let my mind go there.

  Miller nods, stepping forward to brush my hair off my face. ‘Just wait here for two minutes while I make a call. Then I’ll take you down to my office.’ He kisses my cheek and leaves quickly, not giving me scope for objection. Damn him! The conniving bastard! He knows I don’t want to be alone with William, and the resistance it takes not to run after Miller nearly floors me. My legs are twitching, my eyes are darting, and my restless heart has set off on another nervous skip.