by Davis, L. D.
“A loan,” I forced myself to say. “Everything you spend, I pay back, with interest.”
“No interest.”
“With interest,” I said firmly, unwilling to yield on this.
“One percent.”
What? One percent? One percent was like peeing in the ocean and she knew it.
“Eight percent,” I said.
“Two and a half,” she countered.
“Seven and a half.”
“Four.”
Her stubbornness was going to drive me fucking crazy.
“Six and three quarters,” I insisted, trying not to lose my patience.
“Five percent is the highest I'll allow,” she said with finality. “You're being ridiculous.”
“You're being too generous,” I argued.
She was quiet for a moment. She looked at me and quietly said “I feel like I owe you something.”
After the way I had treated her for the past few months, she actually felt as if she owed me?
“You gave me a kid, Em. You don't owe me anything.”
“What if he grows up and turns out to be a loser?”
I tried not to laugh, because I knew she was rather serious.
“Then I may insist on some compensation. Until then, you don't owe me anything. So, I'll accept a capped loan, with five and a half percent interest.”
“Capped? I don't know how much I'll have to spend in your crappy office,” she said doubtfully. I loved that she didn’t feel any need to be polite about the state of my office.
“Then I suggest you set a budget, Miss Grayne,” I said to her.
“Fine,” she said. She stood up and collected our plates. I followed her into the kitchen. I pulled a beer out of the fridge and leaned against the counter as she started to load the dishes into the dishwasher.
“You agreed to that too fast.”
“No, a budget is fine.” She said too easily and began to wipe down the counters and stove before getting a beer.
“So, what kind of budget did you have in mind?” I prodded.
“Oh, I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “Not much.”
“I don't believe you. How much is not much?”
“Well...” she started slowly. “You need more staff, more equipment and furniture, advertising, and money just to function for your clients.”
“How much, Em?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “I guess...one and a half million.”
I choked on my beer and she watched me with mild amusement. If I didn’t have to address this million dollar shit, I would have done something else to amuse her. It had been too long since I saw a genuine sign of amusement out of her. “One and a half million dollars!”
“I can do two or three,” she said in a high voice, trying to stop her lips from forming a smile. Now she was fucking with me, but if I let it go she would seriously try to spend two or three million dollars. Who the hell in this day and age just had a few mil lying around? Apparently my baby’s mama.
“I thought maybe a hundred grand, at most two fifty,” I objected. “Not over a million!”
“I said I can do two or three!” She threw up a hand.
“You're crazy,” I said, shaking my head. “Two fifty, and no more.”
“What's wrong with one mil?” she asked.
“Did you ever consider the possibility that I won't be able to pay that back?”
“You will,” she gently insisted.
“You're insane,” I said with a frown. Borrowing money from a bank was one thing, but borrowing this kind of money from Emmy despite her financial situation made me uneasy.
She sighed and looked at me with pleading eyes. “I really want to do this, Luke.”
“It's a lot of money, Emmy.”
She shrugged and proceeded to stare me down. I stared back, trying to look as formidable as possible under the circumstances, but her pretty brown and green eyes burned into my own eyes and straight through my head. Shamefully, I looked away first.
“Okay,” I said grudgingly.
“Okay,” she said, trying to hide how triumphant I knew she felt.
“Can we have pie now?” I sulked.
“Of course,” she said, and then it happened. She gave me a full blown smile that made the shame I felt in taking her money well worth the price.
Chapter Eight
Emmy attempted to slip back to her old ways. The following night after Lucas was asleep and the kitchen was clean, she silently began slipping into the bedroom without so much as a glance at me on the couch. It pissed me off a little bit, because we had a great working day together. So much was accomplished and we even had lunch at my desk together. Even though we were working throughout the meal and nothing personal was discussed, it was nice to be around her without heavy tension or the energy it took to ignore her and forget her name. We even ate dinner together again – takeout pizza, wings, soda, and leftover pie for dessert. She was on the quiet side, but we were talking, bullshitting about nothing in particular. But now she was trying to just slip away.
“Hey,” I said to her just before she stepped inside the bedroom.
She paused and looked at me with some apprehension. I guess I didn’t blame her. I knew she wasn’t quite used to our sudden burst of comradery. It was going to take some time for her to trust that I wouldn’t revert back to being a complete and utter assfuck. Now that I had her attention, how was I going to keep it? Make up some fake task for her to help me with?
But lying never got us anywhere before.
“You don’t have to crawl back into your cave just because the boy is asleep,” I teased.
“Oh…” She looked taken aback, but at least she was meeting my eyes.
She looked at the floor between us.
Damn.
“We’ve had a rough few months,” I said with my hands held up in defense. “It’s mostly my fault, and I’m sorry. I just…I think we can be friends and I think Lucas needs to see that we’re friends. I don’t want to teach my son how to be a cold bastard like I was to you. Even if we’re not together, he should see that we’re at least together as far as he is concerned, not two separate entities that don’t communicate. I don’t want that for him and I don’t want him to grow up believing his relationships have to be just as dysfunctional.”
She met my eyes again. Her own eyes were wide with surprise and apprehension. At the office, Emmy was in beast mode, putting everyone to work and making grown ass men like me quake with fear. She didn’t look fearful then and definitely showed no signs of weakness, but the moment we walked through the door at home she started to shrink back to that docile, wounded animal.
“I…” she started, but then bit her lip.
“What?” I prodded, trying not to show my frustration.
Her eyes glistened. Surprised, I took a step towards her. Was she about to cry?
“The heels I wore the past couple of days were my pre-pregnancy heels,” she said, blinking up at the ceiling. “My feet are too fat for them still and I have blisters all over my feet. I was about to go in the bathroom and soak them.” She sniffled. It was pathetically cute. “And maybe cry a little.”
I really shouldn’t have laughed, but I couldn’t stop myself. I threw my head back and laughed harder than I had in months, maybe longer than that. It felt really good to laugh so genuinely hard, and with Emmy.
“I’m sorry,” I said through some final chuckles as she glared daggers at me. “The things women do to look hot in a pair of heels.”
A blush rose in her cheeks but she didn’t respond.
“Okay, go soak your sore feet. Wear flats tomorrow.”
“I don’t own any flats,” she said with an aggravated sigh.
“Take some time off in the morning to go shoe shopping,” I said and sat down on the couch.
“There’s too much to do,” she waved the idea off.
“I’m your boss,” I reminded her. “I am commanding you to go shopping for sensible shoes t
o be worn in the office.”
An eyebrow raised and a hand went to her hip. “You’re not my boss.”
“You work for me. That makes me your boss.”
“I work with you,” she said. “I am doing you an enormous favor by making your pretend office into a real one, and I don’t get paid, Mr. Kessler. Therefore, I do not work for you and you are not my boss.”
She was right. Furthermore, she was my benefactor. So technically it was I who worked for her. She kind of owned me.
But pushing her buttons to make more of that snarky girl I used to know ease out of her dead shell was fun.
“If you don’t do as I tell you, I will fire you.”
“Fire me and your piece of crap office will eventually get flushed,” she challenged.
“Is that the best you got? Crap and flushed? You reason like an eight year old.”
Flustered, she blurted out “Your mom!”
She disappeared into the bedroom while I sat on the couch laughing at her.
About an hour later Emmy sat her ass down on the other end of the couch. She propped her feet up on the coffee table with a small sigh.
“What are you watching?” she asked.
“One of those international real estate shows. This one is in Paris.”
“I didn’t know you cared about these kinds of shows,” she said, looking at me.
“I usually don’t,” I shrugged. “This one is in France though. It made me think of your time there. Where were you in France?”
“Not too far from Burgundy,” she answered casually as if I knew the difference between Burgundy and any other French town.
“I guess that means nothing to me since I’ve never been to France.”
“It’s a little more than three hours outside of Paris,” she explained.
“Did you like it out there?” I tilted my head to look at her.
She looked at me for a moment before answering. “I guess so. The area surrounding the home I was staying in was…pretty.”
“Who were you staying with?” I felt like an ass for not knowing any of this sooner.
“Helene and Marcus – they are friends of Donya’s.” She gave a small smile. “They were very kind.”
“Did you enjoy your time with them?”
Her smile faded to a frown and she looked away from me. Her eyes focused on the flat screen in front of us.
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said and gently cleared her throat.
I never asked why she had gone to the French countryside. I never asked because until recently I never cared, and I didn’t think much about it again. But I should have asked. She was pregnant with my son while she was there, and I should have wanted to know everything she did while she was carrying him inside of her.
“Why did you go there?” I asked her.
She didn’t look away from the television, and she was so quiet for so long I wasn’t sure if she actually heard me. Then I saw her chest rising and falling heavier than it should have been, and with her damp hair pulled back in a ponytail I was able to see the pulse racing in the sensitive flesh below her ear.
“I had to get away,” she said just above a whisper. “I needed to be somewhere…unfamiliar.”
I felt an uncomfortable weight in my chest. It was beginning to dawn on me why she sprinted across the sea.
“What did you have to get away from, Emmy?” I asked, though I should have been asking from whom she had to get away from.
She let out a heavy, weary sigh. “From life. I had to get away from life,” she said as she got up off of the couch. “I’m more tired than I thought I was. See you in the morning.”
She disappeared into the bedroom again. I sat on the couch staring at the door, surprised by the anger that had reignited inside of me. Emmy has kept so much away from me and she was doing it again. She thought by shutting herself in that damn room that she could just cut me off and not tell me anything. I had the right to know what happened to her, who or what chased her pregnant ass all the way to the fucking French countryside where she spent I don’t even know how long with strangers, without her family and friends.
I pushed my hand through my hair and sighed with frustration. I kept telling myself that this was about Lucas – what his life was like in the womb, but honestly, it was about Emmy, too. I wasn’t over what she did, not by a long shot, and though my change in heart towards her was rather sudden, it was genuine. I cared to know whatever her struggles were, but I was pissed off that she chose to run away instead of humbling herself and coming to me for help. Did she really think I would turn her away if something terrible had happened?
I hope Kyle Sterling breaks your heart and makes you choke on it.
The words bounce around in my head and answer my question. Yes, she probably did think I would turn her away, even if something terrible had happened. Even though I knew Kyle Sterling was probably somewhere in the equation to blame, I had to accept the fact that my own words may have had a severe impact on Emmy’s decisions thereafter. I had to accept the fact that I may be just as much at fault as anyone else.
Chapter Nine
After that night when she told me she had to escape life, Emmy stopped closing herself off in the bedroom every night, but her smiles were small and sedated, and laughter was nonexistent. Sometimes she would say something incredibly smart ass and I would get my hopes up that the old Emmy was finally coming through, but her eyes always gave her away. There was something completely broken inside of her. It held her back, it held her down, and consistently snuffed out whatever contentment she managed to find. There were times when it would seem that this broken thing was on the mend, but it would snap her back into the dark suddenly and unexpectedly.
I gave Emmy a lot of credit though, she kept trying. She focused hard on putting my firm together. She focused even harder on being a good mom, and even when it looked like she just wanted to suffer alone, she made an effort to be friendly. Whereas in the past, she participated in family functions because maybe she thought she had to, she went out of her way to draw closer to my sisters and mother. It had to be very hard for her to put herself out there over and over while struggling to breathe on the inside.
The nightmares didn’t fade. Sometimes I’d stand in the dark doorway and just listen. They were all very similar. Someone was attacking her, and though the dialogue would sometimes change, the ending was always the same. It didn’t take too long for me to hear the name that I had been suspecting. When she begged Kyle to stop hitting her, I had to hold my breath to keep myself from vomiting. I never wanted her to know that I heard her nightmares. I knew it would just make her regress, but that first night when she cried for Kyle to stop, I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair until she quieted. Whether or not she knew I was there, I don’t know. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell.
Late one night after listening to Em have another nightmare, I slipped out of the apartment and drove over to Claire’s. It was well past that seventy-two hour deadline, by weeks, but I had to make sure that she had done what she said she would. On my way over I worried that maybe she didn’t do the backup birth control, and thought about what that could mean for me, for Lucas, and even for Emmy.
I didn’t warn her I was coming over. I wasn’t sure if she had anyone over or if she would even let me in, but she was alone and only reluctantly did she open her door for me.
“Why aren’t you home with your son?” she asked dryly with her arms folded across her midsection.
“I needed to follow up on something with you,” I said, refusing to go any further than a few feet into her apartment.
“If you’re here to find out whether or not I went to the pharmacy…” she took a deep breath. “I didn’t.”
My eyes must have almost fallen out of my head. I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off.
“Don’t worry, Luke. I got my period.”
I let out a ragged breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. My anger quickly came
to a boil.
“Why didn’t you go to the pharmacy and take the Plan B, Claire?” I roared. “Why would you even fuck with that?”
“Not that you would care,” she yelled back. “But I was in a car accident the following morning!” She ripped her robe open and my eyes were immediately drawn to the fading bruise across her chest from a seatbelt. “Keeping your child out of my belly was the last thing on my mind!”
“Shit,” I said and pushed my hand through my hair as I stared at the bruising. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry.” Her voice broke over words as she pulled her robe together again. Tears dripped from her eyes at an alarming rate.
“Claire,” I said, taking a step towards her, but she held up her hand.
“Just leave,” she said. “Just go. You got what you needed, as usual. Now go home to your family.”
I was such a fucking jerk. She was right – our whole relationship had always been about me and what I needed. If I had been a decent guy, I would have left her alone so that she could find someone to give her what she needed. Now that I knew we wouldn’t be sharing a child, I could finally do that.
Saying sorry again wasn’t going to have any positive effect. I gave her an apologetic look instead and let myself out. I went back home and was surprised to find Emmy awake and moving around in the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said, tossing my keys onto the counter.
“Hey,” she said groggily. “Working late?”
“Yes,” I lied. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she lied and took a sip of hot tea. “Would you like some hot tea?”
“Yes,” I said as I watched her.
A few minutes later we were both standing in the kitchen sipping tea. We didn’t speak, but I found some comfort in her presence and hoped that she found some in mine.
*~~~*
Vivian Deluca was my arch enemy. She had been my arch enemy since I ran up against her in court in my first year as an attorney. Viv was only a couple of years older than me, but she already had a strong foothold in one of Chicago’s biggest, most reputable law firms. She ate guys like me for breakfast with her bare hands and dabbed away our tears that clung to her lips with high quality linen napkins. What made matters worse was that Vivian was sex in a suit. With smooth edible looking skin the color of mocha, Vivian looked like she was a descendent of gods and goddesses. Her dark hair was always pulled into a fierce bun or a tight braid that trailed down between her shoulder blades, and she had a body that appeared both well exercised and well fed. She had a slim waistline, but generous hips and an ass that made even my mouth water. Her suits always perfectly outlined her well-endowed chest and long, shapely legs, but she was a professional through and through. There was only always just barely a glimpse of cleavage and her skirts were modestly short. Vivian had eyes the color of honey, but they were shrewd and calculating, and at times I’m sure many have glimpsed the depths of both heaven and hell in them.
