Hell, he’d looked good. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Her face was pale, her eyes suspiciously bright. She pinched her cheeks and blinked furiously, pausing a few moments before heading back to the kitchen.
The rest of the night passed, somehow, but Emily had no recollection of anything beyond that moment. She ran on autopilot, carrying out her duties, her body going through the motions while her mind was totally absorbed. She’d never been so relieved as when the end of her shift finally loomed before her.
She signed out and grabbed her coat and bag, ducking out of the service entry and into the dark, cold night.
And there he was.
Waiting for her, reclining indolently against the side of the building. He was staring straight ahead, his posture relaxed, his dress formal. A suit, and a long coat, that fell to his knees. He looked heavenly, and he looked expensive. Untouchable.
His eyes met hers, and her world tilted swiftly off its axis.
“What are you doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
She pulled her coat tighter around herself, embarrassed now at the threadbare quality of it. It was just another physical reminder of how different they were. “I have to go,” she said, her voice low and quiet against the background hum of central London. A bus hurtled past, a streak of red and orange lights.
She began to walk brusquely towards her stop. He fell into step beside her. “You’re angry with me.”
A statement, not a question. Her annoyance was evident. “No.”
“Yes,” he contradicted, looping her bag off her shoulder and clutching its weight for her.
She looked at him in consternation. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t need to do anything,” he agreed with all the appearance of affability.
“What do you want?” She stopped walking and looked up at him.
His smile echoed her own sentiments. What he wanted was Emily. “I want to talk to you,” he responded earnestly, his expression intense.
“Sure you do,” she scoffed, a small laugh punctuating their conversation. She looked down the street, at the bus heading their way. “Another time,” she shrugged nonchalantly, though her heart was pounding and her pulse was racing. “This is me.” She put her hand out for her bag, but Sabato didn’t move.
“I will take you home.”
“No,” she responded angrily. “I take the bus.”
“So tonight, my driver will take you.”
“No!” She reached for her bag and he didn’t resist. Emily pulled it tight over her body then fished out her Oyster card.
The bus stopped with the sound of grinding brakes. “Goodbye, again,” she said, not able to look at him. Her heart raced as she stepped up onto the bus. She moved down the aisle, and chose a seat far from anyone else. She wanted to be alone.
She placed her bag beside her to emphasise the point then looked forward. Sabato, in his expensive suit and wool coat, was stepping onto the bus. His wallet – soft, black leather – was unfolded, and he had removed a pile of bank notes. The driver was shaking his head, and she heard his cockney accent dispute, “Correct change only, mate.”
Emily’s lips quirked in a smile despite her inner-turmoil. It was very clear that Sabato had no idea how a bus worked. He flicked open the coin compartment of his wallet. “How much?”
The driver stated the fare and Sabato compressed his lips in frustration. “Take the fifty. Think of it as a tip.” He stalked down the bus, his natural athleticism an easy match for the bumpy departure of the surprised driver. Every head in the seats was angled to watch his progress; he had that effect on people.
But Sabato didn’t notice. He only had eyes for Emily.
He lifted her bag without asking and sat beside her, his broad frame invading all of her senses. She spun around in the seat, so that she could look at him properly.
“What are you doing?” She hissed, scanning his face.
“I want to speak with you.”
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes. “You said that. But what about?”
He put a hand on her knee but she jerked away. “Don’t.” She bit down on her lip, hating the sting of tears she felt in her eyes.
Sabato took a deep breath, searching for his forbearance. “Emily, please try to be reasonable.”
She glared at him angrily. “Reasonable?” She retorted fiercely. “You don’t think it would have been reasonable to tell me you were in the hotel? Or, I don’t know, the city?”
“You didn’t want to see me,” he reminded her. “You insisted, if I remember, that we leave the weekend as it was.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “And I meant it.” Liar! “I only mean as a matter of courtesy, that you should have told me you’d be in the penthouse.”
“So that you could avoid me?”
“Yes!” She nodded.
“Why? Why would you not want to see me again?”
Her cheeks flamed. She turned away from him and stared out of the window. The bus was logged in traffic, and barely moving. Despite the noise of the engine, the silence between them crackled with animosity. “What if you’d had a woman with you?” She pointed out, after a few moments of unbearable quiet.
“I didn’t.”
“That’s just good luck,” Emily retorted hotly.
Sabato reached up and touched her cheek. This time, Emily didn’t pull away. But her eyes were lost, her expression mournful, as she stared across at him. “I want to forget you.”
He brushed his hand over her hair. “Did it occur to you that you’re not the only one struggling to leave that weekend behind?”
Her eyes locked to his. Hope flared in her chest, but died almost instantly. “No.” She bit down on her lip. “I know you, Sabato. If you’d … wanted to see me again, you would have called me. Or come back sooner.” She licked her lower lip. “How long are you here for?”
His heart thumped hard and fast in his chest. His gut turned. “A night.”
“A night?” She shook her head angrily. “See? A night – this night. If chance hadn’t brought me to your room, you would have come and gone and I’d have been none the wiser.”
“I believed that to be what you wished.”
She sighed softly. “So did I.”
“I have thought of you often since then.”
She didn’t know if she believed him, but the words were some balm to her overwrought nerves. She settled back in the seat and scanned the street outside. “Do you need to say anything else?” She asked after a few kilometres had been eaten up by the bus. As it travelled across London, and out of the congested areas, it was moving with increased speed. When he didn’t answer, she pointed to the yellow buttons buried in the grey bars. “Because you are getting further and further away from central.”
He shrugged. “I’m seeing you home.”
Emily did laugh now, her face a study of amusement. “You’re seeing me home?”
His face was not smiling. It was serious and it was inexplicably furious. “Yes.”
“Ummm,” she made an effort to squash her laughter. “Why?”
His smile didn’t meet his eyes. “Stop asking questions to which you know the answers.”
Her stomach rolled; her insides clenched. “I live with my brother, remember?”
He nodded. “Yes. You sleep on a sofa bed.”
She refused to let his words embarrass her. But the truth was, she was embarrassed. Mortified, in fact.
The bus journey took over an hour, and much of it was completed in uncomfortable silence. Emily was burning with things she needed to say to Sabato, but now that she was faced with him, she wasn’t sure what they were. All she knew was the she’d missed him desperately. Seeing him again was an agony, because she knew it couldn’t last.
Chapter 6
The bus drove off, puffing out a cloud of fog in its wake. Emily watched it go, then reluctantly glanced at her companion.
Sabato had looked bizarre enough on a bus.
On the side of the road at The Elephant, he looked positively out of place.
“You do that every day?” He asked, his tone laced with something Emily didn’t understand.
She blinked up at him and then nodded.
“There is not a faster way to get to the hotel?”
She bit down on her lip and turned towards her home. She started walking and he fell in beside her. “There’s the tube, but I hate it.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Being underground. And all those people. I like to be able to see. To breathe. To read my book and look out at the city scape.”
His look was scathing. “That took an hour and seventeen minutes.”
“Swiss precision?” She asked, only half-joking. His watch, she knew, was some kind of Rolex.
“Why are you acting as though this doesn’t matter?”
“I’m not saying it’s not annoying,” she responded finally, letting her flippant tone drop. “But it’s not your business.”
He compressed his lips. “You work for me.”
“I work for someone who works for someone who works for someone who works for you. I think.”
He stopped walking, and his dark eyes bore into hers. “Emily …” It was a plaintive sound of frustration.
Emily lifted her chin. “What?”
“This is where you live?” He looked around the area, a few blocks from where the bus had deposited them. It was, admittedly, not the best street, but the rent was cheap and she knew enough of her neighbours to always feel safe.
“What’s wrong with it?” She challenged.
Sabato breathed out loudly and then shook his head. “Let us see.” He waved his hand down the street and commanded, “Lead the way, Emily.”
Emily wondered, later, why she had done as he said. She would have been within her rights to refuse him. Only saying ‘no’ to Sabato wasn’t something that came easily to her. And so she nodded tersely and resumed the well-worn journey to the one-time council flats she called home.
She paused at the door, waiting for Sabato to say something. But his face was thick with thunderclouds. She pulled her keys out of her bag and searched for the security access. Sabato’s angry presence was unnerving though, and her fingers weren’t steady. His silence only added to her stretched nerves. Finally, she clasped her fingers around the brass key and inserted it into the door. It opened with a good heave.
“The building repairman has been meaning to look at that for a while,” she murmured, annoyed that her voice sounded apologetic.
Sabato was a silent figure. He walked beside her, emanating disapproval as they passed overflowing mailboxes and proceeded down a hallway that was illuminated only intermittently, owing to a flickering fluorescent light tube.
She pressed the button for the lift and avoided meeting his eyes. When the doors opened, she went to step in, but his arm crossed against her body. “Is it safe?”
He was only half joking. If the building maintenance was so lax as to leave a door almost immovable and a light bulb unchanged, how regularly was the lift tended to?
Emily smiled at him with false sweetness. “Maybe it isn’t. Perhaps we should say goodbye here.”
He cast her a dark look and then released her, following her into the confines of the elevator.
In the small space, Emily was much more aware of him. Dangerously so. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and stared straight ahead. It was the first time she’d noticed the slight smell of urine in the cramped quarters. Sometimes, vagrants entered the lobby and sheltered in the apartment’s foyer.
Emily had been embarrassed, and now she was miserable. At his penthouse, they were still two creatures from different worlds. But now, they were just so incredibly different that Emily knew he would never want to see her again. Her stomach lurched as the doors opened.
Her expression was bleak when she turned to face him. “Please just go, Sabato.”
He stared down at her, a muscle flexing in his jaw. Their eyes clashed, and something shifted between them. “Which one is yours?”
She closed her eyes against the certainty that he was about to come into her life in a way she’d never expected. She tried to recall the state of the flat when she’d left that afternoon.
“Sabato,” she said quietly, and blinked her eyes open, to stare at him head on.
“Which one?” He repeated firmly.
She turned around and walked slowly down the corridor. As if a delay might weaken his resolve. It didn’t. They reached the door to her apartment and he was still beside her, impossible to fathom, and difficult to ignore.
Emily knew she could refuse to let him in. That she could cause a scene and tell him he had no place in her life. But a large part of her was sparking back to life, after three months of being frozen with despair. And that core of her being was desperate for whatever time she could share with Sabato Montepulciano.
The door pushed inwards easily. She’d oiled the hinges herself a few weeks earlier. She reached around the timber frame for the light and flicked it on. Apprehensively, she shifted into the apartment. Sabato followed, his eyes lancing her as he walked passed. But he did not look at her for long. He turned his focus to her home, scanning the basic but clean kitchen, the simple sofa bed with the depression in its centre, the television set she’d picked up from Argos and walked all the way home. The lamp she’d been given when the French couple next door had moved out.
He finished the slow inspection of the lounge and then looked at her again. His expression was becoming darker by the moment, and Emily’s stomach was in knots. He moved to the doorway that led to Andrew’s room. Emily padded behind him, but not too close. She didn’t want to see his cool rejection for a moment longer than she needed to.
Now he knew. He knew just how far out of his orbit she really was, and he would leave her alone. He might even wish he’d never been with someone like her – someone so broke she could barely make ends meet. Mortification was unfurling in her gut. She couldn’t bear his silence.
She walked quietly back to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. While it boiled to life, she stared straight ahead, at the lemon yellow tiles delineated by off-white grout.
The first clue she had that Sabato was behind her was the sound of the refrigerator opening. She spun around and watched as he crouched down to survey the contents.
“What are you doing?” She said finally, relieved to have remembered she had a voice, and every right to object to his invasion of her personal space.
He stood then, and shut the fridge door with more force than was necessary. His eyes were darkly accusing.
“This is where you live.” Another statement. Yet it seemed to demand an answer.
She tilted her head forward. “As you see.”
“Dio Mio,” he swore loudly, and slammed his palm into the kitchen bench. “This, here? This is where you come to, after you’ve worked so hard all day? This is your haven? Your home?”
His mood was grim, and yet she smiled. “I wouldn’t call it a haven,” she confided honestly. “But it’s home for now.”
His breathing was ragged. He thrust his hands onto his hips and looked at her long and hard. “I want you to pack a bag, and come back to the hotel. With me.”
Emily furrowed her brow in confusion. “Um, no.”
“I think you misunderstood. I’m not asking. Pack a bag. You have just as long as it takes for my driver to arrive.”
Emily’s ears had turned pink. She could feel the heat that was spreading all over her face. Indignant rage, it burned her insides with its flickering wrath. “Who the hell do you think you are?” She spoke quietly, with an undercurrent of fury.
His smile was both cold, and humourless. “I am your boss.”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Emily. If I want you fired, you’re fired. I am just as much your boss as if I worked directly over you.”
She took a step towards him, hoping
that it might aid her in understanding him better. “Sabato,” her voice was husky. She shook her head and tried again. “Why would you even say that?”
He closed his eyes and ran a hand over them. “Just… pack a bag.”
Another step towards him; it brought no greater comprehension. “I can’t.” She bit down on her lip, and with her eyes, she begged him to drop this ridiculous proposal.
“Where are your things?”
“Stop!” She snapped, her eyes widening as she realised the depth of his intention. “You are behaving like a madman. You have no right –.”
“I have every right,” he interrupted swiftly. “You don’t think what we shared gives me a right to care about your accommodations? To want to provide something better for you?”
Her balance was off. She felt like she was looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. None of the colours were fitting together properly. “No,” she said after a long beat had passed. “Three months ago – that’s twelve weeks – we slept together. That’s all that we shared. It was nothing. It meant nothing. It certainly doesn’t mean you have any reason to interfere in how I live my life.”
He opened his mouth to speak but she shook her head angrily. “And I need you to go. Now. My brother’s band rehearsal will be finishing. He’ll be home soon and the last thing he needs is to see a strange man in our home.”
“I don’t think you understand, Emily. I’m not going anywhere. Not until I know that you are living in a better fashion than this.” He waved his hand around the apartment, focussing on the drab curtains and threadbare carpet.
“How I live is not your problem.” She straightened her spine and eyeballed him without blinking. “And it’s very rude of you to come here and criticise my life.”
He laughed, and it tore through the tension. His eyes sparkled, when he laughed, and his chest moved. Emily watched him, her wariness holding itself around her like a cloak.
“Yes. Perhaps I am being rude,” he agreed finally, taking a step of his own towards her. “I am also being domineering. It is how I am. I think you will find my stance impossible to shift me from.”
Emily looked up at him slowly. “But why?”
Billionaire Brides: An Anthology Page 41
