Getting Even

by Avril Tremayne

  In fact she’d not only take it, she’d give it—lob whatever he gave her right back at him twice as hard. She’d fuck him not only off his damn feet but into orbit! She’d bring him to his knees and make him beg, just like he’d dared her to do.

  Revenge—served sizzling hot. And she would count her path to success in the mirror image of her body every morning when she woke up tenderized and love-bitten.

  So for now, she wouldn’t wash the smell of him off her. She’d leave everything on her for him to see when he returned from his run, and let things unfold from there.

  She went digging around in her suitcase for a come-fuck-me-immediately outfit, but had to admit a swift defeat: there was nothing in there that would incite anything but fashion admiration. How could it be that she had only one immodest item? And she hadn’t even packed it—it was an old, pale blue T-shirt of Piers’s that he’d refused to throw out even though it was threadbare, a leftover from one of their weekends away.

  She slipped it over her head and returned to the bathroom mirror. After a gazillion turns in the washing machine, it was thin enough to be almost transparent, so that not only was the jut of her nipples against the cotton obvious but the color of them was vaguely visible, too. The hem hit above mid-thigh and the neck was so wide it slid completely off one shoulder. It gave the illusion of being both there and not being there. And she figured all she had to do was leave off her bra and panties and Rafael would be on her in a split second.

  “Okay,” she breathed out as she left the bathroom—and that’s when she noticed the hot-pink flash of her evening purse. She distinctly recalled dropping it on the floor downstairs but now it was placed neatly on top of a perfectly folded gray T-shirt on the armchair—Rafael’s T-shirt, the color he always wore under his dress shirts. The sight of the two items sitting so innocently together made butterflies erupt in her tummy, ruining her femme-fatale buzz. She told herself it was no big deal that her purse was on top of his T-shirt. But it felt...wrong. Because it felt...right.

  She looked around the room, looking for other evidence of domesticity, but there was nothing. Unless he’d brought her dress up, too...? If he had, he would have hung it neatly in the wardrobe. So...

  She approached the wardrobe the way someone would look for a concealed serial killer, which she knew was ridiculous, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She paused with her fingers on the door handle, telling herself it didn’t matter if her dress was in there. Then she opened the wardrobe—and decided it mattered all right, because it was hanging next to Rafael’s shirt.

  Her hand came up to rub over her heart. It was somehow more shocking to be confronted by the non-sexual intimacy of their clothes hanging together in a wardrobe than it had been to be tied to the bed. It hurt her to see it. Made her...homesick. And there was no point in missing what they’d once had because that had been a TV sitcom fantasy. Her dreams of riding off into the sunset with him on that motorcycle had been so...so stupid! As if it would ever have lasted! It couldn’t have lasted. It couldn’t. It couldn’t! She truly believed that, she had to believe that, because otherwise... Ooooh God, otherwise, she’d made a terrible mistake.

  It hit her, quite suddenly, that that was the real reason she was here in this cottage with Rafael. Revenge—yes. To take a walk on the wild side once more—sure. To feel alive, to...to have him again—of course. Closure—absolutely. But more than anything, she needed affirmation. She wanted not to have made a mistake in letting him go.

  Her legs were giving out once more, sending her staggering over to grab that bedpost again. But her eyes were drawn inexorably back to the open wardrobe. One shirt, one dress, two lives.

  Te amaré por siempre, Verónica.

  I will love you forever.

  She could still see his stricken face as he’d said it.

  She remembered that first phone call he’d made the next day. How every drop of blood in her had coalesced in her heart, swelling it until it almost burst as she’d let the call go to voice mail before deleting the message unheard.

  She remembered burning his letter, blocking his emails. She remembered that fledgling seed of hope, germinating in her dying soul, after her first divorce, wondering what she’d say if Rafael tried again to contact her. The long, deafening, agonizing silence that eventually convinced her she’d lost him forever. Scarlett’s painful sympathy. The rush into a second marriage while she was still mourning...

  No!

  She pushed away from the bedpost, went over to the wardrobe and closed it. She’d make sure Rafael knew she didn’t need him to pick up after her the way he once had. She didn’t need to...to mingle with him. She just needed him to fuck her—and not good but bad.

  To which end—where was he? They had thirteen days and she was going to use them, goddamn it—starting now!

  She hurried from the room, down the stairs...and pulled up short as a series of low curses in Spanish floated out from the kitchen.

  She visualized the room, which was separated into two distinct areas by a granite-topped island bench: a small cooking space and a larger dining area dominated by an old scarred table with four chairs. Where would Rafael be? In the kitchen making the strong coffee she could smell, or at the dining table drinking it? Not that it was important, except insofar as she wanted to position herself for maximum power over the moment.

  More Spanish—most of it indecipherably fast—but three phrases she could translate. Ella es patética—she is pathetic—Esto es una mierda—this is bullshit—and then Ella me va a matar—she’s going to kill me.

  Which sounded like a perfect line upon which to enter.

  Up went her eyebrows. On went her smile. She took a deep breath, inhaling fumes from her body that were probably akin to the stench of an eighteenth-century whorehouse, and in she went.

  “Morning,” she said as though she’d spent every night since he’d left her in a sexual foment and it was therefore no big deal to see a hot guy in the kitchen in the morning.

  Rafael, who’d obviously been intent on rising from his chair at the dining table, jerked as though he’d been Tasered and promptly collapsed back into it—score one for Piers’s T-shirt, and two for her nipples, which snagged his immediate attention and held on fast. Excellent!

  “Holy fu—sh—he—” he said as she reached the table. But instead of finishing that thought with the “fuck,” “shit” or “hell” he was obviously trying to choose between, he swallowed hard, gave his head a small shake and dropped his eyes to the two piles of paper in front of him.

  The pile on his left had the type faceup, the one on his right had the type facedown—so he was reading what had to be his manuscript left to right. Brilliant deduction, Dr. Watson.

  “Stomp?” she asked, and came forward to take a seat opposite him.

  He jumped in his seat. His eyes came up as far as her chest then dropped again. He started shuffling the pages together. “Yeah but...I’m not...sure I’m happy with it.”

  “I can read it today if you like.”

  Up came his eyes again—all the way to her face. “What?”

  “Um, I can read it?” she said. “As in it’s my job? You know, as your editor? I can give you an opinion, make some suggestions, write you some notes...?” She stopped there because he’d moved past startled and on to appalled. Regroup. “I am going to be editing the book in three weeks. You will get revisions. Unless it’s the Mona Lisa of manuscripts—an untouchable masterpiece. Don’t tell me you’ve never had revisions before!”

  “No—yes.”

  “Con-fu-sing.”

  “I mean yes, you’re going to be editing it and yes, I’m expecting revisions. But Bryan’s reading it and so I’d rather...I’d rather wait for his feedback and then if I have to make changes...” He trailed off, cleared his throat. “What I’m saying is I’d rather give you the next draft.”

  She watched
him for a minute as he kept shuffling the pages. What he said made perfect sense...and yet it didn’t. She was here and he was here and the book was here, and she’d read his stuff all through college—so what was the real problem? “You used to let me read your early drafts,” she said.

  He stopped shuffling but this time didn’t raise his eyes. “That was in college. College...was a long time ago.”

  “Seven years, two months, three weeks and six days, to be precise,” she said dryly. “But I can still recall you and I having an animated discussion about Catch & Keep, which I’m guessing became Catch, Tag, Release. That was two days before graduation. And you were stuck at chapter fifteen with a case of writer’s block.”

  “I’m not...stuck.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t sure how the epilogue was going to come together.”

  “It’s more a choice of...alternatives.”

  “Maybe I can help you choose.”

  No response, except for him putting the manuscript pages, all in one pile, facedown on the table.

  Oh for fuck’s sake! “Okay, the offer’s there,” she said, giving up. “If Bryan finishes early and you change your mind, let me know.”

  “He won’t finish early. He...he’s going to talk to me when he’s here for the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival next week—the twenty-fourth.”

  “Fantastic. I’ll come along. I don’t know why I didn’t think of going myself.”

  He shifted in his chair. “I thought you wanted to keep things between us confidential.”

  “Yes, but all Bryan needs to know is that I’m editing your book—he doesn’t need to know what else we’re doing. We could be just...well...old college friends, both in the business, both here post-wedding, who decided to go to the festival together.”

  “He’ll know,” he said.

  “Not if we don’t tell him.”

  “Don’t be so fucking naive, Veronica.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m looking at you sitting there, and you know what I’m thinking?”

  “No,” she said, but that throb between her thighs was calling her a liar.

  “I’m thinking I should be writing erotica, because I can see myself dragging you over here and unzipping my jeans and impaling you on my cock. I’m thinking of the sex scene I just read in Stomp—the hero, Alejandro, bending Hope, the heroine, over the couch and taking her from behind—and wondering if perhaps I should try it with you just to refresh my memory of what it was like when I did that to you that night in DC when we had the place to ourselves.

  “I’m thinking of taking you out into the moors and laying you down on the heather and putting my head between your legs and licking you until you come. I’m thinking about you in the shower with me, sucking my cock, and watching you swallow my cum. I’m looking at that love bite I left on your neck and I’m thinking I’d like to rip that T-shirt off you and suck your nipples even harder than I did last night and mark you there, as well. I’m thinking about taking you every damn way you could possibly imagine, and if you think anyone who knows me is going to see me with you and not realize that...?” He laughed. “Well, let’s just say Bryan isn’t an idiot.”

  He stopped there—and it was just as well because they were both breathing hard and she dared not move or she really might have crawled across the table to get to him.

  She cleared her throat. “I still don’t see why that would be a problem if we—”

  “He knows your father, Veronica. What will you do if he drops a hint there?”

  She held her breath. Would she care? No. Would her father care? Hmm. Yes, actually, because he’d wanted to beat Rafael to a pulp for hurting her in the first place. “You win,” she said on that blown-out breath. “I won’t come. Happy?”

  “Ecstatic!” he said and got abruptly to his feet. “I’ll make your coffee—there’s one of those fancy pod machines.”

  As he strode into the kitchen, she had to admit he had a point about people being able to tell what was going on, because if anyone saw her watching his ass in those pale blue denim jeans that fitted him like a second skin, with two fingers over her mouth to stop her tongue from rolling right out of it? Well, she figured they’d know all right.

  A minute and a half later he slid a cup across the table to her and then lingered on his side of the table as though undecided whether to sit.

  She took a tiny sip, discerned it was her usual double espresso with the tiniest drop of milk and precisely half a teaspoonful of sugar. The simple fact of his remembering how she took her coffee had her closing her eyes, remembering other times when they’d sat drinking coffee and talking about books—and more specifically Catch & Keep. Going through it chapter by chapter, her giving him suggestions, all of which he’d consider, some of which he’d push back against, some he’d incorporate, some he’d ignore. How could he remember how she took her coffee yet forget the ease with which they’d worked together on that story?

  She could only have closed her eyes for a brief moment, but when she opened them, he was back in the kitchen. She looked to where Stomp had been sitting on the table and saw it was gone. Hidden away.

  He returned to the table and put a plate heaped with toast slathered in peanut butter down in front of her. Another memory—this was the usual Sunday breakfast he used to prepare for her. Energy food, he’d say, because he’d always want to go back to bed afterward.

  She looked at it and found she didn’t want to eat it. “If you’d woken me when you came back from your run,” she said, “I’d have made bacon and eggs while you were in the shower.”

  “A few problems with that. No run. I showered at five o’clock. The destruction of the planet wouldn’t have woken you. And you can’t cook.”

  “Like you said, college was a long time ago.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means when you set up house with someone, you learn to cook.”

  “You set up house with me and you didn’t cook.”

  “I set up house with you but also Matt and Romy when we were students. And with Romy there... Well, you know what she was like. The kitchen was her domain.”

  He looked toward the window then back at her. “You’re saying you learned to cook for your husbands.”

  “For myself,” she corrected. “And, to be honest, I’m not great at it, but the basics I can manage. I can certainly make bacon and eggs—scrambled eggs, anyway. When I fry them I always break the yolks. I can make pancakes, too. Although Simeon says—”

  “I assumed you’d have a home chef,” he said, cutting her off.

  “Really?” she said, bristling. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you made a wrong assumption.”

  “Your parents have a chef.”

  “That’s their choice and mine is not to. But if it’s important to you that the woman you’re having a two-week fling with—the woman who’s sitting across from you all but flashing a Let’s Fuck sign at you—knows how to cook and therefore doesn’t need a chef, I’ll prove it to you. I’ll cook for you every night we’re here. How’s that?” She threw up her hands. “So come on, place your order. Don’t ask for beef Wellington or coq au vin or osso buco Milanese. But good old American meatloaf, grilled steaks, spaghetti Bolognese I can manage. Or maybe you’d like—”

  “What did they like?”

  “Who?”

  “Piers. Simeon.”

  “Piers likes chili. Simeon is more into—”

  “Chili’s fine. Chili is just. Fucking. Fine.”

  Pause. She saw that his hands had clenched into fists on the table, and those fists were practically pulsing—clench, relax, clench, relax.

  “What’s wrong, Rafael?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, and shoved himself away from the table. “Every fucking thing is just fucking fine.”

  He got to his
feet and stalked into the kitchen, where he stood rigid with his back to her.

  Veronica’s first impulse was to go to him, to put her arms around him from behind and just hold on. But she battled the urge back because that’s exactly what she would have done back when she’d loved him. And she didn’t love him now. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. She hadn’t spent the past seven years, two months, three weeks and six days kissing that voodoo doll on the mouth and saying There, there, I won’t hurt you. She’d stuck pins in it, wanting to inflict the pain, to pass her pain on to him, because it was his fault she was in agony!

  So she stayed where she was and the moment stretched while she tried to find a response. And when he sighed and turned toward her looking so tired, she felt her resolve waver and knew she had to attack or she’d lose this battle.

  “Well, it’s a good thing nothing’s wrong, Rafael, because I’m calling my boss tomorrow and after that, this deal of ours will be set in stone from my perspective.

  “So let me say this—if you have an issue—any issue at all—with me working on your book—and I’ve got to say that’s the impression you’re giving me this morning—now’s the time to tell me. If working with me is the problem, I’ll get another editor assigned to you. But if it’s the Johnson half of the Johnson/Charles connection that’s worrying you, and God knows you never gave my father the time of day, so I’m guessing that’s a hot contender here...” She shrugged—shoulders and hands. “Then we have some serious renegotiating to do.

  “Because the way I see it, we’re one night in and I’ve already started fulfilling my side of the bargain. I said no to nothing last night, not one thing. Now don’t get me wrong, a book’s forever whereas what we’ve got happening is short-term, and I’ll understand if you’ve changed your mind and want to take your book elsewhere, go to auction with it, whatever.” She leaned across the table. “But if you have changed your mind, I’m going to want to know how you propose to pay me back for last night. Because—sorry to labor the point—college, long time ago. At college, I was with you out of love. Last night, I didn’t do what I did for love, I did it for Stomp.”