“I’m sorry if I upset you,” Elena said, her voice soft.
“I’m not upset,” Neal said quickly. “I’m just… I guess I’m just thinking.”
He tried to collect his chaotic thoughts; they were going off in different directions. One thread pulled him towards his childhood, another one pulled towards memories of his father, another one pulled towards memories of George. There was a tiny voice in the back of his head that told Neal that they were all connected.
“My mother died when I was twelve,” he said suddenly.
Elena looked up in surprise. She had not expected that from him. She watched his face. He really was a good-looking man. He had good, strong features, but she noticed that his eyes were sad. She wondered if they had always been, or if she had only now paid enough attention to notice. She didn’t say anything, knowing how hollow anything she said would sound. Instead, she stayed silent and let him tell his story at his own pace.
“My mother… she was a stay at home mom,” Neal started slowly, “and she was a brilliant one. She was like a child herself sometimes. George was four years older than me, so he outgrew me pretty fast, and when that happened, Mom sort of filled in for him. She used to call herself ‘my honorary big brother’. We were really close.”
Elena smiled, but she was conscious of how sad a smile it was. She leaned over and placed her hand over Neal’s. Before he continued, he slowly changed its position so that they were holding hands. His voice was stronger when he started speaking again.
“When my dad started his business, it felt like I lost him too, but again, Mom was always there for me. We were together always, I used to consider her my best friend, and she used to say I was hers.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident,” Neal replied bluntly. “She was picking me up from school. She was never late. I knew something was wrong before anyone told me…. she was never late.”
Elena looked down at her hands because it suddenly got very hard to look at Neal.
“I took her death badly,” Neal said, his voice suddenly clipped. “I had to take time away from school. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I could barely function. Dad and George looked after me. They did everything so that my life would be easy, so that I would never have to worry about anything. I think they felt that I had enough of a burden to carry around after Mom’s death.”
He shook his head, as though he could clear it that way.
“After a while, the pain sort of… blunted. I couldn’t feel it as acutely, and slowly, things went back to normal. I went back to school, then college, and I tried to find something I liked, something I could see myself doing in the future. But nothing ever stuck, and I guess there wasn’t any pressure. I’d already received my inheritance, and I had my brother’s backing, and by then I was used to the perks and the luxuries, without the responsibility.”
He looked up tentatively at Elena, worried suddenly that he had just outed himself as a selfish, indolent fool who had just used his mother’s death to explain away his complete lack of drive.
“It’s not a good reason,” he tacked on abashedly.
“I don’t think that’s your reason at all,” Elena replied.
Neal looked at her, taken back by her statement.
“I think you adopted a shallow lifestyle to try and convince yourself that you were a shallow person,” Elena said bluntly.
“Why would I do that?” he asked in surprise.
“So that you wouldn’t have to analyze your life choices. So that you wouldn’t have to feel guilty about your lack of interest in the family business. So that you could numb the pain of your mother’s death.”
Elena said what she had to with a straight face and no expression. She felt for Neal, but she didn’t want to sit there and pretend like she believed what he was telling her. Neal processed Elena’s words. He tried to see if there was any truth to them. He couldn’t feel anything but confusion.
“It’s OK, Neal,” Elena’s voice was kind. “We don’t always understand ourselves. We cope the best way we can. You are a good guy, you’re just a little lost. We’ve all been there.”
Neal sighed and looked up, feeling drained. “Have you been lost? Somehow, I doubt that. I just can't see it in you.”
Elena laughed without humor. “Why… because I act like I have all the answers? Maybe that’s my coping mechanism.”
“Is it my turn, then?” Neal asked.
Elena shot him a questioning look.
“To ask a question?” Neal clarified.
Elena smiled and nodded.
“What is the real reason you accepted my insane proposal?”
“I wouldn’t have,” she admitted, “if it hadn’t been for the last two days that I spent with my family. My relationship with them – well, it’s been rocky, to say the least. You’re lucky to have had a family who was so supportive.”
“Even if it did more harm than good?”
Elena thought about that. “I think it’s about balance. Everything in life is about balance. My parents… well, they’re people you would call pretentious. They’re the kind of people who have their lives mapped out, and that includes their kids’ lives, too.”
“Ah,” Neal said, understanding, “let me guess. You refused to conform.”
“Actually,” Elena said, “I did try. I went to their stuffy parties, I mixed with their stuffy friends. I even had a boyfriend they approved of in high school.”
“Conformity didn’t work out for you?”
“It was too alien, I wasn’t happy, and in the end, I think I realized that I wasn’t asking for much. All I wanted was the freedom to choose what I wanted to do in life, and who I wanted to be.”
“They didn’t approve of sculpting?”
“I found sculpting in college,” Elena explained, “but when I told them that I was going to pursue a career in the fine arts, they were less than thrilled. They did everything they could to try and discourage me.”
“And when that didn’t work?”
“They told me they weren’t going to pay for my tuition.”
“Wow,” Neal said, “harsh.”
“I thought so too,” Elena replied, hurt coloring her voice for a second. “They gave me their reasons. All very logical; very reasonable. They told me that being a sculptor was a hard business. I would find it hard to support myself… so on and so on. All I really heard was that they didn’t think I was talented enough to be successful at sculpting.”
“What did you do?”
“I got a partial scholarship to a small arts college. In the end, it made almost no difference. I’m still paying off student loans.”
“Not for long,” Neal reminded her.
She nodded.
“And that’s why you accepted me, to pay off your loans?”
“No,” Elena replied honestly, “I accepted you because I’m too proud to admit to my parents that they were right. Sculpting – well it hasn’t panned out for me. I can’t make ends meet and I can’t afford not to. I would have had to move back in with my parents, and moving back in with them means allowing them to control my life. So taking that into account, my only option was to accept your offer.”
“They’re that bad, huh?” Neal asked seriously.
“Did I mention I have a twin sister?”
“Really? Identical?”
“No,” Elena replied, “but she’s everything that I’m not. She’s the perfect daughter and I’m the disappointment. Everything I do, well, when I do it, I know I’m being compared to her, and I know I shouldn’t care what they think… but they’re my parents. I want their approval, no matter how much I say I don’t care about their opinions.”
“Maybe one day they’ll realize what you're really worth,” Neal said comfortingly.
Elena gave him a sad smile. “I don’t think they’re the type to realize anything.”
“Well, maybe one day… you’ll have someone in your life who's important enough to you that their opinions wil
l become irrelevant.”
Elena smiled. “Fingers crossed.”
They were sitting close together, their hands still linked. Neal was suddenly aware of their intertwined fingers. Without over-thinking, he acted on instinct and a suddenly strong desire, and leaned towards Elena. His lips caught hers as he made the decision. She didn’t pull away. Neal tilted his head to the side, drawing her in for a more intimate kiss. She came to him willingly; her body was soft and pliant against his own.
Elena felt none of the discomfort she had felt earlier in the day, in his room. Now, all she felt was the unexpected closeness that came from sharing thoughts that you had never said aloud before. His body was hard against her own, his hands were calloused and sure, as they moved up and down the curve of her back.
As the kiss deepened, Elena felt desire slowly build up inside her. She moved her hands beneath his t-shirt and felt the hard wall of his stomach. Her hands on his skin seemed to act as a trigger. He pulled at her blouse, and at the same time, they stumbled away from the kitchen, towards the large sofa.
They fell together onto the sofa, Elena first, and then Neal on top of her. She wasn’t sure if her shortness of breath had to do with the fall or the feel of Neal’s lips on her neck and shoulders. Slowly, deliberately, Neal removed her clothes, one by one, until she lay naked beneath him. He got off her for a moment, and rid himself of his own clothes.
When he settled on top of her again, he was as naked as she was. He started kissing her again, moving his lips from her neck to her breasts, and then to her stomach.
Clutching at his hair, Elena tried not to wonder how he had come to be so sure and confident as a lover. She tried not to think about all the women he must have been with to have perfected his style so well. Elena reminded herself that she had no right to have such thoughts at all. This was not a relationship, it was a business deal.
She closed her eyes and reminded herself of the reasons why she was even doing this at all. She wanted to be free, and the only way to achieve freedom in this world was financial stability. She couldn’t stomach moving back in with her parents, she couldn't stand admitting to them that they had been right all along. She was a failure.
She wondered if accepting Neal’s deal was a failure in its own right. She questioned her own sanity in agreeing to it at all, then he entered her, pushing his erection deep inside her, his breath mixing in with her own, his lips on her mouth, on her neck, on her breasts, and she wondered if she were doing the right thing.
It was hard to remember anything at all, the way they were entwined together, skin to skin, no distance between them. Even as her breath quickened and small uncontrollable gasps escaped her, and an orgasm consumed her, Elena lay there, praying that this wasn’t simply the desperate act of a lost woman.
Chapter8
They had fallen asleep on the couch. Neal woke up in the middle of the night, with the the moonlight streaming in through his French doors. Elena had been asleep, but she moved around a lot, mumbling inaudibly in her sleep from time to time. She seemed to be dreaming. Neal had picked her up as gently as he was able to and carried her to his bedroom. After settling her into bed, he threw a blanket over her and walked back into the living room.
Neal knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep at this point. His mind was wide awake and his body felt strangely alive, but his thoughts were troubled. He was starting to doubt the success of his plan. So many things could go wrong. Elena could take a long time to get pregnant. She might not get pregnant at all. The doctor he had found to alter the paternity test might back out at the last minute. So many factors counted and so many little strings, all pulling in different directions.
Neal had looked at the situation from every angle, but Harry had explained everything to him. The codicil was airtight. The only way the family fortune could stay in the family was if George had a child. Neal tried not to feel too hurt by the fact that he wasn’t the next logical inheritor after his brother’s children, but he forced the hurt from his mind; he knew he had no right to it. He had never been interested in the company and he had said so on many different occasions.
A small part of Neal was forced to admit that perhaps refusing interest in the company was his way of punishing his father for being so absent in his life. After all, all that time spent away from him, was time spent nurturing the business. Again, Neal felt a wave of shame. His pettiness surprised him and he suddenly remembered what Elena had told him that evening.
Neal wondered if she was right. If embracing a shallow life had been an attempt to turn himself into a shallow person, and if that were the case, he wondered if it had succeeded. He looked back on his life the past year, and he had to admit that perhaps he was. Neal went to the little side table where he kept his keys. He opened the left drawer and stared at George’s house key innocently sitting there.
He hadn’t been able to summon the courage to visit his brother’s house since news of the plane crash had been announced. He felt nauseous every time he thought of going. Neal sat outside on his modest terrace, and watched the sun come up. Then he closed his eyes and thought of his brother.
“Neal?”
Neal turned around to see Elena by the open sliding door. She had put her clothes back on, and her hair was disheveled. She looked very young, standing there in his doorway, looking at him through squinting eyes.
“You’re up early,” he commented, getting up and walking back inside.
She went in and sat on one of the bar stools.
“I didn’t sleep very well,” she admitted, trying to rub the exhaustion from her eyes, “but your bed was amazing. So comfortable.”
“You should go back to it, try and get some more sleep then,” Neal suggested.
“I can do that in my own apartment.” Elena reminded him.
“Is your bed better than mine?”
She smiled. “It isn’t.”
“Then you should stay.”
“But –"
“Listen,” Neal said, cutting her off as he walked to his drawer and picked out his spare key, “take this. You can come back later in the day.”
“You’re giving me your spare key?”
“I trust you.”
Elena smiled. “What are your plans for the day?”
“I have to head into Hargrove Brothers for a little while this morning, but I’ll be back by one.”
“So,” Elena said uncertainly, “should I come back around that time?”
“Yes. Maybe it would be best if you moved in for a little while.”
Elena raised her eyebrows.
“Just until you’re pregnant,” Neal clarified quickly, “it’ll make things easier. We’ll need to have sex as much as possible in the next few days.”
Neal might have laughed if the situation had not been so very desperate. Elena considered his offer for a moment and then nodded in agreement.
“I’ll bring a bag over when I come back this evening.”
***
Cliff was already in the board room when Neal walked in. His expression was sanguine and calm and that made Neal’s blood boil. He couldn’t help noticing that Cliff sat in George’s chair.
“Wrong chair, Cliff,” Neal said bluntly.
“I was just trying it out,” he replied, trying to make light of the situation.
“A little premature though,” Neal said through gritted teeth.
“There’s no need to get upset, my boy,” Cliff said, rising from his seat. “I didn’t think about it before I sat down.”
“A little insensitive of you, don’t you think?” Neal countered, unwilling to let it go.
Cliff put up his hands in surrender and moved to his usual seat.
“This is a hard time for us all, I understand how you must be feeling.”
“You have no idea how I’m feeling.” Neal spat.
“We all loved George, Neal,” Cliff said with an infuriating calmness.
“Is that right?” Neal asked, “Then why is it th
at this whole damn board is so eager to declare my brother dead?”
“It’s procedure –"
“Screw procedure,” Neal said with venom. “This is his company. My father built it up from nothing and my brother helped it grow. How is it right that it passes to you and a bunch of strangers?”
“We’ve been here a long time Neal,” he said with exaggerated calm. “Some would argue that we've been here much longer than you.”
Neal recoiled as though he had been struck. “Meaning I have no right to the company?”
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