The Choice

by Alice Ward

  Likely, she was already well acquainted with his masterful tongue. And they’d have all night together. All night to make love, again and again.

  I heaved another sigh. Why did that sound like a luxury?

  And why, oh why, was I feeling so terribly envious?

  I cursed myself again, wondering what was wrong with me, and threw the car into drive. I was just preparing to pull out of my spot across the street when he stepped outside, tugging on his collar, only a few minutes after he’d entered.

  He was leaving her. He wasn’t spending the night, after all.

  A surge of victory coursed through me. So you don’t own him like you thought you did, rich bitch.

  But then it dissipated, and I was left feeling even more mystified than before. “Exactly who are you, Mr. Brice?” I murmured through the window.

  Heartbeat skipping, I pulled out of the spot, making an illegal U-turn to follow him. He didn’t go anywhere unexpected, simply headed right to his Delancey Place home. When he got out and the limo pulled away, I watched him fiddle with his keys at the top stoop before pushing open the door. When he closed it, I could see his silhouette through the stained glass. He tilted his head to the ceiling, ran his hands through his hair, and vised the back of his head, standing as still as a statue for the longest time.

  It looked, not just tired, but almost… sad. He stayed there so long that I knew he was deep in thought, and I had to wonder, for the hundredth time that night, what was on his mind. The one thing that came to me was this…

  He may have cared about her, but he didn’t love her.

  Cameron had passion. I’d seen it. But he had purpose too. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t fuck women unless there was something more there.

  I wished I could open up his head and find out what.

  When he started to the back of the house, I sighed. Out of sight. Then, light suddenly illuminated the windows on the side of the house. Then, more windows, toward the back of the house, as he must have been walking through the large home. I scanned the sidewalk, dimly lit by one small streetlight. While most of the houses on the street were sandwiched together, Cameron’s stood alone, with alleys on either side. There was a spindly black wrought iron gate to the right of his house, and a path, mostly covered in thick vegetation, leading into darkness.

  I squinted into the darkness. If I really wanted to, I could wander back there. But that would be stalking. And, likely trespassing, which was illegal.

  And beneath it all, I was a good girl who followed the law… mostly.

  I rubbed my hands together as I warred with myself, shivering, watching the windows, wishing he’d come back into the foyer so I could see him again. But moments passed, and I knew that I needed to be back there, with him.

  Screw the FBI. If I got caught, I would just claim I saw my cat run back there.

  I needed to see him again, just once more, and then I would go home.

  Making up my mind, I ripped off my seatbelt and pushed open the door. I was so focused on the idea that I didn’t realize I was crossing the busy street until a car zoomed past me at lightning speed, horn blaring. More cautious, I hurried onto the sidewalk, and checking to make sure the street was relatively empty, lifted the latch to the gate and quickly slid inside.

  It only occurred to me when I was inside the dark garden that he could’ve had a security system. I sucked in a breath, wondering if I would be caught there, effectively ending my dreams of joining the FBI forever. The light did nothing to help illuminate the way ahead. When an alarm wasn’t raised, I shuffled into total darkness on the uneven path, stubbing my Easy Spirits on raised bricks, once so badly I nearly cried out in pain. All the while, I kept my eyes trained on the windows up above, trying to make out Cameron’s form.

  The first room was draped in heavy reddish curtains. The only thing visible through them was the outline of light. But as I neared the room at the back of the house, I drew in a breath and held it.

  It was a large room with a high ceiling, and a wall of windows overlooking the yard. Cameron was standing there, his jacket and tie now off, his dress shirt open and untucked, holding a tumbler of amber-colored liquid. Scotch, I knew, the ridiculously expensive kind that probably cost more a fix than I had in my bank account. He was staring at something that seemed to be in the distance, but when I craned to see what, all I saw was a blank wall. He’d been concentrating on nothing, all in his head. Once again, I had to wonder what was going through his mind.

  Suddenly, he brought the glass down to the table in front of him with such force, I thought it would shatter. He unbuttoned the rest of the buttons on his shirt and shrugged it off, tossing it aside.

  I nearly choked at the sight of his naked, sculpted chest. He was lean, but with just enough of a rise in his pectorals and enough corded muscles around his arms to make him look, not like a god maybe, but better. More real. Even from that far away, I could tell he had the makings of a six-pack, that if he’d devoted as much time to working out as he did to the campaign trail, he could’ve easily graced the covers of fitness magazines. His skin was a pleasant, smooth caramel color, like the scotch he was so fond of. It seemed a sin to hide such beauty under the many layers that a three-piece suit provided. He strode across the room, at an angle toward me, in just his tuxedo trousers, and I ached to be in the room with him, to understand what he was thinking.

  Then he grabbed something off the wall. I moved farther down the path and an easel came into view. He was holding a paintbrush in his hand, staring at the canvas with eyes narrowed, partly in concentration, partly in anger.

  He paints, I thought dumbly, watching him stroke boldly over the canvas. How apropos. Apollo. The god of art.

  As he moved, drops of paint splattered on his bare chest, but he carried on, unfazed. He moved like a house afire — unstoppable, raw, sensual — like he was making love to the image in front of him.

  It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

  I couldn’t think. I could barely breathe or blink. It seemed so certain to me before that this man, this person who cared nothing about nature or the homeless and poor, would care nothing for beauty. I’d assumed he wouldn’t care for a thing unless it could make him rich.

  But god, he cared about this image in front of him. Desperately. If a gaze could set something afire, this one would’ve burned down his house.

  I knew I’d been out too long. I’d spent a shamefully long time following after Cameron Brice. If anyone knew, they’d certainly think me mad. But I had to go the step further.

  I had to know what he was painting. What had moved him so that he was in such a fever, lost completely in himself, in the image on the canvas. I inched forward into the rhododendron bushes until I was nearly able to reach out and touch the building’s brick façade.

  All at once, a white ghostlike form appeared in the periphery of my vision. Before I could react, it launched itself at me. The loudest of rolling barks stunned me, ripping through the quiet night. I jumped backwards, losing all sense of balance, my elbows and ass breaking my fall, sloshing through thick mud in the rain-soaked garden.

  “Shit!” I yelped, heart hammering as I scrabbled away on my heels and hands like a frightened crab as the massive ball of white fur leaped at me again, launching another series of ror-ror-ror-ror-rors at me.

  Luckily, the animal didn’t get closer, didn’t actually attack like his barks indicated he would. With relief, I noticed he really wasn’t the type of dog that would normally maul a person, more like the type that would lick a person to death. An Akita possibly. Heart hammering, I stumbled to my feet as the dog started to whine at me, and glanced up again at the window.

  Cameron was striding toward it, eyebrows arched in concern, obviously alerted by the sound.

  Shit.

  Without thinking, I dove headfirst into the rhododendrons. Branches scratched my face, and my forehead slammed against something hard. I crouched in position under the window, praying the dog would sh
ut up, and Cameron wouldn’t notice me there. I could see his shadow crowding out the light streaming through the window as he came near it, searching out the darkness in his small backyard. The dog circled the bush, and then whimpered and laid down, keeping a close eye on me. I watched the shadow in the window, sucking in a breath, wondering what the fuck I was doing. How would I explain this to him if I were caught? Answer: there was no explanation. Here I was, covered in mud in Cameron Brice’s backyard. What was I going to find here among his flowering plants? Illegal weeds?

  I’d definitely crossed the line to stalker, to a pathetic Peeping Tom.

  That was when I looked up and realized his shadow was gone.

  I heard a latch at the back of the house open up, and a light illuminated the back of the yard. I shrank back against the wall, into the shadows cast by the bushes, feeling like I might have a heart attack. A moment later, footsteps echoed down an outside wooden staircase.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” his voice sang out.

  The dog jumped to its feet, tail wagging like crazy, looking deliriously joyful as it raced to his master. I grabbed my knees to my chest and said a prayer as I peeked between the branches and watched him bend and scratch the dog behind the ears. I smiled as he talked to the dog, telling him what a good boy he was. I listened to the click of claws on the steps followed by slower footsteps. Then the click of the door. They were gone, and I could breathe again.

  The light flipped off, casting me in darkness. Gathering up what was left of my dignity, I quietly stole away to my car and sped toward home.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cameron

  The following morning, PETA activists began picketing outside my headquarters with signs that screamed LONG LIVE THE YELLOW-HORNED TOAD.

  At first, they merely sneered and called me names as I arrived. But on Friday, one of them, holding a sign with a picture of Kermit the frog — forgetting or disregarding that frogs and toads were two very different animals — threw a ceramic frog at me. It sounded mild, like a nothing thing, barely worth getting upset about. However, the damned thing hit me square in the corner of my eye. I’d like to think I had a high tolerance for pain, but it shot clear to my skull, momentarily blinding me, and it took all my self-control to not scream bloody murder at the guy on the sidewalk.

  No, instead, I bit my tongue as a true diplomat was trained to do, wove my way through the crowd, and threw open the door to the headquarters. It was times like this when I wished I’d conceded to my father and hired a security staff. But knowing I might one day be forever surrounded by secret service had made me put off that task as long as I could.

  My campaign workers were busy in the front room. They all looked up, awaiting my standard “good morning” greeting. Instead, I stalked past them without a look, clutching my eye, and slammed the door of my office behind me.

  The white of my eye was already turning bloodshot, thin red tentacle-like capillaries stretching for the iris, making me wince. I studied the injury closer, making sure there was no debris inside my eye, and cursed. My eye looked diseased, with a raw triangle of skin already starting to turn purple at my temple.

  “What happened?” my father asked, not bothering to knock as he barreled in, alerted to my presence by my less than subtle entrance.

  I grabbed a tissue from the desk and brought it to my eye, which had begun to tear. “What do you think?” I blinked again and again, surprised by how something so small could sting so much. “Ceramic frog. Eye. The rest is history.”

  “They’re just a bunch of tree-hugging assholes,” my father said, inspecting the injury. “And the mainstream media will cover the protest, rail on you for your heartless decision, but they won’t say a word about how those bleeding hearts nearly blinded you.”

  “Let’s not get carried away. It’s not a big deal.”

  “The hell it isn’t.” He strode to my phone and pressed the intercom. “Simmons. Get in here with an ice pack.”

  “Forget it. I’m fine,” I muttered. I wiped the wetness from my cheek and powered up my laptop. I knew I had meetings out the ass, which didn’t seem right for a Friday. Not that any of my Fridays, or Saturdays, or even Sundays these days were very clear. I checked the calendar. Sure enough, there was a meeting with the Building Association at nine, then one with the commissioner for education. And to make it even better, I had a troop of Brownie Girl Scouts coming in at noon.

  “Forget nothing. You need to get that seen to. We can’t have you in front of the camera today looking like you came in second in a prizefight.”

  I knew his interest was less fatherly concern and more his obsession with the image Cameron Brice displayed to the world. The worst thing a Brice could project, in my father’s eyes, was… Weak. Loser.

  And that’s just what this injury did.

  I looked up from my computer, then checked my watch. It was already nine. “Too late to move the meetings elsewhere. But I should have Bob cancel the Girl Scouts. It’s not safe for them.”

  My father rolled his eyes. “Fuck the Girl Scouts, boy. Do you understand the importance of these meetings?”

  I spoke through gritted teeth. “Of course I do.”

  “Environmentalist support was a long shot anyway. Let’s shore up our alliance with these people, and then those people outside won’t matter. I need to know you’re ready—”

  “Mr. Brice?” The intercom buzzed with Bob’s voice. “Your nine o’clock is here.”

  I studied my father stoically, waiting for him to finish his thought. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before, as he kept repeating the same directives to me over and over again, like I was his puppet on his string. My father just waved it away and let out a grumble of annoyance. I knew he didn’t think I was ready.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “We’ll be right there. And Mr. Simmons?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you postpone the Girl Scout troop event to the week after Memorial Day? Tell them I’m awfully sorry, but to apologize, I’ll be on hand to give them a personal tour.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  My father rolled his eyes and straightened his tie, and I knew what he was thinking. Fuck those Girl Scouts already! You have much bigger fish to fry. “I’ll hold the builders off. Get your shit together, and I’ll see you in there.”

  He threw open the door, preparing to walk out, but stopped short, held up by an obstacle in his way. He maneuvered around the barrier without a word. I looked up to see the new clerk huddled in the doorway, clutching a pile of towels and an ice pack to her chest, and chewing nervously on her bottom lip. She stood at the threshold for a long moment, waiting to be invited in. I motioned her toward me without a word.

  What was her name? I caught a glance at the front of her sweater when she placed the towels on my desk. Kittens… in… sweaters? It was so hideous, I doubted most thrift stores would take it. Her stringy hair fell in her face as she pushed her giant glasses up over the bridge of her nose and caught sight of my bruise. “Oh! Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said dismissively. My eyes trailed to her hands, which were just about the only part of her body left bare. The old lady outfit couldn’t hide that she had pretty hands, young hands, hands that did not belong in the picture she’d drawn of herself. Here she was, masquerading as a librarian of fifty when she couldn’t be a day over thirty. Perhaps she was even younger. I scanned up to her lightly pinked cheeks, watching them turn a deeper shade of red. Her skin was flawless, not a pore to be seen. It intrigued me, but I had a meeting to get to, and I was already in a bad mood.

  I reached for the ice pack, bringing it to my temple, and winced as an ice-cold shot of pain surged straight through my skull, making me see stars. “Ah, shit.”

  I felt a hand on mine, smooth and cool, prying the ice pack out from my fingers, and was surprised when I found her next to me. She smelled faintly of a scent I hadn’t come in contact with in forever... mothballs? My grandmother used to use those, I remembered with
a wave of nostalgia. What was it doing on her? Had she pulled her wardrobe from her grandmother’s closet?

  She motioned to me to sit on the edge of the desk, took one of the towels, wrapped it around the pack, and lifted it to my temple. It was tolerable that way. The pain soon subsided as she tended to it, gently patting the side of my head, my awkward little nursemaid. I noticed another dichotomy — she seemed shy and awkward but had confidence with an injury, as if she’d tended to many in her lifetime. Like Cassandra, with her imitation pearls, there was something about this woman that wasn’t quite hitting the mark, and again, I felt an inexplicable urge to unravel her layers. To see what was hiding under that hideous sweater.

  “Thanks,” I said, shifting on the edge of the desk in an effort to quell my cock’s sudden twitching. Her name came to me, and I fought to keep my expression benevolent rather than leering. “How are you, Miss Wilkes?”

  “Okay.” She heaved in a breath as she blotted the sore, and I could see beyond the spectacles for the first time, her blue eyes. Eyes as arresting as the woman I couldn’t get out of my mind. But unlike Cassandra, my little clerk wore no makeup although her lashes were long and sensuous on their own. I wasn’t doing a good job at not leering, obviously, because she cleared her throat and pointed outside. “That’s a nasty bruise, Mr. Brice. Did you fall?”

  I shook my head, smirking, and out poured the charm I usually saved for when I wanted to bed a girl. I had no idea why. “Got into a fight with a frog. Actually, turns out our friends outside are not really all that friendly.”

  Her eyes widened, but other than that, no reaction. No giggle, no coy blush. Oddly, she was as oblivious to my charm as she was to fashion. “The protesters? They hit you?”

  “Well, not exactly.” I took the pack from her and sat up. “People don’t like me that much. But you should know that.”

  She stopped blotting the bruise and blinked. “I should?”