by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose
“I’ve dated other girls.”
“But you haven’t liked them.”
And he was right. They’d been rich and pretty and utterly vacuous. Natasha was different.
“Okay, I’m an idiot,” I told Neil.
“I already knew that. What’d you fight about?”
“Just some stuff in her past. I wanted to know, and she didn’t want to tell me.”
“Oh.” Neil sounded like he suddenly understood. “You mean: she had a secret and you were being you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Obsessive and a pain in the ass.”
I gaped. “I’m not obsessive. I’m...thorough.”
“Which is awesome when you’re working but not good with fragile chicks.”
I thought about that. “I didn’t know she was fragile. Natasha’s fragile?”
“Everybody’s fragile, man.”
“Even you?”
“Maybe not me. Everybody else.”
I sighed. “Okay, okay. Stay out of her past. What else?”
“Call her.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Natasha
I had my head down, ass up, legs pumping hard on the pedals. I’d only been going for a few minutes, but I had the bike cranked up to maximum resistance and my muscles were already starting to protest. I hadn’t warmed up and was at real risk of tearing something, but I didn’t care.
Stupid, I told myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Thinking it could work. Thinking I could have a relationship. All I’d done was taunt myself—let myself have a taste of everything I’d been missing, making its loss all the more bitter. I’d let him get too close, let my attraction for him make me forget what I really was. And then, just as I deserved, it had all come tumbling down.
I pedaled harder, panting now. The whir of the bike rose and rose. I’d ride until my legs burned. Until I damn well did tear something, serve me right for—
My phone rang.
I knew it was him, but I grabbed it and checked the screen anyway.
I kept pedaling, staring at the phone as it rang and rang. I’d just keep going. He’d get the message eventually. Probably count himself lucky that he’d escaped without getting too deeply involved.
I was going faster and faster, my chest heaving, the air like lava. The phone kept ringing and ringing, about to go to voicemail. I gritted my teeth, waiting for it to ring off—
And then, without consciously doing it, I’d hit “Answer” and my legs stopped moving. I couldn’t speak for a second, I was so out of breath, so we both sat there listening to my labored panting.
“Natasha?” he said at last.
I didn’t answer. I had no idea what to say. I heard the bike’s flywheel slowly spinning down.
“Natasha?” he sounded worried, now. I could hear my heart thumping, and it wasn’t slowing down like it should.
“Nat—”
“What?” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded angry and afraid, like a wounded animal ready to lash out.
“I’m sorry.”
It almost made me angrier. Why did he have to be nice? This would be so much easier if I could be mad at him. But that was the worst part—I knew his intentions were good.
“I don’t think....” My eyes stung, and I told myself it was just sweat trickling into them. “I don’t think we should see each other again.”
“No!” So loud and forceful I jumped. “Natasha, no! I’m sorry. I’m sorry I pried. I just—I want to protect you.”
My eyes were getting hotter and hotter. I wiped them savagely with the back of my hand and it came away wet. He didn’t get it. He wanted to know who’d hurt me so he could be mad at them. When he discovered I was hurting myself, he’d be mad at me. And then, inevitably, he’d want to know why I did it, and if I told him that he’d hate me forever.
Better to end it now.
I realized I’d been silent for too long. “I don’t think it’s going to work out, Darrell.” I thought of losing him, of never looking into those deep, clear eyes again. Of never feeling the push of his pecs against my chest, smooth and warm and so solidly real. I could feel myself slipping away again, and now that I’d started to get used to my new anchor, I wasn’t sure the old one would work anymore. I could feel the hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Natasha....” I could hear that he was choosing every word very carefully. And somehow I knew that this was as new to him as it was to me, that he wasn’t used to this sort of conversation. The fact he was trying made my heart melt. “I love you. I promise I will never, ever, ask about your past again. OK? It’s off limits.”
I felt a little flicker of hope inside me and immediately tried to stamp down on it, because I knew I was kidding myself. This was Darrell, with his brilliant mind and his eyes that saw everything. There was no way he was going to leave it alone. Not forever. A week from now or a year from now, he’d need to know, and breaking it off then would hurt even more.
But...ending it now, when there was even the faint possibility of us being happy together...wasn’t that worse?
I could hear him at the other end of the line, listening. He could tell I was thinking. Maybe he could even tell I was crying. I could feel him bursting to speak, desperate to say the magic words that would fix everything, but not knowing what they were.
There weren’t any. I knew I couldn’t be fixed. I didn’t deserve to be fixed. And if I wanted to be happy, I had to be the one to make the leap. I had to decide if it was worth lying to him—every single day—and always having that distance between us, if it meant we could be happy.
“Okay,” I said, in a voice I could barely hear.
I heard him let out a long sigh of relief. We were both still edgy and nervous. The bridge we’d gradually built between us had been swept away, and all we had now was a slender rope that could snap at any time.
“Will you come to the party tomorrow?” He was reaching out into space. The party would be full of intimidating posh, rich people and as his date, I’d be the center of attention....
But I’d be with him.
I felt for that strong, warm mental hand and grasped it. “Yes,” I told him. “But I have to go now.” And I hung up, because I knew if I said even one more word I was going to break down completely. I looked down at the bike, but that wasn’t what I needed. I climbed off, legs aching and cramped, and collapsed on my bed. I didn’t want to cut, or pedal, or cry. I just lay there, staring numbly up at the peeling paint on the ceiling, and let it all sink in. What the hell, I asked myself, is going to happen now?
Chapter Twenty Five
Darrell
I was sitting down in the workshop—completely inappropriate, given that I was in a suit for the party, but upstairs, the caterers were bustling around with trays of canapés and glasses and in the garden the string quartet were tuning up. The workshop was the only place I could think. Normally, I’d have had the music cranked up loud to drown out my thoughts and memories, but I needed silence, needed to work through everything that had been happening. What struck me immediately was how weird it felt. I was starting to realize that I’d been cramming my mind full of work ever since my parents died, unwilling to stop for even one second.
Natasha was affecting me, right down to my very core. It was more than the way she moved, it was—okay, I know it sounds stupid, but it was her spirit. She was all gentleness and grace; I’d always been about brute force and speed. Maybe it was time I stopped. Maybe going at full speed had taken me somewhere I didn’t want to be.
I couldn’t think of the day it happened—it was too painful. But I could think of the days and months after. The police, and the American embassy, explaining that my parents had been targeted because of their involvement with the military. That the most likely suspects were anti-American extremists who’d chosen a soft target in the rich Arab state we’d been visiting instead of engaging troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. That they lived in the mountains, and that they’d taken
to sheltering in fortified caves that could withstand an initial missile strike, allowing them to escape before the next one.
I’d returned to the US and buried my parents. I’d expected the anger to decrease, but it only built. Days after the funeral, the same terrorists had attacked the airbase itself, and then an international school.
A week later, I’d returned to MIT and looked at the blueprint on my dorm room wall. I’d been working on a cheap, long-distance aircraft intended to bring disaster relief to remote areas of the world.
I’d grabbed the center of the blueprint and ripped it from the wall. And then I’d sat down at my computer and started designing something that would smash down into the cowards’ caves like the fist of God himself.
A month later, I’d taken my design to five different aerospace companies, and none of them had wanted anything to do with a messed-up college kid who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. And then a young research and development exec at Sabre had taken a look, and had flown all the way from Virginia to come and talk to me.
I can help you, Carol had told me. We need people like you, people who understand what it takes to win a war. She was so calming and loving, after months spent on my own. She’d told me, These people took your parents. Don’t ever forget that. And I never did.
Sometimes, I’d come up with ideas myself. More often, Carol told me about some problem Sabre were having, to nudge me in the right direction.
I hadn’t really admitted it to myself until that moment, but over the years, their requests had moved further and further away from things used to fight terrorists. I walked over to the prototype missile and ran my hand down its casing. It wasn’t designed to kill a handful of extremists hiding in a cave. It was designed to destroy a city, and its parent weapon, a country.
I sat down heavily. What had I become?
Chapter Twenty Six
Natasha
We could see gray storm clouds spreading just a few miles away, but the sky immediately overhead was postcard blue and the three of us soaked up the sunshine as we waited on the doorstep. Clarissa, looking like she belonged there, in a light, floaty dress that would have been at home at a polo match. Neil, who’d eventually let Clarissa persuade him to put on a shirt and a slightly less ragged pair of jeans. And me, in a dress borrowed from Clarissa, feeling completely out of place. It wasn’t as if I went to many parties, but a party in the middle of the afternoon, in a sundress?
We could hear classical music trickling in from the gardens behind the house, and when Darrell opened the door there was a waiter beside him offering us chilled champagne. I let Clarissa and Neil sweep in ahead of me and stood on the step with Darrell.
“Hi.” I didn’t know what else to say. The phone call suddenly seemed unreal, as if we needed to make up all over again in person, and I had no idea how to do that. I looked into those achingly clear blue eyes and I could see the pain he was in. He stepped in close, his hands coming to rest on my cheeks, and I had to tilt my head back to look up at him.
“I will never ask about your past again,” he told me solemnly, and pulled me into his chest. I rested my cheek against the solid wall of him, my arms around his waist, and slowly relaxed into him. All my doubts since the call gradually melted away.
When I finally pulled back, he gave me a glass of champagne and led me into the house by the hand, squeezing it gently. I squeezed back.
I hadn’t seen much of the gardens until now. They stretched out behind the mansion for a good half acre, with manicured lawns and winding, tree-lined paths—a good place to lose yourself for an hour or so. I tried to imagine Darrell walking in them and couldn’t. I suspected that, like the rest of the house, he saw them as just a freebie that came with the workshop.
A string quartet was playing under a sun shade and waiters circulated with chilled drinks and canapés. For the next two hours, I smiled and shook hands and occasionally kissed cheeks as Darrell introduced me to local dignitaries. I got the impression they weren’t so much friends as people he was expected to mix with. The conversation seemed to be a mixture of which charities people were donating too, which gallery opening they were attending and which ski resort they were vacationing at. I felt, just as I thought I would, completely out of place.
But his arm around my waist was all I needed to make it bearable. With it there, all the questions about dancing and Fenbrook and where I was from seemed polite, not threatening—why was it so hard when I was on my own? I rarely felt like I was in danger of panicking and sliding out of control, and on the rare occasion when someone asked something about my past and I felt myself start to go, I only had to press myself against the solidity of his arm and I was calm again. After a while, I even started to enjoy myself. I caught a few vicious little glances from a couple of ridiculously skinny girls when they saw me with Darrell. Exes? Or just hoping to try their luck? I nestled closer to Darrell. Tough. He’s mine and I’m keeping him!
As the party wound down, the storm clouds were almost overhead and everyone kept commenting on how lucky we’d been. Clarissa and Neil had spent most of the party bickering good-naturedly, with an occasional whisper from Neil making Clarissa suddenly gasp and blush. We both shook our heads as we looked at them.
“I can’t believe Clarissa’s found someone who can reduce her to silence,” I said.
“I can’t believe Neil’s found someone who can persuade him to put a shirt on,” Darrell told me.
The party was at an end and people were drifting off when we heard the voice behind us. “Well.” The accent was British and deceptively warm, with a layer of pure ice beneath it. “I’m guessing this must be Natasha.”
I turned. She was maybe ten years’ older than me, with long dark hair, and looked if anything more stylish than Clarissa in her sundress. Unlike me, she looked like she regularly went to garden parties—with the Queen.
“Natasha, this is Carol. She works for Sabre Technologies—they buy the stuff I make.”
Carol smiled at me. “Darrell’s our little star. We’ve been together for four years now.” She deliberately made it sound ambiguous and then made it worse by leaning over and kissing his cheek. “I’m really quite protective of him.”
I smiled sweetly while resisting the urge to rip her throat out. “You must know him very well, after four years.” Had he slept with her? She was a lot older than me, but very attractive....
“Oh, I know all his little foibles. I’m so glad he found himself a....” Her eyes flicked down my body. “Muse.” She somehow made it sound like “slut.”
Darrell took her by the elbow and steered her away. “I actually need to speak to Carol downstairs for a moment,” he told me. “Will you be okay?”
I wasn’t overjoyed at being left on my own, especially if it was so that he could talk shop, but I smiled. “Of course.”
I watched them walk into the elevator together. Darrell didn’t act like there was anything between them—not sexually, at least—but she sure did. And Darrell had been antsy as soon as she showed up, his face tight with worry. What was going on—and why wasn’t he telling me about it?
The house was emptying now, the string quartet putting away their instruments. I tried to find Clarissa, but couldn’t. I gave up and went to stand in the hallway, where I’d be more likely to see her when she came past. I leaned back against the staircase. A few moments later, something pushed against my back, and when I stepped forward, a door opened behind me.
Neil emerged from the storage closet, closing the door behind him. I looked at him, bemused. “What were you doing in there?”
The door opened again and Clarissa’s head popped out, looking both ways to see if the coast was clear and then blushing as she saw me. She slunk out, still in the process of tugging her dress down.
“You two are unbelievable,” I muttered. “At least sneak upstairs and use a bedroom!”
Clarissa sniffed. “It’s a billionaire’s house. I thought there might be a dungeon or something under
there.”
“Millionaire and he doesn’t—oh, forget it.”
“Are you coming back into the city with us?” she asked.
I hadn’t thought about that. After the fight and our make-up phone call, we’d only made the vaguest of plans. A night of just the two of us was exactly what we needed. “I’ll stay here.”
Unexpectedly, she gave me a squeeze. “Be careful.” And then she was gone, towing Neil with her.
I wandered the house as the last few guests drifted out, and then it was just the caterers and me. There was no sign of Carol or Darrell, and my stomach started to churn. It wasn’t that I thought they were doing anything, just...something about the woman put me on edge.
I rounded a corner and suddenly she was there in front of me, knocking back a glass of champagne, another one ready in her other hand. When she saw me, her eyes narrowed and she stalked over. “What bollocks have you been whispering in his ear?” she demanded.
“What?”
“Don’t what me: you know exactly what I’m talking about. Did you tell him you’d only spread your legs if he went peacenik? Did that bloody hippy have a hand in it, too?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but the part about spreading my legs made me want to slap her across the face. “Maybe you’d better leave.”
“Oh, it’s your house now, is it? Think you’ve snagged yourself a millionaire?” She got right up in my face. “Wait until your novelty wears off, sweetie. I’ve known him a lot longer than you and he’ll choose the work over the sex every time, and I don’t care how pretty your pirouettes are!”
She deliberately dropped her glass and let it shatter on the tiles. Then she was stalking out of the front door, staggering just a little in her heels. A moment later I heard a sports car’s engine roar into life and she sped off, far too drunk to be driving. With any luck, she’ll get pulled over, I thought viciously.
What the hell had she been talking about? Peacenik?!
I needed answers. I took the elevator down to the workshop.
