Love Me Later

by Libby Rice

  Flexing his jaw, he rubbed at the bruise that proved exactly what a disruption Scarlet would be. When he’d sensed her during the fight—a sting of awareness sliding over the skin—his focus had shifted. Being in a ring with a guy trying to beat the shit out of him hadn’t changed a thing. He’d broken stride to search her out, opening him to the heaviest hit he’d taken in weeks.

  “Interesting.” The sardonic observation drifted over Lissa’s shoulder before she turned to face him, walking backward at a leisurely pace. Her glance worked him over like a pellet gun buffeting every inch of his body. But when her eyes met his, her narrowed gaze said she hadn’t seen anything worth the price of admission. “Manly, too,” she sniped. “Or not.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You obviously have a point—”

  “And smart. What a prize.” She rolled her eyes at that bit of inflammation. “You’ve let a woman who wears Carolina Herrera to prizefights wander away. In the dark. Alone.”

  Lissa’s meaning sank deep, farther and faster than he would have preferred. He saw himself letting Scarlet flee into the night, allowing her that brazen farewell in the face of his fake indifference, both of them ignoring what they really wanted.

  Despite the reasons to steer clear—fights to win, degrees to get, a company to launch—need flashed beneath his skin, a pulsing realization that stiffened his body and slowed his steps.

  A fraction of the judgment lifted from Lissa’s gaze. “Like I said, manly and smart.”

  Mindless talking had eaten up blocks that could have been spent seeing Scarlet to her car. Home. Anywhere private. A long line of women, starting with his own mother, had quietly called him overprotective.

  He’d made peace with the title, saw it as a compliment. Jerking to a stop, he spoke to the others over Lissa’s head. “I’m out. Not hungry.” Before anyone gave voice to their knowing smirks, he turned and jogged the other direction.

  Scarlet was about to join the ranks of the overprotected.

  ******

  A gust of Atlantic wind bristled over Scarlet’s exposed legs, and she shivered through a dose of longing for her college condo on the West Coast, all sunbaked tile and terracotta warmth. She sped up, moving as fast as her three-inch heels could navigate the patches of inky ice glinting on the sidewalk. One block down and another to go. As she clipped along, clenching her pepper spray in a bloodless fist, she chastised herself for being careless, muttering inane observations about the area in an effort to fill the silence. The empty words simply misted into the ether.

  Panting, she considered removing her shoes for a mad dash. Instead she slowed, then went still, listening to make sure her heels didn’t mask sounds she needed to hear.

  The street appeared empty. Nothing but stoic warehouse fronts, their corrugated doors flickering in the light of a few buzzing street lamps. No movement. Not a hint of sound. She hadn’t thought it possible for New York City to fall silent. The calm only bred agitation.

  Relief bloomed at the sight of familiar red paint. She sucked in the deep breath her shallow rasps hadn’t allowed and skated across the parking lot, grappling for her driver’s-side door, congratulating herself on the simple, but rare, act of walking to her car unaided.

  Heavy footfalls sounded out of the eerie quiet. Before she could react, a rough shove between the shoulder blades slammed her chest first against an old Ford pickup parked in the next space. Rough edges dug into her ribs.

  A gloved hand spun her around, and she gazed up into the blinding beam of a flashlight. Disoriented, Scarlet saw nothing beyond a glowing orb rimmed with absolute blackness.

  But she could hear, and worse, she could feel. The man leaned in close and spoke in a gritty, unrecognizable whisper. “Throw the fucking vegetable spritzer.” She soundlessly ditched the pepper spray. “The bag, too.” She tossed again.

  Gripping the slick, oily edges of her courage, it dawned on her to struggle… to call out. Fight. Go for the eyes. Had Lissa and Matt and—please God—Ethan, walked this way?

  The guy must have sensed her mental rally because he reached up and squeezed her jaw below the ears, using the leverage to crack her head against the frozen window of the truck, hard. “Good girl,” he said, compressing her small face in his hand. “What else?”

  What else? The light above focused in and out… in and out, through a lens she couldn’t control. She blinked, then forced a squint. Still nothing.

  The pain in her face receded to a terrible numbness before he shifted his grip to her chin and forcibly turned her face to the Maserati. “See the pretty car, Empress. What else?” His free hand went to her pockets, skimming over her hands before jerking a bracelet from her wrist.

  Empress. “Ethan?” she choked. “Don’t.” Tears leaked from beneath closed lids. Not him.

  “Not used to this, are you, Empress? You’re used to the win, like me.” His voice was guttural. “Perhaps this time you’ve strayed too far from Daddy’s penthouse.”

  He grazed a fingertip along the shell of her ear. The almost-gentle caress was her only warning before a sharp, malicious agony flooded the side of her face. She cried out. Her mother’s diamond earring moved into her blurred peripheral vision. It shimmered with a trace of blood that gleamed in the glow of the flashlight. Muscles locked, her every nerve ending awaited his next move. The sting came fast when he ripped the other locking stud to freedom.

  Whimpering in the aftermath of the excruciating pain, she kept her gaze downcast, staring dully at the familiar jeans in the murky fringe of light. Like before, Ethan’s too-light attire didn’t prevent him from putting off waves of heat. Only now, his warmth didn’t comfort.

  That kiss. The embrace beneath the awning. They’d been worse than lies.

  Though the light never faltered, his hand again momentarily left her face. This time, harsh steel took its place. Saying nothing, he slid the flat side of a freezing blade across her cheek and down her throat. Then, slowly, he began to slice the buttons along the seam of her coat.

  Scarlet clenched, bracing for the violation that would come next. But Ethan didn’t cut away any more clothing. Once the buttons were gone, he used his knife-hand to nudge the edges of her coat outward. Scarlet relaxed imperceptibly. Too soon.

  “This will hurt, Empress,” he said softly. “A little pain to show I always win.”

  He kissed her cheek as the knife punctured her party dress and kept going… slowly… until it bottomed-out deep within her lower abdomen. Working an airless scream, Scarlet almost convinced herself the adrenaline would mask the pain, but a clenching misery hit as he extracted the blade with jerky movements.

  She murmured Ethan’s name one last time before her world slipped away.

  ******

  Gone.

  Relief eased Ethan’s balled fists when he didn’t see Scarlet or her Maserati in the lot. Probably halfway back to paradise by now. Yet a vague sense of foreboding remained.

  Despite her absence, he loped forward across the expanse of lined pavement, which was empty save an old pickup and a beat-up Toyota sedan. Nothing out of place. At the other end, he turned his tired ass around, heading for the subway.

  He saw her hair first. A bright stream of blonde, too beautiful to touch the filthy pavement, streamed out beneath her shoulders. She lay crumpled on her side beneath the passenger door of the truck he’d ignored.

  Like a shot, he charged for Scarlet’s prone form. A few steps out, he bent and scooped up a petite canister. Rolling the cold metal in his palm, he recognized a lipstick-sized mace spray. He winced, feeling the aluminum give in his fist. Like her, the package was shiny and colorful and, unfortunately, fragile. Purple, of all things.

  Shoving the spray into his pocket, he crouched next to her, blood pounding at his temples. Icy sweat froze over the long slide down his face, becoming part of the frigid landscape.

  She might be fine, a run-of-the-mill carjacking, and she hit her head.

  But her little body curled into itsel
f. Reaching out, he hovered a hand over her slumped form, then pulled away. Bruises marred the pale skin of her face and jaw, but otherwise he couldn’t gauge her injuries. Too much black. Keeping his touch feather light, he brushed along her chest and stomach, the only side he could access without shifting her torso.

  Jesus. Blood-stained fingers wavered in front of him. A lifetime of transferring the fear in his mother’s eyes to the coward who’d put it there, and he’d let this ethereal beauty go it alone. He might as well have done the damage himself.

  He tucked her coat inward to block the wind. “Hold on, Empress.” She couldn’t hear his strained plea, but the appeal gave him hope, let him pretend she’d grant his wish. Fumbling for his phone, he managed to dial 911, clutching her chilled fingers while he talked to dispatch.

  Huddling beside her, he wrenched himself under the truck to curl around the slope of her spine in a silent offer of warmth. Of comfort. And he waited, the whole time stroking the sunshine of Scarlet’s blonde curls and praying to a God he didn’t believe in that she’d be okay.

  Chapter 3

  June—New York City

  Nine years later…

  Water and conditioner sluiced over wet lace. Glancing to her chest, Scarlet smoothed a palm over her breasts to rinse any remaining soap from the bra stretched across her skin. Steam molded the delicate lingerie to every curve, though at six a.m. on a Tuesday morning, the sight was hers alone.

  And she barely looked.

  Stepping from the shower, she reached for a plush towel and dried herself, underwear and all. Only after she’d secured the towel around her dripping hair did she peel out of the drenched bra-and-panty set, casually revealing a set of angry scars that marred the otherwise smooth skin of her abdomen. She knew they were there but didn’t waste a glance. With a flick of the wrist, her underthings landed in the sink, and she donned a dry thong beneath a soft, terry-cloth robe. The act of changing had become a precise science. She managed the transition from sopping wet to dry and robed in thirty seconds every time.

  Ritual complete, she wrung the water from the sodden lilac lace and flung it over the drying rack that never got stowed. One day, she chanted on an internal promise, I’ll be ready. When that day came, she wouldn’t need clothes in the shower. She’d feel safe without them.

  A half hour later, she skidded to a halt in the front lobby. No night watch. Scarlet shifted her weight as she contemplated her building’s security desk. Seth should have been at his post pawning his wife’s stale muffins. His jovial greeting was conspicuously absent, leaving her without the armed lookout she paid good money to have present and ready. Stepping closer to Seth’s counter on shaky legs, she surveyed the space in a subtle sweep.

  Get ahold of yourself. The ever-present knowledge of work languishing at the office forced her to shake it off, and she pressed forward and out the coded entrance despite the unwelcome reminder that one guard could be distracted. Two security personnel on round-the-clock duty would be better, but that luxury exceeded her pay grade.

  Plus, smack in the middle of Chelsea, and tucked between blocks of pulsing urban history, her modern complex won on location and ambiance. Her father had built it. He’d also sold it, years before she’d begun calling the address home but only months after she’d quit calling him Dad. Season upon season of entrusting her safety to the same set of walls left the building feeling more like family than brick and mortar. She’d stay no matter how often the guard went missing.

  “Morning, Miss. Leore.”

  Seth might be AWOL, but Andy manned the steps, ever reliable in his pomp and circumstance. He provided a last line of defense, even if he was a seventy-year-old doorman armed with nothing more than a crisp suit and a red bowtie. “Morning, Andy. How goes it?”

  “Quite lovely,” he said in his false British upper crust. “And you?”

  She mustered her best rendition of Middle America. “Swell,” she quipped. “Quite swell, I mean.”

  The amendment brought out a paternal headshake. “It’s till tomorrow then, isn’t it?”

  “That’s a promise.”

  Joining the sunrise hustle on the street, Scarlet lifted her head and shoulders, physically shifting into lawyer-mode. She strode down the sidewalk like any other confident, but sleep-deprived, New Yorker looking for a latte. With a breath of rancid steam rising from a gutter grate and a quickstep around a present left by a city-dwelling dog with a lazy owner, she reminded herself she was any other businesswoman on her way to work. N-o-r-m-a-l.

  Mentally tallying the day’s to-do list, she pondered the logistics of conference calls at nine and eleven, with a noon business lunch at a restaurant located six blocks from her office.

  Take the eleven o’clock on my mobile and wrap the meeting while sprinting down the street in heels?

  Most days she loved her life. Some days she was merely thankful for a job. Still others, she had trouble keeping up and wondered how she could ever maintain the pace. But she’d had the best education money could buy, and she’d inherited her father’s business acumen. Fine with me, Daddy. You can keep the rest.

  Scarlet slid into her office chair at ten past seven, her eyes blurring at the number of e-mails she’d received overnight. Sixty-seven. Sixty-seven e-mails between six o’clock on Monday evening and seven o’clock on Tuesday morning.

  Today brought messages from patent attorneys on site at a medical disposables company in Singapore. Her client was interested in incorporating Pacific Limited’s more innovative products into its own systems. But Pacific was demanding fixed-price purchase agreements when raw-material costs were trending downward. She’d advised her client to consider acquiring Pacific, along with its intellectual property, so the company could independently manufacture Pacific’s technologies without bothering with, well, Pacific.

  “Gut and trump,” she liked to call it, leaving “mergers and acquisitions” to nicer people.

  Complexities weaved through her inbox like a patchwork quilt, aspects of the larger problem only revealing themselves as she considered each additional message and added its secrets to the collage.

  She checked the time—eight thirty in the New York offices of Jahn Tremane & Spellman. Perhaps she could still catch someone in Singapore. Although late in Asia, her people might be reachable. They didn’t find it impossible to resist the city’s sky-high mega malls in their meager free time. She’d never understand that kind of dedication.

  Scarlet gulped her latte, absorbing the best of the bad news trumpeting from her computer screen. Pacific had been forthcoming with documents, but the paperwork didn’t convey what she’d hoped.

  Slumped over her keyboard, the monotonous ring of her office phone broke through her frustration. When she reached for the receiver, her fingernail caught the facet of a diamond at her ear. She jerked, and her hand balled into an instinctive fist. Without realizing, she’d been worrying the stone. Again. Unlike the presumably chop-shopped Maserati, her mother’s earrings had surfaced at a small auction house a few months after her attack. Now she loved them too much, as if inanimate objects could be guardians or friends.

  Scarlet knew the association wasn’t rational, but when her mother’s heirlooms had been returned, she’d felt like her relationship with Cora Leore—that shining beacon of remembered perfection—had also survived the trauma. She couldn’t say the same for her living parent. In the aftermath of her stabbing, her father had made a short trip to the city, just long enough for a stop at the hospital and the office of the chief of police. After Ethan Blake had been arrested with all due haste, Tripp had disappeared again, leaving months of long-distance strain in his wake.

  Scarlet hadn’t seen her father in person since he’d left her to the mercy of the morphine drip.

  Loosening her fingers, she answered the ring seconds before the call went to voice mail.

  Lissa’s banter sounded over the line. “I’m flea-marketing for inspiration. Just found the perfect T-shirt. Says, ‘Friends don’t l
et friends go to Yale.’ I think it actually has your name written on the tag.”

  “Do they have one that says, ‘Friends don’t let friends major in art or art history’ or ‘Hi, welcome to Jerry’s Artarama, would you like a basket for your supplies today?’”

  “Straight to hell.”

  “Only because you’ll need a wingwoman.”

  A bark of laughter, then, “Pick you up at seven?”

  Scarlet said one final word as her arm arced back toward the phone’s cradle. “Sharp.” Then she was back to game on.

  The impending hours of mayhem would eventually dispose with the day. At some point, she’d sprawl over her couch and wait. At a knock, she’d jump up and rush the door. There’d be Lissa, standing by for takeoff. Like so many times before, Scarlet felt a wave of appreciation.

  Most of her evenings out began with greeting Lissa, or another personal escort, across the gleam of the security chain. If an escort wasn’t possible, she hired a private car. As a last resort, she called a cab and found a chaperon to accompany her straight to the yellow door.

  And then there was the collection of underwear hanging in her bathroom like Tuesday was laundry day. Only hand-washing for the delicates, of course.

  All the security requirements demanded time and money, but the burning need for a round-the-clock guard—and worse, wishing there were two—broke the bank.

  Her hand crept back toward the diamond. When her rent came due this month, she’d be selling another piece of jewelry to cover it.

  ******

  Ethan padded to the kitchen, casting a worn grimace on the gourmet space. When had the gleaming granite and stainless steel stopped imparting a sense of satisfaction? For years, even the smallest luxury hadn’t been lost on him. Now he took his palatial surroundings, including the beautiful woman in his shower, for granted.

  Mixing eggs and aged gouda, he mechanically assembled omelets for two. As the scent of gooey, melted cheese and frying eggs permeated his surroundings, he could only dread the pending confrontation with Miranda. He would offer breakfast. She would refuse.