Battle Lines.

by Anderson, Abigail

“So then why did you lie? Harry asked her.

  “I… it… well.”

  “Mm.” Harry told her as he regarded her thoughtfully.

  “Mm, nothing.” She told him.

  “Mm, everything.”

  “Harry.” She complained.

  “You did put me in a bit of a spot.” Harry reminded her.

  “And I am really sorry, but you are digging yourself deeper.” She reminded him.

  “Well, once I saw his face I couldn’t resist it. He is fit to burst down there.” Harry told her.

  “And you do not want to see him explode.” Amanda pointed out to him. Harry shrugged a shoulder.

  “I was just testing the water.”

  “Well stop testing the water.” She snapped at him.

  “Don’t worry I know what temperature it is now.” Harry gave her a smug look.

  “I have no idea what that means.” She said crossly.

  “And you really don’t want to know what it means.” Harry told her.

  “Why are you here?”

  “To tell you about the meeting. No luck by the way.” He grimaced. “I tried every trick in the book.”

  “I told you to phone me to let me know. Not turn up.”

  “And I would have, had you had your phone switched on that is.”

  Amanda huffed and removed her mobile from her pocket. He was right it was switched off. Great, she had obviously forgotten to charge it.

  “I am sorry.”

  “And so you should be. What have you got me into?” Harry asked her, well moaned at her actually.

  “I am sorry, really just… look just play along and then leave. The bathroom is at the end of the hall there. Wait a few minutes then come back down. Make an excuse that you have to get back to work or back to the office or something and then I will smooth things over when you are gone and confess.” Harry’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “I promise.” She told him.

  “Fine, whatever you say boss. I am here to serve.” Then with a click of his fingers he was back in character. Prancing down the hallway like a three-year-old ballerina. A very bad ballerina with absolutely no sense of balance. Or rhythm.

  Chapter 11.

  Amanda returned to the parlour a moment later after she had taken several deep breaths to calm herself and preparing herself for a difficult confession once Harry had gone.

  On returning, however, her mother wasn’t there. Jake was sitting quietly by himself.

  “Where did mum go?” she asked Jake as she moved closer. She had been intending to sit back down but Jake was up like a shot as soon as she was close enough and his hands grabbed her upper arms painfully so that she could not move away from him.

  She did not need to look up at his face to know that he was angry. It was literally dripping out of every pore. She could feel it. She could smell it. She was in big trouble.

  “What the hell do you think you are playing at?” he hissed at her through clenched teeth. She could see that pulse beating at the side of his neck. It looked ready to rupture.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, playing dumb.

  “You heard me.”

  “I’m not sure if I understand.” She replied, she understood only too well. Jake’s fingers bit harder into her flesh and she bit her lips to stop herself from wincing.

  “Oh no you don’t. You are not getting out of it that easily.”

  “Jake please you are hurting me.” She winced.

  “Hurting you? I ought to shake some sense into that little brain of yours, if you have one. Tell me this is some sort of sick joke and that you didn’t actually marry that… that… that… whatever the hell that is.”

  Okay, now tell the truth, she implored herself. Here is your chance. Look Jake right in the eyes and tell him. He would be angry but then he was angry now.

  Amanda took a breath and looked up at Jake trying not to shrink back at the smouldering anger she saw in the depths of his eyes.

  “Alan is my husband. I would like you to accept him as part of the family.” Amanda groaned inwardly.

  You silly, stupid idiot. You had your chance to end this pathetic charade. What are you doing?

  “Are you trying to tell me that you were actually dense enough to marry that… man?” She felt his fingers biting deeper into the flesh of her upper arms. “What the hell goes through that head of yours?”

  “I thought you said having my own ideas was one of my better qualities.” She threw his earlier words back in his face.

  “Don’t you dare.” He started. That pulse was ticking away like it was fit to burst. She had never seen it so violent.

  “What’s the matter Jake, don’t like it because you haven’t got your own way. Throwing your toys out of your pram.” She threw at him and instantly regretted it as he pulled her closer to him. His lips coming down on hers so brutally, so savagely that she whimpered.

  He lifted his head, stopping what he was doing, as though he knew that he could easily be pushed too far.

  “Do you know what I think? I think you married him just to get a rise out of me.” He told her.

  “That is ridiculous Jake. Trust me, I don’t even think of you when Alan and I are… ouch.” His grip was so tight now that she could no longer feel her hands. He had cut off her circulation.

  “Don’t… even… think… about finishing that sentence. Not… if you know what’s good for you.” His voice sounded more of a deep gravelly growl.

  “What are you going to do Jake?” she lifted her chin challengingly at him. Which was probably not a wise move.

  “Trust me if we were alone here. There would be quite a few things that I would do to you.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper that made her shiver. The hidden meanings in his words were not lost on her. She knew exactly what he was thinking and her heart gave a savage kick.

  “What’s wrong with Alan?” she asked, feigning indignation.

  “What’s right with him? You surely don’t need me to tell you?” he told her.

  “Alan is my husband. He is my family.” She said. “The only family I have known for a very long time.”

  “Mandy…” Unfortunately, Harry chose that moment to come back into the room. Or maybe that was fortunately. Jake let her go as if she were contaminated.

  Her mother came back into the room then with a worried look on her face as she looked from Jake to Amanda and then back at Jake.

  “Well.” Harry began. “I have to go. There are more important things for me to do. Jackie it’s been real. Am I right? I’m always right… Jakey.” Harry wiped away a few phantom tears and snivelled into a hanky. “Emee sweetie. I will see you later.”

  Harry grabbed her and slung her backwards. He leaned over and kissed her before pulling her back into a standing upright position.

  “Oh, won’t my daughter go back in the car with you?” her mother asked Harry. Harry look horrified.

  “She is a woman.” He snorted loudly and indignantly. “There is nothing wrong with her feet or her legs. Besides the exercise will do her good. I have noticed that she been getting rather podgy lately. The only thing worse than an ugly wife is a fat ugly wife.”

  Too far. Way too far. Amanda knew it even before Jake’s fist snuck out and collided with Harry’s jaw.

  Chapter 12.

  “Ouch… don’t.” Harry was holding an ice pack on the right side of his face. Amanda had to admit that the bruise did look menacing.

  “I need to look at it.” She told him sternly. Amanda already felt guilty enough. “Hold still will you.”

  “I can take care of it. Thanks all the same.” He told her. “You have already done enough.”

  “Oh Harry I am really so very sorry. Truly I am.” Amanda said for about the hundredth time since their arrival at her home.

  The car journey back had been awful. A nightmare may have been a more apt way of describing it.

  Harry had been sprawled, passed out, on the back seat and Amanda had been sat huddled in the front seat staring si
ghtlessly down at her tightly clenched hands.

  She had not dared look up at Jake. He had been livid. Angrier than she had ever seen him before. How he had managed to stop himself doing something terrible to Harry she would never know.

  He had ground his teeth all the way back. He had almost slammed into the back of a car, not once but twice and he had run through a red light.

  Once back at her home he had carried Harry from the car and had then dumped him down hard on her sofa that had made Amanda wince. Then like a tornado he had gone.

  A squeal of tyres a moment later after the banging of her front door had told her that he had gone.

  “Will I be required to be Alan again?” Harry asked her.

  “I hope not.” She paused. “For your sake more than mine. Tomorrow I’ll go over and own up. I’ll take the morning off and go over in the afternoon. Can you hold down the fort tomorrow?” She asked him.

  “I guess I could.” Harry said.

  “I shouldn’t have let it go as far as it did.” Amanda said now.

  “Why did you?” he asked her.

  “I just…” she shrugged her shoulders. “Oh Harry. You went too far. What got into you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I could see him getting wound up tighter than a guitar string.” He shrugged. “I was curious as to how much pressure it would take for it to snap.”

  “Well done, you found out.” She chastised him.

  “Yes I did.” Harry moaned.

  “I did tell you to cool it. I warned you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “He likes you.” Harry told her, laughter beginning to dance in his eyes.

  “Who does?”

  “Hah, who does? You know whom dear.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She told Harry, becoming flustered.

  “Trust me, he likes you.” Harry told her.

  “He is my brother.” She reminded him.

  “I thought he was your stepbrother, no blood relation. Isn’t that what you said on the phone?”

  “Okay stepbrother. He is still family.” Amanda told him. Harry looked at her and she stared back at him. “What?”

  “What? Don’t give me those bambi eyes. It’s so damn obvious.”

  “Harry you have it all wrong. You have no idea.” She told him.

  “I don’t think so. He really likes you. He likes you a hell of a lot.” She heard Harry laugh and then wince. Served him right, she thought uncharitably and then felt bad.

  “Jake hates me” she told him as Harry got up and walked over to the mirror to inspect the damage. Amanda still sitting on her bed. “He just doesn’t like the fact that I might have got my own life and that I do not need him for anything.” Harry turned then and regarded her for several moments before he walked out of her bedroom and across the small hallway into her bathroom.

  “Amanda sweetie.” He called to her from the other room. “There was so much more to that scene than that.” Harry told her.

  “No, there really wasn’t.” She called back.

  “You should wake up and smell the pheromones.”

  “Harry.” Amanda warned her employee. “Just remember you are not indispensable.”

  “What about Alan?” he slung over his shoulder at her as he inspected his black eye in the bathroom mirror. Amanda had a feeling that Harry was rather enjoying himself, and she would not have minded if it had not been at her expense.

  “Keep talking like that and see where it gets you.” She threatened half-heartedly.

  “You don’t scare me.” He told her. “Not now anyway.”

  “You should be.” She told him.

  “Trust me, now that I have met Jake, I am more scared of him than of you.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to give him a smart-alec response but then stopped and sighed heavily.

  “And so you should be.” Amanda finally admitted. He was much more formidable than she.

  “So where is the delightful Jake now?” Harry asked her.

  “Jake has definitely left the building.” She sighed sadly.

  Amanda hated the way it had ended. That look on Jake’s face when he had marched out of the door and slammed the door. He had briefly looked at her as he had walked passed her. That look he threw her would stay with her forever.

  “Well, thank god for some small mercies.” Harry said.

  “Oh Harry why did you goad him so much? You must have seen that he was close to losing it.” She asked him.

  “I guess I love a challenge.”

  “You would have been far safer to challenge a rattle snake.” She told him.

  “Oh no.” She heard Harry exclaim and she ran to the door.

  “What is it?” and then she winced as she saw the dark swollen skin. It was really bad and not all the bruising had come out yet.

  “My car. It’s still parked at your mother’s.” he told her.

  “Oh great.” She flung up her hands and then lowered them again.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll go back to the office and ask Marsha if she can give me a lift in her car and then I will pick my car up and go home.”

  “I could pay for a cab.” She offered. It was the least she could do.

  “Yeah, why not.” Harry said.

  “I hope you have learnt your lesson.” Amanda told him as she went to phone a cab from the home phone. She had not managed to charge her mobile. It was next on her list of things to do.

  “I hope you have learnt yours.” Harry called after her.

  “If you hadn’t goaded him like that then it would not have happened.” She told him sternly

  “If you hadn’t lied then I would not have been put in a position to goad him.” Harry pointed out.

  “But you didn’t need to be quite so obnoxious.” She said.

  “It was kinda worth it.” Harry told her.

  “What do you mean?” Amanda called up the stairs.

  “The poor man thinks he has lost you. It made you look like a right fool, which serves you right.”

  “Watch it.” She warned and picked up the receiver to phone for the cab.

  “It was kinda fun, to be out of character. To be someone else. I can see why people become actors.” Harry said as he smiled and then stopped as he winced. “And it made you look like a right fool, have I mentioned that one already?”

  “Do you want me to come in there and give you a matching left side?” Amanda asked as she dialled the number.

  “Oh, no thank you.” He called to her and then quieter to himself as he looked at his reflection. “Besides… I have a feeling it won’t be long before Jake does that. I have got to look for a new job.”

  Chapter 13.

  Amanda spent most of the night tossing and turning worrying about poor Jake, though really she should have been worrying about poor Harry.

  She had got up early, resigning herself to the fact that she wasn’t about to get anymore sleep, not any more than she had got anyway.

  She had showered and dressed in a skirt and blouse and then she had taken a cab into town. She had a couple of contacts that she wanted to catch up with this morning. Which she was hoping would help boost her business.

  Then after, she had a light lunch before catching the bus and then walking down the long isolated road to her mother’s house.

  Hopefully she could smooth things over with her mother and, with any luck, she could then persuade her mother to smooth things over with Jake.

  It was a clever plan. Who was she kidding, it was a cowardly plan at best and she knew it. But, the alternative was to face Jake herself and the truth was she just was not brave enough for that.

  Amanda’s heart lurched in her chest when she saw Jake’s car in the driveway. Why couldn’t he have been in the office today?

  He was probably working from home. She had been hoping to catch just her mother, that’s why she had come at this time, thinking Jake would be tucked away in his office, an office that ha
d once been her father’s.

  Amanda walked up the driveway to the front door and stood looking at it as she decided whether she was ready to face Jake. She raised her hand as though to knock on the door.

  It hovered in the air. She could always come back, maybe tomorrow or the next day or even the day after that. There was always next month, possibly next year.

  Perhaps it was best if she left it until things had cooled down a bit, and Harry’s bruising had gone down.

  Amanda sighed, that was such a feeble excuse and she knew it. Still it was the only one she had.

  So finally, she decided that today was not the day that she was prepared to poke a tiger with a stick. Amanda lowered her hand and stepped back from the door before turning around to head for the street once more.

  “So you finally made up your mind then?” came that familiar deep voice, she could hear the mocking laughter in it. There was a generous sprinkling of it.

  Great, that was all she needed. Amanda felt her heart racing in her chest and a sweat broke out on her skin. “If you are looking for mum you are out of luck. She’s gone out and won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  Slowly Amanda turned and looked up towards the sound of Jake’s voice. He was casually hanging his top half out of the landing window directly above the door looking down on her.

  Great. How long had he been watching, looking down at her? “From the time you were walking from way up the road.” He supplied the answer to her unasked question. “If you held your head up a bit when you are walking instead of looking down at your feet you would have seen me.” He told her. “You would have seen me last night too. I followed you home and you never noticed. I drove right passed you and parked up right outside your house just as you walked through the gate.” Yes, how remiss of her not to have noticed that.

  Amanda watched the laughter dancing in his eyes. Even from his position high above her she could see it. Though his face remained impassive and closed.

  “Well… I’ll come back when it’s… more convenient.” She turned on her heel determined to go. She really did not want to be in the house alone with him.

  “You mean safer.” He remarked candidly. Amanda decided not to rise to his baiting, and that is what it was, she knew. Instead she was going to ignore it. Though, they both knew that he was right.