by S. L. Naeole
Sensing my tension, Mal pressed a soft, tender kiss on my forehead and sighed. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’re not going to do anything you aren’t ready for or that you don’t want to do. Remember what I said, I only find my pleasure when you find yours.”
His words calmed me, soothed the underlying panic that I hadn’t realized was itching beneath the surface to come barreling out of me again. Mal understood.
Sighing with resignation, he pulled away from me then and it was my time to understand. “I’ve really got to go, baby. I don’t know when I’ll be done and I’ve got things I’ve got to work on afterward so I don’t know if I’ll be making a return trip here tonight.”
I ducked my head at the sadness that his words covered me in. He, however, wasn’t going to let me get away with hiding. Not anymore. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” he asked as he tipped my chin up.
Shaking my head, I answered him truthfully. “I need time, Mal.”
“I understand,” he replied. And I knew that he did.
So I watched as he moved around my room as if he’d been there with me for the past few years, walking to my closet to remove the shirt and jacket he’d hung up inside, heading to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, and then returning to my dresser where he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it. As he looped his tie around his neck I stepped forward to help, making sure that it was straight, allowing my hands to press lightly against his chest. He sucked in a breath and kissed me before putting his jacket on. He slipped his watch into his pocket and grabbed his phone.
His wallet sat on my nightstand and as he reached for it, he also reached for my phone. Touching the camera app in the corner, he stalked toward me and brought his mouth down hard on mine. I heard the telltale click before he turned to check the phone and smiled.
“Send this to me,” he whispered in my ear. “I need a new wallpaper for my phone.”
Blushing, I took my phone and then followed him, my hand in his, out of the room and toward the front door. Vonne, Lara, Kara, and even Holly waved as we passed. The minute we were in the small alcove near the door, Mal bent his mouth down to mine once more and kissed me softly at the corner of my mouth. It was as chaste a kiss as he’d ever given me, and yet it lit fires in my belly and made my fingers itch to touch him again.
“I love you, Victoria,” he said huskily, his voice enough to send a torrent of moisture to flood my thighs and a tidal wave of emotion to drown my heart.
“I love you, Mal,” I said in answer.
For the next few weeks, our schedules became so busy that seeing each other was almost impossible outside of scheduled lunches and delicious make-out sessions. My cast was removed two weeks after the gala, which meant that I could start doing restorations again. Del, who had apologized profusely and even filled my desk with the chocolate covered orange jelly sticks from Germany I loved so much, argued that I would be too busy to focus my time and energy on private restorations, what with a new season’s planning underway. But then the AITTIA exhibit got its expected extension which meant that any new exhibit that Del and Tobias were working on would have to be pushed back to the end of AITTIA’s.
This gave me time, time I realized I needed to lose myself in art for a while instead of in a man. One that proved to be such a major distraction that I found myself texting him at all hours of the day just to see his wicked replies and the temptations he laid for me.
But work came first. Work was my saving grace, my sanctuary. It was hard to believe that it had been two months since I’d picked up a brush, touched my neutralizers, looked at color. In my studio in the catacombs, I sat staring at a nineteenth-century miniature of a woman with auburn curls and a delicate pink gown over her alabaster skin. The image itself was cracked and damaged so severely that most eyes would only see slashes of rust or faded pink, but my eyes saw things differently. My eyes saw the tilt of hers, saw the shade of olivine used to ring her coal black pupil. My eyes saw the swirls of gold in the pink sash of her dress, and the soft green of ivy in the cream wallpaper that sat behind her.
This miniature wasn’t important to the museum. It would never go up on a wall, or on display in some future exhibit. No. This miniature belonged to the Mayor’s wife, whose great-grandmother sat for that painting when she was just seventeen.
“She wants you to do it,” Del had told me when he finally capitulated and presented me with the write-up and the box containing the tiny painting. “She said that word’s gotten around that you were the best and since you’ve been out of practice for a bit I thought this would help you ease back into it.”
I grunted. “It’s been two months, Del, not two decades.”
But I’d taken the painting and set about inspecting it, taking photos of it and then examining them on the computer in my studio. I was busy cataloging the various degrees of cracks when I felt that I wasn’t alone. My head lifted from my spreadsheet and a smile spread across my face.
“What are you doing here?” I said, hopping off my stool to greet Mal, who stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.
“I came to see how my girlfriend was doing, now that she’s gone back to being a kickass art restorer.”
Laughing, I lifted my arms around his neck and waited for his kiss. It was glorious.
“I’ve always been a kickass art restorer,” I told him. “I’ve just got the title of assistant director to add to it.”
“My beautiful renaissance woman,” he beamed with pride before kissing me once more, letting his tongue slip into my mouth slightly, just a taste.
That morning in my room had been the last time we’d been intimate in two weeks, and my body felt starved for him, for his touch. The way he leaned into me, and the darkness that glittered in his eyes like burnt amber told me that he felt the same way. It would have been easy to forget where I was, forget everything except the feel of him and my desire to let him touch me, love me the way he wanted to.
“So what’s the real reason you’re here?” I asked as I eased away from him, remembering that I smelled like varnish and not wanting to transfer the scent to him.
He grinned excitedly. “I have to fly to California this weekend for business.”
My face did not match his grin.
“Okay. You seem happy about it.”
He stepped toward me and gripped my hips in his hands, pulling me against him once more so that I felt just how happy he was. “I will be once you agree to come with me.”
“Me? You want me to come with you?” I laughed softly, my hands not knowing where to go on his body even as I felt that familiar heat seep into me.
“Of course,” he said before dotting my face with kisses. “Where else would I want my girlfriend but beside me as I make crucial decisions on where to build my next manufacturing plant?”
He nuzzled his nose against my ear, and I felt my knees wobble as his breath push hot and damp into my ear. “Who else would I want to go house shopping with me but the woman I love beyond distraction?”
This time I squeaked. “H-house shopping? But you live here!”
Pulling away, he frowned. “Oh sweetheart.” Suddenly I felt as if a small rug had been pulled out from under me. The way he looked, the way his brows tightened over his eyes with concern, told me that something wasn’t right.
“I don’t live in New York, Victoria. I have a place here for when I visit, but my home is in California. My company’s headquarters is in Los Angeles and we’re building a new office in Silicon Valley for my tech subdivision. I’m looking to start construction sometime next year for the plant to manufacture our upcoming products. I thought you knew this.”
I blinked away the tears of disappointment and anger that threatened to spill. “No, I didn’t know this. I told you that I haven’t done any research on you. I don’t google anyone or anything so all I know about you is what you tell me, and one thing you didn’t tell me was that you were only here temporarily.” In all honesty, that was
n’t all that he didn’t tell me, but I wasn’t ready to go into all of that yet.
Sighing, Mal scrubbed his hand through his hair, his eyes soaring to the ceiling as my words left their mark. “God. You’re right. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
Wrapping my arms around myself, I turned away from him, hating the fact that I didn’t know anything about him, really, and that the world knew more than I did simply because they were brave enough to look. “I can’t go with you,” I told him.
His hands were on my shoulders in an instant, turning me to face him, concern and even fear marring his beautiful features. “Why?”
I pointed at my work, trying to come up with a lie, but I knew that I couldn’t do that to him. We didn’t lie to each other. I wouldn’t lie to him. Inhaling deeply, I answered in a voice so quiet I wasn’t sure he heard me. “Because that’s where it happened. I can’t go back there, Mal. I can’t. I won’t.”
Darkness moved over his face as understanding dawned on him, and then guilt flooded his features as he pulled me into his chest, his arms wrapping around my back. He kissed the top of my head, his hands lightly caressing me as I shuddered against him.
“I’m sorry, Victoria. I’m an idiot.”
He held me until the shaking stopped, and then he kissed me softly on my cheek before telling me that he had to go. There was no “I love you” or “I’ll call you later”. He simply left and I was left feeling emptier than I had in years.
“You didn’t know he lived in California?” Lara asked incredulously. We were eating dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, the five of us filling our usual booth in the back near the kitchen.
“Everyone knows that,” Kara nodded at her sister’s question.
“I’m not everyone,” I spat, taking a sip of my mango margarita. “I’ve never looked him up online, and I don’t read those magazines with his face plastered on them either. Plus we haven’t talked about it. I guess he assumed I already knew since everyone else and their twin sister already did.”
Holly stirred her soda and frowned. “He’s right about thinking that you probably already knew. I mean, we all thought you knew and we’re your best friends. The two of you have only been going out a few weeks. It’s not wrong of him to have assumed this was something you were already aware of.”
Vonne patted my leg and sighed. “Don’t hold it against him that he didn’t reveal common knowledge stuff to you, Ria.”
I could have screamed in frustration at their defense of him. “But he knew about what happened to me and still wanted me to go with him to California. He actually wanted us to go house hunting together. A house. Me, in a house in California. Where I could run into Franklyn and his family!”
Lara sputtered. “California has, like, twenty-two-million people in it, Ria, and a couple hundred bucks a month from your lawsuit settlement isn’t going to be enough to buy a home in the areas I’m sure Michael plans on buying a home in. The odds of you running into Franklyn or any of the jerks that hurt you are so small, I have a greater chance of actually having Idris Elba’s baby.”
Our food arrived before I could launch into another argument and for a while, we lost ourselves in cheese, spices, meat, and gossip that didn’t involve me or Mal.
“So there’s this new girl at Roy’s office. Gina,” Kara said as she twisted a string of melted cheese around her finger. “She is totally in lust with Roy, right, and started sending him suggestive emails. You know, the kind that’s full of innuendo and that kind of shit? Anyway, I was at his place last week and she sent him an email to his private account. His private account. He let me read it because, duh, he knows that I would never suspect him of cheating and we’re totally open with each other, but holy shit! It’s this huge sob story about how her ex-boyfriend is stalking her and she’s scared that he’s going to hurt her and she hopes she can turn to Roy in her hour of need. The bitch actually wrote ‘hour of need’, like she’s the female Nicholas Sparks or something. Can you believe that?”
We all shook our heads over our food because we couldn’t. Of course, her story had my mind spinning; if Roy was getting emails from infatuated co-workers, what was Mal getting? He already had the sex addict as his assistant and receptionists who gave the evil eye to anything with nipples. There were also those receptionists who’d looked at me as if I wasn’t fit to push back the cuticles on their toes. What about all the other women that worked for and with him?
“So anyway, the next day Roy told Gina that it was inappropriate for her to send him emails to his personal account and that if she needed help with her situation that she should call the police and if she needed support he’d go with her.”
Holly spoke up. “So? Did she really need help?”
Kara nodded. “Yup. Her ex showed up that afternoon screaming her name and threatening to drag her out of the office by her hair, calling her a bitch, a whore. You know, the usual bullshit that guys say when they’re acting like entitled assholes. So anyway, Roy called the police and went with her to the station to file a report of terroristic threatening. He gave a statement and had some of the others from their floor give statements, too. He totally white knighted her. You guys know what that means.”
Lara, Holly, and even Vonne groaned. I sat puzzled.
“She’s now in fucking love with Roy. Brings him cookies and shit and leaves recommendation notes in the suggestion box about him. He’s gotten eight just this week.”
Lara shook her head in disdain. “That happens a lot, you know. DID syndrome: Damsel In Distress. She didn’t have the courage to go and report her ex herself so she waited for someone else to come and rescue her and do it for her. Now he’s her hero and she’ll never let that go.”
Holly and Vonne agreed, and as they talked I sank further and further back in my seat. Lara’s words stung. They weren’t directed at me, but they held a grain of truth when it came to me. I hadn’t had the courage to move past what had happened to me, and Mal had—literally—swept me off my feet. Twice. But did I think of him as my hero because of that? Did I see him as my hero period?
Was that the reason why I’d let him in? Was that the reason why rationality and logic fly out the window whenever he’s around me? Why I forget my fears and even my nightmares when he’s touching me?
“Earth to Ria.”
I blinked and looked across at Lara. “What?”
“I said, if Michael lives in California, what does that mean for your relationship? Are you guys just gonna hang out when he’s here on business, be his New York girlfriend? I know guys like him probably have a girl in every port but have you guys even talked about it?”
Who knew a heart could fall completely through every organ in the lower digestive tract and hit the ground in two seconds flat. Mal lived in California. He’d told me that. I’d heard it. I’d even voiced it to my friends in complaint. But it hadn’t hit me that he lived in California. He was only visiting New York. He was only visiting me, his New York girlfriend.
Everything he did was in California. His company’s headquarters was there. His life was there. He was looking to buy a house there.
Yeah, a house with me!
“Ria?”
“We haven’t talked about it,” I answered truthfully.
“Don’t you think you should talk about it? I mean, long distance relationships can work, but only if you want to put in the effort. You guys haven’t seen much of each other these past few weeks so, you know.”
Yeah. Yeah, I knew.
Del stared at the miniature, his chin resting on his thumb as his forefinger pressed over his mouth. It was his “inspection” pose, one he took on whenever he was presented with completed work. I’d finished the miniature over the weekend, opting to cancel plans with Mal to focus on my work for once. I’d also moved all of his clothes into a small drawer I’d cleared out in my dresser so that I wouldn’t mistake his clothes for mine.
Baby steps.
“I think it’s fantastic work. You managed to keep t
he gold muted while mimicking the scroll pattern beautifully. Even the variance in her hair is perfect.”
Del had never shied away from praise, but this was something I hadn’t expected. I knew that my work on the miniature was good. I had focused on it to the point of obsession, wanting to make sure that I wasn’t changing it or enhancing it, but merely correcting issues caused by age. It’s a much more difficult task than people realize, so to hear that I’d been successful pleased me.
“The Mayor and his wife will be inordinately pleased. I have no doubt they’ll be asking for you personally when they begin the restoration of City Hall’s paintings in a few weeks.”
This news stunned me. I’d heard about the renovation, but not that they had planned to restore the paintings. Many of them were from the seventeen-hundreds and guarded more heavily than the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris.
“There are, what, over three dozen paintings at city hall,” I gasped, trying to go over the workload in my head for the restorers we had on staff. With only six of us, the work would take at least three months, and that was if the restorations themselves were simple.
Del tapped his finger against his lips. “I think they have around twenty-seven on rotation, but they have over sixty in total, including one of former President George Washington as well as Treasurer Alexander Hamilton. Given the recent success of that new Broadway musical, the mayor thinks it would be a great idea to place those two paintings in a more prominent location.”
Wow.
“And we’re getting the job?”
“After seeing this, it’s a guarantee,” Del smiled.
We were at ease again, the two of us, after what had happened at the gala. He hadn’t offered up an explanation about Reina yet, but that was mostly because I kept telling him that I wasn’t interested. It hurt him, I knew, but a part of me still felt betrayed and I wasn’t ready to accept that maybe I’d overreacted. I wasn’t his real daughter, no matter how he treated me or how he felt. He didn’t owe me an explanation, and I knew that.