One Less Problem Without You

by Beth Harbison

  She rolled over so the room service guy didn’t see her. Something Lee didn’t seem to be worried about.

  “Champagne?” he asked, bringing over two glasses.

  She had never had Moët. She’d always wanted to. How could she say no?

  “So good,” she said, but all she noticed was that it quenched the thirst of her dry mouth.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  Some gap in moments passed, and then he was asking if she wanted him to help her. She became aware that she was trying to pull the zipper down on the back of her dress. She nodded.

  It was off.

  Then she was on her back. He kissed her. It was amazing. The kiss was incredible. Practically morphine. She could have done it all night. But that didn’t seem to be up to her … Was she being driven by him or by her desperate desire?

  It was like being a teenager again. Racing hormones. The tearing at each other’s bodies. She wanted to kiss him, kiss him hard, pull at his shoulders, but then, no—

  No …

  She had pushed back on him, to flirt a little more. She didn’t want to go tearing into this part of the evening already, even if she did end up doing it. Right now, she didn’t want to go that far, maybe not at all. She pushed back on his chest with her palms, and he held her down with his forearm, right across her breasts.

  Whoa.

  Chelsea struggled to remember his name. “Wait, no, please, I don’t want—”

  He kissed her, and she kissed him back, because that part was okay. That part was fine, it wasn’t that part …

  She pushed back on his lower abdomen—bare, she noticed now with a gasp—his muscles were strong, and she still tried to rationalize, noting that his body was better than she’d expected.

  She tried to get into it, but she couldn’t. This wasn’t desperate passion. This was force. But he couldn’t know that, surely. He must think they were both feeling this into it.

  And yet when she pushed back or tried to speak, he pushed her back and covered her mouth.

  The words to express what she needed to would not come. The bubbles from the champagne filled her head, and the pain between her thighs became something she couldn’t bear, as she slipped off into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Diana

  I have to say, I really loved the store. Almost right away. “Almost” because it was initially daunting to have such a change of lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong; I was so grateful to Prinny for the apartment and for the opportunity to make something of the hobby I had been indulging for so long, but it was a far cry from the comforts I had become used to.

  The comforts I had, in fact, come to rely on as the only real “good things” in my life. It’s an age-old story; I’m hardly the first and sadly not the last to live it: One’s love life is unsatisfying, so one acquires things to make up for it. Sometimes the things are lovers, sometimes the things are children, but most of the time things are things.

  They certainly were in my case. I would go to Nordstrom or Simon’s with a blank mind, and whoosh, I could buy into every fantasy they tried to sell me. A beautiful, colorful serving tray? I could immediately see my funky martini glasses on it for a party I would never have, so I’d buy it.

  A new perfume from Paris (probably by way of New Jersey)? One spritz and I was imagining myself on the Champs-Élysées, Audrey Hepburn hat in place, tasteful Hérmes Kelly bag hooked over one forearm, a rack of iconic shopping bags on the other.

  Leather riding boots? Preferably predistressed, thank you very much. I could see myself at the point-to-points in Middleburg, at the Clyde’s tent, sipping fine champagne, nibbling shrimp cocktail, betting twenty-dollar bills on sleek Thoroughbreds.

  The softest Belgian linen sheets? I could even picture having sumptuous sex on them, despite the fact that it would not just be the cure for my emptiness but, more important, was the cause.

  Well, none of that was part of my life anymore, and even though time had yet to tell what our division of assets might end up being, chances looked good that I would remain as I was, with nothing. And, truth be told, that was ceasing to seem like such a horrible thing.

  After all, I had satisfaction, and that was something I had never had in my marriage. It had been a long time since I’d felt productive or important, or like anything I did or thought or achieved made a lick of difference to anyone else in the world.

  Yet just yesterday, Prinny and I had come up with a gorgeous, simple logo for the Cosmos tea. A little shower of herb leaves like stars spilling into a steaming mug that had the Cosmos logo on it. We were even going to start producing the mug.

  And I was part of that. I was a big part of it. It was an exciting new venture, and I was in. It felt great.

  So that put me alone, working, feeling content in the shop. I was listening to music that had made me happy as a teenager, the lights were dim, except for my workspace, and I was alone in the store, ten minutes before closing, concocting away when the bells on the door jingled.

  A young man with a flushed face and hair that had clearly been repeatedly raked back with his fingers stumbled in.

  I knew this story. It had already happened multiple times in the short while I’d been here.

  He looked around, confused. “Ahh, where’s the bar?”

  “This isn’t a bar.” People always thought it was. Cosmos. Like the drink. “Sorry.”

  He came closer, and apprehension moved over me. “This”—he pointed at the counter where I was working—“looks like a bar.”

  I shook my head. “Only if you want tea. Did you want tea?”

  “Tea?” He looked as if he’d never heard the word before.

  I laughed. “No alcohol. Sorry.”

  “Ahhh.” He rolled his eyes and waved me off with his hand, turning from me. “You’re a tease.”

  I squinted, trying briefly to figure out if he had misunderstood the word “tea” that completely.

  “I think you’ll find plenty of other options on M Street,” I called after him. “Good luck!”

  Perhaps it was fortuitous that he’d come in, because it gave me the idea to come up with a hangover tea, maybe with some detoxing dandelion for the liver. I was jotting the idea down on a pad when the bells rang over the door again.

  Oh, no, he was back.

  I looked up, ready to usher him out and lock up early. But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him at all.

  My stomach lurched.

  It was Leif.

  “Mrs. Tiesman,” he said easily, ambling in. He stopped and turned the lock on the door and moved the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Everything froze for a moment, my body stiff, my ears ringing with blood. And then I decided to be calm. Or my body realized it had no choice. No amount of panic, fury, anger, nothing could make him go away or control the situation.

  “Took you long enough,” I hedged.

  He laughed. “So it was a game all along. To get my attention.”

  I shrugged, as if flirting. Hopefully he didn’t know how my heart was pounding. “I didn’t say that.”

  I remembered the breakup games of my teen years. I remembered driving off into the night, only so I’d be chased, ignoring phone calls to make my boyfriends worry. If he wanted to believe that’s what this was like, maybe I could be convincing.

  He came over and leaned on the counter in front of me.

  And dammit, my body reacted, just as it always did around him. My body wanted to angle an eyebrow at him, pull him in to me, like this was all some elaborate role-play. I had no control over my desire whatsoever. It was so infuriating.

  “You have really pissed me off.” His voice was low and smooth and unmistakably threatening.

  The only way to deal with it, I decided, was to fight fire with fire. I couldn’t let him know he was rattling me.

  I leaned down in front of him, our faces just inches apart. “Ditto,” I said.

  He drew back and slammed his han
ds so hard on the glass counter that I was amazed it didn’t break. “I could kill you for this. In fact, I should kill you for this.” He splayed his arms. “Who’d know? Who’d care? Here we are in this dumpy little shop late on a weeknight. It’s busy enough to be unsuspicious out there, but deserted enough for almost complete privacy. Tell me, Diana, why should I not strangle my estranged, betraying wife right now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Because your chances of getting caught are better than you say, as you well know, and you don’t want the great Leif Tiesman going to jail? You know that would be a bad way to go.”

  He scoffed at the very idea.

  Did he mean it? I had no idea. This might be a shop full of psychic paraphernalia, but I didn’t have an iota of talent in that arena. Not one little bit.

  “Tiesmans don’t go to jail.” He shrugged. “At least not this one.”

  “Oh, come on, Leif, cut it out. You shouldn’t talk this way. Someone might take you seriously.” Oh, I was taking him very seriously. But as long as he didn’t know I was, there was still a chance I could get out of this unharmed. “You’ve caught me. You’re pissed. What is my punishment, dare I ask?”

  “I’m not sure.” He started walking around the store, eyeing the retail items with disdain. “Look at this shit.” He took a handful of quartz crystal and hurled it in my direction. I put my hands up in front of my face just in time, as the crystals pinged against my palms painfully, then clattered onto the glass counter and floor.

  “Leif!”

  “She’s as crazy as her fucking mother.” He continued his perusal of the store, tipping books off the shelves as he read them off. “Magikal Kitchen, Herbalism for Her, Fly to the Moon Without a Broom, The Magic of Stones, The Single Witch.” He took that one in hand and laughed. “You might be wanting this one.” He winged it at me like a Frisbee.

  I was scared. I didn’t want him to know it, but I was so scared, how could he not?

  “Yes, Leif, I wanted your attention! So what? What did you expect me to do when you were running all over town with other women? Touching other women? I hated you for that, but I wanted you anyway. You talk about killing me? You are killing me!” The tears that sprang to my eyes came naturally, but they were not for the reason he thought. It was because the truest thing I had ever said to him was that he really was killing me.

  He was. Being with him was killing me. Being his wife was killing me. Killing. Me.

  His expression softened fractionally, while my resolve strengthened. I would rather die than go through this anymore, if those were my only two options left.

  Somewhere inside, he must have sensed the shift in my energy, because his tactic changed. Predictably. “Baby, I told you there’s no one else for me.”

  “Yes, you said that.”

  “I meant it.”

  “Tell Eastern Shore Plumbing, or whatever it was you had her listed as in your phone.”

  “What are you talking about?” He was so good at this, so good at sounding convincing, genuinely baffled.

  But I knew. I knew. I’d read it all myself. Saw the call logs. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt.

  And he knew I knew. But only he could make me wonder if I really did.

  I shook my head. “How many have there been, Leif? Can you even count them?”

  “One.” He reached for my hand, which I knew was as cold as a corpse. His was hot. Comforting. Of course. “I married only one woman. And it’s not just because you ticked all the boxes that looked good for me in business.”

  “It’s not?” That hadn’t occurred to me, actually. But it answered some questions my ego hadn’t wanted to ask.

  “No.”

  I pulled my hand back. “I want some tea.” I went to the back counter and turned on the electric kettle.

  “Of course you do.”

  I busied my hands, taking out a strainer and moving to the glass pots of herbs. “You used to like my teas,” I commented with a tiny smile as I moved along from container to container, taking out what I wanted. “Or you said you did. I realize you have some trouble with the truth.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re ace at tea making. I just prefer something stronger.”

  A little chamomile, a smidge of lavender, a bit of foxglove, and a pinch of kava, then a fruity hibiscus base. The kettle was close to a boil, and I poured the water into the strainer and let the mixture steep.

  “My teas are pretty strong.”

  “They are when you put vodka in them.”

  I looked at him, shocked.

  “Did you think I didn’t know?”

  “Yes,” I said honestly. “I did think you didn’t know.”

  “Baby, I don’t trust anyone in this world. Our security cameras showed everything.”

  Everything? I wondered if there was an infrared one with the embarrassing image of me pressing his finger to his phone and sneaking into the bathroom to read all of his private messages. Was there a camera in the bathroom, too, disguised, perhaps, as one of the shower spouts? Had he watched me sitting on the floor, flipping through everything, crying like a fool?

  What about him bending me over the counter and taking me as he had after I’d accused him of infidelity? Was that captured on tape somewhere? Would that be a recording he’d keep to use later on, or one he’d ditch in favor of something hotter with someone younger and more interesting?

  Why did he even want me? Was it only to win?

  I looked in his eyes and saw my answer. Yes. All he wanted me for now was to win.

  And, equally important, to not let me win.

  I poured the tea into a cup, then paused. “Do you want some?”

  “What are you going to do, poison me?”

  I continued pouring my own. “Scared of me, are you?”

  “Pour me some,” he said, and I did.

  Ha! The playground taunt had worked. The “scared of a girl” line had worked on this overgrown child.

  “Maybe this will calm you down. I’m sure you’ve got some Scotch in your left breast pocket as usual,” I said, handing him the cup. “Slip some in this; maybe it’ll make you see things a little clearer.”

  “Oh, I see things plenty clear.”

  “And what is it you see?”

  “That we need to figure out the terms of your return. And you need to obey them.”

  Obey. Nice.

  “Who says I’m returning?”

  He laughed heartily and took a flask out of his inside pocket, right where I knew him well enough to predict. Probably single malt Scotch. He was a Scotch snob, so if there was one thing he would have on him, that’d be it.

  He never offered to share. Tonight was no exception. He poured some into his own cup and put the flask back in his pocket.

  It was just as well. I would hate to waste a good Scotch.

  “We’re going to tell people you went to a spa,” he said, drinking, then making a distasteful face. “Bitter,” he said.

  “It steeped too long,” I said. It had. That made almost anything bitter.

  Nice of him to point that out, though, wasn’t it? Even in the middle of his dictator act, he had to interrupt himself to point out where I had failed.

  “Anyway,” he went on. “We’re going to tell everyone you went to a spa. So you’re going to have to get some Botox, maybe a little filler here and there so you look refreshed.” He appraised my face with a sneer—his, not mine—and added, “You can use it.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  He drank more tea. “Then you’re going to be under house arrest.”

  The words were horrible. “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re not leaving again. I’ll hire a housekeeper to accompany you if you go shopping or something. Otherwise, you stay in unless you and I have an engagement.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” He slammed his cup down. What was left of the tea splattered in a constellation across the floor.

&
nbsp; Shit!

  God, he’d made a complete mess of the place. How was I ever going to explain this?

  I grabbed a paper towel, doused it with hot water, and ran around the counter to clean up the spilled tea, but the moment I put the towel to the spill, he grabbed me by the hips and threw me several feet away, into a spinning wire display rack. “What are you doing?” I cried.

  “A lot less than you deserve.”

  I ran to the door and fumbled with the lock. Normally it was so easy, but it felt like my hands were made out of Play-Doh. I had just managed to grab the deadbolt and started to turn it when he grabbed me again, this time throwing me against the bookcase, knocking a large amethyst geode off. It struck the top of my head and crashed to the ground, breaking in half and scattering smaller bits around it. I bent to pick up the large pieces, thinking one of them would make a decent weapon if I needed it, but then I felt a warm tickle on the crown of my head. It quickly grew, and the next thing I knew, warm blood was pouring down over my forehead and spilling onto the floor.

  “What the fuck!” Leif yelled. “I didn’t do that!”

  “Who the fuck did, then?” I screamed back. At this point, I didn’t even care what he’d do to me. He was going to kill me or I was going to kill him; there was no in between.

  He backed off, looking at me in horror.

  I have to admit, it was almost funny. I knew he had a blood phobia, but I didn’t know it was this powerful. He was making his way slowly to the door as if I were holding a gun on him.

  “Proud of yourself?” I demanded, and pushed my hair back, knowing it was smearing the blood across my forehead.

  “Clean that up,” he said, and gingerly reached for the paper towel I’d started to clean the tea with. He picked it up and came at me with it. “You’ve got to stop bleeding.”

  “No!” I knocked his arm away, sending the paper towel flying. “Don’t touch me with that.” I’d as soon have let him stab me as swab up my wound.

  Which, from the looks of it, had to be a terrible gash.

  I reached for the phone on the wall and dialed 911 before he could stop me.

  He made a noise of anger and lunged toward me, but I held the receiver up. “It’s too late. I already dialed. Even if you manage to hang up this call, the police will be here any second. You’d better get out of here, Leif. You’d better get far, far away from here and hope I don’t decide to press charges.”