Lord Bachelor

by Tammy L. Bailey

  However, he’d stepped in quicksand with agreeing to do the show, not thinking of anyone but himself. He didn’t stop to realize a name came attached with an actual human being. One name in particular he couldn’t stop thinking about. She consumed him, day and night, body and soul.

  “Well, look who’s here.”

  Edmund glanced up to find Tommy Reid drying a glass as if he were sharpening a knife. He wore a navy blue T-shirt that hugged his chest and accentuated his bronzed skin. The virile handsomeness of the man shoved Edmund into an even darker mood.

  Despite the effort not to, Edmund found himself questioning Tommy’s expectations in his and Abby’s cozy relationship. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, her bartender friend still had feelings for her. Edmund recognized the look, the hunger, the wanting. Although she believed they’d left each other at the altar, Edmund knew Tommy had stayed behind, waiting for her to say “I do” one day.

  “She’s not here,” Tommy said.

  Edmund cleared his throat and sat up straighter. He thought the man would have said the same thing, even if Abby stood behind him with an apron tied around her small waist. Remembering the first beer on the list she’d drudgingly rattled off to him that first night, he called out his order. “I’d like an Avery White Rascal.”

  Tommy didn’t move right away, but when he did, he never shifted his gaze away from Edmund. He finally returned, slapping a napkin down before the orange-labeled bottle.

  Still in the man’s firing line, Edmund threw his head back and drank some of the citrus-flavored beer. He didn’t intend to enter into a conversation with Tommy until the man placed his bear paw-sized hands on the bar and pulled forward.

  “You do realize I will kill you if you hurt her in any way?”

  Tommy’s declaration came as no surprise. If the roles were reversed, Edmund knew he’d have no reservations telling the man the same thing.

  “Yes, it has crossed my mind.”

  “Good.”

  Tommy started to say something else when the black wall phone rang loudly behind him. He picked it up and balanced it on one hefty shoulder, stretching the cord to take care of another customer. “Oh, hey, Abby,” Tommy shouted over the blaring music and intoxicated crowd.

  The reaction to hearing her name on the man’s lips came hard and fast. Edmund waited on the edge of his seat, an unpleasant sensation slicing down his spine.

  Tommy stuck an index finger in one ear and shouted. “What? Abby, calm down. I can’t understand you. Where are you?”

  Apprehension squeezed at Edmund’s chest.

  “At the shop? Just give me a few minutes. I need someone to cover for me, and I’ll be right there.”

  Edmund, stood, his hands fisting at his side until Tommy’s sharp features pulled taut with concern. “Just tell me if you’re hurt.”

  Edmund had heard enough, his head spinning with concern and uncertainty. At this point, he didn’t care who she’d called, he wanted to be there. With Tommy’s back to him, Edmund slapped a twenty on the bar and left.

  It took him fifteen minutes to get to What Goes Around, but it felt like an hour, every traffic light stopping him, even when the streets lay damp and eerily empty.

  When he arrived, what he saw didn’t bring him any more comfort. The street was lined with three police cars, their sirens silent, and their lights flashing a hypnotic red, white, and blue. He sprinted down the sidewalk, his feet crunching over parts of the front door.

  “Whoa, hold on there,” said one of the officers, sticking his hand out to keep him from going any further.

  “Where’s the owner, Abby Forester? Is she all right?” Edmund held his breath, waiting for the emotionless man to say something. “I’m a…friend.”

  “She’s over there,” the man acknowledged, jerking his heard toward the staircase leading up to her apartment.

  Edmund stepped over the overturned antique case and parts of the doorframe, catching sight of her sitting with her hands over her face, her shoulders quaking.

  He took a cautious step closer. He’d never comforted anyone in his life, and he questioned if he’d be making a mistake to go to her without knowing what to do or what to say. His legs moved forward all the same, until he stood before her.

  “Abby?”

  Her face lifted, her lashes damp with tears. She blinked at him, another one falling and landing on her quivering lip. “How?”

  He just shook his head as she swiped at her face. It didn’t matter. She rose up, slow and unsteady, and fell straight into his arms.

  “God,” he murmured. He held her as her silent cry drenched his shirt, as her arms wrapped tight around his neck.

  He wanted his first question to be “why didn’t you call me?” But it was egotistical, and he knew it. “What happened?” he asked instead.

  ****

  Abby didn’t want to pull away. Her hair was a disaster, her face was puffy, and the comfort of Edmund’s arms around her was like nothing she’d ever known. At last, she drew back, his warm and caressing palms lifting to push back some of her disheveled hair.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she hiccupped, “so I got up to take a walk. When I came back, I found this.” She glanced toward the mangled mess. “They took some of my father’s rare Beatles albums and my mother’s pa…pa…paintings.” A sob tore from her throat at the last words, unable to comprehend never being able to look at them again.

  He brought her back toward him, her cheek resting against his chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing the warm and heady smell of his skin and drowning in the rapid pounding of his heart.

  “Do you have any idea who may have done this?” His voice reverberated against her ear, low and strong.

  She didn’t want to talk or think. It hurt too much to do either. Still, if she had to guess, her first thought was Kendra, but she had no way to prove it. Instead, she hoped the police would find some evidence before incriminating the woman.

  After lecturing both Raify and Edmund on the outdated notion of damsels in distress, here she stood, bawling in a man’s arms, dreading the moment he’d have to leave her.

  “We’ve done all we can do for now,” she heard an officer say behind her. She forced herself to leave Edmund’s warm embrace, glancing back to the young man who’d taken down all the information about the break-in.

  “Upstairs doesn’t appear to be touched. I suppose they found what they were looking for down here.” He inhaled and motioned for the other two officers to leave. “We’ll call if we catch who did this. If you want to notify your insurance company, I’ll have the report ready for you around three tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded and handed Edmund his card. “I’ll see about placing a car outside to watch over the place. If you two think of anything else, please call that number on the front. We really want to catch who did this.”

  Edmund reached out to take the card and shake the officer’s hand. “I assure you, we will.”

  The man started to turn, but hesitated, his compassionate gaze landing straight on Abby. “I wouldn’t recommend staying here tonight. Do you have someplace else to go?”

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  Abby’s head jerked toward the doorway to find Tommy standing in the rubble, his hands fisted, his massive form unyielding. Since her father’s death, Tommy had always been there for her. It was the reason she’d called him first; that and Will’s impromptu visit warning her of going off script with Edmund and the consequences if she did.

  The small-statured officer, who one of his colleagues called Jay-Rome, replaced his miniature notepad inside his left uniform pocket. With his boyish features, she believed he showed more than the usual sympathy for her plight.

  He left her between Tommy and Edmund, both staring at each other like two rutting elks.

  “You can go now,” Tommy said to Edmund, his tone respectful but stern. While most people walked backward whenever Tommy gave a command, Edmund just stood ther
e, never budging.

  “No, I’d prefer to stay,” Edmund countered with a half-cocked smile. That wasn’t the answer Tommy expected, and he let it show in his warrior-like stance.

  To avoid bloodshed, Abby turned to Edmund. “I’m okay, really. You should probably go.”

  His eyebrows furrowed above his shocked gaze. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “She doesn’t want you here, Lord Bachelor. If she did, she would have called you.”

  Abby twisted toward Tommy, her finger lifted to scold him. “That’s not fair.”

  His lips thinned under his long nose, and she knew she’d wounded him. Always logical and even-tempered, he stepped forward, glass crunching under his black boots. “Ask him, Abby. Ask him his intentions after the show is over, because from what I’ve read on the social networks, his reputation with sticking around or settling down with only one woman, leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Abby shook her head. Even though she already knew these things, she held onto some romantic hope they were either false or wildly exaggerated. “You don’t know him.”

  Tommy drew up to his full height. “I know enough to believe, when he gets tired of screwing—”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The punch came out of nowhere as Edmund landed one square across Tommy’s mouth. As Edmund grasped his hand and gritted out enough expletives to make a rapper blush, Tommy staggered back, almost losing his balance. Abby ran to him, astonished to see his tall form stooped over and blood dripping from the cut on his lip.

  “Somehow,” he said, wiping his mouth gingerly with the back of his tanned hand, “I didn’t see that coming.”

  “I’ll go get you some ice.”

  Abby turned and sent a warning glare toward Edmund before running up the stairs to her kitchen. She didn’t know if she should rejoice in his reckless actions, or tell him she never wanted to see him again.

  The second option made her pause and her heart drop clear to the floor. Trying not to overreact, she set about filling a freezer bag full of miniature ice cubes. In her haste and nervousness, half the tray ended up on the floor, broken pieces scattering to all corners. She managed to pick up most of them before dashing back downstairs.

  She stopped halfway between the register and the loveseat where she and Raify always talked. She expected Tommy to have Edmund in a headlock, the man’s meaty fists pounding Edmund’s beautiful face to a pulp.

  Instead, she found Edmund alone, leaning against the wall, his head tilted upward toward the vaulted ceiling.

  “Where’s Tommy?” she asked.

  Edmund lowered his chin, his gaze drifting over hers for a long, inspecting moment. “He left.”

  With the ice numbing her palm, she walked over to Edmund and, without saying a word, gently lifted the bag to his fighting hand.

  She struggled with her thoughts, wondering if he deserved her gratitude or ire. Tommy had said nothing wrong. He’d voiced aloud what many people must have thought about the situation. For Edmund to nearly render the man unconscious only added to the truthfulness of the situation.

  “What a mess,” she said, shaking her head and walking away. She didn’t get very far before he reached his hand around to haul her back.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her head tilted. “For what exactly? Sorry for punching one of my closest friends in the lip, or sorry that what he said was true?”

  She waited until Edmund’s steely gaze shifted first. When his grip loosened, she slid away, stepping lightly to the place that once held her mother’s paintings. With the knot in her throat growing larger, she lifted her hand to touch the clean rectangle, the emptiness cold and painful.

  If she dared see a silver lining in this horrific moment, it was spending time cleaning the store, as opposed to thinking of Edmund with his three other brides.

  Abby groaned from her inward thoughts, prompting him to walk to her side. With gentle hands, he turned her around to face him. She believed her features conveyed her feelings as his bruised knuckles grazed across her cheek, caressing and soft.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t the first person you called,” he confessed. “It should have been me. Do you think I’m incapable of taking care of you?” His chest expanded on an unsteady breath.

  “What, no. It’s just…well, the last time I saw you, you were squashed between two women, one of them planning what she wanted to do with you…naked.”

  “Bloody….damn it…hell, Abby,” he said, tossing the ice pack onto the couch and pacing back and forth with his thumb and index finger pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “Maybe you should go, Edmund. If Will finds out—”

  “I don’t give a damn about Will right now,” he said, in a tone she’d never heard him use. He lifted his head toward the ceiling and brought both hands down the length of his face. She knew he was struggling to rein in his emotions. With his shoulders rising and falling hard and fast, she drew back.

  “Earlier, at the bar, when I heard Tommy ask you if you were hurt…” He paused to steady his voice. “…I couldn’t breathe.”

  His words left her speechless. He stepped to her again, more cautious than the last time, his eyes glistening with tender emotion. Despite his words, she still found herself asking the ultimate question, “If the audience picks me, Edmund, will you contest it?”

  His silence brought her the answer. Any expectations of them remaining together crashed around her like the shattered glass at her feet. Now she was the one who couldn’t breathe.

  “Edmund, please go.”

  “No.”

  It seemed they had come full circle from when they first met, never seeming to meet in the middle or find enough common ground to come together. This angered and exasperated her, all at the same time.

  “What do you expect from me, from us? I’m not inhuman, Edmund. I can’t continue to shut off my feelings like a faucet whenever it becomes too much for you to carry.”

  He didn’t move from his place two feet away, his posture and stare so stiff and unyielding she thought he might pass out.

  ****

  “Oh dear, what happened?”

  Edmund turned to find Raify standing in the doorway, a street light putting a white halo around her decorated head. She was dressed as she always was, as if it were the middle of the afternoon.

  “I was robbed,” Abby answered, her voice quivering and tearful. To his left, Raify entered, taking great care to find the cleanest spot to walk. “What did they take?”

  “A few rare records and my mother’s paintings,” Abby said, before turning back to glance at him. He tried to read her face, but the message she’d tried to convey was lost in Raify’s motherly command.

  “Come, dear. You can stay with me until you can get the door fixed.”

  Not yet ready to let her go, Edmund rose to the occasion, shifting to stand between the woman and Abby. “I have plenty of room. She can stay with me,” he said, with the authority his father had instilled in him at a young age.

  “Of course you do, Lord Rushwood. Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoons right about now?”

  Edmund’s blood, set to simmering, began to boil in his veins. With the woman never taking her gaze from his, she shooed Abby away, in the gentlest way possible.

  “Why don’t you go get a few things from upstairs? Edmund will be here when you get back,” Raify reassured her.

  He watched Abby trudge past him and up the staircase, glancing back once or twice. With Abby out of sight, the woman turned on him. “I’m starting to wonder if it might be best if you leave her the way you found her.”

  The thought suffocated him. “I can’t do that.”

  “Then you have learned nothing. You are just as selfish now as you were when you arrived.”

  Her words infuriated him. “What do you know about me?”

  She showed no emotion. “I know Abby wants you, heart and soul. I also know you have no intention of giving away either, for Abby or anyone else.”
>
  He let out the breath he’d been holding, wrapping his mind around the woman’s admission. “Since you have only just met me, madam, you have no right to draw such intimate conclusions. As for Abby, she doesn’t know what she wants. She’s breaking her back trying to hold onto a dream that isn’t even hers.” He fisted his hands to control his temper over the matter. Although Abby had admitted she wanted him, it by no means meant she was in love with him. Still, the thought made his pulse hammer.

  “What if I wish to marry her?” he blurted out, perhaps meaning to shock the old woman. However, she just stood there as if she knew what he was going to say even before he’d thought of it.

  “You did not come all the way from England and plant yourself in that demeaning show to marry a girl with nothing to give you but herself.”

  The truth of her words impaled him. He swallowed hard. “Then what would you have me do?” His stern voice caused Raify to lift her chin to an intimidating angle. After several tense moments, she smiled, though fleeting and weak. He understood she was testing him, pushing him further than he ever thought he’d ever want to go with a relationship.

  Of course, she never had the chance to answer, as Abby’s soft steps sounded on the stairs. He thought he’d ingested enough of Raify’s speech to give in to her taking Abby to her place.

  “Come, dear,” the woman said, lifting a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  Abby glanced back at him, disappointment showing in her swollen, tear-stained face. To see her so tormented didn’t make things any easier for him. However, he needed to finish what he’d started, and he needed to know if what he felt for her was real.

  “It’s for the best,” he confided, waffling on the edge of changing his mind. So many questions stretched between them, so many he didn’t know how to answer.

  “Abby—”

  She held up her hand. “I’m so tired of words.”

  She left him there, among the scattered ruins of her father’s shop. He didn’t move for a long time. When he did, he stooped down and began picking up the jagged pieces under his feet, one at a time.