by Lucy Parker
Already, he did feel differently. As each minute passed, and the hours clustered into days, his attachment to her, the connection between them, seemed to strengthen and take root in every part of his mind and body. From those first tentative, whisper-fine threads into a knot of solid platinum.
She shivered. Still smiling a little, she crossed her arms, rubbing at the goose bumps appearing on her skin. Griff reached out and hooked a finger through one of hers. He tugged, and her smile took on that mischievous, provocative tilt. She came forward, her arms sliding around his waist. Cuddling into his body, she nuzzled her cheek against his chest in a gesture that was almost catlike, and so transparently affectionate that his heart fucking clenched.
Sliding his hand down over the soft curves of her arse, he nudged her temple with his nose. She looked up, a spark igniting in her eyes, but being so delightfully... Freddy, didn’t just obligingly lift her mouth for his kiss. Looping one arm about his neck, she yanked him down to her and pressed her lips enthusiastically to his.
She broke the kiss long enough to lean out of the stall and snatch up another condom, and he gritted his teeth as she rolled it onto him with adept strokes that sent jolts of sensation down his legs and up his spine. Griff lifted her in a swift movement, her legs twining around his waist, his tongue delving deeply back into her mouth.
“Mmm.” Freddy made a muffled sound, tilting her head to kiss the side of his mouth, his cheek, his jawbone. “I don’t think I’ll bother with morning runs ever again. You’re much better exercise.”
His laugh was ragged as his breath ran short and his blood shot southward. “As pillow talk goes, I’m not sure you’d have Shakespeare looking to his laurels.”
Her reply was lost as his mouth returned to hers, and the kiss grew long and hot and drugging. Bracing Freddy against the wall, Griff held her up with his body, and her heels dug into the small of his back when he pushed slowly back inside her.
It was significantly easier with the water off.
Sex with Freddy had so far been an incredibly intense rush. This was far more relaxed, an almost leisurely build of pleasure as he stroked into her and she smoothed her fingertips over his cheeks and smiled into his eyes.
He could feel the movement of her chest, the push of her breasts against him as her breath quickened, and the quivering in the muscles of her thighs as her legs started to clench around him. Then internal muscles gripped down hard on his erection, and the rocking of her hips faltered.
She wrapped her arms tightly around his head, and he kissed her neck as the pulsing rippled through her body.
He increased the pace of his thrusts, driving his own spiralling pleasure upward, but trying to keep his movements relatively shallow, despite the urge to push and hold in deep. She’d sworn up and down that her pelvic pain had subsided, but—
His mind whited out as the pressure broke and spilled over, his nerve endings seeming to spark through his entire body. A rough sound broke from his throat, and he closed his eyes as Freddy held him close.
When he was confident enough in the stability of his arms and legs to lift his head and straighten, she adjusted the grip of her thighs over his hips, and slowly touched a finger to the centre of his chin.
He was expecting a light, cheeky comment, but her voice was solemn. “Thank you for making this week bearable for me.”
His eyes searched hers, then he tucked her face back into the curve of his neck, sheltering her body with his own.
As they got dressed in the bedroom, Freddy’s fingers flew as she buttoned up her dress. She was due at the theatre soon. Instead of encouraging the cast to chill out in the hours leading up to opening night, Maf Reynolds was still drilling cues into them for the different scene sequences, and her roaring had echoed around the estate this week when anyone was late. She was clearly worried about how the performance was going to come off.
“Griff.” He glanced up at the alteration in Freddy’s tone. A certain tension had slipped back into the set of her shoulders, and he assumed the subject in her mind had something to do with her grandmother. Even decades later, the bloody woman was still causing strife. “You’ve studied art history. What do you know about Billy Gotham?”
“Not a lot.” He tucked his shirt into his trousers and did up his belt. “Twentieth-century portraiture isn’t my area. He had a successful showing in a Royal Academy summer exhibition, attracted the notice of an influential patron, and his career took off from there. He was one of the pet society artists. And obviously became wealthy, because the boy who was born in one of the poorest streets in the East End eventually died in a home he owned in Knightsbridge.”
“Alone?” Freddy asked, winding her hair into a coil on top of her head. “He never married?”
“No.” Griff propped his hip against the desk. “He never married.”
“Because he was still in love with Violet.”
“Conjecture,” Griff pointed out, and she wrinkled her nose at him. “But possibly, yes.”
Not so long ago, he’d have sneered at any possibility that romantic love could be so enduring, so life-altering as that.
It no longer seemed like a notion that belonged only in fiction.
Freddy reached up to kiss him. Her mint-scented breath had just touched his skin when someone knocked on the door. She froze. “Why do I suddenly have an apprehensive feeling?”
“Because you have an overactive imagination that’s proving to be contagious, and it would be best for all concerned if you put a line through whodunits on your list of future projects.” He pulled open the door just as she threw a pillow at his head.
“Ahoy there, young lovers.” Charlie was wearing his usual smile, but there was wariness behind it. “Sorry to break up the party,” he said with a quirked brow at the pillow. “But I need a word, Griff.”
Griff stepped back to let him in, but Charlie cast a glance at Freddy. “Er...in private. No offense intended, Freddy.”
“None taken. I have to get to the theatre.” Freddy went up on her tiptoes and kissed Griff’s cheek, her hand resting on the crook of his arm.
She shot him a smile as she went out, transparently pleased to see him and Charlie advancing to the stage of brotherly heart-to-hearts.
Unfortunately, he suspected that wasn’t why his brother was here.
Once Freddy was out of earshot, he turned with raised eyebrows.
“Rupert Carlton has arrived,” Charlie said. “He’s waiting for you in the library.”
He clenched his jaw. “Right.”
“It’ll work out,” Charlie said, and Griff looked at him.
“That blind optimism again?”
Charlie shook his head. “That faith again.”
On the first landing, they passed Sadie Foster leaning against the wall and cooing into her phone. She looked as innocent and sweet as a chocolate-box painting until her eyes lifted. She sneered at them as she continued to pour honeyed bullshit into some gullible sod’s ear.
“God, she’s a piece of work,” Charlie muttered, and Griff glanced back at her.
She was watching them with narrowed eyes, her body language shrewd and assessing. As his cool gaze met hers, she raised her chin with clear disdain.
Downstairs, Griff paused with his hand on the library door. Charlie dropped back a few paces, a supportive presence at his back, but giving him space. An instant of silent communication passed between them, before Charlie formed a fist with his right hand and pressed it over his heart.
It was a gesture he hadn’t made for years. Griff had last seen him do it when he’d been a skinny kid, standing on the paved steps leading up to his boarding school, watching Griff drive away after his visit to the headmaster’s office. Griff had been eighteen then, heading into London on a mission to find enough money to pay Charlie’s school fees, with no plan in mind, but a kid behind him who believed he cou
ld make anything right.
His chest momentarily tight, Griff opened the door. Rupert Carlton was standing very still in a slice of sunlight from the window, leaning on his walking stick, looking down at the Wythburn Group materials Griff had left scattered across his desk.
The older man lifted his head. Lines around his eyes spoke of physical pain and sleepless nights.
Griff closed the door behind him. “Carlton.”
“Ford-Griffin.” Rupert had a way of pronouncing Griff’s name that pushed his mouth into a shape like he’d just smelled a rotten egg.
There was no love lost between them—and this conversation wasn’t going to endear them to each other—but the fact was, this was Freddy’s father. And she loved him.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t quite keep the edge of sarcasm from his voice. “I see you got my message. Eventually.”
Rupert closed his hand into a fist where it rested against the papers on the desk. “I believe you wanted to discuss this aborted film of yours.”
“The film comes into it.” Griff walked over to the bookshelves and bent down, scanning the spines, looking for the book. His own copy was still over in the office at The Henry, but he remembered there being a copy—There. Pulling it from the shelf, he joined Rupert at the desk.
He set All Her World down on the desk in front of its author. “But I think we’d better talk about this first, don’t you?”
* * *
Sadie was tormenting Maya again. After absolutely bouncing onto the stage ten minutes late, with such a bubbly attitude that even the telling-off from Maf hadn’t fazed her and Freddy had actually wondered if she was drunk, she’d resorted back to type.
From her position in the stands, Freddy watched with growing concern as Maya pulled at the label of her water bottle, looking close to tears. She’d never seen Maya falling apart like this. She was holding it together onstage so far, but she was a total mess between scenes. God, Sadie had a nasty streak the length of the Nile. And besides everything else, she was jeopardising the whole production by undermining cast morale, and this was going on her CV as well.
Cross-legged, Freddy reached for her own water bottle and a couple of the paracetamol tablets she had left. Her leg had almost healed, but her stress headache was thumping. Fruitlessly, she checked her phone again.
She wondered if her father was even planning to come to the performance tonight.
She heard voices as a group of people came into the rear stalls, and for a moment thought it was Griff, but when she turned, saw Charlie. He was talking to the TV crew, but as he caught her eye, he winked.
Actually—he looked a bit...furtive. Guilty, even.
Freddy frowned, swallowing down her tablets. She could hear the resonance of his voice, but not the words. He did have a similar voice to Griff. It was one of their few physical similarities. Otherwise, you’d never know they were related. Charlie hadn’t been blessed with her favourite nose on the planet, the glorious hooked bridge Griff shared with Violet, and his smile was—
At that moment, Charlie grinned at something the head producer said to him, and Freddy stilled.
It was the most extraordinary sensation, like a veil of fog had been resting over the final piece of the puzzle, and she’d been too blind to see it. With that same buzzing feeling in her ears that she’d experienced in the old nursery at Mallowren Manor, she checked the time on her phone. Fifteen minutes until her next cue.
Long enough.
In a rush of movement, suddenly driven to just know all of it, she hurried across the theatre floor to the side door that led to the rear passageway. As she slipped through it, she caught a glimpse of Charlie looking startled and a bit concerned.
The back hallways were empty, and she made it to Henrietta’s office without anyone stopping her for a chat or to deliver more instructions in the chaotic final lead-up to the performance.
The room felt echoing and eerie in the quiet. In the air above the shattered tile wall, little dust motes were still dancing in the dim light. Griff had left a few scattered materials on the desk, including a stack of books.
Freddy checked the spines and found the one she was looking for. His copy of All Her World.
Sitting down at the desk, she flipped through until she found the chapter that included Rupert’s own childhood recollections of Highbrook. The weeks that he had spent here while his mother was supposedly writing The Velvet Room.
She had forgotten. In the shock of everything, and the confusion, and the increasing performance pressure, she’d forgotten that her father hadn’t just written about Henrietta and the creation of the play in general terms. He’d actually described—
Once she began writing, she sank into the script and didn’t emerge for days. I still remember seeing her there at the desk, hand flying, ink splattering, page after page thrown into a messy pile that would later require meticulous reorganizing. And all the while, that strange little triangular smile on her face. Her expression throughout was part cynicism, part determination—and underlying it, the oddest sense of despair. Even as a child, I felt it as a chilled atmosphere that seemed to permeate the very walls.
Freddy stared down at the page, her fingers resting on two words.
As the numbness cleared, a creeping fury began to sidle in.
She slammed the cover closed, and stormed towards the door.
Outside in the drizzling rain, she passed a few people on her jog down the woodland path, but they all took one surprised look at her expression and gave her a wide berth.
When she reached the house, more cars were rolling into the driveway, and she was forced to stop briefly as the tall man emerging from an Audi hailed her in a deep voice. Fisting her hands to hold back her nervous energy, she stood still as Nick Davenport snapped open an umbrella and came to hold it over both their heads. He was broad-shouldered and long-legged, with dark skin and eyes, and his bone structure was unbelievable. He might have been carved by Michelangelo rather than sprouting from cells like other mortals. The designer of that suit should be paying him advertising commission. He was also a human fox terrier when it came to sniffing out potential stories, and one of the last people on the planet she wanted to make forced small talk with right now.
“Freddy Carlton,” he said, oh so charmingly. He and Sabrina—the practiced schmoozers. They were more alike than they’d ever admit. “Nice to see you again. I hope things are on track here?”
A sound emerged from her throat that jumbled together irony and misery with a hint of hysteria, and Nick was obviously taken aback. He almost lost the trademark smile completely. “Problem?”
“Several. Excuse me.” Ducking around him, Freddy dashed through the rain towards the house. She’d apologise for the rudeness later, although behind that smooth exterior Nick was ruthless and probably impervious to snubs.
Inside, she went straight to the library. Griff and Charlie had obviously finished their conversation, so she expected he’d be in there working.
She had several things to say to him. Her incredibly acute lover and budding best mate, who knew the research material for his film like the back of his hand.
She put her hand on the library door and stopped as voices came to her from the other side of the wood. It was déjà vu to the moment at the Metronome, standing there, listening to words that affected her profoundly. Not quite in the same way this time.
“...don’t tell Freddy...” She heard Griff’s deep tones distinctly, followed by an inaudible muttering from a voice slightly higher in pitch.
That she also recognised.
Her temper snapped.
Chapter Seventeen
Freddy pushed open the library door without knocking, and the two men she cared about most in the world turned their heads. They were standing by the table, with documents strewn between them, looking like a couple of wartime generals consulting on the pla
n of attack. Making arrangements that would affect other people’s lives, behind their backs.
Ignoring Griff for the moment, since obviously none of this was a surprise to him at all, the bloody infuriating, overprotective, overbearing...clod, Freddy met her father’s shuttered gaze. “You knew,” she said. “I’ve been stressing for days, wondering how to break it to you. And you knew all along. You wrote All Her World, you profited by the story, y-you held up Henrietta to me as this shining example of a woman with drive and ambition, this goal of success—” Already her voice was cracking, the hurt warring with the anger, which only infuriated her more. These two had treated her like enough of a fucking mug without her breaking down and sobbing all over them, but she couldn’t hold back the distress. “Dad. Oh, Dad. Why did you write the book?”
Red spots started to burn on her father’s cheeks. Suddenly, as he had in Henrietta’s office last week, he looked so much older.
Griff came towards her, but when she jerked away from his outstretched hand, he flinched. “Did Charlie tell you?” The question was rough with concern. “I told him I needed to—”
“Oh, you told Charlie what you’d obviously realised straight away, did you?” Freddy breathed in shakily, glaring at him. “Glad you’re opening up to your brother and treating him like a capable adult with a brain. Wish you’d extended the same courtesy to me.”
Griff’s brows snapped together. “Freddy—”
“I poured my heart out to you about how worried I was about telling my father, and you didn’t think to mention that it probably wasn’t necessary to agonise over it. That, by the way, my dad is as much a part of the whole sodding web of lies as my script-pinching grandma and your nympho grandad.”
“Freddy—” he tried again, his hand on her arm, but again she shook him off, and turned back to her father, who was watching them, a shuttered expression in his eyes.
His eyes, which were identical to hers, and to Henrietta’s. The three of them connected in this bloody mess.
