by Dani Collins
“No it doesn’t,” Violet rushed to say, but Porter seemed to retract to an unreachable space. “Porter, it doesn’t. We can be togeth—”
“No. We can’t.” He released her abruptly. “And if you’ve fallen in love then I’ve definitely taken this too far. I don’t love you. I can’t.” Conflict pulled his face into an expression of deep strain. “I just told you I didn’t want to hurt you—damn it,” he bit out, bleak anger twisting his mouth. “Goodbye.” He walked away.
Everything in her screamed to run after him, but she stood crystallized in the anguished amber of rejection. He could be lying, she told herself, but one glance toward Eloisa, who looked at her with empathy and pity rather than triumph, told her what a desperate stretch that was.
Matchsticks. A flare and a snap before they were discarded, charred and thinned to nothing.
“When you come back tomorrow,” Eloisa said with a kindness that increased the ache in her heart, “I’ll give you money for a fresh start.”
Ann had two words for that, an old Anglo-Saxon version of No, thanks.
Chapter Nine
Ann followed Fonzo on his dawn tour of the garden, pouring water on each place he piddled so the gardener wouldn’t have to do it. Paris was having one of its damp starts. Wisps of fog faded in and out across the river, toneless barge horns sounding, indistinct voices and traffic drifting from unseen directions.
A preternatural tingle crept across her shoulders. She turned and looked up, both startled and unsurprised to find Porter on his balcony, watching her. Another frisson went through her, this one feminine and sexual. She wanted to go to him, feeling called, but he only stood in somber stillness, uninviting.
He hadn’t been online since her return to the mansion last evening. She’d checked about a million times, barely sleeping. She hadn’t even been sure he was in the house.
She lowered her head and her exhale briefly fogged her glasses.
She had decided to tell him. Whether he loved her or not didn’t matter. Whether he married her or not didn’t matter either. She just wanted the subterfuge gone.
Twenty minutes later, she stood in her bra and underwear staring into her closet, wondering if she should dress as Ann or Violet when she went to his office. There was nothing in here that looked like Violet, but if she left off the abaya—maybe she should wear it to his office, then take it off there?
A knock at the door had her calling an absent, “Come in.”
She expected one of the maids with her breakfast, but Porter entered.
“I need to speak—” He stared at her nearly naked form, nonplussed. “I saw you outside so I thought you were dressed…”
Anyone else would have turned away when walking in on someone, but he scanned her from head to toe, waves of confusion flickering across his expression, followed by growing incredulity. A flicker of something harder, denial, sent his gaze scanning the room for answers before he flashed his glare back to hers, appalled comprehension stamped there now.
Dawning anger.
She could practically see the memories of their various interactions, the lies, the sexual intimacies, the secrets, roll through his mind like film. Each scene made an impact, causing him to flinch again and again until his face was a contorted mask of growing fury.
“You…and Eloisa…? Why?”
“Close the door and I’ll explain,” she promised, even though her brain shorted out and her heart tripped into a gallop. He looked really, really dangerous.
“Explain what? How Eloisa wanted to stop me marrying, no matter what it took? I told you—” He straightened to his full height. “Have you spoken to my father? Are you and he—”
“No!” she cried, astounded he would even think it. Chilled by his contemptuous rake of her near nakedness. The visible severing of any soft feelings in him scared her into trying to close the distance with a few steps toward him. “This doesn’t change anything,” she insisted. “We can still get married.”
“Are you kidding? What kind of woman does something like this?”
“Porter,” she cajoled, pushing forward to grasp his arm, driven by a wave of desperation. “Remember when I said I loved you—?”
He shoved her with such finality she stumbled backward, tripped over her own feet and landed jarringly on her ass. The rejection was worse than the pain of the fall.
“You seriously think I believe that? You lied—what else have you lied about? My God, you’re quite the little actress aren’t you? Virgin my eye. Is Cain in on this?”
“No! And you can’t tell him, Porter.” As deeply insulting as his question was, the implication was worse. Pushing achingly to her feet, feeling real terror creeping in, she said, “He’ll kill me.”
“Good. This was cruel and wrong.” He turned to the door.
She rushed him again, but the ferocity in his glare held her back from touching him. “I’m serious, Porter. He’ll be—” She realized she was trembling, going into a type of shock. In a way that was a blessing. It was holding off the agony of Porter’s contempt, but she couldn’t think through the panic. Which was worse? Porter’s fury or Cain’s? “Just stay here and listen. Please.”
“No. Not to you. You’re no better than what I grew up with, setting me up with some twisted promise of love only to slap me down and laugh at my pain. I don’t take that kind of shit anymore. You’re out of here. Both of you. Now.” He walked out.
Her heart contracted to a pinned knot of guilt in her chest while the rest of her vibrated in tortured reaction. Like always, the tiny flicker of hope she’d started to glimpse was extinguishing before she properly reached its light.
“Porter!” she protested, leaning out to see him head straight to her stepfather’s door. “Please.”
He ignored her. His knuckles made a loud few raps before he pushed in.
Oh God.
* * *
Porter entered the dark, rancid-smelling bedroom Cain was using and took a moment to suppress a retch. He told himself it was the foulness of watching Cain’s clumsy, farting body sit up on the edge of the bed, but knew deep down it was hurt and betrayal making him reel.
I can’t marry you, Ann. I’ve fallen in love with someone else. I can’t give her up. He’d been so close to saying it. So close to feeling it. What a fool. What a fucking idiot infatuated by a fucking bitch.
“What do you want?” Cain gruffed.
“The deal is off,” he managed succinctly and turned for the door. “Leave. Immediately.”
“You can’t! On what grounds?”
“She’s not a virgin, for starters,” Porter hissed, hating himself for being so taken in that he’d begun to imagine she could be. The way she’d held herself just beyond his reach had been very convincing, but it was nothing but ruthless manipulation. Her and Eloisa and this man, all having a laugh at his expense. “Given the behavior I’ve seen—” The swallowing of his cum, the rocket-like speed of her own climax, “—she’s been honing her skills a while.”
“Ann!” Cain bellowed. The mattress squeaked as he rose, but Porter was already heading for the stairs, wanting to be as far away as possible from both of them. “You fucking slut.”
Cain’s voice was near murderous. Despite his disgust with her, Porter recognized the level of wrath in the man as dangerous. Police-to-the-house dangerous. He glanced back as Cain’s abusive vitriol moved toward Ann’s room. His guts turned to water as he scented true violence. It wasn’t like he hadn’t spent his childhood learning the signs.
He went back up the stairs, two at a time, waving off a maid who arrived at the top of the servant’s stairs, eyes wide with alarm.
“Don’t think you’ll hide this time, you cunt. Where are you?” Cain shouted. Ann’s door smashed against the wall and her little dog barked. Nails scratched on the floor in a chaotic scamper. Cain swore and the dog yelped.
Inside Ann’s room, Cain pushed onto the balcony, coming up against the rail to shout, “You bitch. Get your ass back here. Stop
her,” he told someone below. “Put the dogs on her.”
Leaping across the room and into the tiny space beside Cain, Porter took in the security guard who’d entered the back garden with the leashed pinschers. Two servants peered off the back veranda and Violet, naked but for her bra and underpants, balanced on the wall in the back corner of the garden.
“Don’t,” Porter countermanded sharply. “Ann, stop.”
The snarling dogs drowned him out and she only looked back once over shoulders still shadowed by healing bruises that he’d seen often enough to stop acknowledging. Pale and cold as she was, the yellowed marks stood out in the morning light, hitting him between the eyes.
He’ll kill me.
Rising to stand on the low wall, she looked into the water.
“No!” Porter shouted so loud it clawed his throat.
She launched herself into the river, diving headfirst and disappearing.
Cain swore and turned into the bedroom, swinging a foot at the overexcited poodle who was only protecting his territory.
Before he realized what he was doing, Porter had elbowed Cain in the face, breaking his nose and dropping him to the floor in a pile of cursing, gnashing flesh.
“Get him out of here,” he told the nearest servant. “Now. On the street. His things can be set out later, but I want him out of this house.”
Brushing by his stunned mother in her negligee and his father coming from the servants’ wing, he went through the garage and down the stairs to the boathouse. Firing up the engine of the speedboat, he ground out, “Come on, come on,” as the mesh doors to the river took their time retracting.
With a throaty growl of the engine, he zigzagged into the open water then rounded to idle at the end of the island where the garden wall rose above a handful of loose boulders and a lot of dark, flowing water. She’d been right there. Why had she jumped? Damn it, why hadn’t she just stayed right there for one more second.
“Violet!” he called. “Ann! Where are you?”
Nothing. The fog made seeing more than a few meters impossible. He flexed his desperate grip on the controls, wanting to burst across the water in search of her, but afraid he’d run her over. Any of the barges navigating these waters could, if she didn’t succumb to hypothermia first.
Jesus Christ.
“Ann!”
He’ll kill me.
So she’d pulled a Tomas and leapt to her death instead?
It had been too great a shock to discover Ann and Violet were the same person. Too much like the games his parents used to play, promising something only to renege with a laugh, destroying what he loved without conscience. A goldfish, a kitten. His brother. For a few minutes, she’d been exactly like them. He’d hated her.
She didn’t have their taste for humiliation, however. He knew that. Far from being a predator, she had learned the survival techniques of prey. God, hadn’t he seen a dozen demonstrations of that in her? Submission. Camouflage.
Escape.
“Violet! Ann! Answer me!”
Only the gurgle of rushing water came to his ears over the rumble of the boat’s engine. He’d drifted down river and knew he was nearing a bridge, but didn’t want to look away from the passing shoreline in case he spotted her.
Let her live. Dear God, I’ll let her go if I have to, but let her live.
Forced to rev the engine to avoid the approaching bridge support, he pushed upriver a few hundred meters and drifted again, scanning, searching.
“Ann, please,” he begged.
Nothing.
As he called again and again, a couple walking on the bridge pointed at the shore and shouted down that a woman had climbed from the river there.
“Vous êtes certains?” he asked, searching for signs of her, aware he was drifting toward the supports again. “Avec de longs cheveux bruns?”
“Oui. Absolument,” they assured him. “Pas habillée.”
Not dressed. He was in a shirt and jeans and the air was uncomfortably cold. Naked and chilled by the water, she must be ready to collapse. Without anywhere to tie up and disembark, he could only return to the house and go back to search for her on foot. Aside from a few muddy toe prints on rocks, there was no sign of her.
At noon, he did the only thing he could think of: he went to see Eloisa.
* * *
It turned out that when you stumbled out of a river and into a group of university students, and offered them soggy money from your bra, they were surprisingly helpful.
A young man gave up his jacket while another offered his scarf, which Ann asked him to wrap around her frozen head since her hands wouldn’t work. A girl gave her the hot coffee she held and invited her to use her shower in a nearby flat. Another provided a warm, clean shirt and a pair of lovingly frayed jeans.
An hour later, Ann sat among people her own age for the first time since childhood, drank broth from a cup, and offered a very loose outline of her situation.
They tried to offer solutions, but weren’t much help.
“There’s no one else you can turn to?” one asked.
Porter, she immediately thought, but he’d pushed her away like she was a leper. She’d heard him calling for her on the river, but aside from being too breathless from exertion to answer, she’d feared Cain was with him. As crazy as her escape had been, as destitute and rock bottom as her situation was right now, she was free of Cain. Finally.
Raina would be so proud.
If only she knew how to contact her. She’d looked online using the laptop in the mansion, trying social media sites, but hadn’t had any luck yet.
Thinking of Raina led to thinking of Fonzo and her mood dipped. Would her puppy be looked after by the servants? Or would Porter’s mother order him killed?
She sighed, not wanting to think of Porter’s flat voice telling her that his mother would rather drown a dog than save one. If that was the sort of thing people close to him did, of course he’d seen her betrayal as unforgivable.
She still wished he’d given her a chance to explain.
But then, she’d had several chances and never taken any of them. She’d been trying to figure out who she was and how to achieve independence.
Find the courage to take charge of yourself. Use the assets you have to make a better life. Eloisa’s voice intruded unwillingly, but she heard her all the same.
“Maybe there’s one person I could try.”
Chapter Ten
Finding Eloisa’s home was a matter of getting directions to the spa. As she circled behind it and wandered into the alley she thought led to Eloisa’s private apartment, a man with a dog stopped her. He was the same man who had held the door of the limo for her each time, but he didn’t recognize her without her abaya and hijab.
When she said, “I’ve been coming here all week,” his demeanor changed.
“She’s been looking for you. Go in.” He touched his ear and relayed a message.
She entered and removed the flip-flops that one of her saviors had provided.
Eloisa came halfway down the spiral stairs wearing a ruffled robe. Her face was pallid beneath her layer of smudged makeup. “He’s beside himself. Worried you’re drowned. I have to tell him you’re here. Tsitsi!”
“Wait! Don’t. You don’t have to say I’m here, do you? I came to talk to you.” She instinctively backed to the door, hand going to the latch.
“Ann. You didn’t see him.” Eloisa came down the rest of the stairs with white-knuckled hands gripping the rail, as though moving was difficult.
“Did he hurt you?” Ann backed into the door, blood congealing to ice chunks in her veins.
“Not like you’re thinking. God, not even like I’ve hurt him.” She touched a hand to her brow. When she dropped it away and her chin came up, a deep sadness remained in her expression. “I thought I would enjoy seeing him love and lose, but it’s horrible. I hate myself quite a bit right now.” She fished in her pocket for her phone while calling out insistently, “Tsitsi.”
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“He doesn’t love me,” Ann assured her.
“He told me that if I hid you from him, he would destroy everything he made possible for me to build.”
“Because he’s angry you tricked him,” Ann insisted, folding her arms. “He’s furious with both of us. Don’t tell him I’m here.”
“I have to at least tell him you’re safe. He wasn’t even sure you’d made it out of the water.”
Ann smoothed the line of tailed threads poking up along the front pocket of her borrowed jeans, wishing Porter’s concern was as deep as Eloisa made it sound, but it was more likely part of the knee-jerk protectiveness his brother had instilled in him. He would be just as upset and worried if a stranger fell in the river, or one of the dogs.
Tsitsi moved from hovering in the archway into Eloisa’s line of vision and was told to make tea.
“I think he would like to marry you, Ann,” Eloisa said when she turned back to her. “He was so worried. So angry with himself that he’d put you in danger.”
She jerked a shoulder. “He doesn’t want to marry me,” she asserted. Coming forward, she tentatively perched on the edge of the sofa. “And I wouldn’t marry him. Not now. He said once that rescue wasn’t empowerment.”
Eloisa smiled tightly. “Nice to know he spoke well of me.”
“He has never wanted to marry anyone. You have to believe that. Our marriage was a means to get at his father. That’s the only reason he was willing to do it. Cain owns the company that used to belong to my mother. He made marrying me part of the purchase price to get me off his hands. With me gone, Cain can do what he pleases. Porter can still buy the company and have what he wanted. Marrying me now would gain him nothing except a wife who thought she had no other option except to rely on a man.” The words were a kind of death knell over the helpless girl she’d been. Screwing up her courage, she continued. “But I do have an option. Eloisa, I came here to do what you told me to do that first day. I have to take charge of my own life.”
Eloisa’s mobile buzzed insistently. She nodded once at the phone. “He’ll want to see you.”
