Keeping Her

by Holly Hart

  “You,” he slurs again. “This,” he gestures happily out at the cavorting strippers. “Them!”

  His arm starts to inch closer to my uncovered shoulders. I shoot him a killer glare, and when that doesn’t work, I double down.

  “I hope you’re not doing what you I think you’re doing…”

  Rex bites his lip, and turns on his best come-get-me eyes. I’m cold, and hard. He looks away quick, like frozen snow bouncing off a glacier.

  “Ah guess not,” he says, shrugging. “But you cain’t blame a guy fer tryin’, can you?”

  I smile. I like Rex, for all his latent misogyny and boastful braggadocio, deep down he’s got a heart of gold.

  “Can’t I?” I murmur. “Say, Rex, do you ever think that your need to hit on every woman who crosses your path has something to do with your broken relationship with your mother?”

  Rex nods seriously, and glances down at the tumbler of whiskey in his hand. “Ah guess so,” he says. “You know, when ya’ put it like that, it sounds kinda serious, don’t it?”

  “It sure does, Rex,” I grin, reaching over and stealing the whiskey tumbler from fingers that clutch closed a second too late. “You’re a real piece of work. You should get –”

  “– some counselin’?” Rex says hopefully, a delighted smile on his face. “Ya mean…in pri-vate? I could fit ya in, Princess…”

  “I was going to say a mail order bride,” I fire back. “Because any woman who’s going to spend any time with you, Rex, is going to need one hell of a paycheck!”

  “All I’m sayin’, Skye,” Rex throws his big, meaty hands up in the air and chuckles, “is that girl could be you…”

  “Not in your wildest dreams,” I respond, grinning right back at him. “And eww, I better not be in your dreams, Rex. You hear that?”

  “Hey – Ah ain’t making no promises,” Rex says. Then he squints, and his head sidles forward as he peers into the darkness on the other side of the strip club. “No shi-it,” he grins, shaking his head.

  “What?” I ask, turning slowly, expecting to see some buzzed trader with his pants down his ankles.

  “It’s the boss,” Rex says.

  My stomach does a backflip – a spinning, Olympic-style, swan dive from the 10 m platform. Surely Rex doesn’t mean THE boss. Not Harlan?

  “What –?” I choke, sending a burning surge of whiskey snorting up my nose. Tears sting my eyes.

  Rex glances at me. “You okay there, darlin’,” he drawls in that broad Texas accent of his. “Maybe you should stay away from the hard stuff?”

  I wipe the tears in my eyes away with the back of my hand. “Do not ‘darlin’ me,” I mutter, distracted.

  My eyes trace Harlan’s path through the seedy darkness at the other end of the strip club. He looks like he’s searching for something. Someone.

  Me?

  “Well don’t take it personal, like,” Rex says, neatly stealing his whiskey back. “Ah’m just sayin’ maybe it would be better if you stick to something a bit weaker: a white wine spritzer, maybe?”

  I ignore his patronizing tone. “Does he come out often?” I ask, keeping my eyes glued to Harlan Wolfe’s path across the room. “Drinking with you guys, I mean.”

  Rex turns his own gaze on the boss, and shakes his head slowly, thoughtfully. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

  “Never,” he says. “Not once in the two years that I been here, anyhow.” His glance flicks back to me.

  “You don’t need to worry, dar –, I mean Skye. You work on Wall Street. Ain’t no one gonna fire you for knowin’ how to have a good time.”

  “I’m not –!” I choke. “I mean, I’m not worried. Just –”

  What, exactly?

  My palms are sweaty, and the lie rolls off my tongue with an awkward, jagged rhythm, like a drag race on hubcaps, sparks on asphalt. My face is bright red, burning hot, and in my head it’s an illuminated sign, pointing directly at my embarrassment.

  Lucky Rex is oblivious to all that. He strokes the stubble on his chin.

  “Say, Skye,” he says, lowering his voice so it’s only us. “You should buy him a drank.”

  My head snaps to look at him, panic in my eyes. “What!”

  Rex holds his meaty palms up to placate me. “From me, I mean.” He pinches his thumb and forefinger together. “Ah’m this close, Skye, this close to the big one.”

  The panic crashing my eardrums like waves on a San Diego beach subsides a little. His bonus. Rex is talking about his bonus.

  “So, you buy him a drink,” I say, choking out the words. “Why should I?”

  My gaze flickers, and I watch Harlan out of the corner of my eye. He has stopped at the other end of the bar. He’s wearing suit pants and thousand dollar Oxford wingtips, and an open necked white shirt. But as I squint into the darkness, I realize that he’s thrown a messy, faded dark brown leather jacket over his shoulders.

  It suits him. It’s classy, without trying to be, yet somehow subtly dangerous. It makes me wonder what happened to him in the Navy. What he did. What combat he saw.

  As I turn my attention back, Rex’s eyes are doing the talking. They dart, just for a second, to my chest.

  A sense of outrage burns through me like a wildfire, and I latch onto it gratefully. I need something – anything – to distract me from my embarrassment, and my nervousness around Harlan. God, I’m not even ten feet away from him, and yet I’m still as tongue-tied as an awkward teenage girl.

  “Oh!” I exclaim, touching my breast and leaning back. “You think it’ll come better from me, will it? Because of my –,” I raise my eyebrows, “– assets.”

  Rex shifts awkwardly in his seat. “Well …when you put it like that…” he trails off. “Ferget I said anythang.”

  “I need to freshen up,” I mutter.

  In truth, I’ve noticed Harlan’s body rotating, his eyes searching the strip club. I know, by instinct, that he’s hunting for me. I can’t bear the thought of him turning his sights upon me right now. I can’t bear the idea that he knows my darkest secret.

  I can’t fathom how he plans to fix me.

  “Hey!” Rex says in a half-complaining tone of voice. “Where’re you goin’, princess? I didn’ mean it like that, honest…”

  I ignore the slurring trader, averting my gaze. I’m hiding from him, but most importantly, from Harlan. I move quickly through the darkened space, suddenly aware of its tawdry, sticky smell. Is it that I don’t want to see Harlan, or that I don’t want him to find me here?

  I dart down a darkened hallway, and into the women’s restrooms. Thankfully, they’re clean, and look barely used. I guess this place doesn’t get many visitors from members of the fairer sex. I splash water on my face, and try and get a grip of myself as tinny Euro pop vibrates through the restroom’s door, sounding like the rattling of a cheap drum. My chest heaves, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

  The rational side of my brain is fully aware of how ridiculous this is. I’m behaving irrationally. I’m a big girl. I need to grow up and face the fear that’s bothering me.

  Except…

  Except… facing the fear is just not that easy. I’ve somehow attracted the attention of one of the most powerful men in New York. I can’t just hide from him forever.

  Or can I?

  My mind jumps on the idea, as if it’s found an opening, or an escape. It will be easier, I reason, this way. I won’t have to face my fears head on. Maybe I can just hide from them.

  Forever starts now, tonight. I need to get out of this club without Harlan seeing me, and after that I need to put an end to this – this thing that’s brewing between us. I shouldn’t even have let it get this far.

  I could lose my professional license for simply entering into a personal relationship with a client – let alone one who’s my boss! If anyone ever found out …

  It’s not worth thinking about.

  I know what I need to do now. I brush a few strands of red hair across my face, as if hoping to
create a disguise, and study myself critically in the mirror.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. Why would a man as devastatingly powerful and attractive as Harlan Wolfe be interested in a plain, boring girl like me? Whatever his game is, I don’t want to play it.

  No. The way forward is clear. I need to get out of this club without anyone – especially Harlan – seeing, and then I need to cut him off.

  For good.

  I push the restroom door open, and the music slaps me in the face. It takes a second or two for my eyes to readjust to the hallway’s darkness.

  “Skye.”

  The voice startles me. I twist my neck searching for it. When I see its owner – the very last person I am prepared to encounter after what I just decided – I flinch. My feet are stuck to the floor. I don’t know what to do – whether to run or duck back into the restroom. In the end, I simply stand there like a deer caught in headlights.

  Harlan continues as though he hasn’t noticed the storm of emotions raging on my face.

  “Not the kind of place I expected to find you,” he says, leaning against the wall with his hands thrust into his pockets.

  I cast my eye over his frame without being fully aware of what I’m doing. The leather jacket clings to his body – tight where it needs to be, loose where it doesn’t. His shoulders look like they’ve been chiseled out of stone, his torso thick and powerful. He looks like he could break me, like he could –

  Harlan raises an eyebrow. “Skye – are you in there?”

  I blink, and search desperately for my voice. When I find it, I blurt out, “what are you doing here?”

  God, get a grip, already. Just excuse yourself, and then run…like hell.

  “Pleased to see you, too,” Harlan replies, shooting me a funny look. “But seriously, what are you doing here? I didn’t pick you for the kind of girl who’s into the ladies,” he grins hungrily, his tongue flicking out to moisten his lips.

  “Not,” he pauses to lengthen my awkwardness, “that that thought fills me with anything but interest, you understand…”

  “I’m not into anything,” I growl, finding a sliver of backbone. And then my tongue runs away from me. “You know that better than most. Besides… this isn’t … appropriate.”

  Again, Harlan’s eyebrow curls upward, a look of amused interest filling his face. He looks like a big cat playing with helpless prey – like a tiger, a killer.

  “Appropriate?” He says. Then he pushes himself away from the wall, reaching out his hand for mine as though he hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. “Come with me, Skye. I want to show you something.”

  I can’t resist.

  Not him. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  The reason for Harlan’s leather jacket becomes clear a few moments later, when my hair is streaming out underneath a motorcycle helmet. It whips against my cheeks, flapping in the breeze of the speeding bike. Manhattan’s early summer air still bites this late at night.

  The engine growls beneath me, and I cling to Harlan’s tree trunk torso for dear life. New York’s lights flash past on either side, as though I’m sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.

  Harlan lifts his hand from the throttle, and the bike begins to slow. He brings it to a stop a few inches from the water lapping the side of a dock.

  I climb off, pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth in a desperate attempt to moisten it – glad that I’m hidden by this helmet.

  “Where are we?” I ask. My voice sounds muffled through the thick plastic visor.

  Harlan removes his helmet before replying, and then ruffles his fingers through his thick, dark hair. God, he looks unbelievable when he does that. I want to jump him right here and now. He’s making me feel things that no man ever has … and he hasn’t even touched me.

  Yet, I am feeling anticipation, an aching need, desire.

  Or maybe that was the motorcycle, vibrating beneath me.

  Sure it was.

  Harlan gestures at the water when he finally replies. “The docks – I come down here when I need to think.”

  I don’t know why, but when I speak, the tone that escapes my mouth is strangely intimate. “And what are you thinking right now?”

  What am I doing? How did Harlan get me here without so much as a word of complaint, when a second before I saw him, I had resolved to never see him again. What is this hold that he has over me?

  “You know.”

  Is that Harlan’s voice, or the one inside my head, that answers?

  I know. It’s both. Because I also know the reason I came here with this man. He offers me redemption – a chance to feel like a woman should. The drug that will fix whatever’s broken in my mind.

  How can I resist an offer like that?

  Harlan takes a pace towards me.

  His gaze is hungry, his body poised. The water ripples against the dock, and traffic burbles in the distance – all the sounds that remind me that there’s a world out there, outside of this, outside of right now. But otherwise, we’re absolutely, completely, terrifyingly alone.

  Harlan reaches for my hand.

  His touch is fiercely hot, and he pulls me towards him, radiating fire. I go without resisting. My eyelashes cover my vision, and then there’s only darkness. I don’t even resist when his lips brush mine, lighting sparklers on my skin, nor when his palm cups my side and rests there.

  Then he pulls away, leaving my lips searching for his touch, and my eyes flutter open once again.

  “You’re going to fix me, Skye. I know it. I feel it,” he says, pausing to let his eyes roam my face. “Let me fix you.”

  But I break away. I turn my head from Harlan’s needy gaze, terrified of what it promises, and of what it threatens to cost me. I start to walk away – to where, I don’t know – to somewhere, anywhere other than here.

  “Where are you going?” He asks.

  “Home,” I croak out in a my tiny voice. “I’ll find a way.”

  “Wait,” he demands, his voice trembling with authority. Irrationally, I do exactly what he tells me. My feet are locked to the ground as though they are stuck in cement. “You can’t go alone. It’s not safe. My driver will take you home.”

  I hear him speak a few muffled words into his phone.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll walk.”

  Somehow, this feels important. I need to show Harlan that I can stand on my own two feet, that I can resist both him and the path he wants to set me on.

  A limousine rumbles down an entry road, and I realize with a jolt that it must’ve traced us here and waited. It’s yet another reminder that Harlan Wolfe and I are from two very different worlds.

  “Then he’ll follow you,” Harlan says. “To make sure you get home safely.”

  “Please, Harlan,” I whisper. “We can’t do this. Not now, not ever. Just let me go…”

  But Harlan doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t give up. His voice follows me into the darkness – a promise, a threat.

  “Your sessions start tomorrow, Skye,” he growls, as if he hasn’t heard me. “I hope you’re ready…”

  Whatever complaint I have dies in my throat. I just keep walking, and what does that say? Is it agreement, in all but name?

  210

  Harlan

  I barely manage to put a foot through the front door before a pint-sized angel slams right into my chest.

  “Daddy!”

  I put my hands out automatically to catch my assailant, and sweep up my favorite girl in my arms. I squeeze her tightly, pulling her up and nuzzling my nose against her velvet hair. She smells clean, of bubble bath and freshly laundered cotton sheets.

  “As happy as I am to see you,” I whisper into my daughter’s ear, “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what you’re doing up so late?”

  The angel shakes her head against my chest and clutches me tight.

  “Poppy!”

  A gray-haired woman comes barreling round the corner. Mrs. Kathy – Poppy’s nanny – blanc
hes when she sees my face. Just as quickly, a touch of embarrassment adds color like a drop of blood to a basin of water. She throws her hands up in the air and shakes her head.

  “Mr. Wolfe, I’m so sorry. I thought Poppy was asleep. The next thing I know she’s sprinting past me, and –”

  “It is fine, Kathy,” I chuckle. It’s been a long day, full of expected – and somewhat less expected – stress.

  I know that at her age, Poppy should be getting her beauty sleep, but there’s something irresistible about seeing her in this mood. I know I’m able to spend more time with my daughter than most fathers do – perks of the job – but still, every second I’m away from her makes my heart hurt.

  “Here,” Kathy says as she walks toward me, the hem of her 1950s housewife style skirt kisses the ground. “Let me take her, you go –”

  I shake my head. “Nonsense. You get on home. It’s late. Do you want me to get Stan to drive you? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

  Mrs. Kathy shakes her head so vigorously I start to wonder whether she thinks my innocent suggestion might cause a scandal in her neighborhood. I hide the smile that’s tickling my lips.

  “No, I wouldn’t want to impose,” she says. “Besides, Jason’s waiting on me downstairs.”

  I nod, composing myself as Kathy gathers her things. I know that the old nanny just told me a white lie, but I let it slide. It’s harmless enough.

  Kathy’s husband has been in the hospital six months now. I know because I know everything about my employees. Especially the ones in whom I entrust my daughter’s care.

  I know because it’s my job to keep Poppy safe.

  I know, because the mysterious charity that started funding Jason Davies’ care isn’t so mysterious to me. Mrs. Kathy would never have come to me asking for help. She’s from a different generation. Yet I provide her husband’s care regardless.

  It’s not just charity. I don’t like it when people close to me have weaknesses. Because when they have a weakness, I have a weakness. You can call me paranoid if you want.

  But it’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you…

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Kathy,” I smile, stroking Poppy’s hair. She nods formally, but the lines on her face relax for a second as her eyes pass over me and my daughter.