Pride and Papercuts: Inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

by Staci Hart

  I’d been in a design hole for hours, a hyperfocused vacuum of creation. When I looked up, my beer had been replaced again without my noticing Greg approach, so I just gave him a wave across the bar and got back in it.

  Darcy had been right about the campaign I’d proposed—it was too vague, and the average joe didn’t know who Rochester was—but I had a new idea, one that elevated the campaign to a height he would take seriously. The campaign would be similar to what I’d already come up with, but rather than the long, clunky tagline, I’d tightened it up to this slogan: Meet Your Next _____. We could use it for everything. Meet your next book. Meet your next superhero. Assassin. Zombie slayer. Duke. Viking. Sports stud. And the best part? It worked for both the bookshop and the mixer. Not only could we use words like first date, but even the other illustrations were relevant. There were mixers when somebody could meet a zombie slayer or assassin or duke. It was the multitool of ads. I could have my cake, eat my cake, and stuff the cake in Liam’s face when he lost.

  Really, it couldn’t have been more perfect. I’d been working on illustrating people who resembled famous comic heroes and heroines without infringing copyright. Like a faceless girl in a tank and cargo bootie shorts, with a long braid hanging over her shoulder and a gun strapped to her thigh. In her hand was a grappling hook. Everybody knew who she was with treasure hunter in the blank rather than Tomb Raider. Thor, he was easy too, being a Norse god and all. The superheroes were hard, though. I couldn’t exactly draw Batman and expect to get away with it, but with some creative gymnastics, I had all kinds of options. Tomorrow, I’d start on the romance side. I just had to finish the Not-Elektra assassin I was working on, and I could pack it up and head home before the bar started to get busy.

  I was deeply entrenched in drawing Not-Elektra’s hair when someone slipped into the booth across from me. Bleary-eyed, I looked up, smiling when I saw Wyatt.

  “Ooh, fries,” he said, reaching for the mostly empty basket.

  “Ew, those are cold.”

  He popped one in his mouth and shrugged. “Still good. Mmm. Salty.” Dusting off his hands, he said, “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?” His smile tugged up on one side.

  “Wyatt!” I said with dramatic flair. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Glad you asked. I knew you’d been here through what should have been dinner and figured you needed to be fed something more nutritious than cold fries.”

  “Well, they weren’t cold an hour ago.”

  “So I was thinking we should get shawarma.”

  I laughed. “The healthy choice.”

  “I was going to suggest pizza, but we had that on our last date.”

  “Date, huh?” I asked, amused. “The way I remember, we ate pizza on the walk to my place, talked on the stoop, and you wouldn’t come up. Is it a date if you don’t get kissed at the end?”

  There was that sadness again, the one that came and went like a comet. “I haven’t dated much since Georgie.”

  The admission struck me with regret. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t … I didn’t even think.”

  “It’s okay, really,” he said in a way that was impossible not to believe. “But I’m calling it a date. I did buy your dinner.”

  “You did,” I said on a chuckle, saving my work once more before closing my laptop. “What time is it?”

  “Eight. What are you working on?”

  “This campaign for work. Get this—Darcy wouldn’t listen to my ideas, so I challenged him to a competition, and if he accepts, I’m going to annihilate him.”

  “I hope it’s humiliating.”

  “Me too, if for nothing more than to see the look on his face. I can’t imagine Liam is a graceful loser.”

  “You’re right about that. Once, he—”

  I waited when Wyatt stilled, his eyes narrowed and trained behind me.

  When I followed his gaze, it landed on one very unexpected, very beautiful Liam Darcy. But he wasn’t beautiful in the peaceful, reverent way the word was usually used, a thing to be quietly admired and worshipped. He was beautiful destruction, a tempest conjuring mountains from waves and putting out the stars with his fury, leaving the world beneath him heaving in the dark.

  He’d stopped a few yards inside, a pillar of shadows. The black of his hair, of his eyes, of his glare. The long, inky double-breasted wool coat, the kind that only rich men wore, swathing him in a vacuum of color. And though the two men were twenty feet apart, the air cracked and sizzled between them.

  And then he laid those impenetrable eyes on me.

  The weight of that gaze crushed my lungs, leaving them devoid of air.

  Confused, I blinked and hitched a shallow inhale, sliding out of the booth. Wyatt moved to follow, but I stayed him with a hand. And I crossed the space between us, suddenly uncertain of everything.

  I stopped in front of him, and though I was a few feet away, the heat of him licked at me, as it always seemed to. “What … what are you doing here?” I asked. “And at eight at night?”

  For a handful of heartbeats, he looked down at me, his eyes piercing. Again, my lungs ceased to function.

  “I considered your challenge, and I accept.”

  Still baffled, I stared back at him. “You could have emailed me.”

  One of his brows ticked up.

  “Or called. Or texted.”

  “But I came here. So now you know.” His eyes shifted back to Wyatt, and the temperature dropped ten degrees in a breath. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

  What is even happening right now?

  He ruined Georgie’s life and Wyatt’s along with it. Let’s not forget that.

  I stiffened. “Well, you’ve delivered your message.”

  “Yes. I suppose I have.” He took a step back, and I felt a strange void in the empty space. “I’ll need you in the office tomorrow to announce the competition to the team and reassign them.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  A slight nod. A glance at Wyatt. A sling of daggers. A final look at me, and he turned to go.

  For a second, I just stood there, staring at his back. When I caught myself, I headed back to Wyatt, looking over my shoulder before I sat to catch a sliver of black disappearing into the night.

  “What did he want?” Wyatt asked through his teeth.

  “He accepted my challenge.”

  A pause. “And he came here to tell you?”

  I sighed. “He is not a normal guy. I couldn’t tell you what he wanted or what his motive was. The man is a mystery in a designer suit.”

  “He’s simpler than you might think,” he said darkly, but with some internal snap of self, he smiled. “Come on—let’s go get you some shawarma before you disappear.”

  “Only if you promise to come up this time.”

  He considered it, looking at my lips as a smile rose on his. “Deal. If you play your cards right, you might even get that kiss.”

  I laughed as we headed out, flustered at the thought of kissing him. “Who even are you?”

  “Just a guy who doesn’t want to screw up again. That’s all.”

  At that, I smiled, lips together and face soft. “Well, you’re safe with me.”

  And when he wrapped his arm around my shoulders, I felt safe too.

  Safety—a thing I so often took for granted. At the thought, Liam’s dark eyes flashed in my mind, a portal to a bottomless chasm. Those eyes were dangerous, an unpredictable depth, a pool of black water. They struck me with a primal sort of fear that if I reached out, if I breached the surface, there would be no smooth rock bottom, no boundary, no limit, no end. A hand beneath would wrap itself around mine, pulling me in. And I would be lost forever, swallowed up by the darkness, leaving not even a ripple on the still, glassy plane.

  And the thought left me wondering if I’d care.

  12

  Who Knows Better

  LIAM

  The night was cold, the bite in the air sharp, but I marched into Central Park des
pite the chill, the sting only registering from a distance.

  The fire of my fury was enough to keep me warm.

  Wickham’s face burned a negative in my consciousness, the smug smile he’d given me when Laney wasn’t looking. It had been a long time since I’d laid eyes on him, long enough that I’d never have guessed I’d react this viscerally to his presence, even if only from across a bar. I knew I wasn’t over his betrayal—I knew myself well enough to know I would never let go of that—but the urge to feel the bone of his nose crack against my knuckles was just as intense as it’d been when he abandoned my sister weeks before their wedding.

  But it wasn’t just that, I realized as I stormed across the park toward my building. It was that he’d been there with her.

  From the moment Laney left my office yesterday to the second I walked into the bar, she’d occupied my thoughts. Her proposition tumbled around in my mind, and though I knew I’d accept, the thing itself held my attention like a puzzle I’d almost solved. I’d given some thought as to why she’d suggested a challenge. This type of thing wasn’t unusual—I’d been in my fair share of wagers and competitions inside of a creative team over the years. But coming from her, and considering the volatility of our relationship, my curiosity was too much to deny. How would she rise to the occasion, and what would it produce?

  But my preoccupation with her went beyond campaigns and marketing strategies. It went beyond the cut of her words or the friction between us. She drove me to madness, and I gladly returned the favor, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that wasn’t a symptom of something deeper, something bigger than what it appeared.

  I couldn’t describe it, not exactly. Couldn’t pinpoint a word for the way she felt in my arms. There wasn’t a phrase to convey the way her hand fit in mine or the tempo of my pulse when her chin lifted to meet my eyes, when her smart smile beamed up at me. Her lingering presence was a constant companion, even when she infuriated me, even when all I wanted was for her to stop talking, willing to quiet her with my lips against hers where I could swallow her words. I was in her thrall, caged and captured, haunted by a ghost of what could be, of what would never be.

  Not only did she despise me, but she was expressly forbidden. There was little I could do about either point, particularly gaining her favor. We were made of substances that didn’t mix, didn’t mingle—her of golden oil and me of aged vinegar—watching each other through an impenetrable barrier. There had been moments between us that shook the bottle, transforming us into something new. But her wall wouldn’t be breached. She’d made that much perfectly clear. So the moment would pass, and we would settle back into our space—mine dark, hers light—forever in opposition.

  I would accept that, just as I’d accepted everything I’d been handed, well accustomed to not having things I wanted. But seeing her with Wickham had set a fire in me, and that fire was hungry for destruction.

  There was little I could do beyond seethe, unwilling to stoop so low as to interfere—I’d done that once, and though I’d do it again for Georgie’s sake, the fallout had been cataclysmic. But Laney wasn’t mine to protect. My comfort was in trusting her intuition—she was too clever and suspicious to fall for his game. And Wickham was most definitely playing a game, just as he always was.

  Even if I did tell her the truth about Wickham, I doubted she’d believe me when I told her why he left Georgie. If he was good at one thing, it was convincing everyone around him that he wasn’t a thieving, lying bastard. He was a wolf in sheepskin, hiding his teeth and fur.

  It was how he’d convinced Georgie they didn’t need a prenup. And if it wasn’t for my suspicions—despite the fact that Wickham and I had been friends for a decade—I wouldn’t have discovered his gambling debt or the frequent trips to Atlantic City when he was supposed to be traveling for business. I’d thought I knew him, and maybe I did. But addiction had changed him, twisted him into something unrecognizable, insatiable. My objective hadn’t been to break them up—I wanted to force the prenup, with the addition of an allowance provision, and the written agreement that he’d get help. But he refused and implemented plan B—convince Georgie that I wanted to control them, break them up. Persuade her that I believed him beneath us and would say anything to remove him from the picture. He called me a liar, promised her it had all been fabricated, insisting that if she loved him, she’d leave with him and abandon me.

  When she didn’t, his anger twisted him into a creature of resent. But despite it all, when it was over, I gave him the money to pay his debts with his promise he’d never show his face again. Last I heard, he’d blown every penny.

  And now here he was, with Laney.

  The thought of her broken beyond repair like Georgie sent a roar tearing through my chest.

  Fucking Wickham.

  The park was dark and quiet and cold, and by the time I reached our building, I couldn’t feel my fingertips. Judging by the doorman’s face, I must have looked as angry as I felt, and by the time I spanned the warm lobby to reach the penthouse elevators, I was hot and cold all over. Beads of sweat gathered on my brow as I pulled off my coat in the elevator, but my hands and feet were ice. The thought of my treadmill brought me some relief—I wanted to run until I couldn’t move. Until I was so tired that I wouldn’t stare at my ceiling all night, so exhausted that I wouldn’t dream.

  The house was well lit, the sound of Billie Holiday floating into the entry from the kitchen along with the scent of garlic and spices.

  “Liam?” Georgie called from that direction. “Where have you been? Are you hungry?”

  My stomach twisted in answer. The encounter with Wyatt fought for a way out, but I wouldn’t burden Georgie. Barking about Wickham would only serve me—she’d be left shaken, and upsetting her without cause wasn’t something I was willing to do. Really, what I wanted was to be alone where I could burn off my anger, but it’d been too long since I’d eaten to run as hard as I planned to. So I strode into the kitchen and set my things in a chair at the island.

  Georgie smiled over her shoulder at me, absently nudging chicken around in the pan as I pulled off my coat. She looked so young without makeup, her hair piled on top of her head in a bun so messy, I wasn’t exactly sure how it stayed in place. A gigantic sweater hung off one of her shoulders, adding to the teenage effect she wore. And when that smile of hers hit me, the tension thrumming in me eased just a little. A long breath left me, taking a pound of rage with it.

  “Your nose is all red,” she noted, her brow quirking. “Did you walk home?”

  “From Wasted Words.”

  At that, she was smiling again, and I didn’t miss the flush of her cheeks. “What were you doing over there?”

  “Laney Bennet and I are splitting up the team to compete for the campaign win.”

  Her smile froze in a strange sort of confused expression. “You’re what?”

  “She proposed it yesterday after the meeting. She was pushing the parties again—”

  “Because it’s a good idea.”

  My face flattened. “Not you too.”

  A shrug. “It’s wise. Half the team thinks so too.”

  “Good. She can have that half.”

  “How in the world did she convince you to step down from your throne to get in the dirt with the lackeys?”

  “I’m not. I’m just giving her a throne of her own.”

  Georgie shook her head. “You realize that’s even weirder, right?”

  “She promised she’d quit making my life difficult if I win.”

  “God, she is so smart.” She set her spatula down and moved for the wineglasses. “Have any big ideas?” she asked as she pulled a bottle of wine out of the fridge.

  “I always have ideas. And if I’m being honest, I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty. It’s been a while since I’ve flexed those muscles.”

  She gave me a derisive laugh. “Please. You practically do it all yourself anyway.” As she sipped her wine, her snarky eyebrows didn’t le
t up. “So why were you at Wasted Words?”

  I started to speak but stopped myself, calculating my words. “Just to tell Laney the competition was on.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Trust me, it’s not.”

  The way she inspected me told me she didn’t believe me. “You guys will be working together. A lot. She’ll have to be in the office more, I figure.”

  “I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “What’s for dinner?” I jerked my chin toward the pan, and she allowed me to change the subject.

  Georgie didn’t let anything go unless she wanted to.

  “Chicken piccata. I’m glad you went to the bookstore. The more time you spend there, the more you’ll get it.”

  “What’s there to get? It’s a book bar. Pretty simple concept.”

  “Tell that to your creative team.”

  “You’re on a roll today. I can almost hear the rimshots.”

  “It’s Cam’s fault. After hanging out with her today at Wasted Words, I might have absorbed some of her sass.”

  Like the flip of a switch, the tension was back, drawing my shoulder blades together. “You went to the bookstore today?”

  “Yeah. I took Cam to lunch, and then we hung out for a while at the bar.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” she asked innocently, prodding the chicken.

  “I told you, I’m coming with you to the bookstore.”

  “And I told you that A, it’s part of my job to handle briefings and customer relations—which means going to the bookstore regularly—and B, I’m an adult and don’t need a chaperone.”

  “Was Jett Bennet there?”

  Her bare shoulder rolled. “Maybe.”

  I stared at her profile for a long moment, long enough that she met my gaze with an angry one of her own.

  “Liam, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I?” I rounded the island, folding my arms. “He likes you.”