7. Mia
7
MIA
I watch Leon carefully as my words register.
For a moment, there’s a ghost of something reminiscent of regret that flashes behind his eyes. But he quickly schools his expression into something more neutral as he takes another sip of his drink.
“I’ll save us an argument, shall I?” he says once he puts his glass back down.
His lips are damp with whiskey. I don’t stare. I don’t.
“I deny whatever you’re accusing me of. You don’t believe me because I’ve not given you any reason to. Which leads to another fruitless discussion regarding the likelihood of ever being able to trust each other and one of us storming out the room.”
“I don’t storm,” I say petulantly.
Leon regards me for a thoughtful moment. “No, you’re correct. You scorch. ”
The way he says it sounds more like a compliment, which only serves to rile me up more.
“Seeing as you have us both all figured out, I suppose there’s nothing left for us to say.” I step off the stool and stand before him, suddenly quite close to him. “If you will excuse me, I apparently have some earth to scorch.”
For a moment, he doesn’t move an inch. He looks down at me intensely, and I try not to feel crowded by him, try not to remember how it felt to be held in his embrace. I try not to think of his lips on my neck.
We were closer than this then. We could be close again.
His eyes drop lower.
We could…I could…
I push into him roughly, and the surprise of the movement makes him stumble back a step. It gives me the opening I need to leave, and I take it.
I don’t anticipate the speed of his recovery.
Hands grab the wrists that pushed him, pinning them down to the counter behind me.
He’s suddenly much, much closer. His chest presses firmly into mine as he holds me right there, entirely at his disposal. Black pepper and rum spice overwhelm my senses.
“This doesn’t have to be difficult.” His breath is in my ear, my neck. My hands would shake if they weren’t pinned down. “I could make this very, very good for you.”
He can hear my heartbeat, I’m sure of it. I can feel it trying to burst out of my chest. Betrayed by my body, I feel myself tilting away from him, exposing more of my neck.
“I don’t want any of this,” I say to try and rectify my actions, but it comes out in a whisper.
Lips press just below my ear. “None of it?”
It takes every morsel of strength I can muster to remind myself why I’m here. Why we’re here. I struggle to remember who this man is to me beyond the way he can touch me, the way he can bring me to life with only his words.
His touch, his kiss, it’s all torture. It’s so warm, and it feels so right. I need so much more.
But I can’t want more. Not from a man who has manipulated me at every turn. Even now, even this. It’s not real.
“I don’t want you .”
He pulls away so sharply it’s an effort not to stumble forward. What was once warm and enticing is now ice cold.
Leon turns away, picking up his discarded glass and downing the amber liquid in one swallow. “So be it.”
I’m not sure if it’s pride or horror that carries my legs toward the exit. Either way, it’s a miracle I can move at all.
I came here to regain some control over the situation, not to remind myself how powerless I am as soon as he draws too close. It’s agonizing and painful and…
“Mia,” his voice calls out after me.
My hand freezes on the door handle. I don’t turn around, but I don’t open it either.
“You have your own room here. If you ever need it.”
For when you eventually move in, he doesn’t say.
I push down on the handle and escape into the night without looking back.
“We thought you were dead, you know,” Rufin greets me at the back of an Irish bar in New Jersey.
This is an old haunt from a life I swore I’d leave behind after college.
“You have so little faith in me?” I say back, pulling away from the wall to take a measure of the man before me.
I’m not sure if his real name is Rufin, but it’s what he’s always insisted on. He hasn’t changed much since I last saw him—same leather jacket, same burn scar across his face. He must be older than me by a decade or so, but I never learned his exact age.
Seeing his face again ignites adrenaline within me that does wonders for my efforts to forget a certain towering blonde man and all the lies that drop from his mouth.
This is what I need, to do something that I can actually control. Something that I’m good at.
“You stopped showing up.” He shrugs with a smirk on his half-ruined lips. “I poured a drink out for you and everything.”
“Didn’t realize you cared.”
This used to be my life before the Candelabra became my domain. But with that gone, it was either waste away at home, staring at the clock until it was time to perform my wifely duties, or this.
This hasn’t changed. Rufin hasn’t changed. I don’t need to change, either.
He shakes his head. “Something came up last week. I actually thought of you for it, you know. Weird that you would come back now.”
I give him a calculating look. “How coincidental.”
He seems to weigh his thoughts carefully before responding. “Client seemed a little too keen to know about you. I’d say it's just a coincidence, but keep your guard up anyway.”
Rufin digs his hand into his pocket and pulls out a small notebook. From inside, he extracts a business card and offers it to me.
“I always do,” I take it from him. There’s nothing on it but a number. “Anything I should know?”
“She wanted a woman in her twenties?—”
My eyebrow quirks up. “ She ?”
Rufin nods. “Private muscle for a couple of events.”
“Babysitting then,” I look back down at the card. I can’t remember the last time I did freelance work for a woman. Not in this particular industry.
“I’m not sure who she's affiliated with, but it’s not the Irish.”
I tap the card against my palm a few times. “Thanks, Rufin. I’ll send you your cut.”
“Can’t accept money from a ghost, Red,” he brushes me off. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”
With a wave, I head out of the alley, burner already in hand. It’s already late, so I half expect that no one will pick up when I dial the number.
But luck is finally on my side.
“Hello?” an unfamiliar female voice says, the connection crackling in my ear.
“My name is Red. I just saw your ad in Rufin’s paper.”
The client gave me the address of a 24-hour diner just outside of Newark. She was eager to meet at my earliest convenience.
I’d asked if she could be there in a few hours.
I could hardly believe it when she agreed.
Torn between celebrating my good fortune and being more suspicious of the coincidences involved in this job, I take a taxi to the diner and find myself walking across the vinyl floors at exactly three a.m.
At this hour, there’s barely anyone sitting inside besides a couple of trucker types and an older woman who looks like she’s fallen asleep in her booth. It makes my client very easy to spot.
Her eyes find mine the second I step into view.
She’s young. Younger than me, even. Tan skin, dark eyes, and a beautiful mass of curls piled up on her head. Even in her nondescript hoodie and jeans, it’s difficult for her not to stand out.
She looks about as surprised as I feel as I go to take my seat opposite her.
“Red?” she asks tentatively, though I don’t think either of us needs the clarification.
“Rufin said you were new, but…” I let my words trail off.
She looks down at this, bashful, somehow, appearing even younger than a second ago. “I’m twenty-one.”
“Right.” I turn to wave the bored-looking server over. “So, what does a twenty-one-year-old need with a mercenary like me?”
The question hovers between us for a moment before the server appears, granting my potential client time to think up an answer. I order a milkshake in another attempt to put her at ease.
She smiles slightly and orders the same.
“I imagine this is a bit strange for you,” she says once the server leaves us again. “It’s strange for me too.”
I wait patiently for her to gather her nerves, sitting back in my seat and trying to figure out who she could be. She has a slightly non-rhotic accent, but that’s typical of this area. She’s too tan to be Irish. She’s too memorable to be Italian.
“My family…my father,” she corrects herself. “Expects me to make an entrance into his society next week. I managed to delay it until I finished college, but now there’s no way to get out of it.”
“I’m guessing you’re not debuting at the country club?” I deadpan.
She looks up at me then, biting at her bottom lip. “Are you Irish?”
I blink at her. “Is it the hair?”
“Rufin…” she trails off as two milkshakes are placed before us. There’s a beat of silence while we both take a sip.
Just two young women enjoying a midnight treat, nothing to see here.
“Do I need to be Irish?” I ask carefully.
She shakes her head. “You’d just need to pose as my friend. Undercover, that is.”
“You’re worried about your father’s society friends?”
“I trust my father’s…friends to stay in line,” she says. “I just know if anything were to go wrong, they would answer to him and not me. I want someone there who I can rely on to put me first.”
Slowly, I begin to put the pieces together. “Hiring a beefed-up bodyguard to follow you around all night would be suspicious. Your Irish friend from college, however…”
“Exactly.”
It’s a smart enough move, one I would certainly consider should I ever find myself in her position. Nothing about the job seems too suspicious, and the woman seems too nervous to pull off some kind of setup.
I take another sip of my milkshake before getting down to business.
“Is it just your debut, then? Or will you need me for other events?” I ask.
“There might be a few in the future,” she admits. “If this works and we can pull it off convincingly, that is.”
“Where did we go to college?”
“Princeton.”
My eyebrows raise at that. “Impressive. Studying what?”
“Bioengineering.” She flushes modestly.
I let out a low whistle. “I was a lowly business major at Columbia.”
Her eyes light up at this, and I instantly realize my mistake. “Really?”
Maybe I’m a bit rusty after all, sharing personal information like that. Fuck. She could find me now if she wanted to.
“It was a few years ago now.” I try to cover up my fumble by redirecting the conversation. “Sorority sisters?”
She makes a face. “Roommates.”
I almost laugh at her obvious disdain. “No ‘Delta, Delta, Delta’ for you in Princeton?”
“Those girls terrified me,” she admits.
“Says the woman hiring a mercenary.”
She weighs this up. “When you grow up with this stuff, it’s strange how easy it is to forget it’s not normal.”
Her words strike a very particular chord, and I find myself swallowing down something hard lodged in my throat. Suddenly, I feel sorry for both of us. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Shouldn’t you ask me about payment?”
I give her a look. “Are you going to pay me?”
“Yes.”
“Good, that settles that.” I slide another burner across the table to her. “Contact me on this. All my details are already in there. You can keep calling me Red.”
She takes the cell from me. “Red works.”
“What should I call you?”
“I suppose you’ll find out soon enough,” she sighs, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “My name is Carmen. Carmen Rubio.”