Chapter 56 #2
“Yes. You’re forgiven.” My stomach chose that moment to rumble again, insisting on being heard. Alfie chuckled. “Come, let me feed you.”
Our fight forgotten and our bridge rebuilt, Alfie led me over to the delicious-smelling food. I was so hungry I was practically salivating. He sat on the couch but I opted for the floor instead, which made it much easier to reach the food. Alfie eyed me with amusement.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve never in my life seen a woman eat on the floor unless it was a cultural requirement.”
“Try it.”
“I don’t think so, Lola. I do have an image to keep.
” I rolled my eyes at the ridiculous man and reached for him, grabbing him by the arms and tugging him onto the floor.
He landed on top of me in a heap and my aloof, arrogant man burst out laughing, a far cry from the man he’d been moments ago. He was actually laughing .
“That’s what I think of your image, Alfie Tell.
” I licked his cheek playfully and he freed another burst of laughter.
He reared up, resting on his forearms, and looked down at me.
He looked so different when he laughed. The faint lines around his eyes added a touch of humanity to his otherwise otherworldly beauty.
I tilted my chin and was just about to melt into his kiss when the door to his office swung open, startling us both. I turned my head, spying red stilettos, a pair of bony knees, and then looked up to where a set of small eyes were narrowed at me. My mood blackened instantly.
“Oh, excuse me!” Angie’s voice was rich with false surprise.
“Fuck sake, Angie. Knock will you?” Alfie snapped as he disentangled himself from me.
I stifled a grin. I knew it was petty to be pleased he was admonishing her but I really hated that woman.
Alfie surprised me further by pulling me directly into his lap.
Angie stared between the two of us, seemingly in shock.
I didn’t bother to hide my glee this time and openly smiled at her.
“Well?” Alfie demanded. Angie winced and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
“I just wanted to run through this list of suppliers with you.” She held out an iPad, clearly expecting him to take it. He’d better not take it. He’d better not fucking take it.
“I’ll be five minutes,” he murmured to me, kissing me on the cheek. “Eat.” He gestured at the food and stood, taking the iPad and disappearing out the room. Angie gave me a smug grin before shutting the door on me. Shutting me out.
I heard them mumbling through the door but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
I opened up a box of noodles and searched for utensils, but all I found were chopsticks.
Heathen that I was, I’d never learned to use them.
I attempted them but after failing miserably I resorted to spearing a piece of pork with one of them and eating that way. Yep. Total heathen.
Angie’s too-sweet laugh came tinkling through the door and my anger bubbled up.
I grabbed the nearest thing–a carton of spring rolls–and threw them at the door, which happened to open just as I released the food catapult.
Luckily, my aim was terrible and only a single spring roll hit Alfie square in the chest before landing on the floor with a pathetic thump.
Alfie looked at the spring roll and then at me with a ‘really?’ look in his eyes.
He sighed and shut the door, and the sound of Angie’s retreating steps echoed down the hall. I guess their business was done.
“I have to work with her, Lola.” His tone warned me not to start yet another argument.
“That’s fine, Tell. As I’ve said to you before, you’re setting a precedent for how I deal with people that are trying to come between us.” He narrowed his eyes at me, all traces of our earlier levity gone. He shrugged out of his suit jacket and lay it over the arm of the couch.
He took a seat on the couch and began undoing his shirt cuffs, rolling them over, revealing smooth, muscular forearms. Somehow, just that little bit of flesh seemed more tantalising than seeing him completely naked.
“I just don’t get why you can manipulate everything else in your life but not her.”
“Because I don’t want to.” After a moment more of my sulking he took my chin and forced me to look up at him. Kneeling as I was, with him looming over me, I felt like this was our true dynamic and I just kidded myself that we were ever equals.
“Let. It. Go,” he said firmly. I opened my mouth to argue further, but tiredness kicked in.
We had fought so much today. I was hungry.
I just didn’t want to do this anymore. This was where Alfie won.
He would always be more persistent, always have more stamina.
So, in the end, I gave a defeated nod. I could let it go.
For now. He kissed me softly, his thumb rubbing my cheek, and then released me.
He picked up a pair of chopsticks and began to eat as if he’d used them a thousand times. “Shall I teach you?” He held them out to me. I was still a little pissed, but I was hungry more than I was angry so I nodded.
He tried to teach me, he really did, but my fingers just wouldn’t cooperate and in the end he gave up and fed me himself.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked as I swallowed another mouthful of rice.
“Can I stop you?”
“No.” He picked up a piece of chicken with ease and popped it into his mouth before waving the chopsticks at me in a ‘go on’ motion. “You said that you had your personal shopper buy that whole wardrobe for me. I was just wondering why.”
“She knows what I like,” he said, as if that should have been obvious.
“Yeah, but I mean, it was supposed to be a gift, right?”
“So?”
“So when you buy a gift you tend to pick it out yourself so that it’s personal, rather than send someone else to do it for you.
” Alfie just looked at me as he chewed, clearly not getting my point.
“Alfie, have you ever actually bought someone a gift? Like, you’ve gone into a shop and spent forever trying to find just the right thing for that person?
Have you taken it home, carefully wrapped it in the nicest paper you could find, and then given it to them, kind of nervous about their reaction but excited too? ”
“No,” he said simply. How was that possible?
Was that just how rich people did it? They paid other people to buy gifts for them?
When I was five I’d given my mother a bowl full of mud and sticks for her birthday and she’d loved it.
It hurt me to realise that the reason he’d never given a gift out of love to anyone was likely because he’d never received one before.
“You should try it,” I told him, opening my mouth obediently to accept his offering of noodles.
“I don’t have time, Lola.”
“Do you have time to sit on the floor eating Chinese food with an obstinate redhead? You make time for the things that matter.”
He studied me long and hard and then scowled, returning his attention back to the food and looking thoroughly displeased. “What?”
“Nothing. I just hate that fucking dress.” I watched him in stunned silence as he lifted more rice into his mouth, chewing slowly. “I admit I may have made a slight error in judgement.”
I hugged my knees to my body, not even bothering to hide the glee on my face. “You fucked up.”
“An error in judgement,” he repeated stiffly, not looking at all amused. I bit back a laugh and quickly distracted myself by spearing another piece of pork with my chopstick.
He was quiet for a while, obviously chewing over his thoughts. As I was learning to do, I let him be until he was ready to air them. After a few minutes, he did. “I meant some of what I said this morning, you know. Seeing you wear something I have chosen for you, it does please me.”
“Did you do that with other girls? Dress them, I mean.” The frown on his face made me wish I hadn’t asked.
“In a sense, yes.” My stomach roiled at the thought of him fucking and playing with other women.
I couldn’t even see their faces but I hated them.
“I put them in costumes. Dressed them how I wanted them to look. I had to transform them into something I wanted.” The grey dress felt tighter than ever.
It irritated my skin and I itched to tear it off.
“Alfie, if you feel the need to transform me in order to want me then we have a serious problem.” I was glad he was talking to me, but talking to Alfie was like walking through a minefield. I never knew when I was going to land on something that was going to blow up in my face and devastate me.
“There was my error in judgement. You don’t need a costume. You’re already what I want.” My chest constricted, a well of emotion threatened to rise up and make me cry.
“I felt like you were ashamed of me.”
“I don’t give a damn that you’re poor, Lola, though I do find aspects of your world distasteful.
” I rolled my eyes but he continued. “But you, yourself, I don’t care whether you know the difference between a fish fork and a salad fork, I just know how the rest of the world, the rest of my world, will treat you.
Your world is a kind one, but mine isn’t.
I’m trying to protect you from that.” Suddenly, so many of his actions and words made sense.
How many times had he commented on my clothes, my behaviour?
Those personal remarks had always felt like a rejection of who I was, but they weren’t, they were a warning.
He was trying to prepare me for the world I was entering into.
“I’ll try to remember that. And just for the record, I don’t mind you dressing me from time to time, just?—”
“No costumes,” he finished for me. A wicked smile crept onto my face and I pushed up on my knees, sliding my hands along his thighs and lifting my mouth up to his.
“There are one or two costumes I could be persuaded to wear.” I giggled and watched, my heart threatening to burst, as a real, full smile spread over his face.
“I’ll remember that.” He kissed me gently through a smile, but the sweetness of our moment was once again interrupted by the shrill ringing of his phone. With a sigh he got up, leaving me hanging, and retrieved it from his desk. He picked up the call and immediately began speaking in rapid French.
It bugged me that our dinner had been interrupted twice now by work but I tried to let it go.
Alfie had been putting off a lot of work to spend time with me and if I chose to leave with him, I knew that it was going to be a lot worse than this.
I dragged myself up from the floor and flopped onto the couch to watch him.
I caught his eye from time to time. He’d switched the call to hands free and tapped away on his laptop as he spoke.
I felt his eyes on me and when I caught them, he smiled.
It was a calm smile for once, not the usual half-dead man that I found sitting at that desk.
It was nice just being with Alfie. So much of our time together was spent either fighting or fucking that it felt good to just be around each other.
No matter how much time I spent with him though, my heart still managed to skip a beat every time he looked at me and every time he smiled, it cracked a little too.