10. Nobody touches her
Nobody touches her
Vicky
Lottie squeezed my wrist lightly, which was my signal to stop, take a breath, and give someone else a chance to speak.
When I turned to her, she gave her head a very subtle shake. I tilted mine to the side with a small frown, but did manage to snap my mouth shut, which was annoying because I had way more to say on the economic principle of comparative advantage in trade.
My mind stalled for a moment. What was it Lottie said I should do next in this situation?
Lottie had such a high level of emotional intelligence and was so in tune with others that it was like she could almost read their minds.
That’s why she was invaluable to me. My emotional intelligence was in my boots, and I struggled with reading people.
Before Lottie came on the scene, I was unwittingly insulting various investors and business associates on a daily basis.
Now, if she was with me, she could help direct my aberrant behaviour with the non-verbal signals we’d developed together.
She squeezed my wrist again.
If in doubt, just smile at them , I heard Lottie say in my head, and I turned back to the men in the circle around me to do just that.
A couple of them blinked in shock at the abrupt transition, but most smiled right back.
Lottie’s voice filtered into my thoughts again…
“Use that thing carefully,” she’d warned me.
“What thing?”
“That smile.”
I frowned at her. “What about my smile?”
“Vics, do you have any idea how stunning you are when you smile?”
I shrugged. Of course I was well aware that I was conventionally attractive, but what did that have to do with my smile?
She gave me a patient look. “What happens when you smile at people?”
“I don’t really smile at anyone.”
Lottie sighed. “Okay, then just try it for me. I guarantee that with men, they’ll either smile back or be too stunned to do anything at all.”
Lottie was right. Even in the most difficult negotiation, if I smiled, I could gain a huge advantage.
“I’m sorry, gentleman,” I said in the self-effacing tone I’d practised with Lottie.
It annoyed me, really. Why should I say sorry when I wasn’t?
Why should I apologise for knowing more about economics than them?
I didn’t understand the point. But Lottie explained that if I wanted people on my side, it was what they wanted to hear.
“I tend to get carried away with economics.”
“Money is Vicky’s jam,” Lottie said with her own smile.
There was a snort from the side.
My gaze flicked across, and I froze.
Mike was standing there in a dinner jacket perfectly fitted to his huge frame. He was pulling at his collar and shifting in his shiny Italian leather shoes. The contrast between this Mike and the normal Mike was so stark that my brain somewhat short-circuited.
“Well, I can attest to that,” one of the investors said as he smiled at me. “The investments you’ve managed for us have doubled in the last quarter.”
Someone else started speaking, but I lost the thread of the conversation. The importance of making a good impression on the men around us, which was one of the main objectives of this evening, faded.
All I could see was Mike.
“You’re wearing a suit,” I blurted out as I stared at him, ignoring everything else around us.
Once I slipped into hyperfocus mode, there was no stopping me.
Mike’s eyebrows went up. “Er… well, yeah. It’s kind of required,” he said in his gruff voice.
“You never wear suits.”
I vaguely registered everyone around us muttering in confusion, but I simply could not tear my focus away from Mike. I barely even felt Lottie’s wrist squeeze to attempt to bring me back to the real world this time.
“I prefer you in your normal clothes,” I said. My smile had dropped now, and I was frowning across at him.
The suit was wrong . I’d never been a fan of change. It felt imperative that I get this across to Mike right in that moment, so I didn’t filter my words or think about what they might be implying.
“In particular, I like the thermal shirt you wear that has a small rip in the left sleeve.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mike muttered, and two flags of colour appeared on his cheekbones above his beard.
“Who is this guy?” I heard the Hyde Park investor whisper to his colleague. Both of them had made their sexual interest in me known previously.
I had improved on how I turned men down now. Instead of my standard “no” accompanied by a blank stare, I pretended to be flattered and faked remorse for the fact I wasn’t free to pursue any further relations with them.
To be honest, I’d not quite managed this form of lying yet. Both of those men had received a blank no from me, and I’d overheard both of them call me ice princess more than once.
“Vics,” Lottie said in a low voice, trying to draw my attention. “We need to keep an eye on the time, yeah? Gentleman, ladies, excuse us for a second.”
I registered her pulling on my arm, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Mike.
“Victoria,” she snapped, her voice raised just enough to penetrate my hyperfocus.
I blinked before turning to her.
“We need to go .” She breathed a huge sigh of relief as I nodded. Lottie muttered our excuses, and we left the circle to start across the ballroom.
“I was doing it again, wasn’t I?” I asked in a dejected tone as Lottie headed for the exit with me in tow.
There was a certain amount of panic in her movements now, and I knew it was because she was worried about the fireworks.
Well, not about the fireworks, but about my reaction to the fireworks.
I wasn’t good with fireworks. Ollie hadn’t even wanted me to come tonight because of them.
Ugh. What kind of person couldn’t even tolerate a few loud bangs?
Once Lottie and I were around the corner in the corridor leading to the toilets, she turned to me and gave my hand a quick squeeze, which was all I could tolerate in terms of handholding.
“It’s okay, hun,” she said in a soft voice.
“It’s not okay,” I snapped, as my hands bunched into fists at my sides. “I’m never going to convince him to sleep with me if he thinks I’m defective.”
After what happened between Mike and me at Buckingham Manor, I’d been thinking. Okay, so maybe Mike didn’t like me, which made him a poor choice as a romantic prospect. But the kiss would suggest that he had changed his mind about pursuing something physical.
If I could convince him to take me on as a project in the sexual sense, then I might finally be able to lose my virginity.
And given the fact that he was the first man I had ever been attracted to, this was probably my only opportunity to do it.
It was ridiculous to be a twenty-nine-year-old virgin.
If I didn’t sleep with Mike, that was never going to change.
I’d decided it was worth the risk, despite the fact I wasn’t “emotionally safe” with him.
Plus, I simply could not stop thinking about him.
The kiss and being held in his arms had made my obsessive thoughts ten times worse.
I was actually thankful that I’d had a blissful twenty-nine years without being tortured by the kind of unrelenting yearning I was experiencing now.
I woke up most nights aching and sweating after dreams of Mike kissing me, on top of me—all kinds of things I’d never imagined before. It was completely taking over my life.
Lottie frowned. “Vicky, you’re not defective.”
“Yes, I am. I’m defective and weird.”
“Who wants to be normal? What even is normal?” she said with a smile, clearly trying to coax me out of my black mood. “It’s probably blooming boring. I’d rather hang out with you than someone boring. And you are not defective, Vicky. Not at all.”
As she linked arms with me and propelled us to the ladies’ toilets, I had a warm feeling spread from my chest. Yes, I employed Lottie, so I knew deep down that she wasn’t a real friend.
It was a transactional relationship, which in reality, was the only type of friendship I was able to cultivate—but when she made comments like that, the warmth in her voice made it easy to pretend.
“Why are we going to the toilets?” I asked.
“It’s what women do to catch their breath,” she explained.
I wrinkled my nose. “Sometimes I think that the whole world is weird, and I’m the only normal one.”
Lottie snorted a laugh as we pushed through into the cavernous bathroom. She moved to the mirrors whilst I headed to the nearest cubicle.
“You’re not even going to try and use the opportunity to empty your bladder?” I asked, completely incredulous.
Honestly, people made no sense to me. After I shut the door behind me, I could hear someone else come into the bathroom and talk to Lottie, but the space was too vast to make out what they were saying.
When I came back out, to my surprise, my half-sister was standing next to Lottie by the mirrors, glaring at her in the reflection.
Claire and Lottie had always seemed to get on okay.
“Stop it,” Claire hissed at Lottie as I approached. “Leave me alone.”
“Claire?” I asked as I drew up next to them and looked between them. Something was wrong with Claire’s face. In the harsh light of the bathroom, I could see an area of darkening high on her cheekbone, and I noticed some swelling there. “Why have you got a bruise on your cheek?”
Claire glared at me for a moment, then tore out of the bathroom.
I frowned after her. Claire and I weren’t very close. She only really tolerated me, but she was never unkind. And the last thing I wanted was for her to be hurt.
Lottie put her hand on my arm to get my attention.
“Vics, we need to go really soon. Why don’t you find Ollie and let him know, and I’ll go after Claire.”
I nodded at Lottie, well aware that managing the Claire situation was far beyond my capabilities.
She wouldn’t welcome me coming after her.
I knew that at least. But I also knew that if my half-sister was hurt, then my half-brother needed to know.
Informing him was a task I was capable of.
So I took a deep breath and forced myself into the crowd to get across the ballroom.
Crowds like this were not good for me. I could feel my anxiety levels slowly climb as I weaved through all the people, but all I could see in my mind was that bruise on my half-sister’s cheek.
If anyone could sort it out, it was Ollie. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Claire. He’d protect her.
But the more time I spent closed in with other people, the worse I started to feel.
Where was he? Seeing a gap open up a pathway towards the bar, I made a break for it, but just as I was squeezing past the group of investors I’d been talking to earlier, one of them caught my arm, bringing me to an abrupt halt.
“Ice princess,” he said in a booming voice, and the people around him started laughing.
I yanked on my arm, trying to pull free, but he held fast.
The feel of his large sweaty hand around my biceps made me feel physically sick. For an awful moment, I thought I might meltdown.
I knew what Lottie would tell me to do. She’d say to use my smile and make a polite excuse. Maybe if I’d been able to do that, he might have let me go. But when hit with the reality of this situation I just froze, blinking up at him with a blank expression.
“So, we’re curious,” the horrible man went on in a slurred voice. “Do you let anyone have a go with your royal snatch, or has everything iced over completely now?”
I pulled on my arm again to try and step away, but he only tightened his grip. Bile rose in the back of my throat, but just as I thought I would vomit on his shoes, suddenly, his hand was gone.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you tosser?” Mike shook the man by the arm he had snatched off me. He towered over him, and I watched as the man’s face paled. “Answer me, you piece of shit.”
“Fucking hell, let go of me!” the man shouted.
Mike dropped his arm, and the man took a step back, rubbing it with his hand.
“Doesn’t feel good when someone bigger than you grabs you and won’t let go, does it?” Mike’s voice was low and furious.
“She didn’t say anything,” the man whined. “I would have let her go if she’d said something.”
I shuffled back and hugged myself, suddenly feeling very cold. Of course, I should have said something. A normal woman would have been able to tell this odious man to cease and desist the minute he put his hands on her. But I wasn’t normal.
Noticing my movement, Mike’s gaze flicked from the man to me, then, to my complete shock, he walked in my direction, and as if we belonged to each other, he took my hand in his.
For the first time in my life, I tolerated someone holding my hand. There was something different about Mike’s large, dry, calloused hand, something calming.
“Stay away from her,” he growled at the man, then turned to the rest of the group, who were all cowering away from him. “The same goes for all you pillocks. Nobody touches her. Got me?”
They all nodded. The one who grabbed me looked mutinous and was still rubbing his arm, but he nodded along all the same.
Then Mike turned and pulled me through the crowd, successfully negotiating all the people far more effectively than I had managed.
When we were in a relatively clear area next to the floor-to-ceiling windows and the huge open double doors leading outside, he pulled us to a stop, his hand still in mine, and glared down at me.
“Why the fuck are you alone?”