Chapter 36
“Estella! Welcome to the party.” Harry was up on his feet, graciously smoothing over the crackle in the air between the grand villain’s entrance and everyone else. “Can I interest you in a herbal tea?”
Estella blinked at him. Harry had already crossed to the open kitchen and opened with dramatic flourish the world’s most extensive and exotic tea collection.
Ellie wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Estella Grant, sparking with sex and danger, poised in the doorway for a showdown and being met with herbal tea.
To her shock, Estella didn’t shoot him down or ignore him for a duel with Alison Hartmann.
Instead, her shoulders dropped about two inches.
“Yes please. Do you have anything minty?” Her eyes sought out Ellie and Ellie, despite it all, found herself flushing.
“Of course,” Harry said into his tea cupboard.
Estella didn’t look away from her, as if she was frozen to the spot.
Out of Ellie’s peripheral vision she saw Harry turn back to take in Estella more fully.
“The Rest & Relax Tranquility Blend,” he decided, pulling out a box.
“Please,” he waved at her, “come in and take a seat.”
Estella seemed to come unstuck. She was dressed down, all in black, skin-tight yoga pants, her t-shirt cut to show the shape of her body, the perfection of her collarbones, the glow of her skin.
Ellie was starting to understand this was her version of comfort-wear.
She toed off her shoes at the door like some kind of impeccably polite house guest and crossed the room toward them.
Only Estella, with her gleaming red pedicure, could look equally dangerous padding across a living room in bare feet.
Estella made a beeline for Ellie. She took her seat right beside her on the couch, aligned hip to thigh. “How are you doing?” she asked, her eyes on Ellie’s face, her voice gentle. Ellie shivered. She’d never seen this from Estella. Was it an act? Was she simply proving Alison wrong?
“I’m okay,” she whispered back, completely unsure how to act.
It felt like the whole room was watching them both like hawks.
Estella narrowed her blue eyes just slightly, like she didn’t believe her.
Harry arrived in and presented a large earthenware white cup on the coffee table before Estella with a flourish.
Estella thanked him and picked it up, then, with perfect casualness, dropped her other hand down onto Ellie’s thigh.
The gesture was soft but entirely clear.
Mine, it said, to anyone who wanted to look.
Ellie turned to liquid. She didn’t want to meet anyone’s eye, but, even more than that, she didn’t want Estella to let go. Yet another long, ringing, awkward silence took over the room. But still, Estella didn’t budge.
“Seems like I’ve interrupted quite the reunion,” she said lightly after a while. “Alison, you look well.” Her meaning was crystal clear. Estella saved your life. To Ellie’s surprise — considering Alison’s last words on the subject — Alison looked simply contemplative.
“I am,” she said. “Thank you. It’s been surprisingly peaceful not being harassed by thugs anymore.” She let the moment string out, just for a moment, then she let her eyes rest on Ellie. “Seems they’ve found a new target, though.”
Ellie felt Estella stiffen, though outwardly she didn’t move.
“That,” Estella said coolly, “was not the work of the Grants.” Her hand tightened slightly on Ellie’s thigh.
Ellie’s head started pounding all over again.
She opened her mouth to protest she had no idea who’d assaulted her, but Alison got in first.
“Ellie here, despite her injuries, has been worried sick you’ve been out seeking revenge. What can you tell her? Did you go kill anyone about it, Estella?”
Estella didn’t say a word, and Ellie started to feel sick. The air was thick with tension.
“Dangerous question to ask,” Estella finally replied. “It’s like we’ve never met. Have you reverted to type again, Alison? Decided I’m the dumb piece of ass your ex-husband was chasing? Nothing but a clueless, psychopathic bimbo? You think I’d answer a question like that in a room full of lawyers?”
Ellie frowned. By quick process of elimination she realised that suave, sweet Harry was perhaps not the retired airline attendant he gave the vibe of being. It still didn’t distract her from the fact that Estella hadn’t answered the question.
“Did you?” she asked Estella directly. She couldn’t reconcile all the fractured parts of her. She couldn’t feel both things at once: warm comfort from Estella’s protective tenderness and a suspicion that the soft hand on her thigh could have just started a gang war.
Estella removed her hand as if she could read Ellie’s mind. Ellie felt the coolness immediately where her warmth had been. Estella met her eyes.
“I did not.”
Ellie didn’t wonder for a second if she was lying. Instead, she felt the full hit of the moment. Alison got evasion and a whole weight of old pain. Ellie got a simple answer. The price, though, was a flash of what Ellie swore was hurt in Estella’s eyes. That made zero sense, though.
“Let me get this straight,” Alison said, her tone dry. “Your girlfriend was beaten, and dropped at your door. You — with your entire violent gang network at your disposal — dropped her off here and rushed back to Melbourne for a full day of… not taking revenge?”
Ellie’s head throbbed for several reasons: girlfriend not, unfortunately, the least of it.
“It’s honestly quite cute how you think this is any of your business,” Estella said, her voice light and breezy in the way she always did when she was bordering on furious.
“Honey,” Estella looked at Ellie now, a full force of irony in her voice.
“What do you need right now? Because I swear to god, that is why I’m here. No matter what you all think of me.”
Ellie heard it, the thing everyone in this entire suspicious room had just heard: the smallest crack in Estella’s voice.
Estella Grant, a little bit hurt that Ellie thought she was a murderer.
All of the times she’d tried to ask the question, and here it was, the closest she was going to get to an answer.
“I want to go to bed,” was all Ellie managed to say, and this time it was her hand that found Estella’s thigh. “Please? My head hurts.”
There was a small whirl of activity around her. Prisha dispensing medication, Estella with the hand on the small of her back, all but helping her stay upright, the blurriness of the long, beautiful hallway, then finally, the little forest green room. The door closing. The bed.
Estella looked at Ellie, as she sat woozily on the edge of the bed. She looked both fierce and tender.
“I went back to Melbourne to make sure your sister and your nephew were safe,” she said, her voice flat.
Ellie went dizzy. She’d been so in her own head, battered, scared and exhausted, so worried about what Estella might do, that it was only now that she had a hazy recollection of a hissed threat, somewhere during her semi-conscious trip across the city, we know where your family live.
“They are safe.” Estella quickly held up her hand, as if to stop Ellie lurching out of the house to find them.
“I’ve got them out of town and with an eye on them. You can call Zara when you wake up.”
Ellie could feel the tears slipping down her cheeks. She could see now why Estella had felt hurt by her suspicion, despite how reasonable it was. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” said Estella briskly. She looked away from Ellie, intently over to the landscape painting on the wall behind, as if making up her mind.
“I wanted to tell you that, so you didn’t have to worry.
And also, so you can make a choice.” Ellie sucked in a breath.
Estella looked deadly serious. Ellie wondered what was coming, how much of her life was going to hinge on what Estella would ask of her now.
“Do you want me to stay the night with you?”
Ellie burst out crying, even as she started to laugh.
Yes it was partly the head injury, making everything swim around her, but also it was the heartbreakingly real vulnerability in Estella Grant’s face and the desperate urge Ellie felt for her to please, please, just hold her, for all the safety and protection she somehow felt in this woman’s arms, despite all the reasons she shouldn’t.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes please.”