Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
“This is unbelievably dull, even for Scotland.”
Ella smirks and covers her mouth with her hand. “Shh.”
She nods toward the female docent, who is talking in front of a small crowd of onlookers. My gaze drops to Ella’s tits; she has small, firm breasts that I want to press my face between. I want to tongue her puffy nipples, just the same rich color as deep earth.
“This painting of a vestal virgin dates back to 1847, to the very beginnings of the Scottish Realism movement. We know the date of the painting for three reasons. One, because of the types of fruit depicted here, in the corner…”
My attention wavers, my gaze drifting away from the woman talking.
I look around the tiny museum we are in, eyeing the place.
The walls are a dark grey, the color purposely chosen to contrast with the sparse paintings hanging two or three to a wall.
Isla is standing off to the side, a notebook in her hands.
She’s listening carefully to what the museum docent is saying and taking careful notes.
She reminds me a bit of my brother James when he was young.
He went through a long phase of journaling his inner thoughts.
As the older sibling, I was someone who found that numbers made perfect sense where words could be easily mistaken. So I felt no little joy in ribbing James all through his teenaged years, shouting into the void of endless notebooks.
Isla glances up as the woman begins walking backward, heading into the next room. She gives me a ghost of a smile and follows her. But when I see Ella about to follow suit, I grab her wrist.
She flushes and gives me a hard look. She pulls free from my grasp and puts a finger to her lips.
It’s been a while since I last touched Ella’s silky skin and felt its heat under my hands. I dreamt about her all last night and now my hands itch to touch her. I have been watching her walk around in her short little white cotton dress, probably not even realizing that she is a walking pricktease.
After half a minute, the group has moved on to the next room. I turn to her, jerking my head toward the exit.
She raises her brows but follows, quietly sneaking under my arm when I hold the door open. Once we are outside, I heave a big sigh.
“That museum is a little…” Ella says, then pauses, moving away from the doors. She continues, dropping her voice. “On the boring side.”
“I thought for a moment that I had died and gone to hell. I’m not afraid of going to hell if it’s all fire and brimstone; I’m only worried if the whole place is stodgy and tedious.”
“Hah.” She rolls her eyes. “I get the feeling that your parents didn’t put the fear of the devil in you like my parents did.”
“Oh?” It occurs to me that I don’t know a fucking thing about her parents. I sit down on the wide stone balustrades of the broad sweep of limestone steps that lead up to the museum. “You are from Atlanta. That’s the southern part of the country, right?”
Her lips twitch and she gives me an amused gaze. “It’s in the southeast. But everyone calls it The South where I’m from.”
“And your family is… some denomination of Christian, I’m guessing?”
“Southern Baptist.” She pauses. “My mother is Latina, and she was raised to be a good Catholic girl. But when she met my father, she converted to his denomination. And for most of my young life, we went to church two or three times a week.”
My head rocks back. “Two or three times a week? What, were they giving away free money or something?”
“You’re hilarious. No, they were giving away salvation.” She shrugs. “The people at my parents’ church were nice, but they were so damned nosy. Just everybody in everybody’s business. I was always looking for a reason not to go… and then I found ballet.”
She smiles, as if she’s reminiscing. I tilt my head, imagining a young version of Ella trading going to church for dancing. I can see it; honestly, all the ballerinas I have ever known were so dogged and spent so much time practicing that they could call it a religion of sorts.
“Well, my family was not very interested. Sure, we attended on holidays. I think Mum and Dad still do. And James probably does, too, now that there are voters to be swayed by a pious enough politician.”
“Tell me how you really feel, Keir.” Ella gives a surprised laugh. “So I suppose that neither of us is particularly devout.”
“No.” I glance down at my hands, smirking. “I think after I told my parents that I was going to divorce Kingsley, they sort of gave up on me. One day, I was the future prime minister. The next, I was a divorcee. No longer the presumptive heir, as it were.”
She looks up, her brow knitting. “Oh?”
I nod, squinting off into the distance. “All of a sudden, things just mattered less because no one was going to count how many times I missed services. My parents decided that James had a much better shot at being elected, although he was not married. And I was sort of shoved aside.” I screw my face up.
“Luckily, my grandfather, that is my mother’s father, passed NewsCorp on to me. ”
I glance down at my hands again, nodding slightly.
“It sounds like a lot of changes in a very short time.”
Glancing up at Ella, I find her expression kind, but otherwise unreadable.
“Yeah. I feel a tremendous responsibility to my grandfather. When I took the reins of the media empire, I worked like a dog to ensure that the companies made at least what they made when he ran things. Everybody in the family makes their money from the board of directors or company stock. So there were a lot of voices, a lot of very wealthy people to please.”
Ella tilts her head. “It sounds like you have grown the company, though. Right?”
I give a low chuckle. “Aye. But it took a lot of blood and sweat and long nights. The first three years I had the reins, I worked all fucking day and most nights.”
“I’m having trouble imagining the alternate reality. You know, the one where your brother ran the family business and you ran for office instead.”
I shrug. “I didn’t have much of a choice either way. But I think that I’m more content with things as they are. Plus, I don’t know if Granddad would have passed the family business down if James was in charge.” I heave a sigh. “There was talk of it being passed to my friend Deacon instead.”
“Wait, what now?”
I nod. “Deacon Masters. He’s running a multinational law firm now, based out of Los Angeles. But when I was a boy, his family was best friends with mine. We were childhood best friends.” I smile. “He’s a fucking workaholic. And a player, too.”
“He must be something for you to talk about him like he’s a god or something.”
I roll my eyes. “Deacon is really something, all right.”
She scrunches up half her face, looking thoughtful. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Isn’t that what we are doing right now?”
She sticks her tongue out at me.
“I’m serious. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but… do you think that James will make a good prime minister? He’s kind of… I guess childish, sometimes.”
A guffaw escapes my throat and I don’t even try to disguise it.
“Fuck!” I say, laughing. “That’s awfully blunt.
But… my answer is, yes and no. Yes, he is amazingly good at being engaging and disarming and even deceptive when he wants to be.
But no, I don’t think that he’s ready at all.
” I straighten my tie, my lips curling. “My opinions on the matter are not welcome. My parents keep explaining my objections away as me being jealous.”
Ella chews her bottom lip, those brown eyes burning into my soul. “What if you didn’t back him?”
“That’s… not even a real possibility. For a variety of reasons. To start with, it would give my Mum an apoplectic fit. And my Dad would probably have a stroke from the stress. So…” I gesture, sweeping my hand. “It’s not really worth considering.”
She rolls a shoulder, a half shrug.
“It was just a question.” She stands up, brushing off the back of her dress. My eyes catch on what I am sure is the hint of a thong as she lifts and plucks at the back of her short cotton skirt.
Suddenly, my brain switches modes. I’m hungry for touch. Specifically, for her touch, for the inhale of her breath, for the feeling of her small body pressed against mine.
Luckily, an idea pops into my head. “Come on.”
I shade my eyes as I head around the building.
“Where are we going?” Ella asks. I am not looking at her but I can hear the frown in her voice.
“I’ve been to this museum half a dozen times already. The next room takes about twenty minutes. And then they head into a projection room where a film reel is shown for another thirty. We’ve still got time.”
I come around the building to a small courtyard with a small hedge maze. At the center of a couple of rows of tall greenery, there is a statue of a mostly nude man. Beside the statue is a bench that I sat on during a previous visit.
Mostly, I enjoy that the statue is completely private and the bench was vacant both times I’ve sought it out.
“And… voila,” I say, waving as we step into the small sanctuary. “Privacy.”
Ella puts her hands behind her back and walks around the statue. “How do you know this is here again?”
I shrug, taking a seat on the bench. “Boredom, mainly. I hate that museum, not that I would ever tell Isla.” My lips twitch and I look down at her toned legs again. “Why don’t you come sit down?”
She purses her lips and arches an eyebrow. “You’re awfully nice to me all of the sudden.”
I smirk. “Well, that’s what I was going to talk to you about. Yesterday, I was interviewed for an Irish morning program. Wendy showed up unexpectedly… and if she had our tape, I think she would’ve played that card when she had me trapped.”
Ella squints and comes to sit down next to me, crossing her arms. “So… what? You think that whoever has access to our videotape is staying quiet for some reason?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But my feeling is that the danger of the tape leaking has passed. I want you to stay until the end of the month, just in case—”
“It’s only the fifth!” she says, a little outraged.
“Again, I remind you that I’ll pay you for your time. The money is much better than anything else you would normally be doing. I can assure you of that.”
She sucks in a sharp breath.
“It isn’t about the money. Never has been.”
I move a little bit closer, brushing the back of my knuckles over her bare shoulder. Goosebumps form where my skin touches hers. I hear her breath catch.
“What are you in such a hurry to get back to? Hmm?”
The way her cheeks flush. The way her breathing grows ragged. The way her dark lashes flutter over those gorgeous tawny eyes…
“I had a life in New York,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I still have friends there. Kaia says she will get me a job with Calum’s company. There are people waiting for me, Keir.”
“So? If they have waited this long, they’ll wait for a few more weeks.”
She swallows hard, some foreign emotion flitting across her face.
“I miss my little sister. I miss Kaia. I feel like I’m missing a pretty important time in both of their lives.
And if I was giving that experience up for something real, it would be one thing.
But that’s not what this is.” She reaches out, gingerly touching my collar, smoothing it down where it touches my neck.
I can’t help but close my eyes. It’s so nice to be touched, especially by someone that looks like her. I think I had genuinely forgotten how good it feels to share these little moments of intimacy with another person.
But none of that changes who I am. I might feel a sort of sadness at the very idea that one day soon Ella will leave. It can’t undo all of my past damage, though.
I’m still broken. I still don’t trust women. A month with Ella can’t change that, even if we both wanted it.
My eyes snap open. “I’m not relationship material, Ella. I think you know that.”
She starts, then pulls her hand away.
“I didn’t mean to say otherwise. I was just saying, you know… if things were different. If we were different people. Then maybe it could be something real.”
I pick up Ella’s hand, kissing her wrist. Locking gazes with her, I give her delicate flash a sharp nip. She gasps and tugs at her hand, but I don’t let go.
“My heart is non-fucking-functional. I think we both know that. But I love your body, Ella. I love fucking you and watching you come and hearing you call out my motherfucking name.”
She looks down, smiling shyly.
“I like it too,” she admits.
“Give me the rest of the month. I’ll make sure that you leave here with enough money to live comfortably on for the rest of the year. And to sweeten the deal, I’ll take you to Rome with me. We’ll stay in my penthouse, right by the fucking Parthenon. How does that sound?”
Ella looks up, her nose wrinkling. “Pretty nice.”
Putting my arm around her waist, I draw her in. Her chin rises and I cup her face, tracing my thumb along the jagged line of her lips.
“Should we—”
I silence her with a kiss. She leans close, her breathing erratic.
Yes.
Yes, more of this.
So much more, as much as I can get in the next three weeks…