Chapter 13
Tyler
“What the fuck, Tyler!” Saffron’s sexy behind swayed side to side as she marched ahead of me in black stilettos and a tight pink skirt and white silk blouse that would have been appropriate in any business setting but wholly inappropriate at a factory.
She stopped at the gate, shook her head in exasperation, and took a phone out of her cream purse.
“You don’t need to call an Uber. I have a car.
” I gestured to my Bentley, parked a couple of yards away from where we were standing.
The afternoon sun was high up and hot; you could see a layer of heat haze shimmering above the car.
There was no way she was going to wait for a car to take her back to the city in this weather.
“You spent all our marriage wanting nothing to do with me, and suddenly you tell some guy we’re married because… what? You hate to see me succeed?”
That wasn’t the issue at all. When I saw how she was with Antonio, how comfortable, smiling, and casual he was with her.
She’d never smiled at me like that. And it wasn’t one of her billboard smiles.
It was the genuine kind she’d only shone a few times before.
Some primal urge to rip that man away from her came over me.
To claim her and show him she was mine. An urge I did not understand even now.
“Were you flirting with him?”
“Why would that—are you insane!”
I had no answer to that. “Please get in the car; my driver and my assistant, Matt, are waiting. They’re watching us right now, wondering what’s going on. You’re not going to wait here for an hour. Not in this heat. Not in these stilettos.”
She glanced at the Bentley and then at me. Frowning, she said, “What are you doing here?”
I came here because I went out of my way to check up on her.
Saffron was on my mind ever since I learned she had a business trip to the same town at the same time as mine.
It was kismet, so I invited her along on my jet.
When Lindy, the logistics supervisor, told me she had booked a hotel room on the same floor as Matt, I gave her the instruction to put Saffron on the same floor as me.
I thought that was because she was at a higher level than assistant, just like my CFO, but now I was not sure.
“Business. Same as you. Listen. I am only offering because we came together; otherwise, I am more than happy to leave you on the side road. Seb wouldn’t like it. I, on the other hand, could not give a damn about you.”
She glanced at the road, then on her phone. She knew I was right. Antonio might offer her a ride into town, but I didn’t want that to happen less than her getting into a ride-sharing car. She sighed and shoved her phone back into her purse. I suppressed a smile as she went to the car.
Saffron closed the door on her side of the car after she entered and faced straight ahead, deliberately not looking at me.
The air conditioner in the interior wafted down my body, cooling my skin as Saffron’s jasmine and rose scent filled my nostrils, hardening my groin.
My driver started the car, and we were on the road back to the city.
It was a quiet and awkward journey. Saffron kept to her phone while the two men in front dared not attempt a conversation between them or with me.
It was only when we were halfway along that she said, “What were you doing here exactly?”
I knew what she meant. There were very few businesses in these parts except for leather factories and other similar companies.
“I told you; I have business here.”
“Around these parts?”
“No, in the city. I came to sign off on a deal with an architectural company. Now that it is done, I thought I would look in on you.”
She snorted. “You thought I didn’t know how to take care of myself.”
“No. But I thought you’d like a ride. And I was right, wasn’t I?
” I leaned back on the headrest and closed my eyes, ending the conversation.
I didn’t want her to probe further into my true motivations, which, frankly, I myself didn’t understand.
Why the fuck did I go an hour out of my way to follow her?
“Weirdo,” I heard her say.
Saffron was the first to get out of the car when we arrived at the hotel.
Before I could stop her, she mumbled a thanks, and I was left to follow her.
She jumped into the elevator before I could catch up with her, and when I finally got onto our floor, Saffron had already entered her room. I knocked on her door to no response.
I sent her a text.
Me: Are you running from me?
Saff the Epoxy Wife: Yes
Me: Ouch
Saff the Epoxy Wife: For someone who thinks I am a stalker. You’re obsessed with me.
Me: I want to talk to you.
Saff the Epoxy Wife: Eat shit, Tyler
Me: I want to apologize.
She took forever to respond, and for a moment, I thought she had ignored the message. But then, her door opened. “There she is,” I said, my voice echoing in the silent hallway.
Saffron rolled her eyes. “If this is a ploy to—”
“No. I really want to apologize for the way I treated you the other day. I shouldn’t have called you a stalker. That was rude of me. I don’t know what I was thinking. Seeing you—you fuck up my brain sometimes, you know?”
“And that’s my problem, how?”
“I’m not blaming you! I didn’t expect to see you at my sister’s bakery. You have a tendency of popping up in places I least expect.” And wrecking my composure in the process.
Saffron did not look convinced.
“And I want to apologize for my behavior at the site. I was a dick.”
“Fine. Apology accepted.” She stepped back and was about to close the door when I put my foot between the door and the door frame.
“Tyler!”
A cleaner pushing a cart strolled past, momentarily distracting her. I took the opportunity to enter her room.
“What the fuck!”
“You were about to shut the door on me.” I closed the door behind me and entered the spacious apartment with a neo-Italian Renaissance design and decor that were similar to my own.
We were in the sitting area of the suite, and my gaze ventured to the partially opened double pocket doors where a well-made bed lay beyond.
“Because I was done talking to you!”
“I wasn’t.”
“I said I forgive you. What else do you want?”
I marched over to the red and gold chaise lounge and sank into it, spreading my arm on the headrest. “My apology is not complete.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I wanna take you out.”
“Out?”
“Visit…” My gaze went to the window blowing air into the room while showcasing a beautiful view of the city. “…this place.” I waved toward the window.
She smirked. “No, thanks.”
I got up and closed the space between us.
I got so close to her that she had to look up at me to stare directly into my eyes.
Which she did with an insolent gaze. She had taken off her shoes and was shorter than me, coming up to my shoulder.
A tendril of brown hair fell down her beautiful face as she looked up at me, and I had to clench my fists so I would not brush it away.
“Come on,” I said. “I wanna make it up to you.”
She licked her lips. That night came to mind again. I clamped down the need to wrap my arms around her waist.
“And how do you propose you do that?”
“Nothing insane. Just a walk down the Arno.”
“A walk down the Arno?”
And other explicit things I dare not think about, let alone say. “Yeah. As uh…business partners.”
Her eyes narrowed again, this time with less suspicion than before. Then she said, “Fine. I'll change.”
I couldn’t help the smile that cracked through my lips.
She went to the bedroom, and I couldn’t help ogling her behind as she walked. At the doors, she stopped and turned to face me. “Well? What are you still doing here?”
“Uh. Right. Fine. I will let you… do your thing.”
A quarter of an hour later, Saffron and I were getting out of the hotel and strolling into the street side by side.
The sun was no longer as sweltering as before.
While tourists filled the streets, it was not as terrible as on my previous visits, but we still brushed against people as we walked.
Saffron had changed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and I had thrown on something similar.
To the unsuspecting eye, we probably looked like a couple enjoying the sights like everyone else.
“So?” Saff said. “What’s the agenda?”
“Agenda? You make it sound like it’s a business meeting.”
“Might as well be. We wouldn’t be speaking to each other right now if it weren’t for business.”
I spotted a gelateria and pointed at it. “The agenda is gelato. Think you can handle it?”
“Sure,” she sounded doubtful. “Ice cream sounds nice.”
A few minutes later, we were back on the streets, cones in hand. I had to face forward and not risk any glances, or my mind would wander whenever Saffron licked her gelato.
“So, you’re not lying when you said you wanted to apologize,” Saffron said.
“No, I have mistreated you, and it hasn’t helped our working relationship.”
She stopped abruptly. “Did Seb put you up to this?”
“Seb?” I don’t know why it bothered me to hear her call him so informally. “You’re on a nickname basis with my brother now?”
She blanched. “No. Does he not like being called that?”
I licked my gelato to hide my relief. “He prefers it, actually, but only with friends and girlfriends. Colleagues and business partners are forced to use the full name.”
“Right… your brother’s weird.”
“It’s called being a Hawthorne. We all come with our quirks.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
It was my turn to be surprised. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
We had strolled down a lane with fewer people. There was less jostling of the crowds, but we had gotten closer to each other and were practically brushing arms. “I don’t, actually.”
Saffron shook her head. “Of course you’ve forgotten.” She stopped again.
I went to stand in front of her. “You know, you’re going to have to be more specific if you want me to remember.” Licking my gelato. Deliberately teasing her.
“Our first night together. You’re telling me it’s normal to have sex with your wife and then toss her to the wind for the next five years?”
“Do you still think about that night?”
Her cheeks reddened. She tried to cover them with her hair, but I had already seen her reaction. “What was that all about?”
Saffron was a little girl with a crush on me for a long time.
That’s how I knew her. When she sent me a letter asking me out to prom, I thought it was cute.
She was a cute kid to me and nothing more.
But then a friend of mine found out and read it at assembly in front of the entire school.
I confronted him later. And when I dragged him to her class so he could beg for her forgiveness, she had already gone.
And when she got older, our families being in similar circles all the time, I came to learn more about her and her modeling career.
And the crush she had maintained for years.
All that would not have mattered if she hadn’t lied to her friends and family that we were dating when she was sixteen and I was twenty-one, making me out to be a pervert.
She immediately rescinded the lie, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Even that would not have mattered if she hadn’t ended up finding a way of coercing me into doing so.
But what sucked about all this was that as she became a grown woman, my feelings for her changed.
When I saw her again at another party years later, Saffron was then a model, and a sexy one at that.
She had grown into her height. Her gangly legs were now shapely stilts that made any red-blooded man conjure up images of the pair wrapped around his waist. The pimples and adolescent skin conditions that plagued her in her youth were gone, leaving smooth alabaster skin I craved to touch.
Annoyance had turned into desire. And try as I might to get rid of it, I couldn’t.
It was also difficult to put her out of my mind when her very image was sensually plastered on every bus, billboard, and bus-stop in the city.
“I did what I wanted to do for a long time,” I said finally. “Is there anything wrong with that considering the money I paid you?”
“You make it sound like I am a whore.”
“Last I checked, sex workers don’t cost fifty mil and a Sword of Damocles.”
“I told you I am not the one blackmailing you. If I knew, don’t you think I would have done something about it?”
That was one part about it that made little sense. For someone who had little control over me and wanted a divorce, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But who else had the material if not her?
“What did you do with all the money?”
“I blew it all on shoes.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
“That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?” She began walking again. I trailed behind her.
“Not at all.”
“Sure, sure.”
When I caught up to her side, she jumped when our shoulders touched. Interesting. She wasn’t as aloof to me as she was pretending to be. “No seriously, what did you do with it? Because if you still had it, I doubt you’d have gone to my brother with a begging bowl.”
“Oh, my god. It was a pitch, and I wasn’t the one who set it up! My partner did.”
I raised my hands in the air, splashing drips of gelato onto the ground. “Fine. You wouldn’t have gone to my brother with a pitch if you had had any money left.”
She stared straight ahead. “I never got a lick. My father spent it all.”
“Really?” I found that hard to believe. “Not even for your tuition?”
“I put myself through college all on my own. Dad thought that now I was married to you, it was your responsibility to take care of me. That was the deal, remember?”
Yeah, her father had mentioned something about that, but I was too angry to care.
“So, how did you do it? Did modeling pay that much?” She hadn’t been a supermodel or anything close to it, but maybe she had gotten endorsement deals.
Or a sugar daddy willing to bankroll her.
It wasn’t uncommon for women in her career, especially a woman from a transactional family such as hers.
But the thought of Saffron in another man’s arms made me want to punch a wall.
“Not really. I had to take a few loans and live more frugally than my fellow counterparts.”
“Why didn’t you contact me? I could have—”
She raised her eyebrows, rendering me silent.
She knew I would have laughed in her face.
What I did not understand was why her father would let a child fend for herself when she was the key to helping him get the money he desperately needed.
Then I remembered my own father and how selfish he was when he was alive, and I understood.