From The Other Man
MATTHEW AND NINA’S STORY
“Nina! Nina ! Goddammit, will you just wait!”
It was amazing, really, just how damn fast she could walk in four-inches heels, especially on a surface that switched erratically between pavement and cobblestones.
Even if I hadn’t figured out exactly who she was, I’d have known she was a veteran of New York sidewalks. Very fast. But not fast enough.
“Nina!”
I lunged forward and managed to catch her hand just as she started to cross the Seventy-Seventh Street Bridge. I snapped her back hard enough that she toppled into me, forcing me to wrap my arms around her just to stop us both from smacking the pavement.
The effect was immediate.
Lightning.
Shock.
Electricity.
Fire.
Look, I was still mad. Livid, in fact. I didn’t chase after women, much less an Upper East Side princess who had done her best to pretend I didn’t exist for the last two hours.
If she were anyone else, I would have let her go, and good riddance.
And maybe I was that much angrier because I couldn’t let her go.
Because she’d been stuck in my mind for months.
But the second I touched her again, none of that mattered. Because it wasn’t a mirage in my arms. It wasn’t a dream where I’d woken up shouting in the dark. She was the real thing. And she felt better than I had ever imagined.
“If you don’t mind!” She wriggled out of my grasp with a huff and immediately started brushing down her coat, which was now rumpled from the chase. “Matthew, just what do you think you’re doing, grabbing me like that?”
And just like that, the anger was back.
“What do I think I’m doing?” I repeated. “What do you think you’re doing, huh? It’s eight o’clock at night. In Central Park.”
The sky above us was pitch black aside from the lights of the buildings ringing us. The park was a dungeon compared to the glowing city.
Nina stopped de-rumpling her coat and looked at me. That mask was back. So like her cousin’s, but somehow sharper. More…imperious. For some reason, I was taken back to one particular moment in the bar, when we’d first met.
“What did you call me?”
“Princess,” I said with a sly grin as I leaned on the bar just a few inches from her. I was invading her space, and it made her uncomfortable. I didn’t give a shit.
I reached out and twirled a bit of her golden hair around one finger. “You’re all dainty and shit, sitting on your throne, sipping on your wine. Like a princess. It fits.”
She swallowed, looking fairly angry, although the way her tight nipples were pointing at me through her
blouse said she felt a lot more than that. Inwardly, I shrugged. Angry sex was just fine by me.
“I don’t like being called princess.”
She was right, of course. I had thought it funny at the time, but right now it was painfully obvious: Nina Astor wasn’t anyone’s princess. She was a queen.
A queen without her crown, I realized, thinking of Eric’s unintentional coup. A monarch without a kingdom.
“I brought you this.” I held out the umbrella like a knight offering fealty. As if I should kneel or something, and allow her to touch the umbrella to my shoulders like the edge of a sword.
“Oh.” She took it. “Well, thank you. That was kind, but unnecessary. Eric would have sent it over, or Jane could have brought it to our meeting tomorrow.”
“Why were you running away?” I demanded bluntly.
Nina touched her mouth as she took a step backward. “I wasn’t running. These shoes wouldn’t let me.”
“Po-ta-to, po-tah-to. Skipping. Trotting. Cantering like a fuckin’ horse if that’s what you want to say. But you were getting away from me as fast as those chopsticks would take you.”
She looked down. “I thought you liked high heels, Matthew.”
“I love high heels, doll. Especially on you. But not when they’re taking you away from me.”
She started again at the use of the nickname, just like she had in the apartment. But she didn’t answer. The ferocity that had been on her face a moment before tightened into something more patrician. Something much more guarded.
I fuckin’ hated it.
“Nina.” I took a step toward her. “Come on. You couldn’t have thought I’d just let you leave without talking.”
The mask fell a bit, though now she was inordinately interested in the empty-branched oak trees surrounding us. “Oh, but I wish you would. It’s—Matthew, it’s better this way.”
“Better? You wanna walk me through that one, sweetheart?”
She didn’t answer as our gazes finally locked. This wasn’t stolen glances across the coffee table. We were in the middle of Central Park on a cold, dreary night. The trees swallowed the sounds of the city. Right now, it was just us here on this bridge.
“I—” I took off my hat, put it back on. Then did it again. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe, all right?”
Nina tipped her head. “Matthew. Really.”
“Okay. Okay . But what the fuck did you think I was going to do? Months, Nina. I’ve been looking for you for months .”
“I told you not to do that.”
Her tone was bitter. But not as much as mine.
“I don’t remember that part. I remember telling you I’d walk you down after a shower, but when I got out, you had fuckin’ disappear?—”
“You couldn’t have possibly believed I would stay,” she cut in. “I said one?—”
“And just when I’m thinking about giving up, the fuckin’ door opens in some random person’s apartment?—”
“Jane and Eric are not random, and?—”
“And like the Mother Mary herself just answered every one of my damn prayers, you walk in out of nowhere, so?—”
“I was there for my own reas?—”
“The hell if I was just going to let you walk out again without a word. I have some questions, Nina, and I’m not leaving until you fuckin’ answer them!”
By the time we had finished cutting off each other’s sentences, both of us were seething—me in a more obvious, chest-thumping way with my favorite hat now crumpled in my hands, Nina with that ice queen glare of hers.
She crossed her arms. “You have questions. Like what, pray tell, Mr. Zola?”
I hated the crisp formality. It reminded me of a judge on her last case of the day.
Or the headmistress at the parish school where I had lasted exactly two years before being kicked out.
The only time I ever wanted to hear Nina address me that way was on her knees before I taught her some fuckin’ respect.
Right before she begged for more…discipline.
“Like…like…” I was gesturing wildly by this point. Fuckin’ Christ, the woman flustered me with just a name.
As she folded her arms again, the light from a streetlamp caught one of the facets of her diamond.
“Like that ,” I said, pointing at it.
She looked down at the stone, then back up at me. “That’s an engagement ring. And a wedding ring.”
“I know that.”
“I told you I was married.”
“I know that too.”
“I fail to hear a question, Matthew.”
I stomped my foot. Like a fuckin’ child, I stomped my foot right there on the bridge. I already knew Nina could make me crazy, but I didn’t realize she could be like this. Full of stubbornness. Intransigence. Using her ability to reduce a man to rubble out of spite.
Okay, so she was part of one of the oldest, richest families in New York.
Okay, so she was suddenly back in my life after months.
I was a lawyer in the greatest city in the world.
I went in front of judges, reporters, jury members every damn day.
I wasn’t going to let one spoiled little girl get the best of me.
And this time, I wasn’t going to take it easy on her.
“Your name,” I said. “What’s your name?”