24. RAFE
RAFE
The car ride with Diana is agonising. We aren’t going far: Knightsbridge to Pall Mall, but I struggle to think of anything other than her—the way her breath hitched when I fixed her dress, her slight flinch when my skin touched hers. The slow meander of her tongue as it slicked her bottom lip.
She’s so much closer to Lizzie’s age than mine that even noticing those things about her feels wrong, let alone dwelling on them.
Maybe the journey would have been easier to endure if we had walked, and part of me would have loved to extend the time alone together; to do anything with her that might be vaguely ‘normal’, other than swimming or talking about her business.
I wish I could shift the constraints of our relationship, but I don’t know where we fit other than exactly where we are.
Besides, Diana is wearing a pair of glittery pink heels that don’t look fit for walking.
She crosses her legs at the knee, revealing her swim-toned calves and the delicate tendons that run down the front of her foot. They flicker as she taps it to the music that’s playing low in the car. I want to touch my thumb to them, savour every undulation of her body, even the tiniest ones.
I’m lost to this. Obsessing over her foot, the indentation of her ankle, the protrusion of bone. But it’s easier to stare at a foot than a face, especially when her eyes are so knowing, as if she sees right to the heart of me and understands more about me than I do myself.
I’m losing my mind over this.
I need a distraction more than ever because I have no idea how I am supposed to continue resisting Diana Marchetti.
The way Julian and Henry teased me about working with her hit too close to home.
I didn’t want to give them anything to feed off, and as a result, I was colder to Diana than I would have been otherwise.
But in her bedroom afterwards, I nearly gave in; I can’t allow myself to get so close again.
If I can keep it professional and talk about her work instead of thinking about her dress and her skin and her ankles, everything will be fine.
Placing my hands on my thighs, I ask, “That chapter you keep referring to in Taming the Beast.”
“Yes?” she says, eyes alert.
“What happens?”
She meets my gaze with a sideways glance. “You could read the book.”
“I don’t have time. Tell me.”
She lets out a wistful sigh. “It’s the most romantic part. The first kiss. I’ve never read one like it.”
I cough, nearly choking on air, spluttering like a fool. Hearing Diana say first kiss is absolutely not the distraction I needed.
Diana ignores me. “It’s a wonderful scene, but it’s really the build up that clinches it.
He’s this huge and powerful guy—gorgeous, obviously—and he resents her for making him…
feel things.” She swallows, and my attention falls to the motion along the column of her throat.
“So he gets angry. Fights his feelings, you know? He’s cruel to her and deliberately breaks her heart, so she rushes out into a storm to get away from him.
She’s going to die out there in the cold, and he tries not to follow her, but he can’t help himself.
When he finds her, she’s freezing. Weeping.
Distraught. It wrecks him. He turns into this great big whimpering mess, begging forgiveness and swearing he’ll do anything to protect her. Carrying her home in his arms.”
“And then?”
She snorts a laugh. “Got you hooked?”
“No.”
My response is too fast, and Diana smiles like she knows I’m lying. “Then they kiss. That’s the beat. Remember?”
Unwelcome sensations stir throughout my body—a recurrence of the fluttering sensation that has become so familiar to me where Diana is concerned. “I remember. And is it raining in this scene you like so much?”
“Yes,” she says quietly, turning away from me and staring out of the window again. “All the best things happen in the rain.”
“So nothing good will happen tonight then,” I say, tilting my head to indicate outside, where it’s dry.
“Probably not,” Diana whispers, and for a reason I can’t explain, the tension in the car increases tenfold.
We travel in silence for a few minutes until Diana lets out a squeal and grabs my hand. Her expression is gleeful as she stares out at the city lit up like a Christmas tree, taking in the strings of twinkling lights arching across the width of the street and glittering up lampposts.
“Look at the lights,” she says with childlike excitement. Her fingers slip off mine, but my skin burns where she touched. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
I fist the hand she touched, wondering how she’s so quickly able to shift from one emotion to the next. She doesn’t let awkwardness fester, and I’m grateful. “It is.”
She looks at me. “You don’t have a tree in the house.”
“It’s barely December.”
Her pretty mouth opens on a gasp. “We're more than halfway through the month! And Christmas is a joy. You’ve got to put one up.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” I say, realising only after I’ve spoken that I sound churlish.
She quirks her head. “Are you all right? You seem a little out of sorts?”
“There’s a lot on at work.” It’s a lie, or at least there’s no more on than usual. The Castow Management deal, however, has more or less fallen out of bed. Melanie won’t shift; I won’t shift. We’ve reached an impasse, although perhaps tonight will yield results.
The smile falls from Diana’s face at my deadpan response, and she leans forward and says to the driver, “Can you let us out here?”
His eyes meet mine in the rear view mirror, but rather than grant the approval he’s seeking, I turn to her and ask, “Why?”
“Because you look miserable, and it’s beautiful out there. Maybe we can make good things happen tonight, even without the rain.”
“I don’t—”
“Please, let us out,” she says to the driver, and this time, when he glances my way, I give him a nod.
The car pulls to the side of the road, and the driver gets out to open the door for us.
The air is brisk, the chill punishing. We’re not dressed for the outside because the car was supposed to take us right to the door; at no point did I envisage needing to be out in the cold, so neither of us is prepared.
“You’re going to freeze,” I say to Diana.
She flashes a tiny smile my way. “No one wears a coat on the red carpet.”
“There’s no carpet. Just the sidewalk.”
Diana’s soft giggle catches on the breeze. “It’s not far,” she says, pointing further down the street. “I’ll survive.”
She shivers, the pink silk dress doing little to protect her from the chill. I curse under my breath, shrugging out of my jacket and holding it out to her.
“Here.”
She casts me a grateful look and lets me drape it over her shoulders.
“Thank you. It’s cold, but look how pretty,” she says, gesturing to the lights around us.
There’s Christmas music coming from somewhere, a jazzy version of Jingle Bells, and people are crowding the pavement, laden with shopping bags.
Everyone is smiling and laughing, and I have to admit that she’s right. This is better than being in the car.
As we walk side-by-side, people look at her as we pass. She’s hard to ignore at the best of times, but dressed up like this, she’s impossible not to notice. Every time some asshole checks her out, I want to sling my arm around her and tell them to fuck off.
Her hand grazes mine as we weave through the crowds, and sparks fly up my arm. As if she felt it too, she glances at her hand, then looks at me, a coy smile slanting her lips as she turns away. It has me questioning everything.
We can’t get to the venue soon enough. I’ve never felt the need to hold a woman’s hand as strongly as I feel it now. To do something, anything, to signal to the world that she’s mine. To soothe the itch beneath my skin that has me wanting to reach out and touch her.
We’ve been living together for months now, and I could count on one hand the number of times we’ve made physical contact, despite the fact that all I think about is touching her.
“Diana!”
At the shout of her name, she reaches for me, shunting her body closer to mine.
Through the crowd, a man approaches. Shorter than me, but still over six feet tall with grey hair, slicked into a side parting, and a grey woollen coat hanging from broad shoulders, buttoned closed over an expanding waistline.
“Dad,” Diana greets him, but it’s a breathy, frightened sound.
Without looking at me, he grips Diana by the wrist, thick fingers tightening around her delicate skin, holding her firm. “Where have you been?” He tugs on her arm, and she staggers a few steps closer to him. “Why haven’t you answered any of my messages?”
My mind whirs at a million miles an hour. If he’s her father, then he’s the man who destroyed her belongings and threw her out without a penny.
She yanks her hand back, but he doesn’t release it.
“It’s none of your business where I’ve been,” she says, her voice stronger now.
“You’re my daughter,” he growls. “It’s always my business. It will be my business forever.”
“No.” She shakes her head, desperation creeping into her voice again. “Not after what you did. Never, after that.” She pulls harder against his hold, trying to free herself. It must hurt, because her voice thins, rising to a whine as she says, “Dad, please. Let go.”
I step forwards, crowding him. “Remove your hand, or I’ll do it for you.”
The man’s eyes, golden brown and so similar to Diana’s, dart to mine, narrowing as he says, “Who are you?”
“If you think you can throw your daughter out of your life and then walk back in and claim her at your own leisure, you’re mistaken. Let. Go. Of. Her.”
His jaw hardens, and his grip on Diana’s wrist tightens, his knuckles whitening as his next words blast like a round of bullets. “Are you taking care of her now? Is she living under your roof? Does she obey when you issue orders like that? Because she never obeyed mine.”