Chapter 4 #3
“You won’t,” I informed him sharply. “Ever.” I made a mental vow to myself never to give in to that feeling. “I’m merely here to deliver this and fulfill a promise. I fully intend to never cross paths with you again.”
Elliot remained silent, as if he was digesting my words. Then he crossed his arms, a sly grin on his face. “I’m not taking that.” He nodded to the envelope.
I scowled. “I’ll just leave it here.”
“Then I’ll just mail it back,” he returned.
My forehead would’ve creased if it wasn’t Botoxed within an inch of its life. “I could just tear it up.”
His eyes glinted with mischief. “I’ll write another.”
I planted my hands on my hips, irritated by the determination I heard in his tone, sensing that he wouldn’t give up on this easily. “What do you want?”
I was schooled enough to understand that this was a negotiation tactic—act like a toddler until you got what you want. One usually employed by men. Another venture into familiar territory. Although some of me might’ve been disappointed that Elliot was just like other men, mostly I was relieved.
“Dinner, with you,” he said without missing a beat, eyes twinkling.
My stomach lurched. Yes, he was more like most men than I’d expected.
Even though I was jaded enough to expect it, I was disappointed.
“You’re trying to blackmail me into having dinner with you?
Dinner that you’ll try to turn into fucking.
” I shook my head, appalled, but feeling appalled with a man was much more comfortable than whatever I felt for Elliot. “I meant what I said, I’m not a whore.”
“It’s technically extortion, I think.” As if in deep thought, he thrummed two fingers against his chin. “And I know you’re not a whore, Calliope.” Dropping his fingers and the act, he said this more softly. More meaningfully. Like he thought highly of me.
He really didn’t know me, then.
“Either one isn’t an honorable or an attractive way to get a woman on a date.
” I fisted my hands at my sides, welcoming the familiar burn of feminine fury in my throat—much more helpful than the heat of desire.
“Call me old fashioned, but I don’t consider coercion a turn-on.
” My eyes narrowed as I scowled. “Coercion and a general disregard for women’s rights was the way of the world in the not too distant past. It seems you think you live there too.
I promise you, you really won’t like trying to force me to do something I don’t want to do. ”
I clenched my fists so I wouldn’t smack the smug smile off his handsome face.
My threat was nowhere near empty. It was a hobby of mine to punish men who thought they could control women.
Elliot didn’t look appropriately unnerved. Men rarely did. Not until their life was falling apart around them because of the woman they weren’t properly afraid of.
“I’d never force a woman to do something they didn’t want to do.” He spoke softly but not without conviction. “But you want to have dinner with me. Just a little.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart.
“What makes you think that?” I balked instead of lying outright, which was the appropriate course of action. Lie my well-toned ass off then get out of there.
“A hunch.” Elliot’s eyes twinkled again.
It was a dare. For me to argue with him some more, prod and poke to find out what he thought about me. What I thought about him.
I was good at that.
Fighting.
I was fucking great at that. And I’d never backed down from a fight. Not once. Which had bit me in the ass a time or too but mostly hardened me into the woman I’d become.
And I was proud of the woman I’d become.
Mostly.
I’d buried a lot of the shame and guilt for my darker deeds, lying to myself about the motivations and the villains in such things.
When I was the villain. If you wanted to get down to it.
Certainly not suitable for a clear-eyed fisherman who likely hadn’t so much as jaywalked.
“You have no idea what you’d get yourself into with me.” Was I warning him? Flirting?
His brow quirked, and his eyes danced down my body in a gaze that felt physical, as if he was imagining what he was going to do to it. Or maybe that was just me.
As oxytocin shot through my bloodstream, I steeled my expression to remain even.
“That’s kind of the point. I like the mystery.” He met my eyes again, his voice edged with a hungry rasp. “What’s the problem, Calliope Derrick? Scared you won’t last through a dinner with me without starting to like me a little?”
There it was again.
Another challenge.
A much more dangerous one.
If I kept pushing, kept fighting, I knew I’d grind Elliot down to ensure he never so much as glanced in my direction again. I had plenty of experience with taking men apart and turning them into nothing but quivering little boys at my feet.
Yet I had no desire to do that to him. He didn’t deserve it.
He wasn’t actually pressuring me into the date; he was well aware that I was a strong enough woman who wouldn’t hesitate to refuse.
Moreover, I had the sense that he never would’ve broached such a bargain if he hadn’t read my subtle signs, showing I might be agreeable, interested in him.
My mind turned, calculating various outcomes before coming to the conclusion that the most logical way forward was to stay firm.
Stay cold and take him down so he’d never ask me for a thing again.
So I’d never see him again and never be confronted with a complicated desire toward something I shouldn’t want.
“Fine,” I relented. “But don’t be surprised when you find yourself out of your depth and regretting this moment.”
The warning wasn’t meant as a threat. The sharp tone was crafted to deftly cover the insecurity I felt, knowing if and when this man truly knew me, he’d be disgusted.
His grin endured. “I find it hard to believe that I’ll ever regret a moment with you, Calliope Derrick.”
My body reacted viscerally, physically, as his words struck me off-balance. I didn’t teeter on my heels because I was used to men trying to push me down from their height. But that wasn’t what Elliot was doing. Not in the slightest.
He was enchanted. Maybe bored by the small-town fisherman life. I was something shiny and new and attractive, and he was building me into something I wasn’t.
“You’re a romantic,” I observed as if I was calling him a fascist.
“Hopeless,” he shrugged without shame.
I gripped my purse, beyond ready to get some space between us. “I’ll remedy that at dinner, one that will be free of romance.”
His mouth twitched. “We’ll see.”
None of my usual arsenal was making an impact. He wasn’t angered by my coldness, my hardness, the blatant blows that were usually fatal to a fragile male ego.
I rolled my lips together, staring at the envelope on the bar, the real reason I was there.
All of my desire, frustration and complicated thoughts cleared as I returned to look at Elliot.
“Your niece…” I wanted to soften my voice but was unable to do that, so it still sounded harsh, businesslike. “What kind of cancer does she have?”
Like a kick to my stomach, his smile disappeared, and grief so raw, so all-encompassing, took over his expression.
“Acute lymphocytic leukemia,” His voice became deadened, all joy leached from it.
I felt guilty. For returning him to the place where he lived underneath all the easy smiles— constantly consumed by pain, agony and worry for someone he obviously loved with all of his being.
Although I wasn’t a soft and cuddly aunt, I loved my nieces and nephews with every millimeter of my shriveled heart, and the thought of anything happening to them made my chest hurt.
I would go to the ends of the earth to locate any kind of demon or devil to sell my soul to in order to keep them safe.
You know, if I hadn’t already sold it to make myself rich and powerful.
“How is she?” I was still unable to inject any empathy into my tone, although I felt it radiating to my bones.
Elliot clenched and unclenched his fist on the bar.
“She’s a fighter.” He smiled, but the smile was so sad and full of pain that it made my eyes fill with tears I would’ve readily shed if I was weaker or a woman capable of feeling more.
Though maybe it was my rejection of feelings that made me weaker.
“But without a bone marrow transplant, it doesn’t look good.” Elliot spoke over my shoulder, his eyes wide, unseeing.
It felt like my throat was lined with thorns. Unable to keep looking at him, my eyes went back to the bar, to the bottles behind it, anywhere but on the man who was obviously in a kind of pain that superseded any kind of petty bullshit I was involved in.
“None of us are matches,” he continued. “My brother, me, my father.”
I forced myself to look at him, to witness the defeat in his words.
I didn’t know this man from Adam, but I knew men like him, like my brother.
All they wanted to do was protect those they loved.
My brother would’ve given all of his bones, his organs, his lifeblood in an instant to save his children.
And not being able to do that when it might’ve been the only thing to keep them on this earth would haunt him for eternity.
Powerlessness. That’s what I was witnessing. Powerlessness, not defeat. I saw that he had not accepted, would not accept, that there was no treatment, yet I also felt hopelessness creeping in.
“We’re on a list,” he sighed.
I sucked my teeth. I had a cynical view of our healthcare system because it was inherently fucked. Sure, she might have had a chance to get a donor, but the chance was small. People bought their way to the top of those lists all the fucking time.
I was the person who made them the money required to do so.
My lunch swirled in my stomach.
“Where’s her mother?” I demanded.
Elliot’s face scrunched up with fury that looked unfamiliar yet embedded. “She left,” he bit out. “When she was three months old.”
I gaped at him. “Three months old?”
I thought of my nieces, how tiny they were then. How helpless. How reliant on the woman who birthed them for safety, comfort. Even me, the self-professed callous bitch, found it impossible to understand leaving something that small and sacred.
He nodded once, curtly. “She’s an immensely selfish woman.
We tried to warn him, but he was in love.
She was his whole world until he held his daughter.
Then nothing mattered but her, and his wife didn’t like that.
She was jealous.” He spat the sentences out like tacks, nothing like the free-flowing words of before.
My earlier assumption that nothing could rile this man was proved wrong.
When it came to his family, he was a different beast entirely.
We had that in common.
Jealous. Of her husband doting on her daughter. I shook my head.
“Yeah, piece of work,” he agreed at my head shaking. “We’re better off without her. Though we could use some of her bone marrow.”
Though this entire subject was infinitely sad, I perked up at this. “She’s a match?”
Elliot shrugged. I knew he was going for nonchalance, but I registered the way his entire body tensed, his eyes hardening, and his mouth flattened as if he was gritting his teeth. “We can’t be sure, but the closer the family, the better.”
Powerlessness. I could feel it. In him.
But powerlessness was not something I accepted. So even as he spoke, a plan formed in my head.
“I better go.” I straightened my shoulders, finally able to properly look him in the eye now that I had a plan. Now that I could control something.
His expression changed as he took in what could only be viewed as an abrupt and careless end to a horrible conversation that required softness, empathy.
Good. Maybe he’d rightly ascertain that I was heartless and stay far away from me.
“Keep the check, Elliot.” I tapped the envelope.
Then I turned my back and walked out because I couldn’t stand the look on his face.
He was seeing me for what I really was. Which was a good thing. I could only pretend for so long. But I suddenly felt cold, no longer basking in the sunlight of Elliot Shaw’s gaze.
I was on my phone the second I got in my car.
“I need you to find someone for me,” I said when he answered.
“It’ll cost you.” I swore I could feel the cold smile stretching across his handsome face.
He wasn’t one for pleasantries, nor was he one to do anything for nothing. Though his voice didn’t betray a thing, I knew he’d been waiting for this. For me to slip up, ask him for something, to be in his debt.
And I’d done everything in my power to ensure I’d never ever be put in that position. I’d told myself there was nothing that could make me ask him for help.
Except for a four-year-old girl. Who needed a bone marrow transplant.
“I know.” I gave him the information required.
“No problem,” was his reply. “I’ll be in touch about payment.”
My hands weren’t shaking as I held the phone because I wasn’t that kind of bitch. But my pinkie tremored once I put the phone down and stared at Shaw Shack for much longer than I should’ve before driving off.