Perhaps Alaric should get Naz to speak with Bethany? Exhaustion ringed her eyes, circling a resigned sadness that no make-up could hide. First she’d had a divorce to deal with, then Pemberton’s retaliation. And it was retaliation. Last night, he’d discovered one of his assistants had both sharp eyes and morals, so of course he’d wanted to get rid of her. What if she questioned things further, kept checking the stolen-art databases? There was no way the gallery would stand up to that kind of scrutiny. No, she’d had to go. She said she tripped over a cleaning caddy? Alaric would put money on the old bastard having moved it into Bethany’s path himself.
“Thank you for doing this. I won’t need the parking space for long, I promise. Just until I can make other arrangements. I’ll update my CV again this evening, and—” Now what was wrong? She’d gone quite pale. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t update my CV. My laptop died two months ago, and I’ve just been using the one at the gallery. But I had to leave it behind.” Unexpectedly, she thumped the dashboard, then leaned her head against the steering wheel. Her breath steamed onto the windscreen, fuzzy little circles of despair that matched Alaric’s mind. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got a laptop. Let’s drop the car off, then we can work on your résumé.” We? For fuck’s sake, McLain. “I’ll even buy you dinner.”
It was official: his mouth was no longer connected to his brain, and the latter had ceased to function. In fact, the only parts of him that were still working were his tongue and his dick, which had clubbed together to toss difficulties into his path like confetti at a wedding.
“Dinner?” Bethany asked.
“We’ve got to eat, right?” Just. Stop. Talking. “What kind of food do you like?”
“Anything I don’t have to cook myself.”
Slowly, deliberately, Alaric forced one foot out of the car. What the hell was he doing? The last time he’d let his little head overrule his big one, he’d ended up with Emmy, and look how that had turned out. He’d ended up hurting both of them, not to mention making an enemy out of her husband. Marriage of convenience his ass. Deep down, he’d always known Black would claim Emmy in the end, but still he couldn’t stop himself from falling head over heels. Quite literally, he mused, remembering the number of times he’d fucked her in stilettos.
Alaric’s gaze strayed towards the driver’s side footwell, sliding over a pair of smooth legs he had no business looking at. If he didn’t get a grip, he’d be forced to check himself into a damn monastery until he came to his senses. Honestly, he didn’t usually behave like a horny teenager. That was Judd’s job.
Alaric made a mental note not to let him anywhere near Bethany.
“Are we going now?” She turned listlessly in her seat.
“Unless you want me to get pizza delivered to the parking lot.” He glanced out the door, taking in the tangle of brambles surrounding the potholed blacktop. Stray pieces of straw scudded past, tumbling in the stiff breeze that blew from the north, and a squirrel balanced on a wooden post, a rotting totem of a fence that had once separated the space from a bare paddock. Now white electric tape marked the boundary instead, and a small brown horse shook a frothy tangle of hair away from its eyes and stared hangdog at them from its makeshift prison. “The ambience isn’t much, and there’s a nosy diner at the next table, but the view’s nice.”
“Really? I always thought it was a bit overgrown.” Ah, such innocence. She didn’t get the double entendre? “Pinkey’s always saying she’s going to cut it back, but then a horse goes lame or a water drinker malfunctions and floods the place or the roof of the tack room falls down, so she runs out of time. And Twiggy’s meant to be on a diet. He used to be in the paddock by the footpath, but people kept bringing him carrots.”
“Somebody called that horse Twiggy?”
He was a whisky barrel with a leg at each corner, about as far from a twig as it was possible to get. Walk him up a hill and he’d block out the sun.
“Technically, he’s a pony rather than a horse, but…yes, I suppose there is a certain irony. His name’s actually Lord Ferdinand, but he escaped and got tangled in a blackberry patch. It took us an hour to cut him free and two more to pick the bits out of his hair. Pinkey called him Twiggy for a joke because it was either laugh or cry while we all got our hands cut to shreds, and it stuck.”
Before his brain caught up, Alaric had reached out for one of Bethany’s hands, turning it over in his to examine the skin on both sides. At least he knew why her nails were chipped now—caring for her horse trumped manicures.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for damage.”
“Damage? From the blackberries?”
“Plants can be vicious.”
He’d found that out the day Emmy convinced him it would be fun to make a parachute jump. He’d only agreed because she promised he’d be strapped tightly to her the whole way down. The first thirty seconds of free fall had been terrifying, but once she pulled the chute, he’d actually begun to enjoy himself, aided in no small part by her legs wrapped around him and the filth she’d been shouting in his ear over the wind noise. Then thirty feet from the ground, a last-second gust had tossed them sideways into a briar patch. And it only added insult to injury when Black glided in like a steroid-addled ballerina, landing neatly in the field to their left.
Emmy had been pissed, really pissed, mostly at herself but partly at the undergrowth. She’d cursed in at least six different languages as she hacked through the bushes with a machete. A fucking machete. To this day, Alaric didn’t know where she’d got it from. He’d covered the important bits with his hands when they landed, which meant he’d retained the ability to have children at least, but rather than going out for dinner, they’d spent the evening tweezing thorns out of each other’s asses.
“Who says romance is dead?” Emmy had joked. Laugh or cry, right?
Their romance might not yet have been dead at that point, but when Alaric looked back now, he understood there had been a tumour growing.
Bethany pulled her hand away, gently rather than snatching. “It happened six months ago. The scratches don’t show anymore.”
Why couldn’t he get involved with a woman who had a safe hobby for once? Not that he was involved with Bethany, exactly. He owed her, that was all. And he wasn’t about to make the mistake of suggesting she take up flower arranging.
No, he was going to get away from the damn car and take her back to London where she belonged.
“Are you still in London?” Ravi asked through the Honda’s speakers.
“Just outside and going nowhere fast.” The M4 was backed up. Again. Bethany was right behind Alaric, and every so often, she leaned across to fiddle with the radio. Trying to find out what the delay was? Or just listening to music? Yesterday, he’d have pegged her as a classical fan, but she’d already surprised him once with her choice of hobby. Perhaps she liked hard rock?
“Heading into town or out?”
“Into town.”
“Good—can you do me a favour?”