His Obsession (3 page)

He turned and looked at me quizzically in the dim light of the moon. "Yes?"

"Just wondering. What are you clinging to that causes you so much suffering that you want to kill yourself?"

Immediately I knew I'd struck a nerve. His body tensed and his brow furrowed slightly, and I could tell he perhaps hadn't thought of it that way. To him, taking that fatal, final step
was
letting go simply because he couldn't—or didn't want—to see the alternatives. He'd said his decision was a logical one, and while I doubted that was entirely true, perhaps, just maybe, if he'd reasoned himself into it, he could reason himself out of it.

After all, most people don't just off themselves because it's the most convenient way out of their problems. Under his calm exterior, I knew he must be terribly hurt by his friend's betrayal. Why he clung to
that
attachment was the root of his problems. It stood to reason.

"I..." he said, staring off into the distance. "I'm not sure." His voice wavered, and I could tell I had startled him, perhaps even frightened him. "We should get ready to walk to the boat."

He backed up ever so slightly, as though he were wary of me, and I realized that he had trapped me against the wall again, holding me up. My knees, still weak from my orgasm, could barely support my weight, but I tried anyway as he released the support he had been giving me. Malcolm shot me one last look that I couldn't quite decipher, then took a step back and frowned out at the harbor. Cool sea wind blew his hair back from his face, and I wanted to run my fingers through it.

In the harbor I saw the white bulk of a yacht pull up to the dock, and Malcolm took my hand. "Let's go."

We walked quickly and briskly, but didn't run. The smell of the sea filled my head, made me dizzy, and I kept waiting to hear the shout of the police, telling us to stop in the name of the law or whatever it is they say in Croatia, but though I strained to hear, no shouts came. If we had been in a movie it would have been a mad dash, we would be separated, darting through the streets, trying to reach the docks in time, but as it was Malcolm was too sharp, too ahead of the game to be caught like that, which just made his little FBI predicament all the more perplexing to me. We made it to the boat without incident and boarded.

It was huge. Three decks and a sleek design that made me think of space age flying cars. The boat rolled beneath my feet and it took all my concentration not to fall over as Malcolm led me past a silent, uniformed captain, only a shadow barely touched by yellow lamplight, who nodded at us before setting about doing whatever it was that was needed to reel the gangplank in. The dark was so encompassing that I barely got a glimpse of the deck—ghostly chairs, a couch, a coffee table—before Malcolm led me inside.

It was even more ridiculous inside. Gorgeous, perfectly designed, luxurious... everything one might expect from a billionaire playboy who wanted nothing more than to party with fifty of his closest friends in international waters. The sitting room—or whatever it was—had been constructed in cream trim and cherrywood paneling. A comfortable place to gather and chat, or throw a cocktail party. So elegant. So high-society. So exhausting.

"Would you like a drink, Sadie?" Malcolm asked me as he crossed the room to the bar and the hum of the motors picked up. I glanced out the window and saw the lights of Dubrovnik retreating.

This was really happening. We were on the run from the law.

"Yes," I said. "I could really use a drink."

His eyes flickered to me. "Scotch?"

I waved my hand. "Yeah. Sure. Okay."

He selected a few cubes of ice from a well-concealed freezer and poured two glasses of Scotch on the rocks. Crossing back to me, he held it out and I took it, braving a sip.

Ugh. Scotch tastes like shit. But it was a drink, so I just had to deal with it.

Malcolm was already turning toward the couch, and as I fought the Scotch down, I watched as he he sprawled out, throwing one leg up onto the cushions and taking a long, deliberate drink from his glass as he stared me in the eye.

I felt the silence called for some commentary.

"So," I said. "Here we are."

He nodded. "This is true." He yawned, like a lion with his pride, surveying the land around him. The master of his domain.

I looked around. The room was gorgeous, decorated in tones of taupe and white and gold, perfectly elegant and turned out like a hotel room. "So I guess my job's going to be pretty easy, then," I said.

"Oh?" he asked. "How do you mean?"

I rolled my eyes. Did he really not get it? "I mean, why would you want to leave all this behind?" I gestured around me. "I mean, shit, if I had a yacht, I'd just spend all my time on it throwing parties."

"Would you? Would they be like the party you organized for the auction?"

I glanced at him sharply, but his head was tilted to the side, and he seemed merely curious. "No," I said. "We'd be out in international waters. We'd totally get drunk and high and shove the deck chairs into the sea."

He arched a brow at that. "Those deck chairs are awfully expensive," he said.

"Really? They're deck chairs. How expensive can they be?"

"Oh," he said, "three thousand dollars at least."

I choked and coughed on my drink. Alcohol burned in my nose. "What?" I exclaimed. "You could buy, like, thirty deck chairs for that cost!"

"Ah," he said, "but then they would not be three thousand dollar deck chairs and I'd be a laughingstock of the yachting club." He smiled while he said it and I scowled.

"Are you joking with me? Do you actually belong to a yacht club?"

His smile widened. "Of course I don't. The chairs came with the boat. I just bought it and it came with all these fine things in it, it seemed silly to change it."

That sort of thinking was totally foreign to me. "What, you mean you didn't want to make it your own or whatever?"

He shrugged. "I
own
it," he said. "It's already my own."

"Uh-huh," I said. "And what do you use it for?"

He shrugged again. "Getaways," he said. "In the summer it is a fine thing to cruise around the islands off the coast of Croatia. They are beautiful and it is very warm and relaxing."

"Yeah," I said. "About that... why Croatia? It's hardly the place I'd expect a rich guy to go."

"Oh? Why?"

"Because..." I trailed off. "Well, because it's not the French Riviera or... or a private island in the Bahamas or something." I had no idea where rich people went for fun.

"I used to frequent the more lively of European countries," he replied. "But you grow out of that thing when you get older, I think."

"So now you just want to float around in a boat?"

"And start a farm in the French countryside. I would dearly love to own some sheep."

"And yet," I said, "you won't be able to do any of that once you kick the bucket."

Ah. An abrupt turn of conversation, sprung like a trap. I'm so clever.

His lips tightened. "I know that," he said. His words were clipped. "Some things are just dreams, after all."

"Yeah," I said, "but for you they could be reality. You're fucking
rich.
You have one problem and it's a person. Do you know how many people would kill to have your problems? They don't go around offing themselves the first time someone betrays them."

I took a sip of my drink, watching him from the corner of my eye to gauge his reaction. His handsome face, so many sharp planes, became sharper at the suggestion that his problems were trivial. Which, you know, they kind of were. Not
to him,
obviously, but compared to being unable to eat, or keep the heat on, or stop drinking or shooting up or afford cancer treatments or any number of problems that people faced every damn day, his problem was a few angry emails, some public snubbings, and a humiliating episode of
Judge Judy
away from being satisfactorily resolved.

It made me kind of angry, now that I thought about it. He just wanted to throw all this away for no good reason. He had the money to buy a shrink. To literally put a shrink on-call twenty-four seven, and he just wanted to take the easy way out instead of facing his issues.

What a cock.
I glared at my drink, swirling it around so that it splashed over its few ice cubes, then drained it. It burned and warmed me up, and my cheeks heated with it.

"Would you like to know how I met Dominic?" Malcolm asked me suddenly.

I jumped, then looked at him, surprised. Why would he bring up our restauranteur? I doubted I would see him again as long as I lived. Still, anything to get him off his stupid suicidal high-horse. "Uh," I said. "Sure."

He smiled, but it lacked warmth. "That was the right answer," he said, and I had the impression I had passed some sort of test. Malcolm slid off the bed and stood up, shoving his hands into his pockets. Leisurely he began to pace, but I was attuned enough by now to his moods that I realized he was quite agitated. What he was about to share was personal. I set my drink down, lowered myself into one of the plush, luxurious armchairs, and turned my full attention on him.

He continued to pace. "I met Dominic in Paris," he began, "where he was staying after the war. He worked as a bartender in an... exclusive club."

Sex club,
I thought.

"We got to talking one night, and I learned that he had come to France to flee the war in his old home. You remember the war?"

"I know there was
a
war. I was kind of young."

He laughed. A bitter sound. "Of course. I don't remember it very much myself. It didn't involve me, and I was only a teenager. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Yugoslavia split apart in a civil war and went back to its component pieces. Dominic lost everything. He had to flee his hometown—I forget where it was—and his daughter was raped and his mother was
disappeared
because she lived in the wrong village. The war devastated the countryside. Dominic was Croat living in Serbian territory. He had to leave. He left everything behind and fled to France, and he was barely scraping by there. I asked him what he would do if he had unlimited money and could go back to Croatia and he told me he would buy a cafe in Dubrovnic and become a famous chef. So I bankrolled him."

He trailed off, though he didn't stop pacing. His eyes took on a faraway look, as though he were gazing into some other time and place. I waited for him to finish the story, but he said nothing. At last I frowned. "And?"

Malcolm paused and glanced at me, as if he had forgotten I was there. Then he smiled. "
And,"
he told me, "he's not a famous chef yet, but he's living a better life now. He doesn't have to serve alcohol to degenerates like me."

Oh yeah. That had been a sex club.
I tried not to get sidetracked by curiosity. "I already know you can be generous," I said. "Why are you telling me this?"

He raised his eyebrows. "That wasn't the point of the story. The point was that I
know
my problems are paltry in the grand scheme of things. I will never lose my home to an invading army. My neighbors will never turn on me and shell my city." He paused in his pacing and pinned me with his dark cherrywood eyes, the same color, I realized, as the wood paneling of the interior of this yacht. Our eyes locked to each other, he stalked across the floor to me. "I understand, Sadie," he said. "I will never be
disappeared
by a militia and dragged into the woods where I'll be shot in the back of the head and left to rot in the fallen leaves. I will never be an anonymous skeleton in the forest. I
know
that."

He'd already anticipated this line of attack. Hell, it had probably been the very first thing he had told himself if he ever tried to talk himself out of his dumb plan. I felt cold inside, as though someone had slipped ice beneath my skin. "So?" I said. He loomed over the chair, staring down at me. Then he sighed and tapped his chest.

"I'm still hollow in here. Knowing and feeling are two different things. I
know
my struggles are nothing. Betrayal by my own dear brother? What does it matter? The things that cause me pain... they change nothing. There is nothing here
to
change."

Reaching down, he stroked my face. "I'm afraid you have set yourself up for an impossible task, Sadie."

I tried not to show my trepidation. I was starting to believe him. But there wasn't anything I could do about it now. I'd vowed to try my best to reach the person under the armor. I
knew
he was there. But he was right—knowing and feeling are two different things. If I couldn't reach his heart—and there had to be something there, otherwise he wouldn't have felt any pain at all—then I could never draw out the man I truly wanted to know.

I could never talk him out of killing himself, I realized. But earnest words are never the only thing in a woman's arsenal.

I could also be flippant.

"Don't worry about me," I said. "You forget. I was an artist before I was a personal assistant. I'm like a world expert at banging my head against a wall."

A half-smile graced his lips. "Is that so? I wasn't aware art was so difficult."

"That's 'cause you're doing it wrong," I replied. "You have to dig deep."

"There's nowhere to dig," he said.

"Fine," I said. "Then show the world how shallow you are. You have to dig really deep to demonstrate that."

"Really?" he said.

"Really," I replied. "Because there is nothing harder than making a piece of art that someone can just look at and say, 'yeah, that says absolutely nothing.'"

He pursed his lips. "What about abstract art?"

"You'd better believe that says something," I told him. "For a lot of abstract artists, it was a rebellion against fascism, or a comment on modern life. Nothing makes much sense after a war so huge it ripped everyone up and changed the entire world. There was a lot of commentary on breaking free of old strictures and shit like that that didn't make any sense in a senseless world."