Unbind (12 page)

I didn’t broach the subject further. Neither did he.

“Where are we eating? I could eat a fucking horse and her foal.”

He sniggered while I put my earrings in at the large mirror above the fireplace.

“Seems we’re both dressed to impress… how ’bout we try the Savoy?”

“The Savoy?” I almost screeched.

“Yeah, they keep a table for my aunt. She drops into the city a lot, unannounced. I think they’ll let us borrow it.” I spotted him on his phone, firing off a text to her maybe.

“Okay,” I squeaked.
The fucking Savoy
!

I grabbed my black Monsoon poncho coat and silver sequined clutch, and we were out of there, hailing my second cab of the night. My third of the day.

“You’ll love it,” he convinced me as we sat snuggled in the backseat, holding hands. Wrapped in each other’s perfumes, I felt hazy. “We’ll get treated well because of Jennifer.”

“Oh, alright then.” I huffed, and fiddled with my nails. My thoughts were on Klaus, again. Maybe it was the gin but I just felt awkward about the whole thing and the way Cai had reacted to any mention of him.

“Hey, why are you tense?” he asked, like
we were
already in a relationship. Like he could read my mind. “If you think I give a damn about Klaus… it isn’t that. He just doesn’t seem trustworthy from what I’ve heard.”

“What have you heard?” I turned to him. He did that thing again—two fingers wiped each side of his mouth.

“It might not be true.” He sighed. “Something my aunt said, is all.”

“All you people and your rumours… do you really want me to go cyber stalking for answers?”

He turned to me in the seat and entreated me with his eyes, “Please don’t go looking online, you might not like what you find. Better to live and learn the real way, yeah?”

He released one hand and I used this to stroke my finger over the back of his. Was it tiring for him having always lived in this kind of world? One where his life was just entertainment for some. A throwaway comment here or there about the guy with the massive inheritance was seemingly painful for him.             

“Okay, I won’t go looking,” I agreed, reaching up to gently kiss a corner of his mouth.

He held my cheek and shut his eyes, whispering shakily, “Chloe.”

I wanted to drown in this man, have him peel me bare and let him do whatever he wanted to do to my body. Just the sight of his throat in a crisp, white shirt, brought to mind a bedroom scene in which I unpicked his buttons and got my first look at the body beneath the clothes. I felt so proud to be ‘on his arm’, even if it were only for that night.

He kept his eyes shut and murmured, “You make me wanna break all the rules… make me wanna invest in hosiery so you’re never without.” He gestured at my choice that evening, a pair stitched with pencil lines at the back and mock-garters that showed the further my skirt rode up. His large hand touched my thigh, his fingers just grazing the hem of my skirt. “Chloe, I wanna fuck all the rules… for you.”

I needed to sit on his cock and ride him until this insanity subsided. Somehow I knew it would only get worse after that!

“Get me drunk and we’ll see what happens,” I grinned sinfully.

I already felt the effects of that G&T.

“We’ll be screwed for work tomorrow,” he said, hopeful.

“Hmm. Yes.”

EVEN BEFORE WE got to the Savoy, I knew I was slightly off my head. I think the liquor at Klaus’s place must have been overproof or something, I was so far gone even before the sommelier asked whether the Tempranillo was okay. Truth was, anything would have been okay. I couldn’t taste the difference right then.

While we ate our goat’s cheese starters, I noticed he looked uncomfortable. For some reason, not much about that meal was sexy, so far. So I started the convo off light.

“You know I don’t do dating…” I slurred my words a little, I hated to realise.

“No, neither do I—” He looked like he was going to elaborate, but cut himself off. He stuck a whole lettuce leaf in his mouth and olive oil dribbled down his chin. He swiped it away on his extra-large, white napkin before I got a chance to help him.

“What about an exception? What about—” I was trying to hint at us formally dating, when he started coughing violently on a piece of potato.

“You don’t seem to be
at home
here if you don’t mind me saying?”

The Simpson’s-in-the-Strand was like being on the Titanic, like nowhere I’d ever eaten before and truth be told, Klaus had taken me to a few sweet places. These kind of establishments didn’t seem to be to Cai’s taste. He was so young after all.

“I feel like I’m naked here,” he complained, “like I can’t do a thing without you noticing.”

“Don’t avoid the question, snapper boy.” I held out my knife toward him, enraging some elegant patrons nearby who clearly knew we were only in that place because of Jennifer. You may as well have sewn the Matthews name into the tablecloth.

“Yeah you’re right… but it’ll please my aunt to know we ate here, you know? We won’t even have to dig in our wallets for this, either… and with a gallery refurbishment taking everything outta my pocket… I’m counting my green right now.”

I sliced through my salad and chewed steadily, raising an eyebrow. “A gallery?”

“I have a space in Brooklyn. The place kinda sucked so I decided to refurb, see if I couldn’t drum up some more interest.” He shrugged off the importance of that, though it was clearly significant.

“You take photos as art, too?” I let the red seep into my already heated veins. There was something about this man, something two-tone…

“I sell pieces, yeah… people call them art. I call them a pastime.”

“Ha. So modest, aren’t you?”

He laughed along with me and finished his glass of red, which was immediately refilled by a passing waiter.

“We’re talking major renovations… some days I regret I even started it.”

I tapped my teeth with a finger. “According to a snippet I read, you’re not short on cash. Nor is Jennifer I would imagine.”

He nodded, looking around the room, a sly smile showing his white teeth. “She’s got this like control issue.”

I played footsie with him under the table. “Tell me what she’s like… I won’t tell.”

He leaned forward and looked into my eyes, his solid shoulders filling his military-style white shirt perfectly. “She thinks my parents were fucking crazy… and they were, right. I get that. They were,” he paused and scratched at his chin, “but she thinks I have the potential to be just like them, so she has this noose,” he motioned a rope around his neck, “keeping me reined in. I can’t work anywhere in New York without her say-so in case I show her up, spoil her perfect reputation. So that’s why I’m at Media Solutions. They don’t pay great, but they pay… and it’s freedom. They send me off here, there and everywhere, and anytime I get back to the US I sneak home but never stay that long. I don’t like her world, Chloe. It’s not my world.”

That made more sense. “So, the whole gallery thing… it’s a passion but a curse?”

“It is a passion,” he nodded, his eyes wide, “just one I’ve found hard to make happen. It’s a funny story, but on my 21st birthday I got a package in the mail with the deeds to that gallery. Like, a benefactor. I didn’t find out who gave it to me.”

He shook his head, annoyance etched in his eyes as he wiped a drop of wine from his plush mouth. “The building is enormous… huge potential, but is essentially a wreck. I dunno, I thought it was maybe her doing… her way of trying to get me to be serious about my career. I thought that her name would help me secure some funding or a sponsor to renovate or establish some name for myself but I just hit walls, everywhere I went. I’ve tried to save every penny I can from working jobs, but it’s been a stretch. I don’t inherit for another three months yet and I’m counting the days.”

I sat still, thinking through what he was telling me. Jennifer from the outside was pristine. She was known for bringing new designers to the fore and helping models to stardom. She got the best staff money could buy, too.

“You think she’s put a block on you getting anywhere in your career? Like, telling her friends to dismiss you, spreading rumours? Why would she do that?”

He nodded and appeared relieved I thought along the same lines as him. “Stuff went down with my parent’s… bad stuff. She imagines all sorts about me that just isn’t true. I don’t wanna get into the finer details but she seems all philanthropic from the exterior, but beneath, she’s the queen bee who will sting anyone who tries to rob her nest.”

He kept looking around the restaurant, paranoid about who might be listening in. For all I cared, she could walk up to us in the flesh and I’d tell her I didn’t think she was trustworthy, not to have gotten where she had in the industry.

“It’s not unbelievable. I know how people in her world work. I mean… Klaus tells tales sometimes. Not about her, no… he just tells me stuff about certain chieftains and their sneaky habits.”

“Huh,” Cai grunted, his disdain for Klaus not doused. He sat waiting while I finished my food, his hands clasped together. “I wanna ask you something that might offend.”

“Go on,” I nodded, chewing through a cube of seasoned potato.

“You’ve modelled, surely?” He looked bashful, hiding behind his hand. What was his admission? That he thought I should be a model or that he didn’t date models on principle?

I tossed it off. “I did some catalogue work when I was at university. It was no big deal… in fact Kay did some too. Until she got the tattoos and I—”

His eyes narrowed and he drummed his fingers on the table, pushed his lips tight together but couldn’t stop himself saying, “You… what?”

“It’s too long a story to tell,” I revealed.

“Hmm. So, I’m not gonna have to defend my profession? It wasn’t that kinda situation?”

“It wasn’t I assure you. It was something completely out of anyone’s control.” I finished my starter and the plates were whipped away before I could even blink.

I briefly took in our surroundings while I considered whether to tell him what had happened to me. I got lost gazing at the ornate crystal chandeliers, ceiling carvings and the dark, wood-panelled walls.

Then his lobster and my Beef Wellington arrived, so we got right on down to it.

Except my inquisition was rife.

“Where did you grow up?”

He peered at me. “Connecticut, then New York. I’ve travelled a lot, though.”

“Yeah, where?”

“Australia, South Africa, Brazil, all over Europe and America. Dubai. I go to Miami a lot for the fashion work.”

“Just… work?”
Not banging models…

“Yup, work. I work hard, I don’t get much time for tourist stuff.”

He ate his lobster with ease while I sliced through the most perfect Beef Wellington I’d ever tasted. His world was so different to mine.

“I’ve never been abroad, how sad is that?”

His eyes bugged. “You’re kidding me?”

“Nope.”

He set down his silverware and concentrated on his wine for a moment. “If you don’t mind me making an observation… I can see something happened, something you don’t ever talk about. You let it define—”

I drowned him out pretty quickly, indignation rising in my cheeks. “I could say the same about you. Like you said, naked.”

I stared down at my food and took a breath. He was going to incite the nastier side of me if he wasn’t careful—the defensive edge that didn’t want to talk about what was going on here. Or more importantly, what he might find out about me.

The background clinking of glasses and plates, along with soft voices, suddenly seemed ugly to me. The world closed in. I remembered.

I folded my arms and avoided looking at him, though I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was about three seconds away from taking my hand.

“I’ll make a deal with you, Kincaid. You don’t ask me uncomfortable questions, and I won’t either. If you do, I don’t know how I’ll react. I can’t promise I’ll stick around. I can’t even promise you’ll see me again. You don’t know…” I took a deep, deep breath, “…my upbringing wasn’t like yours.”

“You mean, your parents aren’t both dead?”

My head shot up, seeking his eyes.

I retorted, “This isn’t a contest.”

“No. I’m just saying, you assume you know what my upbringing was like, but you’ve no idea.” He fumed, frowning hard. His face appeared even more sculpted in anguish.

I gulped and looked down at my lap, the scrumptious dinner in front of me no longer appetising. How did we even get here? I felt ill for a multitude of reasons.

Your parents are dead… I forgot that.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“For your information my parents both killed themselves. Is that on a par with your tragedy? Your drama, huh?” He tapped the table aggressively.

Rules of decorum suggested I should have slammed my napkin down and left him there to it, called a cab while he chased madly after me, apologising profusely at my tail.