Beating Ruby (12 page)

TWELVE

Contemporary Romance

“I need to know, Swanella. Do you love Djahkobh?”

—Lory Deesire,
Accidentally Married to the Billionaire Sheikh

My fingertips were tingling. I could feel it again in my skin, just like that day in a deserted garage in Tokyo—the hot rush following the contact of my palm with his cheek, the lingering pain. That surge of emotional distress, inseparable from the physical relief after I had slapped March for having lied to me about his involvement in the Cullinan affair, lied to me about everything, from the very beginning.

And God, I wanted to slap him again. Hard enough to wipe that little smile off his face.
Congratulations on being my client again.
Really?
Fricking really?
Not “Hey, biscuit, I missed you too,” or “Sorry I ditched you like an asshole, but now I’m back for you.” Nope. Just the good ol’ “How about I follow you around, but whenever you get too close, I’ll act like a douche and disappear?”

Yeah. How do you like that, Island?

My eyelids fluttered shut and I balled my fists, willing my composure back in a long exhale. When I reopened them, March’s smile was gone, replaced by a quiet watchfulness.

“You know, you could have just
e-mailed
,” I gritted out.

This was neither the place nor the time to have that conversation; we both knew it. March seemed to acknowledge the warning in my eyes. “Island and I need to sort a few things out. I suggest we do so on our way to lunch,” he said, at the same time that he pulled out his smartphone and replied to an incoming text message.

“Lunch?” Alex inquired, breaking his self-imposed silence.

“We’ve been invited by my employer to discuss our new arrangement over a plate of sushi,” March clarified, raising the screen for us to see.

I squinted at the terse message. It was signed “H. E.” As in . . .

“Sweet Jesus! Hadrian Ellingham is inviting us to Mesa!”

I felt Alex’s fingers wrap around my wrist. “There is no arrangement. And she doesn’t leave my sight.”

March’s lips stretched into a threatening smile as he glanced at the silvery caltrops scattered on the floor that had destroyed Alex’s tires, then at his own black coupe. “Are you certain of that? Why don’t you find yourself a cab, Mr. Morgan? I’m afraid I only have one seat to offer.”

I glowered at March. “Stop being like this. Let’s just find a solution—”

“Island, you
can’t
go with that guy. You
owe
me an explanation!”

The distress in Alex’s voice registered in my brain before the sharp pain in my arm. Around my wrists his fingers had tightened, cutting off my blood flow and digging into my skin. By the time I yelped, March had lunged forward and I saw his right hand fly past my shoulder and grab Alex’s throat. The grip around my arm eased immediately, and I staggered back in shock, just as March stepped forward, his face inches from Alex’s.

“
Never
do that again, Mr. Morgan.”

I panicked at the sight of his fingers digging into Alex’s skin. “March, please stop! He didn’t mean—”

There was no need to insist. His hand left Alex’s throat immediately after the warning had been issued, and on Alex’s neck reddish marks had appeared, mirroring the ones around my wrist.

I knew what March was capable of—I had seen him kill people in ways I didn’t even know existed—but there was something disturbing about this burst of pure aggression. This wasn’t him. Even when he had maimed Creepy-hat because I had been hurt, or when he had engaged in a bare-handed fight with Dries, he had retained a thin thread of control; those had been
decisions
. I had read enough novels about biker alpha males who pissed around the heroine to mark their territory—sometimes literally so, if we’re talking about dog shifters—to know that this was a
reaction
.

I stepped closer to Alex. I didn’t dare touch his neck for fear I’d make it worse; I merely allowed my hand to graze his arm in an awkward gesture of comfort, something halfway between a hesitant pat and a platonic caress. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

I cast March a disapproving look. “That was unnecessary.”

To be fair, I think he knew that already and felt perhaps a little embarrassed about his primitive display. He readjusted his cuffs with a cool glare in Alex’s direction. “I’m certain it won’t need to happen again. Now, please get in the car, Island.”

Behind me, Alex was already reaching out for my arm again, this time more carefully. I moved to stop him, placing my hands on his shoulders. “I know this is complicated, but I swear it’ll be okay. March won’t hurt me; he just wants to talk.”

He seemed conflicted. “Island, you can’t ask me that. I’m not supposed to let you go with him—and I don’t want to.”

“You want me to trust you. I need the same from you. You have to trust me on this,” I insisted.

The corners of his lips quirked up, but his eyes told a different story. “I get it. You want space. I’ll give you space. But sooner or later we’re gonna have to talk about this.”

It was no threat, just a fact. I nodded. “I know.”

I stepped away from Alex. March took it as a cue that he had won this round, and flashed his adversary a contemptuous smirk. “Feel free to report this to your superiors as a bona fide kidnapping, Mr. Morgan. I’ll see you at Mesa in thirty minutes. Do not be late.”

All traces of sadness and betrayal vanished from Alex’s features, and he responded with a smile of his own that was definitively Agent Morgan’s. “Drive safely,
South African
—that’s my girl in the front seat.”

A blush spread to my cheeks, and I didn’t miss the way March’s right fist clenched at this explicit reminder. He kept his cool this time, however, choosing to pull out his car key and press it to unlock the Mercedes doors instead. For all my determination, I couldn’t look at Alex as I got into the car. I needed that time away from him, just as I needed to talk to March, but I couldn’t shake the sense of guilt seeping under my skin.

The atmosphere in March’s Mercedes as we drove toward Central Park South was tense, to say the least. There was a lot of traffic, and at some point we got completely stuck, so I leaned my forehead against the window to stare at the carriages lined up along the street, their horses waiting patiently for tourists to climb in.

It felt weird to realize that after six months of thinking of him, March was right next to me, that I could feel his presence, smell the mints, and I had no idea where to start. I shifted to look at him—the familiar chiseled features and aquiline nose, those faint crow’s-feet . . . His hair had grown a little. It was still pretty short, but tiny waves were starting to emerge along his hairline.

“Why?” I asked.

His fingers drummed on the wheel as we waited at a red light. “Why what?”

“All this!” I sighed in frustration. “I thought I’d never see you again, but you were here all along, in New York. You’ve been to my place, right?”

“Only once,” he mumbled.

“March, you can’t do this! You can’t . . . hover above my life. You have to let me move on!”

“With Mr. Morgan?”

His tone had noticeably cooled down as the car started moving again. I had hoped this conversation would take us in another direction. “How long have you known? I’m pretty sure I saw your car on Greenwich Street last night.”

“I checked on you a few weeks ago. I merely wanted to know how you were doing. I discovered you had met someone. I was happy for you.” The way his hands tightened around the wheel as he said this belied his words.

“So happy that you ran a background check on Alex?”

“It was in your best interest. He hid a lot of things from you, Island.”

I thought of the Caterpillar, of how he and Alex seemed to know everything about me, from my ties with March to my mother’s past, and even the fact that Dries was my father. One piece was still missing from the puzzle, but I was almost certain I knew what it was by now. “Alex’s boss, the guy who smokes cigars—his name is Erwin, right?”

March averted his eyes from the road for a second. “I didn’t know Kalahari had told you that much, but yes, it is. I used to work for him, and I assume there’s no need to explain to you why allowing one of his agents to . . .
court you
under a false identity was absolutely unacceptable.”

“Because it meant sticking his nose in your private life again?”

“Something like that,” he said quietly.

“What’s the DCB, by the way? Alex mentioned that, back in the garage.”

“It’s a department Erwin relies on frequently. DCB stands for Dry Cleaning Boutique. Need I elaborate?”

“No, I think I get the idea. And I suppose it’s no coincidence EMG hired you to help recover Ruby and their money?”

“I did pull some strings,” he admitted. “Given the circumstances, it was the least a friend could do.”

His words tore through me, sizzled across my skin, and in that moment, even if it was not the best time—would it ever be?—I decided that I
needed
it all off my chest.

“You’re not my friend, March. You’ll never be.”

A thick silence welcomed this statement. Outside the car, a light breeze had started to rise; I watched it stir Central Park’s elms from their slumber, their leaves like green shoals.

When he finally answered me, his gaze was straight, and his voice sounded cold, remote, which I knew to be his way of expressing anger. “I understand. I apologize for this misunder—”

“Stop that! You know exactly what I mean!” I had to catch my breath because I could feel my eyes watering already. “You’re not my friend because you broke my heart. I spent an entire week crying; I couldn’t focus on anything. You were in my mind, and you were in my fricking life all this time! I can
never
,
ever
think of you as a friend.”

I looked at him as he drove, searched his features for any sign he had actually heard me. I found none, and this silence was even worse than the previous one. I feared I had gone too far this time, embarrassed myself by coming off as some enamored teen, and in the process broken March’s limited ability to cope with human emotions.

Hope returned when I noticed his lips had moved in a visible effort to formulate a coherent sentence. His Adam’s apple twitched as he swallowed and gave it another try. “I’ve been . . . I just finished reading that book you told me about,
Accidentally Married to the Billionaire Sheikh
.”

My mouth fell open in shock. “You
hav
e
? So, um, did you like it?”

“It’s a little predictable, and very explicit, in an oddly lyrical way. I can only imagine how disappointed female readers must be when facing the reality of—” He cleared his throat. “Well, in any case, I’m not certain Hedwardh is a good match for Swanella. I feel the author was forcing them together toward the end.”

“Why? I think it’s made clear that they have this irresistible attraction and all,” I countered.

“An unhealthy attraction.” He frowned. “Swanella is inexperienced, and she throws herself in the arms of an older man without
ever
considering the possibility that he might hurt her.”

“But why would he hurt her? There’s a happy ending; she even gets pregnant!”

“Because he pushes for them to have this child. Hedwardh is very controlling, and his love for Swanella borders on obsessive. I think that scene in the limousine clearly shows he cannot restrain himself once he’s given in to his . . . urges. And by the way, the refractory period doesn’t work like that,” March concluded with a snort.

I shrugged. “I know, after thirty it’s like a day or even two.”

He stopped at a red light and averted his eyes from the street to stare at me for several seconds. He wasn’t saying anything, but his nostrils flared, and he looked as if I had played with his radio or thrown a candy wrapper in his car: beyond outraged.

“What?”

He sighed as we exited Columbus Circle to stop in front of the Time Warner Center’s futuristic twin towers. “Nothing. But I rest my case: the relationship portrayed in this book is not healthy. Hedwardh knows he can’t make Swanella happy, and still he can’t stay away from her.
That
is his fundamental problem.”