London Falling (19 page)

He pulled her to the outside wall of the bar. “You can’t be serious. Do you even have a permit as a street vendor?”

As if he didn’t know the answer to that question already. She kept her eye on the door to see if any guys were coming out. So far, men were her best customers – and the drunker the better.

He put his hand on her arm, but she shrugged him off.

“I’m sorry for what I did back there, but you can’t seriously be thinking about doing this. It’s dangerous. Someone could accost you and steal all your money or something even worse.”

“So far, the only person who’s accosted anyone is you. I’m perfectly safe.”

“Right, I deserve that.” He looked up at the sky as if he needed extra help formulating his sentences. “But can’t you see that you’re putting yourself in danger? And you’re putting me in danger.”

“You seemed pretty capable back there.” More than capable. If she were a cavewoman, she’d have been shouting, “Take me back to your cave, you big strong man,” but only after she knocked him on the side of the head with a dinosaur bone. Fortunately, there was a reason for evolution. This was a world of logic, not emotion, and she had to remember that.

He angled his head, as if trying to figure her out. The streetlight reflected in his eyes as he focused on her.

“I can’t leave you here alone,” he said. His voice was strangely calm. “Not dressed like that.” He gazed at her outfit, his eyes travelling slowly from her head all the way down to her overly exposed legs. Warmth followed everywhere his eyes touched. “We’re going home.”

She considered kicking him. “No.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “No.”

A guy wearing an Arsenal jersey stepped outside the bar. Aimee walked over to him. “Hey there. Do you want–”

“They’re disgusting,” Simon cut in behind her. He made gagging noises and grabbed his throat as if he were choking. “They might even be poisoned.”

The Arsenal jersey guy wrinkled his eyebrows, confused.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s just some crazy guy who’s been following me around. The fairy cakes are only a pound each.” She waved one in front of his face to tempt him with the smell.

“You have no idea where they came from,” Simon said.

Arsenal guy stared at the two of them as if they were both crazy, shook his head, and took off down the street.

Aimee turned towards Simon. “Go. Away.” She made shooing motions with her arms.

Simon didn’t budge. “We can do this the hard way, or the easy way.

Either way, you won’t sell any more fairy cakes tonight or any other night.”

“You’re seriously going to hang out here all night and scare away my customers?” He shrugged his shoulders. Didn’t he have anything better to do? Why was he so intent on ruining her plans? He’d already ruined half her batch and got frosting all over Lucy’s designer clothes and now he was obstructing sales. If the chocolate didn’t come out, she’d have to earn even more money to pay Lucy back. “Erg!l”

“Glad you agree,” he said with a smile.

Aimee clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. She whipped her cart around and stalked toward the tube, not bothering to see if he was following although she knew the exact moment he fell into step beside her. Smartly, he kept his mouth shut.

She was falling further and further behind on cupcake sales. At this rate, she’d never get home. She was never going to graduate, never going to get a real job, never going to get out of debt. And she was never going to be happy.

It was all his fault.

They rode in silence on the tube, and she didn’t even glance at him to see if he followed her off the train or over the wall into his back garden. She hated every perfect hair on his head, every smile from his stupidly gorgeous face. She hated him with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.

After she yanked the cart over the threshold and into the living room, the French doors clicked shut behind her, so she knew the selfish bastard was right there. If she didn’t get away from him, she wasn’t sure what she might say, but she knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

“We agree that you won’t be selling any more cupcakes, correct?” he asked, calmly.

She halted in the doorway to the hall. No way was she agreeing to anything so ridiculous and stupid.

“I have got to put my foot down,” he said. “If you can’t agree, then our deal is off.”

What? The blood rushed to Aimee’s head and caused her ears to ring. Oh God, she hated him! When she whipped around to face him, he took one look at her face and stopped in his tracks. He’d better be scared! “You uncaring jerk! I’m not going to let you ruin my life. Mr. I’m so rich, I have my own bank. Oh, don’t ruin my chances to get the royal family’s business. Oh, my life is so tough. If I don’t get the business my life will be over.” He tightened his jaw at her insults. “But you know what? You’re life won’t be over. You’ll still be richer than rich. You have a family and friends and a gardener that raises Scotties for cripes sake!” She knew she should stop, but she couldn’t keep the words from rushing out of her mouth. “You have no idea what it’s like to work your fingers to the bone, trying to get by, pushing yourself so hard that you think you’re never going to make it.” Tears clogged her throat. “You’ve never had to worry about money so you’ll never understand. You’re just a heartless, rich bastard!”

His face turned rock hard at her insult. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to be one step from poverty?” He moved so close that he towered over her. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to struggle and think you’re never going to make it.”

If that wasn’t the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “Yeah, right, I really believe that you know what it’s like to be poor.” She glared up at him.

He tightened his lips as if holding back an onslaught of words, and shook his head.

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said, the wall back up between them.

“What? Did Daddy cut off your allowance one year?”

He crossed his arms, but said nothing.

“Made you wear last year’s designer clothes?”

“You don’t know anything,” he said, the anger there, just under the surface, shocking in its intensity. Was he telling the truth? Did he really know what it was like to worry about whether or not he’d have enough money to buy meat rather than just ramen noodles and soup? To repair his shoes with masking tape and a black marker because he couldn’t afford new shoes until the next month? She couldn’t picture it, not in a million years, yet his anger told her he was telling the truth. Her own anger dried up, as if he’d stolen it from her.

“That’s right, I don’t know anything.” She softened her voice, because she suddenly had to know how something like that could happen to someone like him. “Not if you don’t tell me.”

Walking over to the French doors, Simon stared out into the dark night.

A clock ticked the seconds away. Simon shook his head again, as if arguing with himself.

“If anyone would understand, it’s me.” Aimee waited, but he didn’t respond. “Simon?”

He sighed, but didn’t turn around. “My mother died when I was fifteen.”

Of all the things she expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing the words meant nothing. She’d never expected that they’d both lost their moms around the same age. “How did she die?”

“Breast cancer.” He finally turned around to face her. “My father was left with three kids, although I was almost full-grown by then. I guess he figured that we needed a mother, because he remarried within a year.” Simon’s face was perfectly controlled, but his eyes were focused somewhere far away.

“What’s your step-mom like?”

There was no humor in his laugh. “Not a mother-figure. She divorced my father within two years. Seems that she was more interested in the ten million in her settlement than in raising someone else’s children.”

Aimee couldn’t control her gasp. “Ten million?” She was way out of her element here. “But that but how did you did your dad just have that kind of money lying around?”

He laughed that strange, humorless laugh again. “No. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t blabbed to all her friends about how much she’d received. That’s when the rumors started.” He put his hands in his pockets as though he were standing at the water cooler discussing last night’s episode of The Office, rather than a painful event from his past. “Do you know what happens when people think a bank has liquidity problems?”

“A bank run,” she whispered. How could he be so cool about this?

“It’s pretty ironic actually. My father spent years telling us that we always needed to put on a positive face–to avoid just that situation–yet he forgot to include it in the divorce settlement with his ex-wife.” He moved toward Aimee. “By the time I turned eighteen, we were two steps from bankruptcy, but my father refused to ask for help from the Central bank, because that would only exacerbate the rumors.”

Millions of pounds. And she thought her money problems were huge.

How could you even get up in the morning knowing you had that much at risk? “Should you be telling me this? I mean, what if this got out?”

He shrugged his shoulders, like it was nothing. “It’s in the past.”

There was something strange about the way he told the story, as if it wasn’t even about him. “But you’re doing well now, right?”

His eyes took on that faraway look again, but his mouth tilted up at the corners, almost a smile. “We needed money. And we needed it from people who weren’t aware of the rumors. So I joined the party circuit. I’d gone to school with half the blokes, and there was always a group of popular young actors and musicians who thought it was cool to have their money in a friend’s bank.” He shook his head. “We couldn’t afford the payments on a second home, and my stepmother got our London townhome, so I slept on the couch in my office. I couldn’t even afford to buy food, yet I was going out every night to clubs with twenty quid cover charges.”

She pulled her hand back where she’d almost reached out to comfort him. Damn-it, she didn’t want to sympathize with him. Besides, his attitude didn’t invite sympathy. She could be blasé too. “So, how’d you do it?”

He shrugged. “I bummed it off my friends. Pretended I forgot to get money before leaving work. Forgot my wallet a few times. Everyone started calling me the broke banker, which was too ironic for words. I kept a running tab of how much I borrowed. Paid everyone back with interest.” There was that strange smile again. “I’m not proud of it, but it saved us. It gave us liquidity when we desperately needed it.”

He said he wasn’t proud, but the expression on his face said otherwise.

How could he not be proud? She was proud of him, and she barely even knew him.

He picked up a vase and stared at it, but she could tell he wasn’t really seeing it. “Thank God no one discovered how little money I had. I would have been in the same boat as you. At least I still had my friends.”

He tossed off the comment like it meant nothing, but her radar went up.

Did he honestly believe that his friends would have abandoned him if he were broke? That was too cynical, even for her. “Your friends wouldn’t have cared.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like to have no money,” he said. “I lived on an office couch for two years and ate noodles for almost every meal because I didn’t take a paycheck until every other employee was paid first.”

Aimee cringed. How could she have ever accused him of being heartless?

“Every small win was a reason to celebrate. I still remember the day we could start paying ourselves. It was the greatest feeling on earth, like a natural high. You wouldn’t understand, unless you’d been through something like that.” He looked her right in the eyes. “Or maybe you would understand.”

He stared at her as though he wanted her to say something more, but she sensed that if she opened herself up to him, there would be no turning back.

And she couldn’t do that.

Simon almost looked disappointed. “That’s why the royals’ business is so important. With their money invested, no one will worry about the liquidity of the bank because they know how much due diligence the princes put into their financial decisions.”

“No more bank runs,” Aimee said and Simon nodded.

“And my father will no longer have any excuses not to turn the bank over to me.” All of the pride and excitement seemed to seep out of his body.

“Finally.”

Standing in the living room with his shoulders down and his alms hanging limply by his sides, he looked as though he’d been carrying around a burden of responsibility and he’d finally set it down in exhaustion. But why would he be so depressed about this, when all of the other challenges seemed to energize him?

Walking over to him, she put her hand on his arm, even though he probably couldn’t feel her touch through the thick wool of his jacket. “I’m sorry.”

He turned tired eyes to her. Standing this close, she could see where the frosting from a cupcake stuck to his hair and stained his jacket. “For what?”

he asked.

Maybe she could make him feel better, just for a moment. “For throwing a cupcake at you.”

He shook his head with a sad smile. “I deserved it.”

Aimee smiled back at him. She had to change the atmosphere in the room, as it was feeling way too intimate. “I can’t believe you tackled that guy!

Whatever possessed you?” Her voice sounded too loud and false, but Simon didn’t take the bait.

“I wanted to protect you,” he said quietly.

Aimee swallowed. No one had ever wanted to protect her. She’d been doing the job for so long, she didn’t know what to say in response.

Simon lifted his hand to the side of her face and rubbed his thumb along her cheekbone. “You’ve chocolate on your cheek,” he said. Leaning forward, he brushed his lips over the same spot his thumb had caressed.

Aimee closed her eyes. She didn’t want this.

But then nothing happened.

She opened her eyes. Simon was staring at her and his eyes were intense, even bluer than normal, and her nerves tightened at the same time her muscles seemed to melt.

Simon wrapped both hands behind her head, tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her closer. His kiss was hot and hard and nothing like she’d expected. She reached up to push him away, but at the same time, the weight of his arms came around her, protecting her. She knew she had to stop the kiss, but just for a moment she relaxed into the protection he offered. It felt so good to just let go and feel.