The List (18 page)

Or Daniel. She’d met Daniel at a party, months earlier, when the only way to escape the forge of her past was to sit on a ledge and imagine flying.

“Well, I still want to watch. While I’m waiting to see what you do next, I’ll brood over these,” she said, spreading the six-by-eight-inch pages on the glass case under the bright lights.

“Brood quickly. I’m calling Edith at Bleecker Street Gallery to determine which ones we keep and which ones we hang.”

“You got some mail.”

Tilda flipped through it, her hands automatically plucking the finest stationery from the pack. The card from Colin was on paper she’d sold him.

Forgive me. —C

Simple and to the point. Given that they’d be working closely together if all the financiers came through for the deal, she had only one option. She tucked the card in a pocket, and texted him.

There’s nothing to forgive. xx T

Edith couldn’t come until tomorrow. When another customer opened the front door, Tilda gathered the palimpsests and took them into her office. The door closed, she spread them out again, and tried to work out why she couldn’t stop staring at them.

April

T
wo separate but distinct sensations brought Daniel out of sleep to float just under the surface of alertness. The first sensation was at the corner of his mouth, where Tilda’s soft, sleep-full lips brushed against his. The second was at the top of his thigh, a hand covering the edge of his boxers, palm and fingers warm as they curved around to gently stroke the sensitive, hidden skin. The fact that the motion registered against his balls was no accident. He knew she knew exactly what she was doing—Tilda never did anything she didn’t want to do—so his cock pulsed from morning wood to awake and aware with intention.

“Morning,” he rasped.

“I believe so,” she murmured against his cheek.

He heard the smile in her voice, and was absurdly grateful for it. “Wha’ time’s it?”

“Time for a blow job,” she whispered in his ear.

Every hair stood up as a shiver crested along his nape. He worked a hand under her shoulders and pulled her across his body so she straddled him. He hated to lose the teasing pressure of her fingers, but the sense of loss disappeared when he rocked up against the sweet heat of her sex, only to return when she wriggled free from his grip on her hips. He groaned, a sound that hitched into a richer register when she started kissing her way down his body. She flicked her tongue against each nipple as she worked his boxers down to the tops of his thighs, then kissed the bottom of his sternum, his belly button. She stopped a mere breath from the head, then trailed her tongue from the flared head to the base, and back up again.

“Don’t tease,” he warned, and wove his fingers through her hair.

“But you’re so much fun to tease,” she murmured, her lips brushing his cock as they shaped the words.

Her hand wrapped around the shaft just below the head, she restricted herself to the tip, varying the suction, never taking him deep, her speed just slow enough to be maddening. Finally, she slid her hand down to the middle of his shaft and she took him deeper, the sound so slick and dirty in the early morning silence that it was almost enough to get him off.

Any blow job was a good blow job, sure, but a really good one could light up his spine and every nerve in his body, wipe his memory clean for a few moments. No past, and no future right now. Tilda loved it, and wasn’t afraid to give him that hint of teeth, the rougher strokes. He wondered who’d taught her how to make it mind-blowing.

He kicked off his boxers, shifted into the center of the bed, and spread his legs. Dislodged by his movements, she gave a low, rough laugh but kept jacking him slowly. He slid his hands back into her hair and guided her down again, then settled in to have his vocabulary reduced to
fuck
and
yes
, and from there to wordless groans. He cupped her jaw and slid his thumb into her open mouth. She closed her lips around it and sucked, gaze locked on his. With her mouth closed the words became muted whimpers he could feel in the tips of his fingers resting on her throat.

He teetered on the edge between pleasure and release, his brain a whirling cloud of images and desires. Making up his mind, he tugged at her hair and growled, “Stop, no, not yet.”

She kissed him, her mouth wet with saliva, her tongue rubbing against his before she pulled back to nip none-too-gently at his lips. “What do you want?”

He tugged her nightshirt over her head, then braced himself on his elbows, the better to watch. “Make it last,” he commanded.

She gripped his cock and drew it toward her mouth, then paused.

He growled.

“Of course, sir,” she purred, amused and aroused, with just a hint of subservience in her tone.

As he watched the carnal picture of his shaft disappearing into her mouth, his pulse pounded in his cheeks and throat. The sensation of hot, slick pressure engulfing his shaft slipped down to pool in his balls.

“Satisfactory?”

There was something so ridiculously hot about the way her mouth shaped that single word and infused it with a very British desire to please, overlaid with arrogance. She walked that edge like she owned it, sent heat sparking along his nerves. He loved that edge, too, and when he was this turned on, his brain responded to it.

“Keep going,” he said. “I need more data.”

She lowered her gaze in an attitude that would have been demure and humble if her eyelashes hadn’t flickered just so. “God,” he said. “You’re so hot. I’m right there.”

Her palm smoothed down his abdomen to cup his balls, warm pressure that sent him over the edge. His release pounded through him, big beats of pleasure that slowly subsided to pulses, then his racing heartbeat. He collapsed on his back, breathing hard, waiting for all the tremors and flashes to work their way out of his muscles and nerves. He pressed a kiss into her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. “Good morning.”

“A very satisfactory morning,” she said.

He chuckled, then looked at the clock. “We better get moving. Jessie’s game starts at eleven.”

Underneath him, her body tensed. “About that.”

He lifted his head. “What about that?”

“I can’t go. I’m going to England tonight for a quick round of meetings with Quality. I need to prepare.”

“Tonight?” He swung his legs over the bed and sat up. “When did this come up?”

“Yesterday,” she said, looking him right in the eye. “You got home late.”

She’d been asleep, in bed for a change. He’d all but tiptoed around the room to avoid waking her. “Prepare on the train. Or the plane.”

“Sheba also wants to talk,” she said, and pushed off the bed.

He snagged her wrist as she walked past him, heading for the shower. “Sheba isn’t your family. Jessie is.”

“She’s in the middle of the biggest creative production process she’s had in twenty years. She’s back at the top of the New York art scene. She needs a bit of reassurance, and she has no one else. Jessie has parents, siblings, grandparents, you.”

The hand resting on his hip nudged, hinting at him to move, a hint he ignored. “These things with your family are all-day affairs. I need reliable Internet access and several hours to focus. You know how important this is to me.”

At her request, he’d looked over the contract and proposal last week. “I have some concerns about the deal,” he said quietly.

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a generous offer. They absorb all the risk,” she said.

“For the vast majority of the reward, plus your involvement for five years.”

“It will take that much time to build the brand,” she said. “After that we negotiate based on results and the business direction.”

“Tilda, you have no idea where you’ll be in five years. It’s a big commitment at a time in your life when—” He cut himself off. Based on her reaction to a pregnancy scare, telling her that locking herself into a global commitment when they might want to start a family was a bad idea.

“I don’t have the cash to put into a project this large,” she said from the bathroom. “What I have is myself. They have money, but they don’t have a clear—” She reappeared in the bathroom door, her gray eyes as wary as a suspect held at knifepoint. “What time of life?”

“Five years is a long time, Tilda. If you’re this busy, traveling this much, for the next five years, you’ll be thirty-three, and I’ll be thirty-seven before we start a family.”

“We haven’t talked about having children,” she said.

Add that to the list of things they hadn’t discussed before eloping. He ran his hands over his hair, then braced his elbows on his knees. “No,” he said.

“I don’t think now is the right time to have that conversation.”

“Because we need to be on a train in an hour, or because we’re both working the equivalent of two full-time jobs?”

“Either. I’m fairly sure we’re not supposed to mix fights. Stick to one argument at a time.”

In other words, kids were off the table. “It’s important to Jessie that you be there. You told her you would be.”

“She has games scheduled every weekend for the next three months. I’ll go to another one. Tell her I’m sorry, and I’ll bring her back a present from England.”

He just looked at her. “Tilda, sweetheart, I know you don’t know my family very well, but the only way you’re going to get to know them is to spend time with them.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have a choice. These aren’t people I put on hold to wait for me. Colin is going to Dubai later in the week, and the CFO leaves for his holiday in Spain after our meetings. They’re being quite kind to fit this in.”

The shower door closed with a snick. Daniel cleaned himself up, brushed his teeth, then joined Tilda in the shower. She gave him a quick, apologetic kiss, then ducked out, leaving him alone under the spray.

He found her in her office, dressed in her at-home clothes, black yoga pants and a cashmere hoodie, her hair drying in dramatic swoops and curls around her face. The electric kettle was near to boiling on the metal tray that held her teas and cups. Arms folded, she stood looking at the spreadsheet in her hand. The lotus blossom paperweight rested on the leather box holding the requests received. Her list, organized differently from his ongoing thoughts and tasks kept in notebooks, but a list nonetheless. He lifted the paperweight, admiring the vivid pink blossom opening at the tips of the green stem, the way it seemed suspended in the glass, timeless and beautiful. In January a couple of minutes of research into Baccarat hallmarks told him he was holding several thousand dollars’ worth of glass in his palm. Thoughtfully, he tilted the glass and watched the lotus flower catch the summer sunlight before replacing the paperweight back on her desk, and asked the question uppermost in his mind.

“Did you give me a blow job to preemptively apologize for missing Jessie’s game?”

“Would you be mad at me if I did?” she asked without looking up from the spreadsheet.

He thrust his arms into his pullover and tugged it over his head. “Yeah. I would. Sex is sex. Apologies are apologies,” he said. One hand on his hip, he cupped his other hand at the back of his head, trying to figure out what would lead her to do something like that. It was very uncharacteristic of Tilda, who was forthright almost to a fault. “Fights don’t mean the end of the world, or the end of us. Angie and I fought all the time growing up. We’ve always forgiven each other. I trust that the fight is the fight, that it’s not about something else.”

“We would have had sex anyway,” she pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter.”

The kettle clicked off, and the rolling boil eased. Tilda set the spreadsheet on her desk, then went not to the tray to make tea but to stand in front of him. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

He looked down into her eyes, trying to put a name to the way she looked. Contrite, and worried, although he had no idea why she would be worried. People fought when they were in relationships. It was as unavoidable as death and taxes, and wasn’t the end of the world. In this light her irises were so pale as to be nearly gray, her lashes and eyebrows and hair dark smudges around her eyes and temples. Her lips were still swollen from sex, a flushed red that drew his gaze, and made him bend forward to kiss her.

He stopped himself. Faced an uncomfortable truth. He was head over heels, balls to the wall in love with Tilda Davies. He could power square miles of the city with the way he burned for her, and while she said she loved him, what showed was respect. Admiration. Affection. Yes, she was English. Yes, they didn’t talk about their feelings, stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on. But if sex became transactional, they were in trouble. If sex didn’t connect them, what did?

There was no way they could have that conversation now. “Let’s talk about it later. Just . . . don’t do it again.”

She didn’t flinch. “I won’t.”

—

On the train to Huntington, he pulled his Moleskine from his jacket pocket and flipped to a clean page.

Things Tilda Has Used Sex to Replace

1. Emotions
   
2. Apologies
   
3. Emotions
   

He stared out the window. The suburbs were blooming, green at the tips of branches, adding color to yards brown from winter. He’d never looked through the boxes, but he’d bet there was no letter from herself, listing qualities or characteristics she lacked in her life, and wanted fulfilled. She could give something to other people, some need that wasn’t being met, their deepest desire, that she couldn’t give herself. What was it his great-aunt used to say? The shoemaker’s children are never shod? He sorted through his mental list of Tilda’s qualities, her drive, her struggles with things he took for granted, like love and acceptance and continuity in relationships, and realized he’d missed a very vital point. Connected Tilda Davies, who knew someone who knew someone in every nook and cranny of the city, couldn’t make connections for herself. Or, perhaps, she didn’t make connections for herself because she didn’t know how to handle them once they were made. She got people through what they considered to be the difficult part, the finding, the connecting, the beginning. The start was usually the most difficult portion for people. But what if that was the easy thing for Tilda, and what came after was the thing she didn’t know how to do?

What if she’d been playing to her strengths until she met him, doing the thing everyone else admired and envied, but he’d forced her out of her comfort zone and into the unknown?

He ran down suspects, cases, promotions, marathons. Ultramarathons. Once he decided he wanted her, Tilda Davies hadn’t stood a chance. People forgot about his tenacity. He didn’t mind, frequently encouraged it. Being underestimated in situations worked to his advantage. But his intention was never to tame her, or to own her. It was never about conquering; it was about possessing and being possessed in return.

She meant it when she said she wouldn’t use sex as a preemptive apology again. He knew she meant it, but also knew he’d just boxed her in. It wasn’t a cage, or a prison cell, but the strain in her eyes, the stark line of her jaw, told him he’d pushed her a little bit further out onto the ledge, the one he suspected they’d never really found their way off.