Page 43 of Taming the Beast (Fairy Tales of New York)

“Orange juice?”

“Sure,” she said, with a nod and a silent prayer of thanks that tomorrow she had no classes. “Thank you. And I’ll have a shot of vodka to go with it, if you don’t mind. What?” she added, catching the look of alarm that passed between her friends.

“Are you sure?” asked Faith, looking concerned.

“About the vodka? Actually, no.”

“Phew.”

“You’d better make it a double.”

*

Two hours and three delicious double vodka and oranges later Mercy, who had an unfamiliar but lovely buzz going on, had come to a decision.

She’d thought about it long and hard, back and forth, up and down, diagonally, upside down and inside out but the next time she saw Seb she was going to tell him exactly how she felt about him. She hadn’t pushed him too far. Of course she hadn’t. She’d helped him. She knew she had, and he’d be pleased she had once he’d gotten over it. So to hell with pamareters. To the devil with the conshequences. She was no shrinking rose. She was no feak and weeble chiquita. She was a woman in lurve. And she was going to tell him.

But, whoops, maybe she’d better get up off the floor first.

Chapter Ten

‡

The Friday night after the Sunday before, having made considerable progress through a bottle of whisky that had lain untouched for years, Seb realized that he had to put a stop to this thing with Mercy. It just couldn’t go on. He had to get out.

With hindsight, he thought grimly, staring into the fire that roared in his grate, his fingers tightening around his again empty glass, he should have gotten out weeks ago. With even clearer hindsight he should never have gotten in, but it was too late to regret that. All he could do was prevent any future regret, and that was what he intended to do.

That he didn’t want to do it was just tough. Sunday morning in his garage had been a game changer, he’d come to realize. He’d lost control. He’d completely lost control. Beneath the onslaught of memory, lust, pain and sheer edginess he just couldn’t explain, he’d buckled, his defences shattering and leaving him exposed and vulnerable.

Mercy had bulldozed her way right on through the rubble, had reached into his very soul where his deepest fears lay and yanked them out. And he’d let her. He’d put up no resistance. No argument. He’d gone to the gallows willingly.

And now, after days of contemplation, it seemed to him that it had been inevitable because the truth was that his defences had weakened long before Sunday morning. Maybe he hadn’t realized it. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. But the signs had all been there.

The sharp arrow of pleased relief he’d experienced when she’d come knocking on his door, for example. The inability to send her packing when his peace of mind depended on it. The heady anticipation with which he greeted every weekend. The insatiable desire he had to know more about her. The ache that had taken up inside him when she hadn’t visited him that weekend and the irrational impulse that had him going to that dinner. The white hot jealousy over that Aussie guy with whom she’d had a five minute phone call and then the heart-thumping gut-churning suspicion that maybe he’d wanted her to see his cellar and his garage.

As if all that wasn’t enough, a month ago he’d bought a pair of Victorian silver gilt grape scissors and what those were all about he didn’t like to think. He’d seen them in the window of an antique shop on Madison Avenue he’d been passing. Useful, he’d told himself. He liked grapes. Ate a lot of them. And they would be

useful if they were actually in his cutlery drawer instead of burning a hole in the top right hand drawer of his desk in his office.

All signs. And in his stupid, arrogant hubris, in his misguided belief that his self-control was all conquerable, all ignored.

Somehow, without him even noticing, Mercy had snuck through his impenetrable shield and embedded herself in him with her wry humor, her quick intelligence, her smiles, her warmth and her touch.

Every time she even so much as looked at him the foundations of everything he believed in rocked. Every time she touched one of his scars he felt another drop of guilt evaporate. Every time they said goodbye he wanted to renegotiate the conditions of their deal.

How he had ever thought she didn’t have a hold over him he didn’t know. She held him in a stranglehold. She had him doubting himself for the first time in years. She had him thinking things he didn’t deserve to think, wanting things he didn’t deserve to want. She’d reduced him to a weak, vulnerable, exposed wreck of a man.

He’d been kidding himself by telling himself he’d been in control of this, he knew now. He’d hadn’t been in control since she’d stormed into his apartment the night of Zel’s slumber party. And without it, what was he? Dangerous. A loose cannon. Someone who destroyed others. Something he wasn’t willing to be or could ever be.

So he had to get out, he thought, refilling his glass then picking up his phone and scrolling down to her details, his fingers shaking in a way he didn’t understand. For his sake, and hers. Before he saw her tomorrow for their regular weekend hookup and he lost his mind all over again. However hard, however unappealing, whatever it took he’d do it. Because he had to get out now.

*

Mercy was in the bath thinking about Seb, about what she was going to say to him tomorrow and how she was going to approach it when her phone rang.

This morning, she thought languidly, lifting her arm from the lovely warm water to feel around on the floor for the thing, the ring tone would have hammered into her head like a pneumatic drill, so bad had her hangover been. But now, twenty-four hours after her night out with the girls, during which she’d consumed her bodyweight in carbs and water and napped on and off, everything was just great.

Especially the decision she’d made last night.

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