Page 35 of Fierce

“A bit.” I didn’t tell her that I’d done some research in preparation for today’s outing. “Do you want to hear?”

“Please,” she said, and there was that smile again, the best one. The one I’d seen only a couple of times. Like the Southern Hemisphere sun coming out after a storm, striking diamonds of light off the ruffles of blue-green water, dazzling you. “Tell me. Like the flowers in my bouquet, for example? Do you know what they meant?”

“Well, your bouquet, yeh. But they were wrong, I’m thinking. Or not so right. White roses—that’s innocence.” I smiled a little ruefully. “Obviously. And the stock—that’s meant to be ‘bonds of affection.’ Which I didn’t know at the time, but that could work, too.”

“Innocence and friendship. Not so much your thing, is it?”

“Oh, it could work for me. As I may have mentioned.”

“Mm.” She walked along the row again, and I kept pace with her. “So if white’s innocence…” she went on, “good thing my favorite wasn’t red, huh? Because I’ll bet that’s ‘passion’ or something, and as we know, I’m not so good at that. What do you suppose that one back there was?”

“Oh, I think you could do passion. I think so. But, yeh. Lavender. That one’s meant to mean ‘enchantment.’ That one’s the fairy tale.” I didn’t tell her it also meant to be “love at first sight,” because I didn’t believe in it, and I didn’t want to give her any ideas. Lust at first sight, now—that was something else. That, I believed in.

“Oh,” she said. “Too bad I don’t believe in fairy tales.”

“No?” Not that I did, either.

“No. Life isn’t Cinderella, is it?”

“Never?”

“Not as far as I’ve ever seen. Or if it is, it sure doesn’t turn out well. Because, all right. Let’s take that one. What is Cinderella?”

“Dunno. What?”

“She’s poor, and she’s beautiful, and she’s ‘good,’ right? Which probably means she’s a doormat. And the prince sees her—well, he sees she’s beautiful, anyway, and he just…” Her arm went out. “Sweeps her away, and, poof, she’s rich, she’s a princess, and all her troubles are over. But what happens when she isn’t beautiful anymore? When somebody else is more beautiful? How’s that going to work out?”

“Could be he saw something else in her,” I said. Now fairy tales weren’t allowed? I couldn’t do this the way I wanted to, and I wasn’t allowed to be romantic, either? Or at least to try to be, or pretend to be. What was left?

“Hm,” she said. “He sees her inner worth when they’re dancing at the ball? I don’t think so, do you? I think it was mostly the ‘beautiful’ thing. And the ‘good’ thing, meaning she puts up with everything everybody does to her and never fights back. Until the prince rides up and takes her away, so she can put up with him, and whatever he wants to do. Just drifting with the tide and hoping for the best. Waiting to be rescued. Not the best message, would you say?”

I was getting a bit narky now. “Am I still meant to feel bad for ‘sweeping you away’ from that Galway bloke? And yet I could’ve sworn I was trying to make your life better.”

“Uh-huh.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Altruistic, were you? You rescue all the photographer’s assistants you encounter?”

“No,” I said, and if it sounded a bit grim, that was because it was how I was feeling. “Just you.”

“Mm-hm. Because you liked how I looked, just like the prince liked Cinderella. You thought I was tiny and sweet, and that I’d do whatever you wanted. That I’d belong to you, at least for a while. At least for as long as it lasted. Which is the Cinderella thing again, right? So her life is better than before, but how much better? And how much choice was really involved in that?”

“And yet you’ve showed me again and again,” I said, my tone grimmer still, “that whatever I thought you were that day, you aren’t it, and here I still am. If you’re so convinced that I don’t want to do anything but take advantage of you, why did you come today at all? You never thought that I might want to know the real you?”

I didn’t tell her that she’d been absolutely right, at least in one aspect. That her tiny, sweet body excited me, that I wanted her to belong to me and do whatever I wanted. I didn’t think that was going to help.

“As opposed to just sleeping with me and moving on,” she said.

I didn’t lose my temper, not ever. I didn’t let anger rule me anymore. Except that it was happening, and I couldn’t shut it down.

I’d done it all. Had sent her flowers, spent a half hour in the roof garden with her, taken her to the rose garden with her sister. Had talked to her sister, and smelled roses, and talked about fairy tales. And I was still copping all this?

“You say you want the real world and not the fairy tale,” I said. “You don’t. You don’t even want to hear what the real world is, much less live there. And no, that isn’t what I want. I don’t sleep with women.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s nice.” Those eyes were flashing something other than sunshine now, and, no, sleeping with her wasn’t top of my list just then. “So they don’t even get to spend the night? You just, what? Just…just fuck them and send them home? Plus whatever else it is you’ve been hinting about and…and threatening me with, all this time?”

There was no point in holding onto my temper, even if I could’ve managed it. Which I couldn’t. “I haven’t been the one talking about spiders and butterflies,” I managed to say. “You’re the one who’s been looking up at me with those big eyes, making it clear how much you’ve liked thinking about it. You know what I want. I’m willing to date you for it if that’s what I have to do. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to dance for you, or whatever it is you want from me. It doesn’t mean I’m going to apologize again for helping you get a better job. And you’re not allowed to talk like that to me. You hate doing it, and I hate hearing it. If there’s talking like that to do, it’ll be me doing it.”

I didn’t care that it was a double standard. There were rules. My rules.

Pity she didn’t play by them, because her breath was coming hard now, and not for the right reasons. “Oh, it’s all your way? And I’m supposed to be excited by that? I’m supposed to want that?”

My fists were clenching, and I could barely get the words out. “No. You know you want that.”

I saw the hand in time, and my own hand shot out and closed around her wrist. “Oh, no,” I told her. “Not this time.”

My grip was tight, but she struggled in it for a moment longer, even though she had no hope of getting loose as long as I wanted to hold her. She was panting. Furious. And so was I, and more, too. I knew what I wanted right now. I knew exactly. I wanted to show her that I was right in the most emphatic way possible.

And then her gaze shifted, and she said, in a completely different voice, “Let me go. Hemi. Please.”

I dropped her hand, and she was rushing past me to the shady spot under the trellis, and I put my head back and counted to ten, and then to twenty. And then I turned to look for her. She wasn’t going to be running away from me again. I’d taken the two of them out, and I was going to see that they got home safely. No matter what.

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