Blazed (36 page)

"Emmy?" Mrs Reynolds appearing in the doorway gave me a much needed opportunity to push away from Blaze while he was distracted and put some distance between us. I couldn't forgive him
— I didn't want to, but there was no way to fight him if he was right up close to me. It made me remember the other times he'd touched me like that and what else he'd been doing at the same time, all the times we'd had sex just to be closer to each other. God, when he was wrapped around me I wanted to scratch myself open so he had a way to crawl inside me for good. 

"Y-You need to g-go." My chest started to shake, holding in what I knew would be a shameless storm of tears and wailing. Sending him away was better in the long term, but my god, was it killing me to find the strength to do it. The clean break would have been better. He could have just taken the hint.

"Emmy, love." Mrs Reynolds pulled me by the arm out into the shop, leaving Blaze inside the stockroom swearing to himself. She sucked on her teeth looking in on him and sighed sharply. "Go home. Talk this out with him."

"But
—"

"It hurts like hell, I know. But he had to have a bloody good reason."
 
Sure, because he wanted to have his cupcake and eat her.
 I didn't vocalise that acerbic notion, choosing instead to regress into miserable teenager mode in protest. If I took him home we'd end up in bed together and that was not the right direction to take from there. Nothing he said would change the fact that I'd essentially been an extra-curricular sex toy and he'd probably been double dipping. That's why he really went weird when I said he could stay overnight properly— shit! It was all starting to make sense. He needed that excuse to creep away so his wife wouldn't twig onto his affair. So why be seen so publicly with me? Why give me a ring? Why tell my friends and family he'd marry me? None of it made sense.

"Stop asking yourself questions he has the answers to, Emmy. If nothing else, go and get some closure so you don't waste your life on 'what if's'." I swallowed convulsively at the same words I'd heard from the mouth of the man in that room and hoped he did have a damn good explanation. She was right, the unanswered questions would drive me insane and I was too weak a person to not end up blaming myself. I didn't know that the penance I set for myself wouldn't be a cost too much.

"Thank you." I nodded stiffly through the open door at Blaze, who jumped into action as spritely as ever. He looked like he'd already won his forgiveness. He certainly hadn't.

WE WALKED THE distance to my flat in a wary silence, Blaze trying to match my slow pace while I trailed behind trying to plan out how the conversation would go. I could hold it together as long as he didn't touch me again, so I planned to position furniture between us, the biggest object possible with a clear run to the door. It felt more like making vigilant plans to go into a bull fight or a lion's den.
 

It amazed me how uncomfortable I could feel in my own home because he was there after all the other occasions he'd been in that space with me had been some of my best, and near impossible to fend off the feeling of relief that we were there again when I was certain that the previous Saturday had been the last time.

Before he could open his mouth, I pointed at the couch until he sat and remained standing. The kitchen was too much of a hazard to both of us because there were too many sharp objects. The couch was a hazard to 
me
 because it would be too easy for him to trap me there. I had to be standing with him in a position of inferiority, somewhere that would hinder his access to me.

"Before you say anything," I rasped hoarsely, so coughed to clear my throat, "I think you should know that this might have gone differently if you'd had the balls to tell me yourself, and it was pretty shitty of you to keep it secret after I spewed the finer details of my life. That said, I think you owe me some simple 'yes' or 'no' answers to some pretty reasonable questions. Yes?"

"Emmeline..." Blaze whined and made to stand up, but I shot him down with a look. "Yes, alright. I do owe you that."

"Okay, good." Sighing, I began to pace the hardwood floor, trying not to pay attention to the rhythmic clacking of my heels. It was too like me to find a reason to let my mind stray and let the delusion pretend there was no problem, but
 

I needed these answers. "Were you ever planning to tell me?"

"Yes. I promise, I was going to, I just—"

"It was a 'yes' or 'no' question!" I snapped at him, forcing myself not to grace him with a look in his direction. "Were you... have you been going home and... do you share a bed and..." My eyes narrowed at his raised eyebrow. "You know where this is going."

"You think you leave me with enough energy to go home and service a wife?" He rolled his eyes and slumped back into the couch with his arms crossed. "No, Emmeline. We share a house, nothing beyond that. We've never had sex."

"Oh."
 What?
 How the hell was that possible? How could he have been married to her for so long but never... I shook the question out of my head and jumped back onto my own track. "Were you really going to marry me?"

Blaze sucked in a quick breath. "Yes."

"So you were going to leave her for me?" Silence. "Blaze?"

"You want a simple answer and I don't have it." He shrugged, raising his hand to his mouth to brush his fingertips across his lips. It was distracting and he knew it. He couldn't lie so he was looking for a way out.
 

"Answer the damn question."

"I can't in accordance with your 'rules'." I gaped, fuming. It was a childish side of him I never imagined could possibly exist. Far from acting like a child, actually, he was being downright snotty about it. 

"You're a smart man. You have a fucking doctorate. It wasn't a problem before, so know when to make like Galileo and break the rules because either way, you're condemned." Stiffening, I waved a hand and sneered, waiting for a half decent answer. Not that I hadn't already made my assumptions based on his attitude.

He ignored my glare and stood, jaw clenched. "No, Emmeline. I wasn't leaving her for you. But it's not as simple as a man just cheating on his wife. She knows about you."

"What?!" Horrified, I stumbled back until I was against a wall. "Is she coming to break my legs?"

"What? No. It's complicated, but she encouraged me to be with you."

"Does she want me to join in or something?" My hands shot to my mouth, then my hair, then my neck, and kept moving while the worsening compendium of nightmarish possibilities gathered in my mind. Maybe she couldn't keep him satisfied and sleeping with me kept them somewhat functional. Maybe she was fixated on a fantasy. Maybe she was one of those crazies who liked to watch their partner fuck other people and get her rocks off to it. Maybe it was all part of some sick scheme to lure me in and make me their slave. Shit! Maybe she was one of the people Henry had screwed over and they wanted to get back at him through the bad publicity that would come from his daughter openly screwing a married man.
 

The growing list made me feel physically sick. "What the hell have you dragged me in to?"

"Nothing! My god," Blaze rushed at me, stalling at the hand I raised to make him keep his distance. "There's nothing suspect about this, I swear. I just wanted to have all my ducks in a row before I told you. I never planned for this, I just let my heart think for me. I'm non compos mentis around you so I had to start thinking on my feet."

"So why the hell didn't it occur to you to engage your god damn genius brain so I didn't get hurt?"

"Because this wasn't supposed to happen!" He grabbed both of my shaking hands in one of his and caged me against the wall, pinning me by the hips with his feet on either side of mine. I saw the frantic throbbing of his pulse in his neck and knew that I was going to be forced to hear him out whether I liked it or not. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I thought we'd spend some reckless times together terrorising the streets of London. You looked like you needed that kind of mischief in your life."

"I did."

"And I thought I might end up drilling you into a few mattresses on occasion. The only reason I didn't at first is because I didn't think you'd appreciate the advance. Sex is usually important to a woman and you're a bigger commitmentphobe than I am." He stopped to draw breath and whimper, visibly battling the impulse to throw me over his shoulder and show me how much of a coward I'd made him, and make sure I damn well liked it. "So this wasn't supposed to happen, Emmeline. We weren't supposed to fal—"

"Oh god," I made a futile attempt at twisting out of his trap, tugging at his grip on my hands urgently, pleadingly. This conversation wasn't welcome, we'd avoided it on purpose. I hadn't planned for it to come up in my inquisition so I wasn't prepared to hear it. "Please don't say it."

He caught my face and stroked back the hair from my eyes. His gaze was intense and turbulent, all of his fears mirroring mine and roiling there. His thumb traced the outline of my lips and he tensed like he was bracing himself for my volatile reaction, leaning away just fractionally. "We weren't supposed to fall in love." A shudder I made no effort to hide shook through me. "I know. You're angry at me— you didn't plan for this either— and I never intended on..." he shrugged and flicked his gaze over me, "... this." His voice softened in surrender. "I never dreamed that it would be both so painful and so... amazing." 

Sighing, he rested his forehead against mine and released my hands, which fell bonelessly to my sides. My mind was too tired to go on with the charade.
 "The fact remains that you're married. I won't be the other woman. You know who I am now, you know it's too much of a scandal. You're friends with my dad— he won't allow it."

"Nobody will know. I don't even know how Tallulah knows, but I won't give you up. What I have is a marriage of convenience
— it means nothing to me. I don't love her, never have. I love y—"

"Then why the hell did you marry her?" He looked at me severely for cutting him off and stepped back to free me from his confines. I didn't care if he was annoyed; I couldn't hear those three words. They were too much far too late with way too much heavy baggage. I'd walked through my life believing that marriage was a holy sanction between two people, meaningful and with a view to be permanent. We had no future if his attitude towards a tradition I respected so much was dismissive at best.

"I didn't know that you were going to walk into my life one day. If I'd known, I would have waited for you."

"I thought we had an unspoken no bullshit rule, Blaze. Why did you marry a woman you didn't love?"

"You won't like it," he warned me, posture suddenly hesitantly rigid and almost repulsed. His grip on me slackened and that was the only clue I needed to know that I didn't want to hear it.

"You're right. I won't. So don't say it and go home."

"She's dying." I stared at him blankly for a moment before twisting away from him. He let me, resigned to my disapproval, and stood there with his eyes closed. Those two words were enough. "She's dying and I get everything if I stay with her. All she wanted was to own me for a while when she found out she was ill— she's been crazy about me since school. I'm like the only item on her bucket list. It doesn't matter to her if I don't love her as long as I'm there until the end. The money, the car, the house— I lose that if I walk away now. It's just a matter of time, then we—"

"Stop talking!" Breathing through the burn of tears in the backs of my eyes, I wrapped my arms around myself and sank down to the floor. His wife and the woman he cared for were the same person. I couldn't believe that I hadn't made the connection before. He'd married a sick woman, motivated by her monetary value. No wonder he got on so well with Henry.

For the first time, his behaviour sickened me and there was no way I could work my mind around it in good conscience. The clarification and dirty details hadn't been necessary, but at least he had the decency to look ashamed of himself. 

"You're staying with a dying woman just so you get her money? Do you realise how corrupt and selfish that is? She loves you and you look at her as nothing but a cash cow
— a pending pay out like all you've been doing is babysitting her. And you expect me to sit around with you waiting for her die so you can marry me and we can spend her money together? I'm rich too, Blaze— at least I'm supposed to be. Will you do the same to me?"

Blaze dropped to his knees and crawled towards me. If I'd been a stronger person, I might have taken some sick satisfaction in it and demanded he dropped down and crawled on his belly for my forgiveness. Really milked it and made him feel like shit on my shoe. But I was too caught up in feeling awful for the poor woman he was scamming.
 

"Of course not! I don't know Emmeline Tudor, the billionaire's daughter, I know Emmeline White, the piss poor girl too principled to touch dirty money. I gave you that ring before I knew, didn't I? Emmeline, my life is made and secure. I don't have to worry about paying my bills, I sleep in a comfortable bed every night, there's no concern over where my next job comes from... Natasha plays no active role in my life beyond being a job. She's just something I have to do. The only thing that would make my life better would be sharing it all with you
— sharing that security."