R Is for Rebel (30 page)

It wasn't unusual for them to touch base with brief texts or phone calls for days at a time, but even Eliot was beginning to rile at her continued dismissal. By Thursday morning, he was more than irritated. He wanted to move on with his life and he was tired of trying to do the right thing. He called her office number because she was more likely to answer.

“Hey, Eliot. I'm really busy, what's up?”

“Hi, Mari. I know it's been a crazy week for both of us, but I really want to see you in person… to talk everything over.”

“Look, Eliot. You came to me a few weeks ago and basically jilted me—”

“Hey!”

“Or almost jilted me, or whatever, and I just don't want to hear it right now!” Her tone was escalating and she breathed in to get it back to a normal level. “I certainly don't want to have this conversation on the phone any more than you do, but I'm not willing to meet you in person right now. I know I'm being selfish, but I think it's my turn. Don't you agree?”

Eliot felt the verbal slap keenly. Obviously he could just tell her over the phone that it was 100 percent and completely over between them, but it felt crude and awkward. Inadequate. She didn't deserve it, but his patience had run thin. “I suppose I deserve that, but—”

“No
buts
, Eliot. I don't care if you are going to break up with me or get down on the floor and prostrate yourself to me—I don't want to know—I just want a few days to think about how I feel and what I want, for me and me alone, not as it relates to you. I am going away for a few days. Trust me. No matter how it turns out, I need this. I will meet you at six o'clock on Monday night at your place. I promise. It may seem irrational to you, but after all this time, I don't think one more weekend is asking too much. Just grant me that, okay? Please do not call me again between now and Monday, all right?”

Jesus. Whatever Eliot had been expecting, it wasn't this. Abigail was already justifiably concerned that he hadn't broken it off with Marisa at the first possible opportunity. If he waited out the whole weekend, she might be furious. On the other hand, it just wasn't in him to deny Marisa this small concession, to contemplate and prepare, whether to reject him or accept him. “Fine. I will see you on Monday.”

“Thank you, Eliot.”

“Bye, Mari.”

Eliot hung up the phone and wanted to talk to Abigail, but dreaded telling her he had been put off again. He inhaled and dialed her number.

“Hey, handsome,” she answered.

“Hey, to you too.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Well, it's the weirdest thing—”

“Let me guess. She's too busy to meet with you in person and you don't want to break up with her over the phone?”

“That pretty much sums it up. It's just for a few more days, love, I promise. I know you understand… don't you?”

“I wish I was more melodramatic and demanding, but yes, I do understand. She obviously senses what's coming and needs a few days to pull herself together, and I kind of respect her for it. When are you going to see her?”

“Monday night.”

“So then come to London, you fool. Come tonight! Come now!”

“Good god, Abigail. You have no idea how good that sounds. I might as well put in my resignation for how much I am able to concentrate. I let my mother take the jet back to Iowa. You're reducing me to flying commercial. I'll be on the afternoon flight into Heathrow. It lands around six thirty your time. I'll take the train into town and see you at your place around seven thirty. Sound good?”

“Oh, Eliot. That will be heavenly. You. My place. Seven thirty. I'll be waiting. Do you want me to pick up something for dinner or do you want to go out?”

“Order in. I'm not letting you out of bed for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Sounds divine. I'll stock up on supplies. Oh, I almost forgot. Bronte is going stir crazy so Max invited a bunch of us out to Dunlear to entertain her. Mostly family and close friends, James Mowbray, and some others. Want to go?”

“Whatever you like. As long as the bed is large and the walls are thick.”

“Check. And check. I think it would be fun and Bronte will kill me if you're in town again and she doesn't get to see you.”

“All right, love. See you tonight. If anything changes, I'll let you know.”

“Eliot, I love you.”

“I love you too, darling. See you soon.”

He hung up the phone and set it aside to the left of his desk blotter. Then he forced himself to give his full attention to the stack of paperwork on his desk, buzzing for his assistant Marcel to come in and go through the huge pile along with him. They broke briefly for lunch and continued until four o'clock.

Eliot was relieved that he was still capable of focusing. After his time of carnal abandon in Paris, he had worried whether his brain would still be able to function with any real acuity when he returned to work. When he looked up at the time, Eliot realized he hadn't given himself enough leeway to return to his house in Versoix to pack a bag. He was mildly concerned, then just shrugged it off and decided he would make do with his briefcase. He could pick up everything he needed in London, and he wasn't about to risk missing his flight.

“That's it for me, Marcel.” Eliot nearly sang as he got up from his desk, “I'm going to London for the weekend.”

Marcel looked askance at the unfamiliar—cheerful—person who had taken the place of his boss. “Now? Do you want me to call you a car?”

“Yes, I'm leaving right now. No car. My flight leaves in a little over an hour. I think it'll be faster if I hop on the train to the airport. I should make it.”

“Very well, sir. Do you want me to set up any meetings while you are there?”

“No. I'm taking the day off. If anything of real importance comes up, just call me on my cell. But you can probably handle everything.” Eliot gave Marcel an encouraging pat on the shoulder and strode out of the office and on toward the elevators, swinging his briefcase without a second glance back.

Marcel shook his head in confused wonder and muttered something about going from inadequate phone screener to deputized CEO in a matter of weeks.

***

Abigail was giddy. Everything about Paris had been otherworldly and dreamlike. The hotel room with its sumptuous fabrics and gold and marble. Their schedule of days spent apart in simmering anticipation and nights spent in heated, joyful reunion. But Eliot's impending visit felt like the beginning of their real life together. No room service, no glamorous views out over the Place Vendôme. Abigail had a momentary panic that Eliot would feel like a too-large giant when he entered her
Alice in Wonderland
home. It was intimate and small, packed with tender reminders of family and friends, postcards resting against books on the shelves on either side of the fireplace, a pinecone that Wolf had given her on a walk at Dunlear, a program from a particularly passionate Wagner concert at Wigmore Hall. A shell from Bequia.

For someone who had spent the first few decades of her life shucking off any connection to the past, she looked around her little home and realized she had turned into a pack rat. She loved the silver porringer her mother had given her. She loved the eight-by-ten black-and-white photo of Bronte, Sarah, and Abigail laughing so hard their eyes were squinting and their backs were hunched over a table at Le Caprice.

She put the huge vase of hothouse flowers down on the rough wood of the coffee table and put Regina Spektor on the stereo. She stood stock-still in the middle of her living room and felt the frightening, then soul-satisfying realization that she was building a life for herself.

Eliot's urgent double-knock scared her senseless, then had her running the few yards to pull open the door. The winter rain was pounding all around and behind him and he looked so damn good standing in her doorway with his perfectly functional black umbrella with the bamboo handle in one hand and his briefcase in the other.

Her beautiful man.

She leapt up onto him like she was climbing a tree, throwing her legs around his waist and her hands around his gorgeous neck, kissing his jaw, licking the rain off his cheek. He tossed his bag onto the floor inside the doorway and pulled her closer, with his one free hand cupping her bottom. He fumbled inelegantly as he turned to get the two of them through the doorway while trying to pull the opened umbrella in behind him. He kicked the door closed and threw the open, sopping umbrella on the living room floor and brought that freed-up hand to the other side of her ass.

“Where's your bed?” he growled.

“Up,” she whispered between hungry nips at his ear, his lower lip, the tendon on his neck.

He carried her up the stairs as if she were weightless. “Right or left?”

“Left…”

He brought them into Abigail's bedroom, which she had filled with about a hundred votive candles. He tossed her down on the bed and pulled off his overcoat, then his blazer, and started unbuttoning his shirt as he kicked off his shoes with his heels. Abigail was lying on her bed, reveling in the sight of him.

“You look so fine. I mean, really, really good,” she said softly.

He smiled and undid his pants, his erection springing free, and he felt himself harden further at the responsive glimmer of desire that flashed in her silver eyes. “This isn't going to be pretty, Abigail.”

“I hope not.” She smiled as she pulled her practical brown corduroy skirt up from her argyle thigh-high socks and revealed herself, completely bare, except for a new, sexy-as-hell garter belt in a sheer nude lace, which she had picked up at Fleur that afternoon in honor of Eliot's arrival. She bent her knees slightly apart and tilted her hips in invitation.

“Holy hell.”

“A little welcome present.”

He pushed her knees up to her shoulders and kissed her at the very warm, very moist center of her being. She screamed and begged him to make her come right then. He licked and sucked and bit at her until he felt the quivering beginning of her orgasm, then pulled himself up and away and thrust into her, to the very hilt, feeling his taut balls slap against her as her orgasm clenched around him, deeper, harder, as he kissed her lips and neck and felt the fire of her breath against his skin as she keened his name in a final, joyful cry, and he met her there.

His release was a silent, powerful, profound binding.

They were fused together.

“Always,” he whispered. “It will always be like this for us, Abigail.”

She had tears of joy rolling silently down her temple into her hair. “I know,” she choked out. “I finally know.”

He kissed her tears, wanting to taste and know every ounce of her. He felt the familiar dissipation of her control, her gradual slipping away toward postcoital oblivion. “Stay with me a few minutes more, love.”

“You are with me now more than ever, Eliot.” Her voice was barely audible. “When I reach this place of joy, of ecstasy, of freedom, you are the only one with me.” She stretched her neck to reach her lips near his ear, then continued in a tiny voice, “I am not retreating from you—I am joining you there.” Her head sank back slowly into the pillow and her eyes slid closed as she smiled and drifted on the cool air of rapture.

Eliot leaned his forehead into hers, closed his eyes, and felt a deeper intimacy than he would have ever thought possible. He pulled a light blanket over them and repositioned his body into a snug cocoon around hers. The two of them dozed off, finding each other in that place of shared freedom.

Marisa couldn't resist doing a little research about the castle where she and James would be spending the weekend. She looked it up online Thursday night and got a feel for the scale (massive) and scope (vast) of the buildings and surrounding gardens and parklands. She saw photos of James's cousin, the current duke, Max Heyworth, and his American wife, Bronte Talbott, and other shots of Devon Heyworth and his wife, Sarah James, the one who knew Eliot, and a few pictures of the younger sister, Abigail Heyworth, who, Marisa realized, was the same Abigail Heyworth she had started to hear about in her own circle of foundations and funders of African aid projects. Perhaps Abigail would be at the house party over the weekend and Marisa could further justify this crazy escapade by securing some additional funding for the school in Tanzania.

She had managed to schedule two appointments in London, which made her feel a tiny bit less guilty about lying so categorically to Eliot. She was on a business trip, after all. She wasn't entirely without honor.

She took a 6 a.m. flight out of Geneva Friday morning, which gave her plenty of time to make a ten o'clock meeting near Victoria Station and a one o'clock meeting in Marylebone. She hoped that last one would be over in an hour or so and she could meet James at his office in Mayfair immediately after.

He had called her each morning and each night of the past week to wish her a simple good day and a simple good night. He never pressed or brought up Eliot, or the heat that had passed between them in Frankfurt; he proffered a consistent, supportive friendship.

Sure, she could try to believe that, she chided herself. Her one o'clock meeting had finished in just under an hour, and she was riding in a taxi from Marylebone High Street toward Oxford Street, making her way inexorably toward Mayfair to meet James at his office. Her attempts at controlling her excitement with lame rationalizations about James-the-supportive-friend were futile. She tried a different tack and began immersing herself in the very real possibility that, upon seeing her, he would kiss her as passionately and heedlessly as he had in the Lufthansa lounge. She hoped that if she could anticipate a tidal wave of passion, perhaps she could prepare herself for it.

Foolish, foolish woman.

All that did was make her squirm and feel like the opaque black tights under her practical black suit were entirely too warm and annoyingly confining. And while the James-as-supportive-friend theory might have been a blatant prevarication, it did not lead to the unfamiliar pulls of sexual tension that always accompanied even the most glancing contemplation of the James-as-passionate-lover hypothesis.

The taxi was feeling close and overheated, so Marisa rolled down the window slightly, welcoming the brisk, wet air that signaled the very beginning or the very end of winter rain. She took a deep breath through her nose and then looked down at her purse and pulled out her compact. She smirked with a not-much-I-can-do-about-it-now look then pulled out a small brush and gave her hair a few quick pulls. It was straight and it was blond, that was about all she could manage at the moment. Her face was a bit flushed from the cool air (and those other thoughts, no doubt), so she didn't bother putting on any powder or blush. She added a bit of lip gloss to her bottom lip, then put everything back into her large black Fauchard bag. A gift from Eliot. Ugh.

She should have switched to her black Longchamp purse, but it hadn't occurred to her until she was already on her way to the airport at five that morning. Too late now. She was fastening the closure when the driver tapped on the dividing plastic and said, “Here you are,” in a far too normal voice.

Didn't he know she was about to open his taxi door and step out onto a very large, very deep metaphorical lake that had only the thinnest treacherous layer of ice to support her? She breathed again, paid the driver through the glass, put her purse over one shoulder, and hefted her weekend bag out onto the sidewalk with her other hand.

Marisa wasn't sure what she had imagined, but the Mowbray store was so quintessentially British, so quintessentially male. The enormous mahogany doors had gleaming brass handles, and the panes of glass on the upper portion were so crystal clear, they looked as if they were cleaned hourly. The four full-story picture windows on either side of the entrance were designed with formal but stylish flair. Large black-and-white photographs provided a grainy, classical background to offset the rich colors and immaculate cuts of the men's clothes. The mannequins were antique, and the linen that covered them looked tea-stained with age.

Marisa let her stare rise slowly up the solid, formidable facade and felt defeated.

This was all a terrible idea.

She was not a frivolous woman. She was not inclined to larks and mischief. And her aversion to such trifles was a characteristic that she liked about herself. She respected who she was and how she acted. And now she had traveled halfway across Europe to meet up with a virtual stranger.

What had she been thinking?

She turned to see if she might still be able to catch the taxi that had just deposited her on this precarious sidewalk and watched, deflated, as it pulled quickly away into traffic.

“There she is now!”

James.

Her chest tightened in a split second of fear, then an unavoidable spilling warmth spread from her solar plexus out to the tingling tips of her fingers and toes.

James.

“Abigail, let me introduce you to my new friend—”

“Mary Moreau,” Marisa interrupted quickly, reaching out her hand to shake Abigail's.

James looked at her askance, then tightened his eyes and deferred to the deception. For now. “Mary…” he said slowly, “this is my cousin Abigail Heyworth. Abigail, this is…
Mary
.”

Abigail looked from one to the other and felt a sweet recognition of the tender affection that she had recently rediscovered with Eliot. It looked as though James might have finally found someone he could tolerate for longer than his typical five minutes.

More than tolerate.

Marisa pressed on with forced ease. “Abigail, it's a pleasure. I was hoping I might get to see you while I am here. I work for an aid agency that's working in Tanzania and really admire everything you're doing with the Rose and Thorn Foundation.”

Abigail turned to James with real concern. “Why didn't you tell me about Mary? We have so much in common. Have you been hiding her from all of us?” She turned back to Marisa with a wide, genuine smile. “He's notoriously secretive, you know. All sorts of internecine goings on. Watch out!” But Abigail's complicit wink was all encouragement, despite her supposed warning.

James looked down at his perfectly polished shoes and shrugged his shoulders. Marisa thought he was the most engaging man she had ever seen. It was strangely hard for her to look away from him. Even if he never wanted to see her again after this weekend, she decided in that moment, she was going to enjoy as much of him as she possibly could.

She must have been staring like a fish-eyed idiot because Abigail looked from James to Marisa and back to James again then burst out laughing. “You two are pretty bad. I thought I was pretty bad, but you two are…” She smiled and shook her head.

James looked at Marisa and didn't even care if Abigail could see how obviously glad he was to see his
new
friend
.

Abigail straightened her back and tried to reposition the eight Mowbray bags she was lugging, then gave the parcels a guilty look. “I have a friend in from out of town and he arrived on my doorstep without any of his personal possessions. A few essentials.” Abigail lifted the bags in evidence. “Fetch me a taxi, James, so I can leave and the two of you can greet one another properly.”

The taxi pulled up and James helped load the shopping bags.

“And we will see you at Dunlear tonight?” Abigail asked with an inquiring eyebrow.

James nodded to confirm that both of them would be there.

“Great to meet you, Mary,” Abigail said, then turned and settled herself into the cab as James shut the door and the black vehicle pulled away.

“She's quite nice,” Marisa tried.

“Yes, she is…
Mary
. Let me take your bag.” James reached for the heavy weekend bag that she had set on the sidewalk between them.

“What do you have in here? We're just going to a friend's house for the weekend, not to meet the queen.”

Marisa looked at him cynically. “Really? I Googled your so-called-friend's house and I thought I might pack a little bit more than my long-sleeved black T-shirt and my Carhartts.”

“Touché. And by the way, I liked that T-shirt very much.” He smiled, then pulled the door to the store wide open. “Come on in.” As they walked through the main floor, James held her substantial valise over his right shoulder as if it were as light as a shirt from the dry cleaner, then he reached for her, resting his palm against the small of her back. “I can't wait to hear more about you…
Mary
.” She opened her mouth to speak and he shook his head to stop her, then added quietly, “Let's get up to my office and you can tell me all about your split personality.”

She smiled despite herself as she took in the wonderful smells of leather and wool and old wood and a hint of beeswax from the floors. Masculine scents of sandalwood, bay rum, and pine floated through the centuries-old store. She saw racks of perfectly hung suits, a section of country tweeds, a shoe area in the far corner to the right, and a manned elevator, complete with a perfectly polished brass cage directly in front of them. James didn't release his hand from her back until they were in his office and he had shut the door behind him and tossed her bag on the very old and very comfortable-looking leather Chesterfield sofa along the wall to her left. A fire burned in the small grate.

“Wow. Some office.”

He remained standing with his back against the door and watched as she dropped her handbag on the sofa and continued to walk around the room, his space. She picked up the occasional paperweight or photograph. “Is this you?”

“Probably.” He wasn't going to look away from the way her skirt hugged her perfect hips long enough to pay attention to the frame she was holding.

“James! You are not even looking at me.”

“I beg to differ.” He met her eyes and she flushed, then looked quickly away and put the picture back on his desk. She continued to the other side of the office, where floor-to-ceiling bookcases were filled with nearly three centuries of hand-bound chestnut leather ledgers, dating back to a time when the Mowbray wool had to be carted across Scotland and England behind a team of horses.

She let the pads of her fingertips trail along the tooled ridges of their bindings. James felt his mouth go dry as those delicate fingers tripped mindlessly across those lucky books.

She came back to where she'd begun, standing a few feet in front of him in the center of his domain, trying to keep calm as her heart pounded amid the warring artillery of fear and desire. “So.”

“So,” he said, “why is your name now Mary?”

Marisa felt a little disappointed that he hadn't showered her in kisses by now, then shook her head and reminded herself she had advanced degrees from prestigious universities and shouldn't be having pattering thoughts about showers of any kind, much less those of the kissing variety.

“Ugh. It's so stupid, I suppose.” She turned half away so she was looking at the fire, then pulled her perfectly straight blond hair in front of her left shoulder in an impatient gesture that, James noted, had the added benefit of revealing a lovely kissable spot at the nape of her neck. “I just didn't want to have to explain myself to anyone. Our wedding announcement was in the
International
Herald
Tribune
about a month ago and just now with Abigail… I mean, she and I are in the same industry. I've admired her work over the past year. Not to mention her mother is married to a close family friend of Eliot's, for goodness' sake. I even met Jack and your aunt Sylvia on holiday in Italy last summer. It's all too close.”

“Aunt Sylvia is not going to be there this weekend, I can assure you of that. And your
engagement
announcement,” he rephrased her words with pointed meaning, “probably passed by most casual readers.”

“From what I've heard, Bronte Talbott is not most casual readers; she is a marketing and PR fanatic. She probably knows every wedding announcement ever made about every employee of Danieli-Fauchard. Not to mention Sarah James.”

James shrugged again.

Marisa continued, “You know she'll probably end up there this weekend too. I'm sorry. It seems silly now, but in that moment when you introduced me to Abigail Heyworth, I had this spontaneous dread of saying my real name and having her ask, ‘
The
Marisa Plataneau?'” She was still staring at the low fire when she felt the sudden touch of his lips at the nape of her neck. She swooned. Or she imagined that's what it must have been, because she'd never really believed that such a thing was possible.

“I've changed my mind…” he whispered provocatively.

She stiffened, then softened into him when he nibbled at her exposed earlobe and said, “I don't care if your name is Mary or Gertrude or Sam or Bill.” He kissed his way down her bare neck as he recounted a lengthy list of progressively ridiculous names. Then he turned her so she was forced to look him straight in the eyes. With her no-nonsense three-inch black heels, they were exactly the same height. He held her chin in his right hand, then added, “As long as you know, I like Marisa the very best.” And then he began to kiss her with a gentle, demanding passion that made her forget any name she had ever possessed.

She was still holding the bulk of her hair in the clench of her right hand, as if it might fall off her head if she did not keep it in place. Her other hand flew up and fisted around a piece of his shirt fabric at his chest to hold herself steady.