Royal Brit Bastard: a badboy stepbrother romance (14 page)

He really didn’t look or sound like he was feeding me a line, but whatever, right? Anyway, I was spoken for at that point. Because that was the day before yesterday, before Ant showed his true colors.

And that was the moment when I spotted Ant, coming out of a door halfway up a stairway. Map was following him out and Ant’s face was flushed. Map seemed to be yanking up her fly.
Her
fly?

To my gorgeous companion, I said, “Please, would you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back,” and I followed Ant. He vanished into the crowd on the next floor up, and it was a while before I caught up with him.

Had I seen something that was just odd, but entirely innocent? Was Map not quite as far along in her transformation as she had implied? If so, had Ant omitted to mention his bisexuality to me? WTF? When I finally reached him through the sparkly throng, Ant was slugging a glass of champagne like he was parched and it was water. He gulped it and he nearly spluttered when he saw me.

“Hey, Ant, what was that?”

“What was what, the champagne?” He swayed a little, and his expression was defensive.

“No, not the champagne, Ant. What were you doing with Map?”

“What are you talking about? Look, can we discuss this later?” He moved to brush past me.

I blocked him and I said, “Is there something to discuss?”

“
No
. That’s not what I meant.”

“What
did
you mean, Ant?”

“I meant that, whatever it is, can we please talk about it later. I’m here professionally, you know? I’m trying to get some business done here, OK?”

I said, “Me too, Ant. So as your social media coordinator, perhaps you should bring me up to speed on the business that you were conducting in the room on the stairs with Map, so that I can update your Facebook friends and the Twitterverse about it.”

“Look, it’s nothing, OK?” He was getting flushed, and that meant angry.

“OK, it’s nothing.” I said, “Look, there’s Map now.” I waved to him. Her. To ‘Map,’ but she acted as though she hadn’t seen me, and ducked away. I looked back to Ant, and he was barging off in the opposite direction, towards the exit.

I went down the steps after him, but he shouted back, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and he was through the door to the street.

I reached the door and saw Ant with his collar up, hurrying along the store windows into the rainy New York night. I was debating whether to go after him, and on the point of deciding against it. As I was about to turn back into the gallery, a rattle like rolling garbage cans came from down an alley, just ahead of where Ant was.

He jumped back, his face drained and pale. Then he flattened himself against the window. Two big shapes came slowly out of the alley. I couldn’t make out their features, but they were huge men.

They hunkered in front of him. He was frozen and obviously terrified. A Bentley convertible pulled up sharply to the curb and a big man’s voice called out, “Brock! Amon!” The two men hesitated, still leaning towards Ant, then they both jumped into the back of the car and it swept away into the darkness and the rain.

I stood rooted to the spot. I didn’t even notice Ant slink away, but I know he did because when I looked back, he wasn’t there. I had recognized the man’s voice. My gorgeous companion was at the wheel of the Bentley.

So Ant was gone, and he was gone. It was a perfect early end to a perfect evening.

On my slow, resigned walk home, a lot of things bothered me. Brock and Amon were two of them. They weren’t unique names, but they aren’t ones that you across every day. The tremors in my little world were all juddering beneath me, and they all melted into one sea of turmoil.

The one thing I knew that I really wanted out of the evening drove away in a Bentley, and I couldn’t see any chance that I’d run into him again.

Ant chose a corner table in the little bar last night to deliver his little ‘I think we need some space,’ talk. He mumbled the rambling speech into his beer mug, since eye contact was an exertion that his feeble strength couldn’t manage. After I got the headlines, I didn’t wait around to listen to all the sidebar excuses and justifications.

When we first met, he was spending his whole life online, blogging, tweeting, chatting and whatever else. His complexion was pale and blotchy, and his contact with actual human beings was scarce. We got together, and I helped him to turn his minute and invisible blog about the SoHo and TriBeCa arts scene into something that more established arts journalists would want to plunder for trends and gossip.

He thought that they were stealing from him. I told him to check his visitor counts. Also, he started to get invitations to private views and to gallery and show openings from then on, and he began to grow a little reputation on the scene. So people were taking notice of him. That was when he started to think that I should be dressing maybe a bit less ‘showy,’ a bit more ‘in keeping.’

When we met, he couldn’t peel his eyes out of my cleavage, except when it was to roam around my hips and my thighs, or over my ass. All of a sudden, he doesn’t want to see me like that when we’re out together.

 
Soon after the invitations started to come in from the agents, artists, and gallery owners, Ant started ‘forgetting’ to mention them to me, or he’d say something like, ‘Oh, don’t you have a thing that evening?’ or, ‘You really don’t
have
to come.’

Like, I’d worked my butt off to get him into these places, and I wouldn’t want to come along for the follow-up? No, it hurts like hell to think it, but I had to face the facts. Ant was thinking that he could do better. He could do better,
now
. Now that I had helped him to gain some credibility, I’d served my purpose for him, and he was ready to move on.
FUCKER!!!

I took a walk on my first solitary Saturday in months, feeling utterly miserable. I went to Central Park and sat on a cold rock by a lake for a while. The autumn sunlight sloped beautifully across the trees. The towers on Central Park West sparkled with a dark gold to match the leaves on the thinning branches.

Traffic noise faded behind the birdsong and rustling leaves. Children squeaked and scampered nearby. All of it left me miserable. I walked over by the Dakota building where John Lennon had lived, and died. I was miserable.

I crossed the noisy traffic of Broadway by the block with the lovely green Beaux-Arts domes and carvings, and I walked down to Riverside Park, where the Hudson gleamed and shimmered. There’s a pretty café by the marina where I thought I might get coffee and an ice-cream.

As I got nearer, the idea made of it me lonely and glum. Fuck it, Ant was hardly the world’s most eligible bachelor, but I’d put a big chunk of my little life into him and I had really believed that we could be going somewhere. Only I was to find out that he wanted us to be going to different somewheres, and he’d tossed me away like a candy wrapper.

Well, I was done crying about him. I did so much of that last night, I must have shed a couple of pounds of saltwater at least. So,
best fucking foot forwards, Ceris, onwards and fucking upwards
.

By the waterfront, the trees behind me muffled the honking buzz of traffic, and the rasp of a boat horn occasionally punctuated the lower, slower, sputtery engine sounds of the river ahead. Across the river is New Jersey, hundreds of thousands of apartment windows, where people were all living their lives, just like they were yesterday, just like they would be tomorrow.

Leaves were turning golden yellows, reds and browns on the trees in the park, and every few moments a jogger huffed by. The breeze carried a few brown leaves, and a slight chill.

As I wandered towards the river’s edge, a big street-dweller came towards me, his arms outstretched. Nine times out of ten in Manhattan, these encounters are funny, charming or just plain goofy.

As a girl, I always expect them to be the one time when it’s not any of those. The large, round man had a straggly beard and a grin with an incomplete set of teeth.

His breath reached me long before he did. I tried not to flinch as he croaked, “Hey, baby,” at me. His hand reached out towards my shoulder and I moved a step back. “Aw, don’t be like that.” His gap-toothed grin widened and I saw a flash in his eyes that I didn’t like. I shrank back towards the bushes. He came after me.

Then he froze. He was looking past my shoulder. His eyes stretched wide and his face went gray. Behind me, I heard a rustling in the bush, then a deep low, grating sound. It was soft, but still shocking. I didn’t think I could risk taking my eyes off the wooly homeless man, even though he was starting to back away slowly, with a look of terror growing across his face.

Behind me, I heard a rustle of leaves and I felt heat. The warmth of a large body moved close to my back. When the homeless man had backed a safe distance away I turned, but all I saw was a large shape slipping back into the bushes and I heard the rustling of the leaves.

As I looked around, the homeless man fled in a panic. The few other people I could see were just enjoying a balmy Saturday, like nothing was going on. In the marina nearby, little boats bobbed on the water, and a massive, silver yacht was cutting through the Hudson and heaving to.

On the prow stood a big, fine looking man in white pants, a white shirt, Raybans and a white sailor’s cap. He shielded his eyes and gave a jolly wave towards the shore, the way that people on boats do. I gave as jolly a wave as I had in return. His golden beard made him look like the man from
Gush
.

In Manhattan, that kind of a chance meeting never happens. Not to me anyway, and not to anyone I knew. He pointed. I looked around, because he must have been waving to someone else. Me, misreading signals again. I didn’t see anyone, and he was still pointing, towards the marina.

I knew he must be gesturing to someone out of my view, but I gave him a friendly wave goodbye as I turned back. Then I heard a man’s voice in the distance. It sounded familiar. It sounded as though he was calling, ‘Ceris!’

I looked back up. That really couldn’t be my beautiful man from the gallery opening shading his eyes on the front of the yacht. It couldn’t be. He called out, “Ceris! Wait for me!” and his voice carried easily across the water. He turned and headed towards the rear of the boat. It wasn’t a short walk.

A motor launch was winching out at the far end of the yacht, and as soon as he reached it, he climbed into the launch and it began to lower into the water. As the boat reached the river and was released from the winch, I had a recollection of Tyler climbing down from his bunk.

“Ceris, what a fantastic surprise.” He strode towards me, long, thick legs beautifully draped in the white flannel pants, the top of his broad, dark golden chest peeking out of the loose white shirt. As he peeled off the sunglasses, his deep brown eyes shone into mine and my insides turned to jelly.

His arm stretched out and went around my waist. I realized too late that he was coming in for a European cheek kiss, or maybe a fashionable metrosexual hug. My arms were already as far around him as they would go and his scent was like a big leather armchair by a crackling fire.

Feeling my soft, hot cheek against his warm, hard chest, my swelling breasts squeezed against his firm rippled stomach, and my arms tight around him, the emotions that I had been holding down and suppressing bubbled and frothed over, and I let out a quiet sob. No blubberer, me, I held on just long enough to get some composure, then I pulled away.

I admit it was a reluctant retreat. Standing there, holding him, enfolded in him, I had felt a tenderness, a huge strength, and I felt so safe, as though nothing could reach me there, except him. I felt as though something was growing between us. And something had been quite literally growing between us.

Something hard, strong, and very large had been growing against my stomach, making my thighs quiver. If I had stayed pressed there against him for much longer, I don’t know what I might have done, out there in the broad daylight.

I needed to recover myself. The perfect gentleman, he said, “Ceris, I think you might like something to eat. Perhaps you’d allow me to buy you lunch.”