Running From Fate (44 page)

“Are they really
scared of me
?” James asked
curiously
.
He had noticed that some of his employees acted a bit wary around him, but he had always attributed it to the fact that he was he boss.
It was a
little surprising to find
out he was wrong, but he
shrugged it off
.
A little wariness would keep them motivated.
Plus,
he reminded himself,
it wasn’t good to become too familiar with
one’s
employees.
Mira was the exception
to that rule
.

“Anyway,” he continued.
“I was talking about my reputation among my possible business rivals or anyone
who
thinks they can cheat me.”

“Ah, you mean the fact that you’re
considered to
be
quite ruthless?”
Mira said
,
deciding to give him a little help.
“I’m still not sure,” she
continued with sham seriousness,
“
w
hat any of this has
to do with you laughing at me.”

He
pushed his fingers through his hair in frustration and tried to think of a way to get through to her.  It was strange, he thought, because she was usually much quicker than this.
The Mira he had
once
known would already be laughing at his
convoluted
attempt
to disentangle himself.
He
glanced across the table and narrowed his eyes in speculation.
The glitter in her green eyes wasn’t anger, he finally realized, it was amusement and there was a hint of a smile on her lips.

Relief poured through him and he found himself wanting to laugh again
.  He
stifled the urge. 
“I don’t intimi
date you at all do I?”

“Not in the least,”
she
replied.
“Besides, if you did, you would either walk all over me or want nothing to do with me.”

“You’re probably right. 
Now,” he said as he stood up and rounded the table.
“Would you like to adjourn to the library for a nightcap?”

“The library James?” Mira said with a laughing glance.
“Isn’t it supposed to be the parlor?
And for that matter,” she continued.
“Aren’t you supposed to go to a separate room so you don’t
offend my delicate sensibilities with your drinking and smoking?”

“I don’t smoke.”
He grinned down at her as he held her arm and led her away.
“And
,
besides
,
I want you with me.”

“In that case lead on.”

They walked out the far door arm-in-arm.
Neither of them saw
Winston
standing in the opposite doorway staring after them with a look of ill-concealed fascination and dawning pleasure on his battered face.

An hour or so later
Mira hummed
happily to he
rself as she made her way up her
front walk.
She paused under the light by the front door and a soft smile spread across her face as she recalled the last half of her evening.

After the excellent meal—
which she was sur
e James had not made by himself—t
hey had sat in the librar
y and talked about everything f
r
o
m their childhoods
to
their future aspirations.
If it hadn’t been for the subtle, but intense sexual tension that had wrapped around them and kept
both of them intensely aware of each other they might still have been
the
lonely children
that they once were
,
formin
g an unusual, but
un-break
able
bond that
survived neglect and the passage of
years.

In fact,
things
had been so
comfortable
and
James had been so careful to maintain a polite distance that
she hadn’t
even
anticipat
ed a
nything but a peck on the check by way of a
goodnight kiss.
She had walked outside with him, slightly dissatisfied but
resigned to rebuilding slowly.  W
hen
he
had clasped her face and bent down she had expected either a
brief touch of his lips or, considering their first kiss, a
n intense, but dominating assault
that would completely fry her brain.
She
got neither.

Instead his lips had been incredibly gentle, brushing
back and forth across
hers with the delicacy of butterfly wings.
By the time he finally deepened the kiss
she had been so entranced
that
she
hadn’t even noticed
her hands were gripping his shirt and she was straining
against him
.
But, w
hen she would have pushed for flash and heat, he had gentled
things
, slowly and sensuously delving inside her mouth until she had felt herself melting.
Only then had he drawn away, leaving her feeling bereft but dazzled.

She was still slightly
dazed
now as
she turned her key and pushed open the door.
She would do something that she hadn’t done in ages
, she decided.
She would
run a hot bubble bath
, light some candles,
and spend an hour
basking
in
daydreams.
With her mind already focused on pleasant thoughts, she flipped on the light and
her mouth dropped open
.

Her once tidy home was
in shamble
s
.
S
hards of broken glasses littered the kitchen floor
,
glittering in the overhead lights like
splintered diamond
s
.
In the living room her beautiful red sofa had been slashed open, spilling its insides on the floor in fluffy white tufts.
Her precious books were scattered
everywhere,
some completely torn from their covers.

In a daze
she walked across the
room and
so
mething crunched under her feet.  S
he looked down, somehow surprised to see that she was standing on the tattered remains of her parents’ wedding picture.
Angry tears leaked down her face and she impatiently wiped them away
as her mind cleared
.
Whoever had perpetrated this wanton destruction was going to pay.

Intellect told her that she should leave immediately and call the police from the safety of a neighbor’s house.
Her ears, however, heard only silence of an empty house and she was too
pissed off
to sit and wait.
Detouring by the kitchen to grab a large
butcher’s
knife off the floor, she quietly made her way up the stairs.

To her relief
the guest bedroom had been left alone except for a broken lamp.
Her room had not been so lucky.
Her mattress was slashed
, her clothes had
been
ripped of hangers, and her drawers were emptied in heaps on the floor.
It looked like a miniature tornado had
blown through
and turned the room on i
t
s head.

Bottles and tubes rolled
across the floor
as she gingerly stepped into the bathroom.
It wasn’t the mess
in here
that caught her eye
,
it was the mirror.
Scrolled in dark red
across
its surface were two words: YOU’LL PAY.
With her jaw firm and her hand clenched around the handle of the knife, she turned an
d
walked away.
There was still on
e
more room to check
.

Considering the rest of the house, it was with a heavy heart and a lagging step that
she
finally made her way
downstairs to
the studio and eased open the door.
Her feeling of relief was so strong that she h
ad to drop the knife and grip
the
doorjamb
to prevent
her
self
from collapsing.
This room had either held no interest or, more likely, her arrival
had chased
the perpetrator away.
It looked untouched.

On legs that could no longer support her, she sank to the floor.
Only then did she allow the tension
to seep away and a weary ache
to take its place.
With a tired
sigh, she leaned her head
against the w
all
and closed her eyes.

It would be nice
and
extremely
easy to just sit there and pretend
, at least
for a while
,
that nothing had happened and he
r little world was still normal, but she wasn’t that type of person. 
That
kind
of thinking may give her a short period of pleasant delusion, but it would not get anything done.
She still had to call the
police
and find
a place to spend the night.  No way
was
she
sleeping in that bedroom.
Cops first though
,
she decided
,
as she opened her eyes and pulled out her cell phone.