The Pleasures of Winter (16 page)
Abbie had never mentioned anyone except the perfect William Dullard while she was in the jungle, and only the dweeb had turned up to meet her in Miami.
She looked a little younger, but the assurance in her manner made it easy to believe.
For some reason, Jack hadn’t expected her to admit that she was a reporter. She should have more sense than to give a stranger so much personal information. Even if he hadn’t known her name, she had just given him enough to track her down. He would spank her for that later. But first …
The question hung on the screen, blinking back at her. The big question. Was it because of Jack? Had he made her feel this way or was Kit right? Maybe she had submissive tendencies. How could she have reached the age of twenty-seven and not know about it?
A vision came into her head of some of the scarier sites she had surfed on the net. Collars, whips, ropes, people dressed in leather. She was definitely not like that. Abbie took a gulp of wine.
Mental note to self, do not buy any more of this stuff
. The question flashed on the screen. He was still waiting for her response.
Nothing happened. Her answer sat there, laughing at her. Maybe she was wasting his time. Maybe he had gone away. A message popped up on the bottom of the screen:
Disciplinarian is typing.
Abbie had never felt so relieved to receive a response. She leaned her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. What was she going to say to him?
The truth, Abbie. Just tell him the truth
.
Oops. Typed on the screen like that it looked terrible. Like she was some kind of cyber-slut who ran around sleeping with random guys. OK, she’d better clarify that. She was about to expand on her response when he came back.
Abbie typed furiously.
Relationship. Abbie stared at the word on the screen. They weren’t in a relationship. Jack was off, god-knows-where,
probably with some beautiful starlet, and she was here talking to a stranger, trying to pick up the pieces.
Disciplinarian is typing.
What? How could he ask that? Even Kit didn’t ask her questions like that. She sat back on the couch. A minute ticked by. He did not have the right to ask her that stuff. She would give him a piece of her mind.
So what? Abbie’s temper rose. He was almost as annoying as Jack. She would refuse to answer the question.
Disciplinarian is typing
.
Abbie bit her lip. Put like that, it sounded awful. She knew that she could be all of those things, but it wasn’t as if she bossed William around. Well, not all the time. Her fingers raced over the keyboard.
She was tempted to write a snappy response to his ‘good girl’ remark. He was almost as bad as Jack. But it
was too late, he had already gone offline. She read over the last few lines of their conversation. How had a stranger done this to her? Made her open up to him in a way that she couldn’t with anyone else. Was it the online thing? Perhaps there was safety in geography. She didn’t know where he was and they would probably never meet.
Abbie’s cell phone buzzed as she stepped into the coffee shop. She reached into her purse and pulled it out. Wrong one. She fished out the other one and glanced at the display. It was Betsy again. She was tempted to take the battery out and crush it under the spike heel of her shoes. Josh Martin on his worst day wasn’t half as demanding as the queen of the Lifestyle section. Abbie let the call go to voicemail. No wonder the woman was a size zero. She never took a lunch break.
Kit waved at her from their usual table and Abbie flopped down into the chair opposite. ‘ You know, life was easier in the jungle. Have you ordered yet?’
‘Yep, two vegetarian specials.’
Abbie pulled a face. Kit was a health-food freak.
‘So?’ Kit poured two glasses of water from a carafe. ‘How is cyberspace? Have you made contact with Paloma’s friend yet?’
Abbie was relieved when the waiter arrived with two colourful salads. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about this yet.
‘You’ve gone back into your shell again.’
‘No, I haven’t. I’m just – what would you say? – I’m processing.’
‘And?’
Abbie put her knife and fork on her plate. ‘I’m not going to get away with this, am I?’
Kit titled her head and smiled. ‘Not a chance. Tell me what’s going on with you.’
She speared a piece of tofu. ‘I’ve made contact with him.’
‘Him who?’
Abbie leaned forwards. ‘His name is Disciplinarian.’
Kit gave a very unladylike snort of laughter. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that but with you and the spanking, well I –’
Abbie could feel the blush rising from her neck. ‘Why don’t you stand on a chair and announce it to the restaurant? I don’t think the girl at the till heard you.’
‘Don’t be so sensitive, Abbie. It was a joke. Now, tell me about D.’
Abbie pushed her salad around her plate. ‘He doesn’t let me get away with anything. I have to tell the truth. I can’t use bad language and he wants to talk about my sex life with William.’
‘Anything else?’
‘What do you mean, anything else? I haven’t even spoken to you about that stuff.’
‘Maybe it’s easier to talk to someone in cyberspace. The good thing is that you’re talking to someone.’
A meeting with Betsy and the team distracted her, but by late afternoon she was pensive again. Abbie pulled her coat around her as she left the office. Despite the threatening rain clouds, she decided to walk home. It would do her good to chase away her unsettling thoughts. Kit was pleased that she was talking to someone. She wasn’t so sure. D was like a battering ram, breaching her defences, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted someone poking around inside her head. She stopped by the local deli and picked
up calzone for dinner. She ate in front of the television, trying to kill time until she could log on.
He responded almost immediately.
Nope, the old
let me distract you by telling you about my new job
ploy hadn’t worked with him. They were back to talking about her feelings again.
Where could she start? Talking to him like this had opened up a ton of stuff. William, the wedding, her family. She wasn’t sure whether she was ready for another session of Let’s Torture Abbie.
Trust him to pick up on that. It wasn’t as if she was out every night drinking cocktails until 2am.
She took a defiant sip before typing again.
Abbie stared at the computer screen for a long minute. Why was she so scared? What was so hard about talking to someone? He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t interested.
Disciplinarian is typing
.
In stark black and white that looked bad. It wasn’t as if she had asked her to organize anything. Dolores Dillard simply took over and William was happy to let her. The first time she had gone to North Africa and got stuck there. Not turning up for a fitting with Vera Wang which had been booked months before had been the first nail in the coffin of their mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship. Dolores had been furious that she hadn’t just resigned from her job when they got engaged.
God, the man was obsessed. Sex, sex, sex. Didn’t he ever think of anything else? He was worse than Kit. She got it that they weren’t online to chat about her interest in Honduran drug gangs. But did it have to keep coming back to her sex life? She tried to distract him.
Correction, I
so
do not want to go there.
What was the endless fascination with William? It wasn’t as if he had been her first boyfriend. There had been that guy she had spent the night with in Mexico during spring break. She didn’t remember much of it except that he was from Sweden, doing a world tour after college. They hadn’t actually had sex. Too many mojitos. Maybe D would like to hear about that instead?
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t cut her off like this. Abbie typed furiously.
