She Hates Me Not: A Richer in Love Romance (5 page)

A
s Lou climbed down the stairs of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, she felt like an ocean buoy in a summertime storm.  Was she the one tilting?  Or had the world around her turned to water?

It had certainly turned upside down.  To keep from falling over, Lou clung to Kip Richmond.  Kip.  Richmond.  Who she’d kissed in plain view on the theatre terrace.  Not just kissed.  Snogged, as the Brits liked to say.

Why had she kissed him?  Kisses to men were like green lights to racecars.  Or red flags to bulls.  Ready, set, grope.

Lou wasn’t immune to them either.  She hadn’t so much as looked at a guy since Liam dumped her.  It was her fault for crushing on a prima donna, but the rest were almost as much trouble.  Men always wanted more than she could give – at least with how things were now.

So why did she want to give everything to Kip Richmond?  The impulse was dangerous in all kinds of ways.  This must be what kept landing him in the tabloids.  Kip was nearly as intoxicating as the way-too-many glasses of champagne she’d drank in the last four hours.  Four hours of feeling out of place.  Then ambushed.  Then useful.  Then head over heels.

Which she might literally be if she didn’t focus her attention on putting one foot in front of the other.  It was just after midnight.  The gala was over.  Time to turn into a pumpkin.

Before they could start for the limousine, Lou pulled free of Kip’s grasp.  He had practically carried her down the last five stairs.  She could reclaim her dignity later.  Right now was all about leaving.

“Thanks,” she said brusquely.  “It’s been fun.”

Kip looked like she’d smacked him upside the head.  “Sorry?”

She pointed toward the Avon.  “I can walk to my, um, hotel from here.”

As Kip exchanged doubtful glances with his bodyguard – whose name had been rinsed from Lou’s memory by the rising tide of alcohol – he reached out to keep Lou from tipping against a bench.  “You’re in no condition to walk anywhere.  Besides, it’s after midnight.  Stratford might not be London, but it’s no place to be alone after dark.

Wrong, Lou wanted to argue.  She’d traipsed around Stratford plenty of times in the wee hours of the morning – with Liam, of course.  They’d never heard so much as a peep of trouble.  Lou figured she could handle it once on her own.

And home wasn’t far.  All she needed to do was cross the foot bridge by the boat club.  The Evangeline was moored just past it, directly across from the theatre’s terrace.  It was a ten-minute walk at the most.  Maybe fifteen in her current state.  Okay, twenty.

“Where are you stopping?” Kip asked.

Mon bon Dieu,
Lou thought.  Where would rich people stay in Stratford?  “At a guesthouse.  A fancy one.  On the A3400.  I stay there every summer.”

“Then why did we collect you on Wood Street?”

Lost for an explanation, Lou moved her lips without uttering a sound.  She was a lousy liar even when she wasn’t drunk.  That’s why she was hiding.  She hid because she couldn’t lie.

Kip eased forward to clasp her arm.  “I just want to make sure you get home safely.  I don’t care where that home is.”

Against her better judgment, Lou met his gaze.  Kip wasn’t angry.  He didn’t seem frustrated.  But he was holding on like a dog with a bone.  A very cute dog with caring eyes and a crinkled forehead and lips hovering too close to hers.

“There are so many things you don’t understand.”

“I’d like to,” he said.

“But I don’t like you.”  Finally, Lou remembered what she was supposed to feel for Kip Richmond.  Before she knew he was human.  And vulnerable.  And an exceptional kisser.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

Yes – by doing everything right.  “No,” she argued.  “I just don’t like you.  Is that so hard to believe?  Are you really that stuck on yourself?”

“Yannick, would you give us a minute?”  Gently he steered Lou along the paved walking path that led to the riverbank.  “Am I to understand that you didn’t enjoy tonight?”

Lou wished that was the case.  Halting, she pressed a hand to her chest.  As Kip continued to grip her arm, his thumb lightly brushed her skin.

“Because I did,” he continued.  “Very much.  And whatever you need to tell me, I’ll understand that also.  I’m hardly in a position to judge.”

Fuzzily Lou tried to figure things out.  One and done.  That was her agreement with Lydia.  To consider any other options put Améline at immediate risk since her sister’s medical treatments couldn’t start until they made the first payment.  If Amy had just moved to England while their mom was alive, then none of this would be happening.

But she hadn’t.  And it was.  Lou forced herself to focus.  It wasn’t easy with Kip standing so close.

If she told Kip about the money, he might be insulted and leave.  Or he might double the offer for another date.

This was crazy, all of it.  Fortunes turned good men into criminals, her father among them.  It jumbled their moral compasses – just like it had jumbled hers.

Much as she hated to, Lou stepped away.  “All I need you to understand is that I don’t want to see you again.”

Kip appeared more curious than hurt.  “What are you not telling me, Lou?  Apart from your given name and the truth about where you’re staying.”

“I told you.  No details.”

“There are details, and there are secrets.  I won’t press you for anything you don’t want to share, but I’d like to see you again.  Even if it means I do all the talking – which will be dead boring for us both.  But if that’s a condition, I accept.”

Lou bit her lip when she started to smile.  Kip wasn’t selling snake oil.  His request was sincere, and Lou desperately wanted to say yes.

She pictured Lydia’s face.  Then Amy’s replaced it.  Then her daddy’s on his last day in court.

“You’re not hearing me, Kip.”  Lou took another step toward the river.  Distance seemed to make things easier.  “I don’t like you.  In fact, I hate you.”

He didn’t move to close the gap between them.  “I beg your pardon?”

“I hate you,” Lou said again.  “I hate the way you spend money.  I hate the way you treat women.  I hate how you’re always in the papers.  You have so many advantages, and you waste every one like the free world owes you this life.”

He stared at Lou as if she was a stranger.  “And this is what you truly believe?”

“Yes,” she insisted.  “It’s what I think of you, so please don’t think of me anymore.”

Kip winced as he stared back at her.  The lies were sinking in.  Lou didn’t know how much more convincing she could be, but hatred should be enough to get the job done.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

When he turned away, Lou roughly exhaled, her breath sounding somewhat like a sob.  An unknown sorrow rose up in her soul, one as ancient as it was strange.  Although she wasn’t crying, she might have if the tables were turned.  She hated herself for lying.  But she lied to protect those she loved.

What if Kip was supposed to be among them?

You gonna fit like a hand and a glove, ma chère.  A hand and a glove.

The memory of her maw-maw’s voice – roughened by age but still comforting – made real tears well in Lou’s eyes.  She watched Kip walk away until she couldn’t see without blinking.  Most men hated it when women cried.  Lou wondered if Kip was one of them.

She wouldn’t find out now.  Not unless she ran after him.  Apologized.  Explained.  It wasn’t too late.

But it was too late to start changing the rules.  She and Amy were still alive because they’d stuck to their guns.  Safety first.  Always.  Safety required secrets.  And lies.

Slipping off her high heels, Lou began walking in the opposite direction, away from the line of limousines and streetlamps and the gleam of the theatre’s lobby.  Swans awakened by the late-night soirée honked rudely from the river.  A swollen moon crested overhead, and in its glow Lou could see a narrowboat moored to the Avon’s southern bank.  One small lantern glimmered on its stern.  Like a
fifolet
it beckoned.

Love meant nothing if it jeopardized Améline’s health.  It meant even less if Lou wasn’t alive to feel it.

Making peace with her fate, Lou let herself cry as she walked home alone.

A
s Kip reported the previous evening’s events to his brother, his mind still fumbled for an explanation as to how he could have botched things so badly.  He’d returned to the hotel in a fog of confusion.  He slept for only a few hours.

Although Kip blamed himself for how the gala had ended, he was at a loss for where things had gone wrong.  The kiss was ill-advised, of course, but he wasn’t the one to suggest it.  Cat’s brief appearance seemed to make Lou more relaxed, not less.  That and too much champagne.

While Kip detailed the evening, Ben hardly reacted.  Even though it was a Sunday, Ben was in his home office, computers humming and mobiles buzzing.  He ran his division of Richmond Enterprises like the world might stop spinning otherwise.

Daily, Kip took it upon himself to make sure Ben knew that it wouldn’t. 

“Are you even listening?” he demanded.

“Of course,” Ben snipped.  “Stop chewing on that pen.”

“Better this than a cigarette.”

“Thank God that’s one habit you never acquired.”

Kip tossed the ballpoint pen at the center of the bed.  “So what should I do?”

From the laptop’s screen, Ben scrutinized Kip with a fleet, squinting glare.  “A shower seems to be in order.”

“I mean about Lou.”

“Thank her for being honest instead of stringing you along?”

“Is this what my life’s going to be like?”  Kip lunged for the pen.  Resisting the urge to gnaw, he twirled it like a miniature baton.  “I finally meet a nice girl, and she won’t go out with me because she thinks I’m not a nice guy.”

Ben didn’t look up from his desk.  “If she’s worth the trouble, she’ll realize you are.”

“She’s brilliant,” Kip insisted.  “The complete opposite of Cat.”

“Then she must be a nice girl.”

Even though Kip agreed, he felt compelled to defend Catrella.  “Cat had her moments.”

“Cat had her agenda.  Nothing more.  I saw it from day one.”

“You might have said something.”

“You were too far gone to hear it.”  At last Ben faced the camera with his version of undivided attention.  Lifting his mobile into view, his eyes occasionally flicked toward its screen.  “Look, Kip, if you do like this girl, then go find her.  Search for her.  Ask around.  How many Americans named Lou who aren’t Italian and male could be visiting Stratford-upon-Avon?”

“What if she doesn’t want me to find her?”

“Then she’ll do something to let you know.  Fist to the cheekbone.  Knee to the bollocks.  She’s American.  It won’t be subtle.”  Ben returned his attention to the other computers.  With his right hand, he began typing on a tablet.  “When do you leave for India?”

“In a fortnight.”

“Well, this should keep you out of trouble until then.”

As his brother’s expression glazed, Kip ended the call by shutting his laptop.  No one in his family ever said goodbye.  Or hello for that matter.  Ben could concentrate on work for days on end, but personal issues tested his patience.  If there was no clear endgame, no bottom line, then Ben lost interest within seconds.

Their mother was exactly the same.

Tossing aside the duvet, Kip checked his reflection in a mirror.  Ben was right.  He needed a shower – and a sense of closure.  Lou’s outburst was too abrupt and forced to convinced Kip that she’d meant it.  Alcohol unhinged the most sensible people.  Thank God it wasn’t his Achilles heel.

The whereabouts of Lou Aucoin was.  Kip could sit and think about her for the rest of the day, or he could make every effort to find her.  Although he and Ben were chalk and cheese, they both inherited their mother’s tenacious determination.  How each applied it frustrated the other.

Five hours later, even Kip’s concentration was waning.  Five hours of scouring the streets of Stratford with a fading hope of rediscovering his secretive date.

He’d skipped lunch for fear of wasting a minute.  Passed by Shakespeare’s birthplace at least a dozen times.  Crossed over Bridge Foot to search for Lou’s supposed hotel and traipsed down the Avon’s footpaths.  He even thought about finding the local Catholic church to see if Lou had attended Mass.  A ginger-haired American might stand out among the parishioners.

There were worse pastimes to be sure.  Stratford was one of Kip’s favorite towns, and although it lacked London’s energy, its charm more than compensated.  While some streets were a bit touristy for Kip’s tastes – Henley in particular – others testified to the town’s longevity.  Coffee shops served cappuccinos beneath Elizabethan façades.  The Garrick Inn traced its roots to Shakespeare’s day.  For every Boots or Barclays, there was an Old Thatch Tavern to offset the surge of modern commerce.

By half three, Kip was tempted to give up.  Tourists swarmed the lanes and shops with a fervor that made him weary on their behalf.  To him, all souvenir kiosks looked the same, and their sundries ranked just above rubbish.  Who needed a bottle opener bearing Shakespeare’s face?

No matter what track he followed, every route took him back to Wood Street, to the exact spot where Lou had climbed into the limo.  Already he’d walked the adjacent passageway twice.  It was one of those poky medieval inlets formed by the haphazard walls of buildings.  Someone still made use of it, judging from the hodgepodge of tables and plants and fairy lights dangling from eaves.  A pity that walls couldn’t talk.

Stomachs could, however, and his growled loudly. 

Giving in, Kip turned left into a covered arcade with a red-bricked entrance.  Its shops were practical rather than kitschy, catering to locals who needed sensible shoes and raingear not emblazoned with sonnets.  At the arcade’s inmost bend was a café that contained those same locals.  Its name might be one of Shakespeare’s characters – Kip couldn’t be sure – but nothing else of the Bard’s was on display.

Kip checked the time on his phone.  Twenty to four.  With luck they would still be serving.

A brass bell clattered when he opened the door.  None of the other patrons looked up, and Kip took stock of them as he removed his sunglasses.  No one under forty.  No one from the gala.  Anonymity was a gift he’d learned to value each and every time he received it.

Relieved, he studied the paintings that covered the walls while he waited to be seated.  All were Impressionistic and pastoral.  Some were quite good.  The café smelled of fresh scones and Sunday roast.  Its empty tables were clean with no lace curtains or doilies or crocheted tea cosies in sight.

A young woman dressed in blue jeans and a pink t-shirt emerged from a doorway curtained with steel blue fabric.  She carried a slim, single-sheet menu printed on simple white paper.  A multicolored bandana – purple, green, and gold – restrained her hair.

Her red hair.  When she started talking in an unmistakable accent, it took all of Kip’s self-control not to hug her.

Oblivious to his delight, Lou scanned the available tables.  “I’m so sorry.  Our kitchen just closed.  I can offer you tea or coffee and something from the pastry counter if you like.”

When she finally glanced up, Kip was smiling.  Grinning like an idiot, really.  The impulse to embrace Lou persisted, but he settled for telling the truth.

“I have been searching for you all day.”

Lou replied with her gobsmacked expression – one remarkably familiar to Kip in spite of how little time he’d known her.  As many secrets as Lou kept, she seemed perpetually astonished by what life tossed at her.

When the silence grew awkward, Kip stopped grinning.  “I’d love a cup of tea.”

Lou’s surprise transformed to something like horror.  “You have to leave.”

“The sign says you’re open.”

“Why are you here?”  Her voice emerged as a supercharged whisper, presumably to keep from disrupting the other patrons.  “I told you I never wanted to see you again!”

“You also told me you were on holiday.”  He matched her volume, if not her tone.  “It appears that was a lie – unless this is the sort of thing all American heiresses do when they’re summering across the Pond.  Can’t we sit down and talk for a minute?”

Lou tilted to peer out the windows.  “I wish we could, but it’s not a good idea.”

“You wish we could?  What about somewhere else?  Are you free for dinner?”

“Everything all right, Lou?”

A tall, temperate woman entered the dining area.  Calmly she wiped her hands on a towel before extending her right one to Kip.  “Moggie Wallace.”

Shaking her hand, Kip gave his name.  “Moggie,” he repeated.  “Does that make you Imogen?”

“Very good.”  She eyed him with approval.  “Most customers don’t put those two together.”

“I’m not sure I’m a customer,” he humbly confessed.  “I’ve been refused a cup of tea.”

“Well, we can’t have that.”  Moggie aimed her unflustered gaze at Lou who was flustered enough for them all.  “Why don’t you two go sit in the court?  I’ll brew you a pot.”

Lou appeared terrified.  “Moggie, I can’t.”

“You haven’t taken a proper break all day.  Hear him out, Lou.  I’ll help Beryl close up.”

Moggie wrapped an arm around Lou’s shoulders and steered her toward a side door painted in the same pastoral style as the artwork on the walls.  Kip followed close enough to catch Lou’s whispered words.

“You know what I promised.”

“And you didn’t contact him.  Stay the course.  Hear him out.”

Praying that Lou wouldn’t change her mind, Kip followed her out the door.  They entered the cloistered passageway he’d already explored twice.  Both times he passed through it, Lou had been ten feet away.

Kip moved to the nearest table and pulled out a chair.  “Shall we sit?”

Lou chose the seat opposite.  Plopping into it, she crossed her arms and fixed Kip with a critical pout.  “I thought I made it clear last night that I don’t like you.”

“Actually the word you used was ‘hate.’  Does this mean my chances are improving?”

She swiveled to the check the alley.  “Kip, please.  You need to leave.”

“Why can’t we have a cup of tea?”

“Because you don’t want a cup of tea.  You want…more.” 

Kip didn’t disagree.  “How long have you worked here?”

“Since I was nineteen.”

He lifted his eyebrows.  “So that would be…”

“Five years.”

“Is this where you live?”

“No.”

Kip sighed.  Lou wasn’t going to make this easy.  Or even moderately hard.

“I had no intention of ambushing you,” he asserted.  “We’ve each had enough of that for one weekend.  But I wanted a chance to respond to the things you said last night.  Not the lovely things.  That bit at the end.”

He paused to gauge Lou’s reaction.  Her lips softened, and her arms relaxed.  Even after a day’s work, she was incandescently pretty.

“I just want to say that, if you’re going to hate me, I’d prefer it be for the right reasons.  Reasons that are actually true.”  Lowering his gaze, he played with an empty sugar packet someone else had left on the table.  “I am, believe it or not, quite thoughtful about how I spend money.  I was raised to treat women with the utmost respect.  And while I am occasionally in the papers, it’s not something I desire.  The paparazzi took no interest in me until I began seeing Cat.  I was coming off a rather difficult time, and it made for a more lurid story.”

“I remember that,” Lou murmured.  “Something about a drug habit.”

Debating how much to share, Kip raised his eyes to meet Lou’s briefly.  She appeared to be waging a war of her own between interest and suspicion.  While Kip desperately wanted to earn her trust, she hadn’t earned his either.

Already Lou had told him more lies than he could tally.  Normally that would put Kip off completely.  But her lies weren’t driven by the typical motives – selfishness, greed, spitefulness, or shame.  Instead, she seemed almost frightened.

“Details,” he said cheekily.  “The point is, Lou, that I don’t mind if you hate me.  It’s part of the game, my brother would say.  But I don’t play it as well as he does, and comments like yours cut me quite deeply.  So if you are going to hate me, please allow me to help you find a legitimate reason.  My brother assures me it won’t be difficult.”

He raised his eyes to find Lou’s bashful smile aimed squarely at him.  Next to finding her at all, it was the high point of his day.  Kip grinned back at her until his mobile buzzed in an S-O-S pattern.  Instantly annoyed, he assumed his most apologetic expression.

“Sorry,” he said.  “Do you mind?  It’s my mother.  She won’t stop texting until I answer her.”

Lou gave a single stiff nod.  Again, she retreated, arms folding closed, while Kip pulled the smartphone from his back pocket.  Of course he would be interrupted by his mother on what was, he hoped, becoming a second date.  Unimpressive to say the least.

Kipling.

He scowled at the screen.
  Yes.

Are you still in SUA?

Yes.

Why?

He gave a grunt of frustration.
  What do you need?

Answer the question.

NOYB. WDYN?