Walking quickly back through the restaurant and toward the car, I saw Marcy talking to my husband, who was smoking and pacing.
“Wow, you look like you’ve got a fever,” she said. “You should skip the play and go home until whatever you have works its way out of your system.”
I feigned a smile of thanks and dropped into the passenger seat.
My husband got in and asked if I wanted to go home.
“No, I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Though I’d been looking forward to the performance, it passed before my unseeing eyes as I recovered from the storm that was raging within me.
Marcy called me at work the following Friday morning to tell me that she’d be over for dinner, but had to leave early. And that she was bringing Walter, instead of Rain.
“What?” I asked, amazed.
“Well, Rain’s on his way out of town, and you remember Walter, he’s the CFO at that administrative firm. Anyhow, I’ve got to make it a short night and if I bring Walter—”
I interrupted her midsentence. “What? He didn’t tell me he was leaving!”
“Who, honey, Rain? I just found out this morning when he texted me. He’s going to Vegas to check something out. Anyhow,
it wasn’t going anywhere with us.” I held my breath, waiting for her to put it together, to respond to my exclamations, to tell me she’d noticed a strand of my long blonde hair adorning his T-shirt or jeans. She paused a moment, then continued with more about Walter.
My mind raced. No more Fridays with Rain. In a way it was a relief because Rain and I had taken too many chances. If he continued to come over, we would probably get tipsy one night and end up fucking in my bathroom while Marcy and my husband debated politics. I didn’t want to keep going in that direction.
As Marcy was saying good-bye, I heard the muted beep of my phone, alerting me to a new email. My heart raced when I looked at the screen. It was from Rain.
His message said,
I’m in Vegas for the weekend. Sorry to leave suddenly. Got an offer that I had to see to believe, doing Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
for a fountain at the premiere hotel. It’ll be an incredible piece of art. Join me.
Attached was a tick-etless confirmation in my name for a 10:45 flight to Vegas. That night.
Join me.
Two simple words carried such weight. I sent him a response, congratulating him on his job and saying I didn’t see how I could get away on such short notice. The words felt inadequate, dismissive. He’d put my feet to the fire; I jumped away before I would get burned.
The day passed by, as did the evening—with Walter, and not Rain. My husband was a bit disappointed at first, as he’d considered Rain as interesting a diversion as Marcy had. I was distracted, asking myself if I believed that, too; if I should just appreciate that he had reawakened essential parts of my being, but stop seeing him.
Marcy and Walter begged off before we’d even cleared the dinner plates from the table. I offered to pack dessert, but they both declined. So I sat at the dining room table savoring a cup of hot tea and my homemade biscotti while my husband went upstairs to watch some TV before calling it a night. It was just nearing nine.
After washing my dishes, I retrieved the note I’d typed at work from my briefcase and left it propped up against the fresh flowers on the table, to explain—as best I could. Then I walked out through the foyer of my perfect little house. And caught that flight to Vegas.
THE HARD WAY
Justine Elyot
I
’m offering you a choice,” he says, and I know exactly what comes next. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
The script is so familiar. In my three years as duty solicitor at the Maiden Street police station, I’ve heard Detective Sergeant Blake utter this phrase countless times. Sometimes whichever random villain I’m representing will choose the easy way—he or she will spill the beans, confess all, finger the Mr. Big behind the operation, and then Blake will smile his earnest smile, reassure them that it will be okay, pat them on the shoulder while they gibber about witness protection. Far more often, they plump for the latter option, in which case Blake has to bring out the big guns. Of course, I don’t mean that literally. Blake’s arsenal is wholly psychological, but it is no less deadly for that. An implication here, a tut and a shake of the head, a casual mention of a family member or acquaintance—I have seen all of these reduce a strong man to a crumpled, tear-stained wreck. He has mastered the art of being both good and bad cop simultaneously,
and I cannot help admiring him for it. More than admiring. Desiring.
So which will it be? Easy or hard? The rules are a little different tonight. I do not preside over some sulking youth in a hoodie; there is no set of tattooed knuckles next to mine on the table. Indeed, there is no table. There is Blake and there is me, and we are on a bed. The situation has changed, as has the dynamic, but the question remains.
I push back my shoulders, lift my chin, meet his eyes.
“Make it hard,” I tell him.
He smiles, his eyes firing, his ego challenged.
“You’ve never been easy,” he says. “I just hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
I think I do. God knows, I’ve studied the man long and hard. Three years of watching him, long legs pacing, fingers stroking chin, eyes distant with calculation, while I count down to the spring, the trap, the coup de grâce. I have learned to expect it, but the suspects never do; they are always caught off guard. They don’t know that little quiver of cheek muscle, the slow tumble of hair over his brow, the impatient tap of forefinger that comes before the moment of doom. I know all of it intimately now.
I’ve also savored the gently intensifying wall of attraction between us that has grown up, brick by brick, with each interview. When he is the interviewing officer, I pay that extra bit of my attention, and when I accompany the suspect into the room, his eyes crinkle and the sides of his mouth twitch up. He teases me; there is subtle flirtation and the odd accidental brush of hands. I never thought anything would come of it, though, until tonight.
He is staring through the window, his back to us as I enter the room with Ginger, a shambolic teenager who seems almost
more addicted to bungling shoplifting raids than he is to heroin. Blake’s partner, Viv, opens the interview, switching on the recorder and speaking into it. “Interview started at twenty-one fifteen,” she says, pulling out a seat for me.
Throughout the brief and unchallenging interview, Blake says nothing, brooding over at us from the side of the room. Viv handles the questions alone, negotiating a quick falling-apart-at-the-seams from a hapless Ginger and ending up with a confession.
“Thanks,” says Viv, nodding briskly at me and escorting Ginger from the room. I stand to leave, unsettled by Blake’s peculiar demeanor, but my movement finally precipitates speech from him.
“Stay,” he says.
“Stay? Why?” I let myself sink back into the molded plastic. “Are you okay, Detective Sergeant?”
“You can call me Ben,” he says.
“After all these years…”
“It’s Ellen, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Listen, I should…”
“You should. I should. We should. I’ve had some news tonight. I wanted to share it with you.”
He comes to sit opposite me, swooping down and clasping his fingers. I can see that his eyes are burning blue. Whatever it is, it’s firing him up.
“So then?” I open. The toe of his shiny black work shoe nudges my patent pump.
“I’ve been promoted. I’m DI Blake now. Detective Inspector.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” His grin is vulpine. His foot inches forward until our calves rub together. “The promotion involves a transfer.
I’m leaving Maiden Lane. I’ll be based at Stafford Row from now on.”
“Oh.” I can’t conceal the falling of my face. “I’ll miss you.”
“I was hoping you would.” His face is close to mine, the tip of his beaky nose blurring out of focus, his eyes still glassy-brilliant as ever. “I’ll miss you, too. But we won’t work together anymore, so…”
“So?”
“So…this.” He darts forward and his lips touch mine. It’s a whisper of a kiss, no more than a promise really, but it rocks me sideways. He hooks a leg around mine, capturing it. “If you want.”
“I do want. Yes. I think I do.”
He pushes my notebook aside and scoops up my hands until they are cocooned within his, held tightly inside, clenched into heart shapes.
“Are you going to interview me?” I ask with a low laugh, suddenly absurdly nervous.
“Interview you?” he says, kissing the captive hands. “Interrogate you. Put you under pressure. Make you sing like a canary.”
“Here?”
He uncoils, releases me, throwing his head back and blinking at the ceiling, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s doing or saying.
“No, of course, not here.” He snaps back to life, his lip curled in erotic challenge. “Where then?”
“Not my place, I’m afraid. I’m having an extension built; it’s chaos. Dusty chaos.”
“My flat then. It’s not far.”
He helps me from my chair and pulls me in close, bumping foreheads.
“You lawyers are a slippery lot,” he murmurs. “But you aren’t. Are you going to slip through my fingers?”
“I don’t think there’s a legal precedent,” I tell him, intoxicated by his scent. “I’ll let myself be guided by you.”
“You do that.”
On the short drive to his docklands apartment, we talk haltingly, as if we have only just met and picked each other up. Despite the three years of professional involvement and mutual attraction, we are strangers.
“Did you always want to do this?” I ask him.
“Oh, yeah.” He flicks his eyes away from the darkened streets to meet mine with an abashed smile. “I had to train myself not to check you out all the time I was questioning suspects. I had to pretend you were some old scrote with a boil on the end of his nose, otherwise the thieves would have run rings around me.”
“That’s so strange.” I am hugging myself, thrilled at this disclosure. “You know, I’ve felt the same way. For a very long time.”
He turns the corner and drives down a ramp to an underground parking lot.
“Good,” he says.
We make it to his front door in a shuffling tango, bodies intertwined, lips clashing, before falling through into the hallway. We half stagger, half crawl to the bedroom, landing on the bed in an urgent heap, ready to fulfill the night’s promises.
“DS Blake. Ben.” I snatch a second of lip freedom to speak his name.
“What? Don’t talk. Keep kissing. Get your clothes off.”
“I want you to…”
He pulls at my blouse, stretching the buttons to their limits.
“What? Name it. I’ll do it. Just as soon as you’re naked.”
“Interview me.”
He is taken aback by this; his fingers freeze and then retract from my buttons and he lies back on one elbow, surveying me as he would one of his more dangerous malcontents.
“What? Interview you?”
“Yes. I love your technique. It turns me on.”
His chuckle starts off bemused then turns wicked halfway through.
“Yeah? You like that, do you? Like to be grilled?”
“I think you have a way about you. It’s very masterful. Professionally and sexually.”
“Masterful, eh? I suppose you’ll want me to get the cuffs out then.”
“Well, I…wouldn’t object.” I worry that I have said too much. He will write me off as a deviant freak.
But his playful demeanor is unchanged as he leans back to scrabble about in a bedside cabinet.
“You keep them in the bedroom!”
“Of course. Where else?”
We are singing from the same hymn sheet. Hallelujah.
He sits back up, dangling shiny metal chain-linked cuffs in front of my face.
“Let’s be having you then,” he says.
I offer him my wrists. He traces their veins with a caressing fingertip, reducing me to an essence of desire, before suddenly closing his fist around them and snapping the bracelets locked behind my back.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” he breathes. “What have you been up to, Ms. Carrington? I never thought I’d see you here. Anything you need to get off your chest?”
He flicks at the blouse buttons so that the top two slide open. Beneath the white silk, my chest and collarbone rise and fall against his hand.
“I’ve been set up,” I tell him. One finger slips inside the silk and strokes the slope of a breast.
“Oh, I know, love. They framed you. You’re innocent. I’ve heard it all before, a thousand times. But the evidence says otherwise, doesn’t it?”
His sorrowful smile looks so genuine. It always does. He always looks as if the felon’s fall from grace is breaking his heart.
I jut out a lower lip. “I didn’t do it, officer.”
He takes my chin in a hand, leans down to kiss the lie from my lips.
“Yes, you did,” he says. “I’m offering you a choice. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
The frisson that sizzles from my throat to my groin is strong, very strong. I am wetter than wet; I want to moan with need, to throw back my neck and invite him to plunge down and take me.
I push back my shoulders, lift my chin, meet his eyes.
“Make it hard,” I tell him.
He smiles, his eyes firing, his ego challenged.
“You’ve never been easy,” he says. “I just hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, holding me still, while he forcefully unfastens the rest of my blouse buttons, letting the silk swing open over my breasts. When it is untucked from my skirt, he rests his palms at the sides of my rib cage and puts his lips on my ear.
“You asked for it.”
One hand slaps the seat of my skirt; I jump, as far as it is possible to jump when one is on one’s knees, and yelp.