Wishing Well(69)
My heart fractured again. And while trying to swallow past the knot of emotion his words conjured, I realized something about Maurice: it wasn’t that he couldn’t talk - his vocabulary and tone were normal in that moment - it was something else that made communication difficult for him. Maybe because we were ‘friends’, the words were coming easier to him.
“I’m sorry about your mom. My dad died a little over two years ago.”
Nodding, he refused to look at me. “I didn’t like my Papa. He was-“
His teeth clenched together so hard I could hear them scrape. Shaking it off, he said, “You should go,” his voice was tightly controlled.
A live wire, frayed at the end, Maurice struggled against some emotional turmoil, his energy - his pain - bleeding across the table. I opened my mouth to ask what I could do, I reached across, but pulled my hand back when his expression twisted, when it was all he could do to tell me to get out. Fear took hold of me, concern, and I found myself bolting for the hallway, running past the dancing flames of fire sconces to shove the key into the elevator slot, my fingers tapping the code as glass shattered in the distance and tears rolled down my cheeks.
Not knowing what I’d said or what I’d done, I pressed my back against the elevator wall as the doors slid closed, my body sinking to the ground, my head snapping up with the expectation that Vincent would be waiting when the doors slid open again.
He wasn’t. The employee halls were empty. The hotel silent except for the muted echo of conversations floating in from the lobby.
Forcing myself to my feet, I hit the button for the fifth floor and took the elevator up. My feet were practically dragging as I made my way to my room, let myself in and stripped away my clothes in route to the shower. By the time my skin had turned pink beneath the spray of hot water and steam, I glanced at a clock to see that I was expected in Vincent’s suite in a half hour.
I didn’t bother to dry my hair or care about the clothes I pulled on, and by the time I was knocking on Vincent’s door I resembled a drowned rat. His expression said as much when he pulled the door open, his lips slightly parted as if he’d planned to say something but had lost the words as soon as his eyes caught mine.
“That bad?” He finally asked after clearing his throat.
Stepping inside the suite, absolutely hating the man walking behind me, I didn’t stop until I was at the sidebar trying to remember what Vincent had mixed to make the drinks he always gave me.
I knew why I was here. I knew the demands he’d make of me, and when his hands landed on my shoulders, his fingers gripping down as if to massage the muscles, I flinched beneath his touch. “Not as bad as right now,” I answered. Picking up a bottle to read the label, I set it down, jerked away from his hold and turned to face him. “If you’re going to make demands of me, you could at least get me drunk.”
Arrogance cocked his brow, amusement curling his lips. “You act like you know why I wanted you up here.”
One slow blink and then: “What other reason could there be, Vincent? You told me I have no choice in anything. And knowing you, you’ll threaten me with kicking me out of the hotel, leaving me penniless and homeless unless you get your way. So, here I am.”
“Yes,” he responded, his thumb running across his lip in suspicion. “Here you are. Without a word of complaint, in fact. How very unlike you.”
I hadn’t intended to submit to anything on my way up to Vincent’s suite, but now that I was here - now that I had the opportunity - I decided to play my own games. Vincent wanted to force me to submit to his whims. I wanted answers. Perhaps by giving him what he wanted, by pretending that he still had the ability to hurt me, I could discover the information I needed to help Maurice.
“Will you make me a drink, or not?”
His shoulders shook with a bark of laughter. “Are you really that eager?”
I nodded my head. “Eager to get this over with.”
Leaning down, Vincent held his mouth a teasing inch from my ear. “Then why the need for the drink?” Pausing, his breath was a beat trailing down my neck. “Take off your shirt, Penelope.”
Stepping out from between Vincent and the sidebar, I stripped off the shirt that was damp at the shoulders and down the back from my hair. I hadn’t bothered to wear underwear beneath my frumpy clothes, hadn’t cared to seduce a man that was only using me for his own amusement.
Vincent’s smile was mistrustful, but he edged closer regardless. When he was near enough to reach out and touch me, I took a step back. “I have a question I want to ask.”
His eyes drifted from my breasts to my face. “I might have an answer.”
“Where did Maurice get all those scars on his chest?”
The humor in Vincent’s expression was gone, his body becoming still. “He let you see those?”
Confusion addled my thoughts. “Yes. Why?”
A line of concern wrinkled Vincent’s brow, his phone ringing from another room at the same time. Turning to glance in the direction of the sound, he asked, “What happened while you were down there tonight?”
Convinced he was going to be angry that I’d had sex with Maurice after his explicit instruction not to, I said nothing as the phone went to voicemail only to immediately ring again. Cursing under his breath, Vincent shot me a look that could kill before marching into the other room to answer. What I heard from the other room trapped my breath in my lungs, worry seizing my heart between its crushing fingers.