“Shouldn’t or couldn’t?” he smiles. “This man... did he fight it as hard as you?”
“No,” I sigh. “There, I said it. How liberating. He didn’t want me. Only my brain. We make money together. He wants that. Just that.”
Warm fingers brush the hair from my bare shoulders. His breath on my neck. Vincent Blackthorne’s breath on my neck. My fucking God. How fucking surreal.
“This man must be an idiot,” he says.
“He is,” I laugh. “He’s such a prick. He’s uptight, and controlling, and difficult, and a workaholic. He always has to be right. All the fucking time. He’s an idiot.”
“His loss is another man’s gain.” Vincent’s voice is like satin. His touch, too. “I, too, want your brain.” His lips touch my neck, and I shiver. He feels so good. “But I also want your body... I want your laugh... I want your soul, my sweet bird.”
Shit. I’m drunk. So drunk. And his words sound like heaven.
“Stay with me... stay here...” He turns my face to his. “Say you will stay with me. I need a muse, my beautiful magpie. A beautiful creature to inspire my beautiful words. You will be her. You will be my muse.”
“Stay? On holiday? My flight goes tomorrow...”
Dark eyes capture me. Solid hands take mine. I’m floating on air, high in the Prealps, in the gaze of a master. “No holiday,” he breathes. “Just stay…”
I’m nodding. I can’t even believe that I’m nodding, but I am.
He smiles, perfect white teeth. “And what about this man? What about the man who could have meant something?”
I hold out my glass for more Prosecco. “Fuck him.”
***
Andy
“And what about this man? What about the man who could have meant something?”
My magpie dazzles me with her beautiful eyes. They sparkle like the bubbles of Prosecco in the lamplight. She holds out her glass for more. A toast, her smile says, before she answers my question about that man. The man waiting for her back home. That stupid man who let his beautiful bird flutter into my open arms.
“Fuck him,” she says.
And I know my pretty bird is here to stay.
Fuck him.
The words jumped off the fucking screen at me. Who’d have fucking thought the Look Inside option on Amazon would give you such a perfect fucking snippet.
Infuriating, snotty fucking cow, waltzing back in, wanting everything on a silver platter without so much as the courtesy of a straight fucking answer. Turns out I was finding my own.Fuck him. He’s a prick. He’s an idiot.I flicked my lawyer’s card around my fingers over and over. I should make the call, man up and start sorting out my fucking mess. Maybe I could own up to myoversights. Offer her a deal to be gone and finished and out of my fucking business, once and for all.
We’d never make it any length of time in the same airspace. Especially not now I knew how things really fucking went down in Venice. Not without killing each other.
Or at least causing each other grievous bodily harm.
My cock betrayed me at the thought, totally and utterly. Un-fucking-real.
Fuck him. He’s such a fucking prick. Such an idiot.
I slammed the card back in the drawer, and dialled the bar extension.
***
Chapter Seven
Faye