The Contract (Nightlong #1) (10 page)

“Let’s go back to bed.”

He pulled me with him and I lay in his arms back in bed again, swaddled by him and the softest Egyptian cotton sheets known to man.

“What happened to your baby, Ciara?” he asked gently.

He’d never asked before but somewhere along the way, I’d told him I left Ireland because I lost my baby and my family went crazy on me when they found out I’d gotten pregnant from a one-night stand in a nightclub. Never mind I nearly died, and my baby died in the process. All they’d made a fuss over was the fact I was knocked up at seventeen.

“It was… ectopic, you know?”

“Growing in the wrong place,” he whispered.

“Yes. I had this really heavy bleeding, more than a normal period. I didn’t even know I was pregnant!” I gasped, choking on tears. “It was so frightening and then… just this horrendous pain, and feeling sick… I was rushed to hospital and into surgery thinking it was my appendix or something but they said they’d had to remove my left ovary.”

I buried my face in his chest, drawing solace from the warmth of his manly comfort. “It was all such a shock, it was horrible… and then, for the next year of my life they treated us like dirt. So as soon as I turned eighteen, I packed my bags and didn’t even tell them where I was going.”

I choked out all my tears, fighting hard to control my crying.

“Then I found you,” he said, leaning down to kiss my lips, and when I saw he was crying with me, it all felt so much better.

***

ON Tuesday afternoon, we finally left the bed and the bustling street of Saint-Germain behind to wander around the Jardin des Tuileries. We walked rings and rings around the gardens, talking about this and that. It being late March, it was pleasant enough but not warm, so we wore coats – his camel and mine tweed – and I valued the fact that I could wear a red woollen dress with mustard coloured tights and sky-blue Mary Janes, without looking overdressed or garish in the slightest. He looked delectable in 501s, slip-on boots and a black roll-down sweater. I had imagined he’d be eager to keep up to date with what was going on in his empire back in London… but for some reason, he wasn’t. It was all forgotten about and he’d not touched his phone… not called Sexton. He was all mine.

Before I knew where he was steering me, we began walking down the Champs-Élysées and ended up in Cartier. I knew what I wanted as soon as I saw it. A princess-cut diamond with a simple platinum band.

I was measured and then Dante arranged in French for delivery of the ring to our apartment. He seemed to think I knew no French but having been around so many French people over the course of so many weekends, I detected odd words and picked up on him telling the store assistant that we were staying in Paris for a few days more yet.

He called Sexton after that and we drove to Chanel to spend an exorbitant amount of money on make-up, dresses and fragrance.

“Did you get what I asked for?” Dante asked Sexton as we were finally driven home.

“Yes, everything.”

“What’s all the secrecy for?” I interjected.

“Sexton’s been grocery shopping for us. I decided to cook for you tonight.”

“Wow. I’d have taken that over all this lot.” I gestured at the shopping bags at our feet.

“Sweet girl, I’ve never even cooked for myself, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I’m not bad with a deep-fat fryer, so perhaps we can have fun doing it together?” I giggled and he leaned across the backseat to kiss me quickly.

“When I say I’m going to do something for someone, I do it.”

“Okay.” I didn’t miss his undertone. No doubt people came to him with some sort of mission impossible to sort out – and he always did.

He was Mr Fixer.

“So what should I wear for our home-cooked dinner, darling?”

“Something comfortable but pretty,” he told me, smiling. Then his eyes veered out of the window and I felt pensive, wondering about his thoughts and where they were taking him. What did he see in our future? Soon we were back home anyway, and while I was ham-fisted into the bathroom to enjoy myself with my new products, he got busy in the kitchen.

SITTING down to dinner at the dining table, I remarked, “I like this place better than your other.”

The Paris flat was humbler but homelier, I guessed because he spent more leisure time in the City of Lights. Making your main home your place of business too was always going to come with a cost.

“It has its charm,” he agreed.

The dining table sat in a room of its own, but a large archway in the wall meant you could see into the rest of the apartment. The living room and kitchen were combined, making them relatively open plan, and in the summer, opening the French doors at one end of the living room took the apartment out onto the terrace as well where an outdoor dining set sat under covers for the moment, it still being winter.

“You told the man in Cartier we’re in Paris for a few days more. When exactly are you taking me back?”

He didn’t seem surprised I had understood the conversation. “We’re enjoying ourselves, aren’t we? Let’s not put a date on anything, not yet.”

I stared over my wine glass, containing my favourite Bandol. That combined with the rich red wine risotto he’d prepared for us had made my head slightly hazy, but I was in no way unawares.

“I worry you’re taking risks.”

“With your safety? Never.”

“No, with your status quo. Have I come along and ruined it?”

He shook his head. “So what if you have? I can’t be a workhorse forever.”

“That’s true.”

“Ciara,” he soothed me, lightly touching my wrist with his fingers as we sat huddled around one corner of the table, “don’t do this to yourself. Let me worry about it.”

I laid my fork down slowly into my dinner. Holding my head in my hands, I remarked, “This has all happened so fast.”

“Six years is fast?”

“No! I mean… since Thursday night… it’s been insane. You proposed–”

“You’re having second thoughts?”

My head snapped back and I eyed him closely. “No. I love you!”

“But?”

“I may not have much of an education, but I’m not stupid. I sense things.”

“I have no crystal ball here,” he laughed freely, holding out his hands palm up, “no clue except I love you. What’s happening between us is unprecedented. I’ve never had a girlfriend by my side, let alone a wife while I’ve been doing this job.”

“So you kinda fell for me by accident, no?”

Shrugging, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Kinda.”

“You are such a sweet man, when you want to be. I gradually came to realise that.”

“Hmm, not too sweet I hope?”

“It can get a little sour.” I winked.

Shaking his head, he muttered, “There are beasts in all of us, no?”

“
Oui.
Different beasts… all in the same person. I believe in that.”

Grinning, he tipped some wine to his lips. “Paris suits you so, Ciara.”

“Thank you.”

“Plus, you’re taking more compliments. I like that.”

I smiled. “I feel different here, it’s true. Don’t you?”

Nodding fast, he quickly agreed, “Oh yes!”

“Still… I can’t help but worry, you know? I know we both feel relaxed and happy right now… but what about when we go back?”

“Listen,” he began, stroking my hand as he held it in his, “we’ll do whatever you want to do. Tell me what you want to do.”

I swallowed hard and focused on my wine glass, plucking up the courage to say, “How much do you have access to right now?”

“What, you mean money?”

“Yes, like cash. Hard cash. Stuff you can spend, not just capital tied up. Spending money.”

“Around a hundred ’mil,” he said, “half offshore, half in a safety deposit box in Switzerland.”

I looked into his eyes. “I don’t want to go back. Let’s escape, just us. I’ll go anywhere with you. I don’t care if we have to be poor at the end of it, but just take me away.”

He seemed stunned for a few minutes, looking anywhere but at me.

“I don’t do it for the money, I do it for the chase.”

“You mean you won’t give it up?”

“What you said about me the other day, you were right. I’m not sure I can find a replacement. The idea of it is wonderful… us going away together and being free, but you were right… I need it. I need the challenge. I’m not sure anything else compares.”

“Dante, I understand but… you can’t leave me out in the cold. I’ll want to know everything. You’ll have to tell me everything if you can’t give it up. If I’m with you and you have to be what you are… I’ll need to know all your secrets.”

He began stirring his half-eaten meal and I picked up my fork, too.

“So, let’s say… we have this break… you stay with me in Paris a few days more, then we go home and deal with everything. No lies.”

“You mean it?” I blurted, surprised.

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“But while we’re here,” he insisted, swallowing his food, “no questions, no worries. I mean it, that’s my job. I want this time to be perfect. I want you to be happy and carefree. I want to give you everything.”

“Funny,” I said, feeling sick, “I want the exact same things for you.”

He kissed my hand. “I understand.”

“What about your… tastes,” I asked gently, “are you going to explain your persuasion… to the sub or the dom role of our switching dynamic?”

“We’ll figure it all out. Just give me time.”

I nodded and dug into my food. “You can cook, you know?”

“I am a perfectionist.”

“I believe it.”

HE COOKED FOR ME EACH night in Paris after that, seemingly pleased when I gave his food a thumbs up. Gathering ingredients everyday and giving himself something complex to do seemed to make him happy.

We spent our days mostly walking around. We did get to the Père Lachaise in civilised daylight hours and I gave the glass surrounding Oscar Wilde’s tomb my signature kiss, which made Dante horny enough to want to kiss me behind a tree in a quiet corner of the cemetery. We didn’t dare anything more during daylight hours, not with people milling all around.

He took me to the Eiffel Tower for lunch one day and I realised how simple his own tastes were when he ordered tuna niçoise. I’d never thought about it before but he always ordered extravagant dishes for me, accompanied by extravagant wines, but it was nearly always the same French cognac for him and whatever salad looked good.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked as we sat in the Jules Verne restaurant, so high up in the sky it felt like all the noise of the city was miles and miles away.

He daubed his mouth with a napkin. “Here and… there.”

I thought about the way he’d driven around town that night, knowing all the little streets, all the ways to get to the cemetery, even in the dark. Paris central was small really but to say Sexton was the one driving us around a lot, Dante knew the streets well too.

“Paris?”

“Was one of the places we spent time in, yes.”

“We?”

He must have known my questions were coming, but I knew he’d rather answer them in the privacy of our home, not in public. However at home, he could just throw me beneath him and I’d forget what I was even thinking about.

“Me, my parents… and…” He shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“Who else? Your brother?”

“How did you guess?”

I sniffed. “You don’t seem to know women very well. I guessed if you’d ever been close to anyone, it would be a brother.”

He nodded slightly. “How don’t I know women?”

“You thought I was sticking around for the good of my health? I’ve been siphoning money from you for years. I could’ve got away–”

“You couldn’t–”

“Could.”

He leaned forward. “I knew you loved me, but I couldn’t–”

Cutting him off, not wanting his fervent answers in a public place, I shot him down. “Women can be much crueller than men.”

“I know that.”

“Use our wiles, reel you in… ensnare…”

“What are you saying?” He looked up at me with surprised eyes.

“How do you even know I really love you? I could be playing you to get myself free… I could be using you for all this stuff.”

“I have a wonderful mother, Ciara,” he snapped, “so don’t tell me I don’t know women. I have an extraordinarily warm and loving mother.”

I turned my head to the side, heat behind my eyes. “Yeah, well I didn’t.”

Talk of family riled me. I couldn’t help feeling resentment for everything that had happened to me.

“You don’t think I see you?”

“No.” I continued to avoid his eyes.

“I didn’t pursue your heart because I didn’t want to risk your life, and you didn’t pursue mine because you don’t think you’re worth anything to anyone. Well, you’re wrong. You’re everything to me.”

I gulped and glanced at his eyes, but I couldn’t look at him, on the cusp of exploding into a million tears. All this new love was driving me insane.

“Tell me a story about him, your brother. Tell me anything. I don’t want to cry, not here,” I begged, looking around us at all the stiff Parisians enjoying business meetings, and all the crass Americans sat on their phones or with their maps out.

I couldn’t take the world at times like this and in the farthest corner of my heart of hearts, I was prepared to admit I had hidden from the world, using Dante’s contract to justify my exclusion. I would never tell him that, but maybe he already knew.

Everything at the dinner table suddenly felt… tense. I needed him to talk and whip me from my thoughts.

“Daltrey was three years older than me.”

I lifted a hand slowly to my mouth and looked at him, his face set like stone. “Go on.”

“I chose that word because I knew I’d never be able to say it unless really necessary… and all I wanted was for you to punish me. Luckily, you’re not a sadist so you never push too far.”

I swallowed hard, but there was no saliva. Taking a sip of water, I mumbled, “What happened to him?”

“He was murdered… but we never found out who.”

“What about your parents? Where are they in all this?”

“They divorced after it happened.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

He winked. “Mum’s better off.”

“So, you still see her?”

“Now and again. Not as often as I should. Whenever I see her, she begs me to quit what I’m doing, so I concoct excuses not to see her. I tried to keep my job from her like I’ve kept it from you… but it was early on in my career and a couple of dodgy clients later, I had to tell her just in case anything happened to me. Then she went and blabbed to my father about what it is I do.”

“Blabbed?”

“I haven’t seen him in a decade, since it all happened. He took himself off, somewhere he feels the pain less. He and Mum had a strange, sort of open relationship, and even now they’re still the best of friends. I hear he’s wallowing in the bottom of a very large bottle of tequila in Nevada somewhere. He always loved Sin City and last I heard, he was running a legal brothel out in the sticks.”

I laughed. “Oh my.”

“He’s some character, right?”

“What about the clothing business?”

“I bought Dad out when Daltrey died and now, I use it to cover up the other thing I do. I was like a machine and set up the agency to gain intelligence… to gain contacts. The police were useless, my brother’s death not important enough for them to pass it onto the hush-hush departments, you know? So I started doing what I do now. It was the only way I could cope. I got on with trying to nail the killer as well as fixing other people’s problems in exchange for not just money but information and loyalty too. Sad thing is, all this time has passed and I’ve still not found out who put a bullet in my brother’s brain. The schedules and the order I keep help my sanity and the people who work for me realise that the only way I cope is by having everything just right.”

I wondered… because from watching crime dramas, I’d learnt that most murders were committed by someone the victim knew. Perhaps Dante had overlooked someone close to Daltrey.

I reached for his hand. “I understand. So, what do you know about Daltrey’s death?”

He tapped the table with his fingers. “My brother was a junior doctor. I have no idea why he had to die. He got shot through the head on his way home from work one night, the work of someone trained to kill.”

He paused and the weight of his grief fell out of him and onto the table between us. Him telling me all this felt so profound, like Daltrey’s death had defined him. “He was going to be a paediatrician, saving lives. Instead, I got to live, and he died. I don’t understand why. He was a saint in comparison to me.”

My love looked so stone cold about it all. It was over a decade ago, but the trauma still held him hostage in his day-to-day life, I could tell.

“So, why are we safe in Paris? Not so much there?”

“It’s not so much about being safe, it’s just nobody knows me here. In London I’m a millionaire, here I’m just me, people don’t care.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” I asked, sensing he was keeping something from me. Paparazzi weren’t exclusive to London after all.

“People don’t see my face when they contact
the fixer
,” he said under his breath, “nobody knows that I do that too, except for my team. They’re all under strict contracts.”

“Well… there is that. You do like a contract.” I winked, clinking my glass against his.

“Besides, my ghosts don’t live here, not like in London. It’s something I can’t explain but when we come to Paris, I’m a different person. London holds bad memories. That’s all I can tell you in a public place like this.”

While he scoped the room, I thought about his work. Was it violent? Was it legit…?

“So nobody knows to put your face to the fixer’s, then?”

“Correct.” He stabbed his dinner and chomped.

“Who precisely do you agent for? What does your business entail?”

He put his cutlery down and folded his hands, a glint in his eye. “If I were to tell you Cornish was one of mine, might that give you an idea?”

“You mean…” I bit my lip, looking around the room, “…people like him come to you with a problem, and you clean it up? You protect their image? Do whatever is necessary.”

“That’s not a badly uninformed summation, Ciara.”

I shook my head. “But there’s more to it?”

He took my hands in his and whispered, “It involves lots of money changing hands, it involves bribes and corruption and knowing who to trust… but it also encapsulates protection and building protection from the very beginning… from the very moment a star becomes promising. My networks are established and before someone is even famous, they log their interest and I watch them from afar. Call it insurance.”

“So they’re on your books early on?”

“Yes,” he winked, “and they pay out big time when they realise how valuable I am.”

“How do you build trust?” I asked, intrigued.

“With great care and attention. What I do hasn’t happened overnight. I built everything from scratch, I laboured and took risks… I waited patiently. My team was carefully handpicked and outside of them and you, there are only a handful of people who know I am The Fixer. People I trust implicitly.”

People like Sexton? But who else…?

“What job did you do before Daltrey died?”

He smiled. “I was a failed law student, well… I was in Dad’s eyes. You could say academia bored me to tears. Dad wanted me to go even though he never pursued any kind of academic study himself. He thinks that all children born into aristocracy have to go to university, even if it’s not for them.”

I squinted. “How the hell does an aristocrat end up running a brothel?”

He shook his head from side to side, a little more light than usual in his eyes from being able to unburden himself of all this. “My father grew up dirt poor, absolutely dirt poor. He was a self-made millionaire. My mother’s family are the aristocrats. My father was the one who never felt worthy… and back off to worthlessness he goes whenever anything goes wrong.”

I chewed my lip. “So, you quarrelled with your dad over dropping out of school and he legged it to Vegas?”

He smiled with an innocent glint in his eyes. “I wish it were as simple as that.”

“So, what happened?”

“He told me I needed discipline, needed an education to put me in a better position to deal with the money I was due to inherit. When I dropped out of school, he told me I was on my own, and that if I fucked up he wouldn’t bail me out.”

“So, what does he think of the fixing?”

“He thinks that’s bollocks.”

I laughed. “Oh I see. So it wouldn’t matter what you did, nothing would ever be good enough?”

“Well, yes and no. He knows I’ll always side with Mum, no matter their argument, and that was the first bone of contention between us. Me being a mummy’s boy, so to speak. I’m a lot less forgiving than she is you see and she tells me what he’s up to. If you think my tastes are rare, Ciara… well, you haven’t met my father. He built up an empire to seek some sort of self-worth only to end up tossing himself back in the gutter when it all went to shit… when the light of our family died out. The good son. The pure one, dead suddenly. Dad’s never had any self-worth and what little he had left, he gave away the minute Daltrey lay six feet under.”

“You reckon he worked like a dog building up the clothing company, trying to prove himself?”

“And then I bought out his entire life’s work didn’t I? With just the push of a pen. He hates me, Ciara. Hates I got Mum’s good looks. Hates that I got the keys to the kingdom. Hates that while he had it rough, I got it easy… if only that were fucking true. Daltrey dying killed me too, if only he could see that. You know?”

I took his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

He blinked quickly, trying to prevent himself shedding tears. “He’s jealous of me. He’s hurt. We don’t have a relationship, not that we ever did anyway.”

“So, what did you inherit? I only ask out of curiosity–”

He smiled, not suspicious, but impressed I wanted to know his worth. “My mother’s brother, Lord Barlow… he left me all his money.”

“
That
Lord Barlow,” I spat, referencing the one who was gay, worked in government, went to prison for corruption and wrote his memoirs while there. It seemed feasible he might leave all his wealth to Daltrey if he had no children of his own…

“Why didn’t Daltrey get the money, being the eldest?”