His Belt (Part Eight) Read online

  “Until I figure out the problem.”

  “And what’s the problem, again?”

  “I told you. It’s pitching to Jessica Chase. I can’t compete on money, so I need to compete on something else.”

  He glances over at me, and I know what he’s thinking – that I should have taken the job as head of the new Ravish line when he’d offered it to me, instead of staying with my current job in clean romance. Then I would have had the almost unlimited marketing budge that would have come from launching a new line with an established author like Jessica.

  “Don’t say it,” I warn, picking up the pace just a little bit. I’m struggling to keep my breathing rate down and not burn out, but I need to run off this frustration.

  “Okay. If you can’t compete on money, then what can you compete on?”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say, rolling my eyes. I already feel bad enough about the situation. He doesn’t have to rub it in my face.

  “It wasn’t a rhetorical question, Abigail. If you can’t compete on money, then what can you compete on?”

  “Established brand, “ I say automatically. Our line is established. It isn’t going anywhere. It might not have been making a ton of money, but it wasn’t being cut. A new line was always a gamble – even with the marketing money that was behind a new line, it could fail. Or exist for a few seasons or years, and then slowly fade off into nothing.

  “What else?”

  “Editorial relationship.” I’d been Jessica’s editor from the beginning. I know she trusted me with her work.

  “Good. What else?”

  “I can make her lead title. Promise her prominent placement in stores. An end cap display.”

  “Lucy is going to promise her all those things, too.”

  “I know.” The frustration makes me up my pace even more, pumping my legs until they ache. “I need something else,” I pant. Next to me, Elijah keeps up easily, as if we’re out for a Sunday stroll. “Something amazing.”

  I run faster, harder, my legs pumping. Elijah falls into step beside me, slowing down when I slow down, going faster when I go faster.

  We run. And run. And run, the only sound the pump of our legs and the rise and fall of our breathing.

  Finally, when I’m spent, I slow my pace until I’m at a walk.

  Elijah ducks into a café and returns with a bottle of water. He uncaps it and offers it to me. I take a sip and then hand it to back to him.

  “How are you in such good shape?” I demand, pulling my leg up behind me to stretch out my quads.

  He shrugs and takes a pull from the water bottle.

  “How many hours a day do you work out?”

  “I don’t measure my workouts in time,” he says ominously. “I go by results.”

  “When do you even have time to work out?” I ask.

  “I don’t sleep.”

  I finish stretching and we start walking, making our way down the streets of Manhattan. Steam rises from the sewer grates, cabs honk their horns, and the sky is a dark indigo shimmering with the lights of the high-rise lofts and businesses that line the street.

  “You seem to sleep fine,” I grumble, then catch the look on his face as he hands me back the water bottle.

  “Drink,” he commands, looking away from me quickly. “You need to stay hydrated.”

  Is it possible that he’s been sleeping better since I’ve been in his bed? I don’t have time to contemplate what this means, because suddenly, Elijah’s taking my hand and leading me purposely down the street.

  “You need to eat,” he declares.

  “What?” I shake my head. “I don’t need to eat.” It’s a knee jerk reaction though, my default being to go against him when he’s being bossy. Because even as I’m saying the words, my stomach is grumbling.

  And when his fingers tighten around mine and he pulls me into a restaurant, the warm notes of garlic and oregano wafting through the air, my mouth waters.

  It takes my eyes a second to adjust to the dimness of the restaurant – even though it’s dark outside, the lights of the city leant a subdued brightness over the streets and the buildings.

  In here the lights are turned down low, the muted flames of tea candles at every table adding just a faint gleam to the room.

  So it takes me a second to realize that this place is super fancy, and that Elijah and I are woefully underdressed.

  “I think we should go somewhere el— ” I start to say, but before I can finish my sentence, the maitre’d is glancing up from his station, his eyes lighting on Elijah. Instantly, he springs into action, grabbing menus.

  “Mr. Armstrong,” he says, walking around the station and doing what seems to be a little bow. “I wasn’t aware you were dining with us tonight, sir.”

  “It was spur of the moment,” Elijah says.

  “Yes, of course.” The maitre’d turns his attention to me. “Good evening, miss.”

  “Hello.” I hold my hand out for him to shake.

  “Daniel, this is my girlfriend, Abigail,” Elijah says. “Abigail, this is Daniel, the best maitre’d in the city.”

  “You’re too kind, Mr. Armstrong.” Daniel reaches out and takes my hand, shaking it in that half-shake, half-squeeze way that rich people in New York do. Surprise flits over his features, but no one is more surprised than me. Elijah introducing me as his girlfriend? I tamp down the rush of ecstasy that blooms inside of me.

  “Would you like your usual table, sir?” Daniel asks.

  “That would be wonderful, Daniel, thank you.” Elijah’s hand tightens around mine as we’re led to the back of the restaurant, then upstairs to a private event room. It’s huge and open, with sweeping views of the city and its sparkling lights.

  The room is empty – there’s no event going on tonight – and Daniel leads us across the open space and through a pair of French doors that lead out to a private balcony.

  A circular table covered in a crisp white tablecloth sits in the middle of the balcony, along with two chairs upholstered in black and white. Elijah pulls my chair out for me as Daniel lights the tea lights that are in the tiny holders scattered around the table. They’re silver with tiny crescent cutouts on the side, and the flames shimmer and dance, casting light and shadow onto the tablecloth.

  “Here is our menu,” Daniel says, setting two heavy leather volumes down on the table. “But of course the chef will be happy to fix whatever you desire.”

  “Thank you, Daniel,” Elijah says smoothly, as if it’s totally normal to be at a restaurant and get private seating and your choice of food even if it isn’t on the menu.

  Daniel leaves, and Elijah regards me over the table. “What are you hungry for, Ms. Bennett?”

  The way he’s looking at me makes my skin prickle. I reach for the menu. Everything sounds fancy and delicious -- Italian but fancy Italian, the kind that’s all made from scratch with imported ingredients that probably cost more than my cell phone bill.

  Daniel returns a moment later with a bottle of wine. “Compliments of the chef,” he says, uncorking it expertly and pouring Elijah and me each a glass.

  He disappears again, and I take a sip of the wine, almost moaning at the smoothness of it. I know nothing about wine, but I do know that this is nothing like the kind of wine I usually get at the corner bodega.

  I take another sip.

  “Pace yourself, Ms. Bennett,” Elijah says, swirling his own glass around, letting the wine breathe. Right. I forgot I was supposed to do that. “We don’t want you tipsy.”

  “Why not?” I say boldly. “I can be drunk if I want to be.”

  “If you’re drunk, I won’t be able to do what I want to you later. And that is unacceptable.”

  His eyes are still on me, and my skin prickles again. His presence is so overpowering that he draws my attention even though the city is laid out in front of us like a twinkling blanket.

  “Did you send Will those emails?” I ask, in an effort to change the subject. “The ones you stole from
me?”

  “I did not steal them from you, Ms. Bennett,” he says. “All your work emails are property of Armstrong Media.”

  “You mean all my work emails are property of you.”

  “That too,” he says unapologetically. He takes another slow sip of his wine, and I wonder what it feels like to be so in control all the time, so self-assured, to have people at your beck and call, to have them taking care of your every whim. What it feels like to not have to worry about money, to know that anything you want – sex, power, possessions -- can be yours.

  But before I can figure it out, Daniel returns to take our order.

  I order the spaghetti Bolognese, and Elijah gets a twin filet mignon, medium rare.

  “Excellent,” Daniel declares, and then he’s gone again.

  A gentle breeze kicks up and blows over my skin. It feels good after my run, and I close my eyes and breathe in. The air feels different up here, fresher somehow, like we’re slightly removed from the normal grit and steel of the city.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Elijah says suddenly.

  I take a sip of my wine, thrown by his request. It’s not like him to ask personal questions. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  I hope this response will be enough to shut down this line of questioning, but I should have known better – what Elijah wants, Elijah gets.

  “Was she always a prostitute?”

  “Yes.” I hate that word. Prostitute. It’s always managed to somehow sound inappropriately sophisticated for what it really means, and yet dirty at the same time.

  “And your father…?”

  “I never knew him.”

  “Was he one of her customers?”

  I shift on my seat. “I’m not sure. She claims he wasn’t, but her story has changed over the years. For a while she said he was a traveling professor at the state school near us, then she said I was conceived by artificial insemination. Oh! And how can I forget when she told me my father was a famous actor, and that when I turned eighteen I was going to get two million dollars because she’d signed a non-disclosure that entitled me to it.”

  Elijah’s looking at me over the table, his gaze serious. He doesn’t say any of the things a normal person would say, the things that are supposed to make you feel better but really just make you feel worse, like ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘That’s horrible.’

  Instead, he reaches over and takes my napkin off the table, unfolds it and places it gently on my lap before doing the same with his own napkin and his own lap.

  “And when will she get out of jail?”

  “She has ten more years.”

  “Good.” His hand tightens around the edge of the table.

  “Now tell me about your mother.”

  His hand tightens even further, his knuckles turning white. But I’m not going to back down. If he can ask me, then I can ask him.

  “My mother is not a good person, Abigail. And the sooner you realize that, the better.”

  “She seemed nice to me.”

  “Then she’s fooled you the way she’s fooled countless others before.”

  “Like your father?”

  “Like a lot of people.”

  Daniel reappears with our food, a heaping bowl of pasta for me, and a perfectly cooked steak for Elijah.

  “She can’t be that bad, Elijah,” I say, once Daniel’s gone and I’ve twirled my first bite of spaghetti around my fork expertly.

  “She can and she is,” he says. “And you will stay away from her.” And something in the way he says it makes me shiver.

  After dinner, Elijah wants to call his car to take us home, but it’s a beautiful night, and so I convince him to walk.

  We’re just a few blocks away from his apartment when I get the email.

  It’s to my personal account, and it makes my phone buzz with an alert.

  I pull my phone out of the zippered pocket of my running capris, aware of the fact that Elijah’s phone has buzzed at the same time – I don’t know how but the bastard has somehow synced himself to my personal email.

  “How did you get into my personal email?” I demand. Work email is one thing – he has access to the servers – but my personal email as well? Is he God?

  He sighs. “We’ve been through this, Abigail.”

  But before I have a chance to call him out on his whole “My number one priority is to keep you safe” bullshit, I see who the email is from.

  Wellscale Bank. The holder of my student loans.

  Crap. Did I miss a payment? The thing about student loans that’s so infuriating is that if you miss even one payment, the bank does something shady like jack your interest rate up. Or they refuse to honor your current payment plan, or they take away your deferment or they up the amount you have to pay so that it’s no longer based based on your –

  Wait a minute.

  Wtf?

  I peer at my screen, not able to believe what I’m seeing.

  Dear Abigail Bennett, Thank you for your final payment. We are pleased to inform you that your student loans are now considered paid in full. You will receive confirmation in the mail. Thank you for your business, and we look forward to serving you in the future. If you have any questions please contact us at…

  It’s obviously a mistake. Which means that now I’m going to have to call the bank and fix it.

  But a little voice is tugging and whispering at the back of my mind.

  What if it’s not a mistake?

  What if it’s…?

  I turn to Elijah, who’s been reading the same email I just got on his own phone, and is now putting his phone back in his pocket. His hand tightens around mine, our fingers intertwined.

  He’s staring straight ahead as he resumes walking down the street as if nothing has happened.

  “You did that?” I ask.

  “Yes.” He says it simply, as if it’s not a big deal to pay off over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans in one lump sum. Someone else’s student loans.

  One hundred thousand dollars. Jesus.

  It’s a sum that’s astronomical to me. It doesn’t even include the interest. I would have been paying off that loan for, like, twenty years.

  Instantly, I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. No more student loans. No more payments.

  “Why did you do that?” I ask softly. And now I’m standing in the middle of the street, in the middle of Manhattan, unable to move, even as hassled New Yorkers are forced to go around me.

  “To make you happy.” He says the words quietly, his voice raw and rough. “Are you happy?”

  “I don’t…” I trail off, swallowing around the lump in my throat. Now that the shock is starting to wear off, my excitement is being replaced with something else…something uncomfortable that I can’t quite put my finger on. “I don’t want this to be about money.”

  “What?” He stares at me “What are you talking about?”

  “Just because you give me money doesn’t mean that I’m going to do the things you want. I’m not a whore, Elijah.”

  “Jesus,” he says, following me as I begin to walk down the street again.

  Apparently anger has infused fresh energy into my legs, because I’m moving faster than ever.

  “Is that what you think? That I think you’re some kind of whore? Because nothing could be further from the truth.”

  “If you think you can just come in and use money to take care of all my problems, it doesn’t… life doesn’t work that way.” I’m frustrated now, and confused, which makes me even more frustrated.

  “So you don’t want the money.”

  “Of course I want the money!” I say, throwing my hands up in the air. “You have no idea how life-changing that money would be to me, Elijah. It would change my entire world, the entire way I live my life.”

  “Good.”

  “No, it’s not good.” I sigh and keep walking, upping my pace, almost like I’m hoping if I walk fast enough, I’ll be able to outpace the weird f
eeling that’s settled in my stomach. “It’s confusing as hell, Elijah.”

  “Hey, hey,” he says, and now he’s stepping in front of me, stopping me. He grabs my arms, his grip gentle “Hold on a second.”

  I look up at him. His dark eyes are serious, his jaw set in a firm line.

  “That money was supposed to make you happy. If it doesn’t make you happy, then I’ll take it back. No questions asked.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you – it does make me happy, Elijah! It’s an insane amount of money, an insane thing to do, something I would never, ever be able to do on my own.” My head is spinning with all the things I can do with the extra money I’ll have every month. Save. Start a 401K. Buy shoes with heels that don’t break at the slightest bit of pressure.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I told you. It feels weird. I don’t want this to be…that kind of relationship.”

  “What kind of relationship?”

  “The kind of relationship my mother would have!” I say, before I can stop myself.

  He sucks in a breath. “Abigail. I could never –”

  “Fine, then. The kind of relationship where you feel like you control me because you have money.”

  “I don’t feel like I control you because I have money.” His voice is low and firm, raw and rough like sandpaper.

  “But you do feel like you control me.”

  “Yes,” he admits. “That’s the kind of relationship that I require. And it’s the kind of relationship that you agreed to.”

  I push past him and continue walking toward his apartment, weaving through the groups of tourists and smartly-dressed couples out on dates, the groups of friends out for drinks, a few loosely packed gaggles of teenagers dressed in the nearby private school’s posh uniform.

  By the time we get back to his apartment, I’m still confused. I take in a deep breath and stare up at the building, its shiny façade set against the sparkling lights of the city.

  It’s just another reminder of his money, of everything he has that I don’t, of his ability to buy whatever it is he wants. Is that what he’s doing? Buying me?

  When we get inside, he heads for the kitchen and pulls a bottle of water out of the subzero fridge. He hands me one, and I can’t help but notice that inside the refrigerator, water bottles are lined up in neat rows, replaced whatever he’s taken since the last time he needed one. Some nameless, faceless servant has indulged his every whim. And I refuse to do the same.