Here Without You

‘That’s some confidence, Mr Alexander,’ I whisper, closing my eyes as he rains kisses down my throat and pulls the arm slit of the tank to my mid-chest, exposing one breast and making good use of his gifted tongue.

‘Um-hmm,’ he mumbles, completely unrepentant about his smug capacity to dissolve my reticence like a quick, hard summer rain dissolves chalk sketches from sidewalks.

I dig my nails into his shoulders and down his hard, muscled arms, holding him close and almost crying from pleasure. He chuckles, pulling me tighter – his confidence fully justified.

After a late breakfast on the terrace of our suite, wrapped in fluffy robes and soaking up the sun, we dress and head out for a day of attempted incognito shopping. Reid’s dark sunglasses, two to three days of facial scruff and the Cal cap I bought him, along with my standard ordinary-girl appearance, fool the general public just enough for us to remain anonymous, for the most part. We earn a few double takes – especially from clerks in the shops – but there aren’t any mob scenes.

In a boutique shop on Fillmore, he chooses several dresses and tells me to go try them on. ‘If you hate them all, we’ll go somewhere else. But I’m getting you something that will make you feel like royalty when we go out tonight.’ I start to object, but he hands the hangers to a shop attendant and presses me towards the dressing room. ‘No arguments, because I chose somewhere completely condescending and snooty for dinner, and that’s not your fault.’

His line of reasoning makes a peculiar sort of sense … until I look at the price tags. ‘Reid,’ I hiss, poking my face out from behind the dressing-room curtain. ‘I can’t wear this. It’s the price of a car.’ He smirks. ‘A used car, maybe,’ I qualify. ‘But still.’

‘I bought a car two months ago, and I will personally guarantee that nothing in that dressing room is anywhere near the price of a car. Even if you wanted all of them.’

‘I don’t!’ I gasp. ‘But –’

Crossing his arms, he says, ‘Let’s assume that for you, the price of a nice dress is the price of a decent new car, minus a couple of zeros. Yes?’ I nod. ‘That’s what this is for me. It’s all relative, Dori.’ He pushes the curtain aside enough to peek inside. ‘Let me see.’ Smiling, he asks, ‘You love it, don’t you?’

I chew the inside of my cheek, appraising myself in this dress – a soft, dark royal blue knit cut like it was made exclusively for me. It somehow upgrades every physical attribute I’ve got – enhancing the good and improving the bad. But I don’t want him to buy me something this un-reasonable. My life is made up of enough make-believe with him even in it.

Stepping into the dressing booth and drawing the curtain closed behind him, he pulls the zipper down at the slowest pace imaginable and catches my gaze in the mirror. His eyes are steely. ‘I’m purchasing this dress, Miss Cantrell, and you’re going to wear it tonight. Understood?’

Caught between wanting to stomp his foot for ordering me around and wanting to throw my arms around him for making me feel like the most desirable girl in California, I simply nod.

‘Good girl. As always – like you said.’ He places a kiss on my nape and leaves the room.

We’re driving back to the hotel when my brain clicks everything into place. I turn the music down. ‘Reid. This car – this car cost that dress, plus a couple of zeros?’

He just smiles out of the windscreen and I’m glad to be sitting down and strapped in.

Holy cow.

While Reid is showering, Brooke calls him – no last name. She’s in his contacts, then, as simply Brooke. I assume it’s Brooke Cameron, though of course there are other Brookes in the world.

This could be a publicist Brooke. Or an admin Brooke. Or a mechanic Brooke. Frozen in place, I stare at his phone’s display while it buzzes. A minute after the buzzing stops, a message alert beeps. She’s left him voicemail.

Wandering out minutes later with a bath sheet slung loosely around his hips, rubbing his hair dry with a hand towel, he glances to where I’m carefully removing the price tags from my dress. After detouring to turn me by my robe’s belt and steal a slow-building kiss, one hand slipping inside the robe to stroke the bare skin of my hip, he smiles and turns to dig shaving accoutrements from his bag, his phone feet away on the night table.

Trembling from his touch and the words stuck in my throat – Brooke called you – I walk into the bathroom.

I pull coils of my hair up with hairpins while Reid shaves, reflecting that he was in the bedroom long enough to listen to the message, but I didn’t hear him call her back. He doesn’t seem uneasy or concerned. Expression concentrated, he runs the razor over his foam-obscured jaw, pausing to swish the blade beneath a stream of hot water after each swipe.

Maybe it was unimportant. Maybe it was nothing.

‘You got a call while you were in the shower,’ I finally say, watching him.

His brows draw down slightly and his eyes flick to me. ‘Oh?’

Staring into my own eyes, I lean close to the mirror and run the mascara wand over my lashes. ‘From Brooke?’ I clarify, trying to sound unconcerned. Trying to be unconcerned.

He stops cold, staring at me, and I feel as though the air has all just been sucked from the room. ‘Did you … answer it?’ he asks, strained.

He must not have looked at his phone, must not have seen the alert. Even before calling her back, he’s more on edge than I’ve seen him since the night he came to speak to my parents. The apprehension is plain on his face – his normally evasive-if-necessary face.