Dirty Seduction

He smiles. “I like to think of it as synchronicity.”

“I believe in fate,” I tell him. “I believe in horoscopes, too. I read mine every day.”

“Maybe you should read mine,” he says, and there’s humor in it. “I’d love to know what fate has in store for us, Laine. I think it’s a good thing.” “Me too,” I say, and I mean it.

“So,” he prompts. “What is it that you want?”

I shrug, and gesture around me, to the beautiful room in his beautiful house.

“This,” I tell him. “This everything. It’s… it’s like a fairytale.” “Beauty and the Beast?” He laughs.

“No!” I laugh with him. “Cinderella! I’m the scrubby servant girl and you’re Prince Charming come to save me.”

His eyes glitter. “I’m not all that charming,” he says. “Not when you get to know me.”

But I don’t believe him. I tell him so and he laughs again.

“Maybe this could be a fairytale, Laine,” he says. “If we want it badly enough. Life is full of magic, I think, you just have to trust in it.”

“I believe in magic,” I say. “I haven’t seen much of it, not until now, but

I know it’s out there.”

“Maybe it’s right here.”

My heart doesn’t even hope. I feel it lurch, and it scares me how much I want this. It scares me how hard I’m falling, falling right into him, falling right into his life.

“I hope so.” My voice is a whisper.

He holds out a hand and I take it across the table, and his fingers grip mine so tightly.

“Let me care for you, Laine. Will you do that?”

I nod. “I’d like that. Very much.”

“And you’ll stick to the ground rules? Let me keep you safe?” “I’ll stick to the ground rules,” I say.

“Good girl.” His smile gives me tingles on tingles, and my heart races.

I take a breath and stare at my hand in his. “And that’s what you want? Do you want to take care of me? Like I’m…”

“Like you’re my little girl?”

My cheeks must be like beetroot. I close my eyes as I nod.

“And what else do you want, Laine? What did you want on the landing last night? What did you want in bed last night as you wriggled and squirmed?”

I can’t open my eyes. I just can’t.

“You,” I whisper. “I wanted you.”

“Is that still what you want? Not out of gratitude, or because you think you should. None of that is necessary, Laine, I promise you.”

I shake my head. “No… not because of that…” My heart is in my throat. “Just because… because I want it… because I like you…”

I hold my breath as I wait for him to answer, but his response shocks me enough to open my eyes.

“I need to tell you about Jane,” he says.

“About Jane?”

“My rules can get… intense. I need you to understand why.”

I nod, and my eyes are wide and focused. I’m pleased that he doesn’t let go of my hand.

“Jane was my little girl,” he says.

Was.

“I was young when I met her mother. Louisa was lost, just like you were. I found her sheltering under an awning during an autumn thunderstorm, upset because she’d argued with her piece of shit boyfriend. Jane was just a baby, fast asleep in her pushchair, none the wiser for her mother’s predicament, thank God.”

“So she wasn’t…”

“Mine?” he says. “Not biologically, no. But she was mine in every way that matters. I was the man she called daddy. I was the man who read her

bedtime stories and tucked her up in bed at night.” My eyes urge him to continue.

“I was young myself, relatively. Still climbing up the corporate ladder, coping with my father’s death. This was our family home, I inherited it naturally, and it was lonely here before Louisa came, just as it was before you came.”

“Did you bring her home, too?”

He smiles. “I did, yes. I brought her and little Jane home with me, and made Louise cocoa while she dried off. I listened to her stories about her loser boyfriend and her sad life, and how she was so scared for tiny little

Jane.”

“You rescued her. You rescued both of them.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. But she rescued me right back. Saved me from a life full of nothing but work and loneliness.”

I take a breath. “She didn’t grow up here, did she? Jane, I mean.”

“She didn’t grow up, Laine.” He takes a breath. “She died when she was five. A car accident. She and her mother alongside that sorry sack of shit I took her from.” I see his eyes darken. “She left me a note before she went. He wanted to talk, she said, and needed some help, she said. She didn’t want him, but for some crazy reason that day she took our little girl and climbed

into his car. Maybe she didn’t realize he’d been drinking.”

I feel the blood leave my face. “I’m so sorry.”

“I should’ve been here,” he says. “I was working late. Stupid client meeting.”

“But you couldn’t have known…”

“I didn’t keep them safe,” he tells me, and I feel the pain from him. I see it in his eyes, in the hunch of his shoulders, in the tightness in his voice. In his everything.

I squeeze his hand right back, as hard as I can. “I’ll follow the ground rules,” I tell him. “I’ll stay safe, I promise.” I feel so sad. So sad for that little girl with the pretty pink room. So sad for Nick, too. The whole thing feels so sad I can hardly draw breath.

“I just need you to be safe, Laine. I need you to follow the rules.”

I nod. “I will. Cross my heart.”

He smiles such a sad smile. “I’ll love you, Laine, if you’ll let me. Hell knows everyone needs someone to love them.” My heart hurts.

My heart knows that feeling.

I feel my eyes well up, and the tears spill, letting the sadness in my heart tip over. “I’ll love you, too, Nick. I’m so sorry about your little girl.”

He runs his thumb over my knuckles and for that moment I’m sure I see his eyes are watery too.

And then he moves, takes a breath, and gets to his feet, and he’s in control Nick again.

“Chicken for dinner,” he tells me. “I hope you like chicken,” I tell him chicken sounds really good.

NICK

LAINE tries to smile as though everything is okay as I prepare dinner, but she’s thinking about Jane.

It’s a phenomenon I’m familiar with, once people find out about such a loss. One that has long since found me avoiding almost all mentions of my little girl’s name. It makes people feel awkward. Pity, sympathy… There’s a fine line between the two.

I don’t want either.

“It’s ok. You can talk about her,” I say as I peel the carrots.

She spins her empty juice glass on the tabletop. “I just… I can’t imagine the pain…”

“Hopefully you won’t ever have to.” The peeler works so methodically. I lift my eyes from the growing pile of carrot sticks. “It was a long time ago.”

“Still,” she says. “It’s so horrible… it must’ve been…”

“Bad,” I say. “It was bad.”

I hope that will suffice. I have no desire to dredge up the long nights of misery, the countless hours of therapy, or the emptiness Jane and Louisa’s passing left in my life.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells me, and I believe her. Those blue eyes are glassy and melancholic, the sadness written all over her pretty face. “Is that why you rescued me? Because of Louisa?”

“No,” I say. “I rescued you because of you.”

She nods. “I’m so glad you did.”

“So am I.”

She smiles and it’s both sad and breathtaking. “What did she look like?” she asks. “Jane, I mean.”

I hesitate for just a moment, long enough to finish up a carrot and dig my wallet from my suit jacket. I flip it open and pull out the little picture. Jane’s sweet little grin, her blonde pigtails. So happy. She looks so blissfully happy in that photo.

Laine takes it from me with dainty fingers.

“She was so pretty. Such a beautiful little girl.”

“Yes, she was,” I say. “A tiny blonde angel.” I pause, staring at Laine staring at Jane. “Like you.” She hands me the photo and I slip it back inside my wallet. “Louisa was blonde, too.”

“Am I much like her?”

There’s something in her tone – a hint of breathlessness, and that awkwardness she conveys so well. Her sweet self-consciousness is addictive.

I know she must be as confused as I am, spiraling around the same dilemma, just trying to ride the currents.

Lover or little girl.

Louisa or Jane.

I feel her brain ticking. I see it in her eyes, just as I feel it behind mine.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“You remind me of her sometimes. Just a fleeting memory here and there.” I resume my peeling. “But you have an innocence Louisa didn’t.”

“Kelly Anne says I’m a prude, she says I’m a big baby. Innocence is dumb stupid, she says.”

“It’s a beautiful thing,” I tell her. “Very endearing.”

She smiles. “It is?”

“Very.” And then I know it’s time to lay it on the line. “Louisa wouldn’t let me take care of her, not in the way she needed. Not in the way I should’ve.”

Laine stares at me. “She wouldn’t?”