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“The answer’s fucking no. The boys stay in Oxton, end of discussion.”
Her cheeks flush pink, her veneer slipping away in a heartbeat. “It’s not end of discussion, Alexander. They live with me. It’s my call.”
“No,” I tell her. “It isn’t.”
She sighs. “They want to be normal kids, Alex. They want to hang out with regular people, not with the stuck-up little toffs at private school.”
“Fantastic. They can cast aside their future employability for the sake of fitting in with the regular kids. I’m sure they’ll be very happy to end up working in that shitty burger joint they insist on dragging me to.”
Her eyes are on fire. “Alexander.”
I haven’t missed that condescending fucking tone. As though she’s some permanently aggrieved little fishwife, and I’m the big bad cunt of an ex-husband.
Although maybe that bit’s true.
“They’re not going to state school,” I tell her, “and that’s the fucking end of it. If you wish to send your offspring through a second-rate education system, you be my guest, but my boys are not going to a shitty fucking state school.”
Terry shakes his head, and I shoot him a glare that tells him to keep his fucking mouth shut. “I’ve already booked them into Grange High,” she tells me. “They’ve been on an official induction visit. I’ve already cancelled their places at Oxton.”
“Then you’ll have to un-fucking-cancel them, won’t you?”
“No,” she says. “I won’t.”
I smile a horrible smile. “I could take you to court. Enforce my terms. I could move you into a grotty little terrace somewhere, see how you really enjoy slumming it with the regular folk.”
She laughs. “As if you would.”
“Don’t try me.”
“Don’t try me!” she hisses. “Your filthy fucking father can’t keep bailing you out forever, Alexander, one day one of those women are going to talk. Maybe they’ll talk to me, hey? Maybe I’ll be able to get them to testify how much of a dirty fucking pervert you are? Maybe I should give that asshole journalist a call and let him know I’ve got a story for him. I’ve still got screenshots you know, still got logs of your seedy fucking browsing history.”
“Which will mean fuck all in a custody battle,” I sneer.
“Not to your father it won’t. Not when he realises his company name is being dragged through the tabloids.”
I take a step forward, and Terry’s arm is around her shoulders again, his face white as a pissing sheet.
“Don’t push me, Claire.”
She knows I’m serious, my eyes digging into hers, my breath shallow and angry, right on the edge of composure.
She says nothing, just stares with a holier-than-thou expression on her face, and I’m done here, I’m done with their shit.
I’m through the front door and halfway back to the Merc by the time she speaks again, and her voice is a shrill little wail, an attempt at intimidation that falls pathetically short of the mark.
“They’re going to Grange High, Alexander! Whether you like it or not!”
My tyres churn up her pretty pink gravel on my way out.
CHAPTER SIX
MELISSA
SONNIE’S BOUGHT herself some non-standard cleaning cloths. I’ve seen them advertised on TV, extra strong for extra shine. She doesn’t mention it, but I see them when I look in on her wiping down the glass table in suite four.
I’m hurt for a moment that Sonnie would be so out to win, but it’s for the best. Definitely. It means I can whoop her ass without any guilt.
Being here, among the corporate glamour of floor sixteen, has only fanned the flames. Yesterday afternoon I was stuck in an alcove between suites seven and eight, and I managed to stare at him through the glass for ten minutes straight.
He doesn’t smile much, not that I’ve seen. Not with colleagues, nor with clients. He doesn’t smile when he’s on the phone, or even when an assistant drops a Starbucks in between meetings. His face always has this constant sternness about it – his eyes steely, his mouth so perfectly impassive. Perfectly perfect.
Being this close to him is doing nothing whatsoever to ease my obsession. My heart thumps every time I step foot into the executive suites, knowing he might be there, just around the corner, near enough to study, far enough removed that he has no idea I even exist.
I think about him in bed at night, when Joe is asleep in the room next door. I think about him every morning on the underground, wondering if today’s the day I’ll run into him late at the office.
I think about him all the time.
And it’s not just me and Sonnie that are suffering the Henley effect.
I checked Dean’s phone when he was in the shower last night. I wasn’t even snooping, it was right there, flashing on the coffee table. I only picked it up to stop it bleeping.
I didn’t expect to find his gallery app open, and didn’t expect to find five saved pictures of the gorgeous Alexander Henley staring back at me.
Dean says he’s dangerous, just like the internet claims, and maybe he’s right. Maybe the man they call Puppet Master is dangerous. Maybe he’s involved with things I could never imagine, but that doesn’t stop me playing with myself when I think of all the dark, dirty secrets those steely eyes might be hiding. In fact, it’s the opposite. Juicy gossip about the skeletons in his closet turns me on all the more. Fucked up, but true.
I just want… more…
everything…
I just want… him.
And I’m pretty sure Dean’s jerking off over him too.
Hot older guy syndrome – I guess it’s an affliction we both suffer from.
That’s why Dean ended up on my sofa in the first place – a not-so-secret crush on our History teacher at school, Mr Patterson. Dean was just a kid, and he didn’t like to talk about it, especially not after his dad cottoned on and beat the shit out of him at regular intervals from that day forward. Street fighting, that’s what everyone blamed it on, even Dean himself, no matter how many times I asked. But I knew, even if nobody else would believe me. I’ve always known his dad’s a homophobic piece of shit.
So, when Dean arrived on my doorstep earlier this summer with a case full of clothes and the declaration he was going to stay awhile so I could get myself back on my feet I welcomed him in with open arms. He stepped on in and said nothing about his cut lip, or his swollen cheek, or the fact he was walking with a limp, and hasn’t said a word about it since.
He doesn’t talk about his family, or the way they call him a filthy little queer.
He doesn’t talk about the men I know he wants, or the gay porn he jerks off to and thinks I don’t know about.
I do wish he’d talk about Alexander Henley, for him as much as me.
Maybe one day.
But today is all about scoring my way into Alexander Henley’s bedroom, even if it’s only to wash his sheets. Sonnie might have her super-duper cleaning cloths, but I’ve got something she doesn’t have. Absolute determination, with a side helping of crazy.
I’m definitely on the side of crazy today, fizzing with the prospect of stepping foot inside that Kensington house and seeing it all for myself – all his little habits, all his ways, in his most private surroundings. I want to walk barefoot across his plush carpets, strip naked and wrap myself in his bedsheets and breathe him in, so near but so far. I want to be the one to hang his suits up and load his dishwasher and walk his lovely dog. I want to be able to pretend…
I’m already pretending. Pretending I’m already close as I sneak through the service passage to meeting suite ten. I’ve seen the roster. I know he was in there just over an hour ago. I’ll be wiping his fingerprints from the glass table top, polishing up the chair he’s been sitting in. A ghost behind him, following him, adoring him. Stalking him, Dean would say. He’s not so far wrong, I guess.
The room is supposed to be long empty, that’s what the roster says. I’m loaded up with cleaning p
roducts and committed to my entry as I shoulder open the door and step inside. The lights are dim, the London skyline bright through the floor to ceiling windows. I don’t see his silhouette until my feet are already on the carpet, the door swooshing shut behind me.
Oh fuck.
Alexander Henley has his ear pressed to his mobile phone, his voice angry and curt as he barks out orders to the person on the other end.
I back into the door, heart pounding, mouth paper dry at the thought of the disciplinary I’m bound to be getting for this.
Discreet. You must be discreet.
I’ve really fucked up. My dream of promotion shrivels and dies in the air between us as Mr Henley himself turns to face me.
He steps forward, and the glow of a spotlight catches his forehead, his brows so pitted as he squints to make me out in the shadows. I lower my head, and for once I’m grateful for my stupid cap. I don’t want him to see me like this. I don’t want him to see me.
So much for the late-night office fantasy.
“Hold,” he says to the handset, and he’s heading my way. I’m doomed, a rabbit in headlights, unable to bolt and run because that would be too rude, unable to stay because Janet Yorkley will throw a fit at me when she hears about this.
The panic thrums, my mind spinning through my options.
Maybe I should beg him to forgive my error. Beg him to turn a blind eye and not let Janet know what a fuckup I made.
Maybe I should beg full stop.
I’d beg for anything from him.
I shrink into the door, my cap low and shoulders hunched, as though being small is going to save me. But weirdly, as my breath comes out ragged and my knees feel all weird and wobbly, it does.
He stops.
Stares.
I feel his eyes burning as mine stare at the handset lolling in his hand, the call still active. His hands are big. Long fingers. I can’t raise my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Henley, sir,” I whisper, clutching my armful of products like a shield. “I thought… it said the room would be…”
“Empty,” he finishes. “Yes. I’ll be out of your way shortly.”
The handset rises to his ear and my eyes follow, and he gestures me forward, gestures I can carry on about my business. His laptop is still open on the table, but he indicates I can clear it to the side. His coffee cup, too.
