Page 80 of The Company

“Did your father buy you things instead of spending time with you?”

“No, we didn’t get a lot of frivolous presents. And my dad hardly spent any time with us at all. We were mostly ignored except at dinner or parties. But when you live on a two-hundred-and-twenty-foot yacht and your whole life consists of sailing around the tropics visiting paradise, that’s probably enough to qualify as spoiled.” And so that was my life. The beaches, the boats, the water. And once a year on my birthday, a party. I think back to those birthdays, but they mostly run together. Presents, beaches, swimming, fireworks… They all run together except for one. “What did you think when you first saw me?”

He sucks in some air and when he exhales I close my eyes and picture that day again. “Well,” he says softly. “That day on the beach when we both became Six I thought you looked like a sea nymph who would sing a song and I’d lose my mind from the beauty of your voice.”

“You are such a liar,” I snort. He pokes my armpit, testing to see if I’m ticklish. I am, so I squirm, and then his hand slips to my breast and finds the hard pebble of my nipple. He pinches it and I moan a little.

“You want to know what I thought about when I saw you in Huntington that first time?”

My hand slides up my stomach and I place it over the top of his and then grip him a little harder and rub my breast using his hand.

“You’re turning me on, Lionfish. You know that, right?”

“Tell me what you thought, James. I want to know.” My eyes close again. He slides his hand underneath my shirt and squeezes the nipple again with no fabric to dampen the pleasure.

“It was my first day in HB. I had an apartment on PCH. I had some ripped Levi’s. Some vans. Some expensive sunglasses. Just fitting in like I do wherever I’m sent. And I had just finished taking a walk down the pier to check it out. It was just about sunset, and it was cold that day. Rainy and cloudy. So no one was paying any attention to the sunset.”

“Except me,” I say softly.

“Except you. I spotted your hair first. Then there was this break in the clouds and the sun hit your face in a way that turned your brown eyes to this incredible gold, and your hair was like a beacon on that gloomy day. Your beauty called to me, the same way it did back when we turned Six. And I knew the very second I saw you. You were my only reason to live.”

I tip my head up so I can see him and he’s got a sad frown on his face. “Because you had to shoot your brother?”

He looks away and he takes a deep breath that lifts my whole body up with the effort.

“There’s no one left for me to love but you, Harper. My brother is dead, my sister is probably dead. They took her that first year I was working because my mother was ‘getting ideas’ about my little sister’s promise. It was hard to get upset about my lot in life before that. I mean, that was just how it was, ya know? It never occurred to me that I was allowed to be outraged at the thought of my baby sister being promised to a man. So she disappeared. A few years later one of my contracts was shooting his mouth off before I pulled the trigger and he claimed he killed her. I took him at his word, because you know what? The idea that my sister was kidnapped as a toddler and given away as a child bride is just more than I can deal with.”

“God, I’m so sorry. They never told me about the marriage stuff either. Not outright anyway. Not until I turned sixteen. And then that’s all they talked about.”

“But your brother made sure that day never happened. Well.” James stops to correct himself. “No, that’s not true. You took care of it yourself, really. But either way, the gloomy sunset day was like… an ending to the bad things. That’s what I told myself. And then the day I finally decided to ask you your name, I wanted it to be dawn instead of dusk. I didn’t want it to be an ending, I wanted it to be a beginning.”

I picture him in his sorrow on the beach. “I was sad too. Missing my brother so bad my chest hurt all the time, and I used to hold that bottle of pills so tightly in my hand, I’d have sore arms the next day.”

“But you never took them. I used to count them every night.”

What? I’m back from the moment and I need more answers about this surveillance he was doing. “Who sent you to the beach?”

“Your father.”

“So he was watching me.”

“Probably.”

“You were watching me for him?”

“I guess. It was not a job. I was on leave. And I never reported to him. Not one thing I did on that beach was reported.”

I’m silent for a long time. Long stretches of minutes go by and the only thing that registers is the feeling of James playing with my nipples. Every now and then he squeezes a bit and the now-familiar wet feeling between my legs makes me squirm.

“Do you want me to keep going?” he finally asks.

“Will I want to hear the rest?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest.”

“Do you want me to know the rest?”

“Yes, I do. I have wanted to say these things to you since the day under the pier.”