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“Sugar.” There was that million-dollar smile again. “I told you I would always find you. We’re meant to be together.”
“Are we? Then why did you try to kill me so often?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Alice.” Delaney flinched at his use of her old name. “I agree that sometimes my punishments went a little too far, maybe I was a bit heavy-handed, but you pushed me to do that. All you had to do was behave. Now, come here.”
Still she didn’t move. “Except it was impossible tobehave.” She spat the word. “There was nothing I could have done to be perfect for you. You were always punishing me for things that happened only inside your imagination.”
The look he aimed at her was one she knew all too well. She was toeing a dangerous line, and he wouldn’t put up with her attitude much longer. But she couldn’t stop the words pouring out of her. It was like a dam had been broken. If she was going to die at his hand, she had some things she wanted to say to him first.
“You’re trying to provoke me, Alice, and I won’t have it. You’re always trying to make me look like the villain. Come sit down,” he barked, pointing at the chair to his right. “We’re going to have a nice lunch, and then we’re going home. Your friends have missed you.I’vemissed you.”
“How are you going to explain it to them? That I’m not dead?”
He frowned, and his mouth thinned into a hard line. “Yes, you did leave me with quite a mess to clean up. I suspect we’ll have to say you had a nasty fall and lost your memory.”
“That’s very cliché.”
His eyes flashed, and he pushed out of the chair. “Maybe I should mangle one of your limbs so we really can say a gator got you.” She tried to skirt around him when he rushed at her, but he grabbed her by the arm, squeezing it so hard she yelped. “How would it feel to lose a hand? Or maybe we’d have to take it off up to the elbow?”
He traced a finger down the column of her throat. “Give you some good scarring to make it believable. Or I could take a leg.” His hand slid down over her ass to squeeze her thigh. “Make sure you can never run from me again.”
A fresh wave of nausea swamped her at his threat. He was just crazy enough to do it.
“You know it’s impressive, really,” she said.
He released her, shoving her away from him. “What is?”
“How well you manage to hide what a complete psycho you are.”
This time when he touched her, his hand found her throat, and he squeezed until she coughed. “You’ve never appreciated how I held your life in my hands every day and chose not to take it. Because I love you.”
In spite of herself, she laughed, but it was cold, derisive. “That’s not love, you asshole. Not killing someone and calling it love doesn’t prove anything but what a miserable excuse for a human being you are.”
Charles brought his face inches from hers, and she cringed away from him. “You think love is fucking that pathetic man who owns a pub? Playing whore and housewife in his little apartment while you wait tables like a nobody? I gave you everything!”
“And you made me pay for it every day! James is ten times the man you will ever be. I’d rather work my fingers to the bone than live in your cage.”
His fingers tightened on her throat, and she clawed at his skin. She’d been resigned to death at his hand once, but she wanted to see James again. She wanted to feel his arms wrapped around her and hear his voice in her ear. She wanted to fight.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, gasping for breath when Charles loosened his grip.
“Say it again,” he demanded.
“I’m sorry.” He released her, and she pivoted away from him, eyeing the vase on the low credenza just a few inches away. “I’m sorry I ever met you.”
Lunging for the vase, she brought it down against his forehead. When he stumbled back a few steps, she darted for the door, gasping when he recovered fast enough to grab her hair and yank her back against him. He wrapped an arm around her throat again and squeezed.
James had explained how to get out of a chokehold after she told him about Charles, but she couldn’t remember all the steps. And even if she did, it still felt like she was miles from the door. She’d never make it in time. Not while Charles was still breathing.
“It took me such a long time to beat that spirit out of you, Alice,” he whispered against her ear, fear tightening her stomach. “But don’t worry. I remember how I did it the first time. I can do it again.”
“I’d rather be dead.”
His laugh was low and dark. “Oh, sugar. Death would be too easy. Now, are you going to behave, or do I have to knock you out again?” He tightened his arm around her neck to prove his point, and she nodded.
“I’ll behave.”
Charles waited a beat but ultimately released her. As he crossed back to the table and took a seat, Delaney went over the options in her head. She could rush him again, try and hit him with something heavier to knock him out and give her time to get out of the room. Or she could play along and wait until they left, lose herself in a crowd or sprint away from him in public when he was less likely to make a scene.
