HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Adrain

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The car was still running, I hadn’t moved to turn it off or moved at all, actually. I just sat there with both hands joose in my lap and the engine idling and the city doing what cities do at this hour, carrying on without me.

Twenty minutes, maybe more. I didn’t even know at this point, I wasn’t counting.

The red thing she wore was still behind my eyes every time I blinked. I had seen women in red before, had sat across frory them, had watched them work a room. It had never done what it did tonight.

I thought the first two times was a mistake, maybe because I was in my feelings and everything was clouded but coming here again gave me my answer.

I reached forward and turned the heat up one notch, though I wasn’t cold. I had prepared for tonight. I had told myself it was professional curiosity, the kind of detached interest I applied to anything that caught my attention. I thought she was complicated and complicated things required closer inspection. That was all it was.

I had told myself this in the car on the way there, I almost believed it until I got to that room again with a drink I barely touched. This time, I can’t even blame the alcohol.

I pressed the back of my head against the headrest and looked up at the ceiling of the car. The thing about her is that she has never tried to reach me, every other person in my orbit, professional or otherwise, was always reaching, always angling, adjusting themselves toward me the way plants tilt toward a window.

She didn’t do that, even at the firm, even in the moments I had found reasons to be near her or in her line of sight, she met me exactly where I was and no further. She was not cold, she was just contained. And the containment was the thing that made me want to stand close enough to feel the edge of it.

I hadn’t felt this way in a long time, not since Victoria. I didn’t let myself think about Victoria often. There was a version of that story I kept in a drawer in my mind, locked, manageable. I knew what it had cost me to open it and I had decided years ago that the cost wasn’t worth paying again.

But Bianca made me think about it anyway not because she was anything like Victoria, she wasn’t. It was just the warmth that reminded me of Victoria. Not the similarity between them but the feeling.

I sat up and looked at my phone, I told her I would wire the tip earlier. “Why the fuck did I even say that?” I turned the engine off.

I opened my contacts and scrolled to my nosy assistant’s name and he picked up on the second ring.

“Emma Fernandes,” I said. “She’s post-op. I want her moved to a VIP suite and I want her care covered in full. Get it sorted before morning.”

“Boss, are you…” He paused.

“Of course. I’ll handle it now.” He added after some seconds

“Thank you.”

I hung up and set the phone on my thigh and sat with it for a moment.

“Bianca, Arrything to get you running over to me.” I took a deep breath. I felt something embarrassing move through me but

I don’t care, this is definitely the only current means I had of keeping Bianca tethered to something I was part of.

I stared at the building in front of me for another moment and then I heard myself speak.

11:53 Wed, Jul 22

Chapter 19

“She sat down in your lap, Adrian.” I paused.

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“She walked in wearing red and sat down in your lap and you kissed her neck and now you are standing outside a club at this’ hour thinking about her.” I shook my head slowly. “You are a grown man.”

A cab rolled past, the driver didn’t look at me.

“She works here, Adrian. She works here and she is your employee and she has a sister in a hospital and she is very clearly trying to handle her life without any help from anyone and certainly not from you.” I pointed at nothing in particular. So leave it.”

I removed my jacket and placed it on the other side of car. “Leave it alone. Go home. Drink something reasonable. Sleep. Monday you go to work and she goes to work and it is professional and managed and this,” I gestured vaguely at the club behind me, “does not exist.”

“The red dress did not mean anything.” I started the engine.

“She gripped your thigh because that is the job. Adrian. That is what this is. You paid for the evening. You paid for her sister’s hospital bill, which, fine, yes, the reasons for that are their own conversation, but the point is,” I pulled out onto the road, “the point is that you are not special to her. You are a client. You are the client she is probably most irritated by, if anything

I drove for a while without saying anything. The streets were quiet at this hour, just the occasional cab and the wet shine of the road under the streetlights.

I had to stop talking because I couldn’t even understand what I was saying anymore. The phone rang through the car speakers before I reached the second junction.

I glanced at the screen on the dash, it was Felix and I answered immediately.

“Felix.”

“Sir.” His voice was off. “It’s your father. He’s been taken to the hospital. They’re saying it’s cardiac. The team there is working on him now.”

“How long ago?”

“Twenty minutes. Your mother called the house line first. When she couldn’t reach you she called me.”

I had been sitting in a parked car talking to myself about a red dress for twenty minutes.

“I will be on my way.” I was already taking the next turn. “Felix, I need you to bring the driver and meet me at the airport and you know the usual, nobody hears about this. Do you understand?.”

“Understood.”

“And Felix.” I paused for half a second. “Call Bianca.”

There was a silence on the line that lasted exactly long enough to tell me he had heard me correctly and was choosing his next words with some care.

“I’m sorry?”

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