Perfect Strangers

He stayed where he was and shrugged his shoulders, carelessly. “Do it yourself,”

He watched her eyebrows furrow together, her face turned beetroot and her bottom lip jutted out, clearly angered at his insolence. “Excuse me? I can’t do it myself.”

He cricked his neck from left to right, a salacious sneer formed upwards over his face. Wordlessly unfolding his arms, he slowly walked towards her. Taking the necklace from her outstretched bony fingers, he moved himself behind her and held it out in front of her.

He closed his eyes and suddenly pictured himself forcefully smash her head forwards into the work top before she dropped to the floor. He was screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs at her whilst he hunched himself over her whimpering body.

“I don’t have all day,” she snapped bringing him from his murderous thoughts.

“Tell me, why can’t you do this up yourself?” He asked lowly. He slowly moved it to rest against her chest, then brought it up to her neck.

“My hands don’t work like they used to. One of the perks of becoming sixty,” she chuckled.

He continued to work the chain slowly against her throat and carried on doing so until she began to cough, she quickly brought her hand to her neck. “It’s a real shame your hands worked so well when my beautiful Myla was fifteen, hey, Victoria?” He sneered. He continued to pull on the chain around her neck, forcing her back into his chest in doing so. I want to drain the air from your lungs.

“What?” She gargled, clawing at the chain that was now restricting her windpipe.

Lowering his mouth to her ear, he fought the bile rising in his esophagus, and gritted his teeth. “How do you think Stanley will react when he finds out what you fucking did to her that day?”

“Or how about when he finds out you were shagging Mr. Banks? Better yet what about when he finds out you murdered your own grandchild? Do you think he will be interested in that, huh?”

A strangled sob fell from her mouth and Kai smirked. He loosened the chain from her neck and clasped it up. She let out a deep gasp and her shoulders heaved up and down rapidly. She clutched at her throat and turning around to face him, she brought her palm up and slapped him forcefully around his cheek. Kai laughed wickedly as he placed his hand there and shook his head, “Is that all you have? You sure you don’t want to punch me then throw me down the stairs, just like you did to your own daughter?”

“She told you that’s what I did?” She cried. Her eyes bulged in her head and her demeanor wilted as she grasped onto the kitchen counter to steady herself.

Bending over to her level he clamped his hand either side of her face and squeezed pulling her chin up, he looked at her with contempt. “Yes, she told me, I know your dirty little secret. The question you should be asking is, what am I going to do with that secret?”

“Rhett, please, I beg you …Myla has it all wrong,” she mumbled, tears springing into her eyes.

Kai suddenly spotted Stan’s larger-than-life figure heading towards the patio doors through his peripheral. Dropping his hold on her face he grabbed Victoria harshly by her arm and pulled her upright. “Have a wonderful evening,” he replied with a smirk then turned and headed from the room, leaving her whimpering behind him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

She heaved a deep sigh of relief as she took a step back from the mannequin that now had her sister’s wedding dress displayed on it. She smiled as she let her eyes wander over her work. You couldn’t tell the bodice had been detached from another dress and even though she had told Grace she would only be able to do a knee length dress, her insides fired up with excitement while her eyes trailed the full length of the gown, and along the train she had managed to make with the last of the material. I hope you like this, Grace.

She let out a loud yawn and stretched her weary arms into the air. It was now 10.45pm and she was beat. Her fingers ached from the relentless sewing, her eyes felt gritty from all the concentration and earlier crying and her throat was parched.

Dropping back down into the chair she pushed her legs up onto the table and folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes never leaving the dress, she mentally ticked off all the boxes in her head to ensure she had covered absolutely everything. Normally a full wedding dress would take herself and Avery several months to put together from start to finish, with dress fittings and adjustments made along the way. She didn’t have that luxury, she only had several hours to pull something out of the bag before the big day, and now as she sat looking at the finished dress, she suddenly felt completely overwhelmed. It had been one hell of a day. It felt like days ago, since she had woken up wrapped in Kai’s arms at the hotel, but that had happened only this morning and since then, everything had turned to shit.

Her eyes felt heavy and her focus on the dress started to blur, slowly she closed her eyes. Kai’s face floated into to her thoughts and a lazy smile played on her lips when she remembered the way he had held her and rocked her whilst she told him her terrible secret. She hadn’t planned to tell him anything, but somehow, she found herself blurting it out to him, confiding in him, and that’s something she hadn’t been able to do with anyone since the day it had happened.

When she had gone quiet, clinging onto him like her life depended on it, she took that time to process what she had just done, of what this meant, that she Myla Fox had spewed the events of that horrific day to a man she barely knew.

That’s when it hit her, she had fallen for him. Her body had reacted badly. She had broken out into a cold sweat, her limbs trembled in his tight embrace, her breathing had become heavy and she struggled to swallow. But his words kept repeating themselves in her head; ‘you are last thing my heart expected’. That was the only indication she had to go on that he saw her as anything more than a friend with benefits, and as she sat in his lap, tangled up in his arms breaking her vow of silence over that dreadful day, she finally felt it, the one thing she hadn’t felt in a long time… Loved.

A clearing of a throat startled her causing her eyes to snap open, her arms flailed out the sides as she tried to keep her balance on the chair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said coming to a stop in the doorway. Holy hell! He is detrimental to my health.

“You finished the dress then?” he asked with a smile. He trailed his sexy brown eyes over the mannequin.

“Uhm, ugh, y… yes,” was all she could splutter. Her tired and weary eyes suddenly found life again, drinking in the sight of him stood there in a pair of fresh sweats that hung from his hips dangerously low, and nothing else. She could tell he was just out of the shower when the scent of wood and spice hit her nasal passages, and his hair was wet, much like her underwear. His eyes moved from the dress to her, and she squeezed together her thighs and a smile formed on

those soft and gentle lips of his. “I brought you a glass of wine,” he said raggedly taking a few steps closer.

“Stay where you are,” she shrieked moving her feet from the table and down to the floor. He stopped in his tracks, his eyebrows raised with a questioning look. “Why?”

“Just because…” she started with a grin “I’ve worked all day and most of the night on that dress, I don’t want that glass of claret anywhere near it.”

“You had best get your ass over here then, and retrieve it from me,” he replied lowly and took a step back towards the door.