Scorch (Virtues & Lies 2)

“Exactly!” Slapping my back, Edgar retreats towards the bar. “On that note, I wish you the best of luck.” The look he gives me tells me the luck is for this conversation and not my future.

I take my phone from my inside pocket, checking for anything I might’ve missed. A photo of me and Arabella on the edge of the cliff overlooking the private beach of Heaver’s Hall makes me smile. Maybe she’d like to go down to the family estate for Christmas. I know she’d regret a quiet holiday. She loves the festivity and having the family around. Especially this year. It’ll feel somewhat lacking.

I type out a quick message.

Ready to go when you are.

Then, because I can’t tell her enough, I add:

I love you. X

“I’m going to find my wife and make use of our cheque book,” Edgar announces.

“Honestly, she’s got you under the thumb,” Charles throws at him, slapping my back. With the jostle I drop my phone.

Charles picks it up and hands it to me before I even have a chance to reach for it. Nodding my thanks, I slip it into my pocket.

“I’d rather hers than yours.” Laughing his quip off, Edgar pauses mid-step and bows dramatically. “Good evening, gentlemen. I’ll see you around.”

The urge to follow in his footsteps has me taking a couple of steps forward, but Charles drags me back into pointless conversation with Coleman, and all I can do is breathe and count the seconds until Arabella finds me.

I have a promise of a long night to keep to my wife.

Chapter 40

Arabella

“Creo que ella se emborrachó hasta morir, no?” Carla bites her lip as we both stare at a deathly still Dorothy.

Maybe she has drunk herself to death.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person is my first thought; then the more I look at her like this…the sorrier I feel for her. She’s got that look a person gets after living the majority of their life unhappy. Her outside is so shrivelled, that it’s impossible for it to be just age. Not when she has so much life left in her. Or maybe it was the drink that gave her a lift.

“I think she’s just had too much,” I tell Carla, taking a step back from the futon Dorothy is splayed over.

“She was okay

when we went to the toilet.”

“Maybe it caught up with her? You know like the fresh-air sniper?”

“The what?” Her laugh is so infectious that it eases some of the tightness in the pit of my stomach.

“Umm, it’s a saying in the UK. It’s when the fresh air hits you after you’ve been drinking and it takes you over the edge. You go from merry to a drunken embarrassment in a breath.”

“Dangerous.” Her accented voice has a warm depth to it that’s a little husky. She’s got that sexy thing going on with her voluptuous frame and soft features. Comfort and confidence glow in her hazel eyes that are all sorts of fire and water. They remind me of aquamarine lakes in serene woodlands and beach bonfires on early autumn evenings.

I would love to do more of those. I’d like to take Christopher and disappear for a few days. Find ourselves some clear sea and warm sand. The fine kind that gets in all the wrong places but is the best to sit on and watch sunrises and sunsets. The current come and go.

“Are you okay?”

“Mhmm…” I’m the best I’ve been in so long; it’s just that this feeling in my chest won’t go away. It’s like my heart is in a shrinking box, getting squeezed harder with every beat. “We probably should get her husband, or some help. She hasn’t moved.”

“Ehhh, she’s breathing. She’s alive. We’re probably doing her a favour, letting her sleep it off.”

“Still, it’s odd that she passed out like that. Let me get some help.”

“Are you sure? If she wakes up, we’ll have to spend the rest of the night listening to her.”