Page 130 of Never Tell Lies

“Well, I’m sorry I’m such a fucking embarrassment!” I spat back, desperately fighting back the tears already threatening to spill over.

“That’s not what I meant! I’m just trying to say that this would go much smoother if you were just more…” He trailed off as he grasped for the right word but he needn’t have worried. I already knew what he was trying to say.

“More like Angie?” I said, ashamed of how choked I sounded.

Don’t say yes. Please, Alfie, do not say yes.

“Yes, actually,” he answered, completely oblivious to the mallet he’d just taken to my self-esteem. How could he be so aware of me one minute and oblivious the next? Ignorant to my turmoil, he continued. “If you understood the rules of my world, how to behave…but you don’t. You don’t have the slightest clue what my world is and this,” he gestured at the hotel suite that to me was the very height of luxury, “this isnothing. This was the best that your small town had to offer. Do you think that suites in Monaco or New York look like this? That my private jet looks like this? That any of my properties look like this?”

My own pain and humiliation sank into the background as he spoke, the bitterness in his voice fascinating me. His words were bragging, boastful, but he spoke as if he hated the world he was describing. He was building to something, his words spilling over themselves as if a dam had been broken.

“Besides, this is all just window dressing to my life, my world of rules, ofetiquette.Of state dinners and galas. Do you think I relish the idea of introducing you to royalty? Bringing you into that life isn’teasy, Lola. Allowing myself to be happy for the first time in a decade isn’t easy—” He stopped short, his eyes widening. He’d slipped up, dropped a snippet of a secret, and I pounced on it like a cat on a mouse.

“Why is allowing yourself to be happy a problem?”

“It isn’t.” The mask slammed down, the walls sprang up, and once again I found myself on the outside, hammering my fists against unyielding brick.

“Stop shutting me out! Alfie, what you’re asking of me is huge. You say you want me to trust you but you won’t let me in even the slightest bit. The only reason I know anything about you is because I Googled you!”

“There’s nothing to know.” He shrugged and before I could stop them, words came tumbling out of my mouth that should never have seen the light of day.

“What about Charles? Is henothing?” I didn’t mean to say it and the look on his face made me wish I hadn’t. I expected fury to come firing back at me but instead, nothing. His expression was…dead. I’d seen that face before. I’d seen it every time he’d had to work late. I’d seen it when I’d found him in his office with Angie, and I’d had to coax him back to me.

“There is nothing to say about him.”

“Big. Faker. Why don’t you ever talk about your past, Alfie? About your family, about the Never Tell Club? You said in that article that you would rather be dead than work for your father’s company, and now you’re running it! What changed?”

He was silent for a moment, his silence holding me in a limbo where I wondered if he was finally going to let me in or shut me out once more. His eyes were on mine but they weren’t really seeing me. I longed suddenly for that cold, calculating gaze to come back. At least then there would be life inside him. Eventually he spoke and his words shattered my hopes.

“Lola, I have already muddied you enough for one night. I won’t dirty you any further.” He stood, and I held up a hand to stop him approaching but he ignored it and came to stand in front of me, his form phantom-like in the moonlight.

“I’m just trying to understand...” I looked up at him from my twisted duvet robe. I was sitting in a cloud looking up at the empty stars of his eyes.

He tilted my head, forcing me to look at him, and his dead eyes fastened on me as he spoke. “Understand that neither my history, my family, nor my company are any of your concern.”

“Then what is?” I asked, my voice hoarse. He released my jaw, his hand falling to his side.

“Me.” He stood before me, a glorious statue, an ethereal creation. He was offering only himself as if it should be enough, yet he wasn’t as sure of his worth as he might once have been.

“That’s it?” I sniffed, trying to hold back tears. He felt so far away from me and I felt guilty for pushing him so much.

“It’s not enough?”

“No, Alfie. It’s not enough.”

“If it’s the title of Girlfriend you want, you can have it, Lola.” His even tone riled me. I wanted him to shout at me, to get mad and prove he was still in there somewhere.

“Girlfriends know things but you don’t let me in. Why don’t you drink, Alfie? Why won’t you let me pleasure you? Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother? How did you get that scar?” My words came tumbling out, questions that had lain dormant for too long finally breaking their way free.

“Enough.”

“No, Alfie, it isn’t enough.” I straightened my shoulders, showing him how strong I was, how big my shoulders were, that I could carry his weight if he needed me to. “This isn’t a boardroom, it’s a bedroom, and you don’t get to decide what we discuss.”

“I get to decide what I tell you and I choose not to tell you this, so learn your place and stay out of it.”

I winced and stared up at him, barely able to believe he had just spoken to me that way. “That hurt, Alfie.”

“It’s what I do, Lola. I hurt.” He reached out, the pads of his fingers brushing over my jaw as he took my chin once more. I froze, keeping myself perfectly still. He ran his thumb over my bottom lip, his eyes affixed to my mouth.