The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Eleven

Since all of my clothes were still in my workroom next door (we hadn’t yet rebuilt the master closet to accommodate both of our wardrobes), it took me a few minutes to find some of Eric’s that would actually stay on. Eventually I located a pair of pajama pants and one of his expensive white Oxford shirts, which I knotted around my waist, looking like I’d walked out of a TLC video circa 1992. That was me, apparently. Ain’t too proud to beg.

I made sure my makeup wasn’t melting down my face Crow-style, then exited the bedroom still tying my hair into a bun on top of my head. Fuck a good impression. Whoever the hell had interrupted this reunion with my “beloved” was going to be on the receiving end of my wrath, not hospitality.

“All right,” I said as I entered the living room. “Who in the hell at the door was more important than what we were doing? Last I heard, Triton was The Little Mermaid’s dad, not anyone who lives in this apartment.”

Eric turned from the door. His shirt was still buttoned only halfway up, offering a distracting view of his abs and chest. The coin dangled around his neck again. If he hadn’t looked so terrified, I would have towed him back to our room, even if the Queen of England herself had joined us.

A sudden stream of evening sunlight through the bay windows cut through the storm, making the coin gleam. Eric’s face crumpled.

“Jane? I told you to—”

I waved his words away. “You didn’t really think I was going to do that, did you, Petri? Now, who’s our guest? I’m guessing Papa stopped by. Are they deorum vocas-ing again? Do we need to have a talk about appropriate fucking moments for reunions?”

Eric folded his mouth into a thin line and shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was more irritated with me or himself at that moment.

I turned to the person whose tall, imposing figure filled the doorway. It was, of course, the same man who had burst through the doors of St. John the Divine two weeks ago.

John Carson looked down his long, slightly hooked nose at me with an imperious gaze that matched the oiled salt-and-pepper curls so assiduously groomed to his scalp. His eyes gleamed with intent. Slim and tall, he was immaculately dressed in a navy three-piece suit, over which an open raincoat floated around his person like a cape. He looked like a very wealthy, Burberry-clad Dracula, a fact I didn’t like to admit since I could also see the resemblance to me.

The same hazel eyes.

The same long limbs.

The same smug mouth twisted in a knowing grin.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

My insides suddenly scrambled as I came face-to-face with a man who could only be my father. I blinked, swallowed heavily. And then called on my plentiful supply of bravado.

“You have a bit of a habit of breaking up awkward moments, did you know that?” I said as I approached. “First my wedding, and now my husband’s homecoming. Perhaps you should wait until you’re properly invited to these things. If you are at all.”

“Jane,” Eric murmured.

I just rolled my eyes. From my vantage point, the fact that my maybe-husband had left me at the altar, that he was currently staring at me like a terrified gerbil, that he had literally pulled out of me mid-orgasm—all of this was because wannabe Mr. Burns kept busting in on everything. And yeah, I’ll be real. I was most angry with the last one. I didn’t care if this guy was the Pope—he wasn’t getting away with fucking up my sex life.

“How did you get up here?” I asked as I folded my arms. “Carson, is it? Because I’m sure as hell not calling you ‘Daddy.’”

The man blinked. Slowly, his smirk widened, and he bowed. He actually bowed, like some archaic character from an Edgar Allen Poe story.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

“Jane,” he said as he extended a long hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet my daughter properly at last. I wouldn’t have chosen these circumstances, of course, but we’ll make do.”

I examined the hand for a minute, took it, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Carson’s hand—I couldn’t for the life of me think of him as John, and definitely not Dad—was cold and overly smooth, like bone. It was like greeting a cadaver.

“You would have preferred a creepy meeting place in the rain?” I said. “Eric and I politely decline your offer. We decided to come home. The two of us. Alone.”

As I emphasized the word “we,” Carson’s pleasant expression disappeared.

“You know,” he said. “Some might say it’s rude to ignore an invitation. Or an order. Isn’t that so, Triton?” he asked Eric.

“We had more important things to do,” I cut in. “Like consummating our fucking marriage, asshole. Or did you show up to watch? Pretty kinky, but incest isn’t my thing, just FYI.”

Eric buried his face in one hand. Carson’s tightened even more as he cast a look over the room behind us. His gaze caught the abandoned wet clothes, and his jaw clenched visibly.

“I believe you are mistaken,” he said as he walked inside, carefully avoiding the debris and muddy tracks. “From what I understand, the marriage is not legal.” He turned by the kitchen island. ‘Isn’t that correct, Triton?”

Eric mumbled something under his breath that sounded strangely like “Yes.”

I shot him a dirty look, which he avoided.

I turned back to Carson. “We’re figuring it out. It’s a family matter.”

His laugh was like listening to a rock bounce down a stepladder—jarring, rhythmic, and clipped. “I suppose that entitles me to negotiations, doesn’t it, my dear? After all, no one ever asked your father’s permission. And Eric, of course, dearly paid for it.”

Carson’s eyes floated over Eric’s body, which shuddered visibly. I stepped closer to Eric. He only stepped away.

“What did he do to you?” I whispered.

But Eric wouldn’t answer, just shook his head and turned back to Carson “Things are more…complicated now.”

Carson looked Eric over. “Cute, Triton. Very cute. But try as you might, you’ll never have your grandmother’s negotiating skills. A viper, that one.”

His tone was overtly admiring, like Celeste had been a force to be reckoned with, but not without some spite. Well, she had been a force. I could testify to that personally.

“What do you want?” I asked, unwilling to beat around the bush. I was tired of being jerked around in this little charade.

“Simple,” Carson said. “To protect my legacy.”

I frowned. “Your what?”

“Young de Vries here had his orders. Several times, I might add. To stay away from you.”

I frowned. “Me?” I shook my head. “Why me?”

Carson tipped his head. “Call it a protective father’s instinct. It’s not your fault, my dear, that Eric has such a hard time taking orders.”

I turned to Eric, who just held out his hands.

“I couldn’t,” he said weakly. “I couldn’t walk away from you.”

My heart twisted in my chest. Yeah, I knew how that felt. Still, something wasn’t adding up.

“I don’t buy it,” I said. “So what, your little two-faced clubhouse decided the boss’s daughter was off-limits?”

Carson’s head snapped up. “She knows about Janus?”

“She’s smart, Carson. She figured it out.” Eric shrugged, but didn’t mention Brandon. For once, I was grateful for his impervious exterior.

Carson scowled. “Inexcusable. We’ll attend to that later.”

Was it me, or did Eric shrink at the implied threat? From a man at least thirty years his senior?

I, on the other hand, was puffing up like a blowfish. “This is ridiculous. What does it matter what the evil Boy Scouts say? Why did you have to get involved with them anyway? Just walk away like you did last time.”

“Oh, Eric didn’t walk away,” Carson corrected me. “He thought he did, but in reality, he was released.”

My forehead screwed up in confusion. “What? Why?”

“Five years ago, Eric wasn’t an active member of our little group,” Carson said. “A black sheep running off to play attorney?” He scoffed. “Please. We had no use for him then.”

“But you do now?”

Eric took a deep breath. “Jane, DVS operates nearly a third of the major ports in the world right now. Our contracts basically control what goes in and out of almost every country on the planet. I’m the controlling shareholder now. That makes me…valuable.”

“That’s enough,” snapped Carson. “It’s bad enough she knows about the society. The rest is none of her concern.”

“None of my concern?” I parroted. “How’s that, Dr. No? You are literally twisting my life around because of all this nonsense. That definitely sounds like my concern. Do you usually interfere with the lives of your members with this kind of manipulative horseshit?”

“Of course not,” Carson replied easily. “But the other members haven’t tried to marry my daughter.”

And there it was. The key difference. The reason for his interference. Me.

“You’ve—I—we—” I stumbled over the words until I could think of just one thing—the thing I’d been avoiding for the last two weeks. “I need to call my mother.”

“I wouldn’t advise that.” Carson took a few steps closer to me. “Yu Na was told to stay far away from my activities long ago. She accepted my settlement and married that…” His hand waved, as if recognizing Carol Lefferts as an actual person wasn’t even worth his time. One of his thin eyebrows arched. “What, you don’t think she and the psychologist came up with that house payment on their own, did you? There is also the fact that her VISA was processed within days, not years.”

Carson leaned down so he could look me straight in the eye. It wasn’t far—he was tall, but so was I.

“Yu Na has good reason to be afraid of me,” he said. “As does Eric. I’d hate to give my own daughter a taste of that medicine, but it’s not out of the question if she doesn’t behave.”

I opened my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but something in Eric’s eye stopped me. He shook his head minutely. So I remained quiet and took a step back. Proceed, asshole, I thought. And like he heard me, Carson did.

“You see, my darling, I have a bit of a problem. There is an unfortunate price, it seems, of working with the elements I do. A cost of being at the forefront of modern technology.”

“You mean weapons of mass destruction?”

Carson cast another long look at Eric. “Someone has been talking.”

He shook his head.

“You’re the CEO of Chariot Industries,” I shot back. “And I have access to Wikipedia.”

Carson frowned, but continued to pace. “I see. Well…let me be frank, then. A man reaches a certain age, and he wants a legacy to leave behind. He wishes to know he will not be forgotten.”

“So you found out your swimmers are sterile, and I’m all that’s left. Your little half-Korean mistake?” I had to laugh. “Well, that’s rich.”

“It is what it is,” Carson replied between his teeth. “The facts as they are.”

“Well, the facts are also that I want fucking nothing to do with you,” I said. “I don’t know you, regardless of whatever money you gave my parents. I don’t want your ‘legacy.’ I don’t want anything at all from you.”

Carson shrugged. “I harbor no illusions about the possibility of our relationship,” he informed me. “Nor, quite frankly, do I want one. You are much too old and much too…” He waved his hand up and down, as if to indicate something unworthy about my general being. “No, you would never be an appropriate heir. I shall make do with closer confidants. But I have one requirement. That my superior bloodline does not under any circumstances mix with this…swill.”

“The de Vrieses?” I frowned at Eric. “What do you have against one of the oldest families in America?” It was ironic, I knew, that I was actually defending a family who had treated me like a kitchen scamp for the last six months, but here we were. I’d take their snooty Dutch noses over this asshole any day of the week.

“That’s none of your concern!” Carson barked. “One way or another you will learn some respect. I advise you learn it quickly before you receive the consequences of your disregard. Since he loves to talk so much, perhaps Eric can give you a preview.”

I looked to Eric. His head gave an infinitesimal shake—the universal sign for shut up, Jane.

“What is the deal with rich people and their legacies?” I blurted out “Look, Goldfinger, I hate to break it to you, but your DNA is not that special. And neither is mine.”

“Ah, but I must disagree with you, my dear,” Carson put in. “You see, history proves different. Some genetic legacies are more powerful than others. It’s the strong who inherit the earth, not the weak.”

I looked at Eric. “Is he serious? This is over some kind of freaking eugenicist garbage? Are we in the middle of the nineteenth century?”

“If this were the nineteenth century, my dear, you wouldn’t exist.”

I snorted. “Someone needs to go back to history class, Johnny boy. You think you’re the only rich white man to take advantage of a poor Asian woman? It’s a timeworn stereotype, so really, you’re the one out of date. Not to mention ordinary as fuck.”

“Jane,” Eric hissed.

“Don’t bother, Triton,” Carson said, his eyes blazing at me. “Her concerns do not matter anyway.” He paused. “However it emerged, I would hate to know that my legacy will go to waste. You’re rough, but there is enough of me in you that it is worth my effort to take an interest in where it…goes.”

I scowled. “You talk about me like I’m a broodmare.”

Carson just shrugged, which told me the comparison wasn’t totally off base. But before I could argue, something else occurred to me:

“But Eric’s part of your little club,” I said. “If you want to talk bloodlines, his family has deeper roots here than just about anyone besides the actual indigenous people. The de Vrieses didn’t come on the Mayflower, but that’s only because they bought Manhattan ten years later for twenty bucks.”

“Technically, that was Peter Minuit,” Eric put in. “My ancestors were among the merchants that helped him settle.”

Carson smiled, like the detail strengthened his argument that the de Vries line was corrupt.

I just rolled my eyes. “Are we done with the pedantry, boys?” I turned back to Carson. “You want a pedigree? He’s got one. I should think you’d be happy—if I wanted a relationship with you at all, which I don’t—that I ended up with the colonial crown prince of Manhattan should tickle those shaved whiskers of yours bloody pink.”

“Be that as it may,” Carson said, barely able to contain his irritation. “That’s how I feel. And it’s how it shall be. Anyone—anyone—but a member of the de Vries family.”

“Except there’s one problem, Carson.”

Finally, Eric managed to find his voice as he stepped in front of me. He picked his jacket off the floor, pulled out the wet, wadded remains of our copy of Celeste’s will—given to each family member in the office—and handed it to Carson.

“Page five,” Eric said softly as Carson laid the document on the counter and started peeling it apart.

“Stupid woman,” Carson muttered to himself as he scanned the ways in which Celeste had divided her estate. “Two hundred million dollars in real estate to a butler?”

He continued to murmur to himself, chuckling every so often until he came to the section concerning Eric and me. Then his face turned an ungodly shade of red as he read the short paragraph. And read it again. And again. Until finally, when he was just about to spout like a tea kettle, he looked up, fairly shaking with fury.

“What. Is. This?”

Eric shrugged. And for once, it was the best thing I’d ever seen. “It’s my birthright,” he said softly. “Tied to the woman I love.”

Carson spluttered. “You had to get married to keep your inheritance. You told me yourself, it didn’t matter to whom.”

Eric just cocked his head. “Grandmother changed the terms. Jane and I are both granted our own trusts, but the conditions were altered. We don’t have to stay married. We don’t even have to get married again at all. We just have to live together for sixty days. Jane receives fifty million, and I keep my family’s forty-nine percent and remaining assets. If I do nothing, the executor has instructions to sell it all. Which means, of course, DVS loses all its contracts around world ports.” He quirked a brow. “Something tells me you might be interested in that, considering the way Chariot has been investing in DVS stock for the last ten years. What’s your stake now? A full one percent?”

Carson’s jaw dropped and stayed there for several seconds.

“I might be new to this job,” Eric said. “But I’m not stupid. You want me in Janus? You summoned me, after all, Carson. Was that to keep your enemy close or because I served some interest? I remember. You never do anything unless it benefits you in some way. Or, of course, anarchy. So which is it? I can’t be a someone without her, Carson. I’m no one without Jane.”

My brain wasn’t sure how to take that. But my heart definitely thrilled.

Eric winked at me. “Maybe Grandmother wasn’t such a viper after all, huh, Jane?”

I grinned. I had never been so thrilled that Eric’s grandmother was a Machiavellian genius. Carson looked back and forth between us frantically, and I bristled, feeling triumphant. More, however, than I should have.

“Yes, well…” Carson tapped a long finger on the counter, then suddenly swept the entire will into the garbage container on one side of the island. “She wasn’t smart enough to include a procreation clause or anything else like it.”

Carson’s shocked expression morphed into a smile. The kind that, like the Cheshire cat’s, seemed to be present before the rest of his face appeared around it.

“Sixty days,” Carson said. “And you will. Not. Touch. Her.”

I snorted. “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”

“Oh, it will. It will. Won’t it, Triton?” He reached across the island to Eric and pulled his coin out of his shirt.

“This,” he said, “was your father’s, not yours. I recognized it when I last saw you.”

With a sudden wrench, he ripped the chain from Eric’s neck.

“Hey!” Eric yelped.

Carson examined the coin for a few moments. “I should take it,” he said. “Until you’ve earned back the right.”

But instead, he dropped the necklace on the counter, where it collapsed into a pile.

I stared at Eric, who was staring at the coin. I started to grab for it, to hurl it out the window or back at this horrible, snide man who was somehow related to me. But before I could, Eric’s broad hand covered it and pulled it away. I watched in shock as he tucked it into his pants pocket with great care.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “You’re not really going to agree to this, are you?”

“Jane,” he said weakly. “I—I have to.”

“Well, I don’t!”

I stomped my foot on the ground like a child. Carson seemed to enjoy it. I whirled around at him.

“Listen, you pompous prick. There is no fucking way in hell you’re going to dictate any parts of my life or his! I don’t know who you think you are, but—”

Suddenly, my wrist was snatched, and I was swiftly walked backward into the wall in four long steps.

“Hey!” Eric shouted just as I was slammed against the exposed brick, its jagged, uneven texture cutting into my back. “Easy!”

“This is a family matter,” Carson bit out as he glared down at me. “I’ve forgiven your ill manners because of the unfortunate circumstances of our meeting. Haven’t you considered why your prince over there is so terrified of me, Jane?”

I quivered, from fear yes, but mostly anger. “No.”

That same smile appeared, revealing white teeth that had to be capped, but several stained ones near the back. Carson’s breath smelled lightly of cigars. I hoped cancer was eating him alive as we stood there.

“People who cross me usually regret it. Painfully so.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked.

“It’s a fact.”

A low, almost inaudible laugh hummed from the back of Carson’s throat. He released my hand, and I crumpled against the wall and down to the floor, holding my sore wrist to my chest.

“It’s fine,” Eric said as Carson turned around. “We’ll do it.”

“We’ll do it?” I cried. “We will do it? Don’t I have a say in this at all?”

“Jane, please,” he said, as nonchalant as ever, but with a pleading note that almost broke me. “It’s two months. Just…just two months.”

But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the asking me to live platonically that made me so upset. It was that he was choosing this farce—this fucked-up parody of a marriage—over the truth and passion and grit that had always been between us.

Eric had broken my heart so many times before, but this time, he smashed it to pieces. Because it was clear to me, for the first time since he’d walked back into my life six months ago, that the only thing that really mattered to him was his own fucking skin.

Well. I could look out for mine too.

I pushed up from the floor, still cradling my hand, fighting not to swing out at both of the smug, entitled fuckers in front of me.

But before I could say anything, Carson seemed to accept Eric’s consent for us both. He tapped his finger to his nose and walked to the door.

“Sixty days, Triton,” he said before leaving. “And I’ll know. You know I will.”

The door closed behind him and the click of the lock echoed through the apartment.

I turned to Eric. “You’re insane if you think I’m going along with this. If this is how it’s going to be, I’ll just leave now.”

“Jane—” Eric’s voice cracked as he pulled the coin out of his pocket and stared at it. That stupid, flashing piece of metal that seemed to mock us with its brightness.

He looked up, and I could see every argument he had flashing across his otherwise immovable face. That he had to do this, not for himself, but for his family. For Nina and her kids. For his mother and aunt. For the people, bad and good, who were grieving a woman who had done everything she could to maintain a legacy for them through her sole heir.

I deflated like a sad, tired balloon. Every emotion I had seeped from me like the air out of my lungs. All except for anger. At him.

“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll do it. Not for you. For Nina. For my mother’s future. I’ll stay for sixty days, and not one fucking day longer. But if you think I’m going to make it easy on you, think again.”

Eric stared at me like a monster was rising in front of him. And who knows? Maybe one was.

I pushed up on my toes to look him right in the eye. His gaze, however, drifted to my lips like it always did. I shuddered. Dammit.

Anger, I thought to myself. Hold on to your anger. It was the only way I would be able to do it.

Somehow, we’d have to live together for sixty days. Sixty days without touching. Without kissing. Without fucking.

I moved in with Eric six months ago absolutely hating his guts, and I lasted two weeks. Two months would be impossible without holding on to that hate. Doing everything I could to keep it alive.

“If I have to live this miserable, stupid charade with you, I’m going to make you regret it more than you’ve ever regretted anything in your life.”

I moved closer so that my lips hovered inches from his, and Eric’s steely gaze drifted down, fixed on them.

“Is that a threat?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. Dangerous and scared all at once.

“No,” I said as I stood as straight as I could. “That’s a promise.”

Part Two

Aposiopesis

Oh, kiss me, sweet nymph,

With thy poisoned lips,

With ruby’s red shade that cuts to the quick.

Oh, Dido, cry out,

Hysteria’s spout

Trapped not by deed, but words that you shout.

Oh, save me, sweet sprite

With thy hair like the night,

Like Diana, so fierce, so eager to fight.

I’d fly to the mark,

Without liquor or spark,

It’s thy light that saves me from oppressive dark.

“Memory”

—from the journal of Eric de Vries