The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Twenty-Four

“Fuck. Me. Like, right in the ass.”

“That could be arranged.”

I nearly tripped on the porch steps of the tiny guesthouse we had rented outside of Engelberg, Switzerland.

“I think you took care of that a few nights ago,” I replied dryly as I waited for Eric to unlock the door. I sagged against the cabin wall and dropped my snowshoes to the ground with a clatter.

Eric gave me a mischievous once-over that dropped slowly to the part of my body I’d just mentioned. “There’s always room for improvement. I was enjoying myself, but you came too fast. We need to work on your endurance there too, I think.”

I removed one of my new fleece mittens and swatted at him. He dodged easily, then chuckled as he shuttled me the rest of the way inside the warm, inviting little cabin. I had to give points to Switzerland for good cheap accommodations. What the country lacked in picturesque architecture, they made up for in basic, utilitarian comfort and, of course, mountains.

“Gaaahhhhh.” I collapsed onto the bed in the middle of the cabin, reveling in the rush of blood from my sorry, swollen feet back into the rest of my body. “I need to spend the next two days in a hot tub. Please tell me again: why did you think snowshoeing for hours would be a good idea?”

“Because it’s fun.”

Eric unloaded the crash pad—essentially a giant foldable mattress he could fall on when rock climbing—onto the floor. He’d rented it from the owners of the tiny guesthouse along with a pair of climbing shoes he’d dismissed as “mediocre, but usable.” We hadn’t actually gone that far, just hiking maybe an hour until Eric found the particular three-story miniature mountain he was looking for that day.

I didn’t know. They all looked like big rocks to me. But I enjoyed the solitude, sketching in my notebook, making tea on a Bunsen burner, and watching Eric play Spiderman until we were ready to make our way back to town.

I did wonder if he had taken me up here as much to distract from the fact that amidst all the snow, it was also Christmas Eve. The rest of the world was probably decorated up the wazoo, but our cabin only had a couple of pine boughs stuck on the fireplace. Maybe he thought up here, it would be easy to ignore the fact that we were spending the holiday alone and on the run instead of surrounded by family or friends.

“Lefferts.”

I could barely prop my head up to see Eric squatting at the foot of the bed. “What is it, Petri dish? I’m too sore even for a decent comeback, so don’t even think about tying me to this bed again.”

The mention of what Eric had done the night before—a particularly creative episode that involved some of his climbing straps, snow, and a camisole re-appropriated as a blindfold—brought another sly smile to the man’s face. But he remained where he was, untying my hiking boots.

“You just need to exercise more, gorgeous.” One sleek brow arched. “Not that I’m complaining, to be clear. I just don’t like to see you in pain.” He popped over me for a moment and gave me a kiss. “Well, not unless it’s the good kind.”

I pulled him down to continue the kiss a bit longer, even as I flushed, thinking of the color of my breast the other night after he’d paid it some especially brutal attention. But even at that thought, I was too tired to respond. The man had simply worn me out.

I released him and flopped back onto the bed. “I street hike.”

“Walking across Central Park is not hiking,” Eric said as he pulled off my second boot.

“Sure it is. Through the concrete jungle, right? And I’ll have you know that the Guggenheim and the Met are both multiple levels. Up and down those steps for an afternoon is basically like summiting the Matterhorn.”

The smug bastard grinned from the foot of the bed, but his large hands closed over one foot and started to rub, so instead of continuing with another slick retort, I just moaned.

“Oh, wow, VD. You have the touch.”

I jerked when he pinched my pinkie toe.

“What did I say about those names?”

“What is there to say?” I chided. “You earned it, you manwhore. Own your truth.”

The hands on my feet paused. Shit. And for several seconds, no one moved.

When I finally propped myself up again, I found Eric watching me with a very intense expression. I froze, my entire chest tightening under the intensity of his dark gray, almost black gaze.

“You know it’s just you, don’t you?” His voice was soft, but almost a threat.

He scooted up the mattress to sit next to me. I sat up against the pillows.

“Jane,” he said. “Tell me you understand that. Tell me you understand that the entire reason we’re here is because of you. What you mean to me.”

I couldn’t help it. I melted. Like a fucking candle. “Is it?”

Eric’s voice shook with emotion despite not rising one decibel. “Yes.”

I swallowed. I wanted to jump him, but my gaze landed on his empty ring finger. If that was the case, why hadn’t he put it back on? Why hadn’t I?

“What was it you said?” I murmured as I stared at his hand. “‘Better single and poor than married to a whore?’” I hadn’t ever admitted out loud how much those words stung. I could take that accusation from anyone but Eric. “It’s catchy, you know. It almost rhymes.”

“You know I said that to drive you away, don’t you?” Eric took my chin, urging me to look at him. “Jane, the only thing I was thinking was that I needed you to get away from me. For your own good.”

“And you thought calling me a whore would be just the key?”

He had the grace to look ashamed, but his ferocity didn’t lessen. “I would have said anything in that moment to keep you safe.”

But all I could do was shrug. This was our history—in moments of anger, we lobbed insults like Molotov cocktails. It wasn’t like I didn’t tease him incessantly about his sexual history. I had literally just called him a venereal disease, so I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I couldn’t take what I dished out on the regular.

Still, from Eric, in that moment, it had really, really hurt. Even if he believed it had been for my own good.

“I got you back with that slap,” I finally said, shaking off his grip. “I think we’re even.” I offered a grim smile. “It’s forgotten. See?”

Eric examined me for a moment. And then, before I could stop him, he tackled me onto the bed with another kiss that took my breath away.

“Stop it,” he ordered.

For a moment, it was almost like we were wrestling, not cuddling. Despite my intense desire for him to subdue the doubt swimming in my stomach, I couldn’t help but fight a little. Eric’s hands wrapped around my wrists like handcuffs, pinning me to the bedding. I pushed back, sucked a little harder on his mouth, wrapped my legs around his stronger ones and bucked with my hips. Eric grunted with the effort to keep me in place, but still worked that much harder. We grappled on the mattress, enjoying a bit of cathartic combat that eventually gave way to surrender. On both sides.

No one loves to fight you like I do, he’d said. I sighed into his kiss. It was the truest thing I’d ever heard. And the truest thing I’d ever felt.

If only he could learn to fight like that for himself.

I pulled back, much to Eric’s obvious disappointment. His chest rose and fell as he regained his breath, and his dilated eyes revealed how much he wanted to continue exactly what we were doing.

But I needed something sweeter.

“Tell me what you used to do for fun when you were small,” I said as I rolled onto my back.

Eric’s brow rose in surprise. He adjusted his pants. I did my best not to look—I’d be a goner if I did. “Are we going to reminisce about our childhoods now? I never took you for the banal conversation sort.”

I just sighed. “I don’t think it’s banal. It’s all part of knowing someone, isn’t it?” Though my voice was light, I really did need some levity at the moment. For some reason, I felt like I was about to cry all over again. Maybe it was being on the run for this long, but something was really starting to take its toll.

Eric watched me for a few more seconds, then resigned himself to draping a long arm across my stomach.

“My childhood wasn’t really what you’d call ‘fun,’” he said. “I’ve told you that. It was a lot of classes and tutors, prep school and whatnot.”

“Oh, come on,” I prodded further. “You were a kid. All kids like to have some fun. What kinds of things did you enjoy doing with your parents? Maybe with your dad when he was alive?”

“Honestly, I still feel like I barely know my mother. She left most of the childcare to my nannies, and after my dad died, the majority of those parenting decisions went to Grandmother, not her.”

Now he was the one looking away, muffling his voice in the pillow to avoid pity. I could imagine that life pretty clearly. The reality was that you didn’t exactly see a brigade of mothers crowding around the schools of the Upper East Side—instead, it was a lot of women with darker skin than their charges’ pale, WASPish features, or heavily accented English next to the kids’ perfect, regionless diction. Women named Rosa, Khadijah, or Irina. Strong women. Kind women. Strict women.

In some ways, the real parents of the Upper East Side.

Eric blinked, perhaps remembering the same thing. “My dad was busy working most of the time, but sometimes he would take me to the park,” he said quietly. “He liked baseball too. He used to take me to Yankees games—at one point, I think DVS had a box. But that was a long time ago.”

“You miss him.” It wasn’t a question.

“I…I suppose,” he said. “I was only ten when he died. It’s hard to miss someone you didn’t really know that well. I was still at the point in my life where I thought my dad was a superhero. The man I miss probably didn’t really exist.”

“You miss him,” I said again.

My chest constricted as I remembered my own father—my real father, not the one who had apparently provided half my DNA. When I closed my eyes, I could see Carol Lefferts’s kind, homely face. The nose that was a little too big and bulbous. The gray eyebrows Yu Na was always haranguing him to trim. The ready smile whenever he came home from work to be tackled by his overenergetic daughter.

“I miss home,” I whispered.

Eric rolled over, then pulled me into him, pressing his nose into my hair so that the rhythms of our heartbeats blended together as one. The tip of his nose was still chilled from being outside, but the rest of him was a furnace. I closed my eyes, relishing the smell of linen, soap, and the salty residue of sweat. His cologne was back in New York, but I could almost smell it anyway.

“Can I call my mom?” I asked. “It’s Christmas Eve. I just want to say hi. She probably thinks I’m mad at her again.”

The look on Eric’s face already told me the answer.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” he said. “We just—Brandon’s P.I. said he thinks she’s being monitored. We can’t risk it.”

I pressed my lips together and tried not to cry again. I didn’t know why I was getting so damn emotional. I knew this was the score when we’d taken flight, and I’d just left a message for her a few days ago from a payphone in Zurich. Maybe it was because it was Christmas Eve. Maybe it was because I’d been away from home—whatever that meant—for almost over four weeks with no end in sight. I felt shiftless, drifting. Sure, I was with Eric, but that didn’t necessarily equal happiness. I needed my people. I needed my life.

After we lay there for a few minutes, he grabbed something off his nightstand.

“Here,” he said as he showed me an iPad. “I borrowed it from the rental manager. We can’t call your mom, but we can say hi to some other people.”

I rolled onto my stomach with him as he propped the iPad up against the headboard. A few minutes later, he had dialed into an unfamiliar number on the Skype application, and a few seconds later, the faces of almost everyone I knew and loved popped up onto the screen.

“Merry Christmas!” they cried.

“Ahhh!” I exploded, hungry to see the faces of my closest friends. Jenny and Luis took up most of the screen with their round, pudgy faces, while Skylar and Brandon lingered in the back with Christoph and Annabelle. Behind them lurked the shadows of other people celebrating Christmas—their parents, Skylar’s grandmother. Maybe Kieran and her partner, Pushpa.

I twisted a corner of the comforter in my hands. It was funny, when I lived in Chicago, I had gone months, of course, without seeing them, but now that I physically wasn’t even allowed to talk to them for days at a time, I missed my friends dearly.

“How’s the old country?” joked Brandon as he popped what looked like some kind of pastry into his mouth. Of course—it was late morning there. If Sarah was over, no doubt the entire kitchen was full of baked goods, starting with her famous blintz. “Are you guys having a good Christmas Eve?”

I nodded, overcome for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, we are. Eric made me go snowshoeing again—”

“She’s a little sore,” Eric put in. “And not in a good way.”

“Eric!” Skylar admonished him.

“Oh my God, Sky. Don’t be such a prude,” I said.

She grinned. I grinned back. It was good to talk to friends. Already I felt better.

“Any idea when you’re coming home?” Skylar asked.

I shook my head, trying not to appear sad. “We’ve only been gone a month. To have a grand European tour, I’d say we need at least six. Maybe a year. What do you think, Petri?”

For that I was rewarded only with a smile and not even a smack on the ass, which told me I was still being humored.

“At least,” Eric murmured. He turned to Skylar and continued to chat about the firm and its clients, about the kids, about everything else but the elephant in the virtual room—that we were talking like this because we were living like fugitives.

“Jane? Jane!”

I snapped back and found Skylar staring expectantly into the webcam.

“Oh, sorry. I kind of spaced out there.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I just wanted to say I love you. And we miss you.”

My heart sank again, and because I couldn’t stop them, tears welled up and actually overflowed.

“Oh, Janey,” Sky said. “Goddammit.” She turned to Brandon. “Isn’t there anything we can do? Has Zola said anything new lately?”

Brandon shook his head mutely, obviously not wanting to upset me.

I shook my head and swiped at my eyes. “I—shit, I’m sorry. It’s okay. I know you guys are doing your best, and we are too. I’m—I think it’s just because it’s Christmas.”

Eric took my hand and pressed kisses to my fingertips. The gentle gesture made me want to cry harder, so I focused on the ugly burgundy and blue pattern of the comforter until my breathing turned to normal.

“Okay,” Skylar said doubtfully. “Well…maybe Nina can help. Hold on a second.”

There was a bit of a shuffle as Skylar handed her phone to someone and we were apparently carried into another room, beyond the hubbub of the kitchen. Then, to our surprise, Nina’s face appeared on the screen.

“Whoa,” Eric scrambled to his seat and picked up the iPad for a better view. I turned around too, and we crowded together over the screen. “Nina? What are you doing there?”

“I…um…hi, Jane. Eric.” Nina looked from side to side, her blonde hair swishing delicately around her face, like she was worried she would be overheard just saying hello.

Eric and I exchanged twin looks of confusion.

“I needed to talk to you,” Nina said in hushed tones once she seemed satisfied no one was listening. “We’ve been trying to find you for weeks. Skylar had a feeling you might call here over the holidays, so she invited me and Olivia. So nice of them.” She said it like she was surprised by the gesture.

“Where’s Calvin?” Eric asked sharply.

Nina blinked seriously. “Not here.”

“He didn’t want to spend Christmas with his family?” I asked suspiciously.

Nina sighed. “Jane, I realize you don’t know my husband well, but I shouldn’t think it surprising that he doesn’t prioritize free time with his daughter. Or me, for that matter.” Her eyes were suddenly sharp. “Not everyone has that kind of marriage.”

We were all quiet for a few awkward moments before Eric spoke again.

“Look, Nina, you knew I was leaving,” he said. “I couldn’t risk Calvin finding out and telling Carson where we were.”

“Well, he figured it out—asking me to step in at board meetings wasn’t exactly discreet, you know. And he said something about Florence last week—were you there?”

Eric’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Carson must have had more spies than we thought. By some Herculean effort, I managed not to say “I told you so.”

From what Eric had told me, Nina’s pompous ass of a husband had been trying to work his way into the Janus society for years. It didn’t matter that people were generally tapped while in the stages of some form of schooling, or that, from what we could tell, positions were generally reserved as one per family (if men were invited at all). As the de Vries member of Janus, Eric held that position—Calvin’s efforts were in vain.

That obviously didn’t stop him from trying to win Carson’s attention, though.

“This isn’t just a honeymoon, is it?” Nina asked pointedly.

Eric remained quiet. I just bit my lip.

“I thought so,” Nina said. “Well, in that case, I’ve been asked to give you a message. If, you know, I just happened to speak to you.” She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t really aware of the stakes of what was happening, but she clearly thought all of this The Spy Who Shagged Me crap was dumb. I sort of agreed.

Eric frowned. “Who asked you to do that?”

We looked at each other.

“Calvin,” Eric said.

“So the big bad wolf is coming to get us?” I asked.

“Jane,” Eric said. “It’s not funny.”

Nina’s mouth quivered, so I thought he was wrong about that one.

“Calvin told me to pass this on if I…if I could manage it.” She looked almost ashamed to be doing so. “I hope you don’t mind, but I read it. And Eric—look, we need you home. The board is wondering what the hell is going on, the stock took another dip, and the executor is starting to talk about breach of the will, even if you are on vacation. You need to come back and sort this out.”

Eric wilted slightly. Over the last few weeks, I had enjoyed seeing his confidence rebloom a bit. But it still wasn’t at the point where it had been when I’d met him. I was still waiting for that cocky bastard I loved and hated so much to return fully.

More and more, I had a feeling that would be tied indelibly to his willingness to stand up to Carson. My “father.” That until he could walk around unafraid of the man, he wouldn’t regain himself.

She unfolded a piece of paper and read a piece of poetry awkwardly aloud:

Indigently You feed

Your majesty

On proffered sacrifice

And breathfuls of prayer.

You would starve to naught

If children and beggars

Were not such fools full of hope.

“And then it says, ‘Hirschenplatz, eighteen hundred hours, December twenty-fifth.” She looked up again. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Beside me, Eric was shaking his head. “Arrogant motherfucker.”

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“It’s a quote from Goethe, a poem about Prometheus,” Eric said. “Carson thinks he’s being witty.”

“Refresh us, Professor,” I said. “Who is Prometheus?”

Eric sighed. “Prometheus is one of the Greek titans. He was bound to a rock by Zeus for sharing fire with people. As part of his punishment, a bird would eat his liver daily. It would grow back to be eaten again.”

I made a face. “That’s brutal.”

“He also never apologized for flouting the rules,” Eric said. “Prometheus always presented himself as a lover of mankind.”

“And that’s what Carson thinks he is? Promethean?” Nina asked.

“It’s supposed to be ironic,” Eric said witheringly. “We’re the ones on the run, but that asshole is making himself into a martyr.” He pushed a hand over his head, causing his hair, which was looking truly awful now that his dark blond roots were starting to show, to muss up. “He’s trying to get under my skin.”

“It looks like it’s working,” Nina said pointedly. “If you let it, anyway.”

I had to smile. I hadn’t ever heard Nina challenge anyone in her family directly. I wondered if the death of her grandmother—with whom she had been quite close—had sparked some new growth in her as well. The de Vries family needed a new matriarch, after all. I doubted Violet was up to the task.

“He’s letting us know he knows generally where we are.” Eric turned to me. “Lucerne is only a half hour from Engelberg. There’s a house there where Goethe stayed.” He blinked. “We should probably leave. Get the hell out of Europe.”

My heart sank. I didn’t exactly want to talk to John Carson again, but a part of me doubted that running again was the way to go. If the investigators weren’t finding anything, what did Eric want to do? Circle the globe for the rest of our lives?

“That’s ridiculous,” Nina said bluntly.

Eric frowned at the screen. Apparently, he was taken aback by her newfound candor as much as I was. “Nina—”

“Stop it,” she said. “We could write off a month as an extended honeymoon for the two of you, but you can’t act like a scared bunny forever. It’s embarrassing.”

Eric scowled. It was hardly the first time his family had called him such a thing, and I knew he didn’t exactly take to it. In fact, it made him more likely to do exactly what they didn’t want.

“Eric,” Nina said before he could argue. “You don’t need to be scared of John Carson—yes, I know who he is. Brandon and Skylar told me all about him and this ridiculous society.”

We blinked at each other. Brandon and Skylar must have had quite the discussion with Nina to trust her enough with that information.

“Nina,” Eric said, “do you have any idea what he is capable of?”

“Do you have any idea what you are capable of, cousin?” she retorted. “Have you any real idea of the kinds of resources that are at your disposal?”

I didn’t dare look at him. He hadn’t really wanted to hear that exact argument from me again since Florence.

Eric shook his head. “I’m not going to misuse company funds that way. It’s unethical. What do you think, the board is going to approve a family vendetta?”

“Good lord.” Nina didn’t even bother masking her irritation. “This is why you need to stop running off, if only to learn about your own actual life. I’m not talking about DVS, Eric. I’m talking about the family holdings. It’s explicitly in the will, if you had just stayed to listen to it.”

“Nina, my trust is not enough to scare off the likes of John Carson. He has half of Congress in his pocket.”

“So does DVS!” Nina gave an exasperated sigh. “You really don’t know your board, do you? Chariot is owned by one man, Eric, but we’re a public company. Do you have any clue how many board members contribute to all of the super PACs we start? Do you have any idea how they all work together to further the interests of the company? If they thought for a moment that John Carson was trying to undermine the company, he would have earned the ire of twelve very powerful people. Chariot Industries might make weapons, but we control the ships and ports where they are delivered. Nothing works without trade, Eric. De Vries Shipping makes the world turn.”

Eric glowered. Obviously, he didn’t appreciate being lectured about a business he had been learning for the last six months. Or…maybe he knew she was right.

“That’s the company, Nina,” he said finally. “That’s not me. And like I said, my trust alone won’t compete with all of John Carson’s power.”

Nina just exhaled an exasperated breath. “Eric, that’s just your allowance. If you had actually spoken more with the executor, you’d know that the majority of the family’s personal holdings are in a separate account. Grandmother used it for things like this—security, investigations. You don’t become the de Vries family without becoming targets. We protect ourselves. We always have.”

“That fund…” Eric shook his head. “That’s for the head of the family to manage.”

“Eric!” Her voice blasted through the tinny speakers. Nina Gardner was demure, well-bred. Never one to raise her voice. But she wasn’t stopping now. “You are the head of this family,” she said evenly, but firmly. “Stand up and take your place!”

Eric opened his mouth several times, obviously considering a retort, but found he had none.

“Hey.” I nudged his shoulder. “You’re not alone in this.”

He looked around the room, as if he were hoping one of the pieces of furniture would come to his defense. But, of course, nothing did.

“All right,” he said finally. The defeat in his voice broke my heart. He reached out for my hand, and when I gave it, he gripped it so tightly that my fingertips turned white.

“You’re going to Lucerne tomorrow?” Nina asked.

Eric nodded. “We’ll go,” he said. His voice dripped with dread. “Yeah. We’ll go.”

“I’ll change and pack,” I said, already standing up. “But I am not under any circumstances putting those boots back on. They can burn in hell for all I care.”