Lion Heart
With the last interview done for the day, Ashe thanked Betty, the P.R. person, and made his way downstairs. Inside the elevator, his phone buzzed from inside his coat pocket, notifying him of a text message. Ben and Lance were waiting for him downstairs to discuss the day over dinner. As Ashe scrolled through the rest of his messages, he noticed that he’d received nothing from Riley. She hadn’t responded to any of his messages either.
He dialed her number, but his call went straight to voicemail. Hanging up during the recorded message reciting her phone number for she’d abandoned setting up a personalized outgoing message after fans got a hold of her previous number and left threatening messages, Ashe dialed the Library Café. It was still an hour before closing time.
Tessa Pollin, the café’s assistant manager, answered the phone. She had started out a year before as a barista, working part-time while going to film school, but had since dropped out to work full-time at the café and teach yoga part-time at a nearby studio. Ashe found her charming and quite well-versed in yogic philosophy, which she often handed out unsolicited to anyone whom she felt to be in need of it. Her conversations about chakras fascinated him, reminding him of his sister’s interest in Buddhist philosophy. Hazel had been only twenty-three when she’d died.
“Oh, I thought you knew, Ashe; Riley took the week off,” said Tessa. “I think she’s doing all that girl stuff to get ready for your big night. You probably know the drill: facials, waxing, that kind of thing.”
“Yes, that kind of thing,” Ashe smiled. “Thank you, Tessa.”
There was a pause. “Is this where I tell you to break a leg?”
“No,” Ashe chuckled just as the elevator doors slid open. “You do that on opening night.”
As Ashe said goodbye and hung up, Betty stepped out of the elevator and headed straight toward Ben and Lance, who were standing in the lobby. Already Ashe felt people watching them. It wouldn’t be unusual for people suddenly to get an urge to take selfies, making sure to focus on the famous person in the background. He’d learned to spot them and he did his best to ignore them, just as Riley would have to learn to do.
Already more people, mostly tourists, were stopping by the Library Café, hoping to spot him sitting in the corner table farthest from the door; when he wasn’t around, they’d turn their attention to ‘Ashe Hunter’s girlfriend’. Once he’d caught Tessa and Riley swapping name tags; while he’d thought it was cute, he’d also told them it wasn’t funny. There was only one Riley, as far as he was concerned.
As Lance, Ben and Betty ran through the day’s schedule, Ashe went through his text messages again to make sure that he hadn’t missed any from Riley. If Ashe hadn’t left her the way he did last night, he’d have let it go. But for the first time since they started seeing each other, he’d left her in a distressed state, and it worried him. Ashe understood her need to vent but the way she’d approached the matter grated on him. Still, she was right; he always called the shots.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to have to skip dinner. Dave will drive me home,” said Ashe as Ben and Lance looked up in surprise. “I’m tired, and whatever it is you’re going to discuss between the three of you, I’m sure you’ll tell me tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” Ben asked. “I know you’ve had a busy day.”
“I did have a busy day, Ben. I’ve been up since four and now I’m tired. Call me first thing in the morning,” said Ashe. He leaned toward Betty as she drew closer for a European cheek-to-cheek goodbye. “Thank you for all your help, Betty.”
“My pleasure,” she said, pulling him aside. “You did well today, as always. I’ll see you and Riley on opening night. Make sure to brief her on what to expect, won’t you?”
“I will,” promised Ashe. It wasn’t as if Riley didn’t know what to expect, since she’d accompanied him to two events in LA: an afternoon tea to honor film award nominees in Beverly Hills, and afterward a major awards show where Ashe had been a presenter. Neither of these events had occurred in the midst of a slowly-broiling story alluding to Ashe’s involvement in the world of BDSM.
Gareth was right. It was easy to name gay or even transgender actors, but someone who lived an openly kinky lifestyle? Good luck there! It was death to a career to be seen as someone who dabbled in such a lifestyle, even if Ashe could name a few people who actually did, their homes containing special rooms just for their toys. Anything that did get out was immediately silenced with a bribe or a threat. As if things weren’t bad enough, Betty had recently learned that Collette had hired the services of a rival PR firm to handle Catriona’s appearances; this one, she’d warned, was good at creating buzz.
“Not necessarily good buzz, at that,” she had added just before Ashe had sat down to the last interview of the day, a round table with a group of journalists from a European agency. “It may be good publicity for Catriona and her cable TV series since Collette’s depicting her as Hollywood’s next femme fatale, but not for you, Ashe. Your image is the complete opposite. Don’t forget that you’re also the face of a few charitable causes in England and the Prince Charming any woman would love to bring home to introduce to Mom and Dad.”
As the last reporter cleared her throat, crossing her legs seductively in front of him, Ashe did pretend, hiding his boredom at spending hours and hours answering the same questions. Even his cheek muscles were cramped from all the smiling, or rather lifting the sides of his mouth, because after a while that was all he could manage to do. Hell, even that became tiring.
Right now all Ashe wanted was go home and see Riley, his girl. Was that too much to ask?
As he watched the world outside the car window, Ashe couldn’t stop thinking about what Gareth had said. How could he drop the bombshell about Riley not being Sid’s daughter and expect her to coast through the revelation so quickly? And if that wasn’t bad enough, what about the revelation that he’d been involved in BDSM?
At least he’d been slowly introduced to it, trained by one of the Dominants at the club who taught him that the need to control his emotions, needs and desires were just as important as controlling his submissive. He’d had years to perfect it, a skill he later directed to his career.
Riley had no such warning. She’d been blindsided by the revelation, and it hadn’t come from him but from Catriona, prompted by the word ‘vanilla’ and later ‘Sir’ and ‘Master’. Did he really expect that he could go about his busy publicity schedule and leave her alone to deal with the consequences of other people’s actions?
As Dave drove to Riley’s apartment, Ashe’s thoughts were racing. He tried calling her again but his call went straight to her voicemail, as if her phone had been turned off. She often forgot to charge her phone, even after Ashe had given her one of those portable emergency chargers; such things only worked if they were being used. Riley had always resisted being a slave to her phone, or technology in general, unlike Ashe who had no choice in the matter.
In a world where news traveled in the blink of an eye and answers were expected almost as quickly as the questions were posed, Ashe’s phone had become an extension of himself. He was never without it unless he was onstage, in front of a camera, posing for pictures at a junket or pictorial or doing interviews.
As Ashe stared at the blank screen of his phone, he might as well have been without it, since Riley wasn’t answering her phone. He could have asked Ben or Lance to check on her, though that would have driven her crazy. He could see her in his mind’s eye, telling him that she wasn’t a child. Because Ashe wanted to empower Riley to make her own decisions, he tried to limit his help by offering choices only, leaving the ultimate decision up to her. It may have looked like new-age mumbo-jumbo to Gareth, but Ashe didn’t want to coddle Riley any more than he already did, making decisions for her when she asked him to.
A limousine was parked in front of the entrance and Dave temporarily double-parked next to it, allowing Ashe to get out. As he hurried toward the building, Ashe stopped as the door opened and a man and a woman emerged.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled, staring at Catriona, who was wearing a full-length fur coat over a black ensemble; next to her, Emmet was pulling out a mobile phone from his coat pocket. Before he could swipe the phone on, Ashe grabbed it from his hand.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said grimly before turning to face Catriona. “I asked you a question. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, of course. I assumed that you’d be finished with your junkets, so I stopped by your place in the village first.”
“How did you know where I live?”
“You forget, Ashe, that I’ve inherited the manager you discarded, and she’s worth every penny I pay her,” Catriona replied. “Anyway, we stopped by your apartment first, but the doorman said you weren’t home, so I came here to your pet’s apartment just in case.”
“She is not my pet.”
“If you say so,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “We need to talk, Ashe. I want you to slip my name to Abe and his friends. I know you’ve got some things in development and I could use a bit of help.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
Her expression hardened. “You owe me a favor.”
“I owe you nothing. As far as I am concerned, all debts were paid in full,” Ashe said through gritted teeth as he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the limousine. “It would be best if you return to your car.”
Catriona’s gaze moved down her arm. “Ashe, my love, your grip hasn’t changed at all; it’s strong as ever. Always my sir, my Dominant; always in charge.”
“I am not, and never will be, your Dominant,” replied Ashe, releasing her as the memory of the way he used to handle her during their scenes together came back to him in vivid detail. The roughness of their play that left her with marks on her skin, sating the masochist inside her and pleasing the part of him that liked giving her what she wanted. He’d left all that behind when he left her and he wasn’t about to return to it.
“Oh, but you were. You can’t keep denying it, Ashe; lying doesn’t suit you,” said Catriona, smoothing her coat with her dark manicured fingers and standing straight-backed before him, her chin raised. “You can’t hide what you truly are by trying to be someone you’re not, having a relationship with someone who doesn’t understand who you really are and probably won’t be able to accept it, and therefore can never be right for you. How can she truly understand the lion hiding behind the mask of a lamb?”
“I don’t care what you think, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave right now,” Ashe said. “Don’t ever come near Riley’s home again.”
“Oh, she has a name?” Catriona laughed, a high tinkling sound that grated on Ashe. “I would have considered her just a plaything, a toy.”
“Just as Hazel was a toy to you?” By now Ashe was seething mad. Though it was cold, he no longer felt the chill in his bones, heat suffusing his cheeks at the memory of Hazel in a black latex maid’s outfit.
“That was a mistake,” whispered Catriona, her tone faltering. The bravado she’d exhibited minutes earlier was suddenly gone. “I was so sorry to hear that she’d passed away, Ashe. I had no idea—”
Ashe didn’t wait to hear her finish her apology. It was all he needed, for her to acknowledge, five years too late, that it had been a mistake. That mistake had cost Catriona whatever respect Ashe had had for her, even as a stage actress. He couldn’t grant her even professional respect after what she’d done in a bid to get him back, enticing his adored sister into the world he had left behind.
He handed Emmet’s phone back to him and entered the building. The doorman’s desk was empty and the elevator in use, but Ashe had no need of it to reach Riley’s floor. After sitting for most of the day, he was grateful for the time afforded by climbing up five flights of stairs, giving him the opportunity to calm down and regulate his breathing.
It brought back the memory of the first time he’d taken those same stairs. It was the night he’d met Riley, when he’d insisted on walking her to her front door after they’d shared a noodle dinner in Chinatown. It had been a good excuse to find out where she lived, though he’d also wanted to protect her on the journey to her apartment. He’d been so charmed by her that evening that he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
His thoughts were racing. Had Catriona made it upstairs and spoken to Riley? If so, what had she said? Would Riley have opened the door to someone she didn’t know?
As Ashe reached her door, he paused to collect his wits about him and calm his breathing some more. If anyone ever wanted to get to him, they only had to get to Riley and he’d lose the plot. He’d never felt this way for anyone before, and while it was refreshing to know that his heart was capable of love, it scared Ashe to see himself rendered weak because of it.
Maybe Catriona was right; he was a lion behind the facade of a lamb. That didn’t change the fact that Riley held this lion’s heart.