Calm After the Storm
Ashe didn’t need Riley to tell him that she wasn’t happy about the article, not when the front door opened as soon as the serious conversation was over and her nephews rushed inside, screaming her name when they saw her. She was smiling and laughing when he left her, and after battling Manhattan traffic like a pro that he was, Dave dropped him off in front of the theater to the shock of patrons and bystanders.
His performance was like any other night. If people were turned off by pictures of him pulling an older man from a car, they didn’t show it. If some returned their tickets, there were others waiting to snatch them up. After the performance, Ashe cut short his time outside the theater to sign autographs and pose for selfies. He needed to return home.
The next morning, Riley didn’t get out of bed to make coffee like she used to. Ashe stayed with her, watching her stare at the ceiling for what seemed like hours while his phone kept buzzing on the bedside table. The world outside his window could end for all he cared; the only world that mattered to him was lying at his side.
“Talk to me,” murmured Ashe, pulling Riley close and glad that she didn’t resist him. “Tell me what you’re thinking or something else, I don’t care; just talk to me.”
“What about?”
“Anything: the price of coffee beans, or the shade of purple you want to paint the Library Café. I don’t care, Riley. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”
She took a deep breath and sighed, nestling against him, her hand tracing circles along his bicep. Her warm breath fanned his chest as he propped his pillows higher to rest his head.
“Nothing in my life is what I thought it was,” Riley whispered. “My father, my mother, my sister … and my first love, or childhood sweetheart. Whatever anyone wants to call him.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. He drew her closer, kissing her forehead, her eyes and the path of her tears. “I’m sorry, petal.”
“It’s not your fault. I just don’t understand why I feel like it is my fault. It’s not like I could have stopped my mother from falling in love with another man, or the possibility that I could be that man’s daughter. I also can’t stop thinking that if I had been home that night, Paige and Gareth wouldn’t have been alone and she wouldn’t have cried on his shoulder and he wouldn’t have … donated sperm, I guess. But then, I wouldn’t have had my nephews either.”
“So many what if’s, Riley. In the end, you’re right; you have your nephews. They’re your world.”
Clint had outlined what the article would say that night, assuring her that the mention of her name and Gareth’s was limited to a line or two. There would be no quotes, no made-up interviews; just the ‘facts’ that would pre-empt whatever Collette was planning to reveal.
There was already a blind item about an affair between a lifestyle blogger in Manhattan and a Hollywood bad boy. The resulting children, it said, even have the actor’s green eyes. Readers were already naming Paige Caldwell and Gareth Roman, their names more prominent than the rest of the guesses which the reading public was tossing into the comments section.
“All this leaves me and everyone else involved in this mess in a huge grey area, where we don’t know where it stops and where it becomes black and white, right and wrong. Where do we draw the line of what is right, Ashe? When do the tabloids stop guessing?”
“You’ll know when to draw the line eventually, Riley.” Ashe took her hand and kissed it. “If it’s any consolation, you’ve learned to make tough choices, no matter how much it hurts. I wouldn’t know what to do if I were in your shoes, and what you’re doing for the boys reveals how strong you are inside, much stronger than I could ever be. You’ve seen how I was with Catriona, and I did poorly.”
“It’s not the same, Ashe. I’m sure you’d do the same for Rowan when the time comes if some guy shows up and claims that she’s his. But those boys don’t deserve to be used as pawns in someone’s game of revenge,” said Riley, pausing for a few moments to gaze out the window. “It just shows how morally corrupt Collette is, I guess.”
“And she’ll pay for it.”
“I hope so,” she said.
“And Paige?”
“Paige and I are not quite back to the way we were but we’re working on it. I’ll go over there for dinner once every few weeks with her and the boys, now that I’ve taken that first step to rebuild our relationship. What’s done is done and we have to move on.”
Ashe said nothing as he stroked her hair, just wanting her to keep talking and thinking out loud.
“The problem is that I think with my emotions instead of my mind and that usually gets me into a lot of trouble,” said Riley. “My heart is saying that the article about sperm donation and Gareth and what Collette is giving those gossip sites make everything hurt all over again. But my mind also says something else.”
“What does your mind say?”
“That all this doesn’t matter in the long run. All this is the past. Everyone is just digging up the past, like sheep shit and hoping it turns into gold,” she paused, frowning. “Or manure, right?”
“I don’t know about the gold, but aye, on manure.”
“Maybe we can go back there sometime, to Reeth? What do you think? Maybe it’ll be good for me … for us to get all dirty and back to earth, for a change.”
Ashe frowned. “Are you sure? We’re meeting everyone in Paris first.”
“True, but what about going to Reeth before Paris, and then we can all go together to Paris? It’ll give us a bit of time away from the world and back to the world you know? You know, the one with us herding the sheep, tramping the moors, and making sure I know how to wear my wellies right?”
“Now, you’re talking my language, petal,” he murmured, chuckling. “I do believe you’ve got this farm boy’s full attention.”
“Good,” Riley said, chuckling. “But seriously, I have two choices. I can focus all my attention on that shit … the past and all the bad things that have happened since, or I can focus on something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Us,” she whispered as her blue eyes searched his face and Ashe swallowed as if his throat had turned dry. In her eyes he saw the realization that, in all the drama that had happened, they’d lost the one thing that really mattered.
“You, me … our wedding and everything that comes after that,” she continued, and this time she smiled. Ashe could feel the weight lift from her as if talking it all out with him had eased her mind a little.
“With everything that’s happened since we got back from St. Bart’s, we’ve lost sight of us, Ashe. I mean, granted, it was one thing after another: the renovation of the Library, your play, Catriona and her whole BDSM schtick—and then Collette,” she said. “It took us away from what really matters: our future. But maybe this is how life is; day-to-day distractions forcing us to take our eyes off what’s really important, maybe in the hopes that we’d be able to tell the difference.”
She ran her fingers along his shoulder and traced the line of his collarbone as it dipped to the hollow at the base of his throat. “Even our times together, no matter how intimate they were, have been overshadowed by your sexual preferences or my lack of any.”
“You don’t lack anything, Riley. Your preferences are fine just the way they are.”
“You mean being vanilla is fine?”
“Of course. But you’re definitely not vanilla; not exactly,” said Ashe, shaking his head. “What you are is innocent yet adventurous, willing to try anything you set your mind to. If you were indeed vanilla, Riley, you would never have asked me—no, demanded—that I dominate you that day because you wanted to know if you were truly getting all of me.”
“Other than the necktie and the blindfold, you weren’t any different from the man I always knew,” she murmured. “You still did everything we used to do … well, maybe minus the collar and the whatever people use.”
“Because you don’t need them to dominate someone. You just need their consent,” Ashe said. “Their full consent, not consent that’s given only because they’re pressured by someone else.”
Riley sighed. “And I was, wasn’t I?”
He nodded. “One day, I’ll show you.”
She was silent for a few minutes. “This is why I love you, you know. It’s not just an image with you, or a brand. What I see right now is really what I’m getting—not Prince Charming or Hollywood’s Dark Prince, but a man.”
He chuckled. “An ordinary man.”
“Well, not so ordinary. It’s still your face on those billboards in the subway,” she said, chuckling. “You’re also the man I love.”
Ashe traced her cheek with his finger. “And you’re the woman I love, Miss Eames.” His voice deepened as Riley’s hand moved down his chest and toward his taut stomach. “All of you, your innocence, curiosity and beauty make for the biggest turn-on in the world.”
“Really?”
“In fact, it’s an occupational hazard whenever I’m with you.”
“I noticed,” Riley whispered, eying him mischievously as her fingers lingered above his hip bone. “They say that sex can relieve stress, and I have to admit I’m stressed. Are you?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. Would you like to test that hypothesis?” asked Ashe. “I might even try a strategy of my own.”
“And what kind of strategy would that be?” she asked, her hand finding him beneath the sheets.
“To make love to you,” he murmured as she drew a deep intake of breath, her nostrils flaring at the sound of his deep voice. “Savor every inch of you deliberately and slowly.” He kissed her lightly on the lips, moving down to rain lighter kisses along her neck and shoulders as her body trembled beneath him.
“And with each kiss I expect a slow surrender, yielding to what comes next,” he murmured, his tongue warm and soft against her nipple before he took it between his teeth, the clip that adorned it cool against his tongue.
“I like that strategy,” she moaned. “I think it’s working already.”
Ashe lifted his head from her breast to gaze at her, smiling lazily as he moved back toward her face. He loved the way the morning light filtered through the windows and lit Riley’s face as she gazed up at him, highlighting the soft curves rising from beneath the covers. “Oh, I haven’t started yet, city girl. That was just a teaser.”
“Then stop the teasing and get to work, farm boy. Us city girls aren’t as patient, you know,” she giggled, just before Ashe silenced her with a deep kiss. He spent the next hour making slow sweet love to her, but not before reminding her that good things—and even better things that often came with safe words—came to those who waited.