MARK
If fury is a person, it is Helena Ross. And if she owns a weapon, his next step is death. The woman violently swings open the door, her nostrils flaring, her eyes burning, one small fist reaching out and pounding on his wrist, stalling his next press of the doorbell. “Stop that. Stop, stop, stop, STOP.” The words are a chant, her breaths coming harder, a painfully thin chest heaving under the cotton long-sleeve tee she wears.
So much anger in such a tiny body. He’d expected an older woman, one his age, with gray hair and delicate glasses, her regal shoulders pinned back, her panties the stuffy sort never seen. But this anorexic-thin stick of elbows and ears… she couldn’t be much older than thirty. To think such a tiny thing has been the one who’s told him off for the better part of a decade… it makes him want to throw back his head and laugh.
Laughing, it seems, would be unwise. She doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor, her eyes sharpening every time he so much as cracks a smile. “I am Marka Vantly,” he speaks quickly, before she shuts the door, his tone serious. “Call Ron Pilar and ask him.” He holds out the worn business card, the only proof he has readily available. Who knows if the number on it is accurate, the card one he’d been given eight years ago, back when Ron was a stranger and he was just another poor writer with a stack of declined manuscripts. There had been no auction on that novel, no Publishers Weekly write up and six-figure advance. There’d just been a desperate flail for attention from the industry’s top agent, the first contact a moment of celebration, the resulting business card a coveted item.
She straightens, one hand still protecting the bell, her gaze moving down to the card, which hangs in the space between them. Her large eyes dart back to his face, narrowing, squints of skin that breathe fire in the form of pupils. A perfect glare, one that belongs to the claws that pecked out all of those vicious emails filled with jealousy and spite.
Her hand snatches, and his bit of nostalgia is suddenly gone, a victim of her grasp, her gaze darting suspiciously between the card and his face. “Wait here.” She steps back and grabs the door jamb, pausing for a moment as she eyes him, then her doorbell, then him again.
He raises his hands in innocence and steps back, away from her and the tiny button that seems to annoy her so. God, to think of all of the emails he had mused over, carefully selecting the right words to drive her mad, and all it took was the ding-dong of this bell.
She snorts, and shuts the door, leaving him alone on the porch, for the second time in five minutes. What an interesting woman.
He turns, stepping away from the house and to the rail of the porch, his eyes moving over the perfect lines of the yard, a stark contrast from the wild acreage of his Memphis plantation. He tries to imagine the conversation occurring inside, Helena’s interrogation of Ron Pilar. Ron will behave, swallowing his snark under a blanket of kiss-ass. Helena… who knows how Helena would handle it. So far, his plan to play nice has gone slightly astray.
There is the click of a lock and he turns, pushing off the porch rail. Helena stands in the open doorway, a house phone gripped between her hands. There is a long moment of quiet as her eyes drift over him, examining him with renewed distrust. He says nothing, the waiting game stretching out slowly.
“You should have told me you’re a man,” she finally says, and damn if there isn’t a bit of sadness in her voice, as if he is a cheating spouse, or an unfaithful friend.
“It’s a secret very few people know.” He tucks his hands into his front pockets and wishes, for the first time in his life, he wasn’t so big, so tall, so widely built. One of her hands move to grip the doorframe, and it’s as if she needs it to stand, her frailty so out of place amid the fire that burns from her eyes.
She considers that, then nods. “I can respect that. But I can’t respect you playing with me.” Her face hardens, and he pities her future children. This expression, the steel in her voice—it is a force, one scary to stand up to. “Don’t screw with me.”
“I won’t.” It is a promise he will have to keep, the hurt that permeates the edge of her stance… a familiar pain. In it, he sees his daughter’s first tears over a boy, her withdrawal when Stanford rejected her, the crack in her voice—just last week—when she was snubbed by a friend. This hurt, he had caused, all in an immature need to humiliate Helena Ross for pure entertainment. “Can we start over?”
There are small cracks in her facade, a relax of her narrow shoulders, the general untightening of fingers around the phone, her lips parting, a sigh of breath escaping from them. She meets his eyes and nods. “Okay.” She turns, opening the door and waiting for him to enter.
Taking a deep breath, he moves across the threshold and into the house. He had come here to meet Helena Ross, and turn her down. Already, he can feel himself waffling.