CHAPTER 16
HARLEY
He showed up with a bouquet of white lilies and a bottle of pink wine with a turquoise label and French writing on it. I raised a brow and suppressed a laugh. I’d not had rosé in years, sticking to a strict diet of dry red wine and whiskey for years. Sparkling pink drinks were things I’d outgrown ages ago, but I refrained from mentioning it. He looked so uncomfortable standing in my doorway, in a sharply tailored suit that was a far cry from the g-string and tank he’d worn while he made me dinner the other night. I preferred the nudity.
My estate has a way of making even the most cultured people uncomfortable. It’s stately. A huge manor with wide Corinthian columns that intimidate visitors before they’ve even walked past the massive pots of red bougainvillea and rung the doorbell.
It had done the same to me, when I’d first seen it.
I’d purchased it thirty years ago from an actress who was a legend in the fifties, and she’d lived here with her husband, raising a family and living out their golden years. Her husband died and her kids decided she was better off in a nursing home and sold the estate to pay for it.
It was quite sad really, but I promised her I’d take care of it and let her visit anytime. She died shortly afterwards, but I kept my promise. Years later, it was completely restored to its previous luster and I’d never left.
I’d done it all on my own.
The designing, the decisions, paying for it all out of my own pocket, which was unheard of back then. Sometimes, when I’m strolling around the property, having my coffee and wandering barefoot through the lush green lawn, it seems like I’ve lived here forever.
I barely remember where I came from.
I barely remember the abuse, the poverty, my sorry excuse for a family.
It was so long ago. I’ve made a life for myself here. A new life. And yet, sometimes, even though it was so long ago, even though the memory is a distant ghost, the haunting still takes place deep inside of me. It’s a part of me.
But so is this life.
This world I’ve created.
Sure, I may be packing on the years, and I never married, never had kids of my own, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about.
Not only do I have the freedom to make the films I want to make now that I own my own company, but I have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want to. The consequences that used to exist when I was younger have been obliterated.
No longer do I care what anyone thinks of me.
No longer do I have to be concerned with my reputation.
Hell, I don’t even have to worry about getting pregnant anymore.
Life is fabulous.
And this darling hunk of a man?
Standing on my doorstep all hot under the collar and holding a bunch of lilies and a bottle of bubblegum wine over his crotch in a terrible attempt to hide his attraction to me?
The fact that I can do whatever I want with him is just icing on the cake.
If this is what getting older is about, then bring it on, I thought, as I stepped back and gestured for him to come inside.