Daddy's Here(7)

"Maybe I am," I replied. "But a deal's a deal. The purse."

"I haven't got any fucking purse."

"If I reach into your pocket now, I won't find anything that shouldn't be there?"         

     



 

"Fuck off, get your hands off me."

I leant past him, sliding my hand into his coat pocket and bringing her  purse out. "Well, would you look at that? What a surprise."

I threw the keys at him. "Go on, off you go."

"Give me my purse back."

"You either leave now or I smash your face into that steering wheel so hard, you might never wake up.

"You're a psycho," he said, gunning the engine and racing away.

I turned round in time to see the bus pulling out of the car park. "No!"  I called out, running after it as it drove off leaving me alone. I  leant back against a wall behind me and swore loudly. It would be a long  walk back to my car.

"Why are you following me?"

I spun round at the sound of the voice, finding Isabel stood with her  arms folded behind me. "You're on the bus," I said in shock.

"Answer my question. Why are you following me?"

"Why did you tie my shoelaces together?"

She shrugged. "I thought it'd be funny. Did you not think so?"

"No, no I didn't."

"Why are you following me?"

"Listen, Isabel. It's time for you to go home."

"Oh, God. Did my father send you after me?"

I nodded.

"Hang on, you're supposed to take me home?"

"Yes."

"How are you doing that then? Piggyback?"

"I'll call for a car."

"Good luck getting a signal round here."

I dug my phone out and realised she was right. "Shit." I should have kept the thief's car.

She laughed, a high happy laugh that echoed around the car park. "You're not great at this, are you?"

"It's not what I normally do."

"What is it you normally do, apart from take unconscious girls to your hotel room?"

"I work for Tony Matteo."

"So he sent you then."

"Yes."

"And I've got to go home with you."

"Yes."

"And if I say no?"

"I'm to take you anyway."

"By force?" She looked frightened as she said it, as if the reality of  the situation was just starting to hit her. I liked seeing her look  frightened. Stop it, I told myself.

"I'm sure it won't come to that. Look, there's a cafe over there. Let's sit down and talk about it, shall we?"





TEN


ISABEL





"Why don't you want to go home?"

I looked up at him when he asked that. I'd been staring at my coffee for  so long it was ice cold when I took a sip. "It's a long story."

It wasn't that long a story but I didn't know how much he'd been told. I  didn't know anything about him, not really. He'd appeared in the bar,  the most infuriating man I'd ever met. Then I'd woken up to find myself  in a hotel bedroom, the blandly anonymous paintings on the wall a dead  giveaway as to my location.

I shot upright and was about to cry out when I saw him in the corner of  the room. He looked as if he was staring at me, sat rigidly upright with  his arms folded across his chest. But looking closer, I realised his  eyes were closed.

He hadn't touched me. I knew that. He could have done and I wouldn't  have been able to stop him. But all he'd done was take my shoes off and  tuck me into bed. Then he'd just sat there and fallen asleep.

I was as quiet as I could be, tiptoeing out of bed and collecting my  boots. I had no idea how I'd ended up in that bed but I had no intention  of staying. My head throbbed painfully as I crossed the room and I was  about to open the door to the corridor when a childish impulse struck  me.

I told myself that I was tying his shoelaces together to slow him down  if he came after me. That was partially true but I also thought it was a  pretty funny thing to do to the big mysterious man in black, able to  take on three men at once but unable to defend his own shoes.

A tiny whispering part of me wanted him to be cross, wanted him to spank  me for teasing him like this. I stamped on that whisper. It wouldn't  help me to have anything to do with a brute like that.

I climbed onto the first bus I saw, wanting only to get away, it didn't  matter where. I hadn't seen him climb on, so I assumed he was still fast  asleep in the hotel. But when he'd walked past me out of nowhere and  headed down the stairs, there was no mistaking that gait of his, his  strong profile standing out amongst the other passengers, the way he had  to duck slightly to stop his head from banging on the roof as he  passed.

I followed him off the bus and found him talking to someone in a car,  someone who seemed in a hurry to leave. Why did I follow him? Why not  just stay on the bus and carry on my way? I can't really answer that  one. Maybe the whispering voice was winning.         

     



 

Something told me to follow him, so I did. That's all there was to it.  Right or wrong, I ended up sat opposite him in Maggie's Cafe, a cold  coffee in front of me and him sat opposite, the chair creaking under the  sheer bulk of him.

"I have to take you back," he said, sounding as if he was almost sorry that was the case. "You do understand that, don't you?"

"Please," I replied. "I could have left you here, I could have carried on but I didn't."

"I'd have found you."

His arrogance was staggering. There was no self doubt in his voice. He was simply stating a fact.

"I don't think you'll take me back."

He was silent for a long time after I said that. I looked down at my  coffee, turning the cup in my hands, thinking about what I was doing.  Could I trust this man? I didn't know but I knew that if he chose to  pick me up and carry me out of the cafe, drag me kicking and screaming  back to my father, there wasn't a huge amount I was going to be able to  do about it.

"Why don't you want to go home?" he asked and for the first time his  voice sounded softer, the rough edge slightly smoothed. He sounded  almost capable of emotion.

"Have a look at these," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out  the letters. I slid them over the table and waited while he read through  them. It felt strange sharing them with someone but I hoped they'd make  him see I was a real person, not just a parcel to be delivered. "What  do you think?"

"I think they're letters," he replied, sliding them back across to me.

"I love the boy who wrote those letters. Well, the man now."

"So?"

"So that's what love is, in those letters. Love isn't marrying the man  your father chose for you. Love is marrying the man you want to."

"Is that," - he tapped the letters with his finger - "the man you want to marry?"

"I don't know, I just think I need to find out."

"You're going to see him, aren't you?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess, maybe."

"I've got to take you back."

"Can't you just pretend you didn't find me?"

He shook his head. "Afraid not."

"Then we're done here."

I got up and walked out of the cafe without looking back. I was an idiot  for listening to my gut. I should have stayed on the bus, I should have  known better than to try and reason with hired muscle. He didn't know  what love was. He probably didn't know what an emotion was. He was a  cold, hard, brute.

He'd looked at the letters that contained every nuance of young love and  lost love when we'd parted and he hadn't reacted, he hadn't cared. He  just cared about getting paid for returning me to my father and I was a  bloody fool for getting off the bus. Well, it wasn't a mistake I was  going to make twice.

I crossed the road to the bus station and pushed open the door to the  traffic office. Looking up at the screen above the glass fronted booth, I  scanned the destinations. Gladwell, that was just a few miles from  where Ben lived. Perfect. The letters hadn't mentioned the address he  was moving away to, I only found that out much later. There was no way  they'd find me there.

I looked around to make sure he hadn't followed me out of the cafe  before approaching the bored looking figure on the other side of the  glass. "Single to Gladwell please," I said, reaching into my handbag.

With a frown, I glanced downwards, unable to find my purse. Swearing quietly, I began rummaging for it, beginning to panic.

"Looking for this?" a voice said behind me and I turned to find the brute standing there, holding my purse out towards me.





ELEVEN


JAKE





She looked furious with me when I gave her the purse. "You stole it," she said, snatching it from me.

"If you say so."

Her expression changed from anger to confusion. "Didn't you?"

"No, I didn't."

"Then why have you got it?"

"I haven't. You have."

"You know what I mean."

"Well, not everyone is as alert as I am."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means if you paid more attention to your surroundings, people  wouldn't be able to dip their hand in your bag and steal your things  while you stare out of a bus window without a care in the world."