Dare Me

PART ONE

1

EDITH

What do you mean you can't give me a loan?, I blurted out by now outraged.

You understand perfectly well, Miss Merivale.

This is about a student loan! I don't understand the problem.

I have already explained to you that your parents' financial situation is too compromised to give further subsidies."

This is about my education, not my family. I'm in my final year of law school at Yale and I absolutely need that money to finish my studies.

I completely understand that.

No you don't! You don't understand a damn thing, otherwise you would know how much a year at Yale costs. I can't afford it without a loan. The scholarship they gave me barely covers essential expenses.

Miss Merivale. The bank clerk's annoyed tone made me realise that I had reached the end of the conversation and was about to be dismissed. Until your father settles his instalments with other banking institutions and closes the gap he left behind, no bank will be willing to give you another loan.

But the right to study...

Good day, Miss Merivale, the man dryly dismissed me, returning to staring at his computer as if I were no longer there.

I held back a huff of impatience and stood up, gathering all the dignity I had left.

I allowed myself my twenty seconds of self-pity, after which I went back to being the badass Edith I had always been.

I grabbed my mobile phone and immediately booked a flight to Seattle. I had to get home as soon as possible and figure out what the hell had happened.

Already last year I had experienced difficulties because of the economic crisis that had brought my father's company to its knees, but then he had assured me that things would soon be fine. Being on the other side of the US, I had taken him at his word, but after my Platinium credit card had been deactivated, the phone call from my mother telling me that she wouldn't finance my last year at Yale, and the fifth bank slamming the door in my face when I applied for a student loan, it was clear that things had hit rock bottom instead of getting back up.

Fortunately, I had been brought up never to give up and always to get busy, so I didn't let anxiety or financial difficulties overwhelm me this time either.

Yale was too important to give up!

I hurried back to campus and packed a suitcase with the essentials. It was not my intention to stay in Seattle. I would be back the next day if I could talk to my father right away and get him to explain what the hell was going on.

Three hours later I was already on my way to the airport.

I was about to get out of the taxi when my mobile rang.

I prayed it was a bank alerting me that I had reconsidered, but Mum appeared on the display.

With a grunt of nervousness, I answered.

Hi, Mum.

Honey, you need to come home right away. [mumbled speech]

Did you get your lips done again?, I understood, noticing how badly she spoke. It happened every time.

A touch-up.

A touch-up?! I don't have the money for university, but you don't seem to have any shortage to keep going to the plastic surgeon, I blurted bitterly.

You are beautiful now. When you get older, you will too.

I will never do anything like that.

Instead of lecturing me, come home now. Dad had a stroke.

A what?

A stroke... You don't understand anything. I'll text you, she said, ending the call.

Shortly afterwards I received a message: Your father has had a stroke. He is in hospital. Come here immediately. You know I can't handle everything by myself. Mum.

My legs nearly gave way, but I braced myself and replied that I was already catching a plane back.

I clutched the phone so tightly that my knuckles whitened.

I knew my father was desperate, exasperated by the financial situation we were in, but I did not believe that stress and poor nutrition could cause him a stroke.

I swallowed hard.

The bravado that had accompanied me all day had evaporated.

I loved my father. I had always had a good relationship with him. I was convinced that he had always told me everything and kept me up to date on his condition, whereas now I realised that during those years at Yale a chasm had opened up between us. A void that no longer allowed us to communicate and confide in each other as we had in the past.

I was sad about that, but I had never shown it. It had always been easier to pretend I was too happy and satisfied with my studies to grieve over that separation.

Now, reality had hit me with a deadly blow and I felt knocked out.

Wearily dragging my trolley, I approached the check-in desk.

Forty-five minutes later I was on the plane to Seattle.

JAKE

I'm in the middle of a wrongful expropriation mediation and I have a deposition in two hours, Easton!, I blurted out furiously at that interruption. I hated being disturbed while I worked.

Dad had a heart attack.

Fuck, I huffed worriedly.

Yeah, fuck.

Is it serious?

No, he was caught in time, but it's already the second one and this time the doctors want absolute rest for him for the next two months.

Sure, sure.

He asked for you.

About me?

He wants to talk to you.

About what?

About work.

I've got Jenson for that. I don't do acquisitions and buying and selling of...

He wants you, Jake. He has something to settle and he wants you to take care of it.

I'm a lawyer.

I know, but he wants you to handle it. He says Jenson would never give a clearance, so he needs someone in the family.

What's this about? I hope it's a legal thing.

He'll give you the details, the only thing I know is that you have to meet someone.

Who?

Do you remember Paul Merivale?

Hearing that name made my breath catch and for a moment I couldn't speak.

Yes, I whispered faintly, feeling certain emotions crushing me like years before.

He needs money, if I understand correctly. Our father always vowed to help him in the name of their longstanding friendship, and now Merivale is close to bankruptcy.

So I have to write a cheque for him?

Yes, the daughter will come for him.

Edith. Just saying that name made me risk choking on my own vocal cords.

Yes, her. You met her some time ago. Do you remember?

Yes, sadly.

You also fucked her, didn't you?

Easton..., I growled fiercely. He couldn't know it but uttering Edith's name and the word fuck in the same conversation was forbidden by law. My law.

"Okay, big brother, don't get hot. It's obvious that this is a chick who leaves her mark,' Easton snickered.

It was easy for him to talk, since the only girl he had ever loved still loved him. Although four years younger, Easton had already managed to have a relationship that I would never have had. I had often envied him, also because I had met Alice and her peppery temperament. That girl had the power to send even the calmest and most peaceful person in the world to the madhouse.

"Edith was just an insignificant interlude in my life. Nothing worth remembering,' I repeated like a good parrot who knew the lesson by heart. Years of repeating that mantra to myself had worked.

A parenthesis of your imaginary or real life? my brother provoked me.

I ended it with her years ago, I specified firmly.

Really?

Yes.

Then why did you get so pissed off when I mentioned her name? A closed parenthesis leaves indifference not anger.

It's not anger.

Then it's sexual frustration? insisted Easton, bursting out laughing.

Fuck off!, I blurted, relieved not to have my brother in front of me, as I blushed at the truth I would never admit even under torture.

Someone here needs to fuck more! he laughed amused.

I fuck enough already, I raged. How could he tell me such a thing when he knew very well that I had many women with whom I enjoyed myself whenever I wanted. Sex was certainly not something that was lacking in my life. Even Easton had once scolded me for that!

It is not quantity that makes the difference, but quality, and you have yet to find a woman capable of giving meaning to what you are and do.

Since when did you become so cheesy and romantic?

Since I realised the difference between sex without commitment and sex with love. Not even a hundred of the shagging you do is worth as much as one of the shagging I do with Alice. One day you'll understand that too.

I like my life the way it is.

Only because you don't know a different one.

That's not true, I retorted offended. In fact in the past I had begun to live a different life and try to love like Easton, but I had been slack, careless and often drunk. So much so that I had driven away the only person I wanted, exhausting her trust and patience. She had not been able to wait for me and I had done nothing to get a move on. In the end I had preferred to continue my dissolute life rather than leave my comfort zone and throw myself into something I didn't feel I could handle.

I had been a coward, but I was fine with that.

All I had to do repeatedly was to tell myself that she was not the one and to believe it and that was the end of it.

Stanford had helped me and my law studies had saved me from debauchery, giving me a purpose, to be a successful lawyer.

Now I lived for my work and I had sworn that no woman could ever make me lose my head again.

2

EDITH

I was consumed with tension.

Forty-five minutes, seated on a white leather chair, in one of the most austere waiting rooms I knew and with the anguish of not being able to achieve the goal for which I had made that appointment sixteen days earlier, was too much even for me.

I felt my resolve slipping away. I had never felt more vulnerable than at that moment and nothing seemed to be able to give me peace of mind. Not even the fact that I had come so close to that meeting, which had already been postponed twice by Mitchell Carson, gave me relief.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Edith, you're going to make it! Whatever it takes, I muttered to myself as I clenched my fists to stop the trembling.

My whole existence and that of my father depended on that meeting.

I still couldn't believe how life had spiralled so quickly.

It was inconceivable that I had to leave Yale a year after graduating law school, run across the continent to care for my father who was hospitalised with a stroke, and find out that my family was bankrupt.

Goodbye home, goodbye life of luxury, goodbye Yale and goodbye to everything I was used to.

I was desperate but I would have died rather than see it.

During those weeks I had rolled up my sleeves, thoroughly analysed every loss and my father's bad investments. I had even talked to three of Seattle's top financial advisors and they had all advised me to sell every asset before my father went to jail.

I had done that.

My heart was still bleeding with pain.

If I thought that would be enough, I was very mistaken.

The losses were huge but the chances of recovery were there. Too bad that after that economic disaster, the banks had closed the doors in my face. A humiliation that kept me awake for nights on end until my father convinced me to ask his old friend, Mitchell Carson, for help.

I hadn't seen the man since the summer of my graduation, but the memories that name triggered in me was like sharp shards of glass running through my skin.

It wasn't so much Mitchell that caused me that tension but everything he brought with him. I had even gone so far as to leave for the other side of the United States to get away from Oregon. That was why I had chosen Yale instead of Stanford.

Miss Merivale, Mr. Carson is ready to see you, announced the very elegant personal assistant to the president of Carson & Co.

I fixed my hair and stood up feigning nonchalance as I followed the secretary.

Arriving at the door, I was invited to enter alone.

I shrugged my shoulders and strutted forward in my Jimmy Choo's vertiginous heels.

However, as soon as I took a few steps into the imposing white, minimalist office, where the large black glass desk stood out, I suddenly stopped.

Standing behind it was not Mitchell Carson, but his son.

Jake, I whispered, feeling those splinters scratch my body again as his ice-blue, transparent eyes ran from head to toe. It was the first time I had seen him in a suit and tie. He looked much more mature, poised and determined than he used to. He was now a man in his own right and the magnetism of his manhood struck me violently, leaving me breathless.

After three years, you still remember my name, he told me with that dangerous, bewitching smile of his that I remembered. Could it be that he hadn't changed at all?

Beneath that blue haute couture suit and white shirt, I knew that a far more rebellious and unpredictable soul lurked.

The pronounced jawline, that brown hair framing his face and those eyes... Oh my God!

'They say that the worst experiences in one's life are the hardest to forget,' I blurted defensively. I had promised myself to be loose, spontaneous, determined, but that look still had the capacity to make me lose my mind. With him it had always been complicated to remain neutral and impassive. With him that wall I always put between myself and others was as if it did not exist. Something I couldn't bear. Even three years later.

Edith... Edith... I don't know if you should tell me such things. I thought you came all this way to ask me for a favour, not to insult me.

I'm not insulting you. I just stated the obvious. The same one you must have already heard a thousand times from the trail of broken hearts outside your door, I imagine, I replied unable to control myself. Only he could hit me hard enough to poison my every word or gesture.

So I broke your heart too? he mocked me, chuckling. He knew I wouldn't admit to such a thing even under torture.

I left early.

Yeah, I forgot you had to run away to Connecticut to escape me.

I did not run away. I simply chose to continue my studies at Yale.

Even if you had been admitted to Stanford, he reminded me, determined to win. I bit my tongue.

I prefer Yale.

Before or after you found out I was attending Stanford Law? he taunted me.

You were just yet another incentive to choose one of the best universities in the world, I demeaned, determined to strip him of that arrogant, self-centred aura.

But now you're back, he changed tactics, making me tense up like a violin string.

Temporarily, I specified, punctuating the word well, syllable by syllable.

Are you sure about that? I thought your future depended on this meeting.

On this meeting and on your father, I specified, determined to get rid of him as soon as possible.

My father is currently unavailable.

When will he be? His secretary has already postponed the appointment twice and I urgently need to talk to him.

You can talk to me.

No, thanks, I asserted dryly, stepping back to leave.

"Perfect. I'll have your interview scheduled, but I don't know when my father will be available again. He's had a heart attack. The second one this year. Now he'll have to be laid up for a couple of months and I took his place temporarily because I realised it was important, but it's obvious I was wrong,' Jake explained, extending his hand to greet me and take my leave.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry about your father. Mine is sick too and I'm here on his behalf,' I muttered uncomfortably. As much of a bastard as he had been, I knew he would never lie about the state of his father's health, so I believed him and felt guilty for not realising it right away. Although I knew little about Jake, I knew that he had always hated working in his father's company, so only if something serious had happened would he have given in to such a request.

Despondent over that adverse fate, I shook his hand firmly but gently. However, his closed further around mine and suddenly he pushed me against him. I literally ran into him. I placed my hands on his broad, firm chest. I forced myself to pull him away from me, but I couldn't because his other hand was planted on my back, forcing me to arch it so I could look him in the face.

I was breathless as his zesty citrus scent with a undertone of juniper and amber enveloped me like an earthy breeze on a sultry day.

I gasped as his face brushed mine, his eyes shaded by thick dark lashes searched me and stared at my mouth with greed.

I thought he wanted to kiss me, as his pupils dilated like those of a predator a few steps away from its prey. I stood there, still, waiting.

Without realising it, I parted my lips and emitted a pained moan for that wait that was wearing me down and bending me like a blade of grass at the first gust of wind.

His mouth was only a few centimetres from mine and even though a little voice kept shouting at me to move away, to stop him and run away, I remained still.

Then at some point, his nose brushed my cheek and his mouth came close to my ear.

Come back to me when you are desperate enough to save your father from bankruptcy and jail, as your life falls apart just a step away from your dream in the drawer, he whispered slowly, his voice hoarse and vibrant, capable of touching my every nerve ending.

I gasped and recoiled. I felt naked in front of him, now that I knew he was aware of my financial situation.

Jake let go of my hand instantly and I was able to pull away and stare at him with the same hate-filled venom with which I had left for Yale years before.

The defiance I read in his eyes was eloquent enough to silence me, but it was the desperate word that brought me back to my senses.

I wanted to slap him, insult him, throw him out the window, but I knew he was there and waiting for nothing else. If he hadn't changed in those years, I knew his provocation was just a way to break me down or commit a faux pas.

Goodbye, Jake, I managed to say, picking up my wounded pride with all