Who: Valerie and Orin What: Apartment viewing and tension Where: Aubade When: Monday Warnings: None
Valerie understood why she couldn’t have her apartment. She understood why Orin Monarch needed a wife he didn’t love, or even necessarily like. Still, she was on edge about the men who had come to her door unexpected, and when the chauffeur had shown up on Sunday afternoon, all serious suit and gloves, she hadn’t immediately recognized him. After sitting out an unnatural thread of panic, she stared out the hole for a minute more and then opened the door. The chauffeur, she knew, was somehow Monarch’s friend, and though she didn’t quite understand it, she knew well enough that getting angry at him was pointless. She stepped back into her apartment and pointed imperiously at one of her kitchen chairs. “Sit down. I need to talk to him.” Then, so the chauffeur had no fears for his virtue, she went to fetch her phone and punched in a number.
Orin was at the office, but he wasn’t at his desk. He was moving toward the front doors, and when he answered his cell there was the telltale sound of shoes on marble and him greeting people as they greeted him - a “hello, sugar” here and a “hey, honey,” there. He knew it was Valerie, the caller ID having told him as much, and he wasn’t surprised to hear the phone ring. The driver must have just gotten to her place. His own car was waiting, and he climbed into the back before speaking. “Aubade,” he told the driver, and then he turned his attention to the woman on the phone. “Figured you should see the space,” he said by way of greeting.
She completely ignored that. She had a bee in her bonnet and he was about to find out why. “Is this the first time you’ve sent someone to my door without telling me it was you?” Valerie had a smooth, precise voice that she used when she was angry (and sober, otherwise she lost the precision and went up an octave). She folded her arms and looked across the kitchen at the increasingly uncomfortable chauffeur, who hadn’t dared to even look at the platter of cookies on the table.
“What are you on about, woman? Of course it is,” he said. “I didn’t even know what apartment was yours until the bakeathon. Mind telling me what this is about?” he demanded, his voice very much the one he used in the boardroom, all entitlement and the requirement of response.
“I’ll come and see your apartment, but you tell me when people are going to show up here!” So perhaps she got a little sharp at the end. She hung up.
Orin dialed back. He was used to women; the screaming and hanging up wasn’t anything new, especially not these days. When she didn’t answer, he tucked the phone in his pocket with a shake of his head. “Women,” he said, and the driver made a grunting noise of agreement. It reminded him to call his contact at the Times, a woman he’d slept with once and knew he couldn’t trust to print a true story to save her soul. The conversation took the entire ride to Aubade, but by the time he was done, he was sure there’d be a story about his illegitimate kid and coming nuptials in the paper.
As he pulled up, Valerie was stepping out of the back of the car he’d sent, all long leg in sheer hose and an hourglass dress that she had the figure to pull off. She was elegant, brushed, and blooming in complexion and air. Confidence practically oozed out of her pores even as she caught sight of his car and raised an eyebrow. She shifted her weight onto one hip, ignoring the twinge of pressure from the high heels on her still-tender feet, and waited.
He was dressed in tan pants and a blazer over a white button-down that said he wasn’t trying very hard. He looked better suited to California than Seattle, and if he had a cocaine problem you’d never know it by the way he filled out the jacket. He stopped when she stepped out of the car, giving her a long, slow, sweeping look. The woman looked damn good, and there was no denying that; he didn’t even bother trying. He walked up to her, put one hand on her hip and drew her close. “Afternoon, honey.”
She returned the look, but it wasn’t so blatant. Her mother had told her that men were very visual, and to captivate one you had to look good even if you didn’t feel good. Valerie hadn’t found the advice to go wrong, but she also hadn’t expected to be just as visual herself. She hoped the cocaine was as much a facade as the marriage. It would ruin him. Valerie squared her shoulders and slid her hips into his, all familiarity that she’d never shown before. “Hello,” she murmured into his eyes. “Don’t think I’m not still angry with you.” A suggestive little shift of her waist, and the hand not possessed of a purse pressed against his lower back.
He was still a moment longer, strong and sturdy and steady, and then the hand on her hip slipped to the small of her back and he nudged her forward. “Mind telling me why a knock on your door from someone wearing a Monarch Industries nametag scares the shit out of you?” he asked, even as he winked at the doorman in a way that was all proud male showing off his conquest. He didn’t know if she’d ever been in Aubade, and he glanced over at her face to see if she looked impressed or not, even as he nudged her toward the front desk and the deskman that waited there. “Charles, this is Valerie Anna. I’d like you to be adding her to the list for me, if you’d be so kind,” he said, leaning an elbow on the marble desk with entitlement.
Valerie didn’t respond immediately, she just looped an arm around his waist and moved with him through the Aubade doors. She didn’t look around curiously, not even once, and there was nothing like awe in her gaze. She waited for Orin to get deep into his lean before she met the familiar doorman’s eyes and lifted her fingers to wriggle them in greeting. She wasn’t posting any flyers this time, but neither of them were going to say that in front of Mr. Monarch. Valerie was audibly smug. “Hello, Charles.”
Orin knew she was good enough not to look impressed, even if she was, but the smug greeting for the deskman told him she’d been there before. He watched the man return the greeting with polite, respectful distance, which only solidified Orin’s certainty, and he led Valerie away a moment after, once her name had been listed in the computer register. The elevator button lit up as he pushed it, and he moved his hand away from Valerie’s back. “Did you manage to get inside an apartment when you were here?” he asked. “Or only make it far as the lobby?”
The elevator chimed respectfully and the doors shut gently, and there was a split second during which Valerie was looking into Orin’s face for something she’d missed before she too moved back. “For your information, I have a friend who has an apartment here,” Valerie said glibly. Technically this was true, though it was not why she was in the building to begin with. She hadn’t even visited Sophie’s flat yet. Some contrite imp under her rib cage wanted her profession to stay quiet for a little while longer, since she was losing every sense of privacy bit by bit. She was prepared, but that didn’t mean it was enjoyable.
Orin thought there might have been some hurt there, and he almost second guessed his decision just then. He’d chosen Valerie, ostensibly, because she was tough. But he wondered sometimes if that was really it, or if she was strong as he thought she was. He was reminded of a motorcycle ride, and he was getting it in his fool head to visit her before she moved in - without the blazer and dress pants. Which was just plain stupid, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking it as the elevator doors opened. To her comment, he only replied with a hum of sound and a nod in the direction of the apartment.
Valerie was worrying about Orin’s decision too. Not that she couldn’t do it, not that she was sorry that she had to marry someone who wasn’t in the least bit in love with her, but rather that somehow he would change his mind and she’d be left with a very dangerous nothing. She was making contingency plans in the back of her mind, simple because she didn’t trust the world to assist her in landing on her feet, so to speak, and, after all, her living expenses were unique. She moved off out of the elevator without worrying about him at her back, walk smooth, near-empty purse balanced. She didn’t try to revive the conversation.
He nudged her toward the door with a sort of inherent possessiveness, and he reached past her to put the key in the lock. Inside, the apartment looked precisely as it had in the photos. It was the size of a large warehouse and completely open, windows impressive at this time of day and showing a stunning view of the Sound. The only difference was the addition of items belonging to someone who was obviously very young and very female through the lower level - pillows and blankets on the white couch, a laptop, clothes, nick knacks here and there. He nudged her forward again, hand on the small of her back, and he closed the door behind them and walked past her to the cocktail cart and started pouring himself something. “What’s your poison, honey?” he asked.
“Gin and tonic. Go easy on the ice, please.” Valerie didn’t consciously notice any possessiveness, and if she had she probably would have found a way to dismiss it as invalid just for her peace of mind. While the Aubade lobby had done nothing to awe her, being in Orin’s huge space was far different than looking at all the pictures. She moved forward through the interesting clutter, smiling at a toiletries case and coming to a stop at the edge of one of the incredible windows. “That decorator is going to have her hands full.”
He poured her drink, and he walked up behind her, his blazer shucked off somewhere between the door and the window. He held the drink over her shoulder, and he looked out at the water a moment before reaching under her arm and opening the door to the lower balcony and the jacuzzi that went right to the edge. He didn’t move past her, and when he spoke it was near her temple and close to her back. “Got to admit that’s a gorgeous view,” he said, sounding completely genuine in that moment.
She wasn’t dressed to weather the cold for long, and the jacuzzi was only half covered, so little spirals of white steam kept escaping up into the chill air. The smell of water was everywhere, and she made a soft, indistinct sound of agreement. Drink in hand, she moved out onto the balcony, hesitating a moment with an ever-so-brief look back at him before stepping out of her heels and continuing gingerly to the edge. “I would have thought you’d want to stay in after being lost in it for so long.” She was looking at the horizon, not at him.
Orin watched her, his gaze sliding down to the bit of leg that was showing as she took off the heels. He was looking back up when she spoke, his gaze going from warm to something slightly distant. He knew there’d been plenty of rumors about what had gone on while he was missing from the public eye, just like he knew the Morgensterns tried to make everyone believe he was traveling, in order to keep the board from declaring him dead to seize the company. But there’d been rumors of shipwrecks and plane crashed early on, and he knew that, too. “No clue what you’re talking about, honey.”
Valerie lifted her head, blinking away threads of gold that had come loose from the styled curls, and then she looked back. “You could just say you don’t want to talk about it.” She didn’t wait for him to reply, looking away again at the sun and then speculatively at the steam spirals and the half-revealed jacuzzi. “If you ask me something I don’t want to talk about, I’ll tell you. It’ll be like a deal; you like deals.” She moved away from the edge, skirting the pool, somehow awkward without the heels, perhaps because she was avoiding walking on the soles of her feet too heavily.
He watched her move, and he found the movement more endearing for its lack of poised grace, which he associated with her hunt for a ring and money. “I like deals in the office. I’m not real fond of them at home,” he said with residual honesty, left over from the comment about the view and the unexpected observation about the water on her part.
“How strange,” she said, with honest surprise but not too much concern. She pushed at the cover of the jacuzzi and sat down on the half of the cover that was still stable, pulling her dress up immodestly over her knees and dropping her legs in with a bit of a wince. The cuts weren’t open anymore but she was left with a some soreness that the extra two-inches of Gucci height didn’t help. ”No deals, then. No negotiations. You just issue orders?” She was watching him, now, and not the ocean.
“Was I issuing orders?” he asked, stepping out onto the balcony and crouching at the edge of the jacuzzi, dipping only hid fingers into the water to feel the heat off it. “Funny, I didn’t hear me issuing any orders,” he said and then, with a quirk of his brows. “You planning on being defensive all the time?” His gaze was on that display of knee and leg, but only for a moment, heat visible in them when he looked up, but gone just as quickly, controlled.
Valerie’s look that met his was one of surprise. She had thought that he wasn’t really interested in her physical attributes judging from his behavior before and after his little proposal, and the look she just caught said otherwise. Valerie blinked twice, slightly disconcerted. “It was an alternative. I didn’t mean to be defensive. If you don’t negotiate and you don’t give orders what do you do if you want something?”
“Talking sounds like good idea,” he said, an almost-smirk touching his lips as he said it, because he was real sure it should have been the first option that sprang to mind. She was a strange one, was Valerie, and he wondered what she was like under all that need and greed and wall. He chuckled at the thought, the irony of it not lost on him, and he flicked his fingers on the surface of the water, wetting her with the movement of his fingers. And maybe, just maybe, he’d looked at her legs while he did it.
Valerie flinched back with surprise at the assault, and then she laughed, a short laugh that surprised her when she heard it. “You never talk about what you want. You propose or you order.” She didn’t complain about her dress. Instead, she leaned over and scooped up a palm full of water to shove through the air in his direction, pink lips pressed into a long smirk of contained amusement.
“That right?” he asked, about the proposing or the ordering, but the smirk was widening, and the second she got him in the face with the water he dropped into the jacuzzi without any hesitation, the move strangely graceful, like his movements always were when he wasn’t guarding against it. He was across the jacuzzi in one step and a slosh of water, and his arm on her waist was there before there was any warning, and then he’d hauled her in and against him. “Was that a proposal or an order?” he asked.
Valerie scented danger the second he splashed into the water, and she tried to get her feet out and swing her legs out of reach before he could get to her. It was too late, though, and she let out a rather childish little squeal and went over the cover with a sploosh of chlorine-scented heat. She was wet through immediately and the waist-hugging material wasn’t made for bathing, so, rather constricted, she put an arm around his neck so she didn’t drown and laughed until she ran out of breath.
The laugh, Orin thought, was equally as intoxicating as the way the wet dress clung to her curves, if for an entirely different reason, and he wondered what it would be like to hear that laugh in bed. It reminded him of the carnival, of a similar thought more than a month before, and he closed his hands on her waist and sat her on the edge of the jacuzzi, back to the wall and his body blocking the chilled wind. “How about we trying talking, instead of proposing and ordering,” he suggested, green eyes intense.
Valerie hadn’t done too much smiling lately and she was flush with her sudden good humor. She shivered a little with even her shoulders just out of the water, and she sunk a little deeper into the water with her eyes twinkling. “Alright. We’ll see how long you last.” She combed her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, affectionate, and then repossessed her hand to try to find the pin that was giving in under the sodden weight of her hair and prodding her scalp.
“How long I last?” he asked, pushing her hand away after a second of her hunting for the pin and finding it for her, letting the wet tresses fall around her face and then holding the pin in front of her. “I’m real good at taking things off women,” he told her, that smirk in full force as he said it. “Now, how long do we think you’re going to last, honey?” he asked, both hands moving to her thighs, the callouses on his fingers tangible even through the wet fabric of the dress.
There were a great many more pins, but she plucked that one from his fingers with a smile. Her mascara, fortunately, didn’t run, and she didn’t have to stare at him out of raccoon eyes. “I should have known you’d take it that direction.” He was strangely mercurial, and she was constantly misreading him. Instead of setting her on edge, it was reassuring. Spontaneity kept premeditated motives out of the picture.
The dress wasn’t loose enough to float around her, but submerged it wasn’t uncomfortable. She pressed her knees against his, playful, and breathed a cloud into the cold air. “I’m not sure,” she said, finally answering his question. “It depends on how long you’ll keep the charm on.”
“Am I supposed to be charming?” he asked, grinning, his hand moving higher on her thighs. His self control was only so good, and he realized it was dangerous, this game they were playing. He tipped her chin with his fingers, and he looked in her eyes for a moment too long, and then he backed up with a chuckle (a strained one, if she was paying attention). “Let me get you a robe,” he said.
Valerie was enjoying the slow stalk, honestly, and she hadn’t had anyone actually pursue her with any seriousness for a while. Her fingers just brushed the curve of his throat as he pulled away, and her expression was one of surprise. She caught the strain, but she didn’t know what it meant. She pushed off of the wall, and moving somewhat like a mermaid since she had to keep her knees mostly together, she swam across the surface of the pool back up to his chest. “You’re very charming, when you want to be.” She tipped her head to the side and the wet hair (now much darker in the water) made her look a little younger. “But you knew that.”
“I’ve never tried for charming, honey,” he said honestly, and he let his hand slide to the side of her neck for a second, thumb brushing her cheek for just that long, before he moved back entirely and climbed out of the jacuzzi. He would have tugged the wet shirt off as soon as he exited the water, but he was wary of fresh bruises on his shoulder blades, and so he walked inside with a “I’ll get you that robe,” over his shoulder.
Valerie slid back into the deep water at the center of the pool. The heat had taken the soreness out of her feet, and for once she didn’t have any weight on them. If she’d been trying to seduce Orin Monarch, she would have counted this as a resounding failure. Since she hadn’t, she didn’t know what it was. Perhaps she had misread the look before... she floated there for a little while, treading water with demure sweeps of her arms, and tried to understand what just happened while she waited.
By the time he came back down, he was dry again, fresh jeans and a t-shirt that accented the muscles on his arms clinging to the slight dampness at the center of his back. He had a robe draped over his arm, as promised, and a towel, and he set both on the chair beside the jacuzzi with a wink, before going inside to pour them both fresh drinks and leave her to her privacy to change in the bathroom that opened out on to the balcony.
She looked up at him as he returned, nymph-like in the center of the pool with her hair streaming out in a fan behind her and her legs mostly hidden by the skin-close dress. She’d just gotten to the edge of the pool when he departed again, and she looked after him with a slight frown. Valerie sat back on the seat of the jacuzzi. She was not going to try to wriggle out of the wet dress out of water, the fabric wasn’t anything like silk and it would weigh a ton. Besides, it was freezing.
It took her a little while to get the zipper down properly, but at least she was warm while she did it. The dress was set free to float and she sat in bra and panties under the water to strip off the hose.
The cocktail bar was at an angle that allowed for clear viewing of the jacuzzi, which wasn’t Orin’s intent when he set about making the drinks. He didn’t even notice until he looked up, and he froze for two minutes, staring, before turning and disappearing into the kitchen, which had absolutely no damn view of anything.
Several paparazzi got a nice shot of Valerie as she rose out of the water in the nice pale blue lace that could not be mistaken for a swimsuit in any imagination. She slipped on the robe, toweled her hair, and did her best to squeeze the water out of her dress. She left the dress outside, and still toweling, she moved back into the main room, looking around for where he’d disappeared to.
The robe was his and huge on her, and he glanced to her feet when she walked into the kitchen, watching it trail on tile. It was a careful thing, his looking up, controlled, the drink in his hand and an appreciative smirk on his lips (a very controlled, appreciative smirk). “Seen enough so that you can call the designer?” he asked, glancing toward the stairs and then stepping forward and handing her a fresh gin-and-tonic. “Or do you need to see upstairs?” he asked, with no intention of following her; he’d already decided he would stop by her club in something less formal later that night.
For some reason the smirk didn’t reassure her, and her previous good humor wasn’t present in her eyes. She didn’t attempt to fake it. “Yes. Though I meant what I said, they’ve got an impossible job on their hands. They might come up with something like isolating one wall.” She glanced up when he said upstairs, sipping at the drink without really tasting it.
“We could always move into another unit,” he suggested, and he didn’t even gaze longingly at the windows as he said it. Regardless of what he needed, Willow needed a room. He couldn’t expect a teenager to live on a couch in an apartment of glass, and he could always spend more time on the boat. He was starting to think he might need to.
She stopped watching his face; it only confused her. Instead she looked out over the water again, warm this time on the other side of the glass. Bundling herself up, she sat in a clear space on one of the couches with a view. “No, I don’t think so. You might have to give up the second floor to the women, though. Or you think it would get out if we don’t share a room?” Glance back over the rim of her drink.
“I think I don’t want Willow getting a bad idea of what marriage is,” he told her. He knew Willow’s mother and father hadn’t had a very successful relationship, even before the man died, and Orin remembered watching his father stare at his mother from across the room as a boy. He didn’t think they’d be able to fool the girl, but he wanted her to feel like her home was as normal as it could be, under the circumstances.
Valerie lowered her drink in disbelief. “What marriage is?” She let out a bitter laugh that was nothing like her low, rippling one. “Darling, don’t fool yourself. You’re paying me to lie to people, and even if you weren’t, you can’t expect me to believe that you’d stick to the fairy tale fidelity of what marriage is.” She took a deeper drink than her previous sips, shrugged his robe a little deeper over her shoulders, and looked back over the water.
He took a sip of his drink, and he watched the robe’s progress, and he measured his words before speaking, careful and business. “I’m saying I want her to feel like her home’s normal, with people who give a damn about one another, honey. Even if it’s a lie.”
Valerie made herself avoid looking at him again. She didn’t have any paperwork concerning this agreement yet, and there wasn’t a guarantee (except his) that she would. “What you lie about to your daughter is your business,” she said softly, as if it was all agreement.
He chuckled, and he tipped back the rest of the drink and walked out of the kitchen, close enough to brush past her, his upper arm brushing against her robe-covered shoulder, his movement slow, almost lingering. He stopped just past her. “I want her feeling at home,” he said. “The car will drive you back when you’re ready, honey,” he added, that business tone still firmly in place.
Valerie didn’t think the girl would be any more at home here than she was. She couldn’t stop herself from looking even after the brief contact, and the gin burned the back of her tongue because she wasn’t paying attention to it as she drank. “Order,” she said, “and proposal. Another time, darling.” She put the glass down on the end table and stood up in anticipation of his departure.
He didn’t turn around, though there was a slight turn of his foot that said it considered it, and then he was moving across the kitchen and out of the apartment, frustration that was entirely sexual thrumming through him. He almost slammed the door, but he managed not to.
Valerie shook her head. Bizarre man. She gathered up the edges of the robe and went to go look the rest of the place over before she borrowed something from his closet and went home to change for her evening shift.