Loving Ashe Page 8

  And while Paige could be right — that Ashe would not even remember her two weeks from now — how certain was she that he was that type of man who’d just forget all about her? But then, maybe Riley had just idealized him, wanting him to be so unlike Gareth, whom she knew had long drank the Kool-Aid when Hollywood first offered him a taste. And from there, it was like he’d found the fast track to fame in less than three years.

  What if Paige was right?

  “No man in his right mind can say no to such things, Ri. No one — not even my Clint, if you parked his butt in front of it,” Paige said. “So get that in your head. Men like Ashe and Gareth don’t get into this business to be saints. They do what they do because they can live a lie and get paid well doing it. They do it because they can have anything they want, anyone they want. And as long as they’re making money for the studios, whatever they want is handed to them on a silver platter. It’s like modeling – only with more money, more drugs and more sex.”

  “Sure, that’s because you’ve been there, right?” Riley scoffed, though she knew she was losing the battle. She could feel her confidence wavering. What did she really know about Ashe’s world?

  “And that’s the reality of things, Ri,” Paige continued. “That’s the world Ashe lives in, and no matter what you want to believe about him in your fairy tale world, he’s no different from Gareth. And he’s going to hurt you worse than Gareth ever did.”

  “You don’t know that,” Riley said in a small voice. She remembered his touch, his kiss — so tender, so heartfelt. Could a kiss lie, she wondered? But then, Ashe was also an actor — a highly sought-after actor who was good at what he did.

  “I do know it,” Paige said, walking towards her and gathering Riley in her arms. “And I don’t think I can take seeing you on some bathroom floor again, with a needle still stuck in your arm, overdosing over a boy. I just can’t, Ri. Not again. I promised mom I’d take care of you a long time ago, and if it means I have to treat you like you’re some teenager, then I will. But I don’t want to take the risk of you going back to drugs again all because some boy like Ashe Hunter just needed a pussy for the night. I’m sorry for being crass, Ri, but that’s the way it is where he comes from.”

  Riley pulled away, crossing her arms in front of her chest, as if hiding the track marks that were barely there. The only marks that remained were on her left arm, a wide scar that spanned from the middle of her upper arm down to the middle of her forearm. But that hadn’t been from the needles she’d used to pump her system with heroin. That was from something else, from a much longer time, when her life changed forever.

  “Whatever happened to me because of Gareth was a long time ago,” Riley whispered. “I’m older and I’m wiser now. And I’ve been a good girl, Paige. You know very well that I haven’t even seen anyone past the first date.”

  “I know you’re a good girl. But if you’re as wise as you think you are now, Ri, then you’d know better than to hang around Ashe,” Paige said. “And I don’t even care how big his dick is, or if he can play golf with his hands tied behind his back, but you stay away. Even if it works out with Ashe, what do you think will happen if you saw Gareth again? Do you honestly believe you can handle it? After the way he dumped you?”

  She pulled Riley into an embrace, kissing the top of her sister’s head. “You’re beautiful, you know that. You’ve got the sweetest heart, and you give everything — everything, Ri – when you love someone — just like you did when you were with Gareth. Three fucking years you slaved to get him the acting classes he needed, pay for that ratty apartment you lived in, and put food on the table even if you had to work two jobs while he did whatever he wanted for his art or whatever he called it. And that asshole knew it. He took and took from you, Ri. He had you support him until he made it and then he dumped you.”

  Tears streamed down Paige’s face, her mascara running down her cheeks. “When you said you were going back to Jackson Heights after he left you with just a bed — no, a mattress because he took the damn frame, too! — I thought it was a good thing even when I was afraid what Dad would think. I thought maybe this time, you and Dad would get your act together and maybe bond together,” she said as Riley looked away. Paige was getting all worked up again and Riley knew better than to say anything. She also didn’t want to wake up her nephews.

  “Instead you kept it together only for show,” Paige continued. “You fooled everyone, making us believe that you were fine when you weren’t. All that time you were hooked on heroin — heroin! But I’ll never make that mistake again, you hear me? I’m not going to be the one to find you overdosing on some floor-”

  “And you won’t!” Riley exclaimed, taking a step back from Paige. “You won’t, okay? I promise. If you don’t want me to see Ashe again, then I won’t. I may not be able to stop him from ordering his damn coffee at the Library when he’s in town, but I won’t see him again, alright?”

  Paige stared at her, unconvinced.

  “I promise,” Riley said, her voice softening. “You’re right. He’s just going to hurt me.”

  “Anyway, Clint’s assistant likes you,” Paige said. “He told Clint and I tonight that he’d like to see you, maybe get together for a coffee or something, maybe dinner. He’s a little bit older, but he’s very successful and he’s very funny. You’ll like Jesse, Ri. He’s really nice.”

  Riley nodded, wiping the tears from her own face with the sleeve of her shirt. She just wanted to go home and pretend she didn’t give in to her sister so easily. “Okay. Just let me know when.”

  “Maybe I’ll have him come by while you’re working, and then you guys can sit and talk…see how it goes. How does that sound?” Paige asked.

  “Sounds good,” Riley said as Paige’s phone beeped to let her know that she had received a text message. She glanced at it and texted something back before looking back at her.

  “That was Bob. He’s on his way back from dropping Ashe off at his apartment — shit, he’s got his own apartment,” Paige said the last words almost to herself before turning to look at Riley again. “He’s on his way back and I’ll have him drop you off to your place, okay?”

  “Okay,” Riley said, gathering her purse. She pretended to act resigned, just the way she knew Paige would like her to be. At least it would get her home sooner, and she’d bury herself — and her dreams of being kissed by Ashe Hunter — under her covers. Still, she couldn’t help but feel defeated. She would have wanted some of that — how’d they say it? — fine ass, she thought to herself ruefully, trying to find some humor in the predicament she found herself in.

  “Look, Ri, this is for your own good,” Paige said, walking her towards the foyer. “I’ve never ever said you couldn’t see anyone, have I?”

  Riley shook her head.

  “Anyone but Ashe,” Paige said. “Or anyone who knows Gareth, for that matter.”

  “Okay.” That last one didn’t make sense but Riley was past caring. She just wanted to go home.

  “Come here and give your big sister a hug,” Paige said, spreading her arms open and gathering Riley against her. She looked like an angel with her shimmering dress and the diamond necklace that graced her neck while Riley felt like a mere mortal in her jeans and checkered shirt layered over her tank top. Besides, Paige always knew the right thing to do, Riley thought as she inhaled her sister’s perfume. Chanel No. 5.

  “Trust me on this, Ri,” Paige murmured as Riley sighed. Of course she was going to trust Paige, even if everything inside her screamed that Paige was wrong.

  But when was Miss Perfect ever wrong?

  9

  Coffee and Kisses

  Ashe was leaning by her front door when Riley reached her floor, the sight of him making her catch her breath as the elevator doors opened. Still wearing his skin-tight shirt and jeans, the addition of a long dark coat made him look so…so English, just like in the movies.

  “I thought Bob dropped you off,” she said as she stepped off the ele
vator.

  “He did,” Ashe said. “But I needed to make sure that you were all right. Your sister wasn’t happy, and I don’t blame her. She must think me such a cad for making advances towards you.”

  Riley shrugged. “Does it really matter what she thinks? You’re here anyway, aren’t you?”

  He sighed. “Not for what you must be thinking. If anything, I’d like to talk, Riley. At least, let us talk.”

  “How’d you get up here anyway?” Riley asked. There was a doorman, Frank Rogers, who was usually very hard to get past, like a bulldog, though he was nice to her and loved to talk about his teenage daughter, Marie, and whatever she was currently into. Lately it was Twitter, though Frank had no idea what the word even meant. But Riley wondered if Frank had simply been helping one of the elderly tenants up to their apartments like he often did with one of her neighbors, who was turning 98 in a few months.

  Ashe bit his lower lip sheepishly. “I’m afraid I bribed Frank. Being recognizable has its perks.”

  “He’s going to get into trouble when I make a complaint.”

  Ashe frowned, moving away from her door as she approached. “I wouldn’t want him to get into trouble, not when all he wanted was an autograph and a photograph for his daughter. If I leave right now, will you promise not to report him?”

  “You’d really leave?”

  “I would,” Ashe replied, looking down at his boots and brushing some imaginary dirt off the carpet. “It’s not his fault.”

  “Then I won’t report him. He’s like a father to me and I don’t want him getting in trouble on account of me being just a bitch,” Riley said. “But if you’re here to get laid, you’ve got it wrong. Maybe you should call Betty and have her arrange something for you. I’m sure she can think of more entertaining people than me. You won’t have to work so hard at trying to get someone to give you a blow job or whatever.”

  His face darkened. “Is that really why you think I’m here? This is what your sister thinks, isn’t it? That all I want from you is sex, because of something Betty must have told her about whatever parties she must have set up for other…performers?”

  “Does it matter what Betty told her?”

  “Yes, it does, Riley. Because as much as some of what Betty says might be true, it doesn’t mean it applies to every single one of her clients. She doesn’t babysit me, nor supply me with models or drugs,” Ashe replied, taking a step closer. “I will leave right now, but not before you answer me this. Do you always let your sister run your life?”

  “She’s just worried about me. She doesn’t want me to get hurt again,” Riley said, biting her lower lip as she gazed up at him. Ashe had such a magnetic presence, it was overwhelming at times. The broad chest, narrow waist and muscles along his jaw that tensed as he looked at her all made her feel weak, unable to put up defenses strong enough to hide from him. “Anyway, if you’re not here to get laid, then why are you here?”

  His expression softened. “Just talk.”

  “I bet you can get laid a hundred ways from here till Sunday if you wanted to, even without Betty’s help,” she said, exhaling. “Why the hell would you give that up just to know me better? To talk?”

  Ashe didn’t speak right away. He watched her, observing her face go through all the emotions she was feeling — anger, confusion, regret.

  “That’s Paige talking now, Riley, not you,” he said, taking a step away from her. “I want to talk to the Riley I got to know tonight. The Riley who is the perfect narrator to my Sam-I-Am, the one who knows how to assemble a Lionel train faster than I can, even after reading the directions. The one who can convince three boys that macaroni and cheese with corn chips mixed in tastes so much better because Vitamin F means fun.”

  Riley felt her face burning with embarrassment and she lowered her eyes.

  “The Riley who doesn’t believe she’s as beautiful as she really is, who is more intelligent than she lets everyone else believe,” Ashe continued. “That’s the Riley I want to talk to.”

  Riley was blushing and she knew it. Ashe sure had a way with words, she thought. And God almighty, but those eyes. “Well, now that you put it that way, then I guess we can talk,” she said as she unlocked her front door. “But just talk, okay?”

  “Just talk,” Ashe nodded as he followed her inside her apartment. “I meant every word I said.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Riley said, remembering the way he had kissed her earlier that evening, the butterflies in her belly fluttering again. Talking was starting to seem overrated.

  *

  “Would you like coffee?” she asked as they entered her apartment.

  “Coffee would be perfect,” Ashe said, slipping off his coat and hanging it behind her door. He followed her into her small kitchen, which was really just a little space behind a counter, before stepping back when he realized just how small it really was.

  “I hope you’re not allergic to cats,” she said as Ashe walked towards the living room, shaking his head. “Miss Bailey is here somewhere, but she’s a little nervous of people she doesn’t recognize, so she might be under the bed or the couch. Just don’t be alarmed if you notice something moving, maybe rubbing against your leg or whatever.”

  “I won’t,” Ashe said. “I grew up with animals, and it will be a pleasure to meet Miss Bailey when she comes out of hiding.”

  While she prepared coffee for them, Ashe browsed through her books, pulling one out here and there to open it and flip through the pages, and always taking care of how he opened them. Sometimes she thought he actually smelled the books, especially the vintage ones that had belonged to her mother. Wuthering Heights was one that he pulled out and flip through the pages, and Riley caught him smile to himself when he pulled out her mother’s copy of Madame Bovary.

  “Do you like to read?” she asked.

  “I do, yes,” Ashe replied as he returned a book to the shelf. “Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to read these days, unless it’s to research a role. If I have some time, I read on my phone, though I still miss the feel of a real book in my hands.”

  “I know what you mean,” Riley said. “That’s why I have these books here in my apartment. Some of them belonged to my mother. She was such a voracious reader, and she loved collecting old books.”

  “Are these hers?” he asked, pointing to a row of old books on one of the shelves.

  Riley nodded as the moka pot bubbled and she turned away from him, taking the pot from the stove and dividing the contents equally between two cups. While she brewed espressos with a commercial machine at the Library Cafe, at home Riley chose to use a moka pot, preferring to do it the old-fashioned way. Besides, her little kitchen had no room for an espresso machine. She extracted a carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator and a bowl of sugar from the cupboard.

  “Having them around make me happy. She died when I was ten,” Reilly said, taking both cups to the living room where she set them on the coffee table and sat on the couch.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ashe said softly.

  “Thanks. She had MS and she was in a wheelchair, and -” she paused, not wanting the conversation to go down a path she hated to go, but as she gazed at Ashe’s face, she marveled at how honest he looked, like he really was saddened by news that her mother was dead.

  “Anyway, I was too young to really remember what happened but she died in a fire — not from the fire itself, but from the smoke that got into her lungs,” she continued, though that was a flat-out lie. Of course she remembered what happened. Riley had been with her mother when the next door neighbor’s apartment caught on fire from an unattended cigarette. The broad scar on her arm was her reminder everyday of how useless she was because she’d been too small, too weak, to help her mother down the stairs where they would have been safer from all that smoke.

  The scar also reminded her of her father’s hatred for her. He still called her weak and useless whenever he saw her, and that if it weren’t for her being too
weak to help her mother down the stairs before the smoke finally got to her, Millie Eames would still be alive. Riley sighed and forced herself to smile as Ashe sat down on the couch next to her.

  “This is from that fire,” she said, straightening her arm out so he could see the wide scar along the inside of her forearm. What a crybaby she’d been then, she thought, crying at pain of debridement and whatever else they did to graft new skin where the old skin had burned away. But that was before she saw other children that had been burned worse than she’d been, and Riley learned to stop complaining.

  She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “They’re all healed after all the skin grafts. Good as new.”

  For a few minutes neither of them spoke. They simply drank their coffee though Riley could feel Ashe’s eyes watching her. As she looked at him, she was relieved to find no pity staring back at her, or anger though he would have no reason to be angry at what she had just shared. Still, it was time to change the subject or send him home.

  “So, the Englishman who is not posh, what about you? Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?” She nudged him playfully with her foot, trying to lighten the mood. “How come it’s always me talking about myself? It’s your turn to open up, or are you hiding something?”

  “No, I have nothing to hide, at least not at the moment,” Ashe said, nudging her with his leg in return. “But you can always ask me whatever it is you want to know.”

  “You said you aren’t from London, and that you’re not posh. So where are you from?”