Binds (2 page)

Thursday: Lobster tail poached in a lemon garlic sauce, small new red potatoes, and Julienne of fresh snow peas and carrots.

Friday: Rack of lamb with herb roasted Dijon crust, mushroom hazelnut salad, and potato leek soup.

I scroll through the menu in front of me once more to make sure that everything will be acceptable. I blow out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I think for sure that Donovan will be pleased with it this time, and then I scroll back up to the top to peruse the list again. My mind wanders to the first time I saw my husband’s fury over a wrong choice for a dinner party with some of his lesser associates. Surrey roast chicken, I remember. The cook was dismissed before the last plate was cleared from the table that evening. I have taken up the task of going over each monthly menu with a fine-tooth comb ever since. That was 2 years ago, and I still make mistakes every now and then. I’d better go over it once more to be sure, I sigh.

Details are very important to me. They haven’t always been. Not Before. Before, I was like a thistle blowing around in the yard. Free, vibrant, easy going. My mother shaped me that way, stuffed me into the mold of her self. My life seems to have been split sharply into two sections with a clean severance, like a knife cutting kernels off of a corncob. Before, it was a whole object, fully connected to itself, and after, it was scattered all over the plate; cut off, bereft. I try not to dwell too much on the Before portion of my life— what’s gone is gone and you can’t bring it back around. I try to be planted firmly in the After and that is that. Actually, I try not to dwell on much of anything, really, except for the details. The details are what keep my mind off of the past, and more often recently, wandering into ways to get out of the present.

The memory of being found sitting in a Mercedes with the engine running in the enclosed garage off of our guesthouse comes to mind. James, my former driver found me. I remember his shocked face as he pulled me out of the car and walked me back around to the main house. I don’t think he ever told anyone about that day. I know it never got back to Donovan, and James never spoke to me about it either, but he always looked at me from that day forward as if he was waiting, waiting for me to address it or waiting for me to try again.

The weird thing was that I had no clue as to how I ended up in that car. I won’t lie, I’ve thought about trying to end it all, many times. There would be no one to mourn me, no friends, no family besides my husband and his father. Donovan would probably see it as a loss of his trophy wife, and his father would be relieved. He has never seemed to like me anyway. Yes, I have thought about it many times. Of the ways I could end my life and escape this pristine prison, death by auto asphyxiation would seem the easiest and most pain free, but I have never actually attempted it. One minute, I had been crying behind the locked door of my bathroom, and then the next, James was staring into my eyes. I had come back to myself, as if waking from a dream, with a start, behind the wheel of the car.

“Ahem.”

Startled, I looked up from the menu to see the new driver, Reece, standing in the doorway. James, the friendly old man who had found me in my precarious position and had driven me around like a prized porcelain doll has retired, gone for almost two weeks now. Even though I didn’t know him on a personal level, I miss him. It’s sad that I hold onto him that way when not a part of him was ever mine. I’m sure he has a family that he retired to spend more time with, and I’ll never be anything more to him than a pampered housewife that he had to endure. He always looked at me kindly, even before the incident in the garage.

Back to Reece, something about him puts me on edge. It’s odd to me that my husband would hire him in the first place. He definitely doesn’t fit the mold of the people that Donovan usually places around me; the old, the ugly, the giant muscle-clad meathead bodyguard types who have more muscle cells than brain cells. Reece is a good-looking man with his close-cropped ebony hair, striking emerald eyes, and creamy skin. He has a strong jawline that always hints at a five o’clock shadow and dimples that seem to be present whether he is smiling or not. He looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties but still retains a boyish charm in his eyes. I feel as if he doesn’t look at me but through me, as if he knows me already and is expecting me to embrace him as an old friend. I don’t like it.

He steps a few feet into the study. “Miss Brand, I’m here to take you to the inaugural dinner, whenever you are ready.”

“Oh crap, the dinner!” I jump up and start past Reece before remembering myself, cringing at the slip in language. I am always expected to be refined, as Donovan constantly reminds me, no matter what. “Umm, I’m sorry about that. Let me just change and we can leave. Please, give me a few minutes.”

“No, problem,” Reece says, a crooked smile plastered to his face.

He probably thinks I am embarrassed about using the word crap. In reality, I couldn’t care less. Curse words don’t bother me at all. In fact, in the Before years, I wouldn’t have even considered ‘crap’ a bad word. The harsher curse words would easily slip into my conversations, especially if I were talking about something I was passionate about. Donovan once told me when we started dating that he thought it was cute. What was cute for dating became intolerable for marriage. In fact, most of the things that made me
me
, became intolerable shortly after we married, when Donovan became the chief advisor on his father’s campaign for chancellor. At the time, I understood. Elections are hard, especially when you are running for the highest seat in the country. Our every move could be scrutinized and so I went along with it. I pulled all of the ragged edges of myself into a smooth new shape so that I could fit into the mold that Donovan needed at the time.

That was four years ago. Chancellor Brand had been elected and just recently fraudulently reelected; Donovan has been working as his head of state ever since. Propriety is still of utmost importance to both of them, not that I give a rat’s ass anymore about the politics of it. I just prefer to keep Donovan happy. When he is happy, there is no reason to be afraid.

“I’ll wait for you outside. The car is already around front,” Reece states as I flee the room.

I race upstairs and fling my closet doors open. The closet is actually a room unto itself with racks and shelves full of the pieces of the proper uniform for the wife of a head of state. How could I forget? This is not going to be good. Crap, crap, crap. Thankfully, as always, our maid Elise, or ‘Donovan’s eyes’ as I like to think of the squinty-faced woman whose task it is to watch everything I do, has taken the liberty of choosing not only my dress but also my shoes and jewelry for the evening.

I change quickly, while trying to come up with an excuse in the very likely event that we don’t make it in time. Nothing I can say will help me if I am late, but I still hold onto the possibility that he will be too busy to notice me slipping in or maybe he will overlook it this once. Fat chance.

In less than ten minutes, I am ready and running out the door, only slowing my step once I near the car where Reece is holding the back door open for me. I am flustered with nerves and anxiety; worried about what Donovan will do to me, and Reece, as well, for it will be both of us that will be punished. Reece looks at me through the rearview mirror, probably taking in my flushed face and frantic eyes. He is new, so he probably doesn’t realize the trouble we are in. He doesn’t look nervous like a man who knows he will very soon be losing his job. We get to the gated fence that surrounds the house and I watch impatiently as the Brand family crest that covers them pulls apart to allow our departure. Reece seems breezy as he whistles the tune playing on the radio. The whistling almost pushes my nerves to the limit, and I scrape every last ounce of control I have to remain quiet and not scream at him to step on it.

I am staring out of the window, noticing the first stars as they appear in the twilight sky and taking the time to wish on each one I see, wishing that we would get there before the dinner starts. “Start on the outside and work your way in,” Reece says with a laugh in his voice.

“What?” I snap back. I already have enough to worry about as each minute passes while we are not moving, stuck in the end-of-the-day traffic. I really don’t need to worry about cryptic messages from my creepy, attractive driver as well.

“Pretty Woman,” Reece says as if that is an explanation all itself. “You know the movie with Julia Roberts?”

“I know what Pretty Woman is. What are you talking about? Watch the road!” This is getting exasperating. What is up with this guy and why is he trying to make small talk? Doesn’t he see the precariousness of our position? Someone, maybe one of the other drivers or one of our other terrified employees, must have filled him in about his tyrannical employer. They wouldn’t just send him out without the protection of knowledge, would they?

“The forks. You seem nervous about this fancy dinner. I figured it might have something to do with all the forks. They would make me nervous, trying to figure out the right one to use at the right time. My little sister used to make me watch that movie all the time and I thought you might need some help remembering the fork order.” His eyes hold mirth as they meet mine, and it really ticks me off.

“Listen, I don’t want to sound like a total bitch, okay, but you need to stop worrying about me and start worrying about your job. This dinner starts in fifteen minutes and unless we can magically make it through all of this traffic and I can get into the door in time, we are both going to be in a world of hurt. I don’t know what you were told during the hiring process, but my husband is very serious about punctuality and even more serious about consequences when one is not punctual. Please, can we hurry it up?”

“Magically make it … hmm. Not sure if there is enough magic in the world to get this traffic moving,” he mutters. He leans over and turns the radio off. It seems that I killed his good mood. Darn.

We start to pick up the pace. Reece is adept in the art of weaving in and out of traffic, and before I know it, he is pulling up to the front of the Astor and helping me out of the car. “I’ll be here when you are ready to go,” he says, as if he has any other choice but to wait for me, or as if I have any other choice but to go home with him at the end of the night. He probably wishes we both had a choice. I feel bad for yelling at him in the car. It’s my fault that I forgot about the dinner tonight, and I still can’t believe I did.

As I walk into the lobby of the hotel, I glance up at the enormous modern clock behind the front check-in desk and see that I am, indeed, ten minutes late. Most people wouldn’t scoff at ten measly minutes, they may even feel fashionably late, but Donovan is not most people. Donovan makes sure that his life runs exactly on time. He expects everyone around him to be on the same page or they won’t be around him for long. I’ve seen enough staff members and household help dismissed to know you don’t mess around with whatever Donovan wants, it’s just not done.

I walk into the Astor’s grand ballroom. A large cavernous space with shining marble floors and cream-colored walls that are covered in gilded molding, the magnificent crystal chandeliers sprinkle light around the room like fairy dust. It is an enchantingly beautiful room and for once, I let my heart flutter, imagining that I am here to meet someone special, like Cinderella finally crossing the threshold into the ball. I sigh and search the room for my imaginary perfect prince and lock eyes with Donovan. The spell is broken.

It is crazy what one stare from my husband can do to me. My feet feel as if they have become attached to the floor. My body is trying to do the smart thing and stay as far away from Donovan as it possibly can, while my mind knows that I have to go to him. Thankfully, my mind wins because I am able to pick my feet up and hurry across the floor towards him. My veins feel like they are pumping ice water through my system, I am shaking and short of breath. I know that for the duration of the dinner I’ll be fine, he wouldn’t do anything in front of all of these people, but his stare is a promise of the retribution to come.

He is a handsome man. I’ll admit that his looks went a long way to bring us together in the beginning. I am not an unattractive woman, I know this. My mother used to call me ‘little A’ because she thought I looked like Audrey Hepburn. I have long shiny dark brown hair that contrasts with my pale skin, and eyes the color of coffee heavy with creamer. I have a nice figure that is slightly curvy in the right places and slender everywhere else, but I was still shocked when Donovan turned his attentions toward me.

Saying that Donovan is handsome is actually an understatement. He has light chestnut hair and robin’s-egg blue eyes. His eyes have the ability to pierce through a person as if his stare is a stake driven through your body, holding you in place until he decides to let you go. His face is so remarkably manly that it’s hard to believe he was ever a child. It’s as if his mother birthed him as a full-grown man, and he would never trifle with anything childish or whimsical. His features are solid, his posture straight, and his frame assertive. He knows exactly how powerful he is and he isn’t the slightest bit afraid of anyone else knowing it, as well.