Knots (Club Imperial Book 4) (7 page)

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her brother bristle for just an instant.
Well, that’s curious.
Her mother, however didn’t see a thing and plowed on. “Frances, sweetheart, the older you get, the more likely you are to have a retard.”

Cece dropped her fork on the plate with a bang. “What did you just say?”

“It’s true.” Marjorie plowed on. “Once you hit thirty, you are in dangers of having one of those retarded children. We don’t want to burden anyone with one of those.”

“Do you have even the slightest clue what an asshole you sound like right now, mother?”

“Language!” Roger snapped.

“No! I will not watch my language!” Cece stated loudly. “Mom just indicated that she wouldn’t be interested in having a
retard
for grandchild because I’m not having children young enough for her liking. It does not matter what age I am! A child with a birth defect can be born at any age! And for the goddamn record, the word ‘retard’ is horrible insult and you need to cull that from your vocabulary immediately.”

“It’s a--”

“
Immediately
.” Cece was boiling mad. She ran a few of the Learning Disabled programs at the library for the college students, and to hear her mother call them the ‘R’ word made her want to punch things. “You will not use that word around me.”

“It’s just a word.”

“It’s not just a word. It’s an insult. Do you know how many brilliant LD kids we have at the college? They are at a disadvantage, but they are brilliant and sweet and no less deserving of your respect than anyone else on this whole frickin’ planet. So lose the word.”

“Someone needs to curb you,” Charles snapped. “Your mouth and attitude are repellant.”

Cece grabbed her napkin off her lap and tossed it next to the plate of barely touched food. “I’m leaving. I came here because I thought that maybe, just maybe we could be civil to each other. Instead, I’m insulted, demeaned, and told that I’m repellant.”

“You’re not leaving.” Marjorie pointed at her. “Stay where you are.”

“I am leaving.” Cece stood from the table.

Chas was around the table and pushing her chair back in under her a moment later. “You will stay, and you will listen, little sister. Keep your mouth shut, your hands folded, and stay.right.there.”

“Charles!” She yelped, stumbling back into the chair. “Let me out.”

“No!” He snapped at her. “Mother, tell her.”

Cece felt the pit of her stomach plunge to the floor. She was ever more frightened when she saw the helplessness and tears in Hannah’s eyes. She switched her glance over to Marjorie who had delicately put her knife and fork down, and folded her hands. “Mother?! What is going on?”

“We’ve decided that it is time for you to marry.”

Cece wanted to puke. She whipped her head back to her father. “Dad! You can’t let them do this!” But Roger was engrossed in his scotch again.

Oh God.

Marjorie retrieved a very expensive leather portfolio from the sideboard. She moved Cece’s plate to the side and put the portfolio down in front of her. “This is a pre-nuptial and marriage contract for you. Your brother and I spent a lot of time getting this set up, and it’s a binding document already signed by three of the four parties involved.”

Cece looked at her mother. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“I am not joking when it comes to your marital status, Frances.”

“I’m not getting married! I’m not signing this!”

Chas looked at their mother, giving her a slight nod. Mother walked away from them and Chas leaned down to her ear. “Listen carefully to me, Frances Michele. Very carefully. It has already been arranged that if you should refuse this contract, your house is going to go into foreclosure. Your car will be repossessed. Your pretty little job at the library will disappear.”

“Why are you doing this, Charles?” Cece felt sick, helpless.

He turned so Marjorie couldn’t see his words. “Mother thinks this is because you need to be married. But your mother owes an enormous gambling debt to the Wainwrights. They have already threatened father, and they will take all of the Robbe family fortune unless you agree to marry their son. You...or Hannah.” He turned and looked at Hannah sitting there. “It doesn’t matter to them who their son marries. But we both know that you love Hannah a little too much to let that happen.”

Cece snapped her head to look at her brother. “Paul? Paul Wainwright?”

“That’s correct. And they will take everything if it’s not you or Hannah. That means your father, mother and sister will all end up homeless, penniless and destitute.  And we’re not going to let that happen, are we?”

“But Paul… Paul is…”

“Is what, my dear sister?”

“He’s…”

“Known for his proclivities? His wandering hands? Wandering eyes? Cruelty in bed to those who join him there?” Paul nodded. “All of the above, my dear sister.”

“You would put Hannah in that position? You would let Paul handle someone as small and frail as our little sister?”

He turned and looked right in the eye. “No. You would.”

“You fucking asshole.” Cece felt the walls of a prison slide into place around her. Paul was known to be merciless, sometimes out and out abusive to his bedroom partners. She could handle it; she doubted there would ever be a night in bed for them after the honeymoon—

Shit.
She let out a breath. She’d already made up her mind. Hannah couldn’t survive his purported cruelty. She wouldn’t be able to—she had always been the weak, fragile, quiet girl that Chas had made her, and the illness had caused her to be. “What about Marjorie’s gambling?”

“She will not incur any further debts, once you sign this.” Chas smiled at her.

“You’re going to let her keep gambling?” Cece was furious. “How about a intervention on that?”

“There’s no harm in it now.” He tapped the portfolio. “She’s safe from further threat. And you know the Robbe family doesn’t believe in psychiatric help, sis. There’s nothing wrong with us.”

Cece stared at him. Marjorie would never get help for her gambling. Christ, Cece thought that it had been the occasional OTB wager on a horse or a baseball game. She had no idea it was this bad; her mother had never shown her any signs of gambling addiction. And now she had saddled her daughters with the burden of getting her out of her mess, keeping her sister in a house. Keeping her father in the booze.

Chas held out a pen.

“You are the lowest form of scum that has ever existed, Charles.”

By the time the ink was dry, she was already drawing up divorce proceedings in her head.

He watched.

There was a lot to watch right now and it was difficult to keep up sometimes. But this time, there were major stirrings, and they weren't all good.

Frances Michele Robbe, middle child to Roger and Marjorie Robbe. Precocious, spitfire, blindingly intelligent, frighteningly independent and one of the most tender hearts a man could ever hope to hold. Masters in Library Science, minor in Education, self-possessed and determined.

Roger Robbe was so far into alcoholism that he didn't have a say in the family anymore.  Charles was now the man of the house. He and Marjorie were horrified at Cece's acceptance to UPitt and her desire to go. They were even more horrified when she moved out of the house and into the dorm- and they were losing control of her, which was something that didn't sit well with her mother and Charles.

Marjorie actually passed out when Cece bought her own house with her own money. No one questioned why she had enough money to buy the darling little cottage she lived in-- they were just mortified that she had done so. And lived alone without a man to help and protect her.

And pay for her. Unheard of in Marjorie Turing Robbe's world.

Quelle horreur.

Who knew what their reaction would be if they found where Cece had gotten her money for the house. It was his opinion that they didn’t care; they probably just assumed that she had used her trusts to buy it. That was completely against what Cece was trying to prove. But then, her family wore blinders to the rest of the world.

Cece was Prima Domme at Club Imperial.

Not many people outside her weekend job knew that Dusty Rose Milan and the bookish Cece Robbe were the same person. During the week, she wore wool skirts below her knee with impeccably coordinated shirts and blazers. She loved Burberry, and loved to pop the color red with it. She even managed to wear their perfume. Cece always had sensible shoes, and a solid sense of time. She was late or early as the occasion demanded. Her weekday life was neat. Organized.

Her club presence was a force to be reckoned with. Her ability to be present in a moment was surpassed only by the former Prima Domme of Club Imperial, Tessa Saint. However, Tessa had moved to management, and engagement, and moved Dusty Rose as the Prima.

Now Cece was fighting against everything her parents deemed proper. Well, everything Charles and Marjorie deemed such. They wanted her in their house, where they could protect the legacy of the Robbe family-- because she as the only hope for a grandchild, a legacy. Chas had taken up with the Oetler heiress who was not interested in having another child. Nothing Charles could do would change her mind. And Hannah... sweet, fragile Hannah. Her chance of every having a child was small; she was too weak, and too sick. All the doctors she would ever talk to would tell her that if she could conceive, she shouldn't. She just wasn't a woman who could carry a pregnancy. Which meant adoption.

Which to Marjorie meant- don't bother. An heir to her and her husband's money could and should only be blood. He knew they had to get Hannah away from the beast that was her mother soon. Things were going to go very wrong with that girl if her father wasn't there to protect her.

Much as he wasn't for Cece.

Thank God for Gordon Macdonald. He trusted that Gordon would do the same for Hannah if it came down to it. Not exactly the same, but help her nonetheless.

He had seen the contract. He didn't know how they got Cece to sign it; she wasn't the kind of woman who would surrender her freedom to the will of her mother. And especially not to her brother.

Whatever leverage they had, it had to be big. Cece knew Paul Wainwright.

He watched, and wondered. What had made Cece sign that contract... Paul was not an easy person to get along with.

Paul Henry Wainwright, doctor of forensic sciences and a coroner for Allegheny county. Mostly quiet, withdrawn. While generally the same intellectual level as Cece, there have been occasions where he was embarrassed by his inability to communicate effectively. He was awkward and ungainly as a child and seemed to never quite fit into his body.

Paul was the victim of serious bullying in high school and he quickly became an outcast. So much so that he chose to go to college in California to escape the past. Without the bullying and cruelty he shot to the top of his class and sailed through his education to finish with a doctoral degree in Forensic Science.

He moved back home to Pittsburgh, easily got a job as an assistant coroner with Allegheny County, and forged a solid relationship with Thurmon Chemcials. He worked with one particular chemist, Dr. Nicholas Dovadsky, on a regular basis and had a terrible habit of relying on him to translate his reports into something readable.

The black cloud of his childhood hadn't dissipated, though. Instead of being bullied, he was blacklisted. Rumors started springing up everywhere about things that had never happened in Southern California. Exploitation, under-age drinking and drug parties, statutory rape, abuse. The abuse was the one that every one seemed to latch on to- abuse of a beautiful girlfriend that no one had ever seen or met.

Several had gone far enough to try and find the girl and the police reports for the alleged abuse.  They were never able to find anything – because it didn't actually exist – but the rumors still persisted. It didn't even affect his ability to get the position in Allegheny at all. Rumors persisted.

They grew so numerous that he found himself essentially ostracized from the whole of Pittsburgh society. Which made his family very nervous, only for the fact that they were worrying about their legacy. As an only child, they suffered his expulsion as though they could really understand it. They fretted and worried and finally...

Realizing that Marjorie Robbe owed their gambling businesses more than the Robbe family was worth, they threatened her with the destruction of her family, her money and their way of life. And the simplest way to solve that problem was to offer up one of their daughters for marriage to Paul.

They immediately offered up the black sheep, Cece. They couldn't control her, so they thought that getting her married off – to a known abuser who was never proved to be an abuser was just fine with them-- would get her more under their control again. And thereby forcing the hand that could give them their heir.

And so, they got what they had wanted. Cece had signed the marriage contract. Paul would visit her over the weekend and propose with the ring that her mother had picked out for Cece. Paul was less  than thrilled. Cece's reaction would be interesting the next weekend.

The Watcher undressed quickly and slipped into the bed behind his Hunk, all of the day's events  weighing on his mind. The Hunk turned in his arms and pulled him close.

“Didn't think you were coming tonight.”

“I need to be here,” he answered.

“She signed?”

The Watcher nodded. “She did.”

“Isn’t that part of the plan, though?”

“I don’t think that anyone realized what it would take to get that to happen.” He sighed. “She so independent and self-possessed.”

“That’s what a good Domme is.”

“I think that why it’s so hard to watch.” He pulled the Hunk closer. “It’s breaking her. Breaking her spirit, who she has strived to become.”

The Hunk put a hand on his cheek. “It’s not going to break her. This is
necessary
. She’s stronger than you’re allowing yourself to believe. Trust me, love. As much as I hate the whole thing, this is the right thing to do. For everyone. On the other end, we will
all
come out stronger.”

The Watcher stared into his Hunk’s eyes. “God, I fucking love you.”

“I love you, too.” The answer was natural. “Let me hold you. You need it.”

“I do.” He relished the feel of the arms around him, and let them give him strength.

The hard part was still to come.

###

Killian closed the book he was paging through and looked on the screen at the microfiche. There was too much research to be done on this, and he didn’t know how he was going to be able to get through all of it. The paper deadline was in four weeks, and he needed two of those so he and Dr. Najahan could get the revisions done.

Najahan. His savior, in a sense. The man  was a quietly brilliant doctor who eagerly agreed to having Killian as his student and research assistant just two weeks before. Of course, he was also a hard ass that wanted this paper out, but that was something that Killian could do. The amazing work the man did on cardiac diseases floored Killian, and he was thrilled to be working with the doctor. He would learn more with him than he could observing a thousand other doctor for ten or fifteen minutes per operation. It was a terrible way to put it, but he’d gotten his hands dirty more times in the past week than in the past year of his internship.

Dr. Hamburg had been keeping him away. Killian had the odd impression that the man wanted him in private practice, not at the hospital. If he was in private practice, at the end of the day, he would be able to go home to his wife and family and tend the fortunes and the legacy that were the Hamburgs and the McInnis. Neither of which he really had any interest in.

The operation room, the hands on, the interaction with the patients was what Killian craved. It was what had suffered when his father was killed. And now with Najahan, he had a chance.

Selfishly, he added to himself that this was also his chance to get away from the influence that Dr. Hamburg had on his career and life and, maybe, get away from Diane for good.

Two books slipped on to the desk next to him, and the distinct scent of Burberry wafted across him.

His cock instantly started to react.
Damn it
.

Two very long, very sexy legs appeared in his vision, and they were followed by the rest of the gorgeous woman they belonged to as she sat down next to him. He still couldn’t believe Cece was helping him with this. Trying to keep his mind on his work was even harder than his dick when all that kept sliding into his mind was sliding into her.

“Here you are, doctor.” Cece tapped the books. She had a wet paper towel in her hands. “I had to nearly spelunk for those in the back room. They were buried and covered in dust. Someone really has to clean that up back there. All those journals are being ruined.”

“You know if you say something, it’s going to be you.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.” She sighed. “It’s going to be me anyway. I have to start really cataloging what we have and organizing it. I think there’s a lot more back there than people believe there to be.” Cece smiled at him. “A librarian’s job is never done.”

Killian made a noncommittal noise. “Look, Cece. I’m sorry I busted into your office the other day. I have better manners than that most of the time. I--”

“Stop.” It was a powerful word coming from Cece. “I'm not concerned about it, Killian. There's too much going on in my life right now to care if you saw my pu-- privates.”

He glanced at her and caught the ghost of a shadow passing over her face. He blinked a few times and then pushed the journals away from her. “What's wrong?”

“Don't worry about it.”

There wasn't really room for argument in her statement, but Killian decided it was worth it. “I do. I've known you for years, Cece. Nothing gets under your skin, and this did.”

She sighed. Cece wasn't going to talk.

“Do you have plans?”

She gaped at him. “What?”

“Right now. Do you have plans? Can you take some time and have dinner with me. Away from the academic environment?”

“Uh...” She was confused, and speechless.

“Come on.” Killian snapped the microfiche reader off and grabbed the few books he had. “Let's put these in the drawer and go get dinner.”

“You're serious.” Cece seemed glued to the chair.

“Yup.”

Killian watched a dozen emotions cross her face again. She looked at him and finally stood up. “Well, no one is going to take exception to me leaving early. There's plenty of coverage.” She looked at him. “But I have to be somewhere tonight at nine and need time to get ready.”

“Not a problem.”

They walked up to her office and locked away the research. Killian couldn't help but think about her standing in that room with her skirt hiked up. He tamped down his reaction to her, and quickly walked back out of the office, holding the door for her. Killian walked her out of the building directing them to his car, and ten minutes later found them at the Grand Station.

“Kind of over the top for a quickie dinner,” Cece said, sitting down.

Killian shrugged. “Good food. Don't matter to me where it is.” He looked at the menu. “Do you want to talk about what's going on? You were quiet the whole way here.”

“I'm not a talkative person to begin with.” Her statement seemed designed to head him off.

“Cece. We've known each other our whole lives. You can't pull that 'I don't talk' bullshit with me. Not to mention the look on your face is utterly horrified about something that happened this week. So please. Let's talk.”

Killian wanted this work. He wanted to get to know Cece better; he’d pined for her for too long and now that there was chance he could get away from the assumed marriage with Diane, he wanted to take that chance with this woman.