Fic: "Living In the Red" - Chapter 4
DISCLAIMER: "Once Upon a Time" and all its wonderful characters belong to ABC and Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, etc.. I borrow them only with love.
TITLE: Living In the Red
PAIRINGS: Outlaw Queen (AU)
RATING: Mature
SUMMARY: Regina Rossi is an internationally successful fashion designer. She has it all, right? Or maybe she doesn't realize how broken she has become until a stranger appears in the night and flips her world upside down. Outlaw Queen AU.
Major beta gratitude to helenhighwater7 and shinewithalltheuntold.
LIVING IN THE RED
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2015
Chapter 4
"Let's discover one another
Kiss me here, touch me there, yeah
Purest form of ecstasy
Truth or dare, don't be scared, yeah
Let me solve your mystery"
--Madonna, 'Inside Out'
No one is allowed to know that Regina Rossi practices yoga. This is not entirely true. Henry knows. Of course, he knows. There is very little Regina can keep from her relentlessly inquisitive child. But he is not allowed to watch her practice or to tell anyone else what he knows.
There is far too much vulnerability in the physical and emotional exploration.
Regina discovered yoga when Henry was very young, when single motherhood found her flailing for personal time and gasping for air. She loved her little boy to her last breath, but she was being pulled in every direction without a corner for respite, and she had not seen the inside of a gym in months. So, she started looking for something she could cling to in the few moments of peace before sleep each night. It began with snatches of evening meditation, in the quiet of her room after Henry was finally FINALLY sleeping. She would turn down the lights, open the view onto the city, light a candle. Regina discovered she liked focusing on fire, liked the idea of visualizing power in the smoke, of directing it and manipulating the energies.
It was something of which Cora, with her determined if plastically shallow Catholic background, would never approve, yet it was something that felt deeply and inexplicably familiar and comforting to Regina. So, for once, she kept something for herself.
She played around with manipulating energies. When Henry was sick, she would sit with him as he slept, hover her hands over his little body and try to feel the germs inside, focus on her vast love for him and visualize and target the darkness, use her love to pull it out of him. Sometimes it seemed to help. She liked being able to do something as his mother, something others might have been unable to do to help. But this little trick has grown harder and harder as he has grown older and more independent. The symbiosis of mother and toddler loses potency at eleven years old.
Meditation and energy work spread into relaxation exercise and stretching and eventually full out yoga. Regina has never had a formal teacher, only videos and books and blogs. But she is a good student when she wants to be, and she has picked up a great deal of knowledge, both practical and philosophical, in her years of study. Not that she can universally apply it all, as yet. Regina's inner life is more one of guilt and resentment and pain than of peace and acceptance. But she is trying, on her good days.
The trying makes her vulnerable. And vulnerability is not something she is in any way ready to indulge. Which is the primary reason for the closed doors and insistent secrecy.
Regina lives her life braced for a hit. Her stomach muscles are perpetually tensed, her protective armor raised and shored. She is not certain if there was a time, far back in her childhood, when this was not true. She trusted her father not to hurt her. But she never trusted him to have the strength to stand up and protect her from the world (from her mother). So she never truly felt safe.
No one is allowed to rest a hand on Regina's stomach when she is lying on her back, when she relaxes the muscles for a moment (when she can), when she lets down her barriers. Which makes savasana one of the scariest postures she can assume.
Not even Henry is allowed such privilege. Regina always places a guiding hand over his when he touches, or places a hand like a barrier between his head and her naval when he flops affectionately across her lap. Not because she thinks he would ever deliberately hurt her. But because little boys are prone to shove off harshly and unexpectedly, leaving a bit of bruising in their wake. Or throw out offhand comments they never realize might land with a sharp sting.
These recent mornings are the first time in a long while Regina has felt free to practice yoga in her living room, with all the doors open and the music echoing through the empty space.
She woke early this Monday, lit candles around the living room floor in the pre-dawn clouds. She has been practicing for nearly an hour when a seemingly innocent pose, stretched out on her side on the mat, brings forth a memory with visceral intensity that dances shivers down her exposed body -- Robin's hand resting on the base of her spine, guiding her through the door of the café, out onto the busy street.
She cannot remember the last time she met someone who turned her blood to warm chocolate with the lightest brush of skin. There is no explaining it. Connections, chemistry, wrinkle lines at the corner of an eye that make one person boring and another the fodder of fantasies. But there it is, there he is, taking her focus off of her breathing and alignment and fastening it securely to those smiling blue eyes that seem to absorb every word she offers like an eager student.
Dammit. This was not on the schedule. She is supposed to be working on herself this summer, getting her focus and her center back before Henry returns from camp. She is not supposed to be flirting with some guy she stumbled upon at a party (when he just happened to save her life).
Or maybe that is exactly what she is supposed to be doing -- remembering that despite all of her experience, all her travels, there are still possibilities in the world she has not yet considered. Remembering that she is still the one setting the course of her life, that pursuing a bit of innocent pleasure is not such an outrageous indulgence.
Regina rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. More than a decade ago she spent a rather obscene amount of money bringing in a much sought-after artist to perfect this ceiling by hand, to weave the figures of entangled lovers ever-so-subtly into the textures of the beige paint. Well, that view doesn't help. It only serves to reinforce what a hopeless romantic she remains at heart, despite getting burned far more times than she has ever been nurtured.
Breathing. Postures. Alignment. Focus.
She has a long day ahead, scheduled right through that dinner meeting. She needs to quiet her mind to be able to concentrate and get through everything that will be required of her.
She wonders when she will hear from Robin.
She rolls up her mat and blows out the candles.
Forty-five minutes later, Regina is dressed and polished and on the subway. It's a short and familiar ride, and she has her nose in the email on her phone for most of it. She stops at her usual corner shop for coffee, smiles at the familiar clerk, and tosses a generous tip into the jar. She is on the elevator up to her offices at exactly 8:00am.
Tatiana is waiting in Regina's private office, already seated in the chair across from the desk.
Regina drops her oversized armload of bags and sketchpads onto the desktop with an indelicate clomp, just barely keeping a solid hold on her extra tall latte as she does so. She straightens her back, draws in a deep breath and catches Tatiana's gaze, holding it for a significant beat before she speaks. "Yesterday was my fault. I'm sorry. I lost...something that meant a great deal to me. I was trying to find it, but...well, I didn't, anyway. But we did need to work, and I'm sorry I left that with you."
Tati narrows her eyes appraisingly and flicks her pen around between her fingers before she says, "Who are you and what have you done with the real Regina Rossi?"
Regina releases a breath dangerously close to a snort and rolls her eyes. "Shut-up," she mutters. "Now, what's on the table this morning?"
"Do you actually want to hear it?"
"What did I just say?"
"You told me to shut-up."
"Not about the work."
"Fine. Evanna's agent called again this morning."
Regina decides to take a breath, take a sip of coffee, and count to five. Just after four, she says, "And you have some new information that would change my standing reply?"
"I have our latest sales figures and the demographics of those to which we are losing our appeal."
Tati makes a few quick taps to the tablet in her lap, then passes it over to Regina who tries very hard to be a professional and take it from her employee without making Tati hold it in the air for an extra moment. She is scanning over the figures that, though a little concerning, are not so different than the last numbers she laid eyes upon and are not exactly horrifying, when Tati says, "Will you just let me set up a meeting? No commitments, no promises. A simple meet-and-greet, a test shoot if you're interested. Nothing more. At least get to know the girl, find out what she wants to bring to the campaign."
Regina lets Tati wait for the reply a few uncomfortable counts too long, then without eye contact and with a warning note of coolness in her voice she says, "Meet-and-greet only. At least a week out from now."
To her credit Tatiana knows better than to respond with anything but an affirming nod. She has won a petty battle, but the war is still in Regina's kingdom. The subject has closed for the day. Regina hands the tablet back to the younger woman and reaches for the leather portfolio on her own desk. "Since I cut out on you yesterday, I stayed up last night and made a few sketches for our Fashion Week plans. Nothing final, just drawing board stuff, but hopefully it will help guide the vision."
Tati's interest is immediately peaked, and her attitude of tolerant management of a petulant boss turns into admiration and interest as she scoots forward on her chair and reaches an eager hand toward the sketches Regina spreads haphazard across her desk. Regina hates that she is such a glutton for the ego stroke, but it is what it is, and the bit of hero-worship over her art always does its good.
They work shoulder to shoulder, reviving the zone of productivity they had just begun to nurse when they were cut short the previous day. The pressing call of a lunch meeting brings the session to a close, but Regina is starting to breathe a little more and feel like her familiar self, again. Like there is a clear way forward for her business and she has the power to drive that course.
They are standing in the doorway to Regina's office, earlier tensions comfortably dissolved. They have both drained their coffees, and Tati has offered to make a run downstairs for more, when she points the stylus she's been using past Regina's shoulder and says warningly, "Incoming at your six o'clock."
"Hmm?" Regina whirls her head, hair falling pleasurably across her shoulder, but the moment she catches sight of the woman stepping off the elevator she turns back fast and closes her eyes. "Shit. The perfect Monday morning," she whispers.
Tatiana responds with a subtle smirk. "I admit, there are a few advantages to living 8,000 miles from one's family."
Regina arches an eyebrow. "The idea is more appealing every day. You think I should tell the desk to stop letting her up?"
Tati only gives a soft chuckle and turns to walk away as the arriving woman closes in.
"Chicken," Regina tosses after her assistant, but before Tati can reply, the all too familiar and overly bright voice sounds behind Regina.
"Regina!"
Regina draws a deep breath, composes her features, and turns.
"Maggie. To what do I owe the surprise?"
"What, a girl can't just drop by and surprise her step-mother?"
"Calling first is preferable, I am at work." Regina cringes a little at the note of parental rebuke in her own voice.
"Oh, come on." Ever the mature responder, Maggie. Perhaps she has not yet outgrown the role of petulant child to her step-mother's admonitions.
Mary Margaret Kingsley was a young teen when Regina married the girl's father. In the very beginning of the relationship, Regina and Maggie had some potential of getting along; Regina had looked forward to the prospect of having a baby sister of sorts after a lifetime of being an only child, solitary beneath her mother's heavy hand. But the more of Leopold's attention that shifted toward Regina and away from Maggie, the more the budding camaraderie deteriorated into resentment. Then, one day, Maggie betrayed Regina in a way the older woman has yet to find it in her heart to forgive. Even as that once teen girl stands before her as a fully grown woman, clearly no longer the misguided youth who acted out of jealously and ill-conceived loyalties, Regina cannot let it all go.
"I do have things to do. I have a lunch meeting in 15 minutes," she states. "What do you need?"
"Can we go somewhere and talk?"
Because I have nothing to do. Regina has wondered for years if Maggie actually hears her when she speaks. "Here is fine, I just said I don't have long. What do you need?"
Maggie twists her mouth in an expression of petty frustration and impatience Regina has seen a thousand times. One would never guess the girl...woman is approaching thirty. She is pretty, Regina will concede. Piercing blue eyes and beautiful dark hair that she has at last grown out to curl on her shoulders (abandoning that God-awful pixie cut she had insisted upon in high school). Her skin is pale and smooth and never had a blemish for a day. But she still dresses like she is twenty-one. Flirty little skirts and school-girl blouses. Clunky shoes meant to be fashionable that just come off as dorkish.
Maggie never has been willing to take fashion advice from her step-mother, and good grief, she is Regina Rossi, it's not like Maggie can claim she is too old and out of touch with modern trends.
"I need a favor," Maggie says, biting her lip, and glancing around as though to be sure they are not overheard. Regina cannot blame her there. The two of them have prompted enough tabloid headlines to last a lifetime. Bitter feud between Kingsley heir and gold-digging step-mother rages on outside club in downtown Manhattan. New York's favorite party girl promises tell-all interview about domineering step-mother's string of illicit lovers. Regina Rossi claims bratty step-daughter ruined her life. Somehow, Regina always comes out on the unflattering end of these journalistic fantasies.
"This doesn't surprise me," Regina drawls. "What favor?"
"Two favors, actually."
Regina just sags.
"First, I know you said you wanted the Sag Harbor house for a week in October. How flexible are those dates?"
"Carved in stone," Regina enunciates. "That's Henry's school holiday, he wants to go to the beach, and we have the week. Next question."
"Okay, I understand. But it's just...something's come up, and it's kind of huge, and we really didn't know in advance."
Regina just lifts her eyebrows and waits for more. This is not negotiable and she is not going to cave to batted lashes and a round-faced pout.
Maggie clears her throat, sits back on the edge of a nearby worktable and tries a new approach. "Here's the thing. I have eight of my closest friends flying in for a few days...kind of, a girls weekend, thing. And I can't rearrange everybody's vacation time and plane tickets and...I really want to have it at the beach house... "
Regina just shakes her head with no room for further consideration. "I put in my dates three months in advance, those are the terms of our deal. The house is mine for the week."
Maggie tries one of her best placating smiles. "No, I hear you. You did, I just...this was really last minute. We wouldn't need the whole week, just a long weekend. So...maybe we could kind of...I don't know, share, just for the last couple of days? The house is plenty big, and you and Henry would be at the beach most of the time, anyway, right?"
Regina can feel her eyes blazing and she sees the little bit of fear reflected on her step-daughter's pale countenance. "Share. Share? You are not bringing your rich bitch party girls anywhere near my son."
"Regina!"
She doesn't even care who is listening. "No. Not in this life."
"You know, you weren't so snobbish when you hired one of my 'bitches' to be your nanny."
"Oh, please. Emma was a scholarship case at your boarding school, and your friends barely tolerated her."
"I see, so money makes you a bitch?" Maggie's cocked head and biting gaze as she rises to her full height are a strong argument for nurture over nature in mother-daughter relationships. Beneath the loathing, Regina is almost proud. "I don't see you scrounging for funds, you know."
Regina leans in close, smelling the sickly sweetness of Mary Margaret's perfume as she hisses, "My point made."
With this, Mary Margaret draws a long slow breath, considers her step-mother for a moment, then sags her shoulders and drops back to her perch on the edge of the work table. "All right, Regina, here's what's going on."
If she is expecting eager prompting, she will have a long wait.
"David finally proposed. And I said yes." The girl can't keep the bubbling glee from her expression even as she tries to remain clinically factual. "We haven't announced it publicly, yet. We just wanted to keep it about us for a little while, you know, not public property. But now it turns out the bachelorette party is happening sooner rather than later. Which is why my friends are flying in. And I really wanted it to happen at our place by the beach. Good security, no paparazzi..."
The sound from the back of Regina's throat is a mix of exasperation and defeat. She can't deny a grudging admiration for the young couple's choice to keep their relationship between themselves and not milk it for media time. But she is still not surrendering the beach house. No, that is Henry's vacation.
The puppy-dog expression awaiting Regina's reaction is physically painful.
"Mr. Bland?" Regina asks with a bit of a grimace. "Really?"
"What, you'd prefer I marry someone crazy and wild?"
"Just maybe someone with a little more backbone. Someone you can't walk all over."
"Like you did?"
Regina gives a dark laugh. "Well, for once, nursing your Electra Complex might serve you well..."
"Regina." Regina's replying sigh hangs in the air a moment, before Maggie adds, "David's a good man."
It's true. He is. Dammit. "I suppose you could do worse," Regina concedes softly.
Mary Margaret flashes her a grudgingly tolerant look. "Thank you."
In the moments of silence that follow, Regina can read in Maggie's carriage that there is something more she wants to say, and there is a thread of vulnerability in the girl that stays her usual level of vehemence. But she really does have a lunch date to get to.
"What is it?" Regina asks flatly.
Maggie draws a long breath, fidgets with the strap of her handbag and lets her gaze slide around the span of the office. "Regina, I wanted to ask...I'd...do you think...I mean, I'd like it if..."
"If...?"
She can physically see Mary Margaret shoring up her spine and forcing the words across her lips. The hesitation is not like her. She has found a new way to be annoying. "If you would design my wedding gown," Maggie blurts in one long word.
Regina's reply is immediate. "I don't do bridal wear."
"Which would make it even more of an original!" Maggie volunteers, lips curling in a hint of a grin clearly meant to endear.
"Not amused. When is the wedding? "
"Well, that's the sticky part..."
"Why?"
"Because, David and I decided we didn't want to just spend all of our time for the next year stressing about the wedding, so, we thought the solution to that was to just...plunge in and do it."
Regina narrows her eyes. "How soon?"
"...October? First?"
Regina's bark of an incredulous laugh is enough to turn a couple of curious heads. "You know I'm three months out from Fashion Week, right now. And you want me to design and make an original wedding gown for you, at the same time?"
"Yes...maybe."
"Does the whole world revolve around you in your head?"
"Regina..." Mary Margaret stands up from the work table and takes a step toward her step-mother, but, no, Regina just cannot do this, right now.
She glances at the time on her phone. "No, you know what, I really have to go." She back up, turns and walks into her office to gather her things.
Mary Margaret follows her, but only so far as to hover in the doorway. "Regina, will you...would you think about it? Please?"
Regina snatches her purse out of her desk drawer, slams the drawer, then pauses for a moment, running the tip of her tongue over her lips and shaking her head. She avoids all eye contact. "I have to go."
In the edges of her vision she can see Mary Margaret hang on for a moment, then take in the words with a lowered gaze and a resigned nod of her head. The genuine and somehow...personal...sense of disappointment eats away at Regina's gut. The girl is turning to go, when Regina says softly, "Stop at the desk near the elevator, tell Jessica I asked that she take your measurements. Then set up a consult appointment for next week. I'm not promising anything."
The light blooming on Mary Margaret's face is something Regina really cannot deal with, right now. She hardly hears the girl's thanks as she pushes hurriedly past her through the office doorway and stalks toward the elevator, offering no more than a nod and not a moment's glance.
*****
Her lunch meeting is less than memorable. In fact, Regina suspects she remembers far less than she should. What she does remember is the texts she exchanged with Robin under the table, arranging the logistics of their Tuesday night date. A restaurant of his choosing, a favorite neighborhood Italian place. Seven o'clock to pick her up.
She finished the exchange by informing him just how boring her meeting was, and warning him she was within minutes of the danger zone in which her brain might actually implode if the moron across from her did not stop talking just to hear himself speak or at the very least loosen his painfully tight tie before his pink head popped and splattered the walls like an overripe watermelon. Two minutes later, her phone vibrated in her hand and showed her a picture of a penguin sliding down an icy hill with his flippers in the air and his eyes bugging. The accompanying text read, Something more amusing to look at.
It was stupid and childish and Regina almost couldn't suppress her own grin fast enough to avoid drawing the unwanted attention of her lunch companions.
How long had it been since anyone but Henry had sent her something like that? How long since anyone had been unafraid to be so real with her?
She really doesn't know what do with this man, and that fact in itself has her intrigued.
She is halfway back to her office when her phone buzzes with one last picture - this time the penguin is wearing a pink satin dress and a giant bow on its head. The message reads, A new area in which to expand your designs, perhaps?
Regina finds that Tuesday night seems uncomfortably far away.
*****
Tuesday night proves much too far away. Regina's Tuesday is relentless and frustrating and interminable. Every trivial thing that could go wrong at work does, and by five o'clock all she wants is to get the hell out of the office and get home and changed for her date. She finally has to just call it and leave, work be damned, and bless her soul, Tatiana tells her to just go and enjoy, and she will stay and put out any lingering fires. Some days that woman is worth more than she pays her. Regina makes a mental note to boost Tati's holiday bonus.
Regina changes her dress twice. Which is ridiculous. If Regina Rossi knows anything at all in life, it is how to dress herself for any occasion. So, why is she compulsively overthinking a simple dinner date with an interesting man? Something about Robin Archer leaves her a little off center, a little unsteady. She likes it. And she fears it.
She has been thinking about what to wear since yesterday. She settles on an elegant dark red cocktail dress that hugs her curves in what she hopes are the most flattering ways. Underneath the dress she opts for her favorite black lace bra and panties. Not that she expects anyone but herself to see them tonight, but knowing they are there gives her a kind of internal self-assurance she needs. She chooses a tailored black leather jacket to shelter her bare arms against restaurant air conditioning or a cooling evening breeze. The heels of her basic black slip-ons are not deadly stiletto, but they are high enough to give her just a little bit of sass, a little audacity.
She is ready to leave and actually sitting on the back of her couch with her purse in her hand, waiting for her date's arrival like a teenager on homecoming night. She suggested they meet at the restaurant, but Robin insisted on fetching her like the annoyingly adorable traditionalist he is quickly showing himself to be. She compromised a little and told him to text her when his cab neared her building and she would meet him downstairs.
The penthouse feels unusually silent as she stares at the door, her phone cradled in her hand, carefully painted black nails clicking restlessly against the glass screen. It is strange not having to get Henry settled for the evening before she leaves. She forwarded him the goofy penguin photos just to have a reason to make contact, but he has yet to reply.
When her phone's message signal sounds it scares the crap out of her.
Regina closes her eyes in annoyance with her inexplicable nerves, forces a deep breath, and taps the screen for the message. It's Robin. In sight of your building, I believe. Will pull up out front.
Regina quickly texts back, Glad to hear. Will be down in a minute.
She adds a scarf to her outfit, then takes it off.
When Regina emerges from the building's front doors, the adorable man is standing on the sidewalk side of the cab, leaning back, arms crossed like the very picture of a men's wear model. She cannot deny the rush of pleasure that flits through her stomach and down her thighs as she watches him. He is clothed in a well-tailored burgundy pin-striped shirt open at the collar and a pair of tan dress slacks that hug his well-toned hips in all the right ways. Robin is quite, quite attractive, of that much she has no doubt. She is trying very hard not to let that steer her away from a rational appraisal of his character as they get to know one another. But, he really is lovely to look at.
The moment Robin sees her, he springs to attention, pushing up off the car and unfolding his arms. His smile is warm and welcoming.
"Good evening, Ms. Rossi," he says as he steps forward to meet her.
She can't help but return his smile. "Mr. Archer," she says softly. "So nice of you to escort me to the restaurant." She's half-sincere, half-needling him about out-dated gender roles, and she is just sure from the brief sparkle in his gaze that he gets it, and that sharpness and acuity is a serious turn-on for her. Finding a man who appreciates her passive-aggressive bitchiness can be a hefty challenge.
"Not at all, it's my pleasure," he says, and he touches her elbow as he speaks, leans in for a chaste but generous greeting kiss to her cheek.
She does not kiss back, but she does lean in to his offering just enough to let him know the gesture is not unwelcome. She lets him rest his hand on the small of her back as he guides her into the car.
She likes his touch. Every person's touch is different. Identical gestures from different people can feel like day and night. Her father's touch was always warm and welcome, her mother's calculated and self-serving, Henry's is infinitely trusting and kind, Leo was unpredictably comfortable or cold and bruising, Mallory was like cool fingers on a sweltering day (desperately desired but dangerous to overindulge), Graham's touch was trusted but somehow distant. Robin...Robin feels like she has known him far longer than she has. Like she has to be careful not to grant him privileges he has not yet earned.
"And how was your day?" Robin asks as the driver pulls the cab out into traffic.
Regina sighs and settles into the reasonably comfortable seat (for a cab). "Long," she says with a dry chuckle.
Robin wrinkles his nose. "That sounds a bit like 'taxing'."
"Here and there," she concedes. "How was yours?" She watches him in the early evening light, shadows and colored light flickering across his skin. His gaze is so easy to meet. Usually eye contact is slow coming for her. It is something she knows how to use to her advantage in business, in negotiation and in confrontation. But for pure pleasure, in her private life, she bestows such intimacy slowly. With Robin, she finds the connection engenders only kindness and acceptance. Which either makes no sense, because he barely knows her, or makes sense only because he barely knows her.
"Ah, my day...," Robin begins. "My day has been a series of unfortunate events that have hopefully led me to a marvelous evening that will wash all those minor inconveniences from my mind."
Regina gives a soft laugh. "So, you're saying your day sucked as well."
Robin wrinkles his nose in a way that makes her stomach quiver. She is viscerally aware of the intimacy of their confined space and the miniscule distance from his knee to her own. Conversation is so inexplicably easy with this man. Nothing has changed since Sunday afternoon. "Yes, I am saying my day sucked. But I think all the present crises have, at least, stabilized for the night and need not have my attention again until tomorrow."
"Well, that's something. You found a sitter for Roland, then?" She drops the child's name into the conversation just to watch the quick flash of warmth it ignites in Robin's eyes. She imagines she has some equal tells at the mention of her Henry.
"I did. My downstairs neighbor has once again come to my rescue. She's a graduate student and a librarian, Roland adores her, and she has been a Godsend when it comes to trustable childcare. I am living in denial of the knowledge that she is to be married and move out of the city next spring."
"Mmm. Good childcare is invaluable, I agree." Then, as though he had heard his name spoken, her phone buzzes and a text from Henry pops up on her screen. Regina grins, then with only a split-second's hesitation, she holds the message up for Robin to see. "And as they get older, they resent that conscientious care more and more," she says.
Robin leans a bit closer to get a clear view of the words, and Regina instinctively inhales his scent. Fresh. Sharp. Woodsy. Memories of clinging to Rocinante's reins, leaning low, and flying through the woods at the edge of the stables' grounds until she can feel nothing but rushing air and animal warmth and the sun on her skin.
Checking in on the way to dinner, the screen reads. Are you happy now?;)
Robin matches her grin as he falls back into his seat. "The boy clearly has a bit of his mother's sass."
"Clearly," she drawls.
"I'm certain he misses you more than he says," Robin offers, voice softening just enough to let her choose how much intimacy she wants to accept from the words.
She gives only a soft hum in reply as she types a quick, Define 'happy':p, then tucks her phone back into her purse.
Robin regards her with a gentle smile as they ride on through the city and she tries to breathe and let herself enjoy the warmth of this quiet moment. After a few breaths, he is still watching her, and she has to ask. "What?"
He shakes his head, smile undaunted. "Nothing. It's just...the media view of you is...less motherly than what I see."
Regina lifts an eyebrow and sucks at the inside of her cheek. "I have many sides," she says slowly.
Robin's smile pulls into an outright self-satisfied grin. "And I look forward to discovering them all."
She gives a light shake of her head at his incorrigibility, but she cannot help but be infected by his unsquelchable glee. The man seems ridiculously happy regardless of any impending adversity. Regina is not sure she would recognize 'happy' in herself, these days, if it dropped in her lap.
Robin turns to gaze out the window, letting her off the hook if she wants to be. The conversation turns to the weather, the construction at the nearest cross street, and Roland's fear of fireworks with the approaching 4th of July.
As they pull up to the restaurant, she finds her phone says, Happy = You won't withhold my allowance.
*****
The restaurant Robin has chosen is elegant, but not over-the-top in its formality. Regina is pleased to find she is appropriately dressed to scale and that they seem to be in a press-free location. Judging by the specials board at the entrance, the menu appears to be composed primarily of Italian food, but not exclusively so. The lighting is soft with golden overtones reflecting on the drapes and the tassels at the corners of the tablecloths. The chairs and carpets are a deep red that compliments her choice of dress. In the far corner a live jazz pianist warms the ambience.
Robin has a reservation, so they are seated with no wait. The waitress, some perky young thing (they look younger and younger to Regina every day) with long dark curls wrangled into a ribbon, takes their drink orders, leaves the menus, and bounces off toward the kitchen.
Regina smoothes the tails of her own hair from the effects of the evening breeze and the increasing humidity and settles her purse on the table beside her silverware. She takes a sip from the water-filled wine glass.
They are quiet as each of them casually peruses a menu, but after a moment Regina registers the shift in Robin's posture, the hesitation in his movements, and realizes his attention isn't on his menu at all. He glances around the room, then up at her with what she imagines might be an apology in his gaze. She frowns. "What is it?"
Robin shakes his head. "I'm sorry. It's just...is this all right? This place?"
Regina glances around, uncertain what exactly he is asking. She can tell she is missing some vital piece of this conversation. "Well, I can't speak to the food, just yet, but the ambiance is very nice. Why, what's wrong?"
Robin shakes his head. "I'm afraid I feel vastly unqualified to do this."
"To do what? Order dinner? " She is really lost. When her guess doesn't hit the mark, she tries, "Date?"
"To date in your tax bracket," Robin replies, words careful and deliberate. He is showing an unhealthy interest in his napkin ring. "Regina, I honestly have no idea where or how a woman like yourself spends an evening out. I don't know what you might...expect, or...want. In my world, this is a nice restaurant. But in yours...," he fades out and shrugs.
Regina takes a moment to sort through her thoughts and give this inquiry the depth of reply it deserves. This issue needs to be resolved, and it needs to be resolved now so they start this thing off on the proper footing.
She pushes aside her purse and moves her hands just a little closer to his on the table. She likes the way the light plays with the lines and planes of his cheekbones. She doesn't like the worry lines in his forehead, but she is touched by their depth. She clears her throat and speaks plainly and directly. "The first man...possibly the only man... I ever truly loved...was a stablehand. Nothing more, nothing less. No trust fund, no internship with an internationally renowned trainer, no promising scholarship; a stablehand. I do not choose my romantic interests based upon bank accounts. I have other standards, despite what the press may tell you. This restaurant is lovely, and my net worth has no effect on that one way or the other."
Robin gives a somewhat bittersweet but accepting smile and nods his head in acknowledgement. "Understood."
"Good."
A moment passes in silence, the gentle tinkering notes of the jazz piano drift over, then Robin seems to accept the subject as closed and pulls in a breath with a straightened spine. He reaches for his water glass as he asks, "And what became of him? That stablehand of yours..."
Regina feels the familiar weight in the depths of her stomach, grounding her to the chair like an unwelcome restraint. But she forces the words across her lips, because this moment is about honesty, and maybe she just misses that -- real words and real emotions. "He died. Very young. And the rest of the story is for another day."
"All right." His tone is soft and kind enough to twist her stomach dangerously, but he is not going to push, she feels it. Instead, he asks, "And is there to be?"
She misses the word play. "Be what?"
"Another day. Date."
A flirtatious smile creeps across her lips, and she is pleasantly thrilled by the matching sparkle awakening in Robin's eyes. "Isn't it a little early in the evening to be asking that?" she says.
Robin shrugs, easily. "I'm a carpe diem kind of man."
"Clearly."
"You haven't answered my question."
"I'll let you know after dinner."
"Fair enough." He leans forward, forearms on the table, and his smile is so delicious and, oh, hell, she is really in deep with this man, only thirty minutes into a second date. She can feel her footing slipping as she teeters on the precipice of an uncontrolled slide, and for the first time in a long time, she isn't fighting very hard for a solid hold. A quiet part of her is nursing an animated anticipation of the slide.
****
They have been eating for a few minutes, and Regina is trying not to gracelessly stuff her face like Miss Piggy, but God this eggplant parmigiana is amazing and how long has it actually been since she had something more substantial in her stomach than coffee or a cracker? Did she ever even eat lunch today?
"So, explain to me why a woman like yourself is available," Robin says around a mouthful of his own seafood and pasta dish. "I would expect one would have to wait months or years to sneak in a date request in the little window between relationships."
Regina wrinkles her nose and swallows the bite in her mouth. "Well, ignoring the fact that presumption makes me sound like a bit of a slut--"
"Oh, God, no, no, no, I didn't mean--I only meant that--"
She ignores the apology, and the fact that Robin nearly choked on his pasta, and keeps talking, "I will admit, I'm not exactly...lacking for attention. But, I guess I'm more often...seeing someone, than I am...'in a relationship'."
"Honestly, I only meant that--"
She waves off his words, this time with an air of command, and she sees him register the finality. She's playing with him, feeling out his boundaries.
"So, are you 'seeing anyone' now? Or is that what we're doing?"
Regina shakes her head and swallows another bite of eggplant. "I've been with...someone...off and on for a couple of years, now, but it's really more of...an arrangement, I suppose, than a relationship. And I think it's stretched a bit past its expiration date. As for us...," she waves her fork lightly between them, careful not to fling tomato sauce toward his lovely shirt, "...this is a date. And I'm...open to seeing where it takes us. If you are. Does that answer your question?"
"I believe it does. And, yes, I am, as well." He takes another bite of pasta and manages to successfully chew this one.
*****
"What was the last good book you read?" she prompts. "Not your all-time favorite, you told me that on Sunday, but the most recent thing you liked." As she speaks, she lets herself be just a bit too obvious about capturing a piece of pasta off her fork with her skillful tongue. She is pleased to catch his gaze latching onto the gesture for a lingering moment before he resumes his decorum and focuses on her question.
"I haven't nearly the time to read I once had, and I do rather miss it, but I try to sneak in a novel now and then. I would have to say the last one I really liked would be...Catching Fire the second Hunger Games novel."
"You read The Hunger Games?"
"I work with teenagers. It helps to keep up."
"Henry loves those books. He just doesn't like that they're in present tense. Offends his literary sensibilities."
"The boy clearly knows what he likes."
"Asserting his opinion has never been a challenge for my child."
"As we said, like mother like son?"
"Yeah, I probably have to own that one."
"Have you read them? The Hunger Games books?"
Regina nods. "He was 10 when he wanted to start reading, so, of course, I read them first. We read the first one together."
"Do you know how lovely you are when you say things like that?"
Regina pauses mid-bite. "Why? I mean..."
"I work with kids every day whose lives would be 180 degrees different if they had a parent like you."
"I wish that weren't true. I'm highly flawed. The ideal should be more."
"But it is true. And you should give yourself more credit. You have an incredibly busy job, you're a single parent, and you not only know what your son is reading, you pre-screen his books."
"I miss things. The older he gets, the more it cramps my helicopter parenting style," she says with a subtext of genuine self-deprecation she hopes is inaudible to the untrained ear.
"Has Henry ever been away like this before? Like this camp?"
"Never. Not once. We have never been apart more than a couple of days, and he was always with Emma, our nanny, or my father." She takes a drink of her water to slow her words.
"And this is killing you?"
"It won't be too much longer, really, just a few more weeks."
"But it's killing you?"
"I'm sure he's handling it wonderfully. He's incredibly resourceful and independent and rational for his age. And he texts me regularly."
"But it's killing you?" Robin repeats, unflappably calm.
"It is blackening my very soul," Regina admits, and she voices all the melodrama the phrasing deserves. Robin falls into an understanding chuckle that somehow makes her feel like maybe this is all okay. "I'm being ridiculous, right? Kids go to camp."
Robin shakes his head. "Ridiculous would be locking him in his room and forbidding him to go. Letting him explore his independence and his talents in a safe environment whilst you quietly disintegrate at home is just being a loving parent. Believe me, I was a basket case when Roland went to pre-school, I don't even want to think about Kindergarten."
"Kindergarten's brutal. On the parents. Henry loved it."
"That's good to hear. Hopefully, Roland will do the same."
"Your turn to confess. Most embarrassing song you like?"
He thinks for a moment, takes a sip of the wine they have added to their table. "Maroon 5's 'Payphone'. I sing it in the shower."
Regina laughs outright and without delicacy. Her elbows are propped on the table, fork dangled precariously over the dregs of her pasta. "I suddenly find you far less attractive," she says, and words and body language have never been so vehemently in conflict.
"That's because you have yet to hear my falsetto."
She wrinkles her nose and leans in to whisper, "It's probably best that we keep it that way."
Robin raises a hand to press to his heart. "Ah. You wound me, woman. So little faith in my talents."
On the contrary, she finds she has far too much faith in this man's potential talents to make any kind of rational decisions about the progression of the evening. "Now are you going to tell me you were the star of your high school glee club?"
"Mmmm, preppy would, I believe, describe the polar opposite of the boy I was in high school."
Regina lifts an eyebrow, intrigued. "Now that sounds like a story."
"A story for another day, I believe."
She holds his gaze for a long moment in the flattering light, then says softly, "And is there to be?"
"What?"
"Another day. Date."
"Well, that's up to you, lovely lady."
Regina just smiles and soaks up the glow of his presence.
*****
They take a walk after dinner. Regina wants to walk off some of the parmigiana. They amble along, staying safely with the lights and the crowds. Somewhere around the second block, Robin's hand finds its way into hers, and she willingly curls her fingers around his in response. His hands are a pleasurable mixture of soft flesh and the callouses of manual labor. She remembers tracing Daniel's riding callouses with her fingernails. Remembers the lack of texture to Leopold's pampered hands. The mix of texture in Robin's touch seems to parallel the whole of his being. A caring and devoted father, a quiet gentleman, yet she suspects he could be the fiercest of lions when it comes to protecting those he loves. She flexes her fingers around his and tries to remember the last time a man simply held her hand. She finds she wants to keep walking so he won't let go.
Their steps carry them past an open-air ice cream parlor with a bit of a line testifying to its popularity, and Regina decides to indulge when Robin offers to treat her sweet tooth, complete with a tenderly coaxing squeeze of her hand and waggling eyebrows.
"You're going to be bad for my figure, I can tell already."
"Your figure is in no danger of being anything but lovely, milady."
Regina rolls her eyes. But the easy compliment, the huskiness to his voice, and his subtly wandering gaze all feel good. Really good.
"You just want ice cream," she teases.
In the line, they start people watching, and before they reach the counter, Robin's running commentary on the imagined lives of the characters passing on the streets of New York City has Regina giggling and leaning close to whisper her contributions like they are BFFs in middle school. She doesn't even care that they are earning varied forms of approving and disapproving glances from neighboring customers; the attention somehow makes the whole thing that much more delightful.
She orders a strawberry ice cream cone. Robin chooses butter pecan. They walk and lick, Regina feeling increasingly flirty and oral as she goes and pleased by Robin's responsive attention. They find a comfortable bench on which to finish eating when Robin nearly drips ice cream down his shirt. When the evening breeze grows chill, the suit coat from over Robin's arm finds its way around Regina's bare shoulders. His fingers against her skin as he moves send shivers down her spine.
Seated on their bench at the edge of a small neighborhood park, gazing out across the buzz and rush of the city, the city lights seem extraordinarily beautiful. Robin's arm has settled around Regina's shoulders and the nearness of his body is making her feel steadier in her own skin than she has felt in a long time.
"I have an early meeting tomorrow," she says, an edge of regret bleeding into her soft tone. She has finished her ice cream and is toying with her wadded up napkin between middle finger and thumb.
"Then we should get you home," Robin says.
She nods, but does not move. "What about you? Early start?"
"Well, with a four-year-old, even weekends start early, never mind Wednesdays."
"True."
His fingers stroke her shoulder. "But, more of a late night, actually," he continues. "Once we're finished here, I'm afraid I'm on duty with the night van for a few hours. Driving around, finding any kids who need somewhere safe to sleep tonight."
"Tonight?" Regina shifts beneath his arm, facing him more fully. "Robin, you should have been sleeping. Why didn't you say?"
His smile is easy. "Because this is right where I wanted to be."
Her return smile is hesitant and a little admonishing, but his admiration is so pure and open she finds she is powerless to the radiant warmth.
Robin hails them a cab and the growing physical comfort has Regina scooting much closer against Robin's side in the backseat than on the ride out. She rattles off her address to the driver and the trip seems to take half the projected time.
As they pull up in front of her building, Regina reaches out first to pay the driver. Robin tries to stop her, but she says simply, "You paid for the ice cream."
Standing on the street, fingers lightly entwined, Regina scans the length of the sidewalk, then meets Robin's gaze beneath the streetlight and says, "Come upstairs with me? Just to my door." He nods, "Of course," and she continues, "I want a few more minutes with you, but there are a couple of buildings on this block with paparazzi-worthy residents. The flies tend to hover here and grab shots of whatever they can. I'd rather not linger."
"As the lady wishes," Robin says. His free hand waves away the cab, then gestures gallantly to Regina to guide her path.
Regina smirks and leads the way. She nods to the boy at the front desk, unable to make herself let go of Robin's hand, rumors be damned, and leads them briskly down the back hall to her private elevator.
Robin watches in silence as she punches in her access code. (It used to be Henry's birthday, until Henry got old enough to yell at her for choosing something so lacking in security. Now it is the numerical ranking of Henry's initials in the alphabet). She tightens her fingers around Robin's hand as the elevator doors close and the machinery bumps and grinds to pull them upward.
Robin's fingers caress the back of her hand and the tenderness catches her breath and successfully distracts her from her claustrophobia. "I've had a lovely evening," he says softly. Close. Intimate. Her stomach quivers. Her body is screaming at her to jump this man, take him straight into her penthouse, rip off his clothes, lure him into her bedroom, and ravage him until the morning sun splatters across their skin. But the truth is...she likes him. She really likes him. And that scares her. She wants to do this right.
"As did I," she whispers. She turns and meets his gaze, brown eyes to blue in the intimate space, connected and personal, and the shared smile is night-softened and sweet and the heat warms her chest.
When the elevator doors open, they stroll into the golden-lit hallway and Regina feels free and safe and trembling with hovering possibility. She slows near her door and faces Robin.
He draws a breath and stares her down with deliberate intent. "I'm sorry, this may seem too forward, or too early, but it just needs to be said..."
She frowns, fingers still woven with his. "What?"
"Regina Rossi, you may be...the most beautiful woman I have ever had the privilege to gaze upon up close, much less take on a date."
She nearly snorts out a laugh. "I find that hard to believe, Mr. Archer. You are one of the most attractive men I have seen in a long time. Women cannot be missing that."
Robin scoffs. "Speaking of hard to believe... You work with models. Daily."
"All alike. Too young and too thin and quite often too full of themselves." She takes a half-step closer, moving more on instinct than intellect. "Some of them are closer to my son's age than mine. The designers are older, but they're nearly all gay. Which doesn't make them less attractive, but it does take all the fire out of the flirting. Which leaves me with the old money and the literati crowd left over from my former life with my late husband. My statement stands."
"Ah, well, when you paint my competition so elegantly..."
Regina shakes her head, moves closer until she is growing dizzy from the intoxicating scent of his cologne. Jesus, how is he doing this to her? Her skin tingles and quivers, a physical pull to touch, to taste. "I once dated Robert Redford," Regina breathes, then she charges forward and captures Robin's mouth in a hard and heated kiss. She thinks he was starting to utter a startled, "Are you serious?" but she doesn't care and the notion is lost to hungry lips and tender dampness and a fast-kindling passion.
He seems to want this as much as she. Regina grips the lapels of Robin's suit coat and holds him demandingly close. Robin's hands move, one to her waist, the other into her hair. He cradles her head as he kisses her, and there is a tenderness and a...reverence to the touch that slips past the haze of passion in her mind to register with a pang of deliciously painful emotion. But lust is winning (protecting her, as always), and she lets go of conscious thought, losing herself to the fire and comfort of communicating in touches and tongues and whispered nonsense.
Countless minutes of sensation, French kisses and heavy petting, and Robin's suitcoat is forgotten on the floor. It ends in a breathless break and lightly touching foreheads.
"I'm going to say goodnight right here," Regina says, voice hoarse and throaty.
Robin's only reply is a slightly cracked laugh she cannot quite interpret. Incredulity? Her tone certainly mismatched with her words.
"It's just...I like you. So, I don't...
He frowns, tightens his fingers where they rest comfortingly on her hip. "You don't what?"
"I don't...want to mess this up. Or...cheapen it. This is going well. At least...I think it is, from my side."
His smile is all tenderness and warmth and it soothes her quiet insecurities. He brushes her hair from her face with two gentle fingers. "It's going very well," he confirms.
"Let's keep it that way."
"Whatever you're comfortable with. I don't want anything you don't want. I never will."
She offers a fleeting smile and pushes away the images that flicker at the edges of her vision.
"We haven't moved," she says after a moment.
"We have not," he confirms.
Regina draws a deep breath, then forces a step back. She pushes an open hand against Robin's chest to keep him in place. The void is a visceral and aching thing. "Good night, Robin."
He nods, ever the gentleman. "Good night, Regina. Sweet dreams."
Her fingers are already on the keypad for her door when she turns and says, "Robin?"
"Yes?"
"There will be."
"Will be what?"
"Another day. Date."
The roguish smile on his well-kissed lips strains her resolve. Dammit, why couldn't she just be that tabloid slut for tonight? "Indeed there will. I'll text you tomorrow," he says simply.
She has the door open and one foot across the threshold, when Robin's hand catches her wrist and in a whirl of motion she is back in his arms and his lips are hot and strong on hers and she is kissing back with all she is worth. Her body ignites and burns down to her toes. There is strength and power and determination in this gentle man and oh, God, it takes out her knees. And then he's gone. Two feet away from her and it feels like two thousand.
"Just for your dreams," he says, and that impish grin is back, and she is holding onto the doorframe and can muster nothing but a breathless exhale in lieu of a witty reply.
"Good night, Robin," she says, at last.
She leans on the inside of her closed door until the room stops spinning.
So royally fucked.
*****
(end Chapter 4)
TITLE: Living In the Red
PAIRINGS: Outlaw Queen (AU)
RATING: Mature
SUMMARY: Regina Rossi is an internationally successful fashion designer. She has it all, right? Or maybe she doesn't realize how broken she has become until a stranger appears in the night and flips her world upside down. Outlaw Queen AU.
Major beta gratitude to helenhighwater7 and shinewithalltheuntold.
LIVING IN THE RED
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2015
Chapter 4
"Let's discover one another
Kiss me here, touch me there, yeah
Purest form of ecstasy
Truth or dare, don't be scared, yeah
Let me solve your mystery"
--Madonna, 'Inside Out'
No one is allowed to know that Regina Rossi practices yoga. This is not entirely true. Henry knows. Of course, he knows. There is very little Regina can keep from her relentlessly inquisitive child. But he is not allowed to watch her practice or to tell anyone else what he knows.
There is far too much vulnerability in the physical and emotional exploration.
Regina discovered yoga when Henry was very young, when single motherhood found her flailing for personal time and gasping for air. She loved her little boy to her last breath, but she was being pulled in every direction without a corner for respite, and she had not seen the inside of a gym in months. So, she started looking for something she could cling to in the few moments of peace before sleep each night. It began with snatches of evening meditation, in the quiet of her room after Henry was finally FINALLY sleeping. She would turn down the lights, open the view onto the city, light a candle. Regina discovered she liked focusing on fire, liked the idea of visualizing power in the smoke, of directing it and manipulating the energies.
It was something of which Cora, with her determined if plastically shallow Catholic background, would never approve, yet it was something that felt deeply and inexplicably familiar and comforting to Regina. So, for once, she kept something for herself.
She played around with manipulating energies. When Henry was sick, she would sit with him as he slept, hover her hands over his little body and try to feel the germs inside, focus on her vast love for him and visualize and target the darkness, use her love to pull it out of him. Sometimes it seemed to help. She liked being able to do something as his mother, something others might have been unable to do to help. But this little trick has grown harder and harder as he has grown older and more independent. The symbiosis of mother and toddler loses potency at eleven years old.
Meditation and energy work spread into relaxation exercise and stretching and eventually full out yoga. Regina has never had a formal teacher, only videos and books and blogs. But she is a good student when she wants to be, and she has picked up a great deal of knowledge, both practical and philosophical, in her years of study. Not that she can universally apply it all, as yet. Regina's inner life is more one of guilt and resentment and pain than of peace and acceptance. But she is trying, on her good days.
The trying makes her vulnerable. And vulnerability is not something she is in any way ready to indulge. Which is the primary reason for the closed doors and insistent secrecy.
Regina lives her life braced for a hit. Her stomach muscles are perpetually tensed, her protective armor raised and shored. She is not certain if there was a time, far back in her childhood, when this was not true. She trusted her father not to hurt her. But she never trusted him to have the strength to stand up and protect her from the world (from her mother). So she never truly felt safe.
No one is allowed to rest a hand on Regina's stomach when she is lying on her back, when she relaxes the muscles for a moment (when she can), when she lets down her barriers. Which makes savasana one of the scariest postures she can assume.
Not even Henry is allowed such privilege. Regina always places a guiding hand over his when he touches, or places a hand like a barrier between his head and her naval when he flops affectionately across her lap. Not because she thinks he would ever deliberately hurt her. But because little boys are prone to shove off harshly and unexpectedly, leaving a bit of bruising in their wake. Or throw out offhand comments they never realize might land with a sharp sting.
These recent mornings are the first time in a long while Regina has felt free to practice yoga in her living room, with all the doors open and the music echoing through the empty space.
She woke early this Monday, lit candles around the living room floor in the pre-dawn clouds. She has been practicing for nearly an hour when a seemingly innocent pose, stretched out on her side on the mat, brings forth a memory with visceral intensity that dances shivers down her exposed body -- Robin's hand resting on the base of her spine, guiding her through the door of the café, out onto the busy street.
She cannot remember the last time she met someone who turned her blood to warm chocolate with the lightest brush of skin. There is no explaining it. Connections, chemistry, wrinkle lines at the corner of an eye that make one person boring and another the fodder of fantasies. But there it is, there he is, taking her focus off of her breathing and alignment and fastening it securely to those smiling blue eyes that seem to absorb every word she offers like an eager student.
Dammit. This was not on the schedule. She is supposed to be working on herself this summer, getting her focus and her center back before Henry returns from camp. She is not supposed to be flirting with some guy she stumbled upon at a party (when he just happened to save her life).
Or maybe that is exactly what she is supposed to be doing -- remembering that despite all of her experience, all her travels, there are still possibilities in the world she has not yet considered. Remembering that she is still the one setting the course of her life, that pursuing a bit of innocent pleasure is not such an outrageous indulgence.
Regina rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. More than a decade ago she spent a rather obscene amount of money bringing in a much sought-after artist to perfect this ceiling by hand, to weave the figures of entangled lovers ever-so-subtly into the textures of the beige paint. Well, that view doesn't help. It only serves to reinforce what a hopeless romantic she remains at heart, despite getting burned far more times than she has ever been nurtured.
Breathing. Postures. Alignment. Focus.
She has a long day ahead, scheduled right through that dinner meeting. She needs to quiet her mind to be able to concentrate and get through everything that will be required of her.
She wonders when she will hear from Robin.
She rolls up her mat and blows out the candles.
Forty-five minutes later, Regina is dressed and polished and on the subway. It's a short and familiar ride, and she has her nose in the email on her phone for most of it. She stops at her usual corner shop for coffee, smiles at the familiar clerk, and tosses a generous tip into the jar. She is on the elevator up to her offices at exactly 8:00am.
Tatiana is waiting in Regina's private office, already seated in the chair across from the desk.
Regina drops her oversized armload of bags and sketchpads onto the desktop with an indelicate clomp, just barely keeping a solid hold on her extra tall latte as she does so. She straightens her back, draws in a deep breath and catches Tatiana's gaze, holding it for a significant beat before she speaks. "Yesterday was my fault. I'm sorry. I lost...something that meant a great deal to me. I was trying to find it, but...well, I didn't, anyway. But we did need to work, and I'm sorry I left that with you."
Tati narrows her eyes appraisingly and flicks her pen around between her fingers before she says, "Who are you and what have you done with the real Regina Rossi?"
Regina releases a breath dangerously close to a snort and rolls her eyes. "Shut-up," she mutters. "Now, what's on the table this morning?"
"Do you actually want to hear it?"
"What did I just say?"
"You told me to shut-up."
"Not about the work."
"Fine. Evanna's agent called again this morning."
Regina decides to take a breath, take a sip of coffee, and count to five. Just after four, she says, "And you have some new information that would change my standing reply?"
"I have our latest sales figures and the demographics of those to which we are losing our appeal."
Tati makes a few quick taps to the tablet in her lap, then passes it over to Regina who tries very hard to be a professional and take it from her employee without making Tati hold it in the air for an extra moment. She is scanning over the figures that, though a little concerning, are not so different than the last numbers she laid eyes upon and are not exactly horrifying, when Tati says, "Will you just let me set up a meeting? No commitments, no promises. A simple meet-and-greet, a test shoot if you're interested. Nothing more. At least get to know the girl, find out what she wants to bring to the campaign."
Regina lets Tati wait for the reply a few uncomfortable counts too long, then without eye contact and with a warning note of coolness in her voice she says, "Meet-and-greet only. At least a week out from now."
To her credit Tatiana knows better than to respond with anything but an affirming nod. She has won a petty battle, but the war is still in Regina's kingdom. The subject has closed for the day. Regina hands the tablet back to the younger woman and reaches for the leather portfolio on her own desk. "Since I cut out on you yesterday, I stayed up last night and made a few sketches for our Fashion Week plans. Nothing final, just drawing board stuff, but hopefully it will help guide the vision."
Tati's interest is immediately peaked, and her attitude of tolerant management of a petulant boss turns into admiration and interest as she scoots forward on her chair and reaches an eager hand toward the sketches Regina spreads haphazard across her desk. Regina hates that she is such a glutton for the ego stroke, but it is what it is, and the bit of hero-worship over her art always does its good.
They work shoulder to shoulder, reviving the zone of productivity they had just begun to nurse when they were cut short the previous day. The pressing call of a lunch meeting brings the session to a close, but Regina is starting to breathe a little more and feel like her familiar self, again. Like there is a clear way forward for her business and she has the power to drive that course.
They are standing in the doorway to Regina's office, earlier tensions comfortably dissolved. They have both drained their coffees, and Tati has offered to make a run downstairs for more, when she points the stylus she's been using past Regina's shoulder and says warningly, "Incoming at your six o'clock."
"Hmm?" Regina whirls her head, hair falling pleasurably across her shoulder, but the moment she catches sight of the woman stepping off the elevator she turns back fast and closes her eyes. "Shit. The perfect Monday morning," she whispers.
Tatiana responds with a subtle smirk. "I admit, there are a few advantages to living 8,000 miles from one's family."
Regina arches an eyebrow. "The idea is more appealing every day. You think I should tell the desk to stop letting her up?"
Tati only gives a soft chuckle and turns to walk away as the arriving woman closes in.
"Chicken," Regina tosses after her assistant, but before Tati can reply, the all too familiar and overly bright voice sounds behind Regina.
"Regina!"
Regina draws a deep breath, composes her features, and turns.
"Maggie. To what do I owe the surprise?"
"What, a girl can't just drop by and surprise her step-mother?"
"Calling first is preferable, I am at work." Regina cringes a little at the note of parental rebuke in her own voice.
"Oh, come on." Ever the mature responder, Maggie. Perhaps she has not yet outgrown the role of petulant child to her step-mother's admonitions.
Mary Margaret Kingsley was a young teen when Regina married the girl's father. In the very beginning of the relationship, Regina and Maggie had some potential of getting along; Regina had looked forward to the prospect of having a baby sister of sorts after a lifetime of being an only child, solitary beneath her mother's heavy hand. But the more of Leopold's attention that shifted toward Regina and away from Maggie, the more the budding camaraderie deteriorated into resentment. Then, one day, Maggie betrayed Regina in a way the older woman has yet to find it in her heart to forgive. Even as that once teen girl stands before her as a fully grown woman, clearly no longer the misguided youth who acted out of jealously and ill-conceived loyalties, Regina cannot let it all go.
"I do have things to do. I have a lunch meeting in 15 minutes," she states. "What do you need?"
"Can we go somewhere and talk?"
Because I have nothing to do. Regina has wondered for years if Maggie actually hears her when she speaks. "Here is fine, I just said I don't have long. What do you need?"
Maggie twists her mouth in an expression of petty frustration and impatience Regina has seen a thousand times. One would never guess the girl...woman is approaching thirty. She is pretty, Regina will concede. Piercing blue eyes and beautiful dark hair that she has at last grown out to curl on her shoulders (abandoning that God-awful pixie cut she had insisted upon in high school). Her skin is pale and smooth and never had a blemish for a day. But she still dresses like she is twenty-one. Flirty little skirts and school-girl blouses. Clunky shoes meant to be fashionable that just come off as dorkish.
Maggie never has been willing to take fashion advice from her step-mother, and good grief, she is Regina Rossi, it's not like Maggie can claim she is too old and out of touch with modern trends.
"I need a favor," Maggie says, biting her lip, and glancing around as though to be sure they are not overheard. Regina cannot blame her there. The two of them have prompted enough tabloid headlines to last a lifetime. Bitter feud between Kingsley heir and gold-digging step-mother rages on outside club in downtown Manhattan. New York's favorite party girl promises tell-all interview about domineering step-mother's string of illicit lovers. Regina Rossi claims bratty step-daughter ruined her life. Somehow, Regina always comes out on the unflattering end of these journalistic fantasies.
"This doesn't surprise me," Regina drawls. "What favor?"
"Two favors, actually."
Regina just sags.
"First, I know you said you wanted the Sag Harbor house for a week in October. How flexible are those dates?"
"Carved in stone," Regina enunciates. "That's Henry's school holiday, he wants to go to the beach, and we have the week. Next question."
"Okay, I understand. But it's just...something's come up, and it's kind of huge, and we really didn't know in advance."
Regina just lifts her eyebrows and waits for more. This is not negotiable and she is not going to cave to batted lashes and a round-faced pout.
Maggie clears her throat, sits back on the edge of a nearby worktable and tries a new approach. "Here's the thing. I have eight of my closest friends flying in for a few days...kind of, a girls weekend, thing. And I can't rearrange everybody's vacation time and plane tickets and...I really want to have it at the beach house... "
Regina just shakes her head with no room for further consideration. "I put in my dates three months in advance, those are the terms of our deal. The house is mine for the week."
Maggie tries one of her best placating smiles. "No, I hear you. You did, I just...this was really last minute. We wouldn't need the whole week, just a long weekend. So...maybe we could kind of...I don't know, share, just for the last couple of days? The house is plenty big, and you and Henry would be at the beach most of the time, anyway, right?"
Regina can feel her eyes blazing and she sees the little bit of fear reflected on her step-daughter's pale countenance. "Share. Share? You are not bringing your rich bitch party girls anywhere near my son."
"Regina!"
She doesn't even care who is listening. "No. Not in this life."
"You know, you weren't so snobbish when you hired one of my 'bitches' to be your nanny."
"Oh, please. Emma was a scholarship case at your boarding school, and your friends barely tolerated her."
"I see, so money makes you a bitch?" Maggie's cocked head and biting gaze as she rises to her full height are a strong argument for nurture over nature in mother-daughter relationships. Beneath the loathing, Regina is almost proud. "I don't see you scrounging for funds, you know."
Regina leans in close, smelling the sickly sweetness of Mary Margaret's perfume as she hisses, "My point made."
With this, Mary Margaret draws a long slow breath, considers her step-mother for a moment, then sags her shoulders and drops back to her perch on the edge of the work table. "All right, Regina, here's what's going on."
If she is expecting eager prompting, she will have a long wait.
"David finally proposed. And I said yes." The girl can't keep the bubbling glee from her expression even as she tries to remain clinically factual. "We haven't announced it publicly, yet. We just wanted to keep it about us for a little while, you know, not public property. But now it turns out the bachelorette party is happening sooner rather than later. Which is why my friends are flying in. And I really wanted it to happen at our place by the beach. Good security, no paparazzi..."
The sound from the back of Regina's throat is a mix of exasperation and defeat. She can't deny a grudging admiration for the young couple's choice to keep their relationship between themselves and not milk it for media time. But she is still not surrendering the beach house. No, that is Henry's vacation.
The puppy-dog expression awaiting Regina's reaction is physically painful.
"Mr. Bland?" Regina asks with a bit of a grimace. "Really?"
"What, you'd prefer I marry someone crazy and wild?"
"Just maybe someone with a little more backbone. Someone you can't walk all over."
"Like you did?"
Regina gives a dark laugh. "Well, for once, nursing your Electra Complex might serve you well..."
"Regina." Regina's replying sigh hangs in the air a moment, before Maggie adds, "David's a good man."
It's true. He is. Dammit. "I suppose you could do worse," Regina concedes softly.
Mary Margaret flashes her a grudgingly tolerant look. "Thank you."
In the moments of silence that follow, Regina can read in Maggie's carriage that there is something more she wants to say, and there is a thread of vulnerability in the girl that stays her usual level of vehemence. But she really does have a lunch date to get to.
"What is it?" Regina asks flatly.
Maggie draws a long breath, fidgets with the strap of her handbag and lets her gaze slide around the span of the office. "Regina, I wanted to ask...I'd...do you think...I mean, I'd like it if..."
"If...?"
She can physically see Mary Margaret shoring up her spine and forcing the words across her lips. The hesitation is not like her. She has found a new way to be annoying. "If you would design my wedding gown," Maggie blurts in one long word.
Regina's reply is immediate. "I don't do bridal wear."
"Which would make it even more of an original!" Maggie volunteers, lips curling in a hint of a grin clearly meant to endear.
"Not amused. When is the wedding? "
"Well, that's the sticky part..."
"Why?"
"Because, David and I decided we didn't want to just spend all of our time for the next year stressing about the wedding, so, we thought the solution to that was to just...plunge in and do it."
Regina narrows her eyes. "How soon?"
"...October? First?"
Regina's bark of an incredulous laugh is enough to turn a couple of curious heads. "You know I'm three months out from Fashion Week, right now. And you want me to design and make an original wedding gown for you, at the same time?"
"Yes...maybe."
"Does the whole world revolve around you in your head?"
"Regina..." Mary Margaret stands up from the work table and takes a step toward her step-mother, but, no, Regina just cannot do this, right now.
She glances at the time on her phone. "No, you know what, I really have to go." She back up, turns and walks into her office to gather her things.
Mary Margaret follows her, but only so far as to hover in the doorway. "Regina, will you...would you think about it? Please?"
Regina snatches her purse out of her desk drawer, slams the drawer, then pauses for a moment, running the tip of her tongue over her lips and shaking her head. She avoids all eye contact. "I have to go."
In the edges of her vision she can see Mary Margaret hang on for a moment, then take in the words with a lowered gaze and a resigned nod of her head. The genuine and somehow...personal...sense of disappointment eats away at Regina's gut. The girl is turning to go, when Regina says softly, "Stop at the desk near the elevator, tell Jessica I asked that she take your measurements. Then set up a consult appointment for next week. I'm not promising anything."
The light blooming on Mary Margaret's face is something Regina really cannot deal with, right now. She hardly hears the girl's thanks as she pushes hurriedly past her through the office doorway and stalks toward the elevator, offering no more than a nod and not a moment's glance.
*****
Her lunch meeting is less than memorable. In fact, Regina suspects she remembers far less than she should. What she does remember is the texts she exchanged with Robin under the table, arranging the logistics of their Tuesday night date. A restaurant of his choosing, a favorite neighborhood Italian place. Seven o'clock to pick her up.
She finished the exchange by informing him just how boring her meeting was, and warning him she was within minutes of the danger zone in which her brain might actually implode if the moron across from her did not stop talking just to hear himself speak or at the very least loosen his painfully tight tie before his pink head popped and splattered the walls like an overripe watermelon. Two minutes later, her phone vibrated in her hand and showed her a picture of a penguin sliding down an icy hill with his flippers in the air and his eyes bugging. The accompanying text read, Something more amusing to look at.
It was stupid and childish and Regina almost couldn't suppress her own grin fast enough to avoid drawing the unwanted attention of her lunch companions.
How long had it been since anyone but Henry had sent her something like that? How long since anyone had been unafraid to be so real with her?
She really doesn't know what do with this man, and that fact in itself has her intrigued.
She is halfway back to her office when her phone buzzes with one last picture - this time the penguin is wearing a pink satin dress and a giant bow on its head. The message reads, A new area in which to expand your designs, perhaps?
Regina finds that Tuesday night seems uncomfortably far away.
*****
Tuesday night proves much too far away. Regina's Tuesday is relentless and frustrating and interminable. Every trivial thing that could go wrong at work does, and by five o'clock all she wants is to get the hell out of the office and get home and changed for her date. She finally has to just call it and leave, work be damned, and bless her soul, Tatiana tells her to just go and enjoy, and she will stay and put out any lingering fires. Some days that woman is worth more than she pays her. Regina makes a mental note to boost Tati's holiday bonus.
Regina changes her dress twice. Which is ridiculous. If Regina Rossi knows anything at all in life, it is how to dress herself for any occasion. So, why is she compulsively overthinking a simple dinner date with an interesting man? Something about Robin Archer leaves her a little off center, a little unsteady. She likes it. And she fears it.
She has been thinking about what to wear since yesterday. She settles on an elegant dark red cocktail dress that hugs her curves in what she hopes are the most flattering ways. Underneath the dress she opts for her favorite black lace bra and panties. Not that she expects anyone but herself to see them tonight, but knowing they are there gives her a kind of internal self-assurance she needs. She chooses a tailored black leather jacket to shelter her bare arms against restaurant air conditioning or a cooling evening breeze. The heels of her basic black slip-ons are not deadly stiletto, but they are high enough to give her just a little bit of sass, a little audacity.
She is ready to leave and actually sitting on the back of her couch with her purse in her hand, waiting for her date's arrival like a teenager on homecoming night. She suggested they meet at the restaurant, but Robin insisted on fetching her like the annoyingly adorable traditionalist he is quickly showing himself to be. She compromised a little and told him to text her when his cab neared her building and she would meet him downstairs.
The penthouse feels unusually silent as she stares at the door, her phone cradled in her hand, carefully painted black nails clicking restlessly against the glass screen. It is strange not having to get Henry settled for the evening before she leaves. She forwarded him the goofy penguin photos just to have a reason to make contact, but he has yet to reply.
When her phone's message signal sounds it scares the crap out of her.
Regina closes her eyes in annoyance with her inexplicable nerves, forces a deep breath, and taps the screen for the message. It's Robin. In sight of your building, I believe. Will pull up out front.
Regina quickly texts back, Glad to hear. Will be down in a minute.
She adds a scarf to her outfit, then takes it off.
When Regina emerges from the building's front doors, the adorable man is standing on the sidewalk side of the cab, leaning back, arms crossed like the very picture of a men's wear model. She cannot deny the rush of pleasure that flits through her stomach and down her thighs as she watches him. He is clothed in a well-tailored burgundy pin-striped shirt open at the collar and a pair of tan dress slacks that hug his well-toned hips in all the right ways. Robin is quite, quite attractive, of that much she has no doubt. She is trying very hard not to let that steer her away from a rational appraisal of his character as they get to know one another. But, he really is lovely to look at.
The moment Robin sees her, he springs to attention, pushing up off the car and unfolding his arms. His smile is warm and welcoming.
"Good evening, Ms. Rossi," he says as he steps forward to meet her.
She can't help but return his smile. "Mr. Archer," she says softly. "So nice of you to escort me to the restaurant." She's half-sincere, half-needling him about out-dated gender roles, and she is just sure from the brief sparkle in his gaze that he gets it, and that sharpness and acuity is a serious turn-on for her. Finding a man who appreciates her passive-aggressive bitchiness can be a hefty challenge.
"Not at all, it's my pleasure," he says, and he touches her elbow as he speaks, leans in for a chaste but generous greeting kiss to her cheek.
She does not kiss back, but she does lean in to his offering just enough to let him know the gesture is not unwelcome. She lets him rest his hand on the small of her back as he guides her into the car.
She likes his touch. Every person's touch is different. Identical gestures from different people can feel like day and night. Her father's touch was always warm and welcome, her mother's calculated and self-serving, Henry's is infinitely trusting and kind, Leo was unpredictably comfortable or cold and bruising, Mallory was like cool fingers on a sweltering day (desperately desired but dangerous to overindulge), Graham's touch was trusted but somehow distant. Robin...Robin feels like she has known him far longer than she has. Like she has to be careful not to grant him privileges he has not yet earned.
"And how was your day?" Robin asks as the driver pulls the cab out into traffic.
Regina sighs and settles into the reasonably comfortable seat (for a cab). "Long," she says with a dry chuckle.
Robin wrinkles his nose. "That sounds a bit like 'taxing'."
"Here and there," she concedes. "How was yours?" She watches him in the early evening light, shadows and colored light flickering across his skin. His gaze is so easy to meet. Usually eye contact is slow coming for her. It is something she knows how to use to her advantage in business, in negotiation and in confrontation. But for pure pleasure, in her private life, she bestows such intimacy slowly. With Robin, she finds the connection engenders only kindness and acceptance. Which either makes no sense, because he barely knows her, or makes sense only because he barely knows her.
"Ah, my day...," Robin begins. "My day has been a series of unfortunate events that have hopefully led me to a marvelous evening that will wash all those minor inconveniences from my mind."
Regina gives a soft laugh. "So, you're saying your day sucked as well."
Robin wrinkles his nose in a way that makes her stomach quiver. She is viscerally aware of the intimacy of their confined space and the miniscule distance from his knee to her own. Conversation is so inexplicably easy with this man. Nothing has changed since Sunday afternoon. "Yes, I am saying my day sucked. But I think all the present crises have, at least, stabilized for the night and need not have my attention again until tomorrow."
"Well, that's something. You found a sitter for Roland, then?" She drops the child's name into the conversation just to watch the quick flash of warmth it ignites in Robin's eyes. She imagines she has some equal tells at the mention of her Henry.
"I did. My downstairs neighbor has once again come to my rescue. She's a graduate student and a librarian, Roland adores her, and she has been a Godsend when it comes to trustable childcare. I am living in denial of the knowledge that she is to be married and move out of the city next spring."
"Mmm. Good childcare is invaluable, I agree." Then, as though he had heard his name spoken, her phone buzzes and a text from Henry pops up on her screen. Regina grins, then with only a split-second's hesitation, she holds the message up for Robin to see. "And as they get older, they resent that conscientious care more and more," she says.
Robin leans a bit closer to get a clear view of the words, and Regina instinctively inhales his scent. Fresh. Sharp. Woodsy. Memories of clinging to Rocinante's reins, leaning low, and flying through the woods at the edge of the stables' grounds until she can feel nothing but rushing air and animal warmth and the sun on her skin.
Checking in on the way to dinner, the screen reads. Are you happy now?;)
Robin matches her grin as he falls back into his seat. "The boy clearly has a bit of his mother's sass."
"Clearly," she drawls.
"I'm certain he misses you more than he says," Robin offers, voice softening just enough to let her choose how much intimacy she wants to accept from the words.
She gives only a soft hum in reply as she types a quick, Define 'happy':p, then tucks her phone back into her purse.
Robin regards her with a gentle smile as they ride on through the city and she tries to breathe and let herself enjoy the warmth of this quiet moment. After a few breaths, he is still watching her, and she has to ask. "What?"
He shakes his head, smile undaunted. "Nothing. It's just...the media view of you is...less motherly than what I see."
Regina lifts an eyebrow and sucks at the inside of her cheek. "I have many sides," she says slowly.
Robin's smile pulls into an outright self-satisfied grin. "And I look forward to discovering them all."
She gives a light shake of her head at his incorrigibility, but she cannot help but be infected by his unsquelchable glee. The man seems ridiculously happy regardless of any impending adversity. Regina is not sure she would recognize 'happy' in herself, these days, if it dropped in her lap.
Robin turns to gaze out the window, letting her off the hook if she wants to be. The conversation turns to the weather, the construction at the nearest cross street, and Roland's fear of fireworks with the approaching 4th of July.
As they pull up to the restaurant, she finds her phone says, Happy = You won't withhold my allowance.
*****
The restaurant Robin has chosen is elegant, but not over-the-top in its formality. Regina is pleased to find she is appropriately dressed to scale and that they seem to be in a press-free location. Judging by the specials board at the entrance, the menu appears to be composed primarily of Italian food, but not exclusively so. The lighting is soft with golden overtones reflecting on the drapes and the tassels at the corners of the tablecloths. The chairs and carpets are a deep red that compliments her choice of dress. In the far corner a live jazz pianist warms the ambience.
Robin has a reservation, so they are seated with no wait. The waitress, some perky young thing (they look younger and younger to Regina every day) with long dark curls wrangled into a ribbon, takes their drink orders, leaves the menus, and bounces off toward the kitchen.
Regina smoothes the tails of her own hair from the effects of the evening breeze and the increasing humidity and settles her purse on the table beside her silverware. She takes a sip from the water-filled wine glass.
They are quiet as each of them casually peruses a menu, but after a moment Regina registers the shift in Robin's posture, the hesitation in his movements, and realizes his attention isn't on his menu at all. He glances around the room, then up at her with what she imagines might be an apology in his gaze. She frowns. "What is it?"
Robin shakes his head. "I'm sorry. It's just...is this all right? This place?"
Regina glances around, uncertain what exactly he is asking. She can tell she is missing some vital piece of this conversation. "Well, I can't speak to the food, just yet, but the ambiance is very nice. Why, what's wrong?"
Robin shakes his head. "I'm afraid I feel vastly unqualified to do this."
"To do what? Order dinner? " She is really lost. When her guess doesn't hit the mark, she tries, "Date?"
"To date in your tax bracket," Robin replies, words careful and deliberate. He is showing an unhealthy interest in his napkin ring. "Regina, I honestly have no idea where or how a woman like yourself spends an evening out. I don't know what you might...expect, or...want. In my world, this is a nice restaurant. But in yours...," he fades out and shrugs.
Regina takes a moment to sort through her thoughts and give this inquiry the depth of reply it deserves. This issue needs to be resolved, and it needs to be resolved now so they start this thing off on the proper footing.
She pushes aside her purse and moves her hands just a little closer to his on the table. She likes the way the light plays with the lines and planes of his cheekbones. She doesn't like the worry lines in his forehead, but she is touched by their depth. She clears her throat and speaks plainly and directly. "The first man...possibly the only man... I ever truly loved...was a stablehand. Nothing more, nothing less. No trust fund, no internship with an internationally renowned trainer, no promising scholarship; a stablehand. I do not choose my romantic interests based upon bank accounts. I have other standards, despite what the press may tell you. This restaurant is lovely, and my net worth has no effect on that one way or the other."
Robin gives a somewhat bittersweet but accepting smile and nods his head in acknowledgement. "Understood."
"Good."
A moment passes in silence, the gentle tinkering notes of the jazz piano drift over, then Robin seems to accept the subject as closed and pulls in a breath with a straightened spine. He reaches for his water glass as he asks, "And what became of him? That stablehand of yours..."
Regina feels the familiar weight in the depths of her stomach, grounding her to the chair like an unwelcome restraint. But she forces the words across her lips, because this moment is about honesty, and maybe she just misses that -- real words and real emotions. "He died. Very young. And the rest of the story is for another day."
"All right." His tone is soft and kind enough to twist her stomach dangerously, but he is not going to push, she feels it. Instead, he asks, "And is there to be?"
She misses the word play. "Be what?"
"Another day. Date."
A flirtatious smile creeps across her lips, and she is pleasantly thrilled by the matching sparkle awakening in Robin's eyes. "Isn't it a little early in the evening to be asking that?" she says.
Robin shrugs, easily. "I'm a carpe diem kind of man."
"Clearly."
"You haven't answered my question."
"I'll let you know after dinner."
"Fair enough." He leans forward, forearms on the table, and his smile is so delicious and, oh, hell, she is really in deep with this man, only thirty minutes into a second date. She can feel her footing slipping as she teeters on the precipice of an uncontrolled slide, and for the first time in a long time, she isn't fighting very hard for a solid hold. A quiet part of her is nursing an animated anticipation of the slide.
****
They have been eating for a few minutes, and Regina is trying not to gracelessly stuff her face like Miss Piggy, but God this eggplant parmigiana is amazing and how long has it actually been since she had something more substantial in her stomach than coffee or a cracker? Did she ever even eat lunch today?
"So, explain to me why a woman like yourself is available," Robin says around a mouthful of his own seafood and pasta dish. "I would expect one would have to wait months or years to sneak in a date request in the little window between relationships."
Regina wrinkles her nose and swallows the bite in her mouth. "Well, ignoring the fact that presumption makes me sound like a bit of a slut--"
"Oh, God, no, no, no, I didn't mean--I only meant that--"
She ignores the apology, and the fact that Robin nearly choked on his pasta, and keeps talking, "I will admit, I'm not exactly...lacking for attention. But, I guess I'm more often...seeing someone, than I am...'in a relationship'."
"Honestly, I only meant that--"
She waves off his words, this time with an air of command, and she sees him register the finality. She's playing with him, feeling out his boundaries.
"So, are you 'seeing anyone' now? Or is that what we're doing?"
Regina shakes her head and swallows another bite of eggplant. "I've been with...someone...off and on for a couple of years, now, but it's really more of...an arrangement, I suppose, than a relationship. And I think it's stretched a bit past its expiration date. As for us...," she waves her fork lightly between them, careful not to fling tomato sauce toward his lovely shirt, "...this is a date. And I'm...open to seeing where it takes us. If you are. Does that answer your question?"
"I believe it does. And, yes, I am, as well." He takes another bite of pasta and manages to successfully chew this one.
*****
"What was the last good book you read?" she prompts. "Not your all-time favorite, you told me that on Sunday, but the most recent thing you liked." As she speaks, she lets herself be just a bit too obvious about capturing a piece of pasta off her fork with her skillful tongue. She is pleased to catch his gaze latching onto the gesture for a lingering moment before he resumes his decorum and focuses on her question.
"I haven't nearly the time to read I once had, and I do rather miss it, but I try to sneak in a novel now and then. I would have to say the last one I really liked would be...Catching Fire the second Hunger Games novel."
"You read The Hunger Games?"
"I work with teenagers. It helps to keep up."
"Henry loves those books. He just doesn't like that they're in present tense. Offends his literary sensibilities."
"The boy clearly knows what he likes."
"Asserting his opinion has never been a challenge for my child."
"As we said, like mother like son?"
"Yeah, I probably have to own that one."
"Have you read them? The Hunger Games books?"
Regina nods. "He was 10 when he wanted to start reading, so, of course, I read them first. We read the first one together."
"Do you know how lovely you are when you say things like that?"
Regina pauses mid-bite. "Why? I mean..."
"I work with kids every day whose lives would be 180 degrees different if they had a parent like you."
"I wish that weren't true. I'm highly flawed. The ideal should be more."
"But it is true. And you should give yourself more credit. You have an incredibly busy job, you're a single parent, and you not only know what your son is reading, you pre-screen his books."
"I miss things. The older he gets, the more it cramps my helicopter parenting style," she says with a subtext of genuine self-deprecation she hopes is inaudible to the untrained ear.
"Has Henry ever been away like this before? Like this camp?"
"Never. Not once. We have never been apart more than a couple of days, and he was always with Emma, our nanny, or my father." She takes a drink of her water to slow her words.
"And this is killing you?"
"It won't be too much longer, really, just a few more weeks."
"But it's killing you?"
"I'm sure he's handling it wonderfully. He's incredibly resourceful and independent and rational for his age. And he texts me regularly."
"But it's killing you?" Robin repeats, unflappably calm.
"It is blackening my very soul," Regina admits, and she voices all the melodrama the phrasing deserves. Robin falls into an understanding chuckle that somehow makes her feel like maybe this is all okay. "I'm being ridiculous, right? Kids go to camp."
Robin shakes his head. "Ridiculous would be locking him in his room and forbidding him to go. Letting him explore his independence and his talents in a safe environment whilst you quietly disintegrate at home is just being a loving parent. Believe me, I was a basket case when Roland went to pre-school, I don't even want to think about Kindergarten."
"Kindergarten's brutal. On the parents. Henry loved it."
"That's good to hear. Hopefully, Roland will do the same."
"Your turn to confess. Most embarrassing song you like?"
He thinks for a moment, takes a sip of the wine they have added to their table. "Maroon 5's 'Payphone'. I sing it in the shower."
Regina laughs outright and without delicacy. Her elbows are propped on the table, fork dangled precariously over the dregs of her pasta. "I suddenly find you far less attractive," she says, and words and body language have never been so vehemently in conflict.
"That's because you have yet to hear my falsetto."
She wrinkles her nose and leans in to whisper, "It's probably best that we keep it that way."
Robin raises a hand to press to his heart. "Ah. You wound me, woman. So little faith in my talents."
On the contrary, she finds she has far too much faith in this man's potential talents to make any kind of rational decisions about the progression of the evening. "Now are you going to tell me you were the star of your high school glee club?"
"Mmmm, preppy would, I believe, describe the polar opposite of the boy I was in high school."
Regina lifts an eyebrow, intrigued. "Now that sounds like a story."
"A story for another day, I believe."
She holds his gaze for a long moment in the flattering light, then says softly, "And is there to be?"
"What?"
"Another day. Date."
"Well, that's up to you, lovely lady."
Regina just smiles and soaks up the glow of his presence.
*****
They take a walk after dinner. Regina wants to walk off some of the parmigiana. They amble along, staying safely with the lights and the crowds. Somewhere around the second block, Robin's hand finds its way into hers, and she willingly curls her fingers around his in response. His hands are a pleasurable mixture of soft flesh and the callouses of manual labor. She remembers tracing Daniel's riding callouses with her fingernails. Remembers the lack of texture to Leopold's pampered hands. The mix of texture in Robin's touch seems to parallel the whole of his being. A caring and devoted father, a quiet gentleman, yet she suspects he could be the fiercest of lions when it comes to protecting those he loves. She flexes her fingers around his and tries to remember the last time a man simply held her hand. She finds she wants to keep walking so he won't let go.
Their steps carry them past an open-air ice cream parlor with a bit of a line testifying to its popularity, and Regina decides to indulge when Robin offers to treat her sweet tooth, complete with a tenderly coaxing squeeze of her hand and waggling eyebrows.
"You're going to be bad for my figure, I can tell already."
"Your figure is in no danger of being anything but lovely, milady."
Regina rolls her eyes. But the easy compliment, the huskiness to his voice, and his subtly wandering gaze all feel good. Really good.
"You just want ice cream," she teases.
In the line, they start people watching, and before they reach the counter, Robin's running commentary on the imagined lives of the characters passing on the streets of New York City has Regina giggling and leaning close to whisper her contributions like they are BFFs in middle school. She doesn't even care that they are earning varied forms of approving and disapproving glances from neighboring customers; the attention somehow makes the whole thing that much more delightful.
She orders a strawberry ice cream cone. Robin chooses butter pecan. They walk and lick, Regina feeling increasingly flirty and oral as she goes and pleased by Robin's responsive attention. They find a comfortable bench on which to finish eating when Robin nearly drips ice cream down his shirt. When the evening breeze grows chill, the suit coat from over Robin's arm finds its way around Regina's bare shoulders. His fingers against her skin as he moves send shivers down her spine.
Seated on their bench at the edge of a small neighborhood park, gazing out across the buzz and rush of the city, the city lights seem extraordinarily beautiful. Robin's arm has settled around Regina's shoulders and the nearness of his body is making her feel steadier in her own skin than she has felt in a long time.
"I have an early meeting tomorrow," she says, an edge of regret bleeding into her soft tone. She has finished her ice cream and is toying with her wadded up napkin between middle finger and thumb.
"Then we should get you home," Robin says.
She nods, but does not move. "What about you? Early start?"
"Well, with a four-year-old, even weekends start early, never mind Wednesdays."
"True."
His fingers stroke her shoulder. "But, more of a late night, actually," he continues. "Once we're finished here, I'm afraid I'm on duty with the night van for a few hours. Driving around, finding any kids who need somewhere safe to sleep tonight."
"Tonight?" Regina shifts beneath his arm, facing him more fully. "Robin, you should have been sleeping. Why didn't you say?"
His smile is easy. "Because this is right where I wanted to be."
Her return smile is hesitant and a little admonishing, but his admiration is so pure and open she finds she is powerless to the radiant warmth.
Robin hails them a cab and the growing physical comfort has Regina scooting much closer against Robin's side in the backseat than on the ride out. She rattles off her address to the driver and the trip seems to take half the projected time.
As they pull up in front of her building, Regina reaches out first to pay the driver. Robin tries to stop her, but she says simply, "You paid for the ice cream."
Standing on the street, fingers lightly entwined, Regina scans the length of the sidewalk, then meets Robin's gaze beneath the streetlight and says, "Come upstairs with me? Just to my door." He nods, "Of course," and she continues, "I want a few more minutes with you, but there are a couple of buildings on this block with paparazzi-worthy residents. The flies tend to hover here and grab shots of whatever they can. I'd rather not linger."
"As the lady wishes," Robin says. His free hand waves away the cab, then gestures gallantly to Regina to guide her path.
Regina smirks and leads the way. She nods to the boy at the front desk, unable to make herself let go of Robin's hand, rumors be damned, and leads them briskly down the back hall to her private elevator.
Robin watches in silence as she punches in her access code. (It used to be Henry's birthday, until Henry got old enough to yell at her for choosing something so lacking in security. Now it is the numerical ranking of Henry's initials in the alphabet). She tightens her fingers around Robin's hand as the elevator doors close and the machinery bumps and grinds to pull them upward.
Robin's fingers caress the back of her hand and the tenderness catches her breath and successfully distracts her from her claustrophobia. "I've had a lovely evening," he says softly. Close. Intimate. Her stomach quivers. Her body is screaming at her to jump this man, take him straight into her penthouse, rip off his clothes, lure him into her bedroom, and ravage him until the morning sun splatters across their skin. But the truth is...she likes him. She really likes him. And that scares her. She wants to do this right.
"As did I," she whispers. She turns and meets his gaze, brown eyes to blue in the intimate space, connected and personal, and the shared smile is night-softened and sweet and the heat warms her chest.
When the elevator doors open, they stroll into the golden-lit hallway and Regina feels free and safe and trembling with hovering possibility. She slows near her door and faces Robin.
He draws a breath and stares her down with deliberate intent. "I'm sorry, this may seem too forward, or too early, but it just needs to be said..."
She frowns, fingers still woven with his. "What?"
"Regina Rossi, you may be...the most beautiful woman I have ever had the privilege to gaze upon up close, much less take on a date."
She nearly snorts out a laugh. "I find that hard to believe, Mr. Archer. You are one of the most attractive men I have seen in a long time. Women cannot be missing that."
Robin scoffs. "Speaking of hard to believe... You work with models. Daily."
"All alike. Too young and too thin and quite often too full of themselves." She takes a half-step closer, moving more on instinct than intellect. "Some of them are closer to my son's age than mine. The designers are older, but they're nearly all gay. Which doesn't make them less attractive, but it does take all the fire out of the flirting. Which leaves me with the old money and the literati crowd left over from my former life with my late husband. My statement stands."
"Ah, well, when you paint my competition so elegantly..."
Regina shakes her head, moves closer until she is growing dizzy from the intoxicating scent of his cologne. Jesus, how is he doing this to her? Her skin tingles and quivers, a physical pull to touch, to taste. "I once dated Robert Redford," Regina breathes, then she charges forward and captures Robin's mouth in a hard and heated kiss. She thinks he was starting to utter a startled, "Are you serious?" but she doesn't care and the notion is lost to hungry lips and tender dampness and a fast-kindling passion.
He seems to want this as much as she. Regina grips the lapels of Robin's suit coat and holds him demandingly close. Robin's hands move, one to her waist, the other into her hair. He cradles her head as he kisses her, and there is a tenderness and a...reverence to the touch that slips past the haze of passion in her mind to register with a pang of deliciously painful emotion. But lust is winning (protecting her, as always), and she lets go of conscious thought, losing herself to the fire and comfort of communicating in touches and tongues and whispered nonsense.
Countless minutes of sensation, French kisses and heavy petting, and Robin's suitcoat is forgotten on the floor. It ends in a breathless break and lightly touching foreheads.
"I'm going to say goodnight right here," Regina says, voice hoarse and throaty.
Robin's only reply is a slightly cracked laugh she cannot quite interpret. Incredulity? Her tone certainly mismatched with her words.
"It's just...I like you. So, I don't...
He frowns, tightens his fingers where they rest comfortingly on her hip. "You don't what?"
"I don't...want to mess this up. Or...cheapen it. This is going well. At least...I think it is, from my side."
His smile is all tenderness and warmth and it soothes her quiet insecurities. He brushes her hair from her face with two gentle fingers. "It's going very well," he confirms.
"Let's keep it that way."
"Whatever you're comfortable with. I don't want anything you don't want. I never will."
She offers a fleeting smile and pushes away the images that flicker at the edges of her vision.
"We haven't moved," she says after a moment.
"We have not," he confirms.
Regina draws a deep breath, then forces a step back. She pushes an open hand against Robin's chest to keep him in place. The void is a visceral and aching thing. "Good night, Robin."
He nods, ever the gentleman. "Good night, Regina. Sweet dreams."
Her fingers are already on the keypad for her door when she turns and says, "Robin?"
"Yes?"
"There will be."
"Will be what?"
"Another day. Date."
The roguish smile on his well-kissed lips strains her resolve. Dammit, why couldn't she just be that tabloid slut for tonight? "Indeed there will. I'll text you tomorrow," he says simply.
She has the door open and one foot across the threshold, when Robin's hand catches her wrist and in a whirl of motion she is back in his arms and his lips are hot and strong on hers and she is kissing back with all she is worth. Her body ignites and burns down to her toes. There is strength and power and determination in this gentle man and oh, God, it takes out her knees. And then he's gone. Two feet away from her and it feels like two thousand.
"Just for your dreams," he says, and that impish grin is back, and she is holding onto the doorframe and can muster nothing but a breathless exhale in lieu of a witty reply.
"Good night, Robin," she says, at last.
She leans on the inside of her closed door until the room stops spinning.
So royally fucked.
*****
(end Chapter 4)