Chapter 6: Ellie

Monday morning I was awakened by the sound of my annoying alarm at 6:00 a.m. I lay in bed for some time thinking about Saturday night. The hot, strong, dominant stranger had disappeared from my apartment first thing that morning. The night that we spent together was explosive and I was struggling to erase him from my memory. I hadn't gone out on Sunday at all; I spent all day doing the research for a column that I had been working on, on the side.

This morning I still felt pretty relaxed about what went on between us. The sex had blown my mind and his commanding voice had left me drenched with need. Even now I was having hot flashes, smelling him on my sheets and pillows. I had never had a lover who was so gentle and demanding at the same time. That man without a name, who was passionate, powerful and made me orgasm at least five times. I couldn't stop thinking about his piercing grey eyes. I felt truly and utterly screwed after he was done with me.

Finally I pulled the covers away and got up. I went to the bathroom and looked at my own reflection in the mirror, thinking about the day ahead of me. No one in the office knew who I was and I wanted to stay anonymous for as long as possible. Dad hadn't contacted me since the whole scandal hit the media and I wasn't expecting him to. He made it clear that I was dead to him, but if I could make it as a reporter, then there was a slim chance that I could turn my luck around.

I knew Dad regretted spending a fortune on my education. I went to the best media school in Scotland, graduated with a first class degree, then managed to secure work experience in a good paper without his help. My father didn't believe that my degree was worth anything. He'd wanted me to become a respectable barrister like him, but I was more excited about writing articles and exposing the truth than his whole legal crap.

When the scandal was leaked to the papers and my life was pulled from beneath my feet, I was forced to spend my last available funds on this property in another city and take a job in a small magazine in Edinburgh.

It'd been weeks since my name was splattered across the papers, but I was still careful, using my fake name whenever I could. I had tried to keep in touch with some friends. Rebecca and Tasha had visited me a few times, but the rest of my friends kept their distance. They were sympathetic but couldn't believe that my father reacted the way he did. I had made a terrible mistake, but I was a human being, believing it was my own judgment that failed me. Now I felt isolated and haunted by the guilt.

After Andrew, I had lost all my confidence in finding real love. It was better to sleep around, not to be tied down. My father made sure that I lost all the privileges and all my memberships to exclusive clubs and societies in Scotland. We were never really close, but he had believed that asshole over me and made the decision to shut me out of his life forever, not letting me explain what actually happened between us.

The scandal crumbled his good reputation and he lost many important clients because of me. He didn't care who had started what; all that mattered to him was that I was involved. Yeah, I was an idiot back then, thinking that Andrew had loved me. I was ready to do anything for him, but he only played with me to get closer to my powerful father.

Now I was managing to scrape by, earning a shitty wage with the magazine. I missed having an unlimited amount of funds. I was never a materialist, although it was nice to be able to buy anything that I needed, but now I was on my own and the bills were slowly piling up, so I had to deal with it.

I brushed my long brown hair, changed into gym clothes, and picked my outfit for today in the bedroom.

Everything was slowly coming together, but I absolutely detested my workplace. All the senior reporters were chauvinist pigs. They had their own established sources around the city and I was stuck with the rest of the crappy stories that no one wanted to touch, just some boring crap that wouldn't help me further my own career at all. I'd never realised how much my father's name could help. I never used it to my advantage, but now I wished I had.

I went down to use the gym, and for the entire workout, I kept wondering who the mystery man was that I'd had sex with Saturday night. I didn't know his name, but I already missed his touch. I imagined being in bed with him again, lost in his touch.

After my workout I returned to my apartment, changed, picked up my briefcase, and then I was ready to conquer another day. I stood outside in the hall for a little while, fiddling with my keys, when I heard someone coming out of the third apartment on my floor. I hadn't had a chance to meet any of my neighbours yet, and for a while I suspected that the two other apartments were empty. Obviously I was wrong.

"I'm telling you, this is the best way," I heard a female voice saying.

Finally finding the right key, I locked the door in a hurry. I glanced up and for a split second I wondered if my vision was fooling me somehow. My heart skipped a beat and then shuddered in my chest. The mystery guy from two nights ago, the one that made me forget about my sorrow and worries, was walking towards me with another woman. There was no doubt that he recognised me. Tingles ravaged my body as his eyes hovered over my face slowly, like he was calculating whether to say anything about the other night. I was just about to ask him what the hell he was doing here, but the woman that was with him erased my question.

"Oh, hello. You must be our new neighbour? I'm Claire McCune and this is my husband, Mack," she said to me. Then two things happened all at once. The door of the apartment next to me opened up, and I dropped all my folders on the floor. I could swear my heart stopped beating for a good several seconds.

No, no, no, no.... This is not happening to me again.

"Let me help you with this," my one-night stand guy offered, going down on his knee and picking up my papers for me. I shot him one of my worst "ready to murder you with my bare hands" glares, trying to breathe at the same time, but my lungs had stopped working. A wife? The perfect hot and gorgeous guy had a wife? And he lived two doors away from me?

"What's going on here, a neighbourhood watch meeting of some sort?" asked the guy who had just come out of the other apartment, flashing us the most brilliant smile.

I thought that I had a brain freeze. People were talking to me, but I was in a daze. Anger boiled inside me like a hot furnace and I thought I was going through a seizure. Mystery guy handed me one of my folders and our fingers brushed accidentally. Electricity shot down to my core, sending waves of piping hot lust down between my legs. I remembered lying on the bed in my apartment with him between my legs, commanding me to keep still. Shit, that was so hot, but then the voice of reason pulled me back to the real world, to the screwed-up reality of the fact that love, honesty and fidelity existed only in fairy tales.

Mack and I looked up. Our new neighbour was tall, slim and quite handsome. Soft or pretty boy-looking, as I would normally describe him to all my girlfriends. He wasn't Scottish either; I detected some sort of foreign accent. He had tanned dark skin and I assumed that one of his parents might have been from the Middle East. Good-looking without a ring on his finger and dressed smart in a pricey blue shirt.

My breathing hadn't come back to normal yet, but somehow I managed to lift myself up. Beads of sweat were running down my back. I was prepared to roar with frustration and fury. How could he not tell me that he had a freaking wife!

"We were just leaving for work when the lady here dropped her folders all over the floor," said the wife, chuckling like this was funny. Her smile was fake and stiff. Besides that, she wasn't very pretty, and that should have made me feel a little better, but the truth was that I was devastated. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore a cheap black suit. "I guess we're all new here. Have you just moved in?"

I had to get the hell out of here, fast. My heart pounded in my chest while gorgeous, commanding Mack was eyeing our new neighbour with his sharp grey eyes. I imagined stabbing a knife straight into his heart and then twisting until those eyes popped out of his sockets.

"Yes, I'm in the process of moving in. Do you guys live on this floor?" the new neighbour asked and darted his eyes at me. I was fuming, but I still managed to notice as he checked me out, hovering his dark gaze over my legs.

"My name is Mack McCune and this is my wife, Claire. Unfortunately, we haven't yet had the pleasure to be acquainted with the lady here."