Falling For Him

CHAPTER - 8

It's Christmas Day, but I'm having a difficult time enjoying the holiday. Ever since my rendezvous with Ashley at the hotel, I've had trouble focusing. As I turned from the doorway to the bedroom and left the suite, I had to fight the urge to go back and take her. Take her hard and fast. My body demanded it, but I quelled the urge. I'm the Master. I will not allow myself to be directed by my own desire for her, to feel this way.

Now, two days later, I still feel distracted. Growing up, Christmas used to be one of my favorite times of the year. When I was a child, my mother would go all out with the decorations, engaging her staff to hang Christmas lights, put up the Christmas tree, with boughs of holly and garlands around the house and all that, but by the time I was eight years old, I realized that she wasn't doing that for me. She was doing it for show, for the parties she threw, the social event more likely an outlet for pent-up frustration and perhaps lingering grief rather than trying to make the holiday enjoyable for me.

I suppose it didn't really matter.

Even so, I did enjoy the holiday season in the city. The lights, the Yuletide spirit, and everything that entails. I spent every Christmas with my mother, more out of an unspoken rule than preference. This year, I'm also spending the day with Karen. The two of them together. I sigh. They seem to enjoy each other's company, but I don't really want to spend time with either one of them. Actually, my presence at my mother's house today is out of my sense of obligation rather than any true desire to bond. As far as my mother is concerned, it's just another holiday, and that spoils the ambiance for me. Looking around at the decorations in the living room, it all seems rather pointless. Why does she still bother?

Since I arrived early this morning, Karen is due to arrive soon, my mother has bedeviled me with questions about the upcoming marriage arrangements, the plans, the details, none of which I know nor care about. Karen is handling most of it. She doesn't ask my advice or opinion on anything, and I don't really want her to. I find it all rather tedious. I'm not looking forward to any of it. I don't allow my reasons for that to rise to the surface. Not today.

We sit in the living room now, she's sitting in her favorite white-upholstered armchair, so proper, so stiff, her cup of coffee balanced ever so carefully on the saucer resting on her knee.

I sit in the corner of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, arms outstretched, my cup of coffee untouched on the table in front of me. Magazines fan just so, as if the housekeeper has taken a ruler to make sure that the arrangement of Home, Gracious Living, and Bon Appetit all appear equidistant to each side of the table.

"Did you hear me, Marcus?"

I glance up at her, an eyebrow lifted in question. "Sorry, what did you say?"

She frowns with disapproval. "I asked why you didn't attend the board meeting two nights ago? There are some important decisions to be made about expanding our reach into South America."