Puppet Master

Men are just like buses.

Vittoria Casey hadn't had a moment of peace so far. What was ironic was the thought of the apparently very frustrated Goliath man on the front doorstep was the only one she'd wanted to see for the last thirteen years. Until about a week ago.

Tides turn with fortunes, apparently.

Putting down her paintbrush from the tranquil, garden landscape that she was painting, and turning her back on the peace of paradise it promised, she realised that there really was no choice in the matter; she had to answer the door. He was in puppet master mode anyway, judging by his steady march past the window of her small studio space, and she grimaced as she heard the frantic thumping on her front door.

She braced herself for her second stand-off of the day, knowing that this one would be no prettier than the one she'd just had with her older brother, Nathaniel. Covered in every shade of acrylic imaginable, with her long blonde hair tied back from her face in a haphazard ponytail, and her scruffy old jeans with glassy rhinestones running down the sides, she wasn't exactly thrilled to be a participant.

But if Sir so wished to see her, so be it, she thought sardonically, a quirk of her lips betraying the thought.

Good news travels fast, so they say. They'd be right, Tori thought, judging by the development of her morning into one of the more depressing story lines of a popular soap opera. 

"Tori! Open this door. NOW!" Getting a little thrill at the sound of his voice – as harsh, as demanding, and as rough as gravel, and infinitely sexier – was not, she assured herself, the same as wanting to see him. It didn't mean she'd changed her mind, or that she ever would. It was completely natural. All that bossiness was bound to get to her, in some way. 

Smoothing her loose knitted jumper over her hips nervously, wiping off her sweaty palms, she took a deep breath, and reached for the gilded latch that would open the locks, to face her deepest nightmares. Her lips quirked at she had an image of him dressed up like a cartoon devil – painted red complete with a trident and a tail - what would he do if she ignored him? If she just let him sweat it out on her front porch?

She never got the chance to find out. The second she moved the latch, the heavy oak door was pushed towards her, and she had to take a step back to avoid finding herself flung to the marbled tiles on the floor like a turtle thrown out of its path.

Far too serious a man for face paints, it would seem, maybe more Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate?  

Nightmare probably wasn't the right word. Despite everything – all this pompous protection crap, the sense of loyalties he might have betrayed, the complete and utter bullshit that she'd tolerated for more than five years – the man in front of her still sent her pulses spiralling into a mini tornado.  Perfectly natural, though, she thought, just left over ashes from what had once been a blazing fire, nothing she couldn't sweep away. She still wasn't interested.

But it should be illegal to look so ... sexy? Hot? No. There were no words.

Jayden Caine.

Tall, dark, and handsome didn't begin to cover him, he was a league of his own. At six foot three, he towered over her tiny five foot frame, and everything about him was a thousand times deeper, darker, bigger, more intense, than she was. Well, everything, except that rage, that fire and electricity, that threw its way through her body at just the sight of him. It'd been the same since she was twelve years old, although she'd loved him for years before that moment that was the first time her heart fluttered at the sight of him, the first time she imagined being his wife, his world, until the day she died. The epitome of Prince Charming to her fairy tale fantasies, in her mind they were flying through the stars on the backs of unicorns, and, later on, once she'd become a little more realistic, feeding each other strawberries in the moonlight, sipping pink champagne.   

Like Alice at the edge of a rabbit-hole, she'd fallen, heart first, into a Wonderland of fantasy, longing, loving, and, despite everything, she was still there, floating mindlessly.

Except that now, well now the fantasy was over, and she wasn't swimming in puddles of her own bliss there anymore. No, quite the contrary, now she was royally pissed off. And pregnant. A tiny little secret quivering in her stomach right now, but in seven months time, she would be someone's mother, and the unbearable pain in the backside of its father, if that rampant anger in his eyes was anything to go by. Strawberries and moonlight there wasn't, now it was more boxes of Kleenex, tubs of ice cream, and reruns of Friends. Alone. Wrapped up in a snuggie.

Anger was the only emotion that anyone ever saw coming from Jayden's eyes, it was so much a part of him that it froze everything else into an ominous, sinister looking statue. He'd worked hard, first to pull himself out of the gutters where every Caine that came before him had been happy to wallow, and then further up the drainage system, higher than anyone had expected him to go, ever. Five of the most prestigious garages in twenty miles now had his name above the shutters; a development borne of a part-time job he took at sixteen to keep him off the streets. Caine senior, as Tori knew him, Jayden's dad, was a complete waster, a man too preoccupied with booze and drugs to know what day it was, let alone look after his only son. He'd only ever registered his child was in the room when he needed an outlet for the frustration of losing his wife (incidentally, it was true that she was lost, nobody knew where she'd ended up after she'd run out on her family after one too many bruises, and a better offer in the form of a particularly handsome schoolboy – nobody even noticed she'd left until the captain of the football team missed his after school practise).

He'd moved into a grotty little flat in the village with her older brother when he was fifteen, Caleb being that bit older to secure the six month lease, and started working at the garage below it as an apprentice mechanic. By the time he reached eighteen, he owned both the building and the business, and, eight years later he'd cloned it five times. But still that danger, those rougher edges, had never been tampered down, they grew jagged, and cutting.

She'd just been caught in a predictable crossfire, feeling about him the way she did.

He'd never fall in love, she'd realized six weeks earlier, while her heart splintered into a million pieces. He'd never feel it, and even if he did, he wouldn't know it. Years before she'd tried to show hers, to let him feel it, when she was just a wayward child, and he was almost twenty years old, he'd put his heart in an igloo, and decided he could do without for the rest of his life.

She pulled herself upright, not to be intimidated in her own home, she stared into that icy blue gaze to show him so. It didn't work, it never could have done he was just too intense. So she turned away from it, walking away down through the wooden panels in her hallway, to the sanctuary of her kitchen – where there was tea.

"Tor! Vittoria! I'm talking to you!" his voice was impatient, for once without that notorious restraint, he wasn't a massive fan of being walked away from, despite the fact that he, himself, was actually very good at it. Experienced, you know.

And he used her full name, oh my, the man meant business.

"If you're going to rant and rave at me, Jay, at least let me make a cup of tea first!" she said, in an exasperated tone, not once looking back, just forward, into the four glass walls of her conservatory kitchen.