Disclaimer: I don't own it.
Chapter Two
I was currently in my second favourite place in the whole world, after Selfridges, and I couldn't help the beaming smile that was covering my face. The material that I could feel as I ran my fingers over the rails and rails of clothes filled me with a happiness I couldn't even begin to describe.
It wasn't just the clothes and shoes that fill The Cupboard which were the cause for my happiness though. It was the fact that I'd just been informed that I might be going to New York with my boss. She was a bit of a bitch if I was being honest, but given that she was offering me the opportunity to travel I couldn't really moan about the fact that she'd just had a massive go at me for not being creative enough.
I allowed myself a couple of minutes to jump up and down in glee and then settled myself down so that I could sort through the pairs of shoes which had just arrived from one of the shoots that had happened during the week.
All of a sudden, the door to The Cupboard opened with a loud bang, and I glanced up to see Alice, my best friend, stomp through to where I was sitting.
"Bella, did you tell me that you broke up with Mike?" she asked as she came to a halt at my feet and looked down at me with one of her hands placed on her hip. "I have absolutely no memory of you telling me that things ended between you both."
"Yes, I told you on Friday night." I picked up one of the pairs of shoes I had organised and placed them in the correct hole on the wall of shoes. "However, I was pretty drunk, and you were absolutely drunk, so I can understand why you can't remember me telling you. I do think I cried though."
"Well I remember you crying but I thought that was because you had drunk far too much and regretted your decision to dye your hair that blonde colour. Oh my gosh, look at that dress!" she cooed as she picked out one of the new tunic dresses we'd just had delivered and began to wiggle into it over her clothes. "I was sure we talked about your hair on Friday..."
"I was crying because Mike had dumped me, but apparently Mike dumped me because of my hair so I guess that's how you came up with that assumption." I had managed to not think about Mike for a good hour, but this current conversation was pushing the happiness at New York right into the back of my mind, making room for the depressing Mike thoughts to come to the forefront of my head again. "Or he said it was my hair but we both knew that was just a lame excuse. Oh and Alice, you know I love you, but if you continue to try on clothes without unzipping them, I'm going to have to kill you."
"Sorry, Bella, it's just so pretty!" Alice stopped wiggling around and I stood up so that I could unzip it. It fell over her perfect figure and I watched as she took stock of herself in the mirrored wall. She smiled at her reflection for a second, and then rearranged her expression into something more sympathetic and appropriate for our current discussion.
"Okay, I'm done trying on clothes. Let's get back to this whole dumping thing. I think Mike is regretting his lame excuse. He seemed really down and sullen when he came to pick Jasper up before they went to the pub last night. But do you know what I can't get over? The fact that he dumped you on your birthday. That's just wrong, it's rude even."
"And did he tell you where he dumped me?" I asked as I raised an eyebrow at Alice and from her expression I gathered that, no, Mike didn't tell Alice where he had so pleasantly ended our relationship. "In Selfridges – and he even punched a Mulberry bag in a fit of absolute rage!"
"That's awful!" Alice responded, with her eyes wide. "Was it one of the new season bags? Why would he do that? I'm going to make sure that I have a serious word with him about all of this. Oh poor Bella, do you want a hug?"
I shook my head because Alice hugging me would mean that I ended up crying again and I didn't want to do that here, in my second favourite place in the whole world, especially given that my number one favourite spot had been tarnished by the whole Mike dumping me thing. "I'm okay, but if you really wanted to do something for me, could you call me in some more of that amazing lip gloss you managed to get me last month?"
"Of course I can. I'll get some other goodies sent over from them too," Alice promised, and even though I said I didn't want a hug, I felt Alice give my arm a quick squeeze.
There was definitely something to be said for having a best friend who worked as a Junior Editor in the beauty department. There was also something to be said for having a best friend like Alice, even if I did spend rather a lot of time wondering if we actually came from the same planet, let alone the same solar system.
We had become friends at work, both of us starting as assistants, only Alice had moved up the ranks whereas I had simply stayed where I started. We'd both managed to run up thousands of pounds in credit card debt, but Alice's father loved to write his little princess cheques and that therefore meant that she didn't have to put on a questionable Eastern European accent each time the bailiffs came round.
We both dated boys from the same band, but after that dreaded three month mark, Jasper had declared his undying love for Alice and had moved into her flat, bought by Daddy of course, whereas Mike had dumped me.
We both wore the same size in clothes, but Alice seemed to have this Olympian speed metabolism which meant she could eat whatever she wants, whereas I had to work to keep my trim figure, and then there was also the fact that I couldn't actually afford to eat anything more than baked beans anyway.
So I guess we were the same, but different. And although sometimes I found the fact that Alice seemed to have the easy road in life and didn't really understand the word struggle, I still felt that I had lucked out completely in the best friend department.
"So if Mike gets his act together and realises that he's behaved like an absolute arsehole, would you get back with him? Maybe if he got down on his knees and grovelled or something?" Alice asked as she wiggled herself out of the dress which she was still wearing.
"Okay, stop right there, Alice," I growled and then spun Alice around so that I could slide the zip down, meaning that she wouldn't actually rip the dress as she struggled to get out of it. "Mike and I are done. My three months were up. You know me; I'm the queen of the three month relationship."
"Oh please, Bella. Will you stop being so dramatic. One day you'll meet some gorgeous man who'll worship you and the ground you walk on. He'll want to do all kinds of fabulous things for you, he'll always put you first..."
"Does Jasper always put you first?" I asked with a grin while I make a concerted effort to shake my Mike-filled bad mood from my mind.
"Most of the time, but not always. I'm working on it."
Alice's unwavering optimism for my love life was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the two boys who worked in the post room, wheeling in a crate filled with clothing bags.
Alice clapped her hands together in delight. "New clothes!" she shrieked.
I glanced over at the trolley. The sight of an expensive cardboard bag with a designer name printed on it in an interesting font never ceased to perk me up. However, my eyes suddenly moved to the Selfridges gift bag which was perched precariously on the top of the pile.
"This isn't ours..." I began to say but then I peeked at the label which was attached to the bag: For Bella, aged 23, c/o Fabulous Magazine.
I frowned in curiosity at the bag and waved the post boys out of The Cupboard, which wasn't really big enough for them as well as Alice and me. I knelt down on the floor and grabbed the scissors as I snipped away at the Selfridges labels which had been used to seal the gift bag. Opening up the bag, I pushed away the tissue paper and peeked at some pink leather, which only added to my curiosity as to who the hell this could be from.
I was aware of the fact that my hands were now shaking slightly as I reached down and lifted the bag up out of the Selfridges gift bag. It was the unfortunate Bayswater Lipstick Ostrich Mulberry bag which had been lovingly looked at, stroked, patted, punched and then cried over.
How strange.
Maybe Mike had realised the error of his ways, robbed a bank and was offering me this bag as a kind of olive branch of sorts. But in all reality, he wouldn't have the means or the balls to rob a bank, and he wouldn't have the intuition and generosity to buy me something of this magnitude, or anything of any value really.
I ran my reverent hands over the beautiful leather of the bag and explored the inside of it, when my hand clasped around a piece of card which I pulled out and then read: I think the punch has seriously affected the resale value. The scrawl was more elegant than any handwriting I'd ever seen before, it's ridiculously pretty. Happy belated birthday. E
Edward. It had been five days since the strangest lunch-hour of my entire life. I hadn't forgotten a single moment of my abduction although I had tried desperately hard to forget it. The whole reason as to why I'd been trying to forget the whole encounter was because every time I thought about that red room, the weird club where I'd drunk tea and forsaken that delicious looking chocolate cake, I remembered his penetrating stare, his beautiful voice and his gorgeous good looks and I ended up getting the shivers.
I turned the card over.
E. Cullen
Acquisitions Consultant
There was also a Mayfair address and a mobile number prefixed by an international dialling code.
What on earth was an acquisitions consultant? What the hell was he acquiring? Weaponry? Antiques? Women? Was he a professional abductor or something, had I had a very narrow escape from being sold on the black market to some wealthy man who wanted to do very weird things to me?
"Let me look at it!" Alice snatched the bag from my grasp so that she could see what it looked like hanging from her arm in the mirror. I had to admit to myself that it looked good on her, but then again, everything looked good on Alice. "What spread is this for?"
I sighed and got to my feet. "It's not for a shoot. It's for me. From that guy." For some strange reason, my voice was nothing but a whisper, probably to match the weirdness of the situation.
"What guy?" Alice asked with a squeal. "Tell me, Bella, what guy has just spent three thousand pounds on a Mulberry bag for you? Why haven't you told me about him? No wonder you're not interested in getting back together with Mike when you've got some man buying you expensive handbags on the side."
"For goodness sake, Alice, you really must start to actually listen to me when I talk to you, or learn to retain information for more than two seconds at a time, especially when you're drunk. The guy! The guy I met in Selfridges like three seconds after Mike punched this very bag, the one who dragged me out of the store and took me for tea and cake and was just... strange."
I glanced over at Alice's face and could see that she had no recollection of this story at all.
"He was wearing a Gucci suit," I prompted, because she would remember that kind of detail.
"No, I would have remembered that." Alice's inner turmoil was clearly evident in the wrinkles which appeared on her forehead, even though she had vowed that she wouldn't frown ever again last month in a last ditch attempt to prevent herself from needing Botox at the suggestion of the Beauty Director. "Wait! Something's coming back to me – something about cufflinks..."
"He asked me to help him out with his cufflinks," I reminded her as I began to hang the clothes that have just been delivered onto a rail so they could be sorted and steamed.
I could see out of the corner of my eye that Alice was practically vibrating with excitement. "Okay. And then what?"
"Well, he asked me to do him a favour and at first I thought he meant... well, you know, and I told him to fuck off. Actually, I don't think I told him to fuck off but I barked something to that extent at him."
"You do have a great bark," Alice said as she hung up the tunic dress she had just tried on and placed it back where she found it, and I made a mental note to remind myself that I needed to check it was perfect before I could forget about it. "Tell me everything and don't you dare skip any of it."
See now that was the problem, because I didn't really think there was actually that much to tell. However, there were details of that day which had been milling around in my mind and I knew I'd been waiting for the opportunity to dissect every minute of that weird hour with Alice, even though I'd said it all before.
"And he was quite honestly the most obnoxious man I've ever met in my entire life," I said ten minutes later, having summarised my encounter rather nicely, making sure that I hadn't left even the smallest detail out.
"Is he really? Because I find it hard to believe that anyone could be more obnoxious than Heidi."
I pondered Alice's words and then corrected my last statement and began to compare Edward and Heidi, my boss. "It would be pretty close; I'm not sure who would win the title of the most obnoxious person in the world actually."
Alice handed the bag back to me reluctantly and I couldn't help but stroke the beautiful pink leather.
"You have to admit, Bella, it's a bit sexy."
"It wasn't sexy," I returned, well aware of the fact that my face was flushing. "He was old."
"Old or older?"
"Does it matter? He was old."
"Of course it matters."
I sighed and rolled my eyes at her. "He was older."
"Well that's okay then."
"And he stared. A lot," I said as I remembered his blazing, unwavering, green eyes.
"I don't know about you, Bella, but I would most certainly allow and older man to stare at me a lot for an hour if it meant I received a three thousand pound bag afterwards," Alice sighed. "Maybe the bag was sent to you to make up for Mike dumping you."
"Somehow, I don't think it was some karma thing, Alice. It was just weird. And the horrible thing about all of this is the fact that I can't keep the bag."
"Why? Are you worried that he'll turn up and want to do more than stare at you for payment for the bag?" Alice giggled, and I could hardly blame her because the whole situation was ridiculously weird. Things like this just didn't happen to me.
I didn't giggle along with her though, because I was thinking of those long fingers of his running torturously slowly along my body. In any other situation, I would have probably been knocked off my feet in horror, but I wasn't. Instead, I was still standing on my own two feet and nothing had knocked me over, because it was him I was thinking of, not someone else.
"Nothing like that, Alice." I insisted and then turned around so that I could attempt to cool my burning face. "I'm probably just going to sell it on eBay for some spare cash."
I decided I might keep it for a few weeks first though. Just so that I could admire it because it really was beautiful.
