I am having an author's quandary. This story has been more or less plotted since day one. I know how it's going to end, and basically where all the pieces are going to fall, with possibly a couple of surprises left to find in the middle. What I'd like to know from you guys is this: is anyone going to stop reading if we bump the rating to M? R&R, if you have a strong opinion one way or the other.
Belle enjoyed her time with Mr. Gold. With Anthony, she corrected herself. Maybe some day calling him by his given name would come more naturally. Their new familiarity had started simply enough: she went with him to a midday gathering of financiers listening to men in over-stuffed suits give "state of the market" speeches.
In her opinion, they were all a lot of rubbish. Belle lived frugally, in part because she had to and in part because she wasn't raised to affluence. At 28, she had only just cleared the red from her student loan ledger. She lived alone in a small flat, with no real prospects of buying a home; privacy was her primary luxury.
To her, Mr. Gold's world seemed contrived. The mystery of taking an incomprehensibly large pile of money and transforming it into a yet larger pile, through a series of stocks, bonds, net gains and corporate trades might as well have been alchemy or something arcane. It wasn't that she lacked the mental acuity to comprehend it, it simply didn't have anything to do with her day-to-day life.
Still, she smiled and chatted and generally made herself useful. Anthony didn't look completely miserable, and he even spared her a few smiles while the more mercenary women of his world circled and eyed her clothes.
Then he'd taken her out on Friday night as well, to a semi-formal banking social. He was true to his word – there were no more barely-there dresses, but that didn't mean she had successfully avoided all that the wardrobe wars entailed. He wanted to pay for everything. Dresses, shoes, stockings, makeup, hair, nails, underwear. Belle wasn't having it, and brought a kit of supplies in to work the following Monday. She had a couple pairs of neutral heels, plus the gold ones he bought her previously, a few sets of under-things to change into, makeup, and supplies for basic hair care.
He didn't like that, not at all. Belle wasn't sure if he was frustrated that she chose to keep his spending to a minimum or if he was just annoyed that she didn't want to play dress-up any more now than she had on their first nerve-wracking outing.
She remembered how he would pout: "Belle, dearie, if you won't take full advantage of the goods and services I can provide you, people will start to talk."
"Oh, yes," she'd teased him. "They might start to say that I actually enjoy accompanying you to these tiresome things. Perish the thought."
He'd seemed pleased by that, and had let it drop. But he still tried to add extras at every turn. If a dress looked good on her, he'd have one delivered in a similar style the next day. "To cut down on shopping trips," as if that made it somehow less costly. Or, if she snagged a pair of her convenience store stockings, three pairs of thigh-high, silken ones would appear wrapped in tissue paper from the local boutique. "Consider it like an expense account, dearie."
It frustrated her. She didn't like lavish gift-giving, one – because it made her feel that he would set a precedent of just throwing money at her, like all of his other problems, when the time came and two – because she didn't like to accept more than she could conceivably return. Only the fact that he could afford it, nothing he gave her came dearly, kept her from flat-out refusing him. And she still hadn't opened that box.
They'd been out twenty three times in two months, and he'd never once brought it up. It's not that she wasn't curious, or even that she didn't like pretty baubles. She was, and she did. Belle simply wasn't sure she had forgiven him yet for the "stuffy" night in question, and it felt dishonest to accept his peace-bribe prematurely.
It struck her one day, as they laughed together in the back of his town car over some witty quip he'd made, that Anthony was not an all-together bad looking man. In fact, when he wasn't menacing her away with one of his stony, devil-faces, he was actually very handsome. Maybe in another life, in another world, she'd thought ruefully.
This was not the kind of feeling she could act on. Everything with Anthony was business first. Even their "dates," and she had to remind herself to stop calling them that, were really just business obligations. In the car, she had about a 50/50 chance that he would work quietly on his blackberry or speak to her as they navigated traffic. Even then, if he did speak, sometimes it was just to rant about the office and his interns' general incompetence. Belle got into the habit of bringing a book on some of their longer treks, as they generally helped the time pass.
One especially dull day, when he'd been wrapped up in his blackberry and balancing numbers in his head (she could always tell, he had a slight twitch to his fingertips like someone who was accustomed to pressing them together to make a quick tally), she had very nearly gone insane. She wore a simple sun dress, since the weather was nice, and they were headed out of the city to a reception hall in the country. The bridges and tunnels were packed, she couldn't focus on the words on her page. A vague sense of claustrophobia had taken her.
She'd pressed the button to lower their blacked out windows, to let a bit of sunlight and breeze in, and had been disappointed when they didn't respond. A bought of petulance took her then, and she began to press the button a bit maniacally.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to open the windows and let some light in. But they're stuck." Suddenly, she was suspicious. "Do you have the child safety locks on?"
"Yes," he'd replied, as though that were the most natural thing in the world.
She'd laughed at him, Belle recalled vaguely, and had leaned forward to lower the divide – so she could ask the driver to disengage the lock. Suddenly, traffic had started to move, and she'd been thrown backward, landing squarely in Mr. Gold's lap. He had his arms around her, keeping her from any real harm, and it seemed the driver knew what she was aiming for, because he lowered the windows about an inch without being asked.
Belle hadn't known what to do with herself. He was solid. Very solid, and fit. It was the wiry, muscular build of a man who had once been accustomed to hard labor and had maintained his shape with the regular lifting of weights. It felt good, and that scared her. For his part, Mr. Gold looked equally unsure what to do with her piled unceremoniously into his arms.
"Thank you," she whispered. He'd quickly set her to rights, re-establishing a void of space between them.
"Thank you," Belle had repeated again, a little more sure of herself the second time.
"No matter," he'd muttered, quickly picking up his blackberry again.
"I'll, uh, ask the driver to put the windows back up..." Belle had offered, leaning forward toward the division screen. He'd stopped her almost instantly, saying "Don't worry, I'll get used to it." She remembered him clenching and unclenching his fist as he resumed work, and she'd assumed he was angry. They hadn't spoke at all for the rest of the journey.
That's how it was with him. Work, piled on top of uncertainty, with the faintest dash of attraction. And just because he was behaving himself when he spoke to her did not mean that he had sheathed his claws. Belle spent at least 30 minutes a night with her lips firmly pressed together, her nails digging into her palm, as he brutalized whichever impertinent post-grad had wasted the greater part of his time. She knew he'd make it worse if she tried to intervene, and it was hard to feel sympathy for his victims when they buzzed and pestered him for petty things all night long.
Their tea times didn't improve much either, not that they were ever bad per se... She'd walked in on Astrid Nova crying more than once, but Mary Margaret seemed OK. Gold always sent them hurrying away as soon as Belle arrived with the afternoon tea tray, and a couple of times he even had the decency to look a little ashamed. But it was the cat with the canary kind of guilt, at best – the kind that comes from being caught.
Then again, Belle considered, sometimes they got along grandly like a couple of old pals. Once or twice he'd sprung an invitation on her, and sent an intern to her desk to fetch her "emergency" things. She'd changed into a new dress and cleaned herself up from the safety of his en-suite bathroom while he'd made phone calls and continued working. There was something intimate about sharing space, like he was saying "this is me, doing my thing; but it's fine that you're here too." On those days, when he really let the stony mask of indifference slip, they chatted and laughed without any concerns. Belle liked those days, they reminded her who he was under the never-ending uniforms of custom-tailored suits and silk ties.
Today, they were going to a charity gala. He'd foisted off a floor-length gown and trip to the salon on her, and she'd let him because this was one of the rare events where they would meet both his colleagues and hers. She didn't mind it so much, since they'd planned it all out a week ahead of time. Fully dressed and "fluffed," as she liked to call it, Belle had popped off at her work area to change out of her flats before meeting Gold in his office. He almost always worked late on their "date" nights, since they invariably left the building together for their destinations.
Something told her tonight was the night. Belle felt a little bare in dusky rose gown, and she decided, almost on a whim, to wear his gift from Tiffany & Co. The thought that it wouldn't be appropriate hadn't even crossed her mind; the man had taste.
When she opened her drawer to retrieve it her heart stopped. The box wasn't there. Panic set in. She hadn't locked it away, hadn't seen the need. Did someone steal it? But who would need to search her art supplies? For that matter, she didn't really know what was inside that box in the first place. It might have been a stamped leather key chain, or something equally useless for a night on the town. It was no real loss of property, she knew. But still... she had to tell Anthony. To not open or wear his gift was an entirely different thing from losing it.
The elevator ride up to his office was the longest in her life.
Mary Margaret had gone for the night, as had most of the managerial staff. Thank God for small favors, she thought to herself. He was on the phone when he ushered her in, but ended the call quickly. Here goes nothing.
"Belle, you look lovely."
"Thank you, Anthony. Listen, there's um.. something I need to tell you."
"Oh?" he replied, looking curious. He was texting his driver to bring up the car as she continued.
"I... Well, first of all, it was an accident. But I lost the gift you gave me, the Tiffany box. I'm sorry."
To her surprise, Gold just laughed. "Yes, dearie, I know. 'Box' indeed. So you really never opened it? That's a relief."
"What? Why?" Belle's concern was genuine.
"It was entirely generic and not at all suitable for you. I thought at first that you just didn't like it, and then I forgot. So imagine my surprise when Miss Boyd turned up with the unopened thing along with your damned emergency kit last week."
"Oh, Anthony. I'm sorry, I just.. I didn't feel right accepting..."
"No, of course you didn't, you impossible woman. But you were going to accept it tonight?"
She nodded. "I was going to wear it, if it was..."
Gold gave her his biggest, sneakiest smirk. "Good." He produced a varnished wooden box from his desk, and Belle immediately recognized it as an antique.
"Anthony..." she warned.
"No nonsense," he grinned, sounding gleeful. "We've already established that you're in a gift-getting mood. Arguing over the details will make us late." And, with a flourish, he presented her with an Art Deco silver and diamond choker from sometime in the late 1920s. The entire thing was a series of flourishes, filigree and fans with a hidden clasp that he flicked open deftly. Belle was entirely speechless as he brushed a stray curl from her shoulders and placed the delicate gems around her neck.
She wanted shout at him, to insist that he take it back. It probably cost more than one year's rent. But it was just so perfect, and he had already closed the clasp around her neck by the time she found her voice. Belle squeaked out a breathy thank you, and Gold looped his arm through hers as they exited the room.