They walked together to the front door, where he helped her with her coat and she gathered the rest of her things. “Can I call you a cab?”
“Nope. I’m all good,” she said as he opened the door. “Thanks again, Tristan. It’s been a pleasure.”
“I assure you, Zoey, the pleasure was all mine. Good night.”
He closed the door and Zoey started back down the long hall. It was her turn to feel an indescribable sadness. Tristan Malloy had been the dream client, so kind and accommodating. Then she pushed the down arrow elevator button and reached into her pocket to count the money he gave her.
That’s when she realized she still had his spare key in her pocket.
Chapter 4
Zoey was annoyed. She prided herself on her attention to detail. She trudged back down the hallway to his door, weary from a night on her feet. She gave a knock. After waiting a minute and not getting an answer, she knocked again, harder. Loud enough that it resounded through the empty hall. Again, she waited.
“Odd,” she mumbled under her breath, pulling out her phone and finding his number. She waited for it to ring ten times before disconnecting. It didn’t forward to voice mail.
She stood outside Tristan Malloy’s door and slowly built up the steam that ended in her mind completely running away with her. She had just left him not five minutes ago. What the hell could’ve happened to him? She stared at her phone, silently begging the screen to light up with his callback to no avail. Panic mounted with indecision and she pounded on the door, then pushed the tiny button that was supposed to act as a doorbell, then gave up. She stuck the key in the lock.
She swung open the door and then froze.
Aerosmith?
Gone was the jazz music. The whole apartment throbbed with Steven Tyler screaming the lyrics to “Walk This Way.”
“Tristan?” she called out, knowing her voice wasn’t much above a whisper, given the level of the sound system. The only response she got was a droning, blasting demand for her to keep putting one foot in front of the other and continue.
It was hypnotic, commanding. She began the systematic search of the apartment, similar to the investigation she had made earlier, but with quick glances. The rooms she had looked in earlier were all still empty. When she approached the open door to his bedroom, her skin prickled with anticipation and sweat broke out on her upper lip.
She stopped short as soon as she caught the first glimpse of his reflection in his bathroom mirror.
Gone were the bow tie, sweater vest, and perfectly pressed khakis. His dress shirt was still on, unbuttoned and shirttail pulled out, covering the top of the black leather pants he was now wearing. They weren’t skintight, but as he shook his hips and moved his feet and arms with the music, the white shirt rose and fell. There was no mistaking . . . hiding under that hanging crisp white cotton was an extraordinary pair of buns. His chest was broad, her first impression of seeing his abs in his golf shirt now confirmed. His hair was flying free in playful disarray, the ends damp with sweat. And man could he dance, better than any boy band rock star she ever crushed on. He was singing into a pantomimed microphone, which looked only slightly less silly than if he were improvising with a hairbrush. The song went into the next verse, and he could’ve won a lip sync battle. He had all the moves and the muscles to match. Lean, tight, flexible.
“Holy cannoli,” she breathed as she continued to spy on him while he cut loose. This was a complete departure from the man she had been with all day. Now all she could think of was—this dancing machine had no business being kept hidden from the world. When he belted out the line about giving him a kiss, she was tempted.
He stopped the action the moment he caught sight of her shadow in the mirror, accompanied by an actual mic-drop. He swiveled quickly, coming face-to-face with her, still standing a few feet away in his bedroom. They were both embarrassed, but for different reasons. He rushed past her to turn down the volume control knob on the wall in his room. She caught a whiff of leather mixed with sweat and the last remnants of Old Spice.
“Zoey,” he said, making a concerted effort to sound steady while trying to catch his breath. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
Despite her legitimately having broken into his home, he still couldn’t stop being polite.
“I forgot to give you back your key,” Zoey stammered. She held out her hand to show it to him, unable to take her wide eyes off his mostly bare chest as the shirt opened wider. “I tried knocking. And calling. But I guess you didn’t hear it over the Aerosmith.”
Tristan cast his eyes downward, noticed the state of his shirt, and grabbed both sides of it to close the gap. “Sorry.”
Zoey wasn’t sure if the apology was meant for missing her knocking or for the unexpected peep show. “I was going to leave it on the kitchen counter, but, you know, I was just doing what Steven Tyler told me to.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he replied, concentrating on his fingers fumbling to get his shirt buttoned back up. “He’s very persuasive.”
The trance of seeing him in all the skin and leather-clad glory began to wane, replaced with an irrational anger. Forget that Zoey had stumbled upon him uninvited in the privacy of his own bathroom and his first response was an apology. Forget that in reality they were little more than strangers. Her head was spinning with a hundred questions. On the top of that list—just what kind of game was Tristan Malloy playing?
“When you didn’t answer, I was worried something happened to you,” she told him, her voice registering irritation. “I’m not sure if I still should be. Nice pants.”
“I bought them online,” he said sheepishly. “I think they’re too big.”
“You’re supposed to buy them a size smaller than you would normally wear, because they stretch. And most people go to a store and try them on.” What she was really thinking was, if they were any tighter, she may have had a stroke. Then she mentally cursed herself for not checking out his closet, since it was obviously where he kept his secrets. “Getting in touch with your wild side, were you?”
Tristan looked down again at his white sock–wearing feet and shuffled from one of them to the other before saying sheepishly, “It’s how I let go of stress. By pretending I’m a rock star.”
He sounded so contrite, when he had every reason to be mad. He was perfectly within his rights to tell her off. The lost boy was back. Zoey’s ire evaporated. “I didn’t know you were stressed. I thought the evening went very well.”
Not yet brave enough to meet her gaze, he went over to the corner of his bed and sat down, running a hand through his hair. “It did, as far as the food was concerned at any rate. But like I told you, I’m terrible in social situations.”
Zoey let out a heavy sigh before going over to sit beside him, their legs nearly touching. “You seemed so relaxed with those people. I had no idea.”
He finally looked at her. “You’re right. You really don’t.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She watched the emotions play across his face. He was debating whether or not he wanted to open up. If he could trust her.
“You’ll think I’m an idiot.”
“Probably,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t feel better unloading. I already think you have a freaky Jekyll-and-Hyde thing going on.”
They exchanged small smiles, and the tension started to ease.
“Remember me mentioning I’m a terrible judge of character?”
“Of course.” She remembered the entire night from start to finish.
“My first stop in the States after my grandfather died wasn’t New York. It was Las Vegas.”
“You wanted to move there?”
“I was considering it. I thought it would be warm, which I was used to. I didn’t think it would be as hot as it was. There’s no ocean breezes in the desert. But I had heard it was amazing there, full of every sight and sound imaginable. I didn’t care all that much about gambling. There are casinos back home, t
hough I could count on one hand the times I had been to them. But I had money to burn and wasn’t opposed to it either. I booked myself a fancy room at a ritzy hotel for an extended stay. I figured I’d take a little time to live the high life and splurge myself out of my grief.”
He paused. They sat alone together in silence until Zoey reached out, placing her hand on the butter-soft leather covering his leg. “That’s hardly a crime, Tristan. Even if you lost a fortune, it was yours to lose.”
“Agreed. But I don’t know, I didn’t expect so many people being rude and drunk and inappropriate. And everyone seemed to be with groups of other people they knew. Bachelor parties and brides wearing sashes and tiaras, all partying with their friends, having a blast. Extended families on vacations and reunions. Stuff I watched from the safety of a slot machine. I was in the adult entertainment capital of the world, and within two days I felt like I was alone on Mars.”
He began to frown. Zoey got it. It was a feeling she knew well.
“That night I went to the bar to have a nightcap. That’s when I met Veronica. She was beautiful, effervescent, friendly. I got up the nerve to nod in her direction and she struck up a conversation. Next thing I knew, I was buying her a drink and we ended up talking the rest of the night away. We started meeting every night at the bar, around the same time. We talked about deep and meaningful subjects. It was like she was reading my mind most of the time. I really felt a connection with her. I was smitten even before she turned on the flirting and touching.”
Zoey thought she would save him and cut directly to the chase. “Let me guess, she was a gold digger who took you for everything you had?”
He gave a pained shake of his head. “Not everything. Just the thousand dollars she said I owed her.”
“Oh, my God.” She raised a quick hand and added a cough to mask the laugh that escaped before adding, “She was a hooker.”
This time Tristan nodded. “She used the term call girl, which is kind of ironic, since I never got her phone number.”
“You knew prostitution is legal in Vegas, right?” Zoey felt so sorry for him.
“Yeah, but I thought you had to go to an actual bordello. It felt so natural being with her. When she suggested going back to my room to have sex, I couldn’t get her out of the bar fast enough. The whole elevator ride she was all over me. I thought I was the luckiest guy alive.”
“She didn’t make herself clear?” Zoey asked in disbelief. “Isn’t there some sort of protocol for those things? Like, don’t you have to agree to the price or something?”
He shrugged before returning all his concentration to his sock-covered big toe. “She may have, I don’t remember. I already felt guilty for having sex without any emotional commitment. As soon as it was over, she started putting her clothes back on. To lighten the blow, she told me she was giving me her discount rate because she had genuinely enjoyed talking to me. To say I was humiliated is an understatement.”
“So why did you pay her? You could’ve told her to get lost.” Zoey asked the question despite knowing the answer. He was a gentleman who sounded like he spent his young life taking orders like a good soldier.
“I was so mortified by my own stupidity, I just wanted to get her out of there. It was a small price to pay. What if she called the cops or made a scene? I would’ve died on the spot. And I’ve read stories about pimps. I don’t know if she had one, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance of finding out.”
“I forgot about them. Yeah, you did the right thing.” She wanted desperately to say something that would wipe the self-recrimination off his face.
“We used a condom, but I walked around for a year waiting to drop dead from some disease before I went to a doctor here in Manhattan and confessed. The only saving grace was what a nonissue the whole episode was to him. He told me with what he’d seen over his career, on a scale of one to ten, my story was a two.”
“You checked out okay, right?”
“I’m fine.” He tried to smile and shrugged again. “Still a pretty pathetic way to have your first sexual encounter.”
Oh, hell no! Zoey’s inner voice shouted. He was too nice a guy to have been dissed and dismissed in such a fashion. Did guys value their virginity the same way girls were supposed to? It didn’t matter what the correct answer was. She hadn’t known Tristan long, but she was sure he valued his.
“Almost everybody’s first time is a train wreck. You are not alone in that.” It was the best she could come up with. “So, what happened next?”
“Isn’t all that bad enough?” Tristan’s chuckle had a ring of a weight being lifted off his shoulders.
“It is!” Zoey laughed in agreement. “But you might as well finish the story of how you got here.”
“I stayed in that hotel room, in the dark, for a week. I didn’t get out of bed. The thought of running into her again made me want to throw up. The next time I left that room was when I checked out of the hotel. I took a cab to the airport, decided on going to New York, and that was it.”
There were still scads of questions Zoey wanted to ask, but it was hard to broach the topics without revealing that she had scoped out his place while he was gone. Luckily, she didn’t have to.
“I had all these great visions in my mind of how I would blend in with the scenery here. I could play golf after a short ride in almost any direction. I could visit museums and enjoy fine dining. But I couldn’t shake what had happened in Vegas and felt like an enormous loser. That made it next to impossible to make any real connections, let alone friends. Eating alone in public all the time left me feeling like more of a misfit. Even in the public library, I thought I could hear people laughing at me. I had my first panic attack in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Hard to remain impassive when a man looks like he’s about to cry. This poor guy couldn’t seem to catch a break, no matter how luxurious his surroundings. “So you turned your home into a museum.”
If he had realized she had given herself away as a snoop, he didn’t let on. “It didn’t start out that way. It started out with the purchase of a few lithographs of famous works. Then I got up the nerve to venture out to art auctions, where all I had to do was hold up a little paddle. Once word spread that I had money, sellers came to me. Before long, I had my own collection. I had the kitchen remodeled so that I could cook for myself, something I always enjoyed doing with Grandma at the Cove. Golf supplies the fresh air and exercise, but I can do it by myself. I spend the rest of my time cleaning this place and trying to fend off people like the group you met tonight.”
“Did it put an end to the panic attacks?”
“It did. Only now I’m afraid I’m not just awkward, I’m paralyzed.”
There are times in one’s life where you reach a crossroads. When your only options are to stay in your comfort zone or take a leap of faith. Zoey had taken that leap when she came to New York, and while it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, it was a million times better than what she had left behind. Tristan had already proved he could take care of himself. Now he just needed to enjoy life. He deserved it as much as she did. The things they held in common vastly outnumbered their differences. The words tumbled forth from her mouth.
“Tristan, I’d like to think you consider me a friend. And it looks like you could sure use one. I think I can help you, if you’d let me.”
Chapter 5
When Zoey returned to her own apartment, it was well past midnight. Tristan insisted his car service drive her home. She’d spent most of that ride devising a plan that she could implement without overwhelming him. She wasn’t a psychiatrist, she was a kindred spirit, after all. If she went too fast it could make matters worse for the gentle loner. It would be a tragedy to end up leaving him so jaded, he would spend the rest of his life a bitter man. Kind, respectful men were a hot commodity, and he just needed to add a little self-esteem to be quite a catch. He had willingly put his trust in her, and she didn’t want to fail him.
The driver wh
o picked her up gave her a quiet hello and nothing more. The company likely had the instructions that the rides from this address had a “no interaction” policy.
From the safety of the Lincoln Town Car and its silent, focused driver, she pulled the money Tristan gave her out of her pocket and counted it. Tristan had given her double her price quote, a 100 percent tip. She had to toughen him up, or the city would eat him alive.
Ruth was on the futon in the living room, waiting for her, wearing pajamas decorated with cows jumping over moons, the television on for background noise.
“I was starting to worry about you,” she said, looking up from the magazine in her lap.
“I can’t believe you’re home,” Zoey replied. She tossed her bags in their designated spot. “Aren’t you supposed to be up to your ice cubes in Thirsty Thursday?”
“I was out, but when I texted you and you didn’t answer me, I cut the night short.”
“Sorry.” Zoey pulled her phone out of her coat pocket, turning it back on. “I forgot I had it off. I didn’t want to be disturbed while working.”
“You mean you didn’t want to deal with Derek. How did the job go?”
Before Zoey could recap the evening, her phone started to ring.
“Speak of the devil.” Ruth smirked.
Zoey rolled her eyes and answered the call. She headed to the bedroom for some privacy.
“I’m not finished with you yet!” Ruth called out. Zoey gave a backward wave while still moving.
“Hello?” Zoey said, closing the bedroom door behind her.
“Where were you so late?”
She saw no point in playing dumb.
“Derek, if this is supposed to be a friendly call, you’re going about it the wrong way. And if it’s the beginning of an interrogation, you’re on the fast track to me hanging up.”
“I’m sorry.” He instantly scaled back the heavy handedness. “But I don’t think you know how much I worry about you up there.”
“That’s nice, but I’m a big girl. And I don’t see you showing the same level of concern for my sister.”
Under the Table Page 4