Still, Harlow needed a few seconds to gather her own wits. As her mind began to clear, she noticed a man beside them, glancing from her to Ryske, confusion and maybe a tad of fear on his face.
She coughed and covered the way she’d grabbed for Ryske by coiling her fingers around his upper arm like she was doing something perfectly normal. Something that was allowed in polite society.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, I… didn’t mean to interrupt… I…” His gaze rested on her. “I felt like I should know you… that we’ve met, but I couldn’t quite place it…”
“You think she’s never heard that line before?” Ryske spat.
Soothing Ryske, she stroked his arm while their guest blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest anything im—”
“We’ve never met,” she said, managing a practiced smile. “But, I do know who you are.” That surprised both men. Offering the hand of friendship seemed like the least she could do. “I’m Harlow Sweeting, and you are the brilliant Christian Hyslop.”
Her knowledge took him aback, which made her laugh because he’d been the one to recognize her first. “I am, but… I’m sorry, I still—”
“I’m a friend of Ophelia Hagan,” she said.
The absent beauty’s connection to her and to the man at her side was the reason Harlow chose not to introduce Ryske. Withholding information was smart and could prove valuable in future. Though, at a basic level, Harlow just didn’t want the lies to overlap.
If, through the grapevine, Hyslop knew that Ophelia was engaged to Ryske, it could prove difficult to explain why they’d been panting all over each other a moment before.
“Of course! Ophelia,” Hyslop said. Harlow gestured to the chair next to Ryske, indicating that Hyslop should sit, so he did. “How is she?”
“Wonderful the last time I saw her,” Harlow said, though it had been almost a week since she’d visited her friend. “Tell me, did you get the investment Jarvis was helping you with?”
If the fates were fair, she should get bonus points for saying his name like it wasn’t poison. Ryske’s acknowledgement of a fingertip on her knee suggested he’d thought the same thing.
“No,” Hyslop said, shifting in a display of disappointment. “That fell through. We didn’t get the chance to go to the meeting.”
“That is a shame,” she said. “Ophelia says such wonderful things about your brilliant mind.”
“Ophelia is too kind,” Hyslop said, noticing that Rupert was approaching with a tray-carrying server in his wake. “Well, it was nice to see you again.” Hyslop stood up, opening his hand to request hers, so he could offer a polite kiss to her knuckle. “Tell Ophelia I say hello.”
Hyslop left the table and Rupert sat. “Friend of yours?” he asked, looking beyond her to Ryske. He’d probably assumed Hyslop was a friend of Ryske’s, which was just fine, it saved Harlow from coming up with an explanation.
“Something like that,” Ryske said.
Rupert touched her shoulder and nodded to the corner. “Charnock is holding court over there.”
Selecting her drink from the tray the server had left on their table, she enjoyed its scent and its taste. “You have fun with that, honey. Let me know how it works out.”
He laughed. “Okay, I’ll be back.”
Rupert kissed her cheek and left the table to go wait his turn to kiss Edgar Charnock’s ring, as it were.
Watching him go made her shiver. “I hate that guy.”
“Can’t say I’m fond of him,” Ryske muttered, picking a drink from the tray.
She switched her glare over her shoulder to him. “I was talking about Edgar Charnock.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I don’t know that guy.”
“You don’t really hate Rupert,” she said, relaxing in her chair. “He’s not a bad person. He never beat me or anything like that.”
“Fucked you though,” he said, finishing his drink in two mouthfuls. “I don’t hate him… Feel sorry for him, to be honest.”
That piqued Harlow’s curiosity. “Why?”
“Because he’s at the end of his time with you,” Ryske said, being discreet about curving an arm around her to rest it on the back of her chair so he could draw slow circles on her spine. “I’m at the start of mine.” Harlow didn’t get a chance to respond because he leaned back and carried on talking. “You ever think about a tramp stamp?”
“No,” she said, putting down her glass to twist farther toward him. Cupping her breast, she drew a line under the curve of it. “I want a tattoo here… Well, it will start here, curve under my boob and go down to my hip. Charlie has this great design; we’ve been working on it together. It’s tribal lines kind of like yours, but they’re thinner, more delicate. It would be a sort of hourglass shape, wider under my breast and on my hip, but narrower in the middle.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
“My tattoo guy,” she said. Fixated on her body where she’d drawn the shape of the tattoo against the side of her torso, he started to shake his head. “No? Why not?”
Ryske’s eyes narrowed. “Is he gay?”
“Is he… No, he’s not gay. Why? Do you have a fantasy about doing it with a tattoo artist?”
Picking up her glass, he managed to sample some of her drink before she could snatch it away. “I’ve done it with a tattoo artist… few of them actually.”
Scanning the room, she sought a distraction from that visual. “Course you have,” she muttered, pleased to have liquor in her hand.
Ryske wasn’t a gentleman about it and leaned in to murmur in her ear. “Jealous?”
“You’re in enough trouble, so why you would think playing with me is a good idea…” she said, examining the various groups congregated in the glittering space.
His fingertip trailed up her spine. “I always want to play with you.” His finger kept trailing up and down, sending little shivers of tickling awareness through her. “I agree, no tramp stamp… But, you should get my initials tattooed somewhere… Huntley Ryske’s Harlow.”
She tipped her chin toward her shoulder. “That would be HRH.”
Laughing, he straightened from his slouch until his chin almost met her shoulder too. “Exactly. You are my queen.”
“I don’t want to be your queen,” she said, happy to hitch her chin in defiance. Though, her next thought made it difficult to keep a straight face. “I want to be your whore.”
“You’re that too,” he said, sinking against the back of his seat to let his fingers return to their delicate stroking of her spine.
Lifting her hand, she presented her star tattoo. “That’s for you.”
“I know,” he said. “It won’t be as significant after you get the other four.”
“Other four?”
Ryske sat up to take off his jacket and presented his shirt sleeve to her. “Take that out.”
Undoing his cufflink, she watched him fold back his cuff to reveal that he had a new solid black star on his wrist. Though it was in line with the originals, the new star was smaller and had a second concentric star around it in a thin line of black ink, which highlighted it as more significant.
“Oh my God,” she said, touching the edge. “When did you get that?”
“When I was dead,” he said. “Had to wait for Bale to finish with the antibiotic shit. Dover did it… he’s the steadiest hand of us all.”
She hadn’t noticed it in Floyd’s, maybe because she’d been too focused on his dick. Last night, in her dark bedroom, her focus had been elsewhere. Overwhelmed and flattered, Harlow traced the shape with her nail.
His request rang in her ears. “Where?” she asked, her attention springing to his.
Ryske’s brows rose in question. “Where?”
“You can pick anywhere on my body,” she said.
“Uh, your pussy,” he said, making her laugh.
She should have known he’d pick there. “Okay. We will have to disguise it as something else so Rupert won’t kno
w it’s another man’s name.”
His brows snapped down to a frown. “What are we talking about?”
“Your initials.”
He grabbed her arm. “I thought we were playing pin my tail on the Trinket… I’ll get my whole fucking name tattooed in block capital letters down there if I want; that prick won’t ever set eyes on it.”
“You’re being illogical, we just talked about this,” she said, peeling his fingers from her arm so she could fold his sleeve down and return his cufflink to its rightful place. “We’re not going to be together.”
Flipping his hand over, he snatched her wrist, making her gasp. “We are together.”
“No,” she said, struggling to twist her hand out of his grip, finding it impossible at this proximity without making a scene. “We’re not and you don’t pout, so stop pretending you do.”
“Damn right, I don’t pout, I take action,” he said. “Haven’t met a challenge I can’t conquer yet.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Ryske, because you just did,” she said, twisting and pulling. “Let me go, Crash.”
Gripping her tighter, he gave her another yank. “What happened to ‘Tighter, baby’? Huh?”
Something about those words propelled her into a flashback. Suddenly, she was back in Floyd’s on her knees next to Ryske, his blood spilling on the floor. The country club had vanished. The people, the music, the light, all of it, and it became dark.
Cold, scared, and desperate, she existed only in that black moment. “Please, baby,” she murmured.
“Harlow.” She heard his voice, but was too immersed in the memory to respond. Ryske got hold of her and shook her hard. “Trinket!” The force of his stern tone coupled with the vigor of his shake snapped her into the present. She blinked into his gaze, trying to focus. “Where’d you go, baby?”
His fingertips grazed her cheek and kept going around to her hair until he was gripping the side of her head.
“Everything okay?”
Harlow had to forget whatever she’d been about to say when she heard Rupert’s voice behind her. Turning out of Ryske’s hold, she found Rupert lowering into the seat at her side. Her parents and sister were joining them too.
“Everything’s great,” she said, and made herself smile. “I’m just going to use the restroom.”
Leaving the table was her way of seeking a reprieve. Just when life was supposed to be making sense again, she was more confused than ever. It felt as if she was being pulled in so many directions that there were moments even breathing was a chore.
This wasn’t the life she wanted. Country clubs and polite conversation were supposed to be her past, not her future.
But, what choice did she have? The deal with Rupert still stood. She couldn’t go back on it just because Ryske’s lie had set them on this course. Whether Harlow wanted it or not, this was going to be her life. She would hold onto whatever fun she could while it lasted, but there was no way it could last forever.
25
Funny that her thought on the way to the restroom had been about savoring the fun while it lasted.
On her return to the party, Harlow’s ponderings ran more along the vein of how torturous the rest of the night would be. Ditching Ryske at the table would be fun, if that didn’t mean leaving him with full, unfettered access to her family. No way he’d let it slide if she snuck out on him. God only knew what he’d tell her folks if she left him unsupervised.
Using both hands to twist a length of her hair, she wound through the partygoers, taking a lay of the land. Her apathy ran in stark contrast to the smiling faces of everyone else in the room. They all exuded nothing but enthusiasm for the event… It was probably fake… Turned out she hadn’t been raised that far from people with Ryske’s skillset after all.
Someone stepped into her path.
Assuming the move had been unintentional, she stepped to the other side, intending to go past him, except the guy got in her way.
When he did it again, she raised her attention to his and grinned while exhaling a forced laugh. “And, what are we doing?” she asked.
He had the deepest blue eyes she’d ever seen in her life. They were clear and keen and only emphasized by the contrast of his jet black hair.
When his lips widened in a curve, he looked incredibly pleased with himself. “Hi,” he said, his voice a languorous purr.
“Hi,” she replied, tilting her head. “I don’t know you.”
Taking her hand, he traced his fingertips from her wrist to her knuckles. “Not yet.”
He started to raise her hand toward his mouth as though he intended to kiss it.
Harlow tensed to prevent him from making contact. “Listen, buddy, if you’re hitting on me, you’ve really got to take a number, ‘cause my dance card is full.”
The curl in his lips tightened like he was containing a laugh. “Damn, man,” he muttered. “How does he always get the best ones?”
As if the question conjured him, Ryske materialized. Swerving around the stranger, he swept an arm around her waist to pull her against his side.
“Ha, Penzance,” he said, then lowered his voice and spoke through his static smile. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’m talking to this beautiful woman,” he said. “You see her? She’s beautiful.”
Ryske pulled this Penzance person’s hand away from hers, which she was fine with. Though he seemed to have forgotten they had a cover of their own to consider. Reminding him, Harlow pushed Ryske’s hand from her hip and sidestepped out of his embrace.
“This beautiful woman is spoken for,” Ryske said, glancing at her hand when she wiped the back of it down his shirt a few times, ridding herself of the remnants of Penzance’s touch.
It wasn’t that Penzance had actually kissed her, but she was perturbed that he’d taken the liberty of stroking her.
Ryske picked up her other hand to reveal her tattoo. Penzance clicked his fingers. “I thought I recognized that,” he said. Like it was loose on his shoulders, his head flopped down and to the side, so he could take a closer look at her. “You got this one to mark herself for you… that’s deep cover.”
“If it was, you just blew it,” Ryske said. “Want to tell me who you’re working?”
“Nothing as beautiful as you’ve got,” Penzance said and clucked his tongue in appreciation. “How close you been to her panties?”
Harlow took her tongue from where it was resting in the corner of her mouth. “I’m not wearing panties.”
Penzance’s brows rose fast. Ryske tried to curve a hand around her hip again, but she swatted it away. “Oh my God, I think I’m in love,” Penzance muttered.
The guy was attractive, no doubt about that. Probably around the same age as Ryske and his crew, it was obvious from the energy of the air that these men had history.
“I’m not that easily swayed,” she said.
Penzance grinned. “My dick’s bigger than his.”
“Is that any way to talk to a lady?” she asked, swiping Ryske’s possessive, snaking hand away again.
“Gotta do something to get your attention,” he said.
Harlow propped a fist on her cocked hip. “Why do you need my attention? Am I your mark?” She distracted him by licking her lips and plumping them. “Tell you what, Mr. Penzance, you prove you’re not a liar and I’ll let you frisk me for anything I’ve got on me.”
That drew him closer. “Can I keep what I find?”
Without stepping away, she leaned back. “I’d say yes, except you already lost,” she whispered, intriguing him. “You can’t prove you’re not a liar because you are one.”
“Am I?” he asked. “How do you figure that?”
“Because it’s not my attention you want to get, it’s his…”
Nodding sideways, she assessed Penzance’s reaction as he checked out the crowded table at the other side of the room headed by Edgar Charnock.
There was admiration in his gaze when it trailed ba
ck to her. “How do you figure that, Precious?”
Her confidence level was high. “Because he’s the richest man in the room. He’s pompous, arrogant, full of himself, and has complete faith in his own ability to notice anyone who wants to slide behind his defenses. He has a daughter who despises him and a gullible favorite granddaughter with her eyes on the prize… If you want to make a fortune, you’d be a fool not to aim high and commit yourself to the long game.”
“And that’s why you figure I want his attention?”
“No,” she said, resting her shoulder on Ryske’s arm. “I figure that because you were eyeing up Charnock’s granddaughter when I walked in here.”
Her powers of observation seemed to knock him down a peg. “You, I—”
“Emma is not the prettiest or the smartest in the room. You’re a man who likes a challenge and she wouldn’t pose one if sex was your goal… She’s young and gobbles up male attention. You have the skills and the looks to get into the panties of the pinnacle of the room, the real prize, the most obstinate and alluring woman present. A man like you doesn’t go for a girl like Emma without an ulterior motive… I trust you have the skills to pursue this without making that obvious?”
“I…” Penzance looked to Ryske and then to her. “I do.”
“Good. I assume Penzance is a nickname. How do you like to be introduced?”
His mouth fell open. “Vane… my name is Samuel Vane.”
Harlow switched her focus to Ryske and began to straighten his tie. “Excellent. You’ll have more of a chance to gain favor in the family if you make it seem that you want to impress Edgar for the sake of winning his granddaughter. He believes in his own importance. Get to her through him, thus you get to him, etc…” Turning her head, she made brief eye contact with Vane to make sure he understood. After she saw that Vane had absorbed what she said, she slapped her hands onto Ryske’s chest. “Crash, you’re going to flirt with his wife.”
That startled him. “Excuse me? I’m going to what?”
“Kylie is young, and she is beautiful. She’s a swimsuit model.”
“I don’t need her measurements,” he said.
Go It Alone (A Go Novel Book 2) Page 20