by Dani Collins
“That’s a lot of money for them to take one look at me and refuse to say anything without a lawyer present.” Her stomach was nothing but snakes and butterflies as the car ate up the miles.
“We’ll see.”
“Are you enjoying this?” she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.
“A little.” He side-eyed her. “It’s a puzzle. I’m curious. And I want you to have answers.” He reached to squeeze her hand.
That sounded a little like he was emotionally invested, but she didn’t tease him over it. She let the sparks of possibility dance in her, even though she knew it was an indulgence she couldn’t afford.
A short while later, they stepped from the car in front of a villa surrounded by rows upon rows of grapevines. A dog wagged itself nearly to pieces as it waddled up to them.
A middle-aged woman came out of a stone cottage nearby. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel. Her smile fell away into shock.
“When they said a high-profile couple from New York insisted on staying here, I didn’t realize...” The woman gave Reve a confused look, perhaps expecting Oriel’s Indian husband, before mustering a fresh smile for them both. “I’m Farrah. Let me show you into the house. My husband, Charles, will bring your luggage if you’d like to give me the key to the car.”
“Reve Weston. And—”
“I know who you are.” Farrah flipped her tea towel onto her shoulder.
Reve left it at that and said, “We’re hoping to speak to the doctor’s family. Are you...?”
“No relation.” Farrah shook her head. “Charles and I arrived ten years ago. Answered an ad. The family needed someone to run things because the doctor had passed away and he was the one with the passion for the vineyard.”
“Dr. Wagner?” Nina cocked her head. “The one who worked at the clinic?”
“That’s what I was told. Like I say, before our time, but I understand he came from Austria every week or so and had all sorts of famous clients.” Farrah opened the door into the villa. “His family still lives in Austria. I run this as a vacation rental. Charles manages the vineyard.”
Inside, the house was bright and well maintained if slightly dated. It had a beautiful terrace with expansive views of the vineyard and the silver river below.
Charles came in with their luggage and Reve asked him to leave it by the door. He took back the key and they drove straight into the village. The investigator hadn’t had much luck at the café, but Reve went in while Nina stayed in the car, sunglasses on like an undercover cop on stakeout.
Reve came back with pastries and the news. “The owner will ask his father if he remembers a pregnant American woman collapsing twenty-five years ago, but the old man’s memory is failing. We shouldn’t expect too much. I left him my card.”
“Humph.”
They tried the small medical clinic that serviced the village. The receptionist had no desire to tell anyone the names of any retired medical professionals living in the area. Then they drove to the spa, which was swarming with tourists and didn’t inspire Nina to believe there was much they could learn there, either.
They returned to the vineyard and took a walk to stretch their legs and breathe the warm, earth-flavored air, but she was feeling very disheartened.
“It was a waste of time to come all this way, wasn’t it?” Not to mention the cost to him.
“You wanted to know what you could find. Now you do. Did you expect it all to become crystal clear the second we arrived?”
“Kind of,” she said glumly.
“Come here.” He drew her into his embrace.
It felt so natural to be with him like this, leaning on him and lifting her mouth for the kiss he lingered over. How could this be anything other than the way they were meant to be?
“Where do we go from here?” she asked with a forlorn pang in her throat.
“I’ll call Oriel’s husband if you want.” His hands roamed her back, but his touch didn’t soothe the prickles of anguish gathering within her.
“I can do that.” She drew back. “And once I do... Where do we go?”
He dragged in a pained breath, and he gripped her arms briefly before setting her away from him. “This is what I was trying to avoid,” he muttered.
“I know. And I’m not blaming you or trying to pressure you into anything, but I don’t want to say goodbye, Reve. I...” She clutched at her elbows, feeling hollow inside. “I feel safe with you.”
He swore under his breath and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t. I feel as though I’m losing every part of myself when I’m with you, and that’s terrifying.”
His words set fire to her chest.
Whatever anguish came into her face made him wince and turned away.
“I can’t be like you. Open and trusting.”
“Because of her.” She meant the woman who had posted his sex tape.
“Her, my father, my aunt. Anytime I’ve let myself believe in others they have always let me down.”
“What happened with your aunt?”
“Nothing,” he said flatly, his profile sharp as chipped granite. He squinted as he looked to the past, and his voice grew raspy. “She turned up looking just like the photo I had of my mother. I remember this shred of hope coming awake inside me. I thought, Now things will get better.” His face contorted with helpless anger. “But she looked around and asked my father, ‘How can you live like this?’ and left me there.”
His bitterness was so tangible she tasted it on her own tongue. She felt his crushing disappointment as a profound weight on her chest.
“And then I left,” she said with anguish, hating herself for doing that to him.
“What were you going to stay for?” he asked with self-disgust. “I broke what we had. You’re right about that. I am broken.”
“Reve, don’t.” She started toward him, but he stiffened in rejection and she halted. “You’re not. I never should have said that. I was being cruel because I was hurt.”
“It’s still true. I’ll never be able to give you what you want, Nina. I could go through the motions. Marry you and give you kids, but you want more than a couple of boxes ticked. You want things inside me that just aren’t there.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore,” she cried, unable to imagine finding happiness with someone else when the price was him.
“You do.” He rounded on her. “You want the kind of love you’ve always known. I won’t let you compromise yourself and settle for less because we happen to be good in bed.”
His voice was so harsh and final that her mouth began to quiver. She couldn’t stand here and start bawling like a child.
“I’m going to run a bath,” she choked, and hurried inside.
CHAPTER TEN
HER VISION WAS so blurred by the onset of tears that she tripped over their suitcases, still in the foyer.
She cursed loudly and bitterly as she went down. The floor jarred her palm and her knee crashed onto the stone tiles. For a brief second, she sat there stunned by the lightning-sharp agony of her fall as it outshone the despair overwhelming her.
Reve lurched in behind her. “What happened? Are you okay?” He swore when he saw her trying to pick herself up amid their tumbled bags. “That’s my fault. I told him to leave them there.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
When he tried to help her, she recoiled, unable to let him touch her right now. She would fall apart for sure.
A grim silence formed around him as he picked up both their bags and started up the stairs.
She followed to the master bedroom, afraid to so much as thank him because she was on the brink of a breakdown.
Before she had properly taken in the luxurious room in cream and moss tones, Reve slipped around her and walked out—with his own case in his hand.
Reve
. His name stayed locked in her throat, hot and sharp. He wouldn’t even sleep with her.
Biting her lip, she took slow, deliberate breaths, telling herself she would wait until she was in the tub, but agony was gushing upward within her, filling her with greater and greater swathes of misery. She was sniffling and gasping, going through the motions of opening the taps and waiting for the water to warm, trying not to hate herself for being honest with him. She only wished—
Reve walked in.
“Do you ever knock?” she cried, and swiped guiltily at her wet cheeks. Through her dejection, a streak of hope flashed to life.
His hard expression became even more severe. He moved around her to turn off the water. “I have to show you something.”
His voice was grim, and her blood went cold in her veins.
Dread became a heavy boulder atop the emotions that were sitting under the surface of her control. Leaving the drip of the tap behind, she followed him from the master bedroom to the end of the upper hall. His suitcase stood outside the door of a spare bedroom as far from the master as possible.
Okay, I get it. You regret ever meeting me.
He pointed into the room. “Look.”
She peered through the open doorway. It wasn’t a bedroom. It was a den with a sofa that she imagined pulled out into a bed. There were floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with books and board games and DVDs. In one corner sat a wooden desk with a globe and an old-fashioned-looking landline telephone. On the other wall, a television sat on a credenza. A gaming console was hooked up to it, and the controllers were on the coffee table.
“What?” She moved to glance out the window. It was the uphill view of the vineyard, pretty but nothing she hadn’t seen already.
“Look.” He followed her in and lifted the crocheted tablecloth that served as a doily on the credenza. “Twelve drawers. What do you want to bet these little cardholders once held labels that went A/B, C/D, E/F...?”
“Oh, my God.” She began yanking at the pulls, running the alphabet as she did. “K/L—They’re all locked.”
“It’s full, though.” He grabbed an end, and the tendons in his neck and arms strained as he tried to lift it. He gave it a push, but it was solid as a rock. “They haven’t painted behind it. This has been here for years.”
“You don’t think it holds the doctor’s records. Not here. Not still.”
“Why not? Say you’re a doctor traveling from Austria to treat private patients. Where would you store their records?”
“At the clinic.”
“Until they’re discharged, sure. After that, it’s risky to leave them there with staff and other patients coming and going. No sense dragging them back and forth to Austria. Maybe you get a couple of your burliest laborers to drag this behemoth up to your home office and store them here. When you die, no one bothers to clean it out because it’s locked and this is just a spare room where the kids play video games.”
“Where’s the key? On a keychain in Austria?” She moved to the desk and started rummaging through the drawers, finding only crayons and coloring books.
“Is there a letter opener?” Reve ran his hand around the edges of the credenza, then lifted the doily to expose the lock mechanism. “This will take about five seconds to pop.”
“We can’t break in.”
“What’s the difference between that and unlocking it with a key?”
“Good point. We should contact the family and ask for permission to search it. Otherwise, we might invade the privacy of living and dead celebrities.” She stared at the cabinet with equal measures of temptation and regret.
“That’s exactly why I think it still holds the doctor’s records. It’s a solid asset for a family to hold on to.”
“Reve! That is by far the most cynical thing you have ever said. We don’t know anything about this family. Do you really think they would keep something like this as an insurance policy? So they could bribe a dead doctor’s patients if they ran out of money?”
“Yes. Nina—” He stared at her as he gave his head a bemused shake. “The more I realize how naive you really are, the more I realize how badly I took advantage of you. This entire property is a laundry for the doctor’s side hustle with celebrity patients. Do you not see that?”
“You don’t know that. You’re just guessing.” As she said it, she felt the sting of truth. They were here because her birth had been covered up by this doctor. It stood to reason that more than one crime had been committed over the years. She folded her arms, saying defensively, “I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“Me, for instance. I always thought you were blowing smoke when you complimented me, being sweet so I’d let you stay in my home. Turns out you’re actually that innocent and charming. I’m not.”
* * *
“What are you doing?” Nina asked as Reve moved into the hall to open his suitcase.
“Criming.” He found his nail clippers and clicked the file open like a jackknife. He would never be the kind of man she wanted or deserved, but at least he could help her unlock the secrets of her past. “If you prefer not to be implicated, I suggest you leave.”
He tried to slide the file into the mechanism and discovered it was seized from lack of use. Might need oil, so he crouched to see if he could slide the file along the crack and release the mechanism that way.
“How do you know how to do that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She was still hugging herself, her shoulders hunched. “Yes.”
His chest felt constricted by coils of thick rope that were sliding and burning across his naked skin.
I don’t know what I want anymore.
She didn’t want him. He knew that much. She only thought she did because he’d hidden the worst of himself from her. It was time she understood why it was best they stop their involvement and part for good.
“I used to break into cars.”
“For money?”
“Kind of. I learned to do it at the junkyard where I grew up, so I could strip parts and sell them to local shops. Then a couple of men from those shops started asking me to break into cars on the street. They would say it was their uncle’s car or it belonged to a customer. When I was picked up by the police, I realized I was being used to take the initial risk. They stole them once the car was open. That’s when I learned that innocent people get used so it’s best to keep my eyes open.”
“How old were you?” she asked with astonishment.
“Eleven.” The nail file wasn’t strong enough to jimmy the latch. He went back to his bag for his lip balm and lubricated the file, returning to work on picking the lock. “While I was at middle school, I realized I could use the library computer to set up websites and sell parts that way.”
“That’s how you got started as an auto parts dealer.”
“That’s what my PR prints in my bio, yeah.” He wiggled the file in the lock, trying to work the waxiness of the lip balm against the pins so they’d move. “But stripping parts is sweaty, time-consuming work, and shipping them is a pain in the ass. I realized I could simply become a broker, match seller with buyer and take a cut of the transaction. Fill the site full of ads and make money that way, too.”
“I’m impressed that you thought to do that so young, but it doesn’t sound bad. Agents are allowed to take a cut for a service they offer.”
“The parts were hot, Nina. That sort of agent is called a fence.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened.
So naive. He had always thought that was an act, and now he saw how real her trust was. It made him sick that he had walked all over her, soaking up her softness and passion as if he had a right to it. That’s why this had to stop. He knew how mismatched they were and, he was realizing, she wasn’t tough enough to protect herself. Not against him. He had to do that for her.
“I mostly stick to the rules these days, but that’s how I know a laundry when I see one. When my dad died, I was sixteen. I closed my site and used the money I’d made to buy a run-down repair shop in Detroit. If anyone asked, I said my inheritance paid for it, but my father hadn’t owned the land we squatted on. I left town owing for his cremation. I’m actually not much of a mechanic, but I knew how to get good parts for cheap, and that was most of my business.”
“Were the parts still hot?”
“Mostly aftermarket knockoffs unless it was a special case. I knew better than to push my luck.” He swore as the file started to turn, then stopped and needed more coaxing and wiggling. “Do you understand how embarrassed I am that this is taking so long?”
“You’re out of practice,” she said gently. “You haven’t done it in a long time.”
And there was the forgiving, accepting purity in her voice that was like a drug to him. It made a pang resound in his chest.
“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m doing it, Nina.”
He was still a street punk deep down. A sex tape stud who had benefited from the very notoriety he’d resented. His profits had tripled while he’d been making headlines and, much as he’d felt cheapened by the scandal, he’d also capitalized on it. He’d fought to get the tape taken down, but there’d been a part of him that figured he deserved that grim chapter of his life because of the kind of person he was.
Nina’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She glanced at it. “My sister. She’ll want to know how things are going.” She walked toward the door. “Do you want me to get a butter knife?”
“No.” He wouldn’t corrupt her any more than he already had.
* * *
Angela told Nina there was a photo of Nina and Reve gaining traction online. Back when she’d been living with Reve, they’d gone for dinner and had been caught behind a tourist taking a selfie. Now the grainy image was being blown up in every possible way.