by Aubrey Dark
A slight smile hooked the corner of his mouth, and the way he looked at me made me think that he knew exactly what was going on in my thoughts. I flushed again.
“If you’ll excuse me—” I said, starting to turn away. He had held me captive here too long. I needed to get going. Get to the home office. Get out with more than I came in with.
But he caught my arm before I could leave, his palm sliding into the crook of my elbow. The pads of his fingers burned hot against my skin. And again, the heat of his touch sent another kind of wildfire rushing through me. Those lips. Those eyes.
What was wrong with me?
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Belle,” I lied, trying not to squirm in his grip. His body was close to mine, and the nearness of his face made me scared to look up into his eyes again. If he could see into me now, he would know everything. I trailed my gaze over his shoulder instead. “What’s yours?”
“William.”
“Well, William,” I said, forcing a smile as I pulled my arm out of his grasp, “I have to go to the little girl’s room. I’ll see you later, maybe?”
It was a flirtatious tone, but he nodded solemnly.
“I apologize again for the misunderstanding,” he said, bowing slightly and stepping back. I hadn’t realized how close he had been until he wasn’t there anymore. My head spun a bit as I moved away, toward the back room. His gray eyes tracked me, and I felt clumsy, my tongue thick in my mouth.
Get over yourself, Sierra. I pulled myself upright as I entered the back room, my attention focused on the hallway where I’d seen the door to the home office. Two men walked by, headed out towards the back balcony. Another group of women, likely escorts themselves, huddled near the bathroom. I angled away from them, waiting until I was sure nobody was looking, and then slipped into the back hall.
Enough with the flirting, I told myself. It’s time to get to work.
Chapter 5
I watched as the woman made her way away from me. Her hair swinging down to her waist—something wrong about it, something too perfect. I was distracted by the sway of her hips in the tight black fabric of her dress. A pulse of desire surged through me.
Was that really what this was all about? Pure carnal lust? My heart beat quickly as I saw her turn halfway across the room. I followed her, stopping by the doorway to where Sanders was still singing by the pool. I pretended to look at him, but I snuck a glance over at where she was heading. Her profile was angular, her nose small and upturned as she smiled beatifically at a group of men she passed by. She didn’t stop, though. Not an escort. For some reason, that thought made my chest relax.
But then—then—
She made a wrong turn. Not heading toward the bathroom at all, she stepped away to the left, down the wrong hallway. I frowned. She hadn’t moved cautiously, but with purpose. I didn’t know if she was lost, or—
Maybe she was just making an excuse to get away from you.
That, I had to admit, was likely. I hadn’t had much experience flirting with women in the past. After my father had died, I’d thrown myself into business completely to learn how to run the company. I hadn’t had time to learn how to deal with women. But I knew enough to know that asking if someone was a sex escort was a surefire way to get rejected.
This woman, though—there had been something so odd about her. Something that made me want to shoot straight to the heart of the matter, damn the consequences. She hadn’t known about my brothers, had she? And she’d called me and Sanders twins, as though she had no idea there were three of us. That meant that she didn’t know Sanders well. She definitely didn’t know Dexter. And she’d had no idea who I was.
But she’d said she wasn’t an escort.
A twist of mysterious curiosity pulsed through me. I wanted to know who she was.
I needed to know.
Never mind the smoothness of her skin under my fingers. The way her hair smelled slightly of vanilla. The intelligent glint in her eye as she sized me up, as though I had no power over her. As though she was the one in control.
No, that wasn’t why I was so interested in her. It was purely rational, I told myself. A mystery to solve. I would go after her again, and see if she was telling the truth or if she really was an escort.
As I took a step forward, mindless of my surroundings, someone stepped into my path, blocking me.
“Will,” Shawna said, putting a hand up to stop me.
“I need—” I cut myself off as I noticed that the woman had disappeared from view. A stab of disappointment went through my chest. “Never mind. What is it?”
“I just heard from Jake Carville that he’s trying to find you a date here.”
“Yes? And?”
“I’ve scoped out everyone at this party,” Shawna said. “And the girls that Jake Carville will want to introduce to you are out of the question.”
I blinked down at my assistant.
“Are you upset that I’ve enlisted other help? Or are you disappointed that I won’t be forcibly marrying you after all?”
“As sad as it would make me to lose a fake husband, no.”
“I met a woman,” I said. “She said her name was Belle.”
Shawna sighed at me.
“Will, I told you—most of the girls here are paid to be here.”
“She said she wasn’t an escort.”
“You asked her?”
“I—well—it came up in conversation. Anyway, isn’t that exactly what we’re looking for? Someone I can pay to marry me?”
“Not if they’re already married. A lot of these girls are.”
“Ah.” Another stab of disappointment. And with it, a churn of embarrassment. Was I so desperate that I would fall in love with the first pretty face I saw?
She wasn’t just a pretty face. There was a deep intelligence there. There was—
“And not if the board gets wind that the wife you end up marrying is a woman for hire. Then you’d be stuck with a fake wife and no extra shares of the company.” Shawna shook her head. “Promise me you won’t go and propose to anyone without letting me vet her first.”
“I promise I won’t marry any of Jake Carville’s suggestions,” I said. “Does that make you happy?”
“Very.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I whispered to Shawna. “So, have you seen a blonde girl in a black dress?”
“That describes half the girls here. Why? I told you, you can’t trust any of them—”
“Exactly,” I said, ducking again as Sanders’ eyes scanned around again. “I don’t trust this one. But I want to find her.”
“Listen, Will, this is important—” Shawna said, but she never got to tell me what the important thing was.
From behind me, two arms clasped around my shoulders.
“I got him!” Dexter yelled.
“Will!” My name rang out through the microphone system, echoing across the water. Sanders tossed the mike to one of the girls and headed around, almost slipping on the edge of the pool as he hurried over to me.
“How are you liking the party?” Dex asked, slinging one arm around my shoulder. I could smell the whiskey on his breath.
“It’s… it’s fine,” I said. “I—”
“Will, you showed up!” Sanders clasped me in a giant bear hug, lifting me up off of the tile floor. “Are you having fun? Jake said he was finding a girl for you.”
Shawna shot me a hard look.
“About that—”
“A girl!” Sanders smacked me on the arm so hard that it hurt, but I didn’t wince. “You’re here looking for chicks, and you didn’t even tell us?”
“Will, we have the paperwork for the Dubai deal,” Dex said, his voice earnest. “If you want to look it over and sign it, I just got the folder—”
He shoved a manila folder full of papers into my arms.
“I’m not—listen, guys, we need to talk about this. You know I don’t think this is a good deal—”
; “Come on,” Sanders said, his voice edging into whining. “We’ve been working on it forever.”
I didn’t bother to retort that their version of “forever” was about five weeks long, and that I’d been running the company by myself for the past ten years. For some reason, I didn’t think they would be receptive to that kind of argument.
“Let me look over it,” I said, clamping down on my tongue. I didn’t know why they were pressing this, especially now at the party.
“We wanted you to sign it before the end of the week,” Dex said.
“Before…” The words died on my tongue. Before the inheritance split, they meant.
“It’s not like we want to go over your head,” Sanders said. “But you’re not going to be the only one making the decisions soon, and I don’t want the first thing we do to be, you know, against your wishes.”
“There’s an easy way to do that,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Don’t do anything against my wishes.”
“Alright,” Dex said, sensing my frustration. “He needs a couple more days.”
“Well, you know what that means,” Sanders said, taking the folder and tossing it aside. “If you’re not here to do business, you must be here to have fun.”
“Right,” Dex said. He reached over and pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“Hey!” I said. “What are you—ah!”
I should have seen it coming. Before I could protest, Sanders and Dex had grabbed me by the arms and lifted me bodily off of the floor. I started to shout, but there was no stopping my brothers once they had trouble in mind. With two steps, they were at the edge of the pool.
“Don’t you dare,” I said, struggling uselessly on the slippery tile. I gripped both of my brothers by the shirt collars. “If I go in, you’re both going with me.”
Dex and Sanders looked at each other and grinned.
“No!”
They both jumped into the pool, taking me with them.
I splashed down under the surface of the pool, the din of the party disappearing into muted silence underwater. One at a time, I kicked my shoes off and wrested myself away from their grasp.
Damn them both! It had been Sanders’ idea, I was sure of it. Just like his terrible idea about selling off our bank assets.
I kicked hard and sputtered to the surface. A dozen women had taken their cue from my brothers and jumped in with us. Their cocktail dresses clung to their skin, their hair flowing without gravity in the water. Already Sanders had one of them hanging onto his neck for dear life.
“You bastards,” I said, to nobody in particular. I splashed back to the edge of the pool and wiped the water from my eyes.
“Oh, sweetie, I see you found Dex and Sanders. Or, at least, they found you.”
My mother bent down at the edge of the pool. Her eyes shone brightly as she saw my brothers in a splash fight with each other in the shallow end.
“Look at Dexter,” she said. “Just as happy as when he was a kid. You all used to tousle around like that.”
I tried not to look as angry as I felt. I wanted to let her have her moment, the one minute in the day when Dex was having fun instead of huddling in his room. She deserved that, at least. I let out a long breath and hiked myself up to the side of the pool.
“Are you getting out already?” Dexter swam over to where I was sitting. “Come on, bro. The water’s fine! We’re going to play chicken.”
Behind him, Sanders was trying to get a woman up onto his shoulders. Her cream dress was thin and gauzy, and you could see that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“That’s fine,” I said. “You go on and play without me.”
“Sanders keeps some extra suits in the office,” Dex said. “If you want to change.”
“Thanks,” I said evenly.
“Sorry,” he said. “We just thought you wanted to have fun—”
“It’s fine,” I said, pasting a thin smile onto my face. “Very refreshing. But I think I’ll go change now.”
I pushed myself up onto the tile, wet and dripping. I ran one hand through my slicked hair as I walked away. Behind me, Dex was saying something to my mom about how serious I always was.
Of course I was serious! How could he not see that one of us had to be? There wasn’t anyone around here who took things seriously, and now they wanted to take away my decisions from me. We’d see how long the company lasted without someone making serious decisions at the head of it.
I shook my head, droplets of water flying everywhere. A few of the partygoers shied away from me, as though I was a wet dog shaking its fur. Leave me alone, sure. That would be fine with me.
I strode to the back of the house, pulling off my soaking wet tie. I’d gotten my shirt unbuttoned and pulled off before I made it to Sanders’ office and realized that there was a lock on the door. Great. I stood in front of the door, contemplating which was better—putting on the cold wet shirt I’d just taken off, or walking back through the party half-naked to go get the key.
Before I could decide, I heard something coming from inside the door. A noise, like someone singing. I frowned and leaned closer. Putting my hand on the doorknob, I turned it. Nothing. But the pressure from my leaning made the door open anyway.
Inside the room, it was dark. I took one silent step inside, listening. A woman’s voice lilted through the darkness. It was a kid’s song.
“And Bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O…”
Stepping closer, I saw her illuminated by the laptop screen on the desk.
It was the blonde woman. She was bent down behind Sanders’ desk, singing to herself. Her dress was hiked up to her waist, her long legs tucked gracefully underneath her. There were a few metal instruments next to her, and an open phone.
But there was more.
She was kneeling in front of the safe, a metal strip in her hand.
And there was a gun on the desk.
My eyes widened. As I watched, she sang, her fingers moving gracefully at the lock on the safe. Then a click, and the door to the safe swung open.
“Bingo,” she exclaimed. “B-I-N-G-O…”
I didn’t wait. Moving forward quickly, I picked up the gun from the desk. She heard my footstep then, and whirled around.
But I was too fast for her. I had the gun up and aimed directly at her head. Her dark eyes focused on the barrel of the gun as the words of the song faded from her lips.
“I’m guessing your name isn’t Belle. So who are you?” I asked.
The blonde woman shook her head mutely, her thick lashes batting at me. Behind her eyes, I could see that intelligence working, trying to find an explanation that I would accept. I flicked the safety off with my thumb.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
She opened her mouth, but the next words came from the phone, on speaker mode.
“Mama!” it said.
Chapter 6
That man—William—had almost thrown me off of my game. It was so strange, how easily he’d managed to distract me from my goal. My mind shuttered through the images I’d created of his body on mine, the memory of his lips pinched together in a question. Those eyes that saw everything. I blinked away the memory of those fierce gray eyes and made my way back to the home office door. Hiking my dress up, I pulled out the small lockpicking kit from the velcro strap on my hip. I shouldn’t be thinking about that now.
Now was work mode.
Most movies get lockpicking all wrong. On the silver screen, thieves press their ear against the lock as they use a tension wrench to push up all of the pins in a normal tumbler lock. Then, one by one, they painstakingly lever the pick until they hear a soft click indicating a pin is at the right place for the shear line. They have to turn the tension wrench slightly to lock the pin in place and move on to the next pin. They do this in the movies, because they need to build tension.
Don’t get me wrong. I can do that way, too, if I have to. It’s not hard. You can even do it using a basic flathead screwdriver and a dental
pick. But it’s not easy, and it’s not fast. It’s the way hobbyists like to pick locks. It’s for amateurs.
Me, I’m a professional.
And a pro really doesn’t need to pick a lock that way unless they want to be absolutely silent. Or if they forget their pick gun.
An electric pick gun is essential for a quick and easy pick. My dad called them snap guns. He called his own gun “The Snapper.” And whenever he went off to break through a lock with it, he said he was “going fishing”. His puns were always the worst. I guess that’s a mark of a good dad, though. Making your daughter groan with your jokes, and then teaching her how to break into a house.
The guns look kind of like a power stapler, and work pretty much the same way, only you’re shooting up into the pins of the lock. I’d put a bit of felt in the hammer of mine, so it wouldn’t be so loud.
Now, when I slid the pick gun into the lock and pulled the trigger, it sounded kind of like a knock on the door. Just like if I was knocking to see if this was a bathroom, hopefully. This wasn’t a heavy deadbolt, just a normal interior door. At the exact same time as the snap, I turned the knob, and the door opened up.
Abracadabra. Technology is magic.
I looked back into the hall, but there was nobody there. I slipped into the office and closed the door behind me. Deep breath in, then out.
There was no light on in here, only the glow of the computer screen. I tried to relock the door behind me, but one of the pins must have jammed. That was always a problem with the pick guns—they could wreck the inside of a lock. But it didn’t matter to me. I just had to get out of there before anyone came in.
I moved around the desk, opening drawers. Business papers, pens, receipts. Nothing interesting. Then I bent down on one knee behind the desk.
“Hello,” I breathed.
It was a huge safe.
I knelt down and smiled when I saw the brand. Elite Safety. It was the luxury safe for a stupid rich man. Velvet insides, an illuminated interior, and a pretty wheel mechanism on the outside. But it wasn’t a super high-security safe, although I’m sure the salesman didn’t tell him that. There was no glass relocker inside, nothing to keep me from guessing my way into the right combo or manually shoving my way in.