“Well, when you have time, start trying to figure out who they are. For now, for my insurance project for Black Raven, just do a comparison of terms of coverage. Focus on liability. Incorporate what our lawyers have done.” Dammit, but the rock McDougall put on Sam’s finger sparkled as much as the chandeliers, and as much as he willed himself not to see it, he couldn’t fight the glare. “While you’re working, I want to hear the words, sentence by sentence, in plain English.”
“I’ll do a flow chart.” He could hear her fingers clacking on her keyboard, attacking the new project with gusto. “With a line by line comparison. I’ll have it ready by the time you’re standing outside Senator McDougall’s hotel room. You’ll at least have a project to sink your mind into.”
“Great, but while you’re working on that, read to me what you’re doing.”
Her pause was long and extended.
“Ragno?”
“You want me to read insurance provisions to you? Really?”
“Absolutely,” he said, eyes on the door.
“I love you, but I’ve got things to do. I’ll have Sally read to you. Good enough?”
“Fine.” He welcomed, for the next three hours, the mind-numbing exercise of focusing on insurance provisions and clauses. With each word, he tried to block the fucking kaleidoscope of sparkling, colorful happiness presented by McDougall and Sam as they shared tapas, one small, exquisite plateful at a time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chef Diego softly kissed her cheek before stepping away from the table. Samantha drew a deep breath, sipped a bit more champagne, and tried to look anywhere but at Zeus.
“Damn. I haven’t eaten anything yet, but the champagne isn’t making my stomach happy. I’ve already got heartburn. Did you bring antacids?”
“Yeah. Knew you’d need them tonight.”
He slipped a roll from his pocket and passed it under the tablecloth into her lap. He was so good this way. Always prepared.
“Samantha.” Justin’s voice was low. “Look at me.”
The concern in his dark blue eyes almost made her choke. His face wavered as her eyes filled with unwanted tears. She plastered a smile on her face. Without a funny thought in her head, she made herself laugh. At nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Justin arched an eyebrow and frowned. “You’re scaring me.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Why are you going through with this?”
“Because we agreed we would do this. Our plan makes sense, for both of us. He’s just a speed bump and I’m damn well not going to let him become a detour that ends badly.” She made herself giggle again as she forced herself to focus on Justin’s beautiful eyes. Reaching for his hand, she held on for dear life.
“All right, I might be able to handle your fake smile, but not that fake laugh, and definitely not that giggle. You don’t giggle. I can’t take it. Stop it, and tell me why you’re insisting on this preemptive strike now?”
Reaching for the champagne flute, she took a sip, and whispered. “I don’t want to talk about the reasons. Let’s just do this, and move on.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Will you even be able to eat at all? Diego will send us a taste of everything, and I can’t eat it all by myself. We could leave. Say one of us has come down with a sudden something.”
Yes, like Zeus disease. I believe it’s fatal.
“I’ll make myself eat.” Without allowing her gaze to rest on Zeus, who was either talking to himself or had Ragno in his ear, she took another sip of champagne. “I’d hate to disappoint Diego.”
Justin studied her for a long second. “You look like you’ve lost five pounds in the last week.”
“I haven’t had much of an appetite.”
She watched Justin’s eyes slide over to Zeus, who’d walked further away from their table. “Jesus. Oh shit—that is his full name, isn’t it? Anyway, he’s built better than the guys on my brother’s offensive line. I certainly wouldn’t pick a fight with him.”
“Don’t talk about him.”
“Seriously? Although you two are doing a damn good job of not looking at each other, he is the overpowering Greek God in the room, commanding more attention than any elephant I’ve ever come across. How could I not talk about him? Why are you doing this?”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course.”
“Then don’t ask why. You know why our arrangement is better for both of us. Just give me the ring and kiss me.”
“No.” With concern flooding his eyes, he shifted closer to her. “I couldn’t imagine a woman less happy about receiving four carats of brilliant, emerald-cut diamond perfection. You’re not acting like yourself. Not at all. Tell me why you’re going through with this.”
“I’m sorry, Justin.” He was right. She didn’t really care what the ring looked like, and she was mortified that she didn’t really want to see it on her finger. They’d planned the details of their bands, and had selected the stone for the engagement ring months earlier. One option could have been for her to wear her mother’s diamond. She’d rejected that idea the minute it came to her, because there was no need to remember that tragic marriage. “Let’s do it. We’ve been through this.”
“Not this week. Not in detail. Not in person since you and”—he glanced at Zeus, lowered his voice—“tall, dark, brooding and handsome have had your reunion.”
“Not a reunion,” she whispered, careful to keep her smile on her face. “Just recreational sex.”
Which she and Justin both expected the other to have. They’d use utmost discretion, of course. It was the only way their marriage would work.
Justin gave her a slow, knowing headshake. As he studied her, she knew she really couldn’t act as though the sex hadn’t been anything special. As though Zeus didn’t make her feel better than anyone had ever made her feel. As though he didn’t make her feel positively treasured and cherished each time his hands touched her. As though he didn’t fit inside of her with a feeling of fulfillment that didn’t come with anyone else. Sensations with him were so unique, each time he stroked into her, the last few nights had convinced her that her body had been built for him, and him alone.
“Recreational sex,” she repeated. “It means nothing.”
Justin’s full frown was deep. “You’re only fooling one of us, and it isn’t me.”
Eyes filling with more tears that she would not spill, because Zeus had given her that same line only a few days ago, she threw her head back and laughed. If she started crying now she was going to dissolve into a miserable heap, and Zeus, the man she wanted to pick her up off the floor, was not Justin, the only man who she’d allow to pick her up.
After a few deep breaths, she found some composure. “I love you,” she whispered, wondering why those words flowed so easily with Justin, when what she felt for him wasn’t anything like what she felt for Zeus. “I can’t thank you enough for putting up with this.”
“We’ll have to put up with a lot more over the next fifty or so years, assuming we still do this. I’m not sure we should. Seeing you now, I don’t think you can handle what we’re setting ourselves up for, and I’m not sure you should—”
“This is only hard for me because of the past I have with him. It makes him the perfect storm, because I was weaker when I first fell in love with him.”
“When you first fell in love with him.” Justin arched an eyebrow and gave her a slow headshake. “Do you realize what you just said? Meaning you’re in love with him now.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Lie to yourself, Samantha. Not to me.”
“What I feel for him emotionally doesn’t matter. Reason and logic will rule my life. Not my heart. He’ll be my biggest test. There won’t be others like him. I won’t put you through this kind of drama again. I promise.”
Because no one else will make me so aware that I’m turning my back on my last hope for a normal, full life. No one else will make me miss that woman I once was. The
naïve woman who allowed herself to think a man like him could make her a better person.
“Honey, it isn’t me I’m worried about, and you know I’d walk over coals for you.”
Sipping more of the champagne, she found courage in the bubbles. At least it made her voice stronger. “I’m going to be fine. Really. Give me the box and a kiss. A real kiss. Like you mean it.”
Justin shook his head. “You deserve more.”
“And so do you.”
“Which means we’re both settling for something less than ideal.”
“And we’ve been through this a million times. We’re both going to come out ahead.”
“Once I get past that fake smile of yours, you’re looking so heartbroken I’m dying for you. Those aren’t tears of happiness in your eyes, and I’m sitting close enough to you to know it. He isn’t though, and he looks like—”
“He always looks like that.”
“Seriously?” Justin took a sip of champagne as he let his gaze sweep the restaurant, then rest on Zeus. “That impenetrable-looking barrier he throws out to the world isn’t fake? He walks around like that, without a trace of emotion?”
“You just have to watch him. Closely. Sometimes there’s the faintest hint of a smile, or a frown, but mostly, he’s intense. Always calm. Strong. Stoic. He is a rock, when underneath—”
“Come on, Samantha, listen to yourself describe him.”
“How?”
“You love him. Really love him. Old-fashioned, life mate kind of love. You two should be together. For better or worse, regardless of what it does to your career path or your ambitions. Can’t you just face that fact?”
“I’ve faced it. The other night, when I thought he was going to die, fear and abject misery hit me with a certainty that I’ll never forget. It’s the exact kind of love my mother felt for my father. The all-consuming, horrific kind of love that would eat away at me, bit by bit, and destroy me.” She drew a deep breath. “Like my mother’s love for my father destroyed her.”
“But you can’t just will it away.”
“Oh, yes, I can. I sure as hell don’t know why I feel like I need to tell him I’m sorry. To tell him all the reasons why I can’t go there.”
Justin shook his head. “The fact that you feel like you need to apologize—”
“I didn’t say I was going to.”
“You really should have that discussion with him.”
She shook her head. “Too painful. I’m not going there, Justin. If you’re truly my dearest friend, give me the ring, kiss me, let’s eat, and we’ll go to your hotel room. Each step will take me further away from weakness. I need to do this.”
Justin lifted her chin with his finger, drawing her gaze and holding it. “You sure?”
She nodded, “I need to get my equilibrium back. Please. This is the most important thing I’ve ever asked of you. Let’s do this, and let’s make it look good. Like there’s more to us than a friendship.”
“I love you, Samantha Dixon Fairfax.” He bent his head to hers. Their lips touched and lingered together, long enough for Samantha to confirm that kissing her best friend was nothing like kissing Zeus.
Justin reached into the pocket of his sports coat, and pulled out a black velvet box. Her glance accidentally went to Zeus. Their eyes met for a split second. His hard gaze sent shivers down her spine. She turned her shoulders, focused on Justin, and tried to look happy.
“My best friend, my future wife, my partner and architect of the beautiful life we’ll have, full of ambitions and goals we’ll meet, will you marry me?”
She drew a deep breath, opening the black velvet box, as the right words, from the wrong man, and the fiery diamond engagement ring, from the wrong hands, sliced through the heart that beat normally for others, but erratically and hopelessly for Zeus. As Justin again closed his lips on hers, she mentally put the first shovelful of dirt on the coffin of the woman who was in love with Zeus Hernandez.
Chapter Thirty
London, England
Monday, February 7
Hell. An arm’s length away for the duration of a transatlantic flight? Fuck. Too close. He’d smell sweet, soft jasmine for hours. He’d had enough of that fragrance for a lifetime and certainly since that morning, when he’d resumed the lead position on Sam’s detail.
She’d stepped ahead of him onto Raven One, the Black Raven Gulfstream 650 ER taking them from London to ADX Florence, Colorado, the federal supermax prison that housed Stollen. He’d stopped on the tarmac to talk to the captain and co-pilot, who he hadn’t seen in a while. Deal, Jenkins, and Miles filtered into the back of the jet. She was settling into the seat across the aisle from the A seat, the reclining chair he usually rode in, unless he opted for the private berth in the back of the plane.
As he decided whether to take the A seat, he said to her, “You could go in the back. Shut the door. Get some sleep on the couch.”
“I prefer the front.”
Dammit to hell. So did he. The A seat. It was the closest to the door and the closest to the cockpit. It was the seat he and other partners in the company vied for if they were flying together, and they weren’t afraid to act pretty damn juvenile to get to it. He wasn’t going to fly across the goddamn Atlantic in another seat just because sitting in the A seat meant sitting on the opposite side of the aisle from her.
Besides, his agents expected him to take the A seat. They’d think it odd if he didn’t, and he was willing to bet they’d know exactly why he opted out. The whole job had been a clusterfuck from the start, because it hadn’t just been a job for him. He’d hand-chosen the agents on Sam’s team and personally given them a discussion about discretion before they’d started the job.
He made it a practice to deal with adversity head-on.
Why change now?
Settling into his preferred seat, he turned on his reading light, opened his laptop on the slide-out table, and stretched his legs out in front of him. Miles, Jenkins, and Deal were far enough out of earshot to not hear any conversation that transpired between him and Sam, assuming they kept their voices low.
Doesn’t matter. As they stood on the other side of the door, they probably heard God-knows-what over those nights as you and Sam went at it like there was no tomorrow.
Hell.
Joke’s on you, buddy, cause now there is no tomorrow. To top it off, last night they probably heard her screaming McDougall’s name just like she screams—no, screamed—your name when she comes.
He didn’t anticipate talking about anything with Sam his agents couldn’t hear and even if the conversation went there, it would just be an accompaniment that went with the other aspects of this fucked-up job.
Sure as shit, as he tried to focus on his work, he felt her green eyes sliding over his face, burning the path they crossed. For the hundredth time that day, or maybe the two hundredth time, he felt that she was waiting for him to say something about her engagement to McDougall.
The fact that she thought he’d have something to say about it irritated the goddamn living shit out of him. What the hell was he supposed to say? Congratulations? Best wishes? Worse, at some point during the first day of proceedings in London, when he’d caught her watching him from across the courtroom, he’d decided she was looking at him with a slightly concerned, perturbed look that spelled P-I-T-Y and said I’m sorry, even though the words hadn’t crossed her mouth.
Sorry? Pity? Flying fuck to both ideas.
He didn’t want to hear her say, “I’m sorry” and certainly didn’t want her pity. Throughout the day, upon getting the feeling some variation of those words were coming from her, he’d braced himself for the moment she articulated the thought.
He wasn’t so desperate that he needed an apology. Never would be. Just pissed. And feeling raw, and the last thing he wanted to do was anything that would reveal to her how his heart felt like it had been macerated to shreds.
With a signal from the cockpit, he fastened his seatbelt. He opened
his laptop, and scrolled to the folder of insurance information downloads. He turned to the flow sheet of insurance provisions that Ragno had prepared. It would be a sure cure for insomnia borne of irritation, but only if he didn’t start thinking about the serious liability that accrued on Black Raven jobs that went south. As the Raven in charge of operations, until the current job, and as a cleaner of some of the company’s trickier messes, like the fallout that happened over the Barrows incident, he understood the considerable dollars that were wasted when the company was sued.
Instead of analyzing the flow sheet, he glanced out the window. It was a cold, cloudy Monday night in London. As the jet lifted off the runway, swirling gray mist concealed the lights of the city. Now that they were on their way to interview Vladimer Stollen, Sam had left her second chair lawyer—Abe—to handle the witnesses in London on Tuesday, which were government investigators setting forth the evidence on the trade show bombing. Charles would provide assistance to Abe.
Stollen’s interview was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., Mountain Time, on Tuesday. A team of Black Raven agents was meeting them upon landing, and they’d assist with transfers. Robert Brier—already stateside for his wife’s memorial service—was meeting Sam at the prison for the interview of his client. The lead prosecutor for the U.S. in the ITT proceeding, Benjamin McGavin, had flown home over the weekend and would meet her at the prison as well. Other necessary parties would participate via videoconference. Judge O’Connor would monitor the conference and make necessary rulings to facilitate information gathering. By 1500 on Tuesday, Zeus would have Sam back on Raven One for the return trip to London.
He’d been man enough to observe the Sunday evening proposal, until Sam was safely in the hotel room with her fiancé. He’d even walked into the suite, made sure it was secure, glanced at the king size bed they were going to sleep in, lost his breath for a second when he thought about her with McDougall, and told them both goodnight. McDougall had given him a slow nod, his blue eyes revealing bucket-loads of unease. Sam, arm in arm with McDougall, had nodded as she looked past him, her cheeks flushed pink from champagne and happiness.
Jigsaw (Black Raven Book 2) Page 34