Lights appeared in the windows of the villas strung out along the far shore. At the largest, the double-tiered terrace was hung with colored lanterns. It began filling with partiers as pleasure craft arrived, mooring in a loose half circle around the dock.
A little drunk, a lot mellow, Maddie sighed, deep and long. “How glad are you that we’re over here instead of over there?”
“Infinitely.” Adam topped off their glasses, then tilted back in his chair and stacked his bare ankles on the low stonewall.
“I miss John, though,” she added.
“We’ll bring a larger car next time.”
She sipped her wine. Waited for the chill to race up her spine, or the blood to boil in her brain, or some other visceral reaction to his presumption that their relationship might drag on past the weekend.
It didn’t happen. Instead, the warm fuzzies did a snuggly lap dance.
Adam’s phone bleeped a text. “The pilot,” he told her. “They’ve landed. Lucy and Crash are en route to the penthouse.”
“Thanks for letting them stay there. I’m over the worst of it, I guess, but the thought of them banging in my bed . . .” She shivered.
“That much I understand.” He reached across the small table, stroked a warm hand along her arm. “Lucy’s a credit to you. Whatever she was dealing with before—and I’m not asking what it was—in your care she’s blossomed into an extraordinary woman.”
“I’d like to take credit, but Lucy’s been special from the day she was born. And her talent staggers me. You might’ve noticed the paintings in my apartment. They’re hers.”
“I recognized them. I bought several at her Providence showing last year.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re the anonymous collector?”
“I am. She’s wonderfully talented. Her light infuses her work.”
“Doesn’t it?” Maddie beamed. Then, “Wait a minute. How did you know about the show? It wasn’t advertised.”
His hand slid up her arm, and down again. “I kept track of you over the years.”
She stiffened. “Why?”
“Because you interest me. Haven’t I made that plain this past week?”
“Nothing’s plain about this past week.” The warm fuzzies took a vacation. “You appeared out of the blue and tied my life in a knot, then did a one-eighty and lured me into the sack. Now you’re telling me you kept track of me for five years. What the fuck?”
He smiled, annoyingly. “It all makes sense if you think of it from my point of view. I had a crush on you.”
“For five years?”
“If I’d met you ten years ago, it would’ve been ten.” He ran his fingertips up the back of her arm, a delicious feeling she was too agitated to appreciate.
“That’s nuts.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. Which is no doubt why I rationalized my continuing attention as keeping tabs on an old enemy. I have a few on my watch list.”
He must have seen her dismay, because his smile faded. “I promise you, Maddie, it was the lowest level of scrutiny. When you left the U.S. Attorney’s Office, I knew about it. I knew your sister joined you at that time. I knew you moved to the firm, that she was accepted to RISD.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Since you were spending a fortune to send her there, I was curious about her work. I have an interest in young artists, as you know. I sponsor several, and when I saw the depth of her work, I considered sponsoring her as well. As you said, her talent is staggering.”
Her skin felt cold. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I knew my involvement would offend you. So I bought some of her work instead, generated some interest in her by doing so, and left it at that.”
He set his feet on the ground, turned his body to face her. “I can see it troubles you to think I was spying on you. Let me put your mind at ease. Gio tracks more than a hundred individuals on my behalf. People who interest me in some way. Because they used to work for me. Because I’d like them to work for me. Because they’re competitors.”
He smiled again, a slight tilt of the lips. “You’re the only one who tried to put me in prison.”
She relaxed a little. He wasn’t a stalker, just a honcho with minions to do things like keep tabs on the prosecutor who almost put his neck in a noose.
“In retrospect,” he added, “I should’ve bumped you off the list. At the firm, you no longer posed a threat.”
“Again, why didn’t you?”
“Because somewhere, in some complex and mysterious part of my psyche, I knew you were my woman.”
“Bullshit.”
“Word.” His gaze never wavered, cerulean in the light of the squat candle between them.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not getting involved with you.”
“Darling, we’ve been involved since you flashed me across the conference table. I’ve had a hard-on for peach lingerie ever since.”
“Pfft. Lots of felons fantasize about doing their prosecutors. We could make a pin-up calendar and get rich selling it to inmates.”
“I’ll take one for every room.”
She bit her lip. He was right, damn it. She was involved with him. In some ways, important ways, he knew more about her than anyone else. Not the things Gio dug up, but how she ticked. He got her. He knew how her brain worked. What turned her on.
Yeah, he was good at turning her on.
“Maddie.”
She watched his lips move, let that voice wash over her, deep and exotic, the faint flavor of the continent making it uniquely his own.
He dipped a hand in his back pocket, pulled out a swatch of crimson velvet, and set it on the table between them.
With a fingertip, he slid it toward her, a kind of envelope, two inches square.
She leaned back. “I’m not comfortable taking gifts from you.”
“It’s not the key to the Bugatti, if that’s worrying you.” He nudged it closer. “What’s inside that pouch has no monetary value.”
Mysterious. And tempting. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to reach for it.
When she didn’t move, he turned her hand over, emptied the contents into her palm.
A scrap of paper. She unfolded it.
D-O-M-I-N-I-C-K
She looked up at him, baffled.
“It’s the code to the penthouse elevator. When we get back to New York, I’d like you to stay there. With me.”
She dropped it like it was on fire. “Nuh-uh. Nope. Not happening.”
He kept his eyes on her. “A compromise, then. Keep your apartment. Come to the penthouse when you like, stay as long as you like.”
He was serious.
So was she.
“Listen, Adam. Don’t take it personally. It’s me, not you. And I actually mean that this time.”
She took a breath, leveled out. “This”—she flicked a hand back and forth between them—“is the longest affair I’ve ever had. And frankly, it’s about run its course. I’ve never been anybody’s girlfriend and I’m not starting now.”
She waited for “This can be different,” “We’re so good together,” “Just give it a chance,” or any of the myriad arguments she’d heard in the past.
When they didn’t come, when his eyes dropped to the candle that guttered in the breeze, disappointment crept in.
Would it kill him to fight for her?
But that was ego talking. Who wouldn’t want to be wanted by Adam LeCroix? In reality, his acquiescence was good, much better than groveling. She hated groveling.
In fact, maybe, since he was cooperating, since he got where she was coming from, maybe they could see each other once in a while. Just the occasional booty call. For sex, as long as there were no strings attached—
He lifted the scrap with two fingers and held it to the flame.
Whoa. “Why’d you do that?”
“I’m not one of your flings,” he said, softly but firmly. “I’m not a convenient piece of ass.”
“I never sa
id—”
“It’s written on your face. You can’t bring yourself to cut me off, so you’ll propose a friends-with-benefits arrangement. A steamy weekend now and then when loneliness gets the best of you.”
Mind reader.
She sniffed. “I don’t get lonely.”
“Liar. You’re lonely all the time. You’ve walled yourself up and you’re afraid to come out.”
That was bullshit. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“You’re terrified of love.”
“Baloney. I love Lucy. Vicky. John.” Okay, it was a short list, and one of them wasn’t a person. But still, she knew how to love.
“And how are you at accepting love? Even with Lucy, you’re more comfortable giving than receiving it.”
He had a point, but so what? “I don’t need love,” she said staunchly. “They do. I’m Lucy’s whole family. And Vicky, her father’s dead, and you’ve met her mother. She’s worse than no mother at all.”
“So they’re alone in the world, or nearly so.”
“Exactly. And they don’t deserve to be.” It was so simple. Why couldn’t he see it? “They deserve to be loved.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding his head as if the light had dawned. “They deserve to be loved. And you don’t.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you do deserve it?”
“I don’t not deserve it. But I’m prickly. Some people say bitchy.” She shrugged. “I’m just not lovable. Not the way they are.”
“I see.” His tone said he didn’t, not at all.
“They’re warm and friendly,” she went on, making her case. “Full of light. They’re good people.”
“You’re good too, Maddie.”
He was unbelievably dense. “No, I mean they’re good. They’re”—she searched for the word—“wholesome.”
“And you’re what? Unwholesome?”
She threw up her hands. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m trying to follow your train of thought. If I’m not mistaken, you’re saying you can’t accept love because you don’t deserve it, and you don’t deserve it because you’re not wholesome.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did, in a winding and irrational way. And my question is, where do you get such nonsense? For an intelligent woman, you have the most asinine notions about yourself.”
He was starting to get under her skin. “Listen, Adam, you think you know me—”
“I do.”
“You don’t! We’ve spent a week together, doing nothing but fighting and fucking.”
“I can’t think of two better ways to get to know each other.”
“Really? Is that how you get acquainted with all your friends? Piss them off and then screw them?”
“Don’t make this about me. We’re talking about you.”
“No we’re not. We’re done talking. Let’s go back to bed.”
She stood up, but he caught her hand. “Maddie, you deserve to be loved.”
“Shut up about it, will you?” Sweat started to roll. “I had a life before last Wednesday, you know. Before Adam LeCroix sashayed in and started bossing me around. Sic Gio on me all you want. Call in Homeland Security and the CIA. Snooping and spying won’t tell you who I am. ”
“Then you tell me.”
She snatched up her glass, drank off the last of her wine. Inside, she trembled, but she held her hand steady and leveled a no-bullshit stare. “I’m your fuck-buddy. Let’s go fuck.”
He sat back in his chair. His stare stripped her bare. She fought the urge to shift her feet, made do with fisting a hand on her hip, all aggressive annoyance.
“I know you, Maddie,” he said calmly. “I know you slap at me when your emotions run deep. You make what’s between us sound ugly when your feelings frighten you. And now I know why. Because you don’t feel worthy of this.”
She mustered a sneer, but her palms went clammy. Her head spun a dizzy loop.
Damn it, she had to get away from him before she fainted. But not without firing a parting zinger, a ballbuster that would leave him clutching his junk for a week.
She opened her mouth to let it rip, and out came, “My father tried to rape me when I was sixteen.”
Adam caught her as she crumpled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MADDIE CAME AROUND slowly, rocking on a gently rolling sea.
“There you are.” Adam’s voice soothed like a lullaby. He sat on the bedside, suffused in candlelight, holding both of her icy hands in one of his warm ones. With the other, he pressed a cool cloth to her temple.
“Adam.” She released his name on a breath, adrift on their water bed, peaceful and—
Oh God!
She tried to sit up, to take it all back. “I didn’t mean it. I wanted to shock you. So you’d quit pestering me.”
He touched her shoulder, pressed her down.
“No, really—”
He laid a finger on her lips. Did her very voice disgust him? Was he too revolted to hear it?
Filled with dread, she searched his face, stunned to see only compassion. It flooded his eyes, swamping her.
“Darling, it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t to blame.”
For almost twenty years she’d been telling herself that. But, “Maybe I tempted him. Flaunted myself.”
“Is that what he said?”
She nodded.
“Tell me what happened.”
She’d never said it out loud, not even to Lucy. Why now, in this strange place, with this unlikely man, did she finally feel safe enough to tell?
“My father,” she began, “he’s . . . well, for one thing, he’s alive.” She considered. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
He nodded. She couldn’t drum up indignation. A tap had opened and her badass had run out.
“I’m not in contact with him,” she said. “And now that Lucy’s safe and sound, I never think of him. Not really.”
She was tiptoeing in. Adam’s patient gaze steadied her.
“Anyway. He was a son of a bitch. Always. To all of us. Lucy can spout a buttload of psychobabble about his multiple disorders. He’s emotionally abusive, narcissistic, blah blah. In plain English, he’s a monster. A predator. And with a houseful of females to prey on, he was happy as a pig in shit.”
She pulled her hands out of Adam’s, pushed herself up and stuffed a pillow behind her. She couldn’t do this lying down.
“When I was a kid, he picked on me about everything. Every. Thing. Especially how small I was. Not just small, but underdeveloped, puny, stunted, scrawny, feeble. As I got older, he added ugly, stupid, useless, worthless. You get the drift.”
“He devalued you. Relentlessly.”
“That’s Lucy’s word for it, sure. But see, I wasn’t as dumb as he told me I was.” She tapped her temple. “I heard the names he called my mother. They were bullshit. I figured he was lying to me too, so I let most of his insults roll off.”
“And others you internalized.”
She shrugged. “I get defensive about my size. But that’s all that stuck.”
His jaw ticked, but he kept still.
“Anyway, it was awful when he got going, so we pretty much walked on eggshells, trying to stay off his radar. Then Lucy came along and changed the game. She’d cry, like babies do, and he’d lean over her crib, screaming at her to shut up. I couldn’t stand it, so I’d distract him, make him focus on me.”
“Your mother?”
“Mom was an empty dress by then. A domestic robot.” She laughed without humor. “Vicky doesn’t get why Mom didn’t rise up and overthrow my father. But that’s because her mother’s the exact opposite of mine.”
“Cowards like your father don’t choose women like Adrianna Marchand.”
“No. They want women with no skills, no family to run to. No self-confidence. My father had her completely terrorized. His best weapon was me. If she showed any spine, he’d threaten to take me away wher
e she’d never see me again. And just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“she’d shut up, shut down, and bring him his slippers.”
“I imagine he made the same threat about Lucy, and used it to control you.”
“Yeah. And I can tell you, it works like a charm.”
“What happened when you were sixteen?”
“I told you.” She went hoarse, cleared her throat. “He tried to rape me.” Easier to say it this time. Sweat prickled her armpits, but the room didn’t spin.
“Did you report him?”
“No.” She dropped her eyes. “Like I said, it worked like a charm.”
“Counseling?”
“Too embarrassing.” The stink clung to her still.
“Tell me.” He said it calmly, matter-of-factly, like the world wouldn’t end if she did.
For whatever reason, she believed him.
“Birthdays were a nightmare in my house. No cards or cakes, just another chance for him to harp on how disappointing we were. How my mother looked like a dishrag, old and faded. How I was still a runt.”
She rubbed clammy palms on her thighs. “On my sixteenth birthday I went to bed at ten. Lay there in the dark, listening for him to lock my door from the outside like he did every night. But he didn’t come, and I must’ve drifted off, because all of a sudden he was in my room. Leaning over my bed.”
Her chest tightened. Her throat too.
“He’d never hit me before, which is weird, right? But I figured it was coming now. I’d mouthed off at the supper table. Lucy knocked over her milk and he screamed at her. Clumsy, gawky, spastic. So I called him a shit stain. It was the farthest I’d ever gone, and I figured he’d come to make me pay, so I covered my face with my arms.
“But it wasn’t that. He grabbed my arms and pinned them to the pillow with one hand. Yanked off the blankets, right onto the floor. He said . . .” She wet her dry lips with her tongue. “He said I was asking for it. Flaunting myself with short skirts and high heels. He said that was how Mom used to be. Slutty. But he brought her into line, and he’d do the same with me.”
Her hand covered her throat. She forced down a swallow. “He’s big, did I say that before? Huge. Three times my size, easy.
“He pulled my T-shirt up over my face, and he . . . he pinched my breast. He said how my tits were mosquito bites, how I was a scarecrow.” Her breath hitched. “I didn’t like it. He kept saying I did, but I hated it. It hurt and I wanted to throw up. But I just lay there. I just lay there like a board.
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