The VIP Doubles Down (Wager of Hearts Book 3)

by Nancy Herkness

  Then she whirled into action, throwing on jeans, a sweater, and boots, before she shoved all her other belongings into her duffel bag. And there was Pie’s cat carrier, neatly tucked into a corner of the closet. Bless you, Ludmilla. Allie stroked Pie to waken the little cat before she picked her up and put her in the case.

  Now she had to think of a reason why Jaros should drive her back to New York City tonight. Someone had died. She needed to go to her own doctor. A friend was suicidal.

  The cloud of misery was fogging her brain too much to come up with anything convincing, so she decided to pretend she was a rich person and just tell Jaros he had to drive her home. After all, she would never see him or Ludmilla again. The thought made more tears leak down her cheeks, and she swiped her sleeve across her face before picking up the duffel and Pie and heading for the bedroom door.

  She got to the bottom of the stairs before the front door crashed open and Gavin stalked in. She almost dropped Pie’s case, because the sight of him looking magnificent in his tux sent agony ripping through her. She would never again smooth back his thick, gleaming hair or feel the seduction of his lips against hers.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you were a coward,” he said, taking in her luggage with a scornful glance.

  “I would have thought you’d trust me,” she said, tightening her grip on the handle of the cat carrier as she fought the tide of sadness flooding through her. “Just let me leave.”

  He crossed his arms and stayed in front of the door. “I did trust you. That was my mistake.”

  “You don’t know how to trust. You didn’t stop for even one second to think that maybe I hadn’t revealed your secret. You told me you didn’t want to lose me, and then you tried and convicted me without any hesitation.” Pie yowled, and Allie realized she’d been jerking the case back and forth as she talked. “Now you’ve even upset my cat, so get out of my way.”

  She thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes, but he said, “Are you planning to walk back to the city?”

  “I guess billionaires don’t know about Uber.”

  The rigidity went out of his body, and he ran one hand through his hair. “Jaros will take you, if you really want to go.”

  “I do.” Except that she would never see him again, and that was shredding her heart into tiny pieces.

  “Tell me one thing,” he said. “If not you, then who?”

  Hearing him actually say it felt like a mule kick to her gut. The tears overflowed. “Figure it out yourself,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’ll be outside waiting for Jaros.”

  She walked straight at him, feeling a tiny spurt of triumph when he moved out of her way.

  “Allie,” he said, the edge in his voice blunted almost to a plea.

  She kept walking, her head held high, hitching the duffel onto her shoulder. She paused on the threshold to say over her shoulder, “Tell Jaros to hurry. I don’t want Pie catching cold.”

  Then she put all her emotions into slamming the door shut right in Gavin’s gorgeous, heart-wrecking face.

  Gavin jumped as the door crashed closed. He wouldn’t have pegged Allie as a door slammer. But then he wouldn’t have pegged her as an opportunist, either. Or such a talented actress, using righteous anger to deflect his accusations.

  He walked to a control panel and hit the intercom button. “Jaros, Allie needs to go back to the city right away. She’s waiting at the front door.” And cold as hell, he hoped.

  “Yes, Mr. Gavin.” He could hear the bafflement in the chauffeur’s voice, but the man would never question Gavin’s orders.

  He turned off the intercom and rubbed his hand over his face. He could sure pick ’em. First, the ambitious Irene. Now the . . . the . . . He tried to find the right adjective to describe Allie’s perfidy, but all he could come up with was warm, generous, sassy, and caring. And sexy, but opportunists could be sexy. In fact, it undoubtedly helped them in their schemes.

  He needed another drink. Heading for the bar in his downstairs den, he felt the fury he’d worked up drain away, leaving a hollow misery in its wake. He poured himself a bourbon and walked to the window to stare out into the darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he could just see the foam edges of the surf. He pushed open the window to hear the ceaseless roar and crash on the beach. But the sound brought him none of the usual comfort.

  All he felt was cold, chilled to his core. Guilt hacked at him for his hope that Allie was feeling it, too. He banged the window closed and tossed back the rest of his bourbon before going for a refill.

  He threw himself into a leather armchair but stood up again to pace the room.

  It took every ounce of his willpower not to race to the front door and drag Allie back into his house. Without her, the walls seemed to echo with loneliness.

  “Damn it!” He knocked into a small table and sent it crashing onto the floor, its collection of knickknacks shattering. He’d had enough to drink that his balance was going. Still he walked, because what did it matter if he broke every object in the room? He had the money to replace them all.

  But nothing, whispered the relentless voice in his brain, nothing could replace Allie.

  Hugh had said not to jump to conclusions. Allie had told him to figure out who else could have done this. Was that just her way of throwing him off her track, or could someone else be the guilty party?

  The bourbon was making his thoughts spin in useless circles, dredging up flashes of Allie bending over him, her face upside down as she moved his head with her strong little hands. And Allie stroking Pie while she read Gavin’s work on the computer screen, so engrossed she didn’t notice him approaching. And Allie curled against him in bed, her body warm and lax from their lovemaking.

  A wordless groan tore out of his throat.

  What did it matter if she had used her connection with him? People did it all the time. He needed to toughen up and accept that his wealth and position evoked a certain response in others.

  Another Allie moment whirled up from the recesses of his memory. They’d been talking about her ex-husband, and he’d asked her about regrets. He’d heard the sense of failure in her voice. But she’d been so Allie as she turned her lemons into sugar-sweetened lemonade. She’d said that she wished her ex-husband well, but Gavin could see the relief in her eyes that he was three thousand miles away.

  Would she invite that pain back into her life by helping her ex?

  “How the hell should I know?” Gavin muttered, leaning against the mantel to stare into the cold, empty grate of the fireplace.

  If she wouldn’t, who would? Who else knew him and knew Troy?

  Realization seared through him like an electric shock, and he jerked away from the mantel.

  Irene. She was an actress. She lived in LA. Troy was an actor who’d just moved to LA. So they easily could have met.

  He pushed the intercom. “Ludmilla, please bring a large pot of coffee to my office.”

  Holding on to the banister with a death grip, he climbed up the stairs and dropped into the chair in front of his computer. If he typed very slowly, he could get most of the letters right as he googled Irene and Troy in combination.

  And there it was. They worked together in a soap opera.

  The welcome scent of coffee preceded Ludmilla into the room. “Where you want it, Mr. Gavin?”

  “Right here.”

  Ludmilla carried the brass-and-wood tray over and lowered it carefully onto the desk. “Ms. Allie is all right?”

  Clearly, his housekeeper didn’t have the same restraint as her husband. “She’s fine,” Gavin snapped.

  All the warmth and concern left Ludmilla’s face. “Yes, sir,” she said, her voice without inflection. “You want anything else?”

  Now he’d alienated her, too, but he didn’t have the energy to apologize right now. “I’m good.”

  She stalked out of the room, her back ramrod straight.

  Gavin poured himself a mug of the powerful coffee and drank down half of it, tr
ying to clear his brain enough to puzzle out what Irene would have to gain by sending Troy to audition for a nonexistent movie.

  He stared into the steam rising from the mug and debated whether he really wanted to know.

  Because then the guilt of what he’d done to Allie might just destroy him.

  Chapter 29

  Allie wondered why she’d bothered to drag herself out of bed in the morning. Sleet ticked against the windowpane, Pie had hacked up a hair ball on the comforter, and there was no tea or coffee in her pantry. She opened the refrigerator to get orange juice, saw a six-pack of beer, and thought, What the hell?

  Taking a beer to the sofa, she turned on the television and began scrolling through movies, hoping to find something to take her mind off the anger and anguish that rolled through her every time she thought of Gavin.

  But, of course, a Julian Best movie came up in her queue because she rewatched them all the time. She scooped Pie up from her lap and laid her cheek against the cat’s neck, trying to soothe herself with the sound of purring.

  Gavin had battered her heart with his lack of trust. She had done nothing to deserve that from him. She knew he had been betrayed by other women he loved, but she was a different person. A spurt of hot, righteous anger punched through her. Was he too damaged to see that?

  Allie wanted to rage at him, to defend herself from his insulting accusations. But she understood, too. All that sarcasm was just a facade, protecting his poet’s soul. He wanted to believe in love, so he made himself vulnerable to it. And when the person he loved let him down, he imagined he wasn’t worthy. She’d been through that with Troy, thinking there was something wrong with her because her ex had told her so over and over again. She began to assume that she brought that behavior on herself. Her stomach churned at the memory.

  So Gavin thought he evoked betrayal. That it was his fault.

  Maybe if they’d had longer together, he wouldn’t have condemned her unfairly, no matter how damning Hugh’s news seemed. But their relationship had exploded with such suddenness that it had no solid foundation.

  “Why do I have to be so darned sympathetic? Why can’t I just get mad at him for being a jerk?” she muttered into Pie’s fur. The little cat squirmed, so she set her back down on the sofa cushion.

  She needed the strength of anger to combat the most serious of her problems. She loved Gavin, and the ache of losing him burrowed inside her like one of those underground coal seam fires, searing through her without any hope of being extinguished. For a moment she doubled over, her hands braced on her knees as the pain flared in her heart.

  Pushing herself back to a sitting position, Allie took a long swig of beer and chose a movie at random. Working Girl.

  “That’s what I need,” she said, her spine straightening. “Work.”

  Her former boss at Havilland knew she was anxious for a job, but it might pay to remind him tomorrow morning. Then she remembered Ben Cavill, whose business card was on her dresser. She’d drop him an e-mail right now. Being constructive was better than crying over a man.

  Pie glared when Allie launched herself off the couch to grab her laptop and the doctor’s card. She took her time composing the e-mail, then read it out loud. “So what do you think?” she asked Pie. “I want to sound confidently available, not pathetically overeager.”

  She hit “Send” and started the movie again. When the secretary Tess dressed up in borrowed designer clothing to go to a party she wasn’t invited to, Allie decided it was a bad choice and turned it off.

  As she got up to get another beer, her cell phone buzzed. The caller ID came up “Private,” but she figured that chatting with a telemarketer was better than feeling sorry for herself.

  “Allie? This is Ben Cavill. Sorry to call you on Sunday, but I just got your e-mail.”

  Hope fluttered in Allie’s chest. “I’m glad you called.”

  “Good, because I have a client who desperately needs your services. Gavin told me you’re very booked up right now, but your e-mail mentioned that you had availability this week.”

  Gavin told him what? Somehow she managed not to say that out loud. “Yes, I had a patient called out of town unexpectedly, so time opened up,” she improvised.

  “That’s good news. I’m going to send your credentials to my client. Once he gives me the go-ahead, I’ll update you on his issues and put you in touch.” He paused a moment. “I’ve been looking for a PT of your caliber, so I hope you’ll reserve some time for my patients in the future. In concierge medicine, the remuneration is excellent.” He named an hourly fee that made her eyes go wide. At that rate, she would need only three patients to pay her bills.

  “My schedule is starting to open up,” Allie said, “so call me the next time you have a prospective client.”

  She got off the phone and did a victory dance around the sofa before she waltzed over to the cat and scratched her under the chin. “Mama’s going to buy us a sirloin steak to celebrate.”

  Then she remembered Cavill’s comment about Gavin and narrowed her eyes. It sounded as though Gavin had messed with her livelihood because he wanted her to go to Southampton with him. Granted, he was paying her for the little bit of work she did there. Generously.

  But he had no right to keep her from the work she was trained to do, the work that gave her satisfaction and purpose. The work that paid for Pie’s cat food.

  A welcome burn of fury boiled up in her. Before she could think, she hit the speed dial for Gavin’s number. It rang three times, and she was about to hang up when his voice came on the line. “Allie?” He sounded torn between disbelief and hope.

  “How dare you screw with my work?” she snarled. “You knew I needed PT jobs, but you told Ben Cavill that I was booked up. Was it just so you’d have a little entertainment out in Southampton? I can’t believe you accused me of betraying your trust when you’re the guilty one.”

  “Damn it! I was paying you for full-time work, and very well.” His voice was hoarse.

  “For this week, but what about next week, when there was nothing left for me to do on the Julian Best bible? Did you think of that?”

  “I needed you. I thought if I had more time, I could make you understand how much.”

  “You needed me! I used to be stupid enough to think that being needed meant being loved. But I learned the difference from Troy. Neither of you selfish jerks considered my needs.” Angry tears spilled down her cheeks. “Actors and writers, the ultimate narcissists. I’m going to date a plumber next.”

  “Dear God, don’t make me laugh. My head will explode.”

  “Take a video, because I’d like to watch.”

  He gave a pained groan before saying in a subdued tone, “You’re right. I thought if I threw enough money at you, you wouldn’t notice how desperate I was. It was arrogant and selfish.”

  That deflated the hot balloon of her anger, but it didn’t change what had happened between them. She told herself not to ask, but . . . “Did you figure out who set up Troy for the audition?”

  “No. I decided to drink myself into oblivion instead. I didn’t want to feel the terrible things that were tearing me apart, but even the bourbon couldn’t numb me enough for that.”

  She was not going to ask what he was feeling. She’d been through this with Troy. Whatever contrition he expressed wouldn’t make him any more concerned about her feelings the next time he had a problem.

  “I’m sorry, Allie,” he said, his tone so miserable it nearly undermined her resolution. “I knew the moment I said it to Ben that I was wrong.”

  “Yet you made no effort to fix your error.” Exhaustion washed through her, making her shoulders sag. Was it pride or stubbornness that made the men in her life refuse to repair the damage they did?

  Gavin was silent, and she realized she would probably never hear his voice again. “I look forward to reading your next Julian Best novel. It’s going to be great.”

  She ended the call.

  “Allie!” She was
gone. Gavin slammed his fist onto the coffee table. That sent a wave of pain through his skull, but he welcomed the hangover as a well-deserved punishment for his many sins. He cradled the phone in his other hand as though Allie were contained in it.

  Last night, as he stared at the information that Irene and Troy were acting in the same soap opera, a horrible sense that he had totally, completely, and utterly screwed up had seeped through him like acid. He hadn’t been able to bear it, so he’d left the coffee in his office and gone back to the bottle of bourbon.

  Then he’d staggered into his bedroom and seen the dress Allie had left on the bed with the necklace he’d bought for her neatly arranged on top of it. He was going to tell her the jewelry was hers to keep after the ball. He’d picked up the dress and buried his face in it, trying to inhale something of Allie to ward off the sear of his guilt. But the faint scent of her perfume only made the guilt scald even deeper.

  He’d thrown the dress across the room and sent the necklace after it before he crawled into the bed that felt too big and empty without her in it. He even missed having the damned cat curled up on one of the pillows.

  How had she woven herself into his life so quickly?

  After lying awake for an hour with loneliness howling around him, he’d hauled himself into his office to toss and turn on the sofa there.

  When he’d seen her name on his phone, every molecule in his body had leaped with the hope that by some miracle she had forgiven him. Instead, she’d discovered what a self-centered ass he truly was.

  He winced as he remembered his defense that he was paying her well. What the hell was he thinking? That he should demonstrate just how big a jerk he could be? Stuffing a pillow behind his pain-twisted back, he tried to find a comfortable position, but there was no comfort to be had and no escape from his thoughts.

  He stroked the screen of the phone again, his lips curling into a grimace of a smile as he remembered Allie swearing she was going to date a plumber. She could make him laugh even as she berated him. Who else in his life could do that?