“That’s awful,” she said. “Why would you say something like that?”
Because it was true, and I’d known it forever.
“I dunno. Because I’m a bitch?”
“Well, that may be how they treat you, but I’ll be different. You’ll see.”
“Good luck with that.” She huffed off in a blur of peroxide-ravaged hair and pink fabric.
I pulled the cap off the tequila and gulped it down. The room went black, back to color, faded in and out. I was really feeling it now. This was so much better than being at Bax’s place, sitting on his tattered couch with him and Ari and talking about how my mother had ruined my life. Here, I was important. I was also anonymous. And even though the blonde hated me, she admired me. I was a regular attendee at these things. I’d be invited back, as long as I knew how to keep their interest. Tomorrow, she’d be forgotten.
“There you are.” Panick slid down the couch, resting his hand on my knee.
“Heeeyyyy . . . Rock God,” I slurred. The words stumbled over my tongue and fell from my lips in a clumsy fashion. My body tingled and numbed. I dropped the empty mini bottle on the floor.
“I missed you, Silvia.” Panick leaned forward and whispered, “You’re still my favorite.”
“Oh, yeah? Your favorite what?”
“My favorite fuck.” He gnashed that last word between his teeth like a lion chewing a bloody carcass. I recoiled.
Tilting my face with his hand, he mashed his mouth into mine. His tongue dug around my teeth and gums like he was looking for something between them, and my stomach lurched. Ignoring the nausea, I kissed him back, running my hands over his chest. It was an impressive chest, and it usually got me going, but as he eased me down on the couch, my stomach gave another heave. Something felt off, and some of it was the alcohol in my belly, but I knew that wasn’t all of it.
Bax’s face kept appearing behind my eyes, and I couldn’t help but notice how Panick’s lips weren’t Bax’s lips. They lacked his softness, his tenderness. Panick smelled like sweat and booze, not Irish cream and soap. We fit together wrong, like seams sewn to each other without being measured first. In fact, as he fumbled clumsily for the zipper on the back of my dress, I realized we didn’t fit together at all.
“No, Rock God.” I pushed him off me. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” He slid his hand higher on my leg. “And you do it very well.”
I shoved his fingers away and sat up, blinking against the spinning room. “No, I can’t. I need to go.”
Panick watched with questions in his eyes as I struggled to get to my feet; then he shrugged. “Suit yourself. Your loss. I got lots of other options here.”
As I stumbled to the door, my arms in front of me to catch me in case I fell, Panick moved to the corner and got to know the bottle-blonde a little better by grabbing her ass. She let out an excited squeal. Well, at least that would make her night.
The hall of the hotel tilted and swirled as I tried to find the elevators. I avoided looking at the floral pattern on the floor, as it just rocked my stomach. Still, my esophagus tightened, telling me I had mere seconds before the worst would happen. Just in time, I spotted a potted plant and heaved into it.
“Veronica? Is that you? Oh dear, are you sick?”
I wiped my mouth and looked up at Catia Garcia. Crap. This couldn’t be good.
“What’re yoooudoinghere?” I mumbled, rubbing at my carpet-imprinted knees.
“Herb and I sometimes get a hotel in the city for fun. It’s like we’re on vacation.” She touched my forehead. “Oh, dear, you don’t look good. You’re sweating. You might have a fever. Come. Our room is down the hall.”
I tried to protest, but my mouth and feet wouldn’t cooperate. She led me into a room that mirrored the one I’d just been in with the band, only this one was empty of chatty blondes and tattooed rockers. I covered my mouth with my hand as my stomach gave another shudder.
“Okay, let’s get you to the bathroom,” Catia said, ushering me to the marble room.
I upchucked bottle after minibar bottle until it felt like all of my insides had joined the liquid in the toilet. Catia handed me a cold cloth, and I gratefully wiped my mouth and face as she flushed the toilet. I downed the glass of water she passed me, and the fuzz in my head cleared a bit.
“Herb’s down at a meeting at the bar,” she said. “But seeing the state you’re in, I don’t think he’ll mind if I put you in the second bedroom. It’s down here.”
The bedroom was huge, double the size of my own, and I kicked off my heels and lay on the bed. The spinning started again, and I rolled to the side with a groan.
“I think we’ll set a trash can next you for the night, okay, dear? If you need to throw up again, do it in here.” Catia plunked a white container beside the bed. She pushed my sweaty hair off my face. “Should I call your husband? Let him know where you are?”
It took me a moment to realize who she was taking about. “No, please. Don’t call Bax.”
“Okay, dear. Whatever you like. Get some rest.” She headed for the door and flicked off the light.
The words tumbled out without warning. “He’s not my husband, you know.”
“Ah,” Catia said. “I figured. But he will be.”
Those were the last words I heard before the swirling room mercifully faded to black.
• • •
When I padded out to the living room in the morning, feeling like Death had had its way with me, Catia and Herb had coffee and breakfast waiting at the table in the corner. I wrinkled my nose at the scrambled eggs Herb offered, but took a warm mug of coffee with a grateful sigh and pulled out a chair.
“Catia tells me you weren’t feeling well last night,” Herb said, thumbing through his morning paper.
“Yeah.” I took a sip of coffee, letting the bitter taste linger on my tongue and wake up my senses. “I’m sorry if I ruined your romantic getaway.”
“Nonsense.” Catia took her husband’s hand. “When you’ve been together as long as we have, it takes much more than a drunk woman to ruin our time together.”
I plunked my cup on the table. “You knew I was drunk?”
“Darling girl, if the slurring and weaving did not give you away, the fact that you smelled like the inside of a bottle certainly did.”
“Oh.” I slumped in my chair. “Again, I’m sorry. I hope this doesn’t change your opinion of Bax. He had nothing to do with this.”
“Or he has everything to do with it, huh?” Herberto raised his eyebrows at me over his orange juice.
Catia’s words from the night before echoed through my head. “Wait. You said you knew we weren’t married.”
She picked up a bagel and spread cream cheese on it. “That I did.”
“But how?”
“First of all, there was a lack of rings. You don’t even have an engagement ring.” She took a bite of her bagel and swallowed. “Then there was that kiss at the gala. That was not the kiss of two people who have known each other long enough to be married. That was a first kiss, full of passion and need and uncertainty. We knew you were not married, but we never doubted you were in love.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “Baxter and I aren’t in love.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked. “He carried you through the snow at our estate, and fixed your ankle. He stayed with you as you slept to make sure you were okay, until we insisted he go get some sleep himself.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe Bax likes me. But it’s not love. And I don’t love him. Love is one of those things people create because they don’t want to be alone the rest of their lives. It doesn’t exist. It’s nothing but lust and hormones, brought on by attraction. I should know. I’m in a job where I often manipulate people into believing they’re in love.”
“Selling blankets is manipulating p
eople?” Herberto asked.
Shit. What a stupid slip-up. I held my breath. Well, they knew everything else.
I exhaled. “No. Look, the truth is, I’m an actress-for-hire. People pay me to be someone else. Sometimes I’m a new girlfriend to make an old one jealous, or a friend who can get you into the cool clubs so you can show off to your other friends, or, in Baxter’s case, a business partner who makes you look more successful than you actually are so someone will invest in your company.” I straightened, darting glances between them. “Please don’t let this change your mind about Bax or his product. It really does work. That night in the snow, we didn’t set that up. We’d been planning to talk to you about the blanket the next day, but I fell, and all plans went out the window. Baxter really does care about saving people, and he only hired me because he cared. He’d never deceive anyone for an immoral reason. And all the lies—pretending we were married, sneaking into the gala for our ‘wedding,’ that kiss on the dance floor, those were all me. My plans.”
Catia patted my hand. “You are concerned about Baxter and his business, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Is it because he is your client and if Herb decides to cancel the contract, you will have failed him as a professional?”
“Partly.” I gulped down the last of my coffee. “But also because he’s worked so hard for this. You know how there are people in this world who are intrinsically good? That’s Bax. I mean, he created those blankets knowing he might never make money on them. He gave up his job, his fiancée left him, and he used the last of the funds he’d saved for his wedding to hire me.
“On weekends, he works at a soup kitchen because he wants to. And when my mother lay dying in a hospital and I couldn’t get up the nerve to see her, he sat by her bed because he refused to leave her alone—this woman he didn’t even know. He’s been nothing but kind to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. Bax is someone you’d be lucky to work beside.”
Catia leaned back in her chair, exchanging a look with her husband.
“What?” I asked.
“That was a speech of a girl who is in love.”
I grabbed a bagel out of the basket on the table, broke it apart, stared at it, set it down.
Then I met Catia’s eyes.
“Dammit. I think you’re right.”
Herb laughed. “She usually is.”
“But how? I don’t even believe in love.”
“You believe in Baxter,” Herb said. “And that is enough.”
“The question,” Catia said, “is what do you plan to do about it?”
I brushed the bagel crumbs off my hands. “I guess I’m going to see Bax. Tell him how I feel and that I don’t want to be without him. But first, would you mind if I took a shower?”
“Good plan,” Herb said. “One should never smell of vomit when proclaiming one’s love.”
I laughed, even as my stomach plummeted. Baxter Linton. I loved him. And I was going to tell him so.
• • •
After showering and borrowing one of Catia’s flamingo-pink suits (flamingo pink is flattering on no one, by the way), I hugged them good-bye and headed to the lobby. Herb had called a limo to take me home so I could grab my car, just another kind gesture on the part of a couple who owed me nothing. It seemed Bax had found the perfect investors in them.
A crowd gathered on the street of the hotel. Many of them had cameras around their necks or carried video cameras on their shoulders. Crap. The paparazzi. They must’ve learned where the Screeching Monkeys were staying. My black limo was parked across the street, and I bowed my head as I exited, hurrying toward it.
“That’s her!” someone yelled. A tape recorder was shoved in front of my face. “What’s your name, and are you Panick Slade’s new girlfriend?”
I stopped and gave the young female reporter a confused look. “What are you talking about?”
She held up a tablet.
A high-res image of me grinding against the Rock God at the club the night before illuminated the screen. “This picture was snapped at Galaxxy last night and a fan tweeted it. It’s gone viral. Obviously, you spent the night with the sexy lead singer, too. So the world wants to know who you are.”
No. That picture. The lust in Panick’s eyes, the way our bodies looked like one. There was no mistaking anything between us. I had to get to Baxter. Now.
“I’m no one.” I pushed the reporter’s tape recorder out of the way and shielded my face from the flashing cameras as I sprinted to the waiting limo.
After giving the driver my address, I sat back in my seat, dread eating a hole in my stomach.
If Bax had seen that picture, he’d never want to be with me. And I wouldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be with that woman. And I didn’t want to be her anymore, either.
Bax
I woke up to a text from Scott. He’d sent an image of Veronica writhing against some rock singer from a band whose name I couldn’t remember with the words I told you so.
I’d pulled up the Internet, so sure it had to be an old picture, but all the entertainment websites confirmed my fears. The image was everywhere. Headlines like WHO IS PANICK’S NEW PIECE OF ARM CANDY? and THE GORGEOUS WOMAN WITH PANICK IS A MYSTERY clouded the pages. The one that hurt the most read AFTER HOT DANCE, MYSTERY WOMAN SPENDS NIGHT WITH SEXY SINGER.
With a curse, I tossed my phone across the room. Ari whimpered beside me and rested his head on my stomach.
“Sorry, buddy.” I patted him on the head. “Looks like we were both taken in by her charms.”
He chuffed a sympathetic sigh.
After wallowing in self-hatred for a good half hour, I forced myself out of bed and walked and fed the dog. Anything else seemed pointless at the moment, so I just sat in my office, staring at my computer screen, telling myself not to pull that picture back up but doing it anyway.
I’d defended Veronica since I’d met her. Told myself her past had made her the woman she was, and all she needed was compassion to soften the hard edges. What a freaking waste of time. The moment she had the chance, she’d run off with someone rich and famous. I curled and uncurled my fist, wincing at my bruised right hand. Probably lost my best friend because of her, too. All because I had to believe the best of people.
Ari barked as someone knocked on the door and I sat up. As I answered, I grabbed his collar to keep him from bolting into the street. Which was a blessing, because if I hadn’t been holding on to the dog, I might’ve fallen over.
“Clare?”
My ex-fiancée stood in the doorway, the light illuminating her long, curly blond hair. She was still beautiful. Not in the way Veronica was beautiful, where she sucked all the air out of the room when she walked in, but pretty and approachable. In movies, they’d call Clare the girl next door.
“Baxie, hey. Long time no see.” She gave me a small smile and nodded at the dog. “Hi, Armani.”
Ari growled low in his throat.
I rubbed his head. “Ari, hush. It’s Clare. You know her.” I pushed him away from the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk. Can I come in?”
“Uh, I guess so.”
She brushed past my chest as I closed the door behind her, and the familiar scent of honey and vanilla tickled my nose.
Clare peered down the hall and into rooms as we walked to the office. “You haven’t changed a thing.”
“No. You know me. Not really one for the interior decorating. Can I take your coat?”
“I’m fine.” She curled her fingers around the collar of the long gray trench coat. “It’s so cold out there.”
“Yeah. Winter came early.” I sat on the couch and she lowered herself beside me, not meeting my eyes. “Look, Clare, you obviously didn’t come here to comment on the weather. It’s been over a year. What do you want?”
Her gaze swept around the room and landed on my open laptop, the image of Veronica dancing with the Rock God still on the screen. “Is that the lead singer of the Screeching Monkeys?”
Right. That was their dumbass band name. I made a mental note to delete any of their songs I might’ve purchased from my iPod.
“Clare? You’re stalling here.”
“I know. I’m a little nervous.” She fiddled with her unpolished nails, knotting her fingers together. “I saw you on the news. You did it, Baxie. You got a business off the ground, and you’re actually going to help people. I wanted to come and congratulate you.”
“Thank you. But you could’ve e-mailed or texted me like everyone else.” My words were hard like stone, but it was impossible to be pleasant with the woman who’d kicked my heart around like a Nerf ball, then showed up acting like it hadn’t happened.
“I wanted to see you.” She tilted so her knees pressed into me. “I made a mistake, Baxie. I should never have left. It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by where I don’t miss you.”
“What about Mr. Moneybags?”
“Who?”
I ran my fingers over the scabs forming on my knuckles. “The guy you left me for? Rich, bald, looked like the guy from Monopoly?”
“Oh, Larry.” She her voice softened. “We broke up pretty soon after. Turned out, he wanted to trade me in for a younger model. He apparently had a knack for doing that every few months.”
“Ouch. Well, I can’t say I feel bad for you.”
“I understand.” She placed a hand on my knee. “I panicked, Baxie. I know that’s no excuse, but you were the first man I’d dated, kissed, slept with . . . and I was scared that if I married you, I’d regret never experiencing those things with anyone else.”
What was it about women saying they were scared of me? That was it. I was changing shampoos or having whatever voodoo curse was on me removed.
“I know it’s an awful thing, what I did to you.”
“You broke my heart, Clare. Shattered it into a thousand pieces.”
Dealing in Deception Page 19