“Let me get this straight. You made sure to keep yourself in the public eye on purpose?”
“Sound strange? Let it settle in for a moment. I have the eyes of the paparazzi on me all the time. They track my movements. They keep a running record of every single person in my world. Anyone they don’t know so much as breathes in my direction, and they start snapping photos. As an early-warning system, its unbeatable.”
I sat back in my chair, grasping at the questions swarming my head like a cloud of flies. “So the scandals, the prostitutes who blabbed to the papers. You never . . .” Paid extra for butt stuff, I thought, but couldn’t bring myself to say.
“Each and every woman I have ever been photographed with was paid for her services. It just so happens that those services did not include sex.”
I blinked. I swallowed. I raised my finger and tapped my forehead like a microphone. Is this thing on?
“And it worked,” he said. “It always worked. Until Carla. For her, I broke one of my own cardinal rules. And she paid the price.”
“Which rule is that?” I asked.
“Never protect someone you’re involved with. And never become involved with someone you protect.”
My mother had often advised something similar, though hers sounded more like Don’t shit where you eat, Janey.
“Carla was sick,” Valentine continued. “She hid it from me for longer than she should have been able to.” He raked a hand through his hair, harrowing wild furrows among the espresso-colored waves. “When I finally dragged the truth out of her, she told me she’d been involved in a medical trial for some new miracle drug and was somehow worse off than ever. Arrogant fool that I am, I thought, I have more money than God. I have a half sister who’s a medical malpractice lawyer. Slam dunk. Right?” His laugh was as bitter as bile. “Wrong.”
“Wrong how?” I asked.
“It wasn’t long after Kristin and I started working together on Carla’s case that some of the more damning accusations hit the press. As I’ve told you, I always maintain somewhat of a reputation, but this was something different. Someone was doing their sabotage of my businesses and investments by convincing everyone I’m a lying, cheating scoundrel of the first order.”
“Have you ever considered that your soon-to-be ex-wife might have had something to do with it? She can’t have been thrilled with the idea of you leveraging said money for a woman you’d been cheating on her with.”
“Her.” Valentine’s expression changed yet again, and I wasn’t sure exactly what it was I saw there this time. Bitterness. Regret. Exhaustion. Maybe all of those things. “I doubt my dalliance with Carla bothered Miranda all that much. My soon-to-be ex-wife has been screwing around since the day we were married. Before that, actually, as your mother discovered.”
“Discovering things is what she does best,” I said.
Revealing them, not so much.
“Anyway, she followed the trail of information from the press all the way back to where it started.”
“And where was that?”
“Dawes, Shook, and Flickner.”
A bolt of energy shot up my spine, my fingers beginning to tingle and sweat. I shook like a terrier as a lightning clap of realization split my brain.
“Your divorce proceedings. Someone was leaking information gathered in your divorce proceedings to skewer you in the press. That’s why you paid Rhonda and the others to come in and give a bunch of phony testimony. To see what would get leaked, and when.”
“You’re getting warmer,” Valentine encouraged.
“And that’s why Carla came in and said that my mother had been blackmailing you both. Because you didn’t want anyone at the law firm to know that you’d been working together on Carla’s case.”
“You’re on fire.” Valentine fanned himself with a lazy hand.
“So that’s what my mother was investigating before she disappeared? Finding out who had been working so hard to discredit you?”
“She had a promising theory.”
“Which was?”
“That whoever was leaking damning information from my divorce proceedings to the media wanted to sabotage my businesses so I’d have to stop funding Carla Malfi’s lawsuit, and—”
“And if they were to successfully pin her murder on you, you’d take the blame, you’d take the fall, the lawsuit falls apart, and they’re off the hook.”
Valentine reached up and tapped the end of his nose with an index finger. After all the booze he’d guzzled, I was mildly impressed he could still find it.
“Why take the risk?” I leaned forward, resting my chin on my palms, my head buzzing like a beehive between my hands.
“Pardon?” Valentine traced the rim of his empty glass with the tip of his index finger.
“All this time, you’ve been damn near untouchable. Then Carla comes along and you jeopardize the safety of the entire world you’ve built to help her. Why?”
“The same reason most people do stupid things.”
“Shitty judgment?”
“Love.” He raised his empty glass in a boozy, ironic toast.
“Love,” I scoffed. And believe me, scoffing is definitely the word for what I did.
“Have you ever been in love, Jane Avery?” He examined my face as if trying to find the answer to his own question hidden somewhere in the crease of my eyelids or the curve of my lips. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think you have.”
“How would you know?”
“That kind of obsession marks you. Changes you.”
The tips of Valentine’s fingers, these hands that bid buildings to rise, now mapped the transition from my cheekbone to jaw. His eyes following the places he had touched.
And Valentine had touched me before. Dragged his thumb across my lower lip to smear my lipstick. Grazed my hand beneath the table when he’d collected my panties.
This time was different. This time, he didn’t seem to know he was doing it.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe for fear he would realize it and stop.
“When you’ve known what it’s like to need another person more than you need air. When a few stolen moments, a kiss, a touch, is the only respite from the bone-deep ache of craving it. When a part of your soul has been sheared off and grafted into a heart that’s not your own. That kind of love . . . it lives in your skin.”
At least a dozen sarcastic comments suggested themselves. Things I could say—should say—to reduce this moment to rubble.
But I couldn’t.
Not when Valentine’s face was so close to mine. So close I could see the flecks of bronze like metal shavings scattered in the threads of his irises. Close enough for the air he exhaled to perfume my indrawn breath with the smoky scent of whiskey.
And then there was a pause.
No. Not just a pause.
The pause.
I could have stopped it then, but I didn’t. The reasons were as complex and simple as this: right that second, I wanted to be whatever version of myself Valentine thought he saw.
I let my eyes fall closed, readying myself for the kind of mouth-on-mouth smash that had gone out of style with Bogie and Bacall, for I knew in some primal way that this was how Archard Everett Valentine would kiss.
Without preamble. Without apology.
Countless seconds went by during which I couldn’t figure out if this was really happening. If these were really Archard Everett Valentine’s lips hovering over mine, the heat from them making the few air molecules between us dance.
And then some titanic cock-goblin had to go and clear his throat.
Valentine jerked backward like a dog that had just run out of leash, leaving me pre-lip-lock tilting in the open air. The desperate-chick version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The cock-blocking newcomer, whom I recognized as one of Valentine’s own men, did everything short of holding up a hand to erase me from his vision while mumbling apologies to his employer.
“I’m sorry to in
terrupt, sir. But you’ve had a lot to drink, and you said if you . . . that is, if it seemed like you were trying to—”
Valentine looked at me, realization doing its best to form surprise with his uncooperative features.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Were we about to—”
“Of course not,” I said. “We were just having a conversation, and then you paused, and I thought maybe you—”
“She was leaning in, sir. And her eyes were closed.”
I cast a withering look in the direction of Valentine’s paid stooge.
“I was not. I was just stretching.” Lie. I shifted in my seat demonstratively and rubbed at my lower back. “I don’t know what kind of establishment you’re running here, but these chairs are shit.”
“But you—”
“What’s your name?” The interruption was just enough to throw the lackey off his game.
“Jones,” he said.
“Jones, if one more word comes out of your piehole with regard to what I may or may not have been doing, Valentine is going to need to find himself a new ass watcher.”
“You can’t fire me.”
“Who said anything about firing you? Valentine will have to find your body first. Do we understand each other?”
Jones’s Adam’s apple bobbed over a swallow. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, Jane. Ma’am makes me feel oogy.”
“Yes, Jane,” he repeated.
“We should go,” Valentine announced. “Jones, we need to arrange safe transport home for Jane.”
“I’m not going back to the safe house,” I said.
“I didn’t say you were. You’re coming with me.”
“Forget it. I’m done with babysitters. Give me a decent weapon and I’ll take my chances.”
Valentine gave me a look that was far more assessing than I would have figured he could manage at this point. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I made a promise to your mother.”
“Come the fuck again?”
“Your mother made me promise that if anything happened to her, I would make sure you were safe. It’s the whole reason I assigned Paul and Shepard to you in the first place.”
I shook my head, trying to understand what he’d just said. This whole Valentine and my mother as bosom buddies thing was officially creeping me the fuck out.
“Fine. I’ll go to your place. But only because I’m exhausted and my apartment probably still has dead-guy cooties in it.”
“Good. It’s settled.”
Valentine tried to stand but stumbled against the table.
I steadied him by the hips. Feeling their particular unyielding shape against my palms was strangely intimate. He was a man it didn’t feel normal to know.
“I’m drunk,” he said.
“I gathered.”
Jones poked his head around the screen and nodded to a couple of his comrades. Together they propped Valentine up like a scarecrow and commenced to march him out of the restaurant.
The other diners kept right on chewing their prime rib and acting like a billionaire stumbling his way out on the arms of three CIA types was the most natural thing in the world. And for them, maybe it was.
The Phantom was waiting at the curb.
Valentine’s men poured him into the back, and I stepped in after him, seating myself across from his bench. They closed the doors behind us and signaled to the driver, who didn’t look any happier to see me than the last time I’d bid him adieu.
We’d barely pulled away from the curb when Valentine reached for that same decanter he’d availed himself of the first time we had spoken.
“No cock blocker?” I asked. “Who’s going to stop you if you try anything this time?”
“I suppose you’ll have to.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.
“Why?” He upended the decanter. Some of the scotch even made it into the cut-crystal glass. “Don’t think you can resist me?”
“More booze, I mean. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess you were a raging alcoholic.”
“High-functioning alcoholic,” Valentine said. “With anger issues and OCD. But who’s counting?”
Carla had been, and now she was dead. This was a sobering thought. If only Valentine had been the one to have it.
Valentine took a sip, closed his eyes, and let his head fall back on the buttery leather headrest. “You need to be more careful around me, Jane.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’d like to fuck you.”
It was a damned good thing I was already sitting down, because right about then my body turned to liquid from hips to knees. Meanwhile, my stomach did some kind of flip that should have been scored by a panel of Olympic judges.
“Wouldn’t that be breaking your own cardinal rule again? Becoming involved with someone you’re protecting?”
“Technically, Shepard was protecting you.” Valentine’s eyelids were closed, the fringe of dark lashes fanning against his high cheekbones.
“Technically you fired him.” A pang of something like guilt spilled cold liquid through my middle.
“Oh, I agree there are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t let me,” he added. “Fuck you, that is. I’m just saying that I’d like you to.”
As if I needed clarification.
“Not that I would ever even consider it”—(lie)—“because I wouldn’t”—(also lie)—“but why is it I shouldn’t let you, exactly?”
He rolled the tumbler between his hands, the liquid within a small, boiling sea of oblivion inside wickedly refracting angles.
“Because any woman I fuck literally ends up getting fucked figuratively. There’s a long, long list of Women Archard Everett Valentine Has Literally or Figuratively Fucked, and you don’t want to be on it.”
“Good to know.”
“But.” He poked his index finger into the air like a Kennedy. “But there plenty of reasons why you should let me fuck you.”
It would have been just plain rude of me to stop him then. Blotto as he was. And okay, maybe I was the tiniest bit curious.
“You may approach the bench. Figuratively,” I said, borrowing his word.
“I’m good.” He looked at me from beneath the fringe of those dark lashes. One corner of his mouth curving up like the sickle moon. Mischief. “I’m very, very good.”
“You and every other man,” I muttered.
“You misunderstand me.” He set the tumbler aside and rested his elbows on his knees. Though this small posture erased only about two inches of the space between us, I would have sworn under oath that I could feel each and every last micron.
“Some men can blunder their way into learning a trick or two. But like anything that interests me, I’ve made a study of fucking. With them, it’s a hobby. With me, it’s an art.”
“Are we talking modeling clay and gum erasers?”
I regretted the joke as soon as I’d made it, in no small part because Valentine looked like he was actually considering ways that these particular implements could be incorporated into some seriously dirty sexy times.
“You shouldn’t say those things.” Valentine’s hand stirred on the long, lean mound of muscle so perfectly revealed by his tailored slacks. His artist’s fingers flexing, looking for one terrible moment like they might slide upward to stroke his crotch.
And what would I do if he did?
Avert my eyes and watch the city lights slide off the windows? Zip across the seat and slap his hand?
Watch him?
The last thought made my stomach feel heavy. I had begun to sweat in strange places. The creases at the backs of my knees. The insides of my thighs. Even behind my ears, for God’s sake. And from the unblinking, feral way Valentine looked at me and the timely flare of his nostrils, I could almost believe he could smell my longing.
Like a wolf.
I cleared my throat and crossed my legs in the most businesslike way possible. “So you’re a dynamo in the sack and wou
ld most likely ruin me for all other men, if you didn’t ruin my life first. Is that about the point you were trying to make here?”
“Sounds tidy enough.”
I heaved an inward sigh of relief when he leaned back and retrieved his tumbler. The more of that stuff he sucked down, the easier he would be for me to manage, should he decide to get handsy. A drunk Valentine would be easier to subdue, physically speaking.
“Point well noted.” Time to shift the subject back to less dangerous things, like betrayal and murder. “There was something else I wanted to ask you about.”
He lifted his hand in a grand, magnanimous sweep. “Ask away. I’ve told you everything else you’re not supposed to know.”
This dug barbs into my guts, even now. The idea that a man like Valentine could know more about my life than I did galled me somehow.
“Earlier today, I learned that David Koontz’s wife also died of liver failure and that he and his wife had also been involved in a medical malpractice case. This morning, that case was reassigned from Sam Shook to Kristin Flickner at Melanie Beidermeyer’s request. Were their deaths related?”
“Dean David Koontz.” Valentine pronounced the name with the nostalgia some men reserve for their alma mater. “And I thought I was good at eating ass.”
My stomach did another one of those alligator death-roll things. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Koontz is so far up the Beidermeyers’ collective backside, he could probably tell you what they ate for dinner a week running. I’m not the least bit surprised he’d want Melanie involved in his wife’s wrongful death suit.”
“Why? What does he want from them?”
“Money. Expert testimony. Who the hell knows? The Beidermeyers are in the pharmaceutical industry too, if you’ll remember. If there was one thing I learned when backing Carla’s fight, it’s that these cases are brutal. Having an ally like the Beidermeyers in your corner can make or break you in the long run. And whatever he’s doing to ingratiate himself, it must be working.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They’ve given him an honorary position on the board of their charity. In fact, I’ll have the unique displeasure of listening to him drone on at their annual Chow for the Children luncheon tomorrow at the Beidermeyer estate.”
Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Page 22