1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Five

by Julie Kenner

  Diana laughed. “Sounds lovely.”

  It wasn’t entirely true. She wanted more than the bank, didn’t she? Someone to share her life? A home? Maybe children one day?

  Someone like Leo?

  “Liar.”

  Diana waved, stepping out of the doorway. “See you after lunch.”

  “We’re not done talking about this,” Maggie called after her.

  Diana smiled as she made her way toward the elevators. She pressed the button, then stepped inside, taking a deep breath.

  It’s just Leo. And we’re only friends. We’ll only ever be friends.

  Chapter Two

  Leo Gage left the club and headed north on foot. The restaurant he'd chosen as a place to meet Diana was a long walk, but he needed the time to clear his head before he saw the woman who was both his best friend and the object of all his private fantasies.

  It had been that way as long as he could remember, ever since he'd seen Albert Boone shove her on the playground. Leo’s rush toward her had been instinctual even then. She’d been small, with bones as fine and delicate as a bird and an unruly head of black hair that was always escaping from the elastic bands her mother used in a vain attempt to keep it off her daughter’s face. He’d held out a hand to help her, and she’d looked up at him, her brown eyes holding an expression of such goodness, such sincerity, that he’d been lost from that moment forward. He’d spent every moment since trying to preserve all the things that made her better than him.

  And that meant, first and foremost, shielding her from his influence.

  Her parents had made it easy. Clarence and Gwen Barrett had been kind and welcoming, and while he hadn’t realized how rare that was when he was a kid, eventually he understood that not everyone would give him the benefit of the doubt like they had.

  Leo’s mother worked at Charlie’s Pub, slinging beer to drunk patrons while she dodged their advances. Leo had never known his father. He spent his time after school wandering the streets, getting into trouble, or sometimes just watching TV at home. While he was throwing rocks at the windows of abandoned buildings, Diana was practicing the piano, developing a lasting affinity for the classical pieces of music she would come to favor. While Leo stole comic books from the corner grocery, Diana learned to paint next to an easel set up next to her mother's on the wide lawn of the Barrett property. Leo ran wild until all hours. Diana was due home promptly after school. Leo ate greasy fish and chips from the stand by the beach, shoving the hot, flakey fish into his mouth while he walked. Diana sat down promptly at six each night to a well rounded meal cooked by her mother.

  Still, the Barretts never made him feel self-conscious or embarrassed about their differences, even when he grew from a rough and tumble boy to a young man with two arrests (vandalism and petty theft) and a chip on his shoulder a mile wide. Clarence Barrett had spared Leo no sternness, lecturing him eloquently and frequently on his potential, on his need to develop a path for himself before life took him in a direction from which he could not recover. But he was always kind and fair, and Leo sensed his concern and genuine affection. It was for them as much as Diana that he kept up the charade of his professed career.

  And the reason he steered clear of Diana romantically.

  The Barretts might welcome him as a wayward foster son, the tough, angry foil to Diana’s cultured softness, but he was under no illusion they would continue doing so if he were to profess his love for their daughter.

  Besides, Diana deserved better. And so did her parents.

  He lifted a hand to his tie as he approached the restaurant. He hated wearing ties. He always felt like he was being lynched by his own clothing. It was one of the many perks of his real job, one that required nothing more than the ability to think on his feet and a willingness to use his fists — and sometimes a weapon.

  He ran a hand over his dark hair, pushing back the piece in front that fell over his forehead. He’d been wearing his hair the same way for so long the gesture was like a tic. His hands wouldn’t know what to do with themselves without it.

  He opened the door to the restaurant and stepped into a sea of suits and dresses, jackets and ties. Everyone looked the same. All of them wearing their cool expressions like armor.

  Except her.

  She was standing in an alcove against the wall, watching the crowd with an expression of peaceful interest. It was an expression that was quintessentially Diana. Curiosity coupled with a kind of calming serenity. It was one of the many things that drew him to her. Leo was curious, too, but his curiosity was laced with cynicism and a deep-seated belief that whatever he would find in his fellow man wouldn’t be good. It was part of why he needed her. She was a dead calm to his stormy sea, Brahms to his classic rock, peaceful slumber to his erratic energy. Just when he thought he couldn’t face the ugliness of the world another day, she would call to see if he could meet her for dinner. Maybe it would be London. Maybe Prague or Tokyo. It didn’t matter. He came when she called, though he tried to make it seem like he would be in the area anyway. He would meet her in any city across the world, slide into a seat across from her in some crowded restaurant or bar, and his mind would immediately quiet. He would look into her kind eyes, and he would know for sure there was still goodness in the world.

  He hesitated before joining her, taking in the elegant neck that begged for his lips, the full mouth he’d dreamt of plundering. Her hair was loose and crazy — just the way he liked it. He’d had more than one fantasy about her naked body under him, her luxurious hair spread out on the pillow under her head.

  She was wearing a gray dress that kicked into a flare at the knee, and he had to forcibly banish the desire to cross the room, kneel at her feet, slide his hands up her slender calves to thighs that he knew would be soft and plush.

  He was so lost in the fantasy that he hadn’t noticed he’d been spotted. Diana was already halfway to him when he emerged from his reverie, and he plastered a smile on his face, trying to quiet the storm in his blood.

  “Hey, you!” She stood on tiptoe, touched her lips to his cheek.

  “Diana.”

  She leaned back, looked up at him with the clinical eyes of someone who knew him all too well. “You all right? You look a little pale. Is everything okay at work?”

  Work. Right. Diana believed he was an executive at Global Media, a lie he’d been upholding for nearly five years.

  “Fine,” he said. “I was in Paris for a bit. It’s taken me awhile to catch up.”

  She smiled. “I know how it is,” she said. “We travel for work, then do double duty when we come back. Someday we should take a holiday. If we’re going to pay for being away, we may as well have some fun.”

  He had a flash of Diana next to him on the beach, her brown skin glistening in the sun, her fingers intertwined with his own.

  Tempting.

  And dangerous.

  “Someday,” he said. It was all he could do to keep his hands off her in a restaurant or on the street. He wasn’t foolish enough to overestimate his willpower if they found themselves in some tropical locale, without the trappings of the real world to remind him who they were.

  Who he was.

  “Shall we?” She gestured to the maitre d’ standing behind a podium. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay long. I’m swamped at work.”

  “I understand.”

  He led them to the uniformed man maintaining the reservation list. A few minutes later, they were seated at a quiet table in the back of the restaurant. They perused the menu, then ordered — seared salmon for Diana and a rib eye for himself. Then he was staring into her eyes, feeling the familiar combination of affection and lust that always battled inside him while in her company.

  “How are your parents?” he asked, anxious to keep her talking. To keep the conversation moving. Anything that might distract him from the pillowy softness of her lips, the delicate angle of her collarbone, the hollow at her throat.

  She smiled. “You know Mum and Dad. Mum
is retired now. She spends all her time in the garden and at the piano.”

  “There are worse things,” he said.

  “True, but she’s also taken to bothering me about grandchildren.” She laughed. “It’s become insufferable!”

  Leo forced a smile, but the thought of Diana marrying someone else, sleeping beside another man every night, bearing children with her kind eyes and gentle smile with a man who might not fully appreciate her, who might not give her all she deserved — or almost as bad, would give her everything she deserved, everything Leo couldn’t give her — was like an ice pick to his heart.

  “And what about you?” he asked. “Would you like to have children?”

  She turned her water glass in her hand, her expression growing pensive. “Someday. But I’d have to find the right person first. And he seems to be making himself scarce.”

  Leo nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. “And your dad? Still teaching?”

  Her father was a professor of literature at a small college not far from Cornwall. It wasn’t overly prestigious, but it allowed him time to study and read, and he seemed as content a man as Leo had ever known. Leo had grown comfortable with his life, with the uncertainty of it, with the isolation. But thinking about Clarence Barrett always left him with a hint of melancholy. Could Leo be happy with such a life? Did he deserve one?

  “He is,” she said. “He could retire, but I don’t know if he’ll ever actually do it.”

  “He still loves his work,” Leo said.

  She nodded. “He does.”

  The waiter appeared at the edge of the table and set down their plates before retreating.

  “This looks wonderful,” Diana said, picking up her fork. “What about you? How are things at Global?”

  Leo cut into his steak, bracing himself for the string of lies he would be forced to tell her. He should have gotten used to it by now, but he didn’t think he'd ever get used to lying to Diana, looking into her guileless eyes and adding to the elaborate charade he’d been building for her since they were kids. Back then he’d lie about the fact that he’d had a warm meal, that his mother had read to him before bed, that there was something more than ketchup and pasta and white bread in the cupboard. He never knew for sure if she bought it, but she never called him on it, and that had been good enough for him.

  Was it good enough for him now? Was it still more important that she believe he was like her than really know him?

  “It’s good,” he said. “Business is booming. Everyone’s looking for the next frontier. You know how it is.”

  She laughed. “Not really. The business of money hasn’t changed much, I’m afraid.”

  “Surely more is done digitally now?”

  “Well, yes. There’s that. But otherwise, it’s money in, money out. Numbers never change. And they never lie either.”

  There was something wistful in her voice, words left unsaid in the breath exhaled at the end of her sentence.

  He met her eyes over their food. “Is that what you like about it? That it’s always the same?”

  “Well, there’s something to be said for dependable, isn’t there?”

  “Is there?”

  She smiled a little. “You always did see too much of me, Leo Gage.”

  The words sent a rush of warmth barreling through his chest. Both because she believed he really saw her, and because he wanted to see even more of her. And he increasingly wanted her to see all of him, too. It would be a mistake, of course. Their friendship had survived so long not in spite of his lies, but because of them. It was as solid as any fortress, but it was built on the foundation of her belief about him. Take that belief away, and everything they had would crumble into the sea.

  “That goes double for you, Diana.”

  He regretted the words as soon as they had escaped his mouth. Did she hear the insinuation in them? Catch the undertone of sex that had crept into them?

  He covered it by turning the conversation to safer topics. The weather (typically gray and cold). Football (her team always seemed to be winning, unlike his own). Leo’s mother (now retired to a small flat in Cornwall, thanks to Leo’s not insubstantial income as Farrell Black’s second-in-command). And then, all too soon, they were standing, walking out of the restaurant, Diana’s full hips swaying in front of him under the silk of her dress. They stopped on the pavement outside, and a gust of wind blew a strand of hair loose around her face.

  He reached up before he could stop himself, tucked it behind her ear. “It’s getting cold,” he said, to cover the gesture. “Let me get you a taxi.”

  She shook her head. “The walk will warm me up, and it will do me good after that delicious meal. Besides, it’s not that far.”

  He knew better than to push. To act like a boyfriend instead of a pal. He’d already come too close to crossing the carefully drawn line between them.

  “It was nice to see you,” he said instead.

  “It was nice to see you, too.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Talk soon.”

  And then she was gone, making her way down the sidewalk amid a throng of others returning to work, their numbers doing nothing to distract him from the gloss of her hair as she moved through the crowd, the strong set of her shoulders.

  He watched until she turned the corner, then started off the other way. He was itching for his weapon. It was time to get back to work.

  Chapter Three

  Diana leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. Other than a couple of trips to the employee room for coffee and one run to the restroom, she’d been sitting in the same position ever since she’d come back from lunch. The work wasn’t overly challenging — she was auditing a list of deposits and withdrawals for the previous month — but it was enough to keep her mind occupied, and that was of paramount importance after the lunch with Leo.

  She’d hoped it would be different this time. She always hoped it would be different.

  It never was.

  Some deeply buried part of her soul responded to him, reaching for him like a flower to the sun. She kept hoping he would grow bald.

  Or fat.

  Unfortunately, she’d had no such luck. He was as beautiful as ever. In fact, the bastard seemed to grow even more sexy with age. His boyish face had somehow morphed into perfect cheekbones and a jaw that could cut glass. The eyes that had once been kind and guarded were now tempered with a kind of wisdom she only found more appealing because it spoke to experiences they hadn’t shared. To mystery in the lessons he’d learned and the knowledge he’d gained without her.

  The knowledge of a man.

  Her cheeks flushed at the thought — and its implication — and the cleft between her thighs grew warm. It was almost obscene to think about her childhood friend in such a way. And yet here she was, sitting alone in the office imagining Leo Gage naked, the perfectly formed muscles of his chest tapering to corded abs that would be hard and well formed under her tongue. His cock would be as big as the rest of him, thick and long, big enough to fill every inch of her.

  She squirmed in her chair, all too aware of the wetness now coating her knickers. What was she doing? He’d had twenty years to make a move. He hadn’t. Which could only mean he didn’t want to. He probably had a woman in every city, someone to warm his bed wherever Global Media sent him. She was just the girl next door.

  And she had a feeling Leo wanted something entirely different in a woman.

  Her mother was right; she needed to find a man. Get married. Have children. Anything to stop the ridiculous fantasy that was a happily ever after with Leo.

  A glance at the clock told her it was nearly eleven. She stood and stretched, then walked into the empty hall. The office was dark and hushed, shadows angling ominously away from the dim sconces on the walls. She knew from experience that they stayed lit all night, only turning off in the morning when the office was flooded with sunlight, or more often, when the weak, gray light of London managed to seep in through t
he cloud cover.

  Everyone else had gone, and the cleaning service wouldn't arrive for two more hours. She should go home, take a bath and get some sleep before she had to be up again for work tomorrow. She was about to return to her office for her bag and coat when she had a thought.

  She reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and removed a bottle of red wine and two glasses, then headed toward Maggie’s office. She wasn’t eager to answer her mentor’s questions about the lunch with Leo, but Maggie had seemed unusually tired, even worried, earlier in the day. She’d been a good friend to Diana. It was only right that Diana would repay the favor when Maggie needed someone to talk to. Besides, they’d had some of their best conversations over wine after everyone else had gone home.

  She slipped her shoes off next to the desk, then continued down the quiet hall, her footsteps muffled on the plush carpet. She was almost to Maggie’s office when she stopped in her tracks.

  There had been a noise, something she couldn’t quite place. She heard it again, and this time she was certain; a wet thwack, the sound of flesh meeting flesh, followed by a low moan.

  She stood still in the hall, training her ears to the sound. She’d never known Maggie to have a man in the office, and she was almost positive the sound hadn’t been sexual. But there was something unsettling about it, something that chilled her skin under the silk of her dress. A moment later, the sound came again and she understood.

  It wasn’t the muffled moan of pleasure, but the stifled whimper of pain.

  Diana stepped back against the wall, every muscle in her body screaming at her to run while her heart moved her slowly forward, compelled by her worry for Maggie. She was almost to the door of Maggie’s office when she heard a man’s voice.

  “Tell us why; if you don’t intend to tell anyone, why were you accessing the files?”

  Maggie’s voice emerged from the confines of her office. “There were anomalies. It’s my job.”

  There was something defiant in the tone of Maggie’s voice, but Diana was still surprised to hear the strike of flesh against flesh, and a moment later, a moan that could only be Maggie in pain.