“Do you think?”
“I do.”
“Well, the dress is amazing, but not her hair,” Blackwell said. “Although I have that covered now. While you were dressing, Bernie texted me. He’ll come to your apartment tomorrow afternoon at five-thirty. Jennifer, what do you say about having your hair and makeup done with Kate? Then, we can just go to Wenn and dress you there before Alex and you leave for your own evening of corruption.”
“I’m game,” Jennifer said. “Kate?”
“Are you serious? I’m just grateful for each of you. And also for you, Chloe. Because you did this.” I turned in front of the mirror and, for the first time in years, I felt feminine and weirdly glamorous.
“I think it fits,” Chloe said as she walked around me. “What do you think, Barbara?”
“The same. And who the hell knew? Clearly, Valentino must have had you in mind when he made that gown, Kate, because you’re owning it right now. And good for you, darling. Tomorrow night, you will shine.” She shot me a look. “This mysterious man you’re attending Maxine’s party with tomorrow night…You said you dated him in high school—did you go to prom with him?”
“I did.”
“Well, then. Good luck to him when he sees you looking like that, because that, my dear, is worth every penny of the forty thousand dollars you’re about to spend on it. Now, if we can wrest Jennifer away from her glass of champagne, which she’s clinging to like she’ll never taste a distilled grape again, we can go and find shoes.”
“And Spanx,” I said.
Her gaze swept over me. “Is that even a question? Please.”
CHAPTER TEN
The following evening, after Bernie, Blackwell, and Jennifer left my apartment so Jennifer could get dressed for her own event, I went into my bedroom and stood in front of my dressing mirror, completely in disbelief of how they had somehow turned me into a woman that I didn’t recognize.
What will Ben think when he sees me looking like this? I thought. Will he even recognize me?
It was doubtful, because he’d certainly never seen me looking like this, so I had to wonder. Bernie, who I loved at once for his quick wit and gentle demeanor, had not only given me a fresh cut and color, but had also deftly attended to my face in ways that made it glow.
My skin looked preternaturally young—he and Blackwell had convinced me to go for a bold red lip and to wear a pair of mink eyelashes, which were so dramatic, I thought that they had turned me into a siren.
My hair, which I usually wore straight down my back or in a low ponytail, now had highlights in it that I had to admit were flattering. Bernie had used a curling iron to give my hair volume, and then he’d made me lean forward so he could rustle his fingers through it until it became what Jennifer exclaimed was “the coveted freshly fucked look—but in the best way!”
Whatever the case, it had worked.
Who am I? I wondered as I looked at myself. Is this even me? I haven’t looked like this since Lucas attended to me. And even he hadn’t achieved anything close to this.
Ever since Michael’s death, I’d become increasingly conservative with the clothes I chose, the makeup I wore, and how I did my hair. When I was with Michael, I wanted to look my very best for him. But in the years following his death, none of that had mattered to me as much as my philanthropic work.
If I was being brutally honest with myself, I also knew that there was a larger part of me that hadn’t wanted to look sexy again—that part of me had been reserved for Michael, and it had died with him. I’d chosen to live a solitary life for so long. But how I looked now made no sense to me.
But I liked it. Seeing myself like this was like seeing the Kate I used to know—the one who was madly in love and having the time of her life with the love of her life. Those days were gone, but at least on the surface, they were back thanks to Bernie, who had seen something in me that I’d long since forgotten.
When the intercom rang, I knew it was Ben. I took a breath to settle my nerves, and then I went into the foyer to answer it.
“Yes?” I said.
“A mister Benjamin Cade to see you, Mrs. Stone.”
“Please send him up.”
I stepped away from the intercom as a shiver of anticipation ran through me—partly because I was wondering if Ben would like how I looked, but also because I knew I was about to change the course of the evening.
How is he going to react when I tell him that I believe I have a better plan for tonight, despite the inherent dangers it presents? Is he going to buy into it?
Already, I knew that he wouldn’t—and that we were about to butt heads.
When the knock came at the door, I answered it—and there stood Ben, replete in a perfectly fitted black tuxedo, his dark hair raked away from his chiseled face with gel. He hadn’t shaved so his face was peppered with a dusting of stubble, which made him look even more masculine to me.
For a moment, we just stared at each other.
“Kate,” he said before he stepped inside. “You look stunning.”
“Believe me, it’s all smoke and mirrors.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Jesus.”
When he came inside, I saw the desire in his eyes, which he didn’t even try to mask. Instead, if anything, he made it clear that he didn’t give a damn what I saw in his eyes, which threw me.
“That’s quite a dress,” he said in a low voice.
“Tell me about it,” I said in an effort to lighten the moment. “In fact, you should have seen the bill. It should be ‘some dress’.”
But Ben wasn’t about to let me deflect him.
“Turn for me,” he said.
“Turn for you?”
“I want to see all of you in that dress.”
I couldn’t go there with him. As attracted to him as I was, I needed to keep this relationship professional—so I declined. “How about if you turn around for me?” I countered, thinking that he’d never do it.
But he did without hesitation, and as he did, I couldn’t deny the stirring I felt in my gut. He always had been handsome, but what he had become with the passing of time was ridiculously handsome.
He looks good, I thought. Too good…
“Do you approve?” he asked.
I blushed when I said, “Yes.”
“Now, how about you?” he said. “It’s only fair, you know? And given that gown you’re wearing, it should be shown off.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“How does that matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t…”
“Then let me have a look.”
Why is he doing this? He knows how fragile this situation is.
“Come on,” he said. “Take my hand.”
“Why do I need to take your hand to turn around?”
“Just take it.”
When I took it, I was damned if I didn’t feel a spark that was at once faint yet familiar with the memories it evoked. It was also electric on a whole new level that I couldn’t deny even if I’d wanted to.
“Now, turn.”
I turned, and as he quickly spun me around twice, my dress and my hair fanned out. When he stopped me, we were standing within inches of each other. I saw the heat in his eyes, felt his breath on my neck, and smelled the faintest scent of his cologne. I felt my own desire bloom within me—and then I checked myself. This whole arrangement was about Michael, not us. But Ben nevertheless pressed on.
“We were always good together, Kate,” he said.
“I know we were, but this isn’t about us, Ben.”
“Why can’t it be?”
“Because it’s about Michael. And because we need to focus. If we lose that focus, we could fail.”
“I’m able to focus on two things, Kate.”
“Have you considered that that might be difficult for me?”
“Do you want me to back off?”
Did I? I wasn’t sure. If anything, what was happening between us right now was so unexpected, I was confli
cted. At a loss for words, I just looked at him.
“How about if I back down for now?”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“But first this.”
When he leaned forward to kiss me on the lips, it was so gentle and done with such care, I decided that all along this moment was probably inevitable. And so I let myself go and responded to his kiss as he slowly backed me against the foyer’s wall and kissed me deeper. I closed my eyes, placed my hand against his rock hard chest, felt his heart hammering against my palm, and then my head swam with the idea of being with him again. Having him back in my life again. Being his again. He was throwing me off my game, but for reasons I didn’t want to admit to myself right now, I felt powerless against it.
When we parted, he looked down at me. “I’ve been wanting to do that for awhile now. Seeing you like this pushed me over the edge.”
Just as Blackwell had warned…
“Did I go too far?”
“Depends on what you’ve done to my lipstick. It’s a lovely shade on you, though.”
He laughed when I said that, and then he turned around to face the mirror hanging behind him. My clutch was on the table beside me. With my stomach in knots because I knew that I’d just crossed a line, I picked it up, opened it, and handed him a tissue.
“Am I good?” he said when he was finished wiping his lips.
“You’re good. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to talk about tonight.”
“Do you want to go over it again?”
“No. It’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not going to like it,” I said. “But we need to discuss it anyway.”
* * *
“What aren’t I going to like?”
“That I think we should be more aggressive tonight.”
“How so?”
“You want to drop that you’re a private investigator to Bill and Maxine, so you can see what registers in their eyes.”
“That’s right.”
“But what if nothing registers? What if nothing happens? If that’s the case, we’re just wasting our time. So, how about if we approach tonight this way—let’s just be honest with everyone and put it out there. If I tell Bill and Maxine that I’ve hired you because I’m questioning whether or not Michael’s death was an accident, that news will spread like wildfire the moment after we leave their sides. Eventually, it will reach the gossip and lifestyle reporters there to record the night for tomorrow’s social pages. And when that news reaches their editors? You can expect it to become front-page news by morning. I’m suggesting that we need to turn me into a target.”
“A target?”
“If Michael was murdered, as far as I see it, that’s the fastest way to draw out his murderer.”
“But this shouldn’t be about speed—it should be about results. What you’re proposing is too risky—you’d be putting your life on the line. There are other, safer ways to go about this. Kate, you have to know that if you’re asking me to put you in harm’s way, I won’t do it. Even after all these years, you mean too much to me to do something like that. And I’m not afraid to say it, because you do mean something to me. Probably more than you know.”
“If we do this, it will go one of two ways. If Michael’s death was accidental, then nothing will happen to me. But if it is true that he was murdered, and if we properly bait the hook, then whoever did murder him will come after me in an effort to shut me down before I find out too much.”
“At the potential cost of your own life. Are you serious?”
“Nothing will happen to me tonight. Tomorrow morning, I’ll hire a security team to protect me while you work the sidelines to deal with any fallout.”
“You can’t be serious about this. I thought tonight was settled between us.”
“Sometimes plans change.”
“Not without talking them through, they don’t.”
“That’s why we’re talking about this now.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t think that you would.”
“If we intentionally try to draw someone to you, anything could happen.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“We’re talking about your life, Kate. And the very real possibility that this might end it.”
“Here’s what sickens me, Ben, and here’s what you need to understand. If Michael was murdered, whoever killed him has been enjoying their lives for five years while Michael has been lying cold in the ground. Think about that for a moment. Think about what that does to me. It’s an injustice. It incenses me. It makes me want to fight back with everything I have—and, yes, even at the risk of my own life. Certainly you can understand that.”
“To a point, I can. But I’ll say it again—there are other ways.”
“None as swift as this.”
In frustration, he stepped away from me and ran his fingers through his hair. “If I say no to this, you’re just going to go ahead with it on your own, aren’t you?”
“I’ll have no choice. We’ll part ways. I’ll go to the party, and when people ask me what I’ve been doing, I’ll tell them what I want them to hear.”
“And tomorrow morning, you’ll hire some random new P.I. and a security team you know nothing about but who you hope and pray will be able to protect you?”
“I will.”
“Even though you don’t even know what to look for when it comes to hiring either?”
“I know people in this town who can lead me to the best, Ben.”
His face became troubled when he said, “Why are you doing this? You know that I can’t lose you when I’ve only just found you again.”
And there it was—and I knew where he was coming from because I felt it myself. Once you’ve loved someone, as he and I had once loved each other, that love lived on even if it took another shape.
“Will you help me?”
“If I’m going to keep you safe, what choice do I have?”
“If we manipulate the situation, we have a better chance of winning this—assuming there’s anything to this.”
“I see the possibilities, Kate. I get it. But there’s also a massive downside—losing you. And that scares the hell out of me.”
When he said that, I spontaneously stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
“Don’t you see?” I said. “Don’t you realize that if things had turned out differently between us, and if we’d been married, and I’d lost you like I lost Michael, that I’d be standing here right now doing the same thing for you?”
“I know that you would be—you’ve always been fearless. But at what cost?”
“Perhaps the ultimate one, because that’s how much I loved him.” I shrugged at him. “Somehow, this was meant to be, Ben. First the psychic. Then you coming back into my life as a private investigator, of all professions. For whatever reason, the stars have aligned.”
“But what if they crash?”
I didn’t answer that, because I did understand the risks of what I was proposing. But I had to take them. I had to do that for Michael. If this was true, I needed to give him his justice. I checked my watch, saw that we were late, and turned around to grab my clutch. “We should go.”
“If we’re going to do this, I’m going to ask one thing of you.”
“Just one?”
“For the moment.”
“What’s that?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, I want to meet that psychic.”
“Why? You scoffed at her.”
“Initially, I did. But you’re not the only one who has been giving this some thought. Police have used reliable mediums many times to solve cold cases such as this. Am I skeptical? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean that my mind isn’t open to the idea that this woman might be legit and that she could be of help. So, I want to meet her. Assess her. Will you take me to her?”
“I can make that happen. But be prepared to be as spooked as I was, because she was tha
t good. And when you ask her your difficult questions, she’s going to make you question everything you think you know.”
“Are you certain about tonight?” he said.
“I am.”
“I have a security team I work with. They’re excellent. I’ll have them in place by morning. And then I guess we’ll strategize from there. But I want this on the record, Kate—I don’t like it. I think it’s too dangerous. But I fear that if I leave you to your own devices that I’ll only regret it later. And that’s the only reason I’m agreeing to go forward with this. Understood?”
“I understand,” I said.
And we were off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Witherhouse’s mansion was just off Fifth on Sixty-Seventh Street. I knew from previous conversations with Maxine that it was built in 1899 in the French Renaissance style—complete with a host of gargoyles screaming into the night along the rooftop—for Ian Fletcher, a successful banker and railroad investor.
Since a cab was out of the question when it came to this sort of event, I’d enlisted my driver, David, for the evening. As our limousine rolled to a stop in front of the massive house, I had to admit that the Witherhouse’s home was nothing short of imposing and magnificent. It was one of Manhattan’s few remaining mansions, and I knew that as long as the Witherhouses owned it, it wouldn’t be torn down to allow for new development.
“Holy shit,” Ben said when he saw it.
“I know—right? It’s amazing.”
“This has nothing to do with where we come from,” he said.
“To say the least, but at least we can appreciate it. I know you love architecture—or at least you used to.”
“Still do.”
“Then this should be a treat for you. Because the Witherhouses have the means to keep this sort of place in top form.”
“There are reporters on the sidewalk,” he said. “Or at least photographers. Take my hand. You might have changed the evening’s dynamics, but if any of this is going to work, we still need to behave as if we’re a couple.”
“So, we’re good here? We go forward with the rest of the night as I’ve outlined it?”
A Dangerous Widow (Dangerous #1) Page 9