Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Go on?” Robin repeated.

  From the corner of his eyes, Jules could see him widening his eyes in a very clear what the hell? He forced himself to focus on their host’s son, taking on—hopefully—an air of interest very similar to Robin’s.

  “Another issue is the bitch, you know, who’s in the film with you,” Gordie Junior went on. “You gotta take care of paying her off, although another option is that we can be careful about not showing her face.” He laughed. “Her face isn’t what’s important anyway, you know what I mean?”

  It had taken Jules a second to decipher his words—bitch?—but he got it now. Nice.

  “The girl you’re with tonight,” Junior turned to Robin to say. “She’d probably do it for the starfucker factor. I saw the way she was all over you.”

  Somewhere Annie’s ears were ringing.

  “So how much are you offering?” Jules said. “I’m assuming that GBJ would keep distribution rights—and you’d stand to make a fortune with a tape like that.”

  “Well, that’s one way to do it,” Junior said. “But I was thinking we’d provide the service, so…you’d pay us.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Jules said.

  Robin was looking at him as if he’d gone mad. Maybe he had, but this was an incredible opportunity both to get information on Junior’s fledgling company, and to establish a business relationship with the man.

  Not that they were actually going to make a sex tape. No, the negotiations would provide enough of an opportunity.

  “Robin’ll need a half a million dollars,” Jules continued. “Cash. Half on handshake—because this is not a deal that gets anywhere near paper—and half at taping. I’m assuming you’d use digital video?”

  “Yeah,” Junior said. “That’s our format, but—”

  “Second half is delivered in cash to the studio on the day of the shoot,” Jules said. “It goes home with Robin when he leaves that night.”

  “That could work,” Junior said, “but I’d have to check with my business partners…”

  “What’s to check?” Jules asked. “It’s yes or no. A half a million dollars is just a fraction of what you can make with a tape like this, and you know it.”

  “The company’s still in its early stages,” Junior explained.

  “So you’re saying you don’t have the capital,” Jules interpreted.

  “No, I’m not.” Junior was offended. And lying.

  “Because this deal can’t be discussed,” Jules said. “Not between you and your partners, or you and your father—”

  Junior took umbrage. “My father has nothing to do with this.”

  That was useful to know. “It’s between you and me and Robin,” Jules reiterated. “No one else knows. The entire deal is under-the-table. And when GBJ releases the tape, you announce it was sold to you through an anonymous source. You’ll have six months to sell the footage through Internet downloads, during which time Robin will file a lawsuit against you. There’ll be a settlement that will cost you nothing, but at the end of those six months, you will cease and desist your sale of the tape, so you better have a marketing plan in place right from the word go.”

  “I’m going to have to think about this,” Junior said.

  “Think fast,” Jules said. “This is a terrific idea, and God knows Robin could use the PR ASAP.”

  “It’s my fucking idea,” Junior bristled. “You’ll do it with GBJ, or you won’t do it at all.”

  “I’m not saying we’ll go elsewhere,” Jules soothed him. “I never said that. It would just help to know how long it’ll be until you have the money for a project of this magnitude.”

  Junior was silent.

  Jules looked at his watch, not daring to glance at Robin, who still didn’t understand exactly what was going on. But he knew Jules well enough to stay quiet.

  Come on, Junior. When will GBJ have access to a major chunk of cash?

  There was a lot of conjecture here, but if Junior were, say, smuggling a terrorist into the United States, then he would surely be well paid for his treasonous efforts. Finding out when GBJ Productions was expecting a major increase in funds might clue the FBI in to the date of al-Hasan’s arrival. Maybe.

  If, might, maybe…

  Jules looked at his watch again.

  And Junior cleared his throat. “I might have the cash in a week,” he said. “Maybe before that. I got another deal set to happen very soon, problem is the fuckers won’t commit to a closing date.”

  “Another film?” Jules probed.

  “It’s none of your fucking business, but no.”

  Jules took out one of the business cards he’d made for Julian Young, and handed it to Junior. “When you know exactly when you’ll have the cash,” he told him, “you call me, and we’ll deal.”

  As Gordie Junior walked away, Robin murmured, “Sometimes you frighten me.”

  Jules laughed.

  “A sex tape,” Robin mused. “With Annie, no less. Ric’s going to love that.”

  What the fuck was Ric doing down here in the servants’ wing? was the question that had been asked.

  Searching for the men’s room was an extremely lame-ass answer, but it was the excuse he’d been carrying around with him, and it popped out of his mouth. Unfortunately it sounded just as lame-ass when he said it aloud, especially since he’d made it look as if he were coming in from outside.

  “And then I saw this deck,” Ric added, “and it seemed private, so I thought I’d use the opportunity to, you know. Check my meter.”

  Checking one’s meter was street for taking a brief break from a party to indulge in illegal substances. Ric gave a sniff, his thumb against one nostril—a visual aid to make his words ring even more true.

  But Foley’s expression was as lifeless as it had been the night Ric had saved Gordie Junior’s worthless ass. And Ric knew if he didn’t somehow sell this thing more convincingly, then he’d really screwed himself, because all Foley had to do to prove Ric was lying was give him a drug test. It would come back clean, and he’d be in deep shit. Or maybe even dead. And it would domino, since he was here with Annie and Jules and even Robin Chadwick.

  “I had to get out of there, man,” Ric told him. “My girlfriend? She wants to hook up with the movie star, and I’m not okay with that. I mean, would you be? Some guys actually are, but I don’t know what they’re thinking.”

  He was just warming up, ready to launch into a story about how he’d told Annie that they had to talk, and that she’d agreed to meet him in the kitchen, but then she didn’t show.

  But Foley’s gaze shifted over Ric’s shoulder and the door opened behind him—the same door Ric was still holding. The one that led to the deck.

  “Ric, I lost my panties.”

  Jesus God, it was Annie. She looked from Foley to Ric and smiled sheepishly. “Oops. Busted, huh?”

  Somehow she’d gotten onto the deck. She must’ve come around the side of the house and climbed up. Goddamn it, he’d told her not to go anywhere alone, yet she’d slipped away, probably shortly after he had.

  She looked disheveled, her shoes in her hands, and he realized what she’d said as she’d come in.

  She’d lost her panties.

  “Do you have them?” she asked Ric as she slipped her shoes back on. She tucked her bra straps out of sight, adjusting her entire dress, making sure her skirt was straight, as if they’d knocked her clothing askew just minutes before on the deck. She was making it look—and convincingly, too—as if they’d sneaked away to grab a quickie.

  “I don’t think so,” he managed to say, but she leaned close, reaching into the pocket of his jacket.

  “Here they are,” she announced. It was classic sleight of hand—she’d had them scrunched up and hidden in her palm as she’d reached in, and now she pulled them out triumphantly, letting them dangle from one finger.

  As far as visual aids went, they were extremely effective. They were black and lacy.

  Esp
ecially when Annie added, “On second thought, maybe you should keep them. Next time you’re jealous of Robin Chadwick, just remember what’s in your pocket, hot stuff.”

  She flicked them at him, as if she were shooting a giant rubber band. He caught them as, still fixing her hair, she breezed past Foley, heading back toward the kitchen, and ultimately the party.

  Something actually flickered—amusement or maybe appreciation—in Foley’s eyes as he turned to watch her walk away.

  Ric watched her, too. It was hard not to, considering her panties were in his hand, which meant, kind of obviously, that she wasn’t wearing them. He tucked them back into his pocket, and when Foley turned back to him, he shrugged.

  “Busted,” Ric echoed Annie.

  “Get outta here,” Foley ordered him.

  He went.

  Dinner was one of the most unpleasant meals of Jules’s life.

  A buffet had been set up in Burns’s formal dining room, but Ric planted Annie at a table out on the patio, waited for Jules and Robin to get their dinners, and then went through the line for her.

  Something had happened when Ric had gone searching for Peggy’s room. Jules had spotted Annie first, slipping out of the hallway that led down to the kitchen, which explained where she’d been all that time.

  It also explained Ric’s elevated levels of pissed—what was Annie doing down there?—perceptible only to those who knew him, because he covered it with a wide smile when he, too, returned.

  “Change of plans” was all he told Jules, after he gave Annie his jacket because suddenly she was cold, despite the eighty-degree heat. “Annie stays with me, at least for tonight. The breakup’s off.”

  The drinks in the limo, plus the champagne, plus whatever was in Robin’s glass right now either made it hard for Robin to hear or to understand, because he was already making a beeline for Annie. “Hey, gorgeous, where you been?”

  She whispered something in his ear, something that made him laugh—and he pulled her in for an embrace.

  Which Ric was having none of. “Take your hands off her,” he told Robin, his voice low, his smile gone.

  Someone else had come out of that well-traveled hallway to the kitchen—the hired goon that Ric had identified as Foley. Jules saw that he was watching Ric, watching as Robin got the hint and backed off, watching Annie as Ric put his arm possessively around her waist.

  Something had definitely happened.

  “Just go with it,” Jules murmured to Robin. “Continue the interest, but from a distance.”

  Jules filled his plate from a buffet of the most amazing-smelling food, and with Robin right behind him, he sat down next to Annie at the dinner table. It was then that Ric leaned over and said, “Room’s been sanitized.”

  And that was the end of any appetite Jules might’ve had.

  Robin took the seat next to him, afraid to get too close to Annie, and he’d heard Ric, too. This time, he understood exactly the implications of what Ric had discovered—and that it meant Peggy was surely dead.

  “I’m sorry,” Robin told Jules softly. “I know you didn’t like her, but that makes it even worse, huh?”

  Jules had once vented to Robin about Peggy—about how she’d excluded him, time and time again. How she’d avoided him and, when she couldn’t, how she’d looked through him.

  “You didn’t wish this for her,” Robin told him now.

  “I should have done more.” That was what was making him feel sick.

  “You followed orders,” Robin pointed out.

  Jules nodded. “I wouldn’t have if it had been Alyssa.” Or you. He would have launched a full-scale attack the minute he knew something had gone wrong, kicking down the doors at Burns Point.

  God help him.

  “It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling,” Robin said gently. “It really is.”

  He was sitting there, quiet for once, no ulterior motive at play. This wasn’t about convincing Jules to spend the night or even the next week with him. It was empathy and compassion. It was support, sturdy and wholehearted.

  Robin was looking at him the same way Alyssa looked at her husband, Sam. The way Max looked at his beloved Gina. The way Jules had seen Annie looking at Ric.

  What was it he’d said to Robin the other night? You are not what I want. How could something be true and yet also be the biggest lie Jules had ever told?

  He knew he was revealing too much, knew it was right there on his face for Robin to see, but he couldn’t look away.

  “God,” Robin breathed, “you look at me like that, babe, and I’m tempted to do it—just end my career.”

  Robin with fire in his eyes was easier to turn away from than the Robin who had looked at him with such quiet understanding. “I don’t want you to do that,” Jules told him.

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “No, I really don’t,” Jules said, but he couldn’t expound because Ric was back, and unlike Robin, he was unwilling to make this a public discussion. It was bad enough whispering while Annie pretended to be preoccupied with getting a splinter out of her hand.

  Besides, Ric had more info to share. He murmured it to Jules as he put Annie’s plate down in front of her.

  “No furniture in the room, no carpet, fresh paint. The single a/c vent was empty. I checked it thoroughly.”

  Crap.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” Robin said loudly, addressing Ric and Annie, too. “But I’ve got an early day tomorrow. I’m thinking after dinner we should head back.” He turned to Jules. “We still have that…business to talk about. I figured we could drop Ric and Annie off—”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Jules said. “You’ve had a lot to drink.”

  “I’m fine,” Robin said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not,” Jules said. Before they left, he was going to have to figure out a way to get into the room Ric had found. He needed to see it for himself. And then he was going to have to report what they’d found, along with his conclusion regarding Peggy Ryan’s status—which was now officially presumed dead.

  The last thing he wanted to do after that was fight off Robin.

  Who, once again, seemed to know exactly what Jules was thinking.

  “I really was just talking about talking,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry if I come on too strong sometimes.” He, too, had no appetite. He just pushed his food around his plate. “I’ll get you down to that room—I know you want to go there. When I head into the kitchen to meet the staff, it’s going to be extra noisy. I guarantee it. If you came with me, and your cell phone rang…”

  Jules would have to find someplace quiet to take the call—such as down the hall to the servants’ wing.

  “How can you guarantee…?”

  “I’ve already talked to a lot of the servers,” Robin told him. “It’s the caterer’s fiftieth birthday. Jenny Milkovich. She’s well liked. She’s also a fan. They asked me to come to the kitchen to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ but I’ll definitely make it louder than that. I was planning a diversion, remember?” He pulled a CD jewel case out of his pocket, and looked at the back. “You’ll have four minutes and twenty-eight seconds, plus however long they applaud.”

  “Applaud?” Jules asked.

  “Yup,” Robin said, adding “Thanks, Giselle” as a woman with a tray brought him just what he needed—another drink. “We’re going to give Jenny a birthday to remember.”

  Robin had been right about the noise level in the kitchen. There was a built-in sound system, with speakers wired into the ceiling, and the music was up extremely loud. But louder still was the reaction of the crowd.

  And it was a crowd that was growing larger every second, as Burns’s dinner guests came to investigate the noise and stayed for the entertainment.

  If a man taking his clothes off to a Billy Preston song from the 1970s could be called entertainment.

  Annie seemed to think so. “God, he’s hot.”

  Ric looked at her. She was serious. He leaned
in to speak directly into her ear. “He’s gay.” And ironically Jules, the one person who’d probably truly get off on this, had left the room.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Annie told Ric. “It’s the fantasy.”

  He looked back at Robin, who was taking forever just to get his shirt off, playing it humorously coy as he moved to the music. And okay, from the glimpses of his upper body that he’d given the crowd, it was obvious that the actor was ripped. He put his hands on the button to his pants and dozens of women shrieked their approval.

  “So it’s a man-as-meat kind of thing,” Ric mused.

  Annie laughed, genuinely amused, and it was hard as hell not to think about the black lace that was in his pants pocket, damn near burning a hole in his leg. It had been impossible, all evening, for him to look at her and not think about the fact that if her panties were in his pocket—and they certainly were—then she wasn’t wearing them. As in not wearing anything. At all.

  She was wearing his jacket now, too, still claiming she was cold. And although that meant she was even more covered up, the effect was oddly the opposite. The jacket was almost as long as her skirt, and from behind, she looked as if she were wearing his jacket and nothing else.

  Certainly not her panties. Which he knew were in his pocket.

  His brilliant plan to get her to safety—as well as safely out of his apartment—had been seriously screwed by her blatant disregard of his instructions: Don’t go anywhere alone.

  Of course her blatant disregard had saved his ass.

  It had also aroused Foley’s suspicions. The man had been watching them ever since. And that was why Ric had nixed their plan to have Annie split up with him in a very public display at the party’s end. He didn’t think Foley would buy it.

  Yeah, that was why Ric had nixed the plan. It had nothing to do with the fact that it also meant that Annie would have to come home with him.

  “Well, I don’t know about the birthday lady,” she was telling him now, “but for me, it’s more of a fairy-tale fantasy. A hot guy, going to a lot of effort to attract a woman’s attention—”

  “More like forty women.”