by Lesley Young
“You are under no obligation to divulge any communications or information you may have acquired over the past twenty-four hours in the company of Mr. Jace Knight. Are you listening? I understand you may have been exposed to certain information during a period of time which is covered under spousal privilege.”
B and I would let Jace decide on an appropriate interest rate, of course, perhaps on par with market—
Wait. I clutched my stomach. The lawyer, he had said spousal privilege.
If only.
I glanced in his eyes, and shook my head, a weird soft pain spreading out down my limbs. “No, you are mistaken. Our ceremony was not legal.”
It was his turn to shake his head, and I watched him pull out forms. I read them closely. A marriage license? The form from last night, only it said Marriage Ceremony, not Vow Renewal Ceremony . . . why it looked like my signature . . . but . . .
“I did not sign these.”
“Yes, you did.”
I rubbed between my brow, where it ached from frowning. I felt light, lighter than air. Focus! I thought back on last night, and earlier, which seemed a million years ago.
Wait. At the Wedding Chapel, it’s true I had skimmed the forms, not bothering to read them carefully since I thought it was all just pretend. And, frankly, I was not my usual astute self due to all the pressures I was under and the alcohol I had drunk. But a marriage license? When would I have signed . . . oh! The government official who hand-delivered what I thought were property documents: I signed what I thought was a proxy document. But could Jace really have arranged a marriage license in such a way? I remember one of his guards passing the official an envelope of money before he left. I suppose a clerk had witnessed me sign the license in person. Still, such a feat would have required a good deal of planning and confidence on Jace’s part.
I thought back over the evening, confused. So . . . he had tricked me into pretend-marrying him by shaming me for wanting to marry him in the first place when that’s what he wanted all along? Wait.
I was . . . married . . . to Jace Knight?
“Do you understand what spousal privilege is, Mrs. Knight?” asked the lawyer. I was so stunned I did not realize the agents had returned to the room.
Jace had lied to me.
I glanced at them, and back at my lawyer.
The Germans appeared resigned.
Had they known I was in fact married?
I couldn’t believe it. Somehow, Jace knew I was trapped, and he’d put a plan in motion to save me? So . . . he wasn’t testing me?
No wait. He was testing me.
He was giving me a clear choice here and now: betray him—for I had very real information on his new imperialist organization from those two legitimate emails and I didn’t have to reveal it now as the agents could no longer threaten me with B’s demise—or be free to love him forever. Goosebumps spread. He had taken a huge risk, even put his life in my hands, possibly, showing me what he did in those emails.
He trusted me. He believed in me.
“Do you wish to invoke that right at this time, Mrs. Knight?” asked Mr. Warner, growing impatient.
Chapter 24
Jace was waiting outside the Clark County Detention Center for me. He was leaning against a black limo, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, face tilted to the sky, deliberately increasing his skin cancer risk.
I stumbled when I saw him, and Mr. Warner helped steady me. As we walked toward him, the lawyer whispered to me through a smile, “If this wasn’t your choice, young lady, there’s no stopping you from filing for divorce.” I glanced at him, surprised, as Jace stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Warner, thanks again, mate. Appreciate it.” The lawyer shook Jace’s hand, glanced at me one last time, and departed.
I stared at Jace’s throat. I was in a trance. No. I was in shock. The kind that makes all your limbs numb.
“I’m experiencing some very intense emotions toward you,” he finally said, quietly.
I glanced up into his eyes, worried. “Where’s Miss Moneypenny?”
He frowned deeper. “At the hotel. Where else? Jesus H. Christ, Charlie.”
Oh dear.
I needed to prepare to endure some very negative emotions indeed. I could not face the pending impact; his eyes, they were meteors.
Silence reigned down.
Words failed me.
“Should’ve told me about Sullivan Blaise,” he unleashed.
I flinched.
He knew about Sullivan Blaise? I gawked at him. “You knew?”
He blew air out of his nose. “Not nearly soon enough, Charlie. You should’ve told me. If I’d known sooner . . .” He shook his head. “Didn’t pin it on him until I saw him on Bennie’s security, because he’d tried to get on mine too. All this time, he was playing you against me!” he growled.
Uh-oh. I stepped back.
“I’m goin’ to kill him,” Jace continued. “He just confessed to me what he’d been doing to you!”
“You used Sullivan to turn Mr. Bennett and Mr. Carlisle in,” I whispered, watching Jace’s face grimace.
“Yeah. Sent every last piece of evidence I had on them both to your pal Blaise—totally fuckin’ clueless he was up your skirt!”
Oh! Wait. Was Jace angry at me? His jaw was ticking.
“He wasn’t up my—”
“And then I invited Bennie and Simon to be my guests here. Since they’d only come to Vegas with enticement—and were not likely to try another hit off home soil. Your boy Blaise pulled in the FBI since it was going down local. Then, when all’s said and done, the fucker tells me, he was ‘looking out for you’ from day one! More like turning you against me, scaring the shit out of you. That’s why you wanted to get yourself sacked, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?! I knew something was up in Port Douglas!”
I could not hide the truth.
Jace bore down on me still.
I could not bear his wrath.
Surely he could see it was not my fault?
“You fuck him?”
I flinched and my eyes popped open wide.
Ah—jealousy.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, frightened.
“He put his hands on you? His mouth?” he asked baldly.
“No,” I whispered.
He looked away and muttered, “Then he lives.”
I gasped, knowing in my heart in that moment Jace intended to hurt Sullivan. “But Jace, later on, he tried to help me, to warn me about—”
“Don’t care,” he snapped. “You defending him? Really?”
I kept quiet.
My mind was spinning through everything. This only explained part of what happened at the Bellagio pool. Not why he had given me an opportunity to read his emails.
“How did you know about Interpol, and what they wanted me to do?”
He blew air out of his nose. “Charlie, nothing comes in or out of my personal life without scrutiny. That’s something Dmitry taught me from his KGB days. Blaise hid from me longer than most—and the fact that he got to you without me knowing . . .”
Jace’s hands were in fists. “Anyway,” he gritted out. “I looked into Jenny Williams from bookings the day you shacked up with her. Her background didn’t add up. So I had her unit, car, and office bugged.”
“Whoa.”
He continued, “That’s how I knew you didn’t have a clue who she was, and that you were being played. All those times she kept at ya for information. And you were a fuckin’ gas bag. Heard the whole run-up the team gave the night you came over, too.” He nodded at me. “Technology, Charlie. I’ve got some of the best in the business. It’s how I stay ahead.”
I was . . . astonished.
So then he knew when I arrived at his place at the Plaza, what I was setting out to do? And he played me.
Anger scorched my insides.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why did you let me . . . suffer?!”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Two reasons,
Charlie. I had to take care of your friend B’s problem, so there wasn’t any leverage on you. That took some massive doing. Second, I needed to know I could trust you. You’d said you wanted to break up with me, go be a professor or some sort. Then you set out to spy on me.”
“But that is entirely illogical,” I protested. “We had just been shot at! Moreover, I was being extorted!”
He shook his head. “You were always . . . shutting me out. Don’t deny it either. I needed to be sure you were with me. A man like me has to lock things down. So, yeah, I set it up, gave you a real choice, between standing by me—and who I am—or choosing a different life.”
I wiped away my tears.
“I hated hurting you,” I said, desperate to utter those words for so long. “I tried to save you. I should have found the courage to quit, but . . . I couldn’t leave you. I was weak. And so I tried not to get too close to minimize the damage,” I added, though it was perfectly clear he knew all of this.
He stared at me, shook his head, then stared off into the distance.
“You think I’m the one who needed saving. That’s priceless.”
His eyes landed back on me.
I shifted, unable to bear the load. My brain slowly cobbled together events.
“So there never was a meeting with your new . . . organization?”
He titled his head. “Yeah. There were two of them, actually, and you were present at both.”
My mouth popped open. I thought back.
“The man at the poker table?” He said nothing. “And . . . the couple at the fountains?” What had been exchanged while I was busy reading cards or admiring a water show?
But that meant he was still—
“Charlie, I meant what I said before at Ayers Rock. I’ll never do wrong by you, or us.”
I glanced away, uncertain how to reconcile love for a man with a vague moral code. I had no control over his choices. Just as I had had no control over my mother’s choices. Only hers hurt me. I did not believe Jace’s choices would do the same. So far, all his choices had aided me.
“You need me, Charlie. I need you. Sort through it.”
I glanced up into his caves.
“Thank you. For B.”
He looked away.
“But I’m still concerned. Your lawyer said you took care of everything, but Interpol told me B had enraged several loan sharks and that they wanted to make an example out of her.”
“Don’t worry about that. I took care of them. My new contacts have expanded my . . . reach and my reputation. I’ve laid down the law. No one will touch her.”
“Thank you,” I repeated.
“She’s got a real problem.”
I nodded, knowing I would do whatever it took to help her.
“We can get her in a program. I know somewhere, in Sydney.”
Goosebumps spread down my arms. He would move B to Sydney? His kindness stunned me, though, perhaps it shouldn’t have.
“Again, you should have come to me,” he grit out, before I could express more gratitude.
“I was trying to protect B,” I insisted. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Crikey, Charlie, you all but told me at my place.” He added, “You’re a bloody horrible liar, and I love you for it.”
His words hit me like unexpected kisses. Love. You. For. It.
I met his eyes and let his violet, burgundy and fuchsia pour into me, only it wasn’t just color—it was organic, tangible, entirely irrational, wholly precious.
“And I want to love you and take care of you for the rest of your life,” he added softly.
He glanced away, fighting a smile, before staring back down at me.
I crossed my arms over my chest protectively.
Now that all the dust was settled, I was experiencing a negative emotion.
“Still, you should not have set me up and tested me like that. I was arrested.”
He laughed. “Charlie, you had it coming. You could have chosen me over your friend.” Jace uncrossed his arms at my glare and maintained his smile. “Like I said, I couldn’t extricate you from Interpol until I found the source of B’s debts, paid them, and put up boundaries. And Charlie, I needed to know where you stood. For real.”
I suppose that was logical.
“So you tricked me into marrying you, showed me information that was dangerous for me to know, and then put me in a situation where my only way back to you was to invoke spousal privilege.”
“Fuckin’ ay.”
He stood before me, smiling down, expectant.
My eyes welled up.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
He grinned ear to ear, and grabbed me, pulled me close into his chest.
“However, you still could have confessed your plan, given us a chance to establish trust, and asked me to marry you properly,” I said, muffled, what with him pressing my face into his chest. I thought how a moment of honesty might have rectified everything last night.
“No chance, Charlie. Think I don’t know you? You’re way too practical. You would have said it was a coupl'a years too soon, am I right?”
I clung to him, choosing not to answer his question.
“Plus, I had to make sure I got what I wanted,” he added.
He was a manipulative, omnipotent man.
But . . .
I felt it then, shining out of me. And I held on tight to him.
All that really mattered was that I was free.
Free to let him in. Free to build a future with him. Free to love him.
And I wondered, in that moment, if my mother would have approved of my choice in a husband—a man who lived by his own definitions of right and wrong. I was reminded of something she would say on occasion, only when she was feeling particularly hopeful about what the world held for her. “The real pleasures in life are both innocent and guilty, Charlie.”
Thank you for reading The Australian! If you enjoyed it, please write a short or long review on Amazon.com. Want to know when my next book will be available? Please sign up for my newsletter at [email protected] or on my web site at lesleyyoungbooks.com. I love to hear from readers. Talk to me at facebook.com/lesleyyoungbooks or @lesleyyoungbks.
If you haven’t read The Frenchman, it is available on Amazon.com.