by Ava McKnight
He was a free spirit with a will of his own. That was one of the things that had attracted me in the first place. Just like all the others. But unlike the others, we’d spent considerable time getting to know each other. We shared a solid friendship and I enjoyed that familiarity. So I tried to play it cool tonight, the way I’d said I would. The way I had with Nick.
Curling up on the sofa next to Mike with a box of cashew chicken in one hand and a pair of chopsticks in the other, I asked, “What are you working on these days?”
He swallowed down a bite, dropped his chopsticks in the box of beef and reached for his wine. After a sip, he said, “Interesting case, actually. Art theft.”
“Ooohh.” I perked up. “That does sound interesting.”
“I’m working with an insurance investigator to not only try to recover the piece—an original Renoir, if you can believe it—but to determine if the guy whose family has owned it for several generations fenced it and then reported it stolen to collect the insurance money.”
“Little double-dipping. Sneaky bastard.”
Mike nodded. “All signs led me to his doorstep as the culprit, until I picked up a very intriguing tidbit.”
I loved when Mike had a fascinating case. His excitement was contagious and I felt his enthusiasm to the core of my being. “Do tell.”
Setting aside his wine, he went back to work on his dinner. In between bites, he told me, “Turns out the guy’s live-in housekeeper is the former personal assistant to Jackson Portman.”
“The Jackson Portman? Oil tycoon who discovered half his artwork collection had been pilfered during a huge campaign party he’d thrown for a Texas senator?”
“One and the same,” Mike said. “How someone managed to rip off more than a dozen paintings while nearly a thousand people were at his estate for the fundraiser is beyond me. The art was never recovered and no arrests were made.”
“Hmm,” I ventured as I reached for my own glass of wine. “I bet the housekeeper might have a clue or two about how it was pulled off.”
“Given the coincidence that she was recently on-staff when a painting worth more than forty million dollars went missing, I’d say she might be a well-connected infiltrator who knows when and where to strike.”
“How’d you determine who she was?”
“Took some digging. She goes by a different name now and has altered her appearance. But,” Mike said before he took another sip of wine, “I did a background check on the key house staff and not all of her information jived. I picked it apart until I figured out who she was.”
“Clever.” There was nothing sexier than a gorgeous man with bright blue eyes and a brain.
He set aside the Mongolian beef and opened the box of egg rolls, fried wontons and crab puffs while I went for the steamed rice. Mike wasn’t into rice. He liked the deep-fried stuff, though you’d never guess it by his hotter-than-hell body. At thirty-two, he still had the ass of a twenty-year-old.
As he removed the lids from the sweet and sour sauce and then the spicy mustard, he asked, “How’d your day go?”
I nearly choked on my rice. I put the box on the coffee table and washed down the chunks in my throat with the wine. My eyes burned as Mike stared at me, his brow crooked.
“Uh, it was interesting as well.” I had to force visions of Biel and Piper from my mind. On the way home from Elan, I’d pondered what it was about the supermodel that got me all spun up.
At the Montlimiere, I’d thought it was the similarity of experiencing a professional mishap that had the potential to end a career. I’d suffered a huge blow to my investigative reporting stint simply by doing what the job entailed—investigating and reporting. Biel had almost suffered the same fate in her profession. Yet she’d bounced back. She’d literally taken the bull by the horns this morning and had said to the world, “I’m not giving up. Take me as I am, faults and all, and I’ll keep rocking your world.”
What a statement to make.
And precisely the point where our professional similarities ended.
To Mike, I said, “Biel McKinley is indestructible. At twenty-one. I should hate her because I’m so envious of her, but I don’t. I like her. She’s got…what’s it called? Chutzpah.”
“Showed her face at work, did she?”
“The girl wasn’t cowering in any corners, I can tell you that much.” Quite the opposite. She’d been large and in charge today. Wide open in more ways than one. Ready to take on the world and whatever her lover or agent doled out. She clearly wasn’t one to turn tail and run in any capacity. “Unlike yours truly,” I muttered.
He knew exactly what I was thinking, because he knew me so well. “Hey,” he said as he set aside his food and glass. He turned to me on the sofa. “You’re comparing apples to oranges, babe. I saw the footage of what happened at the Montlimiere on the Internet. Pretty traumatic for Biel, I’m sure. But she was just innocently caught up in a cosmetics launch gone awry. Yes, I validate that millions of dollars were spent on the campaign, but the scandal might actually produce results even more amazing than originally predicted, because the incident garnered global attention. What happened to you, on the other hand…”
I sipped more wine. “Yeah, whereas with me… I let the wife of a network bigwig get away with embezzling nearly seventy-five thousand dollars from a women’s shelter. A women’s shelter. Think of all the abused and violated women—and their children—who were turned away because there weren’t enough funds to provide them safe harbor.”
I could have screamed—or cried—over the injustice. And my failure to expose it.
Mike’s teeth ground together for a moment before he said, “That’s not exactly what happened, Lace. You were about to go live and they shut you down. Not much you can do when they fade to black.”
I didn’t agree with him, though I appreciated him siding with me. The truth was, I’d been railroaded because the network exec had been from my network. I’d gotten wind of some wrongdoings on his wife’s part, had snooped around long and hard until I’d unearthed the evidence I’d needed and had, literally, caught her red-handed. I’d had the exclusive. My newscast would have blown the story wide open and sent my investigative reporting career soaring—and helped to recover the funds missing from an organization that almost melted into oblivion because of lack of resources.
Instead, I’d been yanked from my highly coveted prime-time slot and relegated to morning weekend anchor, where the hardest-hitting stories ran along the lines of the circus being in town and live cooking demonstrations from local chefs. Successively, I’d been shuffled about on a weekly basis, my desk getting closer and closer to the front door while the studio execs did damage control. The embezzlement story had eventually leaked and justice had prevailed, but it hadn’t been because of me.
“You know,” I said before draining my glass. “I didn’t take a stand for myself. I didn’t fight back, the way Biel did.” There was more to it than that. The network had killed the story. They’d erased my hard drive. They’d put the fear of God—i.e. lost jobs and ruined careers—into the few people I’d enlisted to help air the story, and no one had uttered a word after that. Including me.
It had taken way too long for someone to stand up for those women and children who’d sought refuge at the shelter that almost closed. That was the true travesty, not my professional demise. It was also the source of my never-ending guilt and remorse, because I’d actually let The Powers That Be execute a gag order and chase me out of town.
“Lace,” Mike said as he settled back against the pile of pillows in the corner of the L-shaped sofa. He lifted my legs and draped them over his as I propped a shoulder against my own cushions and stared at him. “No one’s going to hold Biel McKinley responsible for someone switching her makeup. She really doesn’t have that much at stake.”
“I beg to differ. Her reaction could have been scrutinized and considered detrimental to her career. I’m just saying I admire the way she bounced back.”
He smiled softly as his large hand moved up my calf to my knee, his fingers teasing the sensitive underside, making me squirm on the seat at the intimate and arousing touch, despite the long pants I wore.
“You didn’t cower in a corner either. You found a different way to fight the good fight. You got certified in fraud and abuse and hung out a different kind of investigative services shingle. Now you solve crimes and force restitution by revealing dirty deeds in corporate America. You could have taken a safer route, becoming a waitress or joining the secretary pool, leaving your instincts and desire to uncover seedy doings behind. But you were too strong to simply walk away from your calling.”
His hand inched higher, sweeping over my thigh. I needed a life preserver to keep from drowning in his ocean-blue eyes, and my body tingled from head to toe, even though he only touched my leg. The man had the ability to do crazy-wicked things to my insides on a physical level, but he also stirred my emotions. He was in-tune with everything swirling around inside me, knowing the demons that tormented me. And knowing how to help me cage said demons, even though I was still, five years after the fact, incapable of slaying them for good.
“Thanks for getting me,” I told him. “And for being so supportive.”
“At the end of the day, we’re friends, right?”
I nodded, a lump of emotion in my throat. He was saying and doing all the right things to make me believe in what was quickly transpiring between us, this new level of personal involvement being built upon a solid foundation we’d enjoyed for three years. Just as he’d said he’d hoped to do last night. I took it all very seriously, because he deserved that from me. I only wished I was a bit more stable psychologically when it came to relationships to kick the fears I had.
Composing myself, I said, “I appreciate your viewpoint.”
He grinned sexily at me. “Time to swap boxes?”
“Yeah.” I handed over the cashew chicken and reached for his Mongolian beef. This part of our association was comfortable and synchronized. It wasn’t the frenzied chaos we’d experienced last night in my dressing room. I liked both scenarios, truth be told.
But there was something tickling the back of my brain that, after we’d polished off the food, made me say, “I think I could learn a thing or two from Biel. About not being so closed off and…I don’t know. Afraid of any sort of unexpected turmoil or controversy. I really admire her. She’s like…Teflon.”
He laughed softly as he moved from the sofa and scooped up empty containers to take to the trashcan in my kitchen. He asked, “Should I be jealous?”
“Well, apparently, she does prefer women.” He shot a stunned look over his broad shoulder. I laughed. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“So I have competition?” he quipped. “Fucking great. I finally make a serious move on you that you respond to and some international supermodel swoops in to steal you away.”
“Hardly.” As I cleared away the remainder of trash, I told him, “I’m having a drink with her tomorrow night at Velage in Chelsea and I will be ridiculously out of style and so very uncool.”
He whistled under his breath. “Trendy hotspot.”
“Yeah, I have no idea what to wear. Or how to not feel like I’m the oldest person in the room.”
“You might be,” he admitted. “So don’t try to keep up with the hip and fabulous. Rock it old school.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “I’m sorry. What?”
He chuckled. Turning back to me, he said, “Go retro. That’s always in style. Wear simple black—maybe that black pinstriped suit you have that’s tight and sexy. You know the one?”
“Sure.”
“And don’t do the Sex and the City cosmopolitan thing. Too cliché and a typical fallback.” Apparently, I’d made him watch too many episodes on DVD. “Order a Gibson instead.”
“A what?”
He shook his head at me and made a tsking noise. “Come on, you’re a classy babe. It’s a gin and vermouth martini garnished with a pearl onion, usually pickled. Classic all the way.”
“Huh.” I stared at him a moment, thinking he might be on to something, because I sure as hell didn’t have anything hanging in my closet with bold splashes of color and geometric hems suitable for a get-together with a New York City Fashion Week favorite. This, however, might be its own trendsetting approach. “I like it,” I told him.
After washing his hands and drying them with the towel, he crossed the kitchen to where I stood and put his hands on my waist. His head dipped and he kissed me again, making me forget all about my impending meeting with Biel. Yeah, I was straight all the way.
When Mike broke the kiss, I was breathless, but somehow managed to say, “That is not the way to kiss a girl who hasn’t had sex in three years.”
“I can’t help it,” he murmured as his lips grazed my jaw and trailed down to my neck. “I’ve wanted this for a very long time.”
“Well, you know what I want…”
His head lifted. “I want to be with you tonight, Lace. Make no mistake. But I’m not rushing this part with you.”
My fingers curled around the soft fabric covering his pecs, keeping him close to me. “Then you probably shouldn’t kiss me anymore this evening. I’m practically drowning in lust. I’d hate to go against both our convictions and beg you to fuck me.”
He groaned as he released me. “You wouldn’t have to beg.” He took my hand and led me back to the sofa. “How about a movie?”
We settled in with The Fighter, my concession for clearly forcing too many chick-flicks on him. When the credits finally rolled, he asked me, “So how’d you find out Biel McKinley’s into women?”
I was cozied up in the corner with my feet tucked under me and my head on Mike’s shoulder. He’d draped his arm around me and the way he drew abstract patterns on my bare arm with his fingertips made my skin tingle.
I admitted, “I walked in on her perched on the edge of a coffee table while her makeup artist used a dildo to get her off.”
“Whoa, that’s a visual.”
“Yeah.” I was quiet a few moments, letting him digest or fantasize or whatever. Then I said, “I imagine the only reason she hasn’t gone public with her sexual orientation is because it’d kill the image people—particularly men—have of her. Probably not good for the career, you know? Yet, despite the fact she hasn’t publicly come out of the closet, she’s never tied to any men, famous or not.”
“So, you think in some sense, she’s true to herself and is in control of her environment?”
“She sure seems in control. Not just of her environment, but also her sexuality. She doesn’t flaunt it or go for shock value…she’s just naturally a sexual person, I think.”
“Ah,” Mike said with a hint of amusement in his voice. “You really are envious.”
That verdict was a no-brainer. I said, “I’m not inhibited sexually. Chase and Brandon would have been bored with me after the first night if that were the case. But emotionally and subconsciously, I’m my own worst enemy. I care too much about what people think of me and I don’t really put myself out there. I admire people who do. Like you.”
He lifted my hand to his lips and muttered, “Trust me, I care about what you think of me. I’ve always thought in terms of doing what’s right for me, and me alone. But these past few years, and really quite recently, I’ve considered I have to expand that circle and do what’s right for you too.”
I stared up at him, surprised. “That’s what this take-our-time thing is about this weekend?”
“Yeah, well…” He seemed to search for the right words before saying, “Think about how I’ve chased you and pulled back and then chased you again over the past three years. I hit on you, you tell me ‘not a chance in hell’, but I know the attraction is mutual, so I back off and then something sparks between us and I go for it again.”
“You have made your intentions clear,” I assured him.
He shook his head. “Not really. I mean, ye
ah, I’ve been straightforward about wanting to sleep with you. I’ve been hot for you since the first time I met you.” He grinned at me, a wicked glint in his beautiful blue eyes that was eclipsed by a more somber expression as he said, “But I know your story, Lace. I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you, especially because I know your story. And the fact we’re really great friends. That’s why I’ve always pulled back instead of pushing harder.”
“What changed your mind last night? Because you definitely pushed.” I was quick to add, “And good Lord, can you resuscitate a dormant libido with just a kiss.”
He chuckled. “That’s good old-fashioned chemistry. We have it in spades.”
“Yes, I guess we do.”
In a contemplative voice, he said, “The thing with last night is, I was just going about my business, doing my thing, when I realized I hadn’t had sex in like, two months or so. And I hadn’t missed it because I’d never really been fulfilled by it. Hence the need for a different woman so frequently. I was getting laid, not making love. And that’s when I thought of you. My broken shower was the catalyst I needed in order to see things for what they are—and try to get you to do the same.”
As I took all that in, he continued.
“I didn’t come here last night to be with you in the sexual sense. I wasn’t expecting you to come home when I was naked—that wasn’t a scheme, just bad timing. Or maybe good timing, considering the progress we’ve made. Anyway, I had planned to hang out and wait for you—with my clothes on. Quite frankly, Lace, I’d rather be sitting on the sofa, eating Chinese takeout and watching a movie with you than having sex with another woman.”
“Wow,” I whispered as panic rocketed through me. I moved away from him and stood. “That’s kinda heavy, don’t you think?”
He seemed to consider this, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. But it’s also the truth.”
I didn’t doubt that. He wasn’t the type to lie to a woman to get what he wanted from her. Particularly this one.
He sat forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped together between his parted legs. With an earnest look, he said, “I know my reputation. And I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you I’m a reformed womanizer because you finally caved. I have to prove it. I know you trust me, but it’s not explicit. You don’t yet believe I can be faithful.”