He glanced at her and just as quickly jerked his eyes away. “He learned his proclivities from Maddy. He took to it like a fish takes to water. It’s probably not something I should bring up but . . .” He paused again and sighed, his head tilting so far forward his chin nearly rested against his chest.
She waited for him to finish, not realizing she was holding her breath until she felt light-headed. She sucked in air so fast she wheezed. He jerked his face up to check on her, and seeing she wasn’t choking on a powdered donut, continued speaking.
“These relationships are intense,” he said. “It takes investment, which means they often don’t work on a casual basis, so he tends not to play with just anyone. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Yes but no but yes?
She nodded because that was the only thing she could think to do. It was apparently enough. He removed the corgi from his lap and stood, his hand smacking at his pants to rid himself of dog fur.
“Are you on birth control?” he asked.
Why does everyone keep asking me that?
She examined the beignets on her plate, embarrassed once again. “I’m not sure it’s any of your business. Not to be rude, but that’s personal.”
“You’re right. It isn’t any of my business, but Sol doesn’t think to ask so I do.” He went quiet. She looked up to see if he was staring at her hard enough to shoot holes through her skull. He wasn’t cross, but he did look weary, like so much personal discussion had taken a toll. “He’s my friend, Arianna. I owe him a great deal. I take care of him when he doesn’t take care of himself, and now you’re part of that. Please be careful with him. That’s all I ask. I hope I wasn’t too forward.”
When she didn’t reply—because how do you reply to that?—he drifted toward the door without looking back.
“I’m on the pill,” she called out.
He paused for a moment, his hand on the knob, and nodded without turning around before easing the door open and slipping out.
NINETEEN
TWO HOURS OF trying to get around paying off the old hag. Two hours of being stared at uncomfortably by Brutus because, whether or not Sol liked it, the DuMonts were liable for emotional distress even if there wasn’t a mark on Mrs. Cotton. Bats were stupid. Alex was stupid. Everything was stupid.
“The bat didn’t touch her. There has to be some lawyer thing you can do to make this less annoying. You’re brilliant. Be brilliant for me.”
Brutus looked unimpressed by the praise, but then, Brutus often looked unimpressed. It was how his face was made. Flat features, big eyes, a wide brow. His head was bowling-ball big to match his refrigerator frame. He was six and a half feet tall, about six and a half feet wide, with dark brown skin and light brown eyes. It was a stunning package.
Sol sprawled across his chair and looked at the ceiling.
“If you really think we’re going to go to trial because of a flying rodent, fine. Pay her off. I trust you. But let the record show I hate her forever.”
Brutus closed his file folders and stood, ducking to avoid accidental decapitation by the ceiling fan. His shaved head gleamed like he’d waxed it before their meeting. For all Sol knew, he might have done exactly that; Brutus was a man of quiet mystery. He appeared like a phantom to do magical legal things, say very few words, and then leave in the middle of the night to sprinkle his lawyerly fairy dust on another DuMont property.
Sol thought he was fantastic.
Brutus barely tolerated Sol.
Okay, that wasn’t really the case. The man wouldn’t choose to live a room away half of his life if he didn’t like Sol. Moreover, Brutus never forgot a birthday and always sent the best Christmas presents. Last year it had been artfully knitted sweaters, a rare Japanese caviar, and bottles of Dom Pérignon. Sol suspected Brutus knitted the sweaters himself, but the giant of a man would neither confirm nor deny his participation because that would require talking, and talking was generally off the table unless the need was dire.
“Well! Good conversation! So glad Mrs. Cotton’s going to get a pile of my money and my brother was too stupid to charm her before she became a problem. Is there anything else?”
Brutus shook his head, snapped his briefcase shut, and headed for the door.
“Goodbye, my knight in shining Brioni!” Sol called after him.
A finger waggle, Brutus’s diamond pinky ring gleaming in the soft light, and then he was gone, likely up to his room on the fourth floor to listen to good jazz and smoke fine cigars. He was a man’s man.
A knitting man’s man.
The door closed behind him. Sol ran a hand down his face and eyed the time. Nearly noon. Arianna was likely back in her room by now, or maybe off doing the tourist things he’d distracted her from. He’d call to ask about her plans after he felt less violated by the bat situation. He wasn’t above admitting to himself that if he saw Rain, he’d want to touch her, and touching her in this mood would mean Rough. Rough wasn’t bad when it was controlled and welcome. It wasn’t necessarily good while they were still establishing boundaries.
As luck would have it, before he had to make a real and actual plan, his phone rang. He braced, expecting it to be Alex or Nash or someone else bothering him with their incompetence, but no, it was Maddy doing that snooping thing she did when the rest of the world failed to entertain her.
“Madeline!”
“Dove!” Sol could hear a vacuum over her line followed by angry, animalish groaning. The tiger? Either that or Maddy had worked her way down the food chain in her quest for new bedmates. “Don’t mind the noise. Patrice is vacuuming and Cappy’s crabby about it. I’m not sure who I feel sorrier for. My assistant or my tiger.”
“Oh, the assistant definitely. Poor Patrice.”
The shit Patrice had seen over the years was tell-all worthy. If she ever got around to writing her memoir, the book would have to be burned before the world was unmade by Maddy’s uncomfortably sordid existence.
“Probably. So, how are you? How’s the Barrington girl? I googled her. She’s adorable. I’d like to do things to her.”
Sol knew what sort of things Maddy liked to do to adorable people. It involved ties and paddles and lots of begging. The unbidden visual of her topping Rain crept into his head. Two beautiful women doing illicit things ought to have been a welcome invasion, but it wasn’t. His stomach muscles clenched, a vaguely sick feeling spreading through his guts.
Jealousy?
This is new.
And shitty.
“It’s my cupcake, Maddy. I’ve licked it and it’s mine. Hands off.”
Maddy giggled. “Ooooh. Solly has a girlfriend and what a girlfriend she is. She looks out of place next to that herd of brothers of hers. I met her once, years ago, I think. I can’t really remember much about it. I may have been on E at the time.”
“You, drugs? Maddy, I’m shocked.”
“Hush, you scamp.” There was a heartbeat of a pause before she asked, “So is she taking to your naughtiness? She looks so fresh, like a peach on a tree. I bet she’s ripe and juicy.”
Sol spun in his chair, his eyes closed, the office whirling around him. Talking about Rain was enough to make him smile, the irritation at Bat Lady fizzling by the moment. “I’m not gossiping about her peachiness with you. But I will tell you that she’s special. Kind and silly and smart. She has a good heart. Maybe I’ll keep her.”
“What, what, what? Sol DuMont, are you talking a relationship? Tell me everything!”
There was a time, years ago, when Maddy would use that tone on him and he would have sung like a canary because that’s what Maddy’s pets did.
Not anymore.
“Maddy, you know I adore you, but I think you’re going to have to go fuck yourself on this one.”
Silence. For a moment, he worried he’d insulted not his former wife and dom, but his f
riend. But the concern vanished when Maddy erupted into laughter, her breath catching on wheezy giggle-gasps. “Oh, dove. You’re smitten. Positively smitten. And I couldn’t be happier for you.”
Yes, he was smitten and it was fantastic. He headed out of The Seaside to get more flowers. He planned on only one bouquet, but then he saw blues and purples beside the pink roses and he splurged. Three bouquets for the kitten because she was a three-bouquet kind of girl.
I want to spoil her. I want to cover her in sparkly things, wrap her in silk, and then fuck the ever-loving shit out of her.
He whistled while he walked, a spring in his step, one hand in one of his many pockets, the other wrapped around the bouquets. A shadow darkened his mood when he spied the cameraman lurking around in front of The Seaside, the paunchy man yammering into a cell phone. Sol’s suspicions that this was a Barrington-related thing were confirmed when the stranger, seeing Sol, slid his phone into his pocket and darted over.
“Carl Willis, Crescent Times. Is it true you’re seeing Arianna Barrington? Any comment on the sex tape scandal?”
“Fuck off!” Sol said cheerfully, sidestepping the man who had an unfortunate ketchup stain on his shirt. “And food goes in your mouth, not at it.”
Willis was undeterred.
“Charles Harwood says she has an appetite for staff, which is why he broke it off. Any comment?”
The anger was immediate. Arianna was so revoltingly nice that anyone besmirching her—the swine reporter or Charles Harwood—deserved a swift kick to the balls. Sol spun on his heel, a nasty retort forking his tongue, only to be blinded by Willis’s camera flash.
Oh, that’s enough of this shit.
Sol rubbed his eyes to clear his vision.
“A moment, Mr. Willis, and I’ll have a proper statement for you.”
Sol shoved his way through the front doors of The Seaside, his temper sizzling. Tall, slender Dora with the red lips and the halo of yellow hair was one of two women staffing the desk. She wasn’t as bubbly sweet as Amanda, looking a bit like she’d murder anyone stupid enough to cross her, but she was efficient and polite enough that the guests never complained.
The other woman, Lexi, was busy checking in a guest with her soft smile and softer voice.
Sol motioned at the sidewalk, where Willis milled. “Dora, ring Vaughan Barrington’s room for me.”
She did, handing him the phone.
“What, Ma?” Vaughan snapped.
Oh, good. He’s irritable.
“Not Ma, I’m afraid. DuMont. There’s a reporter named Willis sniffing around outside.” Sol dropped the flowers onto the desk, catching the pink bouquet before it rolled onto the floor. “Harwood’s gone public that your sister ‘has an appetite’ for staff. He also claims that’s why he broke it off with her. The reporter wants a statement. I’ll gladly tell him to piss off, but I thought I’d check in with you before doing so.”
“I’ll be right down.”
There wasn’t even a pause.
Sol smiled.
“Bring those up to 315 with a vase,” he said to Dora, motioning at the flowers. “If Arianna’s there, tell her I’m having lunch in my suite if she’s interested. You might as well give her an access card for the elevator with clearance to my room. No expiration.”
“I do delivery now?” Dora asked, not quite impertinent but dangerously close.
Sol winked at her. “You’re a doll.”
Dora rolled her eyes, but she gathered the armful of flowers together and headed toward storage for a vase.
Sol jogged over to the elevator. He could hear each ding as it descended the floors, and though it seemed to take forever for the Barrington brother to appear, only a minute had passed. Vaughan emerged looking like he needed six more hours of sleep and a shave. Sol glanced back to see if Willis lingered on the curbside, and yes, he did, snapping pictures of the hotel and texting. Sometimes he’d wipe the sweat from the back of his neck with his hand before running it down the front of his shirt.
Remind me never to shake his hand.
“That him?” Vaughan asked, stalking through the foyer. An unlit cigarette dangled from his bottom lip, and Sol immediately regretted not partaking himself while he was out flower shopping. It had been, thus far, a fifty-cigarette kind of day.
“Mmm. He’s desperate. I’m afraid he’ll—”
“I’ve got it,” Vaughan said.
Vaughan pushed his way outside, his voice growing louder. Sol didn’t catch any of the exchange between Barrington and the reporter until he followed outside, just in time to see Willis lift his camera to photograph Vaughan, a foot separating Vaughan’s face and the tip of Willis’s lens. Vaughan snarled, tore it from his hand, and punched him in the face. Willis sprawled on the pavement, clutching his nose, rolling back and forth and sniveling because that had to hurt.
Vaughan dropped the camera to the ground and lit his cigarette. When he looked at Sol, a dry smile crept across his mouth. “Is your lawyer still in house? Seems I might need one.”
TWENTY
BACK IN HER room, Rain changed into a fresh pair of khakis, a blue button-down shirt, and sandals before organizing her soiled clothes into folded piles of darks and lights, cold wash versus warm wash for the laundry team. She was tying her hair into a ponytail when someone knocked on her door. She expected Sol or maybe Vaughan. Freckles apparently expected a serial killer, because he barked and snarled like he wanted to murder everyone in the hotel.
“Stop it, Freckles. Hush.” She opened the door just a crack to prevent Slaughter Corgi from decimating all in his path.
A surly-looking blond woman with giant hair stood in the hall, a veritable flower garden overflowing her arms. She was thin and muscular and fit in that gymaholic way, with the wiry build of someone who spent more time on an elliptical machine than off.
“Mr. DuMont sent me,” she said smartly. “These are for you.”
“Oh, come in.” Rain scooped up the quivering Freckles, stepping aside to allow the stranger to deliver roses, carnations, and other verdant stuff Rain couldn’t identify.
Blowing a gardener, yes.
Paying attention to gardening, no.
She gestured at the antique desk, trying to soothe her irate canine with a barrage of pats. He’d calm down with a sniff, but the woman didn’t strike Rain as the type to brook overly curious corgis or their noses. “Thank you. I didn’t catch your name?”
“I didn’t give it.” The woman fluffed the flowers inside the vase and stood back, assessing the arrangement before leaning in to fluff them again. “Dora.”
“Oh, that’s a pretty name.”
“It’s short for Doreen. I hate Doreen.”
Rain had no idea what to say to that, so she went with, “I’m sorry,” because it seemed safest.
“For?” Dora removed a rose from the left side to insert it into the right, breaking up a white gob of baby’s breath. “You didn’t name me. My mother did, after my crazy aunt. She had fourteen cats and collected Cabbage Patch Kids. Here.” Dora whirled around. There was something aggressive about the way she reached into her pocket to produce a key card, slapping it into Rain’s open palm. “That’s for the elevator and Sol’s room. He’s having lunch delivered if you’d like to join him.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“Your brother punched a guy.”
Rain’s smile faltered at the brisk announcement. “Pardon me?”
“A reporter. He’s downstairs waiting for Brutus, the house lawyer.”
“But why did he hit him?”
Dora smirked. “Because he suggested you were a slut.” She strode toward the door without a glance back. “If you need anything else, call the front desk and ask for me. I’m here until ten. Nice meeting you.”
“Oh.” Rain’s mouth opened like something smart would tumble out, but she w
as rendered speechless. She gawked at her flowers. She gawked at the closed door behind her. She gawked at Freckles, who contorted with canine agony in her arms.
“Stop,” she commanded, and the dog stilled, turning his face to lick her shirt because that was a thing he sometimes liked to do. She rotated him so he couldn’t keep worrying the spot and left the room, following Dora to the elevator. Neither of them said a word as they stepped in. Even Freckles was quiet, gingerly craning his neck to snuffle Dora’s elbow. The woman didn’t look too pleased about it, but Rain was fairly certain she didn’t get pleased about much.
She’s a little scary.
Okay, a lot scary.
As they descended to the ground floor, Rain could see Vaughan smoking on the curb, his five o’clock shadow looking more like an eight o’clock shadow, an orange American Eagle T-shirt stretched across his broad chest. A heavyset man kneeled on the ground nearby, clutching his face. Sol was talking to a police officer who sported an impressively bushy brown mustache. A mountain of a man loomed over them both, his very shiny, dark brown head gleaming like a bowling ball in the afternoon sun. He wore a nice suit and a pair of aviators that reflected the hotel back at its owner.
Seeing Rain, Vaughan stubbed out his cigarette and walked inside. He eyed Dora appreciatively, she cast him a withering glare, and he shrugged before closing in on his sister. His hand immediately crept to the dog. Freckles undulated in adoration.
“So I punched a guy,” he said in greeting.
“Dora told me.” Rain frowned. “You shouldn’t have, Vaughan. They’re just words. Sticks and stones.”
“Is that her name? Dora?” He flashed another smile Dora’s way as she settled behind the counter. She lifted green eyes to him, snorted, and turned around to show him her back.
Rain elbowed him in the side. “You’re awful.”
The King of Bourbon Street Page 14