Seven Books for Seven Lovers

by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair

  So his new challenge was Susannah Carter, undercover operative for FTP, “Financial Trust and Protection,” whatever bullshit that was. She was thirty-two, she was damn good at her job, and like him, her father had been killed when she was a teenager.

  Also like him, she was an excellent shot and an excellent tracker.

  Just his luck.

  The lady he finally wanted to hunt was hunting him.

  4

  SUSANNAH APPLIED THE gloss on top of her red lipstick and took a final look in the mirror. WOW. Talk about a dress to remember! The Boss had a great sense of style, but she never would have picked him for a fashionista. Her outfit looked like it stepped right out of the films he loved: this would be the dress the audience would see on Bacall or Garbo right after the shot where the male lead drops his jaw to the ground. It was a floor-length silk gown in a hazy midnight hue with an overlay of rhinestones and jewels to match. Lisa Bee had helped Susannah with her hair and makeup—it was Lisa Bee’s favorite pastime after a failed career as a special effects artist in Hollywood—and she had done a stellar job. Susannah’s smoky eyes, thick mascara, and red-outlined lips were breathtaking. But the dress was really the kicker: it hugged every curve and tantalized with every inch, leaving just enough to the imagination. Susannah chuckled as she stared at herself in this getup, pondering Chas’s reaction. This may be the dress that breaks the camel’s back, she thought.

  She was having Chas over for a drink before he took her out to dinner. He had sent her a text that afternoon, shortly after the FTP conference. Short, but to the point.

  Legs. I’m intrigued. Dinner tonight? Dress to kill. Tex

  Thrilled, she texted back:

  Tex. I’d be delighted. Let me treat you to a drink first. Tribeca Grand. PH8.

  It took a nanosecond for his response:

  My fave. I’ll be in black tie to give it the respect it deserves

  A frisson of sensuality moved through her as she imagined Chas in tails. He was already mouthwatering in a dress shirt and jeans. In addition she was fascinated by his use of a smiley face emoticon. Rather banal, she thought. Smirking, she sent one last reply:

  Can’t wait to see the tails. Legs ()===& (This is a gun emoticon. Smiley face is a little pat, Tex, doncha think?)

  A moment passed before he shot back:

  The smiley face was how I look thinking about your guns

  And there it was . . . she was completely wet just thinking about being near him. What would the night hold? Would he continue to push her envelope? Frankly, she hoped he’d push it all the way to the post office. It had been so very long since someone had turned her on. So long that she often wondered if it would ever happen again. Sometimes she saw her future when she looked in the mirror: there she stood, ten, twenty, thirty years older and alone, single, married to her job, and slowly dying inside. For years she had chosen to turn off the deepest parts of herself by giving her whole self over to her work. She had had a few one-night stands, of course, but they’d left her dissatisfied, overwrought, wanting something deeper and more real. Was it foolish to wish that this could be the something more she sought?

  The hotel phone rang and she went to answer it: Charles Oakley Palmer III was summarily announced and sent up. Then she waited, breathless with anticipation. Maybe he wouldn’t turn her on this time. Maybe he wasn’t quite as attractive as she had thought. Maybe it wasn’t really chemistry, just the adrenaline of a job in progress, a nameless, faceless spark that had a one-night-only use. Maybe . . .

  And suddenly, the elevator doors opened. And there he stood. And she realized that it was quite, quite the opposite. He was vehemently masculine. Passionately fierce. More attractive than any man she had ever seen in her life. And the look of predatory desire in his eyes was enough to make her want to rip the fancy dress off and beg him to take her in every way known to man.

  There was a long, fiery, intimate pause. Then the elevator doors closed and it began to descend—with Chas still inside. She laughed, fully, gustily, and without breathing until the elevator went all the way down and returned. This time, he stepped out the moment the doors allowed, with a rather sheepish look on his face.

  “I heard you laughing all the way down,” he mumbled.

  “Well,” she said, “don’t you think you earned it?”

  “I don’t know ’bout that, Legs,” he breathed, “that’s one heck of a distracting dress.”

  “Thank you kindly,” she responded with a smile. “You clean up pretty good yourself. Like a drink?”

  “Bourbon. Blanton’s if they’ve got it.”

  She was grateful at that moment for the Boss’s intel about what Chas liked to drink. “Blanton’s it is, cowboy.”

  They locked eyes for a moment. Then his eyes trailed all the way down her body, slowly, ending at her feet. He grinned.

  “Did you wear those for me?” he asked, looking at her 1940s-style heels.

  “Why yes,” she said throatily, “and the garters to match.”

  He cursed under his breath before saying, “I think I’ll take that bourbon now.”

  They walked over to the bar together, and she poured them both a glass of Blanton’s. “You a bourbon drinker, Legs?” he inquired.

  “Only when I’m with a cowboy.” She smiled. “I like to think I can hold my own.”

  “In that case,” he parried, “make mine a double.”

  Suddenly, her earpiece sparked to life. “Cool it, Legs,” Jackson’s voice piped in. “You know you can’t hold your liquor against anyone, much less a drinking man.”

  “Oh, shut it,” she mumbled.

  “Sorry?” Chas inquired.

  “Oh . . . er . . . shoot it? Or rocks?”

  “Neat,” he said pointedly. “One should always drink good bourbon neat.”

  “Right,” she said. “Double for you, double for me. Like to take a stroll?”

  They wound up moments later on the terrace, with a beautiful New York night around them and a cool spring breeze to waft through their hair.

  “Nice view,” Chas murmured, taking her in again, “and the skyline’s not bad either.”

  “I think you’ve used that joke before.”

  “Oh, it’s no joke,” he breathed. “No joke at all.”

  “So, Chas,” she said, extricating herself from the heated moment, “tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “I want to know all of it,” she replied truthfully. “Why you live alone in that beautiful old town house. Why it’s decorated like an Edith Wharton novel. Why you don’t seem to love what you do but do it anyway. What makes you tick, Chas? The real stuff.”

  “Hmm . . .” He pondered that. “Well, I really need a whole lot more bourbon to tell the full truth. But how about this?” He sidled up next to her, arms brushing on the railing as they looked out at the lights of the city. “I’ll tell you something, and you match me, point for point.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Game on.”

  “I live alone because I can’t deal with people around me.”

  “I live alone because I hog the bed and hate doing dishes,” she replied.

  He smiled. “I love turn-of-the-century antiquities,” he said. “It was a passion of my mother’s. Much of the décor is hers, and it kind of, well, stuck.”

  “I was an art history minor, with a focus on turn-of-the-century America.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “Well, we have a lot to talk about. I know more about home furnishings than the average man. But it’s the art that really turns me on. And I was always a huge fan of American history. Let’s see . . . You’re right. I don’t love what I do. But it pays me a fortune. I guess it was what my family always did, and so I just fell into it. And it allows me to do what I’m most passionate about, which is travel, with a focus on art.”

  Now it was her turn to smile. “Love it. I do love my job, but I really got into it for personal reasons. I certainly didn’t f
all into it—at least not in the way you mean. I suppose I’d rather have the option to travel . . . with a focus on art.”

  He moved away a bit. “And what is your job, if I may be so bold?”

  “Intelligence,” she said, the bourbon already compromising her.

  The earpiece crackled. “Watch it, Legs,” Jackson said sotto voce. “Careful.”

  “Funny,” Chas commented, and he looked intrigued. “I thought Peter said you were a secretary.”

  “Well,” she quipped, “I’m a very intelligent secretary.”

  Now he laughed outright. “Love it, Legs. Love it. I’ve had secretaries that were far more intelligent than I’ll ever be, that’s for sure. Okay. Your last question—what makes me tick? Well, that’s tougher for me to answer. I guess it all began in my youth. My mom died when I was a teenager. I had to watch her struggle through a pretty awful tangle with the big bad “C,” and she lost the battle in the end. It was hard on me, but maybe harder on my father. About a year later, we had just begun to get back on our feet, though I was always getting into rough stuff in school and my dad was totally depressed. And then my father . . .” He swallowed the rest of his drink. “My father was killed.”

  She let out a long breath. She had known about his history, but didn’t know if he would actually talk about it. Now that he had begun to really talk, she felt more open to share some of her personal stuff. The details of her own father’s death were inconsistent at best. When Susannah was sixteen, her father was killed in a car accident. They said he had been drinking, and his car crashed through a safety railing on the side of the highway. The car rolled several times, then exploded. But several unexplained facts haunted Susannah and eventually made her study the field of criminology. First, her father had been sober for fifteen years, and there were no signs as to why he would have started again. Second, he was driving a rental car, and his own car was never found. Last, her family was never given the closure of a body as her father was apparently burned so badly and for so long that his bones had vaporized. All that was left were his teeth, and they were matched to dental records. Or so the police reported. “Mine was too. My father was killed in a car accident when I was sixteen. It was so strange, and the whole thing was so unlike him. I was only ever told some of the details, but they never rang true, and I never could believe . . .”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. “Me neither. My father had his throat slit. Supposedly he was an innocent party caught in some inner-city gang war. But I never could believe it either. Someone slit his throat? As part of a gang rivalry? It seemed so extreme, so personal. That’s why I . . .”

  “Why you what, Chas?” she asked, her eyes rounding.

  “Tick.” It seemed to Susannah that he was covering something, that he wanted to say more but couldn’t for some reason. “That’s why I tick,” he said with finality.

  They stood for a moment, looking out upon the glittering lights of the city, and the stars above. It was a romantic view, but the silence felt awkward, full of unspoken thoughts. Then Chas took a breath and said, “Want to go eat?”

  She paused, still stuck in the moment. Then she pulled it together. “Love to.”

  ‡‡‡

  WHEN THEY STEPPED OUT of Chas’s town car and entered the dining room of One if by Land, Two if by Sea, a Greenwich Village restaurant, they were greeted by a lovely maître d’ and the sounds of Etta James belting out “At Last.” Chas smiled to himself. Perfectly romantic. Sure to impress a girl unfamiliar with New York. Or at least he hoped so. He was getting distracted by her, big-time, nearly spilling his soul to her out there on her balcony. He’d never felt comfortable like that around a woman before. But this filly was something else! A Thoroughbred. Different from what he’d been around. And he found himself getting reeled in by her personality, her wide green eyes, and her scent. Something about her made him want to reveal himself, layer by layer, piece by piece. Or maybe that was just his libido talking. Yeah, that was it. It was just that he was turned on, nothing else. He wasn’t really interested in anything else anyway. Not in this life. Not until he found out who had murdered his father, rooted them out at the core, and exacted his revenge. And he might die trying.

  “Chas?” she inquired, looking concerned. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, covering. “Great. Just admiring the scenery.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking around, “is there scenery too?”

  “I meant you, Susannah,” he replied, gazing into those beautiful eyes.

  She looked taken aback. “It’s Susie.”

  “Right.” He chuckled. “Susie. Isn’t that what I said?”

  “No,” she said pointedly. “You called me Susannah.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?” he asked provocatively, knowing he had tripped up but enjoying the reveal all the same.

  “No,” she said. “No, it isn’t.”

  The waiter approached the table, but before he could get a word out, Chas cut him off with: “We’ll have the prix fixe. Come back later for the particulars. And we’ll start by each having a Truth Alone Triumphs and a dozen oysters—please choose a sampling of all the ones you offer.” The waiter nodded and left, dismissed.

  Susannah paused. “Truth Alone Triumphs?”

  He smiled, confidence oozing off him in waves. “It’s a fabulous gin drink with curry. And feels like the perfect drink to have when I come clean.”

  Their eyes caught and held for the entire length of time it took for the waiter to return with the drinks. They continued to lock eyes while the drinks were poured, and they toasted, in silence, to the passionate strains of “As Time Goes By.” They drank, a long pull each, and set the glasses down. Then Susannah spoke. “Okay,” she said, “come clean.”

  Chas took another sip. Then met her eyes. And looked straight into them for a long moment. She met his gaze with challenge, and it only enticed him more. “I know who you are,” he said with surety. “I know that you’re looking into me. I find you fascinating, intriguing, and downright magnificent. How ’bout we screw all this and go investigate each other?”

  There was a long silence. Susannah’s eyes widened beyond all possibility. Chas’s mouth curved into a deeper smile, a deeper challenge. Jackson’s voice came clear over the earpiece: “Susie Q. Time to go. We’ve been had.”

  “Well,” Susannah said, “if we’re really coming clean, give me a moment to talk to my babysitter.” She pulled out the earpiece and spoke into it. “Jackie, honey. Go to bed. Feel free to use the penthouse. I’m taken care of for the night.” And with that she took the earpiece and crushed it between her palms, then tucked the pieces into her cleavage.

  Chas laughed, a throaty, full-bodied chuckle, filled with anticipation of a long night ahead. “Lucky earpiece . . .”

  “If you want to fully destroy it,” Susannah said, well on her way to pleasantly tipsy, “you’ll have to get it.” And with that she stood up a bit shakily on the heels, grabbed her purse, and walked toward the exit.

  Chas inhaled the scent of pursuit. It was going to be a fine, fine night. As he stood up, he left a crumpled hundred on the table out of respect. It was a small price to pay for skipping dinner and going straight to dessert. He just hoped he’d get several helpings before the night was out.

  ‡‡‡

  SUSANNAH GOT OUT of the town car in front of Chas’s brownstone and looked up at the building, recognizing that this beautiful estate was to be her battleground. She was a bit drunk, yes, but well aware of what she had done. Leveled the playing field. Given herself a night to remember. Thrown caution to the wind. And opened herself to possibility. Of what, exactly? she wondered. Of romance? Of sex? Neither. Or both. It reminded her of something her French great-aunt had said to her, shortly before she died. In broken English she had said, “You must to take ze pleasure of life.” Then she grabbed Susannah’s hand, her own hand shriveled like a claw. “Say it wis me, my sweet fille. You must to take ze pleasure of life. Promise me.” Susannah had sm
iled, tears in her eyes, until finally she said, “I promise, Aunt Geneviève. I promise to take the pleasure of life.”

  And here it was, suddenly laid out before her. The pleasure of life. Chas Palmer. His town house. His eyes. His biceps, for godsakes. Fuck it, she thought. Just once in my life, I want to throw caution to the wind and do whatever I want. But just to be safe, as well as loyal and honorable to her company, she sent a text to Jackson as Chas spoke to his driver.

  Enabling phone for tracking and audio. Don’t listen too close. Don’t worry. L

  And in a moment, she received the quick reply:

  Legs. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. That means you can do ALMOST anything. J

  She smiled, threw her phone in her purse, and followed Chas inside. The brownstone was almost as she remembered, except now it felt different, like a museum after hours. Quiet. Like a mausoleum, or a Buddhist temple. And startlingly beautiful in its veil of silence. Chas closed the door behind her with a satisfying click. She could feel him, walking up behind her as she stared up the stairs, felt him standing inches behind her, felt his hot gaze all over her as she almost imperceptibly arched toward him. And then, in the span of a heartbeat, he closed the space between them, fisting his hands in her hair and putting his mouth on the tender spot on her neck. She let out a startled moan. . . . How had he learned her so quickly? But he hadn’t learned everything yet, no, not yet. He was just off to a promising start.

  “I’ve wanted my hands on you since that first instant,” he breathed, “and now I want to taste each inch of you.”

  She moved just a hairsbreadth away and leaned over onto the marble stairs, giving him ample view of her rear. “When I fell on the stairs, I was envisioning all sorts of things. . . .”

  ‡‡‡

  CHAS’S BREATH CAUGHT in his throat. He was ready for her, or so he thought. But this was almost too much for him to bear. He was so hard he felt like his pants might rip in two. But he calmed himself and took her up on the challenge, sliding himself against her, gently, just enough to tease her, just enough to let her feel the tip of his erection. He was in control, but only just—he could feel, with every fiber of his being, that he had met his match. Something primal and deep was boiling in his blood, and he relished the moment, taking his time with her. He was more excited than he’d been in years, and every part of his mind, body, and soul was focused on the woman in front of him.