The Real Mrs. Price

by J. D. Mason

  Another Skin

  IT WAS AWKWARD FOR BOTH of them, but Lucy found comfort in that. She sat across from him at a table in a local sports bar, having silently downed a couple of beers and chicken wings. Roman had confessed the most tragic part of his life to her, and Lucy hadn’t the heart to resurrect that to him and talk about it any more than he already had. She could’ve had questions, like how’s your son doing now? Does your ex-wife blame you? Will you ever be able to move past it? He was guilty and guilt-ridden, and he always would be.

  “I spoke to Marlowe earlier today,” she finally volunteered. “She called me wanting to talk about turning those account numbers over to the police.”

  Roman’s vivid green eyes bored into hers with uncertainty and hesitation. “What’d you tell her?”

  Lucy shifted in her seat. “It was harder than I thought it’d be to talk to her about it.” Lucy sighed. “She’s scared, Roman, and I get it. I’d be scared, too. But it’s not like she’s my friend. I’m not hers. The only thing we have in common is Ed and this money.”

  “No. You don’t have the money,” he finally concluded. “Not yet.”

  “She wants us to turn it in, and she’s not giving up the PINs unless we do.”

  “She doesn’t have them. He does.”

  Lucy was surprised to hear that, because Marlowe had made it seem as if this Plato had found the drive but implied that maybe he’d given it to her.

  “He’s got them?”

  “Yes. And he’s not big on sharing.”

  “But we could talk to him, Roman,” she blurted out unexpectedly. “Lay it out for him. He’s not her. He’s not under the same scrutiny as she is, and maybe he can convince her that this makes sense.” Lucy thought for a moment. “Are they lovers?”

  Roman shrugged. “I have no idea what they are to each other. He sticks closer to her than glue, though.”

  Lucy scratched her head. “I don’t know. Part of me thinks she’s right. The decent part of me thinks that.” She smiled sheepishly. “I was so damned upstanding before all of this.” She felt like crying all of a sudden. “Now I don’t know what I am. Greedy?”

  Roman smiled. “No more than I am.”

  He’d broached the subject, so Lucy followed through. “You have a much nobler reason to need it than I do.”

  Roman arched a brow. “I don’t know, Lucy. Is any reason noble enough to risk a woman’s freedom over?”

  “Your family could use that money,” she reminded him.

  “Don’t do that,” he said with a hint of warning.

  “It’s true, Roman. I can only imagine what medical bills must be like. What kind of care your child needs.”

  “Don’t make this all about me, Lucy.”

  Lucy found herself getting defensive all of a sudden, feeling as if Roman were shining a light on her just to show off how terrible a person she was. “I’m starting to wish I’d never brought it up,” she said resentfully.

  “But you did bring it up, and now we have to decide what to do about it.”

  Silence hung in the air for several moments between them. “I keep telling myself that she could use that money to get out of here and start over somewhere else,” she explained. “Freedom’s freedom. Right?”

  “She wouldn’t be free. She’d be running.”

  “You don’t want to do this, do you?” She asked because deep down, she was starting to change her mind about it too, sort of.

  His gaze drifted around the room. “I don’t know what I want. Last night I wanted to do it.” Roman’s stare landed on Lucy. “Last night I wanted a whole lot of things.”

  Lucy’s feelings were well on their way to being disappointed. “But not anymore?”

  She’d hoped that last night would be the beginning of something, anything that could begin to erase Ed from her life. Roman had done a nice job of it in the time they were together.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, what are you saying?” she asked, challenging him.

  In the short time she’d known him, Lucy had learned that still waters ran deep with Roman, and he was a master at keeping the deepest part of himself off limits. But that wasn’t acceptable anymore. Not when she’d literally opened herself up to him.

  “You’re the first person I’ve allowed myself to be that close to in a very long time, Lucy,” he admitted. “And if I allowed myself the luxury, I’d be working overtime to keep you in my life.”

  She felt her face flush hot. Lucy prepared herself, though, for a but that she saw resting in his expression.

  “I’ve punished myself every single day since it happened, and I haven’t let up. I’ve told myself that I don’t deserve to be happy. That I don’t even want to be. And then I kissed you.”

  “Technically, I kissed you first.” She blushed.

  He smiled. “Is that what happened?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  Roman sighed. “That money wouldn’t be enough to ease my guilt. It would alleviate some pressures, yes. And I thought that that would be enough. Plenty. And then I could at least say that I did that for my son.”

  Lucy could see in his eyes where this was going. “You don’t want to take the money and run?”

  “That’s what we’d be doing,” he said with resolve. “Running. It’s not free money. Ed knows that, which is why he’s on the run. Chuck died for it and maybe even Tom Hilliard. O. P. Wells is the kind of man hired to track down the Ed Prices of the world. Even if we were to convince him to get on board, they’d send someone else for all of us.”

  Disappointment set in, followed quickly by an unusual sense of relief. “So, plan A is out?” she asked sarcastically.

  Roman leaned on the table. “Plan A is out if we’re smart. Plan B is still a possibility, though.”

  Lucy leaned her head curiously to one side. “What’s plan B?”

  He stared luxuriously into her eyes. “Us.”

  An unexpected smile crossed her lips. “There’s an us?”

  “I’d like to pursue an us,” he said with caution. “But I need to be completely honest with you.”

  “Okay,” she responded wearily.

  “I’m an addict, Lucy. I probably always have been, and I know that I always will be. Staying sober for me is a daily burden, a welcome privilege, and a conscious effort. I work at it, every second of every day, and I’ll always have to work at it.”

  Lucy swallowed. The gravity with which he spoke hit a nerve and forced her to pay attention.

  “You scare me,” he confessed. “You bring possibilities into the forefront of my life that I didn’t dare even entertain before last night. And now I can’t stop thinking about you, and that worries me.”

  Lucy stared at him with disbelief and frustration. “Why don’t you just put a gun to my head and pull the damn trigger, Roman?”

  Roman leaned back and sighed.

  “So what is it that you expect me to say? To do with that?” she asked, exasperated. “You want to be with me, but I scare you. Well, you’ve just scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’m being honest.”

  “Is that what you call it?” She frowned. “You set up the worst possible scenario for this relationship. You’re an addict. You could go off the wagon at any second. Why? Because I’m the one that’s going to be the cause of that?”

  “I could be the cause of it,” he corrected her.

  “Over me?”

  “Over anyone, Lucy. I’m just being honest. I just want you to know that—”

  “You’re a ticking time bomb,” she interrupted him. “Just like Ed was.”

  Boy, could she pick ’em. Lucy pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder and stood up. “Tell Plato or Pluto or whoever I have those account numbers. Let’s go ahead and do the right thing, turn them over to the police, get Marlowe off the hook, and go home.”

  Lucy left, and for all she knew, her departure had caused him to pop a pill into his mouth. But she di
dn’t give a damn. That was his problem. Not hers.

  Please don’t let him pop a pill into his mouth, she thought over and over again in a silent prayer.

  Close to Me

  THE RHYTHM OF HIS HEARTBEAT lulled Marlowe’s spirit back a thousand years to a place where he was king and she was his queen. It resonated in his chest, the size of a drum, and echoed against her ear. Marlowe lay naked on top of Plato, relishing the size and strength of him. He had no idea of the effect that he truly had on her, and she was not prepared for it.

  Plato folded one massive arm underneath his head and stretched his other across her back, resting his palm on the mound of her ass. They’d been in bed for hours. It was early afternoon, and they hadn’t gotten out of bed to do anything but pee and eat lunch, and then they came straight back to her room afterward and had been here ever since.

  “If time stopped right this second, I’d be fine,” she said lazily.

  “Can’t you cast a spell or something to make that happen?”

  She laughed. “There you go,” she said wryly. “Making fun of me again.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Nope. I’m touting your abilities. I got faith in you.”

  Marlowe groaned and kissed his chin. “Not nearly as much as I’ve got in you, baby.”

  “Oh, so now you’ve got faith in me? It wasn’t that long ago when you were ready to exorcise my ass and send me to hell.”

  She pushed up on her elbows. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I wanted to do, but I’ve since changed my mind about you.”

  “So you don’t believe what those bones showed you?”

  “Of course I believe it. But my interpretation could’ve been off a bit. Divination is not an exact science.” She rested her head back on his chest and sighed to the soothing sound of his heart again.

  All that storm raging inside her—fear, dread, anger, frustration, and sadness—always seemed to settle down when she was in his arms. Plato’s touch had a way of masking everything wrong in her life, and there was an awful lot wrong in her life. Marlowe had been mulling that dream of hers over in her mind for days, trying to figure out the underlying meaning behind it. Dreams always had more than one way of being interpreted. She’d fallen into the trap of taking it at face value, a dark, evil, mystical creature, consuming her, covering her, and enveloping her until she vanished inside it.

  Darkness didn’t have to be a bad thing, though. In her dream, the creature was pitch black, like ink, but maybe that was to hide her from all the negative forces attacking her. It could very well have been a protective field to hide her in. She’d begged for him in her dream. As afraid as she was of him, Marlowe craved him. For all his faults, and there were many, Plato had protected her. He’d been here for her in ways no one else could possibly be, so yes. The bones were right. He had come for her, but not in the way she’d expected.

  “If things were different,” she said, speaking softly, “if you weren’t here doing whatever it is you do, and if Eddie wasn’t in my life, and if we were just two people who met at a bar or a restaurant, do you think you’d want to be with me?”

  He laughed. “Oh, hell yeah, Marlowe. You’re fucking fine, baby.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” She pushed herself up again and looked into his eyes.

  Marlowe was doing it again. She was leading with her heart and not her head. But she couldn’t help it. Her heart made more noise. It filled her with the kinds of sensations that thrilled her from the inside out. Her heart spoke in colors, her head in black and white, and Marlowe had always been drawn to the brightest, vividest of colors.

  “I know what you mean,” he said, being serious for once. “And yes. If I wasn’t who I am and if I didn’t do what I do, I would most definitely want to be with you.”

  She locked onto his dark eyes. “You’re very good at hiding in there,” she told him.

  Plato looked confused. “Hiding? What?”

  “Not what. Who,” she said, smiling. “I don’t know why I looked past the truth of who my husband was—is. I suppose it’s because I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see the depth of the mistake I’d made. But I see you, Osiris Plato Wells. And not just the part of you that you choose to show the world, but that other part.”

  “I assure you, Marlowe, that there is no other part. What you see with me is what you get.”

  “No.” She shook her head slightly. “What I see is a man straight-arming me. I see you working hard to keep your distance and to make sure I keep mine.”

  “No distance between us now,” he said, smirking.

  “Not physically. Spiritually, though, there’s a valley, and you’re only willing to go so far into it before you stop, turn around, and decide that it’s not where you want to be.”

  Marlowe had made him uncomfortable, but he’d never openly admit it. Plato recovered quickly and shut that door on her that he’d left cracked just wide enough for her to see into.

  “Quentin Parker questioned me yesterday,” he said, effectively changing the subject.

  Marlowe was caught off guard by that admission.

  Quentin had spent an hour drilling Marlowe about the break-in at her house. He’d never mentioned anything about Plato. He’d never even asked her about him.

  “Why would he question you?” she asked.

  “My guess is that he’s smarter than he looks. He knows that you couldn’t possibly have killed that man on your own. He’s walked through that crime scene in his mind a thousand times and still can’t make it work with just you.”

  “He thinks I had an accomplice,” she murmured.

  “And he thinks it’s me.”

  “So what does that mean?” she asked, worried. “Does that mean that he’s closer to building this case against me?”

  “It means he has a theory, and now he’s got to figure out how to make it work.”

  She shook her head. “See? That’s why we’ve got to tell him about that money, Plato. We’ve got to give him those account numbers and let him go and see for himself that Eddie was involved in illegal activities and that somebody else wanted him dead. Not me.”

  He just looked at her, but he had to know that she was right. It was the only way to get Quentin to start to entertain other theories than the one he’d locked on to.

  “Lucy and Roman want to keep that money, but we can’t let them do that,” she earnestly explained. “She can’t do shit without those PINs.”

  “And the PINs are meaningless without account numbers,” he reminded her.

  “I don’t think she’s going to give them to us willingly.”

  His expression changed suddenly and sent a chill up her back. “Then she’ll give them up unwillingly.”

  Marlowe wouldn’t dare ask him what he’d meant by that statement. Plato placed his hand on the back of her head and pulled her face to his, planted a seductive kiss on her lips, then swept his tongue through her mouth and rolled her over underneath him, his cock hard and ready. Marlowe willingly spread her thighs and braced herself.

  Deathless Death

  PLATO HAD PUT THE LOVELY Marlowe to sleep. He stood over her, watching her, committing her pretty face to memory. Her scent was all over him, and he had no intention of washing it off. He carefully covered her with the sheet but didn’t dare kiss her like he wanted to for fear of waking her.

  He walked out of that house knowing that it was time for some clear, fast decisions to be made and that he was the only one in this circle of clowns with the responsibility and conviction to make them. He had a role to play in all of this, and Plato had wasted too much time caught up in the romance of Marlowe. She was a beautiful tragedy who needed redemption, and she believed that she’d found it in him. And what kind of hero was he? That was the problem. Plato was no hero at all.

  * * *

  Plato knocked on Roman’s hotel room door just after 9:00 p.m. The dude looked as if he knew that this moment would come.

  “Did I catch you at a bad
time?” Plato asked sarcastically, pushing his way inside.

  “I don’t have what you want,” Roman said quickly.

  “But Little Miss does,” Plato said, turning to him. “Doesn’t she?”

  His face said it all.

  “You tell me where she is, and I’ll be on my way.”

  That damn knight in shining armor stepped up to the plate. “I’m not telling you where she is. But I’ll be sure to tell her that you asked about those numbers,” he assured Plato.

  Plato sat down in a chair across the room. “And I’ll wait.”

  Technology being what it is, Lucy Price was a phone call away. A pen and a pad of paper to jot down the information was all that was needed for this whole scene to end peacefully and for Plato to disappear like a ghost.

  * * *

  Marlowe had woken up just as she heard the front door shut. And immediately, she knew. She knew that Plato was leaving to find Lucy. What she didn’t know was what he’d do to her when he found her. Marlowe hurried to get dressed, and she raced out the door to her car, knowing instinctively where he was going. Twenty minutes later, Marlowe stood in the parking lot of the hotel, next to his car, staring at rows and rows of room numbers, having no idea which one Plato could’ve been in.

  What the hell was she here for? Lucy Price wasn’t on her side. She and Roman Medlock had planned on keeping that money, and all she could think was that they’d try to talk Plato into keeping it, too. No. He wouldn’t do that. Marlowe shook that thought loose almost as quickly as it had popped into her head. Plato knew what needed to be done, and Marlowe trusted that he would do it. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself and started back toward her car when she saw Lucy come out of one of the rooms on the second floor and knock on the room next door.

  * * *

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Lucy?” Roman blurted out, letting her in and quickly shutting the door behind her.

  “I’m Lucy,” she blurted out, pushing past Roman to get to Plato.

  Pretty woman with pretty eyes and lips. And hips. Plato smiled.