Sin for Me

by Lisa Marie Perry

  Chelsea was the first to crack, her tense lips softening into a smirk. She pointedly avoided looking at Dante, and Alexis could see the sparks as if she was lying on quiet grass and watching skyrockets on the Fourth of July.

  It didn’t take much creativity to speculate how they would fill the next hour or so.

  “Five o’clock sharp.” Chelsea touched his arm and they vanished around the corner.

  Alexis sauntered over in time to see their fancy black car bullet down the street.

  Adelaide’s plump hands began signing the moment Alexis stepped inside the shop. Who were they? What did they want?

  Tourists, she signed back, lying with her hands, because she was sick of her own voice at the moment. It had made her world complicated from the first singing competition she’d won. They wanted directions.

  It takes fifteen minutes to give somebody directions? You know Louisiana like you designed it yourself.

  Because Louisiana was all she knew. Traveling for interviews and television show tapings hadn’t allowed her to truly see or experience life outside St. Martin Parish. Not that she minded, most days.

  She wondered, though, every day what it might be like to wake up in someone else’s bed and see someone else’s view.

  They talked a lot. Chatty. Most tourists are. She added a shrug and ducked behind the reception desk to peck her grandmother on the cheek. Adelaide had done the best she could with a deaf and confused nine-year-old girl who’d lost both parents—one to death and the other to abandonment. “I love you, MawMaw.”

  It was a relief to say something truthful. She hadn’t signed with Devil’s Music record label, but already it had brought out the liar in her.

  The vibration from the alarm she’d set on her phone alerted her when it was closing time. The other two mechanics lingered to wrap up, and she waved goodbye to her grandmother before slipping to the restroom to change out of her coveralls.

  She wasn’t completely filthy with oil when she arrived home in her beater, but she smelled like a garage. The air-conditioning didn’t improve things much, either. All it had accomplished was to dry the sweat on her skin.

  But if Dante Bishop and Chelsea Coin wanted to see whether she cleaned up well or not, she’d happily direct them to the Bayou Beauty makeup tutorial Mel had dared her to film last year.

  Mel—addicted to daring people, always pushing them past their comfort zones.

  The black superspy car appeared in front of her townhouse. Jaysus, where had that come from?

  That was another thing about the supremely wealthy. They seemed to operate on a different plane than mere mortals.

  And here two of them were, fixin’ to turn her into one of them.

  She led them past Mel’s favorite rosebushes and unlocked the door for them to precede her into her house. Always a hostess, she was. “Welcome to my humble home. I’ll get the air on in a second.”

  As they stepped in, she detected an earthy scent that soaked her mind in images of naked skin and aroused bodies and fogged windows.

  Sex.

  She glanced at the car parked out front and imagined a headlight winking in wanton confirmation.

  “Let’s talk,” she said after she turned on the air-conditioning and they were sitting around her dining-room table. “Y’all want to make me into a singer.”

  Chelsea shook her head. “You’re already a singer. We want to help you to grab hip-hop entertainment by the dick.”

  Alexis listened, watching their lips and feeling air pressure change as they spoke. A breakout star was what she would be, and Dante Bishop had come out of retirement to write her songs.

  “All of this for me? Why?”

  “You’re unique,” Chelsea said plainly. “Your bluesy sound was incredible on the videos I saw on your channel. Um, you’ve got a piano. We’d love to hear your talent firsthand.”

  They wanted to see her perform. “Do you doubt that I’m legit?”

  “There is a fortune on the line. You’re an investment for my company, Alexis. I need to see that you can play to the ability of the woman in those videos.”

  “And are you wondering how I can possibly sing, rap, play instruments when I can’t hear?”

  Dante caught her attention. “You can hear. You can touch. That’s what hearing is—a form of touch.”

  Alexis couldn’t stop her mouth from falling open in surprise…and joy. He got it. He understood. Nodding, she went to the piano and decided on an R&B interpretation of a tribute video she’d created to honor a rapper who’d influenced her music.

  With oil under her fingernails, frizz in her sandy-brown hair, and Cajun flavor in her soul, she left her body and sank into the music. Sound didn’t reach her the way it had when she was a young child, but it still existed.

  Maybe two people from one of the dirtiest music labels in American history might show her that she still existed, too.

  When she finished and returned to the table, she found Chelsea and Dante wearing identical serious expressions.

  “My neighbors caused a big shit about my drums, so I had to get rid of my set, but I still play,” she said. But damn, eager wasn’t the way to approach this. Once she started hoping for something, it was usually snatched promptly away. “Okay, tell me.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to need to take a leave of absence from your auto shop and the inn,” said Chelsea. “A commute from Breaux Bridge to Atlanta won’t be practical while we’re building you into the hottest goddamn hip-hop artist to come out of the South.”

  Alexis reached to shake their hands and didn’t even mind that these über-rich, ultra-sexy people probably hadn’t washed after screwing in a BMW i8 sin wagon.

  Chapter 10

  “Alexis Lazarus passed security inspection.” Joshua slapped a dossier onto the boardroom table and sat down across from Chelsea. Seated at the head and looking stressed to the point of frazzled, Emma had nibbled off most of her lip gloss and was writing notes with her right hand while manipulating her tablet with the left.

  “How closely did you and your people look?” Emma asked skeptically.

  “Closely.”

  “Because,” she went on, “I feel there’s more beneath her surface. She lied about her employment. She didn’t tell us that she works in her grandmother’s auto repair shop. That we were left to figure out on our own.”

  That was true. When Chelsea and Dante had arrived at the Breaux Bridge bayou inn looking for Alexis, they’d been directed to Barnacle Auto Repair.

  “If she could omit something like that,” Emma maintained, “then she’s hiding more. And if you can’t probe deep enough, then we should outsource this to someone who can.”

  “If I probed her any deeper I’d be collared on assault charges.”

  “Fix the tone, Joshua. Swear on Grandma Toledo’s crypt or I’ll stab you with my ink pen.”

  Chelsea interjected, “Both of you, please shut the hell up.” The three were alone in the boardroom, yet she lowered her voice anyway. “Correct my timeline if it’s wrong, but a few days ago y’all were sexing on the clock, then I went to Louisiana, and now y’all are fighting again.”

  “It’s nothing,” Emma said, while her husband said nothing. “Joshua, tell her we’re fine.”

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  Like Chelsea would believe that. “What am I, a buffer or something?”

  “No. Don’t worry about it.”

  But she couldn’t do anything else but worry. She’d been the support beam during the final days of her parents’ marriage. She had made up excuses to stay home and had tried so friggin’ hard to distract them from each other, but that only put her in the middle and she found comfort in expressing the pain privately with the aid of hairclips and pins that she would heat over a lit match.

  She looked at her wrists, one bare and the other dressed in a simple white-gold bracelet. Dante had taken her rubber band and made her promise to not replace it, and he’d left her to swim through an ocean of marital
fuckery.

  “Chelsea,” Joshua said sharply, shaking her out of her reverie, “I asked for the status on Lazarus. Where’re we at?”

  “She’ll be here next week. We need her in the studio with Dante and the producers, laying down ‘Turned Out Dirty’ straightaway. Marketing needs to start packaging her. We need her lodging finalized.” She stretched, cracking bones, and yawned. No matter how short the distance, flying sapped her energy.

  “You’re tired. You should go home and have dinner,” Emma said. “It’s almost seven.”

  “God, that’s early.” Some nights Chelsea didn’t leave until one or two. The building was still blazing with office lights and buzzing with activity. “Emma, your assistant’s due for vacation, isn’t he? We can slip her in as his temporary replacement. It’d be logical.”

  “Where do we want to keep the smokin’ little acquisition?” Joshua asked.

  “Emma knows sign language and there’s plenty of room in the Drake-Toledo mansion, so the ‘smokin’ little acquisition’ should stay with y’all.”

  Emma shut this down. “She’s not staying with us.”

  Chelsea didn’t try to mask her confusion. “We already agreed she’ll need to have eyes on her. Dante’s living in the guesthouse for the same reason. Do you suggest we ask them to share the place? Or should we tell him he’s free to go, and we move Alexis in?”

  “Dante’s a Bishop. That’s why we need eyes on him,” Joshua said. “He can’t be trusted with round-the-clock access to our artist—or anything else, for that fucking matter.”

  “She’s going to be performing his material. He’ll have access to her. Joshua, he’s here to do what we’re paying him to do. You sound paranoid.”

  “You sound like you’re on his side. Tell you what, Chelsea. You want to trust him, that’s your choice. But don’t take Emma and me and this goddamn label down with you.”

  Gritting her teeth for a moment, she confronted the accusation. “I’m having sex with him. I’m not trusting him.” Was she?

  “Bastard’s wearing your rubber band.”

  “That’s because he…Well, I said I’d…” She looked from him to Emma. “We have an agreement, that, uh, that if the stress gets to be too much I can come to him and pop his wrist instead of my own. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Except that she was trusting him with her well-being.

  Emma commented, “Instinct tells me I’m going to miss the days that you showed up to work smelling like a stranger.”

  “Emma. Joshua. We’re enjoying what works between us. Fucking. That’s all there is to it. And music. If getting a daily hit of my pussy is what helps him crank out more songs of the caliber of ‘Turned Out Dirty,’ then I’ll ride him all the way to a triple platinum album.”

  Chelsea’s voice echoed in her head. The words felt hollow, but it troubled her that she couldn’t distinguish what was an exaggeration and what was the truth.

  Emma sat up straight, her blue eyes wide. “Uh…Um, can we help you with anything, Dante?”

  Chelsea snapped her head around. God, no, no, no.

  “Progress report. A few more tracks to think about.” He looked at Chelsea. “I’m heading to the studio. C’mon over—and have that triple platinum pussy ready for riding. I might crank out all your songs by the end of the week.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But it’s what you said, so either you’re lying to them or you’re lying to me.” Dante hadn’t made a sound when he’d shown up during her speech, but now he slammed the wood out of the door.

  “I’m sorry, Chelsea,” Emma said.

  “It’s fine.” Her friends weren’t the only ones who could pretend things were okay when they weren’t. “A misunderstanding.” Though she wondered if the one who misunderstood what was between them was her.

  “Want me to kick his ass?” Joshua offered.

  “Don’t attempt it. Last time you ended up flying through a glass door. And I told you it’s fine.” She cleared her throat once, then again, because it kept constricting and her freaking eyes persisted in watering. “Business. SOS. Save our shit. What cover are we going with for Alexis?”

  This needed to be ironed out to the letter before the woman’s arrival in Atlanta. They needed her in place to acclimate her to Devil’s Music’s personality—how the company worked, how the talent flowed, how they partied. A Breaux Bridge mechanic/hostess might be vulnerable to all kinds of culture shock once thumped out of the nest to fly or fall in the middle of a hip-hop party.

  Vitalz’s new track, “Nasties,” would drop in a few days, which meant the party in the group’s honor was rushing ever-so-closer. And even Chelsea, desensitized early in her career, tended to walk away from company parties kind of shaken apart. Blitzed. Wrecked. Screwed.

  She worried, imagining Alexis Lazarus in her place. “She can stay with me. I keep most of my valuables in a vault and the condo’s empty most of the time anyway. Or—hey, I’ve got a better idea. She can live here.”

  “What do you mean?” Joshua asked.

  “She can live in the main house, in the bedroom suite. It’s a friggin’ sanctuary. She’ll want for nothing, and this way she’ll be close enough for us to keep eyes on her. I realize that losing the space will be a temporary pain in the ass, but it’s worth the inconvenience. The three of us will have to go home or crash in our offices when we want to pull an all-nighter.” When Chelsea heard no objections, she continued. “Studio intern could work and give her a reason to hang around Midtown, but I don’t like the idea of integrating her with the actual interns. Too many questions might crop up, and people will get offended if they see us constantly putting her on special assignments. So, Emma, persuade your assistant to take an extended vacation and let Alexis assume the role. This way we keep her close and feelings won’t get hurt.”

  Joshua got up and went to the window, looking out onto a rainy Atlanta night. “Get out of that mentality, Chelsea. Caring about people is how you end up fucked.” He turned around, the gray fire in his eyes finding his wife. “Make money, however the hell we need to. That’s our job.”

  “We can do it without making more enemies,” Chelsea insisted. “I still believe that…don’t you?”

  A modern billionaire surrounded by centuries-old wealth, he crossed the antiques-filled room to her side of the table. “This is Devil’s Music. The devil’s got no need for friends. He wants sinners. An army. How about you?”

  And that was the question, wasn’t it? How many sins would she commit for this company? What was it all worth to her?

  Chelsea took the questions with her to her office after her friends departed the boardroom. Guilt slowed her steps and labored her breathing, but she managed to get to her desk without collapsing in an anxiety rush.

  She had meant what Dante heard her say in the boardroom. She hadn’t meant for him to overhear.

  When she and Dante were together, she knew a breathless sort of calmness. If her nearness and influence stoked his creativity, she would take pride in that. If sex freed him the way it freed her, then she was glad for it. But those weren’t the words she’d used. From his perspective, what she’d actually said made her a user and an opportunist.

  If she explained, would he try to understand?

  Try. An attempt would make all the difference. She and Dante weren’t easy, so they couldn’t survive without effort. If he wasn’t going to make an effort to deserve her, then she was better off without him and his bossy mouth and hard body and unbelievable touch anyway.

  Exhaustion began to sing in her ears and whisper on her skin. She rubbed her eyes, then noticed smears on her fingers and got up to make the trek to the powder room near the executive-floor reception area.

  The noise level was beginning to drop as people tied up tonight’s loose ends while others refilled carafes. Both Joshua’s and Emma’s assistants were still in their offices, and they were so engrossed in their tasks that neither so much as peeked up when she passed. />
  In the powder room she went to the first sink and started to scrub. A glance in the mirror revealed unattractive smudges under her eyes. She sat at the vanity but found no cotton pads in the apothecary jars. Thick paper towels would be too abrasive, so, with a sigh, she ducked into a stall to unroll some toilet paper.

  The powder room door swung open, introducing a pair of voices.

  “Let me do what you like…” a woman cajoled.

  “Is this really what you want?” A male groan ripped through the room. “Christ, you’re so hot when you get like this….But tell me the truth.”

  Toilet paper fluttered from Chelsea’s hands. She recognized those voices. They were stripped of the angry friction they’d held earlier in the boardroom, but Emma and Joshua were stumbling around in the restroom and ready to fool around.

  How awkward would it be if Chelsea leaped out of the stall and sprinted past them to her office?

  Maybe they’d leave again. They’d had sex on company grounds before, but she couldn’t imagine them saying to hell with it and getting dirty in front of the powder room door for all to see. She would give them a moment and wait for them to move on.

  “I want to be fair to you,” Emma said. “You’re sacrificing for me.” Then the door to the stall next to Chelsea slapped open.

  The startled gasp she let out was soundless. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe.

  The stall door closed. Instead of leaving, Chelsea shut herself in and looked at the gray-colored partition between them. She couldn’t see them, but she could smell the notes in their fragrances and hear the lust in their breath and taste their need as if it was her own.

  “Emma, this ain’t right.”

  “Shh. I don’t want an angel on my shoulder. I want a demon between my legs.”