Two hundred-ish glittering, perfect people were milling about in an enormous penthouse on top of a building in one of London’s fashionable districts. Not Arthur’s apartment, though. This one belonged to Lord and Lady Somesuch of Somewhere, but Gen couldn’t remember their names for more than a few minutes.
Arthur knew most of the people there, of course, and introduced her to everyone.
When Arthur smiled at her with his warm, affectionate smile after each introduction as his “close friend,” she almost believed him. She should be careful not to believe too much.
Heck, she was a barrister. That was probably overall good advice.
They made the rounds of the party, shaking hands, and Gen answered, “How do you do?” to everyone who said it to her, which was most of them.
What shocked her the most was the way that most of the people whom she said it to seemed pleased and relieved at only that little statement, and they moved on to less personal topics of conversation like the weather or the drinks, rather than risk speaking of something so intimate as how someone was doing.
Okay. So now she got it.
Arthur was just getting her a drink at the bar when Gen spotted a familiar couple across the room. The woman’s silver and gold hair was twisted up like a thick rope of jewelry.
“Oh, look,” she said. “There are your friends Elizabeth and Bentley, again.”
“Where?” Arthur asked, scanning the room.
“Over there, by the bar.” Gen waved over the crowd to them. Elizabeth smiled and waved back, but then turned back to her conversation.
Arthur took her elbow and steered her toward the other room where the party had spilled into the dining room, which was a convenient place to set drinks while nibbling on shrimp.
Again, bowls of shrimp were laid out all over the place. Their little tails ringed the edge of the bowl like ruffles.
Gen bet that all these fancy-butt parties had those huge, glass bowls of shrimp on ice, but no one ever laid out a nice seven-layer dip. These upper-class people would probably go ape for some proper seven-layer dip.
Or Jell-O shots.
Arthur said, “There are some other people I want you to meet.”
Other people were over in that other room, all right, and there were yet more people all over the place. Gen was dizzy with names and occupations and children’s names and hobbies and events, but she smiled and said, “How do you do?” when prompted.
So many people.
At one point, she found a bathroom and made use of it, just to breathe for a few minutes, if nothing else.
When she came out, she saw Arthur walking across the room toward the bar, and there was a moment—she almost didn’t believe she saw it because it was so quick—but Arthur clasped hands with Elizabeth, the older woman Gen had met, as he passed her. They didn’t acknowledge each other, didn’t look at each other’s eyes, didn’t speak. The instant of contact looked like a secret handshake or a magic trick.
Gen forced her way through the crowd, wedging herself between the men in suits and modern tuxedos and the women wearing black satin, gray lace, or navy blue silk. Everyone blocked her way as she tried to make her way over to him.
By the time she found Arthur, by the bar of course, he was standing with his hands in his pockets. “I ordered you some white wine.”
Gen smiled at him. “Sounds great. Why didn’t you say hi to Elizabeth?”
“Which Elizabeth? There are at least five, here. I know most of the people in attendance. Thanks to generations of inbreeding, I’m related to most of them, too.”
“No, that woman that you introduced me to. Her husband’s name is Bentley.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You touched her or something.”
His gray eyes looked so confused, even though he was smiling. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Arthur was so gorgeous when he smiled, his lips curving over his straight teeth, his laughing eyes twinkling like frost in the sunlight rimmed by midnight blue.
She said, “I’m sorry. It must have been nothing.”
He took his hands out of his pockets and reached for the glass the bartender was offering him. “Here’s your wine.”
Hours later, Gen was glad to finally escape.
Pippa and Arthur drove her home.
On the way, Arthur tapped the back of the seat to get Pippa’s attention and said, “Two. Maybe three.”
Pippa nodded.
Gen asked, “What was that?”
He smiled at her. “Minutes that I’ll be inside your house to check your new locks.”
“Thank you for those, but I really don’t think they’re necessary.”
“Good locks are important, even if we’re only pretending to be a couple.”
At least she was getting new locks at her house and office out of this arrangement.
Pippa stopped the car in front of Gen’s place, the ramshackle mouse-house propped between the other row houses.
Though Gen assured Arthur that the locks were more than adequate and properly installed, he bulled his way inside her small, terraced house. After seeing Arthur’s penthouse apartment a few days before, her mother’s little house had seemed so ragamuffin.
Arthur walked past her, despite her protestations, into the tiny space that he must have thought of as a closet with a couch. He inspected the new locks that he’d had installed on her windows and doors.
He poked at the locks on one of the windows on the rear of the house overlooking the small garden and frowned. “You need an electronic alarm system, one that will alert the police.”
She told him, “This neighborhood is really safe. I caught heck from my neighbors the other day when I let you in here because they didn’t know you. They’re probably all watching from their windows to make sure that you leave at a Godly hour.”
“I’m not worried about your neighbors,” he said, peering up through the window at the houses across her small yard and the fence beyond.
“Then who are you worried about?”
He kept looking out of the window. “People who are not your neighbors.”
Well, it made sense that Arthur was paranoid. He was worth billions. Doubtlessly, one of the reasons that he had been shuffled off to a boarding school in the remote Swiss Alps was the threat of kidnapping.
Gen bit her lip. That must have been a terrible way to grow up, locked away with all the other kids who were worth more as hostages than for their souls. “I’m sure I’ll be fine, Arthur. There’s no reason for anyone to care about me.”
“You might be surprised.” He tapped the window lock. “Have a good night, Gen.”
ACCIDENT
On the way home from dropping off Gen, as a dark coldness filled the back seat of the car, Arthur leaned forward and said, “Pippa, find a place to pull over.”
“Problem, sir?” Pippa’s head, checking her mirrors as she looked at the streets and car parks that they passed.
“Yes. Two cars over, one back. The black sedan. Let it pass when you pull over.”
“There’s a green sedan, too,” she said.
“Yes.” Ah, Pippa has seen them, too. The cars had followed them from the party to Gen’s house and onward. He had made sure that all three had followed him. None had peeled off at Gen’s place.
He had been followed more and more, lately, by several cars, which meant a surveillance team. One time, he had been quite sure that four cars had been following him, a new record. Even Elizabeth didn’t rate four cars.
Pippa pulled the Bentley into an alley and stopped it.
Arthur shoved his door open and leapt out, slamming it behind himself. As he reached for the driver’s door, the door lock popped up and Pippa was already across the seat to the passenger side, her legs balled up as she scooted out of his way. Arthur slid into the driver’s seat, jammed the car into reverse, and jumped into traffic as Pippa buckled her seatbelt on the passenger side.
Pippa may
have been a professional chauffeur, but Arthur had more specialized training.
The black car tailing them had already passed them, but the green car he had suspected was the second tail had pulled into a parallel parking space to wait. As he watched in the rearview mirror, it slid into the stream of traffic a few cars behind him, its headlights a little brighter than the other cars in the nighttime London traffic.
Cheeky of them to send someone into London to watch Arthur at home. When he was in Europe, he expected surveillance and took countermeasures, but being followed through the streets of Britain was new.
Arthur drove through the fluid London traffic, heavy for that late at night, drifting through lanes and turning quickly onto side streets. He doubled back once and became quite sure that a third car, a white economy sedan, was following them.
The car pinged because he hadn’t put on his seat belt, and he gunned the engine. It roared down the dark street.
He sped, cutting between cars and taking quick turns. Pippa watched the passenger mirror and by turning around, informing him of the other cars’ movements.
Elizabeth had passed a micro-USB stick to him at the party. When he’d had a moment of privacy, he’d examined it using his phone. Several files had been placed in a folder called “Examine and Report.” A second folder, titled “Personal,” contained a note that admonished him for his relationship with Gen. The note had clearly been written by Elizabeth herself. Arthur had seen too many examples of her Germanic-influenced grammar over the years to be fooled into thinking that it was from some other director. In the note, Elizabeth reminded Arthur that he was to “cultivate” Gen, to make sure that Gen was exceedingly invested in victory in his court case. Winning that court case and retaining his title and wealth was of utmost importance.
How the devil was Arthur supposed to cultivate Gen when Elizabeth so blatantly warned her off? Her comment in the ladies’ room that Gen had relayed to Arthur still rankled him.
Such contradiction. One might get the impression that Elizabeth was personally conflicted in the matter, but Arthur knew better than that.
In the rear view mirror, Arthur saw bright headlights swerve through the night to follow them around a corner.
Damn it.
Those tails might be from several different agencies, or they might be following each other, following him.
They might be dispatched by the CIA or the Mossad, too.
The Egyptian Gihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma was pissed at him right now, with good reason.
So was the Russian FSB, for excellent reasons.
Arthur smiled and whisked the Bentley through the traffic, whipping around other cars and spinning the wheels down side streets.
The other cars were still there.
He sped up, tracking their headlights through the dense London traffic.
The seatbelt warning alarm chimed again.
He could lose them. He knew he could. If he could just get an opening around the next corner to dodge through the rabbit warren streets of Westminster, he knew that he could lose the tails. Damn it, he was better than this.
Pippa said, “Arthur, watch that—”
A blinding whiteness.
Pain flashed through him.
Darkness slammed his ears and eyes from both sides.
He reached through the darkness, trying to stay conscious.
Gen.
AN EXTREME OPTION
When Octavia Hawkes called Gen into her office the next day, Gen knew that it must be about Arthur even though she hadn’t seen any new evidence against him that morning. Gen had been all over the gossip pages, clicking and searching on her phone while she was doing her make-up and getting dressed in her small bathroom, but nothing new had shown up.
Maybe Octavia had found the pictures from the Parisian strip club, but those had been out for almost a week. Gen had had trouble finding them again because they had dropped off the bottoms of the pages and into the archives.
Surely, he could not have gotten into trouble last night. He had dropped her off at home well after midnight.
What was wrong with Arthur that he would go carousing so late at night, and what could he have done that was so spectacular that he had ended up on the gossip websites once again?
Or, what was wrong with Gen that she was so exceptionally boring and tedious that she drove a man to do something so insanely stupid just from being in her presence for a couple of hours?
Really, that question was every bit as valid as the one about Arthur.
When Gen knocked on Octavia’s imposing office door, Octavia was standing by her window, glaring at the rooftops around the buildings of Lincoln’s Inn. When Octavia looked over at Gen, her mouth was the smallest, angriest red dot that Gen had ever seen. The filler in her cheekbones stood out, making Octavia’s face look even more skull-like.
“Sit down, Gen.” Octavia barely moved her lips.
Gen sat. She folded her hands in her lap and waited for her boss to speak.
Octavia asked, “Have you seen them?”
Them? Oh, God. There must be more than one picture out there. “No. How bad are they?”
“Bad.” Octavia resumed staring out the window.
Gen checked her phone. No texts from Arthur. She typed to him, When will you be here?
The reply came in a moment. As soon as I can.
Where are you?
In the courtyard.
“He’ll be up here in just a minute,” Gen told Octavia. “He’s outside.”
“I’m surprised,” Octavia muttered.
Gen didn’t want to ask why.
Had Arthur been thrown in jail?
Had he managed to get himself all the way to Paris again? Was he in jail in Paris or in some stripper’s bedroom?
Had the pictures shown him to be, ahem, tied up in a most literal way that would impede him being able to make an appearance in his lawyers’ chambers? Yeah, that would elicit sarcasm like that from Octavia.
Gen sat with her ankles crossed and her knees locked together.
Octavia fumed in silence.
Five minutes later, Arthur limped into the room.
Limped.
A dark bruise ran up one side of his cheek, and his eyelid on that side was swollen. His stiff posture looked like his ribs were taped from being broken.
Gen jumped up. “Arthur!” She ran to him and touched his shoulder, afraid to grab him because she didn’t know how far or how deeply those bruises went. “What on God’s green Earth happened to you? Did someone jump you?” She went ahead and grabbed his shirt over his shoulder. “Were you in a fight? Did someone try to kidnap you? Is that why you’ve been having new locks put on my office and my house, because you’re in danger?”
The eyebrow over his unbruised eye rose. “Car accident.”
“Oh my God, Arthur. Come sit down.” She took his hand and led him over to the chairs in front of Octavia’s desk. “Is anything broken? Is Pippa all right?”
“Nothing broken.” Arthur smiled lopsidedly at Octavia. “If I’d’ve known that I would receive this treatment, I would have driven my car into a wall sooner.”
“You didn’t answer about Pippa. Is she all right?”
“Pippa is fine. Not a scratch on her. She got me out of the car before the police got there. I took the brunt of it.”
Gen sat him down in the chair, and because she didn’t want to touch his bruised face and hurt him, she gently smoothed back his hair. “You poor thing. You poor, poor thing.”
Arthur watched her, mostly with his eye that wasn’t nearly swollen shut. She almost thought she imagined it, but he might have tilted his head and leaned into her touch. He certainly closed his eyes.
Octavia butted in, “The accident management company called this morning with the details. He was sideswiped. The person who caused the accident fled the scene, and he barreled into a wall, missing several pedestrians on the sidewalk. Witnesses said that he was driving quickly but not dangerously. Oddly, his b
lood alcohol was under the limit, barely.”
Gen whirled on Octavia. “You knew about this?”
Octavia was staring at Gen, still angry. “I thought you knew.”
“No.” She turned back to Arthur. “I will sue the shit out of the other guy. I’ll take his house and his car and rip the shirt off his back. He’ll be walking naked down the street when I’m finished with him.”
“Hit and run,” Arthur said. He spoke like talking might be hurting him. Dark purples and red stained his skin up one side of his face.
“When the police find him, I’ll make him wish he had crawled into a hole and never come out.”
“The police won’t find him,” Arthur said.
“Why wouldn’t they be able to find him?”
“Just a hunch.”
Gen heard her voice becoming shrill but could not stop herself. She clutched his arm and stared into his battered face. “Was someone trying to hurt you?”
“Oh, no. Just a wrong place, wrong time thing, I’m sure.” He brushed off any other implications with a wave of his hand.
“And yet,” Octavia said, “there are newspaper items about your driving before the accident—erratic, high-speed driving, perhaps negligent—with pictures of the crashed and smoking car.”
Gen felt stupid when she squeaked, “The car caught on fire?”
“Just a little bit,” he assured her. “Practically not at all.”
Gen turned to Octavia. “I don’t know what to say.”
Octavia’s red lips were still pursed into an angry dot. “I would say that, despite the girlfriend charade, you’re not keeping him out of trouble.”
“He was in a car accident! It’s not like he was caught in a compromising situation.”
The black lines of Octavia’s eyeliner and heavy mascara narrowed around her brown eyes. “No. That was last week in Paris, wasn’t it?”
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 17