Games People Play

by Shelby Reed

  “I’m having a rough day. Tell me something that won’t make me feel like crap.”

  She laughed. “Want me to say something nice to you?”

  “Yeah.” He stroked her hand, the feel of her cool skin the only thing that grounded him. “Butter me up.”

  “Something nice. Let me think.” Then, “I’m so proud of you.” Admiration shone in her eyes. His sister. His best friend. She loved him and was proud of him for deeds he’d accomplished a million years ago, deeds that had been erased by lies and prostitution. Maybe he’d started out wanting to help her, to take care of her, but now he was too far gone. He embodied the world he inhabited. He told women what they wanted to hear, touched them when he didn’t want them, whispered lies in their ears, took their money. He lived an untruth every single day.

  When he didn’t respond, Amelia’s eyebrows drew down. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I do know. I engaged in completely unprofessional behavior.”

  “Ah.” She compressed her lips as if to hold back a smile. “You got fired for romancing someone.”

  “In a matter of speaking.”

  “Does this chick feel something for you, too?”

  “Yeah.” The ache in his chest expanded, a mixture of exultation and agony. One week of knowing Sydney had totally turned his life inside out. What kind of fool was he, laying his entire existence—and Amelia’s—on the line with useless feelings for a woman he hardly knew?

  “Well,” Amelia said. “You’re gorgeous and amazing. You do great things. She’s a fool to let you go.”

  He forced himself to smile back and lifted her hand to kiss it. “Thanks, Amie. I feel like a new man.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  Colm laughed and got to his feet. “I’ve got to run some errands, but I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Late as usual?” she sighed.

  “Not tonight. I’ll see you for dinner.”

  * * *

  Azure was in her office when he reached Avalon.

  “I’m done,” he told her, sinking into the brocade chair across from her desk. “Sydney Warren was a lost cause.” So, apparently, was his common sense, and worst of all, his heart. He had to pull it together, or Azure would see right through him.

  She stared at him with those cold blue eyes, her fists propped beneath her chin. “It doesn’t really matter, I suppose,” she said finally. “The pay is the same whether you win or lose. Most companions wouldn’t have been paid for services unrendered. You do know how lucky you are?”

  Dread tweaked the back of his neck. She was just winding up; he could feel it coming. His gaze wandered to the painting behind her desk while he waited in the thundering silence, an Impressionist church landscape whose artist he didn’t recognize. God, just get this over with.

  Never one to disappoint, Azure said, “What I want to know is why you failed to seduce her. That should always be in your power.”

  “I told you from the beginning. She’s completely devoted to Beaudoin.”

  Azure sat back and sighed. “You’re lying.”

  He glanced at the painting again. The church’s spires rose against a rosy setting sun, beckoning. Come all ye sinners . . .

  “There’s a look in your eyes I’ve never seen before, Colm. Do you have feelings for her?”

  He gave a humorless laugh. “After a week?”

  “You fell in love.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Convince me.”

  He forced his hands to relax on the armrests and searched for the safest admission. “Let’s say I liked her.”

  Azure’s gaze never wavered from his face. “And did you want her?”

  “Every day.”

  She leaned forward again. “Fool. I thought I could trust you.”

  “I thought you could, too.” He got to his feet, maintaining a cool demeanor even though his heart was hammering. He couldn’t play games about this. Not about Sydney, and not about his job. “Am I fired, Azure?”

  She thought for a long moment, steepling her fingers against her lips. “Is it over with her?”

  “It’s over.”

  “Are you going to get back to the old Colm who could handle three women a night?”

  How could he? Everything was different now.

  Just lie.

  “I can’t wait,” he said, meeting the challenge of her gaze with a stoic one of his own.

  “Then you still have a place here.” She rose, glided around her desk, and caught his face in her hands. “Colm.”

  Jesus, what more did she want? He was back in her grip, ready to work. What else would she demand of him?

  His jaw tightened as her fingers traced his eyebrows, his nose, his mouth. Then she said, “Lovely. Tell Maria to write you a new schedule. And one last thing.”

  His eyes dropped to her full, red-painted lips. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t ever try to bullshit a bullshitter. One chance is all you get, darling. Don’t lie to me again.”

  * * *

  Darkness had just fallen, bringing with it a colder wind than Sydney had felt all year, when the lights of Max’s limousine flashed across the front of the house. She was sitting on the brick steps in a leather jacket and gloves, a scarf looped around her neck. Inside the foyer closet, her packed luggage was stashed to give her a chance to talk to Max first. After finding an apartment in the city, she would arrange a moving company to get what little furniture she’d acquired over the past few years.

  The limousine’s black finish shone like glass as the car pulled around to the entry. The chauffeur promptly climbed out, retrieved Max’s chair from the trunk, and brought it around to transfer him into it. Max refused a specially equipped van for such purposes. He liked things the old-fashioned way. He liked his employees to work for their money.

  “What are you doing out here in the cold?” Max gave her a curious smile as he wheeled himself toward the ramp, the wind catching at his cashmere scarf. She’d bought it for him last Christmas. It matched the deep gray of his eyes.

  She rose and waited for him at the top of the ramp. “Just needing some fresh air.”

  “You look like you’re going somewhere.” He reached her and took her hand as she bent to brush her lips against his cheek. As he rolled behind her into the house, he added, “Are you going somewhere, Sydney?”

  She wouldn’t lie to him. “Yes, Max.”

  Halting in the black-and-white tiled foyer, he drew a breath and said, “Are you leaving me?”

  Tears burned her eyes. He looked so small and twisted in his wheelchair, suddenly. “Yes, Max.”

  Hans appeared through the dining room and met the chauffeur at the front door for Max’s luggage. “Welcome home, Mr. Beaudoin.”

  “Thank you, Hans.” Max cast him an unreadable smile. “Did you know, Hans, that Sydney is leaving us?”

  The valet’s expression never changed. “I did not, sir. I’m sorry to hear it.” He glanced at Sydney but said nothing more, just hoisted the leather carry-on and garment bag and headed upstairs.

  When he was out of earshot, Sydney said, “Why don’t we go into the library and talk?”

  Max inclined his head and wheeled in front of her, throwing open the double doors when they reached the massive room. The interior was chilled and dark. He turned on a single reading lamp and then pivoted his chair so he could meet her eyes. The glimpse of a broken man was gone. His posture had straightened, his gaze glittering in a way that reminded Sydney of shards of granite.

  “Are you having an affair?” he demanded.

  She didn’t answer right away. She thought about the last week, the days and nights of mixed sweetness and agony. Through all of it, Max had never been further from her life. Whatever she’d been through with Colm belonged in the sacred, female part of her mind and couldn’t be retrieved except on those long, lonely nights that no doubt lay ahead. W
hatever had been between them, it was her history, her truth, for her only.

  “This is about you and me, Max,” she said. “I’m sure you must have seen this moment coming.”

  “Not at all.” He wheeled toward the butler’s cart and the Baccarat crystal decanters sparkling in the dim light. “Will you have a drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Then do you mind if I do?”

  Sydney shook her head and crossed her arms over her breasts, lingering near the door. She didn’t want to drag this out, but he appeared to be settling in for a long winter’s nap.

  “How about we ask Hans to light a fire for us while we talk?” he said.

  “No.” She backed up until her spine hit the door. “Max, I can’t stay.”

  “You want me to ask why you’re leaving.”

  “I feel I owe you an explanation if you haven’t figured it out for yourself.”

  “Then by all means . . .” He gestured with his snifter of brandy, sloshing some of it on the Persian rug.

  Her arms tightened as she hugged herself. “You stopped loving me awhile ago.”

  “Not true.”

  “Then you stopped showing me you did. Whatever happened, something integral changed between us, something I needed and missed.”

  He sighed. “Go on.”

  “In this time I realized a couple of things. One is that our relationship no longer made me happy. The other is that I don’t want to do erotic art anymore, but portraiture.”

  “You’ll never make it,” he snapped so quickly her eyes widened.

  Then ire crawled through her. “Oh, really.”

  He smiled a little. “I’m not being unkind, Sydney. Take this as professional advice. Your talent lies in erotic art. You’ve made yourself a wealthy woman in that genre. Don’t mess with it if it ain’t broke.”

  The crass saying splashed like acid across her nerves. “My life is ‘broke,’ Max, and has been for a while. I plan to fix it. And while I’m so very grateful to you for your knowledge and direction in the past few years, you, too, have benefited from my success. We were a good team for a while. Now it’s time for me to move on, and you to do the same.”

  He rolled back to the butler’s cart and poured himself another brandy. When he pivoted to face her, he said, “So you’re leaving because I wasn’t demonstrative enough and you want to do a different kind of art. Kind of silly, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t patronize me.” She gritted her teeth and forced herself to drop her arms, to straighten, to meet his thundercloud eyes. For all his outward coolness, the expression in his gaze roiled with outrage. “I’m done talking about this. I’m going into the city to a hotel room, but I’ll be back in the next few days to get my things.”

  “Are we parting as friends?”

  “That’s up to you.” She opened the door and stopped at the threshold. “We’ve been through a lot together, Max. I’d hate to part as anything else.”

  Although the right half of his face was lost in shadow, she could see his pleasant expression fade. His mouth tightened, his chin nudging upward. “Is it the wheelchair, then? The handicap? The fact that I don’t—I won’t—”

  He knew right where to stab. “No, Max. It never has been. I would have loved you forever if you would have loved me the same.”

  “I did. I do.”

  “Please.” She rubbed the aching place between her brows. “I’m packed and ready to leave. It’s over. My mind is made up.”

  “Who will agent your career?”

  “Right now? Me.”

  She started to pull the door up behind her, but he blurted, “One last thing.”

  She waited, her heart pounding.

  “Are you seeing Hennessy?”

  “No.” The truth came easily. Colm had opened the symbolic door for her, but she wouldn’t be running through it and into his arms. The realization was agony, but it was her reality, the one she wanted to embrace. “Is that all?” she asked.

  “Come and kiss me good-bye, then.”

  Reluctance slowing her approach, she crossed to where he sat and leaned down to kiss his cheek.

  “My mouth,” he whispered. “Sydney. Kiss my mouth. One last time.”

  Swallowing a surge of reticence, she did as he asked, and his lips caught hers, avid, hungry, his hand sliding up to cup the back of her neck.

  Sydney pulled back, her pulse surging with anger and regret. “It’s too late.”

  She didn’t say good-bye, nor did he. She rushed out of the library and found Hans waiting for her in the foyer to help load her luggage into her sedan.

  When she drove away, she took a final glance in her rearview mirror. The mansion’s myriad windows glowed warmly, as though happiness dwelled there. Only the solitary figure silhouetted in the library window told the whole, sad truth.

  * * *

  On Monday, Colm went back to work. Azure scheduled him for only one client, a punishment, he supposed, for the feelings he couldn’t quite hide. He was changed, but he would still do the job, lay low until the storm passed.

  Then, thank God, the client canceled her late-afternoon appointment, and Colm was free.

  At home, he frowned at the silver Audi sitting in the driveway as he swung in and parked. Virginia tags. He didn’t recognize the car.

  Jane met him at the front door.

  “You’re home early,” she said, sounding a little breathless as she took the bouquet of flowers he’d bought for Amelia.

  “Canceled appointment.” He hung his coat in the front closet. “Whose car is that?”

  When the nurse hesitated, he turned to look at her. Then it washed over him. That son of a bitch Hatch was here.

  “Where is he?” He didn’t wait for her answer, just stalked past her and glanced room to room until he came to the dining room French doors.

  He squeezed the knob hard enough to bruise his hand and stared through the panes. Roger was tucking a blanket around Amelia’s lap, talking too quietly for Colm to hear anything but the low tone of his voice. Whatever he’d said made her laugh . . . and her green eyes sparkled . . . and the cold flushed her cheeks, and joy softened her features . . .

  And Colm wanted to kill Roger Hatch.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Jane said behind Colm, “but she seems so happy when he comes around—”

  “You’re right, Jane,” he said flatly, staring through the panes. “It’s none of your business.” He hardly sensed her surprised silence until the tread of her footsteps moving into the kitchen woke him. Then the sound of his own too-harsh words echoed around him. He ran a hand over his face and released a long, painful sigh. “Jane.”

  He found her standing at the sink, jamming rose stems into a florist’s vase and muttering to herself.

  “Hey.” He put a hand on her broad back. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, but you don’t know the whole story.”

  She whirled to face him. “Of course I do!” When his brows went up, she said, “What do you think Amelia and I do with our hours together? I probably know more about her than you ever could! I don’t care that you’re her brother. You don’t know what she’s missing, her dreams, her hopes that she refuses to let go of, the ones that feed her spirit—”

  Ah, Christ. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Roger Hatch can’t be one of those things.”

  “Oh, but he can. And I know it’s not my place to say so, but don’t stop me now because I’m on a roll. That man has been here nearly every evening for dinner for the last week, and no one could convince me he’s not in love with her. He’s so careful of her, such a good listener, such a kind man. James, can’t you support her making a go with him again?”

  “If he breaks her heart again, there’ll be no picking up the pieces. There’ll be nothing left of her.” He stared out the kitchen window at the couple on the patio, at Hatch sitting so close to Amelia and yet both of them restrained, as though they were courting in another century. “That man is not welcome in
my house.”

  “Then go tell him yourself. But remember it’ll be you breaking Amelia’s heart this time, not Roger Hatch.” She set the vase down on the counter and briskly dried her hands. “My shift is over. I’m going home. Molly will be here any minute to replace me.”

  Colm followed her to the door and retrieved her coat from the closet while she grabbed her purse from a console drawer. “You think I’m a real jerk, don’t you?”

  She hardly looked at him as she stepped out onto the front landing, the chilled wind ruffling her short silver curls. “I think you love your sister and would do anything for her. Look at the hours you work, at all the nights you come in late and exhausted. I know you want the very best for Amelia. But you’ve got her on a tether, James. Maybe you haven’t realized it before, but she needs a life.” She patted his cheek, then said, “Be honest with yourself, honey. Maybe what you’re really wondering is, who would want her?”

  He swallowed, unable to deny it. “Not just anyone can take on the job of being her provider, her family.”

  “You haven’t given anyone else the chance to try.”

  Before he could reply, Molly’s small car pulled behind Jane’s sedan on the street. Jane swung around to look at Colm one last time before she started down the steps. “And what about your life? Where is it? What do you do besides work?”

  “Okay,” he growled. “Now you really are barking up a forbidden tree.”

  She laughed a little and reached to squeeze his hand, then waved to the younger nurse climbing out of the car.

  Back inside, Colm came face-to-face with Roger as the tall, red-haired man pushed Amelia’s wheelchair down the hallway toward her bedroom.

  Amelia went pale. “James, what are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” he said more calmly than he felt.

  Molly came behind with a brisk step and took the chair handles from Roger. “I can manage from here,” she sang, and before Amelia could protest, had whisked her safely into her bedroom, away from the two men staring each other down.