by Alice Ward
“No, I took care of that first,” I assured her, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “Actually, this is the last location on the list, and I think I’ve got everything I need.”
“Are you sure? What about the banquet hall? Or the Executive Suite — did you get the Executive Suite?” she demanded.
“I got it all,” I said with a crisp edge in my tone.
She frowned, and I could see the gears turning in her mind as she racked her brain for anything she could point to and claim I’d forgotten. I didn’t bother trying to convince her otherwise, preferring to fetch my bag from the nearby bench and start disassembling my equipment. Usually, I did everything I could to ensure a more than satisfactory experience for my clients, but Misty was one of those people who wouldn’t be satisfied until her superiors sang her praises. I had something on my mind anyway. Or someone, rather.
My extended weekend with Owen had haunted me from the moment my plane touched down in Chicago. Two showers a day did nothing to cleanse the feeling of his fingers from my skin. Every rub of the seam of my jeans against my panties elicited a gasp. I was even having dreams about walls draped in black fabric and bright spotlights and a low voice whispering orders in my ear. He’d somehow managed to ingrain himself into my head and he consistently weaseled into my conscious without solicitation.
Yet, he was just a fling. He had to be. I was a simple girl living in a Logan Square studio apartment scrambling on a regular basis to make ends meet as a freelance photographer. He was rich, handsome, charming, and oozed the kind of sex appeal that could infect every heterosexual woman in a fifty-foot radius. There was a thousand miles between us and the lives we had built for ourselves — or were trying to build, in my case. We’d met, we’d hung out, we’d slept together, and I’d gone home. From the logistics to the clichés, my weekend in New Orleans with Owen Driscoll had only one possible classification — fling.
God, I wanted to be flung again.
The only outstanding factor that threw a wrench in my analysis of the New Orleans trip was my phone number. Owen had asked for it before we’d said goodbye after our night at The Blackjack Club. I’d given it to him, but I didn’t have any real expectation of a call for the reasons I’d already reiterated to myself over and over again. Plus, despite his frequent reminders about his lacking politeness, he was a gentleman and it stood to reason he’d only asked for my number out of some societal obligation to avoid looking like a sleaze who hit’em and quit’em. I didn’t mind. The thought that he’d asked for the sake of propriety didn’t offend me. But, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, I had a flicker of hope burning inside me he’d call.
“I don’t have anything earlier, so I hope Tuesday works for you, but if the board doesn’t get a chance to look over the photos in time we may have to reschedule.” I hadn’t even realized Misty was talking, but it didn’t seem to matter much because she waved her hand frantically in front of her face a split second later and recanted. “No, no, never mind. Let’s not set any appointments yet. Why don’t you just send over the shots and I’ll forward them to the board, then I’ll give you a call when I hear something back from them?”
“That sounds fine,” I agreed. They were the exact same terms we’d discussed when I’d nabbed the gig in the first place, but I’d discovered Misty was the type to waffle back and forth between ideas before settling on the initial one in the end anyway. Zipping my bag closed, I slipped the strap over my shoulder and hoisted the weight. “I’ll go through them tonight, scrap any duds right off, and email the portfolio tomorrow.”
“Great.” She sighed with relief as she said it, and for the first time since I’d met her, her face relaxed. The lack of tension in her jaw took at least five years off, and she could’ve possibly convinced me she was actually thirty-two rather than in her mid-forties in that moment. “Great.”
My distraction continued into my drive back home. It was only mid-afternoon, but gigs were booked at all hours of the day or night and it wasn’t uncommon for me to find myself with a large portion of the day free. I normally would’ve been pleased to have the time, but not today. It seemed time alone this week meant time to muse over Owen, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“Let it go,” I muttered aloud as I pulled up to a traffic light queue. The gray-haired woman in the car next to mine squinted suspiciously at me like I was a crazy person who’d escaped from the asylum.
Perhaps the most frustrating part about being so mentally occupied by a man I was sure I’d never see again was that, as soon as I managed to expunge him from my thoughts, I instead became focused on the “unique set of interests” he’d told me linked the members of The Club.
According to him, they were dark and dangerous and had the capability of ruining reputations, but that was the only solid information I had. The rest was left up to my imagination, and my imagination was vivid. I wanted to know more. I was desperate to know more.
The little knowledge I had surrounding the subject was so open to interpretation that I could’ve been rubbing elbows with men interested in everything from leather to child pornography, and I couldn’t help feeling like it was necessary that I found out just how far into the extremes the spectrum went. How I perceived The Club and its members, and truthfully, Owen, had become solely dependent on learning whether I’d been in close quarters with people who just got hard sniffing sneakers or who possessed more sinister kinks that left their partners frightened, traumatized, or even harmed. For all I knew, I could’ve slept with a guy who got off on kidnapping women and keeping them locked in cages as slaves. Why it mattered to me so much, I didn’t know. After all, what was done was done. And who really knew anyone anyway? People could be married for twenty years and never suspect a thing until one day they find out their spouse has been dismembering neighborhood dogwalkers. It did matter, though. I felt like I was trapped in a moral mystery and couldn’t drop the obsession until it was solved.
As I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building, I wondered if I should start dating. It seemed reasonable that seeing someone would help me to forget, or not care, about another someone. Then again, I had my doubts. Owen had been perfect, too perfect. I couldn’t fathom meeting another man who could come close to the bar raised by the slick Mr. Driscoll.
Before heading up to my studio, I stopped at the mailbox. Nobody else was around, for which I was grateful because my neighbors were on the strange side and tended to either be complete mutes lacking any semblance of manners or so nosy I couldn’t sneeze without being interrogated about my entire medical history. In the interest of getting upstairs undetected, I snagged the stack of envelopes, flyers, and magazines from the narrow compartment, locked the box again, and scurried to the stairwell.
I wasn’t quite as lucky as I thought. Shoving the key into my door, I heard, “Yoo-hoo!”
“Hello, Ms. Marcheski,” I said without looking. She was easily recognizable by her voice, as high-pitched as a doll with the kind of coarseness only decades of smoking two packs a day could bring.
“Oh, I see you’ve got your mail.” She padded down the hall in her raggedy slippers with her nose shoved forward curiously. “I wanted to tell you I saw a man putting an envelope into your box this morning.”
“Was he wearing a United States Postal Service uniform?” I asked a little dryly. It wasn’t characteristic of me to be so rude, especially toward a woman of Ms. Marcheski’s age, but my recent fixation was making me grouchy.
She shook her head, widening her eyes to buglike proportions. Her frizzled bangs swung limply around her forehead. “No,” she replied solemnly. “He wore a tuxedo. You know, like the kind actors wear for award ceremonies?” I paused with my hand wrapped around the doorknob and stared at her. “He didn’t have a key, of course, but he slipped that envelope right in through the bottom, and then he left. I looked out the door to get his license plate number in case it was anthrax. He was driving a spy car.”
“A
spy car?”
“You know, like the kind they drive in the movies?” She stretched her arms out wide as if to illustrate the size of a true-to-life car. “It was black and shiny and looked expensive. I don’t know why someone driving that car would send you anthrax, but there’s a lot of weirdos out there.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, opting not to comment on the irony of her statement. “Well, thanks for letting me know.”
She rose up onto her tiptoes, the heels of her slippers flapping back against the well-worn hallway carpet, and tried to peer at the mail tucked in my hand. “Do you want me to open it for you? I’ve lived a long life, but you’re just a young thing with plenty of days ahead of you,” she offered.
I put on my friendliest smile and responded sweetly, “No, thank you, but I’ll let you know if I find something terrible in there.”
“Oh.” The disappointment on her face was obvious. “Well, all right. You just holler if you need me, then, dear.”
I thanked her and retreated into the safety of my apartment, taking care to lock the door and deadbolt behind me. Ms. Marcheski was a kind woman for all intents and purposes, but she was the biggest busybody anyone could ever want to meet, and the last thing I needed at that moment was her burrowing into my already muddled business.
The envelope in question was at the bottom of the stack. I tossed the rest of the mail onto my kitchen counter and studied the possibly anthrax-laden packet. Intricate gold foil scrolls swirled up the sides, and the paper itself glimmered at me in the sunlight filtering through my single window. The writing of my name and address was exquisite with the kinds of curves and flourishes common in calligraphy, and there wasn’t a stamp. There was, however, an unnamed return address. My stomach somersaulted.
P.O. Box 74
New Orleans, LA 70119
CHAPTER TWELVE
Owen
I was a mess.
Days-old mugs of half-drunk coffee littered my desk. Files that were ordinarily kept in labeled folders and hung in designated cabinets were scattered across the upholstered chairs reserved for clients. Most of my pens sported new fresh teeth marks on their heads, and crumpled sticky notes decorated my office floor like urban tumbleweeds. Even my framed degree, which had hung in the same spot on the west wall since I’d leased the space three years before, was crooked. Mercifully, I had no in-house appointments booked or I would have run the risk of frightening off any new investable acquisitions.
The blinking screensaver digitally denoting the current time glared at me from my desktop, reminding me I’d wasted almost another full day of work. I glared back. Some may have found the neat, angular numbers motivational. I found them hateful. My career had always come easy to me and been much less like work and much more like an enjoyable — sometimes stressful — puzzle to put together for eight to twelve hours a day. I juggled calls, meetings, presentations, demonstrations, research, and review without breaking a sweat or losing my drive. This week, however, I didn’t care, and I hated that I didn’t care. Worse, I kept revisiting my time with Tabby, and I liked it, and I hated that I liked it.
What was happening to me?
I wasn’t the guy who pined after a woman. I certainly wasn’t the guy who dismissed advances because I was pining after a woman. Twice since Tabby left, though, I’d been approached in public by women hoping to end up on a date with me, plus a voicemail from a past conquest, and I hadn’t engaged any of them because…
Because why? Because they weren’t Tabby?
It was sick. I was sick.
The last time I’d reacted in such a way to the opposite sex had been in college. She was vivacious and athletic and loud — even her hair was loud with its orange-tinted redness — and though her name was Darla, she insisted everyone call her Holly. We dated for two years. My attraction to her had been the same as it always was… difficulty. She was a legend on the softball team, the life of any campus party, and sported the looks to boot. To be the one to wrangle her in a sea of willing guys was a major ego boost. Of course, my ego had been deflated into a blob when I spotted her leaving a bathroom with swollen lips and Ray Hildegard during finals week, and when my junior year ended so did my desire to have a girlfriend. I’d stayed loyal to the rules of casual sex since. The Blackjack Club was my saving grace in that sense because it offered me exactly what I was looking for… contracted anonymity and a slew of women who took emotions off the table and left only physical satisfaction.
I’d broken my own rules, though. Not only had I found every excuse I could to spend time with Tabby, but I’d bedded her, and I’d done it without first getting her to The Club. And while I hadn’t engaged in the behaviors that held the risk the NDA protected me against, I still hadn’t taken the steps to avoid emotional attachment and growth. Now, I was suffering the consequences with a brain fogged by the memory of her scent, the way her body curved too well against mine, and the snappish allure of her quick-witted tongue. I hadn’t even gone back to The Club since my venture there with Tabby, which was unusual for me.
The quirky nymph had wormed her way into my life, and I’d let it happen. Idiot.
My office door flew open, drawing my gaze from the computer screen to the entrant. A bald head and a grin more pubescent than manly greeted me.
“Whoa.” Howie’s eyes scanned the mess that had taken over my workspace. “Nadia on vacation?”
“What? No. Why?”
“You might want to think about replacing her,” he said. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, and I hoped his voice didn’t carry down the hall to Nadia’s cubicle. “An assistant is supposed to help keep you organized, which she’s clearly not doing.”
I rolled my eyes and obligatorily snatched some of the discarded sticky notes off the floor. Tossing them in the almost overflowing trash bin in the corner, I told him, “Cleaning up after me isn’t one of her duties. It’s my job to keep this place in order.”
“Well, maybe you should think about interviewing for your replacement then,” he jibed.
Not in the mood for Howie’s jokes, I ignored him and scooped a mass of mismatched papers into a neat pile. He wasn’t to be deterred. Striding forward, he leaned against one of my client chairs and rested his elbows on the curved backrest. “You haven’t been to The Club in a while.”
“I know.”
“I heard the last time you were there was with that girl from the casino,” he went on. “There’s been a lot of talk about her.”
This revelation earned my attention, and I looked up at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“A lot of the members, the ones who were there the night you brought her anyway, have been asking if you were going to bring her back,” he explained. To my dismay, I saw interest well beyond curiosity twinkling in his eyes. “They’re hoping she’ll be in an auction. Of course, no one is sure if she’s yours or not, so they might be hoping for nothing, but there it is.”
I felt a snarl curl in my throat. I wanted to tell him that, yes, she was mine — all of her belonged to me, and nobody, Club member or otherwise, was going to get his hands on her. That wasn’t true, though. She wasn’t mine to claim no matter how much my mind tried to tell me she was, and it was entirely possible I was never going to see her again anyway. It also didn’t escape my notice that in the past I would’ve been smug knowing everyone lusted after the woman I’d had on my arm, but this time I was… jealous.
Frankly, I was smug too. Tabby was a catch, and not in the trophy wife standard like the women Club members toted around. I enjoyed knowing most of them wouldn’t have a clue how to keep up with her razor tongue and broad intellect and creative musings. Even the idea of Howie attempting to charm her with his usual methods of name-dropping and wallet-flashing amused me.
“So, are you?” he pressed.
I raised a brow at him. “Am I what?”
“Are you bringing her back?”
“Not to be in the auction,” I zinged.
Howie’s face fel
l slightly, but he nodded like he understood. I knew him too well. The nod was only to demonstrate his devotion to our friendship despite his evident cravings to bid on Tabby and have her for an evening.
“I did send her an invitation for this Saturday, though,” I continued.
He colored in surprise, and his eyes widened to epic proportions. “To come to The Club?”
“Yeah.” I resumed cleaning the mess on my desk, pouring the contents of some of the coffee cups into others and stacking the empties beneath the full ones.
“I think Amanda still has a couple openings…” he ventured.
This was tricky territory. Again, I wanted to snap at him that Tabby was mine and like hell would I let anyone else have her, but doing that would not only be admitting I’d developed some feelings toward her but also would be revealing those feelings to a man who, despite being my best friend, had the emotional capacity of a sixteen-year-old. The likelihood that he would support me and have a helpful discussion with me while I tried to work those feelings out was zilch. If anything, I would’ve found myself on the pointed end of a very long taunting stick.
“I don’t think I like the idea of putting her into the auction,” I told him carefully. I made sure I didn’t look up from the file folders I was sifting through in case my face gave anything away. “Anybody could end up winning her, and you know as well as I do there are at least a few guys in The Club we don’t like to be alone with ourselves. It would be immoral to subject her to the company of one of them in solitude.”