Katherine slumped, as exhausted from their exchange as she was from her workout, and she cursed herself for misreading the situation. But the chemistry was unmistakable, and he was practically ordering her not to hold back. She’d felt more alive than she had in years. And aroused.
She wondered what aroused a man like Clay Buchanan—perhaps strategizing and manipulating people. He was complicated, even contradictory at times. Not like Reggie Dugan. Reggie was a simple, straightforward male specimen. A hard-bodied married woman aroused him. Obviously.
Now Katherine wondered if she’d misfired with him, too. If she had, and Clay found out, he would almost certainly reprimand her again, maybe even punish her.
It didn’t occur to her that perhaps he already knew.
CHAPTER 20
Katherine drove along the beach on Smith Neck Road, humming to herself. It was hard to keep all the exciting developments to herself, so she’d made excuses to call her friends. All of them. She still had Holly’s plate from the party. Jenny was on the volunteer committee at the museum where Katherine had an upcoming show. Margery’s kids might be interested in a children’s author she’d heard was doing a book signing. Of course, she mentioned the beach house to each of them in passing. With her newfound success, she mused, she was thinking of buying something on the water, but she couldn’t tell them where just yet. Didn’t want to get ahead of herself, she’d said. Then she shrugged it off, saying it was no big thing.
She pulled into the red-stamped concrete driveway for the third time in as many days. It was private and shaded by shrubs on either side. She turned off the old Toyota’s laboring engine, and sat. She’d peeked through the windows like a burglar the previous two visits and walked the grounds, amazed that such a gorgeous property could be hers.
Managing Reggie had been a challenge, but she’d placated him without folding completely—she hadn’t had full intercourse. She’d been honest with Clay on that score. If she’d bedded Dugan, he might have simply notched his contractor’s belt and lost his motivation. As it stood, he only wanted her more; he was the sort of man that felt the need to finish the job.
Katherine stuffed her car keys into her jeans pocket and leaned the seat back, admiring the fifty-year roof and argon windows, details she’d been too excited to appreciate on her previous trips. Reggie was right: the details made a difference. The devil is in them too, Stu would have said with his patented doubtful frowny look. But Stu wasn’t here. In all their years together, her husband hadn’t been able to arrive at this place. Clay had set this up. Reggie had delivered it. The alpha males.
Katherine settled into her seat as she recalled the big man.
* * *
As assertive as he was, he’d been surprisingly gentle when he’d first embraced her on the deck overlooking the water, one hand in its customary position on her hip. And when she’d allowed it, he’d quickly escalated, and soon he had her pressed against the rail with his mouth buried in her neck and his big hands kneading her SAC-hardened ass.
As confident as advertised, he hadn’t been afraid to ask for exactly what he wanted. But she’d declined the short trip to the master bedroom. It was too much. She needed to find a compromise, an accommodation. And so, after allowing his hands to explore her body for a time, she’d led him inside the model home and seated herself on the luxurious couch in the living room, while he took a standing position in front of her.
Business. That’s all she was doing, she told herself. Younger girls in the SAC locker room called it doing “a favor,” which made it sound no more significant than giving a buddy a ride to the airport. I can do this, she’d told herself as she unbuckled his belt, reached in, and lifted him out. Given the thickness of the big contractor’s member, she couldn’t help thinking of it as simply shaking up a warm beer can to make it foam over. Seriously, no big deal.
She’d peeked past Dugan at the sandy shoreline at the moment she’d finally put her mouth on him to finish the job. The house was a dream. Her dream. More important, it was about to become a reality. This is success, Katherine had thought as he began to shudder. Everything she had worked for was about to arrive.…
* * *
Katherine smiled as she stared through the windshield at the model home from her reclining position in the driver’s seat. She wanted it. And the memory of sitting in front of its huge picture window on the luxurious couch with a half-naked man was uniquely arousing. She wrestled down her jeans and pulled her underwear aside. With her left leg against the driver’s door and her right propped up on the aging Toyota’s center console, she had reasonable access to herself. She tried to picture Stu’s face, but in her imagination her husband looked indecisive. Not assertive. Not confident. Not sexy. She relented and touched herself to the memory of Dugan for a time. It helped, but the big contractor was blunt, indelicate. Just when she thought she might lose her momentum, Clay’s face popped into her head. She’d resisted calling up the image of her husband’s partner, but it came just the same. Katherine shoved her foot against the dashboard and groaned. Suddenly, there was a loud crack as the plastic dash split under the pressure of her muscular leg.
Katherine went limp and giggled. “Oops.…”
Pleasuring herself was becoming a habit. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d let her impulses drive her the way she had in the days since Clay had enlightened her. Maybe college.
The home was beautiful, she thought as she slid her panties back into place and tugged up her jeans. And the private driveway was a benefit she’d not previously considered. It was so private, in fact, that she almost screamed when the man rapped on her window.
Katherine shot bolt upright and found herself staring into the weathered face of a round-shouldered man with a crew cut. He looked familiar—not like someone she knew, but more like someone she’d seen in a photograph. Very plain. Dumpy. Not a celebrity or politician. Nor a social acquaintance, at least not from her circles. But very familiar, and becoming more so as she stared.
He had a tool—hedge clippers, from the look of it. And he wore coveralls. A landscaper, maybe. But why she would recognize some yard worker, she didn’t know. He tapped on the window again as she fumbled with the snap of her pants, and her stomach turned over as she wondered how long he’d been standing there.
“Can I help you with anything, ma’am?” he was saying, his voice muffled through the window.
She shook her head and groped for her keys, but they were bound up in her front pocket, which had twisted when she’d pulled her jeans back up.
“You can get out and look around the place, if you like,” the man continued. “I can’t let you in, though. They don’t give me a key.”
She waved him off, raising her hips to dig into her pants pocket. Her rude gesture was as dismissive as she’d intended, and his expression grew dark. When she glanced up at him again, he looked like a brooding gorilla in a jumpsuit framed in her driver’s-side window. Like a mug shot. And suddenly she realized who he was.
Oh God, she thought. Raymond Butz!
CHAPTER 21
“What the hell was he doing there?” Katherine was still shaking from her close encounter with Butz.
Clay picked up his phone and dialed reception. “Kaylee, cancel my eleven o’clock appointment.” He removed his whiskey bottle from the desk and poured a single shot into a tumbler. “Here. Drink this, Kate.”
He held out the tumbler pinched between two fingers. It was unusual for her to drink anything besides a social glass of wine during the day. And she never drank hard alcohol straight. But the glass hung precariously and looked as though, if she didn’t take it, it would drop in her lap, so she accepted. She sipped, made an icky face, and then sipped again.
“What were you doing out there?” Clay said.
“I was just driving by.”
“You saw him while driving by?” Clay asked doubtfully.
“I pulled into the driveway. I was just sitting my car.”
“Doi
ng what?”
“Just looking.”
“I see.” Clay gave her a patronizing nod.
“I was excited,” Katherine admitted. “I love the house. I want to get a thorough feel for it.”
“From the driveway?”
“Yes. I know it sounds silly.”
“You weren’t meeting Dugan for another tour, were you?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I’d expect you to let me know if you did.”
“I am letting you know. And I didn’t.”
“Before. Not after.”
“Look, I came here because I was confronted by a murderer. I’m a little freaked out.”
“He’s not a murderer. He was acquitted.”
“He was standing by my car. He was watching me.”
“Watching you sit in your car?”
“Yes. It was creepy. Why was he even there?”
“He works for Bolt Construction. Always has. Probably there maintaining the place.”
Katherine was taken aback. She recalled that Butz worked construction, but she hadn’t realized it was for Bolt. “You knew?”
“That he would be there today? No. Of course not. But it doesn’t shock me that he’d be working at one of his employer’s project sites.”
“You knew the man my husband prosecuted for homicide helped build the house that you sent me to look at? A house I’m considering buying? You knew he works for the client you’re having me charm?”
“Butz works for Bolt, not Dugan. Dugan just uses Bolt as his contractor.”
“I don’t want that man around my house.”
“It’s not your house.”
“I don’t want that convict anywhere near me.”
“He’s not a convict. He went through the system and was exonerated.”
“He was turned loose on a technicality.”
“He rolled the dice and won. He’s entitled to his life back.”
“He killed his wife.”
“Look, I know his case hurt Stu’s career, but you have to move on, Kate. The life of a lawyer is about picking your battles. That case goes in the loss column. Let it go.”
Katherine raised the tumbler to her lips again, but it was empty. Clay quickly refilled it before she could put it down, and she took another swig.
Clay leaned back. “You know what we hired guns say: ‘your enemy one day is your ally the next.’”
Katherine gave a pained chuckle. “So one day a killer is ruining my life, the next he’s building my home.”
“Maybe. You never know what’s coming next. You need to be a bit more flexible.”
“Flexible?”
“Changing the world is hard. Changing yourself is easy.” Clay spun in his new leather chair and put his feet up on his burled wood antique desk. “You want Thai for lunch?”
The whiskey had warmed her, and she was no longer shaking. Clay’s confidence was reassuring. And sexy. “Are we having lunch?”
“I am. You’re welcome to join me.” He rose and traded his suit jacket for a tailored trench so new it still had sharp creases where it had been folded in its box. “Or not.”
She did, and they drove to the Poor Siamese downtown. Going home alone didn’t appeal to her. No matter what Clay’s philosophy was about Butz, running into the man had creeped her out. She worried that he’d seen her talking to Stu in the courtroom during the trial and knew who she was. She’d attended sporadically but mostly sat in the back, and she wondered if Butz would remember her face from the crowd. After seeing her with her legs propped wide on the dashboard of her car at the beach house, he certainly wouldn’t forget her now.
“Back here,” said the owner of the Poor Siamese, a young guy named Jimmy who wore a white coat and greeted them at the door. He was not Thai, but his cook was. There was only one other customer in the place, and Katherine wondered how it survived; no crowd for lunch on a Wednesday was a sure sign that a restaurant was dying. Jimmy pumped Clay’s hand as though they were old friends, and then turned to her.
“And you must be Mrs. Stark.” He beamed.
“Yes. Nice to meet you.” She gave him one of her professionally social smiles.
“Anything you need, you let me know personally, Mrs. Stark.” He turned to Clay. “I have you set up in the red room, Mr. Buchanan. No one will bother you.”
She and Clay were quickly ushered into a private room in the rear with a red curtain. She was surprised to see a man waiting for them, slurping tom yum soup from a small bowl.
Clay introduced her. “Frank, this is Katherine Stark. She’s a professional photographer. But I promise she’s not here to take pictures. She’s Stu’s wife. Katherine, this is Frank Hranic.”
The man stood to greet her. He was round, so much so that he had to push his chair back to get up, and when he did, his belly spilled out onto the table like a half-empty beanbag chair. Katherine recognized him. He’d been in the news when he was hired by Mayor Welge of Fall River to manage the city’s convalescent care fund years earlier. Unfortunately for Hranic, a state audit had discovered that the CC fund was siphoning off money to a business in Providence, which provided phony invoices for work that was never done. She didn’t recognize the round scar on his cheek, which looked like a tattoo gone wrong. A burn mark, she realized, the size of a quarter. She could still see the vague impression of a president’s head.
Hranic had blamed accounting, but he suffered felony embezzlement charges along with his bookkeeper. According to Stu, Hranic had provided a statement implicating the bookkeeper in exchange for reduced charges. The bookkeeper, however, wound up on the medical examiner’s table with a bellyful of crushed OxyContin. Hranic received a misdemeanor and a recommendation for thirty days of local time converted to community service for his cooperation. The audit findings put the fraudulent amount in the hundreds of thousands, but only a few thousand were recovered. And the assistant DA handling the case was none other than Clay Buchanan.
The way Stu told it, Clay had been furious when the bookkeeper died and Hranic got the huge break for nothing, but as Clay prepared to sit down with the fat man for lunch, he didn’t seem furious.
“How the hell are you, Frank?” Clay said after his cursory introductions.
“Concerned,” Hranic mumbled.
“About your weight? Because it’s gonna kill you.”
“Considering all the other things that can kill you, I’d just as soon it was food. But you didn’t call me to talk about my health.”
They sat. Hranic could have perched his soup bowl on his belly and eaten off it, but he stuffed his paunch back under the table.
“It’s time to chat about my legal services, Frank.”
“Can we talk in front of her?”
“The attorney-client privilege extends to all my staff.”
“But she’s just your partner’s wife. Can’t she be subpoenaed?”
“No. I’ve brought her here in her official capacity as client liaison.”
Katherine almost laughed.
Clay remained serious. “First of all, if anyone ever connects you with me, you need to say that you sought my legal advice. That way, everything we do is confidential, especially where it relates to your prior criminal matter.”
“Okay.”
“Secondly, I’d like the balance of my fee in a lump sum now. You know the amount. I’m just accelerating the payment schedule. Let your sister know that she’s going to get a bill from us for legal services. She’ll write the check to our firm, as usual.”
Hranic groaned.
“She still has it, right?” Clay asked.
“It’s all still in an account. She shows me the statements.”
“Is she distributing small amounts to you on schedule?”
“Yes, but my cash flow is shit. I need a new car.”
“You can’t hold money or buy expensive niceties, Frank. You can’t even smell like money unless it objectively appears to be within your earning capacity, which is just a
bout minimum wage right now thanks to you getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Criminal restitution remains owing. And then there’s the civil judgment. They’re still watching you. If you need a car, I’d say you’re due for a used Toyota Corolla. Economical. Good gas mileage.”
“It’s been years. Can’t I just get the rest from her?”
Stu darkened. “You’ll eat it. Or drink it. Or gamble it. You have no self-control. I know that. Your sister knows that. That’s part of the reason she won’t give it all to you at once. Hell, you know that. Just look at yourself, you fat fuck.”
“She can call it a gift. It’s my money, not hers.”
“And then you’ll declare it on your taxes? Cast suspicion on her? Hell no. You need to practice some trickle-down economics here, my friend. Do nothing that will attract attention. Continue to draw one thousand a month and bleed it into your budget as cash to pay for groceries and gas. After five years or so you’ll have it all, and you won’t have blown it. That’s my legal and gratuitously friendly advice.”
“So you can take your full cut now, but I can’t? That’s what you’re saying?”
“I’m not the convicted criminal, Frank. I’m just the lawyer. I provide a service for a fee.” Clay patted him on one meaty shoulder. “Look, I can’t legally force your sister to give you the money anyway. It doesn’t exist as far as the law’s concerned. If you want to put real pressure on her, you’ll have to go back to our friend in Providence.”
The fat man paled and squirmed, his belly jostling the table. “I’m not bringing him into it again. I paid him off.” Hranic absently touched his round scar. “Besides, she’s my sister. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
“Then take your lawyer’s advice. And pay me for it.”
After a bit more grumbling and some small talk, Hranic hauled his bulk out of the chair and dismissed himself. Katherine waited until she heard the bell on the front door tinkle, signaling his exit. Then she looked at Clay, aghast.
He smiled and put his legs up on the chair beside her, reclining like a man who’d just had a particularly satisfying meal. “I see from your expression that you have questions,” he said. “Go ahead.”
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