by Dale Mayer
That wasn’t Kano’s way. He was straight-up and honest, and somewhere along the line she’d forgotten just how honest he was, until her mother brought up his name again. A man she had never gotten over after their harsh breakup, mostly on her because she hadn’t been willing to see the truth. And now, here he was, coming to town.
She stared at her phone and wondered. She still had a number in her address book. Should she? The longer she sat here, the more she realized her mother had an ulterior motive for meeting him. Without giving herself a chance to even think about it, Catherine sent him a text message. Why the hell would you have dinner with the black widow?
Then she tossed down her phone and waited.
Chapter 2
When Catherine got no response to her text, she let out a slow sigh of relief, got up, and put on the teakettle. She was determined to forget about her mother, her mother’s games, and definitely Kano. The fact Catherine was in Paris herself right now wasn’t something that she’d even let her mother know. Though it was tongue-in-cheek and mocking her relationship with Kano, her mother’s reveal of her dinner with Kano indicated that she already knew Catherine was in Paris.
Her mother prided herself on her spies and on her ability to keep track of those people she was interested in at any given time. It was kind of worrisome because Catherine never really knew when she would be the flavor of the month or when her mother had something else going on and needed to know what Catherine was up to. She hated coming to Paris just because of her mother’s presence here.
Catherine had a permanent residence in New York, but she spent time in other countries, as her expertise called for her as needed. Like, here in Paris, where she had a second home. Yet Kano wouldn’t know that. He was a person who, when he walked away, he walked away permanently. Too bad she hadn’t walked away at the same time. She still cared, and it continued to hurt like shit that she hadn’t been aware enough to do something about it.
In her heart of hearts, she knew that Kano would likely forgive her, but he wouldn’t take a chance on her again. He kept his heart very closed. She was the only one she knew of who had actually made it into the keep that he had locked down so securely, and then she’d blown it. It would be a long time before he let anybody else get in there. Just as she was making her tea, her phone buzzed. She turned and looked around to see the light shining. Walking over, she clicked on the message and gasped because it was Kano. The number she had for him was not only correct but his simple message left her stunned.
Come and find out.
The phone buzzed again, with the address of a restaurant. She knew it well. It was one of her mom’s favorite haunts. She frowned at that because it was where her mother brought her various victims. Catherine sent back a message saying, Dinner in the spider’s lair?
The response came back almost immediately. Best place to corner her.
She couldn’t help it; she answered, Or become her prey. She got a series of question marks after that. She wasn’t sure what he meant but figured that he was trying to figure out where her change of attitude had come from. She groaned and sat here for a long time. She didn’t want to go to dinner. Her mother didn’t expect her, and that was the one plus to going.
She really wanted to see Kano but didn’t want it to be under these circumstances. It wasn’t who she was, and it wasn’t the game she liked to play. She wasn’t good at playing games, and somehow her mother had managed to raise her in such a way that she lacked the ability to hide anything. That was all for her mother’s benefit because she didn’t like people keeping secrets from her.
Catherine had the most expressive face possible, and she failed at poker because of it. She also failed at lies and any other things that required deception. The very thing her mother prided herself on was exactly where her daughter failed.
So how was Catherine supposed to deal with that right now? She sat back and stared out the window. Sipping her tea, she thought about all the things she regretted the most, and losing Kano was one of them. But she also knew that her time with him had come and gone. He wasn’t somebody she could be with now. Not at this point. At least she didn’t think so, although the very possibility tantalized her.
It tore at her insides, making her worry and wonder and hope for so much more. But she had moved on. She’d had other relationships, but none that had stuck. Maybe that was what her mother was going on about. For some reason, her mother seemed to think she should have grandchildren, which just defied logic. She lived in a world of lies and fears, torment and executions, at least if Kano was to be believed.
Catherine had never quite looked at the deaths of her mother’s husbands with a clear objective eye because she always had to wonder if her mother had something to do with them. Mother swore she hadn’t, but Catherine no longer trusted her mother, and how sad was that? But then again she wasn’t sure that Kano even understood just how bad her mother had gotten. He was a fool to even engage with her.
Catherine knew she was barely up for the ensuing argument, although she didn’t think her mother would hurt her. At least not physically. Emotionally, verbally, mentally—absolutely. It was all a blame game for her. But Catherine wasn’t exactly sure where her mother’s power started and stopped. And what did any of that have to do with Kano? She frowned as she thought about it.
When her phone buzzed one more time, she looked down to see a new message from Kano.
Dare you.
She snorted at that. It was an old game between them. To try to get her to do something she didn’t want to do. Back then it hadn’t worked well either because she’d been very much the sweet, innocent girl who didn’t like conflict. She was still that person, but, at the same time, she had learned that some conflict was necessary, if only to save the people who she cared about.
As she sent him a quick message, saying that she would be there, she wasn’t even sure now if she was trying to save Kano or her mother. Kano was just as dangerous as her mother, but Catherine didn’t think her mother had come to that realization, which was sad because it was pretty obvious that Kano had a power which her mother did not. Catherine didn’t think her mother was even close to recognizing it, but maybe Catherine was all wrong. Maybe these people and their little games entailed something she just couldn’t understand. Maybe they knew something about life that she didn’t.
She knew that she preferred to stay in her own sweet little world and to ignore all of her mother’s world. Catherine spent her life working with special needs children, helping them to learn and to grow and to be the best that they could be. Her mother scoffed at her for what she was doing, telling her that she should work with whole humans and not incomplete humans. Catherine had taken great offense at the time, and her mother had just shaken her head.
“Such a pussy,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what anybody says to you. You’re just way too sensitive. You need to grow a shield around that heart, before somebody rips it out.”
At the time Catherine didn’t realize what her mother was talking about. But, after Catherine’s last big fight with Kano, a fight that had resulted in them breaking up because she didn’t want to see what her mother was truly like, Catherine thought that her mother might be correct on that one point. Catherine had grown up quickly after that, and she had chosen to stay with the incomplete humans, as her mother called them, to give them a bit of a better life, if Catherine could do something to help.
It was much better than dealing with what her mother would consider a whole human, though likely with only half a soul, as far as Catherine was concerned. The people in her mother’s world were crippled emotionally and spiritually. They were only skeletons of who they could be. But, in her mother’s world, they were the best they could be, and her mother would still tear them apart.
Catherine didn’t know where her mother’s anger and all that nastiness came from. Her mother had laughed at Catherine once when she’d asked her mother, who had said it was experience. Catherine didn’t quite know
what that meant. But she figured something in her mother’s past had set her mother on this pathway. Catherine had thought about it a lot over the years, but, since her mother wasn’t into giving any answers, Catherine wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. The world was full of shitty people, and, even if you didn’t want to believe it, they still existed. And it was just Catherine’s bad luck that her mother was one of them.
Even if her mother had been terribly abused in her childhood, it was pretty damn hard to justify the kind of life DeeDee was living now and the people she was hurting. Her mother had laughed and said she wasn’t hurting anybody but those who deserved it. And Catherine didn’t really get that either because her mother clearly wasn’t short of people who needed her skills. It was a skill set she kept her daughter from knowing too much about, but Kano had made it fairly clear.
All in all, it was just killing Catherine to know that he was even here and that her mother was around the corner. That was just not something Catherine wanted to deal with. Yet, in spite of herself, she had decided she would go to this dinner where both of them would be tonight. She stared at her phone, wondering how to back out of it again and then realized she didn’t dare.
Because of all the people she knew from different times in her life, Kano was one she still cared about. And, if her mother had designs on Kano—maybe even thinking of seeking revenge on behalf of her daughter—Catherine was afraid her mother would make good on it. Hating herself for that, Catherine frowned and realized she really would have to go.
*
“Look at that,” Kano said, with a whistle. “Sounds like Catherine’ll join us for dinner.”
“Catherine, the daughter?”
“Yeah, she texted me and asked me why I was meeting her mother, especially in the black widow’s lair.”
“I thought you said she wasn’t like her mother.”
“She isn’t,” he said quietly, “so I’m not sure what’s going on.”
“She could only stay innocent of her mother’s activities for so long,” Fallon said.
“That’s true. She was pretty determined to stay innocent for a lot longer than I could stand.”
“Doesn’t mean she didn’t finally come to a full awareness though,” he said.
“Yeah. Apparently she gets it because she said we could become prey.”
“Can’t wait to meet this DeeDee woman,” Fallon said, rubbing his hands together. “You know that, generally, I like spiders.”
“I’m warning you,” Kano said, “don’t underestimate this one.”
“You’ve really got a hate on for her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, she’s bad news.”
“Anything in particular?”
“I held her dying husband in my arms, for one,” he said, “who told me quite clearly that she’d killed him and laughed about it.”
“And yet you didn’t contact the cops?”
“Oh, I spoke to someone,” he said, “but they didn’t have any proof, and she had a lot of power and a lot of money.”
“So you’re pretty damn sure that she killed him?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” he said, “hell, yes.”
“I’m glad Catherine’s coming,” Fallon said. “It will help me understand you a little more.”
“You understand me just fine,” Kano said, exasperated. He looked at his friend of many years. “You may understand me better than anybody else does.”
“That’s not saying much,” he said. “I don’t know how long ago your relationship with Catherine was,” he said, “but I’ve never really known you to have a soft spot for any woman.”
“With good reason.” he said. “Apparently I have shitty judgment.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Fallon said, “but it will be interesting to see her. I wonder if her mother knows she’s coming.”
“Don’t you worry about those two,” he said.
Fallon studied him for a long moment. “What does Catherine do?”
“No clue,” he said. “Maybe nothing, for all I know.”
“Trust fund baby?”
“I really don’t know,” he said. “When I walked, I walked fast and kept going.” But his tone revealed that he was desperately trying to hide something. When Fallon glanced at him, Kano knew he hadn’t quite succeeded. He just glared back. “What?”
“Nothing,” Fallon said. “You’re an interesting conundrum, and I’m looking forward to dinner.” At that, he whistled cheerfully.
“Too bad we don’t have time to prepare, like go out and get a full suit of armor,” he snapped. “And, if you think I’m kidding, maybe you should talk to Garret.”
“He knows DeeDee?”
“He’s had to deal with her a couple times,” Kano said. “Most of the time Bullard dealt with her.”
“By whose choice?”
“DeeDee’s. She would only deal with Bullard. She figured he should be husband number three, regardless of their age difference. Or maybe it’s four by now.”
“She lines up future husbands?” Fallon asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “definitely.”
“Very interesting woman,” he said.
“If that’s the word you want to use, yes,” he said.
“Are there any others lined up?”
“Not sure there is,” he said. At that, the two men split up. Kano went to the bathroom to give his face a scrub because he was so tired. He also needed five minutes of prep time alone. When he’d sent the challenge to Catherine, it had been with the assumption that she wouldn’t want to come near him. Their last personal encounter had been anything but easy.
He’d walked because he had to, but it had hurt his soul to do it because Catherine had been the one person in his life that he thought was for him. But to find out that his judgment had come up against somebody so foreign to morals and ethics had been hard. And it’s not that Catherine was so different, but she wasn’t willing to see what was in front of her.
He understood it was her family, but just some things in life one had to get over to see the truth of. The one thing that Fallon was correct in was that it would be good to see Catherine. Hopefully Kano would find out that she no longer bothered him. That would be a good outcome for the night. Feeling cheered at that possibility, he headed out and looked at Fallon, who was busy on his laptop. “Ready?”
“Absolutely,” he said. He looked up, smiled at his friend. “You’re not going to a funeral, you know?”
“Oh, we are,” Kano said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
Chapter 3
Getting dressed for the evening required bringing out the little bits of tricks Catherine had learned since finding out about her mother. One of the first things done was hiring a clothes consultant to learn more about how to dress properly. It was a way to give her self-confidence, especially when faced with her mother’s condescension. Describing the situation, but without much detail, she had explained to the professional consultant what the problems were. She didn’t even need to say much when the consultant nodded and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve had clients deal with all kinds of issues. This is not all that uncommon.”
She nodded. “Maybe not to you,” she said, “but it is for me. And it’s a tough one because my mother is very domineering, and I don’t want to keep buckling under.” After that had come a very intensive lesson on power suits and power clothing, including colors, self-esteem, and what made Catherine feel good and self-confident.
Tonight she was going out for dinner, so it meant dressing up because this restaurant wouldn’t accept anything less. Her mother would expect her in a dress, so Catherine deliberately chose a pantsuit. It was skintight in all the right places but had just enough flair to make her feel sexy, high-end, and confident. With her hair in a simple French twist, she grabbed a shawl and ordered a taxi. It wasn’t a night for driving herself. She would need a glass of wine, if only to fortify herself.
Arriving at the restaurant, the valet opened the taxi door for he
r. She smiled at him, slipped him a tip, and walked into the restaurant. The maître d’ smiled when he recognized her. She nodded, smiled back, and said, “My mother is here, apparently with two gentlemen.”
He tilted his head and said, “I’ll take you.” With her hand on his elbow, he escorted her to the table. She saw the shock on her mother’s face and lifted her head a bit higher, until her gaze landed on Kano. He immediately stood and stepped forward. But instead of greeting her easily, he wrapped his arms around her, as if she were as fragile as Venetian glass, and bussed the air around her cheeks, like any good Frenchman.
She used his arms for steadiness, without trying to make it look that way, and returned the greeting. Then she turned and smiled at the man to his side. She held out her hand for him, and he instantly charmed her by lifting the back of her hand to his lips and murmuring something in French.
“Such a romantic,” she said, with a smile, and deliberately chose the empty seat between the two men, as the maître d’ helped seat her, and turned to face her mother. She tilted her head. “Good evening, Mother. How are you today?”
Her mother, never one to show shock, smiled and said, “You’re late.”
“It’s fashionable,” she said. Once she settled in, she looked at the carafe of wine on the table, and, at the maître d’s silent question, she nodded.
“You rarely drink,” her mother said. “You must be unsettled tonight.”
“On the contrary,” she said, “this happens to be one of my favorite wines.” She looked at Kano. “Was it your choice?”
He nodded, with a smile. “I remembered.”
“Interesting,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought enough was there for you to remember at all.” At that, her mother snickered again. Catherine turned her attention to Fallon. “Interesting name,” she murmured.