At my endearment, her cheeks color. It makes me hard.
“Until later, Mr. Beaver.” She winks and walks away.
I watch her go, grinning from ear to ear, until Bailey reappears around the corner.
“Hold your horses, Bailey. I’m coming.”
She looks at the bulge in my crotch. “Or you would’ve been if I hadn’t knocked!”
I say quietly, “Watch yourself.”
She flushes and looks away. After a moment she mumbles, “Sorry.”
Shaking my head, I brush past her on my way to the kitchen. She falls into step beside me.
“So—what was her excuse for blowing you off?”
It pleases me greatly to say, “Her mother was sick. She had to fly out of state on short notice to visit her.”
In my peripheral vision, I see Bailey’s face fall. “Oh. I guess that explains why she was in Texas.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “Texas?”
Bailey nods, lifting a shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Yeah. I read it on the Drudge Report. She was spotted in Texas, some shitty border town. Must be weird to have people following you all the time.”
She turns and continues on toward the kitchen, but I’m rooted to the floor, feeling like a wrecking ball has just blasted a hole straight through my chest.
Victoria said she’d been in California, but she’d actually been in Texas.
What the fuck is in Texas?
It takes me only another second to recall how deftly she’d sidestepped any more questions from me about her mother by asking me to kiss her. Had she known how completely that would distract me?
I stand there in the hallway for several more moments, grappling with the sudden, gut-deep instinct that something is terribly wrong.
24
Victoria
“Girl, have you lost what’s left of your vodka-addled mind?”
“Darcy, just hear me out—”
“No! The answer is no! This is a stupid plan, and I don’t have nothin’ to do with stupid plans! Comprentamento?”
Darcy’s in a snit. Why she’s in said snit, I don’t really understand—or comprentamento, as she butchered the word in her Spanglish translation—because I know this would work. She’s told me so herself. Not only that, but also she’s already taken part in my scheming where Parker is concerned, so I can’t see what her problem is.
“Look, you’ve told me—on more than one occasion, I might add—that in addition to being a first-rate, crystal-ball-gazing fortune-teller, your mother is a voodoo priestess of legendary stature in New Orleans. Am I right or am I not?”
Scowling, Darcy pops a cocktail onion between her fire-engine red lips and chomps on it. Obviously the answer to my question is yes.
“And did you or did you not once tell me that all it would take to put a hex on someone is a lock of his hair?”
Darcy downs the rest of her Gibson. I sense a chink in her armor, so I go for the jugular.
“And did you or did you not just a few days ago say, and I quote, ‘What are friends for if they won’t help you move a body?’”
“Yes, yes to all that shit! But girlfriend, you do not want to mess with black magic. Seriously. You do. Not. My great, great, great, great-grandpaw-paw once asked the spirits for immortality, but the caster forgot to ask for health along with endless life. And do you know what happened?”
Eyes wide, I sit forward in my seat. “What?”
“The same thing that would happen to any hundred-and-thirty-year-old human body. It disintegrated. Only he stayed alive. You remember the Crypt Keeper from that old HBO show Tales from the Crypt?”
When I nod, she says, “That’s Paw-Paw on a good day. The man’s nothing more than a rattling bag of bones. My mother keeps him propped up in a rocking chair in the parlor. Her new clients think he’s fake, one of them Halloween skeletons.” She chuckles. “Until he gets up to pee. On their shoes.”
I stare at her. “That’s not true.”
She stares back at me. “Or is it?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! C’mon, Darse, you have to help me put a curse on Parker! I can easily get a lock of his hair, and we can just mail it to your mother.” A new thought occurs to me. “Wait—do spells work if they’re cast from far away? Because if not, I can totally fly her up here.”
Darcy groans, rolls her eyes, and flips both hands in the air, as if giving up all hope of having an intelligent conversation.
We’re at one of my favorite bars in the city, a rooftop deck on the fifty-fourth floor of the Hyatt in Times Square, enjoying a spectacular view of the city lights. Darcy has coordinated her outfit around her lipstick—I’m not kidding, she actually said that—and is wearing a stunning low-cut crimson dress with spike-heeled sandals to match, gold hoop earrings so large they graze her shoulders, and an armful of red plastic bangles. Every man in the bar is staring at her. Even the gay ones.
In my purse, my cell phone rings. It’s Tabby. I ignore it and go back to harassing Darcy.
“I’m just trying to cover all my bases. I’ve got Tabby searching for serious dirt on Parker on the Internet, I’m going to break into his home safe, and you can do your part by getting your mother to jinx him.”
Darcy mutters, “How’s that for an unholy trinity?”
My cell phone chirps, indicating Tabby’s left me a message. She’d left an earlier message saying she’d gotten food poisoning over the weekend while I was gone, but was feeling better, and she’d see me tomorrow morning at the house. I wonder why she’d be calling again but decide it can wait until after Darcy and I are finished. I turn the phone to silent.
When I look up, Darcy has folded her arms over her chest and is staring at me with a disappointed frown like she’s the school principal and I’ve just been called into her office for throwing a firecracker into the girls’ toilet.
“Was that your baby-daddy?”
Uh-oh. I know that tone. I’m about to get a verbal smackdown.
When I open my mouth, Darcy sits forward in her chair, points a manicured finger in my face, and says, “No.”
“No, what?”
“No, you do not get to ask me for favors when—after knowing you for how many years?”
Knowing where this is going, I mumble sheepishly, “Eight.”
“When after knowing you for eight looong years, and being your best friend for the entirety of that time, you choose to keep the fact that you have a child a secret.”
I look down, fiddling with the stem of my martini glass. I say quietly, “Had a child.”
“Excuse me?”
I glance up at Darcy. “I had a child. Past tense. I gave her up for adoption when she was born.”
Darcy blinks. “You said you were going to see your daughter.”
“And I did.”
After a moment, Darcy prompts, “Are you going to elaborate on that, or am I going to have to kick your Armani-clad ass?”
So, because she really is my best friend, the cat’s already out of the bag, I’m on my second martini, and I need her help to put a curse on Parker, I tell her the whole story, beginning to end, not leaving anything out. It takes another two rounds of drinks for me to get through it all.
At the end of it, she’s staring at me in with her mouth hanging open, speechless.
Finally, sounding awed, disturbed, and unusually somber, she says, “Holy shit, girl. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so depressing.”
I take a long, deep slug of my martini.
“So…basically you’ve lived your life since you were eighteen as a different person? Different name, made-up history, new face, everything? No one knows the real you?”
I shrug.
“Gawd. It’s like you’re in the witness protection program.”
“Only with a lot more money.”
Her laugh is shaky. “Damn. I can’t even imagine how lonely you must be.”
That stops me cold. “I’m not lonely.”
Her big, dark eyes
unblinking, Darcy looks at me long and hard. “Don’t get so comfortable with your own lies that you start believing them.”
The waiter comes and asks us if we want another round. We both decline. He leaves us, and we sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sound of laughter and chatter around us. Sirens pierce the night, drifting up from the street far below like the wailing of mourners. Over and over, I push away the word that’s scratching at the inside of my skull.
Lonely.
Darcy says, “I’m sorry about your little brother.”
My throat gets tight. “Thanks.”
“What was it—his illness? What did he die of?”
“Muscular dystrophy.”
Because she can see that the turn in conversation is hitting me hard, Darcy takes pity on me. “All right. Look here. I’m only gonna say this one thing, and then we’ll let it go.”
When she reaches across the table and takes my hand, I look at her, startled.
“I’m here anytime you need me. To talk, whatever. I’ve got your back. You know I won’t say a word to anyone about this. But now that I know why you are the way you are, what happened to make you so closed off, I think you should seriously reconsider this plan of yours for revenge. Maybe Parker came back into your life for a reason, V. Maybe if you told him—”
I snatch my hand from hers. “If I told him, he’d screw me over just like he did the first time, Darcy!”
She sighs, downs the dregs of her Gibson, and then says, “Honey, if every man had to pay a fine for all the stupid shit he did in high school, not a single one of them would have a cent left.”
“Really? What’s your excuse for the lie he recently told me about his girlfriend who offed herself?”
She scoffs, “Oh, please, I hardly think you’re in any position to get pissed off when someone else tells a whopper! The poor bastard was probably just trying to get laid!”
I practically shout, “By saying his girlfriend killed herself?”
She says reasonably, “You’re a tough nut to crack. Maybe he thought pity was the way to get a bite of your cookie.” She smiles. “Obviously he was right.”
I glare at her. “I can’t believe you. And by the way, you rated Xengu an A-friggin’-plus even after the funky truffles, and knowing Parker’s my arch-nemesis? What the hell?”
In a highly uncharacteristic move, Darcy lowers her lashes demurely and starts to hem and haw. “Er, um, well, it was a lovely meal. And the ambiance was…amazing.” She peeks up at me, finds me staring at her with a frown, and quickly looks back at the table again. “I mean, everything except the truffles was top-notch, V: the service, the chef, the décor, the food, the music, the chef—”
“Oh. My. God!”
Startled by my tone—and also probably by the way I’ve just slapped my open palm against the table—Darcy looks up at me with wide eyes. “What?”
“You’ve got a thing for Parker’s crazy German chef, don’t you?”
Her expression is classic puppy-dog-chewed-my-new-shoes guilty. “Um…no?”
I gasp, outraged. “Don’t you dare lie to me!”
For a few silent seconds, we stare at each other. Then, at the same time, we burst into laughter.
I laugh so long and hard, tears stream down my cheeks. Darcy covers her face with her hands, her whole body shaking. She falls sideways against the glass wall separating us from fifty-four stories of air. The whole thing shudders. We hoot and snort and guffaw until we’re finally both worn out, clutching our sides, our faces aching.
Finally, dabbing her eyes with her napkin, she says, “That was priceless.”
“Almost as priceless as you and Kai as a couple.”
With a straight face, she says, “He’s too sane for me, isn’t he?” and the two of us break out into laughter all over again.
The waiter, obviously worried that we’re drunk and disorderly, deposits the check we haven’t asked for on our table and then scurries away. We split the check and rise to go.
“Hey,” says Darcy, “I have a fabulous idea!”
“What’s that?”
“We can double date!”
“Say something like that again and I’ll strangle you with your own wig.”
“Oh, c’mon! It’ll be fun! I can watch all the carnage up close!”
On our way out the door, I say, “I take it this means I’m not getting that curse.”
Darcy chuckles and links her arm through mine. “I think you’re cursing Parker Maxwell just fine on your own, Miss Thing.”
That remains to be seen.
I take out my phone and send the accursed a text.
In less than ten minutes, Parker pulls up in front of the entrance to the Hyatt. I’m waiting impatiently by the bell desk, trying to fend off the advances of a drunk businessman in a plaid jacket who followed Darcy and me from the bar. He’s made it clear that she was his first choice, but as she’s already left, I’m an acceptable second.
Needless to say, I jump into Parker’s car as if a fire’s been lit under my ass.
“You okay?” he asks, glancing around me. When he sees Parker’s look, the businessman turns and lurches back toward the revolving doors of the hotel.
“I’m fine. He was harmless.”
As we pull away into traffic, I notice Parker’s jaw is clenched almost as tightly as his hands are around the steering wheel. “Are you okay?”
He shoots a glance in my direction. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
There’s something in his tone that sounds an alarm bell in my head.
I’ve lived with this particular alarm bell for as long as I can remember. It was worse in the beginning, when I first moved to New York and was newly famous after my book became a bestseller. In those days, I was certain that I was just about to be discovered, that any minute some reporter would break the story that everything from my degree from Stanford to my name was a lie. But after a few years, when no fingers were pointed, when no one called my bluff, I began to accept that the work Dooney had done to create Victoria Price was enough to protect me forever.
But even the most solid wall of stone has its cracks. Better to apply a little fresh mortar now than risk the whole thing crumbling later.
I rest my hand on Parker’s arm. “What is it? Tell me.”
He glances at me again, his sidelong gaze piercing. He drops his gaze to my hand, and then he looks straight ahead. Beneath my fingers, his arm muscles tense. “Sorry. I’m just tired. It was a bad night.”
I know a lie when I hear one. My heart begins to thump. My mouth goes dry. In the pit of my stomach, a churning ball of acid forms.
What’s he found out?
Parker drives fast and erratically. He narrowly misses several pedestrians, almost side-swipes a bus, blows through two yellow lights as they turn red. By the time we arrive at his building, I’m so tense my lower back aches. The valet takes the car. Parker silently guides me through the lobby and into the elevator.
As soon as the doors close behind us, he pulls me against his chest and kisses me. It’s rough, edged with desperation, and takes my breath away.
“Parker—”
He growls, “Don’t talk unless you’re going to tell the truth.”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck!
He definitely knows something. I think of that missed call from Tabby and feel the first stirrings of panic deep in my gut.
The panic deepens when I realize I left my handbag in his car. Shit! There’s no way I can sneak to the bathroom for a quick call before this gets too far out of hand. I’m flying totally blind.
Parker kisses me again. I feel the tension in his kiss. Even as my body warms, feeling his heat and strength against me, my brain goes a million miles an hour. If he’s found out about me, he could ruin me before I get the chance to ruin him. He could expose me to the world as a liar, a figment of my own imagination, and I could lose it all!
But then he wouldn’t be kissing me. It can’t be the worst-case sce
nario.
He breaks away. His lashes lift, and he pins me in his knowing stare. “So. What do you have to say? What truths do you have for me tonight, Victoria?”
Oh God. He’s not giving me anything! How can I find out what he knows before I answer?
Then it strikes me—the best way to catch a snake is in a snare.
And just like that, because lying is as easy to me as drawing a breath, I say, “Any truth you want. Ask me anything you want, and I’ll tell you.”
It catches him off guard. He was expecting evasion, not an invitation. But he’s not so easy to trap. He turns the tables on me so fast I’m stunned.
“Okay. Tell me how you feel about me.”
I gape at him. “How I…feel about you?”
He nods. His eyes blister me. A million emotions careen through my body. A million words flash through my mind. All my ready lies go up in smoke.
I whisper, “Anything but that.”
“I know it’s the last thing you want to do. Which is why I need you to do it.”
When I close my eyes to escape him, he warns, “You said you could give me real. Give it.”
Real is how my body is so high just from having him close. Real is how my entire adult life was shaped by this man, by what he did and didn’t do, by all the ways I can’t let him go.
Real is the look of pity in Darcy’s eyes when I told her my story.
“I can’t even imagine how lonely you must be.”
Without opening my eyes, I say, “You make me want to believe in happily-ever-afters.”
It comes from the deepest part of me, the darkest part, a silent pit I thought I’d buried a long, long time ago. It’s raw and whispered, and the worst thing of all?
It’s the truth.
Parker says, “Look at me.”
I open my eyes and stare at him. He looks first in one of my eyes and then the other, his gaze intent, deeply searching. After a moment he says, “You never fail to amaze me. When you let down your guard, Victoria, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
There is a moment—a terrible, terrifying moment—when I almost break down and give it all up. I am this close to admitting everything, to purging myself in one epic, truth-telling spew. But then the elevator slides to a stop and the doors to his penthouse open, and the moment is gone.
Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set Page 18