Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set

by J. T. Geissinger

  I turn my attention back to the bowl of ceviche. “The guy’s taking a nap, Carlos, not checking me out. Are you this jealous with your girlfriends?”

  “I know when a man is looking at a woman, Ana, and he’s looking at you, no matter how hard he’s trying to seem like he’s not.”

  Well, if he is, he’s probably just wondering who dropped a bucket of bleach on my head.

  Leaving that thought unspoken, I finish off my beer. Then I match Carlos’s belch with one of my own.

  He lifts a brow. “Now you’re just trying to seduce me.”

  “Yep. I’m a real lady. I’ve got class coming out of my ass.”

  Carlos laughs and slings an arm around my shoulders. “Ah, you see, Ana—this is why I adore you!”

  I laugh along with him. “You have very low standards, my friend.”

  He shrugs. “Life is too short to look for perfection.”

  Truer words were never spoken. I squeeze his hand and then toss his arm off my shoulders so he doesn’t try to reach down farther and cop a feel.

  By the time we finish lunch, I’m ready for a nap. Drinking in the daytime always makes me sleepy. Between the alcohol and the heat, I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open. Since it’s Friday, I know Mr. Colón won’t be coming into the office, and the thought of dealing with the oppressive heat in there has me depressed.

  “Carlos, if I bug out early, would you cover for me if anyone drops in?”

  He sends me a sideways smirk. “Of course. Because then you’d owe me one, Anacita.”

  “Yes. But ‘one’ as in a general favor, not sex.”

  “Sex can be a favor,” he says reasonably. “I once had sex with a girl who was repaying me for fixing a flat tire on her car.”

  “Wow. That’s a steep price to fix a flat.”

  Carlos smiles. “I think she flattened the tire herself.”

  “Of course you do.” I dig a few bills from my purse and toss them on the counter. “And now I’m leaving.”

  I blow Carlos a kiss and walk away. He calls out behind me, “One day, Anacita, you will have sex with me, and then you’ll see the true face of God!”

  I’ve already seen the true face of God during sex, Carlos. And honey, it ain’t yours.

  I wave over my shoulder without looking back and then step through the door of the cantina into the searing heat of the street.

  Six hours later, I’m finally driving up the long dirt road to my house.

  I’d forgotten about my appointment with Mr. Hernandez, who was waiting outside the office with his wife when I emerged from the cantina. Then another client showed up, that one unscheduled. By the time I finished with the meetings and all the paperwork, the sun hung low over the distant mountains and the heat had loosened its chokehold on the city. I stopped to pick up some vegetables and a fat piece of tilapia for dinner from my favorite local market and made the drive out of the clogged city to the rural borough I live in. It’s a sleepy town with fewer than five thousand residents, no theater, hotels or shopping malls, and the lowest crime rate of all the sixteen districts in the greater Mexico City area.

  There’s also no Internet access, so I don’t own a computer.

  In the beginning, that drove me crazy, but I quickly realized it was one less way I could be tracked. Even though I rent the house with cash, paid cash for my car, am paid cash under the table by Mr. Colón, don’t own a single credit card, and for all intents and purposes am dead under the laws of the United States, a part of me is still expecting the police to show up unannounced at my door with extradition papers.

  Paranoia and I have gotten to be pretty close friends.

  My car jumps and rattles over the bumpy road. Summer is the rainy season in this part of Mexico, and the rains take their toll on the roads. The city fixes the main streets, but my private driveway is in a state of disrepair. My landlord keeps promising to get someone in to fill the holes, but he works at the same speed Carlos does. I’ll probably end up doing it myself. I’ve gotten quite handy with home improvement projects.

  I park in front of the house, gather my groceries and handbag from the passenger seat, and head up the paved brick path to the front door. Perdón is stretched out across the welcome mat in all his plump orange glory. When he sees me approach, he rolls to his back and stretches, meowing a lazy hello.

  The house is a pink adobe Spanish Colonial with an arched colonnade in front. It’s shaded by a towering stand of palms on the west side of the property. Scarlet and orange dahlia bushes add a riot of color to the east. In the backyard, I have an herb garden—protected from the blistering sun by netting I hung myself—and a stone fountain carved in the shape of a mermaid that burbles happily day and night.

  Sometimes late at night I turn it off, because all that cheerful burbling makes me wish I had someone to share it with. But the only male who’s shared my bed in the past six months is of another species.

  “Hey, fatty,” I call lovingly to the cat. “Mommy’s home—are you ready for dinner?”

  He leaps to his feet. Actually, leap is too generous a word. It’s more like he flops to one side, struggles to get his paws beneath him, and pushes up. Then he yawns, shakes out his fur, sits back on his haunches, looks up at me, and issues a loud, demanding yowl.

  Stupid question. Perdón is ready for dinner right after he’s eaten his breakfast. The animal is an eating machine.

  “Okay, you little tyrant. In we go.”

  I unlock the front door. Perdón struts in between my feet, his tail swishing imperiously. I push the door shut with my hip, turn, and then cry out in shock. I drop the groceries and my purse on the floor.

  The living room overflows with bouquets of white roses.

  They’re everywhere. On the coffee table, on the side table between two chairs, on the mantel above the fireplace, on the floor. There are dozens of them, full and lush in crystal vases, lending a heady perfume to the air.

  My heart thinks it’s a thoroughbred that’s just heard the starting gate bell at the Kentucky Derby and launches into a thundering gallop. I freeze, listening to the tick of the clock on the mantel, feeling the blood pound through my veins.

  My brain is frozen too. I should grab my purse and run, but instead I call out a tentative “H-hello?”

  After a few eons during which I don’t hear an answer or any unusual sound, I creep forward through the shadowed entry hallway on tiptoe. Wide-eyed, I peek into the dining room.

  More roses.

  I break out in a cold sweat. My hands start to shake. Terror, disbelief, and something I’m not allowing myself to recognize as hope churn in my stomach, wreaking havoc in my mind.

  It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t.

  I move like a zombie through the house, stiff-limbed and slack-jawed, finding bouquets of snowy roses stuffed into every room. It’s a dream or a nightmare. I can’t decide which. When I get to my bedroom and see what’s plastered all over the big mirror above the dresser across from the bed, my frozen disbelief finally cracks. I cover my mouth with both hands and sob.

  It’s a montage of Parker and me. Young and happy, smiling madly in every picture taped to the glass.

  “Buenas tardes, Ana.”

  I spin around, arms flung out. In my haste, I almost lose my balance and fall.

  There in my bedroom doorway—wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves, a white cowboy hat, and a ridiculous moustache—stands Parker.

  40

  Victoria

  I feel as if I might faint.

  He’s thinner than I remember, and his hair is longer, but he’s no less beautiful, in spite of that droopy caterpillar nesting on his top lip.

  “Or should I call you Anacita?” he asks quietly, his piercing gaze never leaving my face.

  “That was you in the bar today,” I whisper hoarsely, so deeply stunned it’s as if I’ve been hit with a Taser gun.

  It’s Parker. He’s here. Here.

  Dear G
od, please don’t let me have a heart attack.

  “I’d ask if that was your boyfriend you were with, but I know cradle-robbing isn’t your style. Though he obviously wishes it were.”

  Parker makes no move to come closer. He just keeps staring at me with this devouring look as if he’s memorizing every feature and curve of my face, burning the details into his mind.

  For a long while, neither of us speaks. Then, because I can no longer bear the crushing silence, I say shakily, “God. That moustache.”

  He strokes it thoughtfully. “I look like a porn star, don’t I?”

  “Not even a star. Like an unpaid extra. It’s hideous.”

  He nods. “Your hair is nice too. Did you lose a bet?”

  My throat is getting dangerously tight. Not sure if I’m going to laugh, sob, or scream, I swallow.

  Parker removes his hat, rakes a hand through his hair, and takes a step into my bedroom. The space seems to shrink.

  “Do you have any idea how many Ana Garcias there are in this country?” His voice is gentle, but his eyes burn right through me. They sear me straight down to my soul.

  I shake my head.

  He says, “A lot,” and takes another step closer. He drops the cowboy hat to the floor.

  I would move, but I’ve become a statue. Or a tree, firmly rooted in place. Paradoxically, there’s so much adrenaline coursing through my body, I’m shaking almost to the point of vibrating.

  “Well.” I clear my throat. “That was rather the point.”

  He nods again. So very serious. So very calm. In comparison, I’m a fireworks show that has gone horribly awry, everything exploding at once with deafening noise and blinding color, burning the bystanders with flying hot shrapnel and chunks of smoking ash.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Tabby.”

  I stagger backward a step, my shock deepening. “She’d never—”

  “She told me everything,” he interrupts softly, “after I told her everything.”

  Everything. That word crashes around inside my skull, smashing and banging into things, leaving wreckage in its wake.

  “She told me about your plan to ruin me. She told me that she was Polaroid, not you.” His voice drops an octave. His eyes are ablaze. “And she told me about Eva.”

  A small noise escapes my lips. My eyes fill with tears.

  Parker comes closer. Then closer still. When he’s standing so close I can count the long golden lashes around his lids, he whispers, “Can you ever forgive me?”

  My knees decide they’ve had enough of knocking and buckle.

  Parker catches me before I fall. He swings me into his arms, strides over to the bed, and lowers us to it. He kisses me on the cheeks, murmuring passionately, “Forgive me, baby, please, please, forgive me.”

  I break down and cry. “You asshole! There’s nothing to forgive! Except that moustache!”

  “I left you without saying goodbye.” He tenderly kisses me on the lips. “I abandoned you when you needed me most.” He kisses me again, deeper, leaving me breathless and gasping for air. “And then, years later, I made you run away from me with the absolute worst fucking proposal of marriage in the history of mankind.”

  This time when he kisses me, I feel his remorse. I feel all his anguish and sorrow and desperation, every painful, ragged inch of his despair. And all the emotions I’d bottled up so tightly over the long, lonely years since he first left me burst free.

  I break the kiss, bury my head in his neck, and bawl like a baby.

  He lets me. He rolls to his back and takes me with him, pinning me against his body with his strong arms around me, keeping me together when I would otherwise shatter into a million little pieces and die. I cry on his chest until the sun sets and a big glowing moon rises over the mountains, and then I cry some more, until eventually my eyes are swollen, my voice is hoarse, and I’m completely spent.

  “For the Queen Bitch, you’re surprisingly weepy,” muses Parker, lovingly stroking my back.

  I sniffle. “I’m not the Queen Bitch anymore. I’m just a lowly office clerk with a crappy hairdo and a fat, bad-tempered cat.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your cat seemed pretty accommodating to me. He didn’t even bat an eye when I broke in through the patio door.”

  “You bribed him with food, didn’t you?”

  Against my temple, I feel Parker’s smile. “I might have given him a treat or two to keep him quiet.”

  We lie in silence for a few minutes, just breathing. The shadows on the wall are long and soft. Outside, a cricket starts to sing.

  Inside my chest, a small, tender flower unfurls her petals to the morning sun.

  I say quietly, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  Parker’s arms tighten around me. He kisses the top of my head.

  “I’m so sorry, Parker. For all of it.”

  “So am I.”

  Tentatively, I ask, “How’s Tabby? And Darcy? Are they angry with me?”

  “Darcy’s fine. She misses you like hell, but she’s been distracted lately with a new project.” His voice warms. “She and a certain insane German chef are collaborating on a cookbook. Among other things.”

  “Other things? Is that your roundabout way of saying she and Kai are dating?”

  “‘Dating’ is one way to put it. Another is ‘screwing like rabbits every chance they get.’ I accidentally walked in on the two of them in the stock room at Xengu.” He chuckles. “I’ll need extensive hypnotherapy to get those images erased from my mind. I had to throw out four crates of artichokes, two dozen boxes of strawberries, and an entire pallet of escarole that had been crushed in their…enthusiasm.”

  I smile, missing Darcy so hard, it’s a physical lump in my stomach. “And Tabby?”

  Caressing my hair, Parker sighs, a sound layered with emotion. “She’s a tough nut, that one. Her loyalty to you is remarkable. Connor’s convinced she’s a lesbian.”

  “She’s not. And who’s Connor?”

  “My friend and security guy. He’s the one who tried to hack into your email. He’s got a huge haterection for Tabby, but she won’t give him the time of day. He’s been trying to get her to come to work for him, but he won’t admit she’s smarter than he is, which is her one condition for accepting the job. Last I heard, he’d offered her seven figures a year in salary, but she still turned him down. Apparently she told him that unless he said the words, ‘You are superior to me in intellect, class, and fashion sense,’ he could find another world-class hacker. So far he’s refused, but I think he’s getting desperate. He’s got a big client who was recently infiltrated by some radical Russian group, and the client is threatening to sue Connor unless he tracks the source and assists police with prosecution. Which, apparently, he can’t do without Tabby’s help. So she’s got him by the proverbial balls.”

  We share another silence as I digest what he’s told me.

  Then, more somberly, he says, “I visited your mother.”

  I haven’t spoken to my mother at all in the months I’ve been gone. There’s a distinct difference between forgiving and forgetting, and though I’ve let go of my anger at her for her part in the tragedy of Parker and Isabel, I haven’t yet wanted to try to reach out.

  Truth be told, I don’t want to talk to her about what happened. I don’t want to know if she’d discovered what Bill Maxwell did with his rigged card came, if the hatred she displayed toward him that day in her kitchen went beyond what she’d said.

  Knowing wouldn’t change anything, anyway. The past is fixed in stone. We can’t carve new endings to old stories, no matter how desperately we might want to.

  When I don’t respond, Parker inhales and then exhales. My head rises and falls with his breath. “She told me about all the letters you sent after I left. I never received any of them, of course.”

  I whisper, “Your father.”

  Parker’s voice turns bitter. “He didn’t even bother to deny it. The day I called him, he was drunk
at two o’clock in the afternoon, raving about the country having a black president. I won’t be speaking to him again.”

  He’s quiet for a moment, and then the bitterness is gone from his voice. “She misses you too.”

  I close my eyes. “I can’t see her, not yet. It’s too fresh. And besides, if I go to Laredo, I’ll want to go…I’ll want to see…”

  I don’t finish my thought, but he knows who I’m talking about. With a new, infinitely soft tone in his voice, he whispers, “She’s so beautiful. Like her mother.”

  My chest tightens. Fresh tears threaten to fall. “You went to the school?”

  “Yes. Sat in the parking lot like a creeper, staring through binoculars. Thank goodness your mother was with me, or I’d really have felt like a perv.”

  Parker and my mother, staring at Eva through binoculars. Though I’ve done it myself countless times, the thought makes me unbearably sad.

  “In a few years, she’ll be eighteen, a legal adult,” says Parker softly.

  I nod.

  “Which means she can make her own decisions…about things like meeting her birth parents.”

  My head snaps up. I stare at him unblinking, my pulse a freight train speeding out of control.

  He says, “It’s worth a shot.”

  “What if she doesn’t know she’s adopted?” I ask breathlessly.

  “She talked about it on her Facebook page. She knows. She thinks it’s cool, like she was chosen, not something to be ashamed of. She sounds remarkably well-adjusted. I think her parents did an amazing job raising her.”

  “B-but if I meet her, I’ll be exposed… No one can know who I am—”

  “You’re Isabel Diaz of Laredo, Texas, daughter of Tómas and Guadalupe,” he says gently. “That’s all anyone ever needs to know. No one in Laredo or anywhere else knows about your connection to Victoria Price or to Ana Garcia. And besides, it’s the truth. You are Isabel. I think we can both agree that the truth is a much better alternative to lying.”