“Shh, Petri, take a Xanax, all right?” Jane interrupted. “No one delays the Met Gala.”
Eric and I both frowned at her. I vaguely knew what she was talking about—some big party at the museum that shut down the Upper East Side every spring. Was she really talking about a fuckin’ social event like it was more important than my updates about John Carson?
“The Met Gala,” Jane repeated, like we should completely grasp the gravity. When we clearly didn’t, she went off. “Eric! Come on, I would have expected better from you, at least. The Met Gala. First Monday in May. Fashion prom. It’s the giant fundraiser of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum, overseen by the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. One of the most exclusive tickets on the planet, and something you do not say no to. Ever!”
By the time she finished ranting, Eric seemed to know what she was talking about. I, however, was still more interested in Nina, who had gone quiet. From what I recalled, this was a woman who knew fashion. Organizing a fancy event with a bunch of designers seemed like something she’d be capable of doing—more, probably, than a novice like Jane.
Nina seemed more interested in studying her nails than meeting anyone’s gaze. I followed hers. Right to the rock on her left hand.
“Is there someone else?” My heart pounded as I asked. But I had to. I probably knew the answer all along.
Guilt flooded her beautiful face. “I—yes. I’m so sorry, Matthew, but yes, there is.”
Every cell in my body deflated. Fuck. Fuck.
I sighed, but forced myself not to look away. “Married, or just…”
Her shoulders hunched. “I’m married, yes.”
The memory faded, but I still felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
“Okay, so what’s up?” Jane asked Nina, who jerked out of her own daze.
“It’s awful, just awful,” she said in a strange, rushed voice. “I took over Grandmother’s seat on the committee, of course. There wasn’t time for them to find someone else. I had intended to give it to you—I think that’s what she wanted, since the two of you spent so much time at the Institute in her last days, and to be honest, I don’t really know much about fashion beyond the houses I like myself. But you and Eric had so many…challenges…lately, I thought it best to do it myself this year. Except I’m absolutely all wrong for it!”
I sat back in my seat again and continued to study her. Call me crazy, but me thought the lady protested a little too much.
“Wrong for what, Nina?” Eric wondered.
Nina flipped to a large picture: a black-and-white photo of a man about to break his guitar over the words London Calling. “Wrong for this. I can’t help organize an event around this theme. I know absolutely nothing about it.”
Everyone bent to look.
“Oh my merry Mick Jones,” Jane murmured. “You have got to be kidding. Have I died and gone to heaven?”
“What?” Eric wondered.
“Is that The Clash?” I asked with a grin. “Hey, I like that song.” Hell, I was just glad to contribute something to this conversation.
“It’s the theme,” Jane practically sang. “They choose one every year for the exhibit and the gala itself, and this year it’s ‘London Calling.’ Cora Spring and the Metropolitan Museum are using The freaking Clash as their inspiration!”
“Which is why I don’t know what I’m doing!” Nina burst out.
Okay, so she lied about who she was. And no, I didn’t exactly believe that she was that stressed about planning any kind of fashion event, punk-themed or not. But in that moment, I didn’t really care about what lies Nina Astor-de Vries-Gardner-whatever-her-name-was had to tell. I heard the note of true panic in that beautiful voice of hers, and all I could think was make it better.
My hand shot out before I could help it, and barely stopped before it landed on top of hers. Nina stared. Jane and Eric stared. And by some Herculean effort, I managed to pull it back into my lap and pretend that nothing happened. Except something already had. Less than five minutes, and I was like a magnet. Good fuckin’ God, I needed to get out of here.
“So you see,” Nina turned the conversation awkwardly around with a single nervous glance my way. “You have to take my spot, Jane.”
“Come again now?”
I stared at my hands while the three of them went back and forth. I should go. I needed to go. But the truth was, as long as Nina was sitting in front of me, I wasn’t going fuckin’ anywhere.
“Just to be clear,” Jane said. “You are asking me to help the editor of the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine and a bunch of the other most stylish people in the world plan the world’s most exclusive fashion event?”
Without a flinch, Nina nodded. “Please, please, please. I look like a fool.”
I frowned. Not fuckin’ likely. I had a feeling that the calm, competent woman sitting in front of me had never looked like a fool in her entire life.
“Well, I only have one question,” Jane said. “Do I get to go too?”
“Oh, of course! You and Eric are already on the guest list. Heather and Mother too. Didn’t I tell you? The family always has a table.”
“Ah, no! You most certainly did not!”
And then Jane started screaming the same way my sisters did whenever one of them won five dollars on Keno tickets. Eric and I sat back like we were being blasted by a fog horn. Jane launched herself at Nina. And Nina…grinned.
Every iota of irritation melted off me at the sight of that golden smile. It fuckin’ transformed her, and the ice that covered most of her appearance suddenly glimmered, like she’d been dipped in gold. Caught in Jane’s embrace, pure happiness made Nina glow.
“Do you know how long it’s been,” she wondered as she watched our fingers slowly, slowly entwine, “since someone held my hand?”
Her loneliness that night had been palpable. The way she’d responded to my touch made me wonder how often she touched others at all.
“Now I feel like I’ve seen something different. And loneliness doesn’t feel like an exchange for other privileges. It simply feels unbearable.”
She’d been talking about them. Funny, how knowing these two had affected us both the same way. We’d both been so lonely that night, and part of it had been because knowing two people as passionately in love as Jane and Eric reiterated the lack of it in our lives.
As Jane wrapped Nina in a bear hug, it was clear that Nina’s plea tonight might have been motivated by a desire to get closer to her cousin and his wife. She had felt partially responsible for their plight, I remembered now. Why, I still wasn’t sure. But I wanted to find out. Hell, with everything I was working on, I needed to find out.
“You look way too happy about this for a man who just committed his wife pretty much full time for the next three months,” Jane told Eric as she returned to her seat. “First Monday in May is right around the corner.”
“So it is,” Eric said, “which also gives me an idea.” He tapped a pen on the coffee table. “Maybe…we don’t need a secret lair to trap the big fish. Maybe we just need a really exclusive event. And the right date to toss out a lure.”
“Uh-oh. Someone is going Scooby-Doo on us,” Jane said to Nina. “Who do you think is under the mask, Fred?”
I snorted. Eric didn’t even respond, too obviously happy with his wife’s glee. Nina, unfortunately, just looked confused. Dammit. Not even Scooby-fuckin’-Doo? What else had she missed out on as a child, growing up in this family?
“Who are you thinking?” I asked. I was already following Eric’s logic. “We’ve tried the Jane card before. Yu-na too. He’s not biting.”
We were talking about Carson. Over the last few months, we’d done everything we could think of to bring the man into New York, if only to see what he would do. No dice.
Something about the gala had Eric’s mind whirring.
“No,” he said. “But we haven’t tried my mother.”
Chapter Five
The pla
n was simple enough. Maybe too simple.
As it turned out, John Carson once carried a pretty big torch for Eric’s mother, who now went by Heather Keeler. Enough that Eric wondered privately if the man had been responsible for his father’s death long ago.
“She says he acted like she belonged to him,” he said.
Jane curled into herself at the thought, no doubt reminded of her own recent traumas.
“Hey,” I found myself telling her. “We’re going to get him, one way or another.”
I wished it were true. I wished it could have been a promise.
“He’s a narcissist who loves big public displays,” Eric said. “He won’t be able to resist a big public invitation from the woman who rejected him again and again. For him, it’s the ultimate victory.”
Soapy enough for you? Yeah, me too.
My job was to get the warrant in order, and to be there waiting with the police. Not too hard, really. But I had my doubts.
While I genuinely thought Carson would respond—we knew the man was nothing if not obsessive about this family—I definitely did not think he would show up. I’d been investigating John Carson for more than six months at this point. He was as slippery as an eel, but ten times smarter.
Still, I was willing to play along. Mostly because I wasn’t going anywhere while Nina Astor—or Gardner, apparently—was sitting across from me. Nina kept trying to leave, but every time Jane would rope her back in with another question. Since the gala was the entire reason she was there, Nina would cast me a furtive glance, swallow about half a glass of wine, pour more, and keep talking.
“Great.” Eric stood after we re-hashed the plan for the last time. “I’ll call my mother tomorrow. Jane, you and Nina need to get her invite ASAP.” He picked up the empty wine bottle. “Damn. Do I need to open another?”
“I need food, not wine,” Jane announced. “Unless you’re trying to get me drunk, Mr. de Vries…”
The playful lilt in her voice was unmistakable.
I hid a smile. I had known Jane a long time, and she still had a ways to go in her recovery. It was good to hear her joking again.
Nina rose and smoothed the fabric of her skirt over her long legs. Again, I found I couldn’t look away, particularly once I caught the silvery gray shoes that seemed extremely familiar. Probably because I’d seen them before. And felt them digging into my back.
Fuck. Me.
She adjusted a delicate platinum watch around one wrist. Iced, just like her.
“I should be going, actually,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure everything was taken care of. Jane, I’ll call tomorrow. The committee meets at one. I’ll introduce you to everyone, and then…it will be in your hands, I suppose.”
Was that a note of melancholy I heard?
Jane nodded, though her attention rested with Eric, who was rubbing his thumb meaningfully around the top of the wine bottle. Suddenly, it felt like they were the only two people in the room. Nina and I were obvious intruders.
“Shall we order out? Eat by the fire tonight?” Eric asked. “What do you think, pretty girl?”
Jane just bit her lip.
I had heard Eric use the nickname on a couple of other occasions, and it never failed to make Jane squirm exactly like she was right now. In fact, the whole fuckin’ place crackled right along with the embers in the fireplace.
Nina swallowed, darting yet another glance my way. I didn’t even bother hiding my stare.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” she said again with a bit more force than strictly necessary. “Eric. Jane. M-Matthew.”
And before anyone could respond, she practically sprinted out of the apartment, her heels echoing down the staircase before the front door shut.
“Zola?” Eric asked as he eyed his wife like prey. “You, ah, need anything else—”
“Nope.” I was already up, tracking the door like a dog on the hunt while I retrieved my hat and coat. “I’ll drop by next week, maybe with Derek. Just let me know what Heather says. I…” I stopped when I caught sight of the umbrella leaning by the door. “I’m going to see if I can catch Nina. She left this.”
I didn’t wait for a reply, just snatched the umbrella and skipped down the stairwell two at a time. Not again, not again. The words were a pounding refrain in time with my feet. I couldn’t fuckin’ miss her again. Not when I knew she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
But when I emerged onto the street, Nina was nowhere to be seen—probably having already disappeared into one of those big black cars people like these seemed to have waiting for them all the time. I was cursing myself out when I turned toward and spotted a flash of white. Tall and leggy. Striding toward the black of the park.
“Nina!” I shouted, taking off down the street, jumping around leftover puddles while I clapped a hand atop my hat. The rain had stopped, but every so often I felt a threatening, fat drop. “Nina, wait!”
Finally, she looked over her shoulder. Her eyes grew about three times their size, and she doubled her pace.
“What the…”
She was avoiding me. Like a scared bunny, she was taking to the woods. In the middle of New York fuckin’ City.
“The hell with that.” I broke into a run, straight into the traffic hurtling up Central Park West.
“Get the fuck outta the road, asshole!”
A parade of horns followed me into the park, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t lose her again. I just fuckin’ couldn’t, and that was that.
“Nina! Nina! Goddammit, will you just wait!”
It was amazing, really, just how damn fast she could walk in four-inches heels, especially on a surface that switched erratically between pavement and cobblestones. Even if I hadn’t figured out exactly who she was, I’d have known she was a veteran of New York sidewalks. Very fast. But not fast enough.
“Nina!”
I lunged forward and managed to catch her hand just as she started to cross the Seventy-Seventh Street Bridge. I snapped her back hard enough that she toppled into me, forcing me to wrap my arms around her just to stop us both from smacking the pavement.
The effect was immediate.
Lightning.
Shock.
Electricity.
Fire.
Look, I was still mad. Livid, in fact. I didn’t chase after women, much less an Upper East Side princess who had done her best to pretend I didn’t exist for the last two hours. If she were anyone else, I would have let her go, and good riddance. And maybe I was that much angrier because I couldn’t let her go. Because she’d been stuck in my mind for months.
But the second I touched her again, none of that mattered. Because it wasn’t a mirage in my arms. It wasn’t a dream where I’d woken up shouting in the dark. She was the real thing. And she felt better than I had ever imagined.
“If you don’t mind!” She wriggled out of my grasp with a huff and immediately started brushing down her coat, which was now rumpled from the chase. “Matthew, just what do you think you’re doing, grabbing me like that?”
And just like that, the anger was back.
“What do I think I’m doing?” I repeated. “What do you think you’re doing, huh? It’s eight o’clock at night. In Central Park.”
The sky above us was pitch black aside from the lights of the buildings ringing us. The park was a dungeon compared to the glowing city.
Nina stopped de-rumpling her coat and looked at me. That mask was back. So like her cousin’s, but somehow sharper. More…imperious. For some reason, I was taken back to one particular moment in the bar, when we’d first met.
“What did you call me?”
“Princess,” I said with a sly grin as I leaned on the bar just a few inches from her. I was invading her space, and it made her uncomfortable. I didn’t give a shit.
I reached out and twirled a bit of her golden hair around one finger. “You’re all dainty and shit, sitting on your throne, sipping on your wine. Like a princess. It fits.”
She
swallowed, looking fairly angry, although the way her tight nipples were pointing at me through her
blouse said she felt a lot more than that. Inwardly, I shrugged. Angry sex was just fine by me.
“I don’t like being called princess.”
She was right, of course. I had thought it funny at the time, but right now it was painfully obvious: Nina Astor wasn’t anyone’s princess. She was a queen.
A queen without her crown, I realized, thinking of Eric’s unintentional coup. A monarch without a kingdom.
“I brought you this.” I held out the umbrella like a knight offering fealty. As if I should kneel or something, and allow her to touch the umbrella to my shoulders like the edge of a sword.
“Oh.” She took it. “Well, thank you. That was kind, but unnecessary. Eric would have sent it over, or Jane could have brought it to our meeting tomorrow.”
“Why were you running away?” I demanded bluntly.
Nina touched her mouth as she took a step backward. “I wasn’t running. These shoes wouldn’t let me.”
“Po-ta-to, po-tah-to. Skipping. Trotting. Cantering like a fuckin’ horse if that’s what you want to say. But you were getting away from me as fast as those chopsticks would take you.”
She looked down. “I thought you liked high heels, Matthew.”
“I love high heels, doll. Especially on you. But not when they’re taking you away from me.”
She started again at the use of the nickname, just like she had in the apartment. But she didn’t answer. The ferocity that had been on her face a moment before tightened into something more patrician. Something much more guarded.
I fuckin’ hated it.
“Nina.” I took a step toward her. “Come on. You couldn’t have thought I’d just let you leave without talking.”
The mask fell a bit, though now she was inordinately interested in the empty-branched oak trees surrounding us. “Oh, but I wish you would. It’s—Matthew, it’s better this way.”
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 5