“And sharing with others,” Riley said. “That’s important.”
It was dark on the porch so she couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the smile in his voice, and something more.
“I’d like to share it with you, too,” she said, exasperated, remembering the kiss he’d turned down on New Year’s Eve, “but you’re not interested.” On an impulse, she stretched up on her toes and kissed him before he could duck, meaning to make it quick, so she could say, Isn’t that better than just thinking about it?
But he kissed her back, hard, following her as she sank back on her heels, and her blood went hot on the instant. He pulled her to him and she leaned into his solid bulk and lost her breath. When he finished the kiss, she held on to him, tighter, gripping his coat because she knew he was going to step away, and she didn’t think she could stand to be alone again.
Don’t make me go into that house alone.
“That was dumb,” Riley said, his breath coming hard. “I apologize.” He tried to pull back, and she held on for dear life.
“If I push this,” she said, “if I kiss you again and stick my tongue in your mouth and climb all over you, will you go to bed with me?”
Riley took a deep breath. “Yes.”
Suze’s heart skipped a beat. “Should I?” she said, wanting him to stop being such a passive clod, such a kissee, and tell her yes.
“No.”
“Why?” Suze said, letting go of him. “I don’t get this.”
Riley leaned back against the brick wall, and when he spoke, he had his breath back and sounded angry. “When we were talking tonight, did you want me?”
“What? At dinner? No, I wanted to make Tim and Whitney pay.”
“Yeah. That was clear. So did Nell. But she wanted Gabe more. She was a lot more interested in turning Gabe on than in making Tim sorry. Everything she said, she pitched to Gabe.”
“Oh.” Suze tried to remember. Maybe she’d been reading Nell wrong. “Okay. So?”
“You had no interest in me, which is okay. Many women have no interest in me. The only time you want me is when you’re alone. You’re going into the big empty house, so you reach for me. In most cases, I’d be all for it, but this is not most cases, this is you and you are a mess right now, and you’re trying to take me down with you. Which does not mean I won’t go if you ask again. I’m only human, and you are hot, kid, no doubt about it. But it’s going to be bad afterward, and you know it.”
“It’s not just being alone,” Suze said, trying to be honest. “I really want the sex, too. I miss it. It’s been weeks.”
Riley let out a stifled sigh. “You want to wake up with me tomorrow?” he said, and Suze thought about it, about dealing with the reality of him in the daylight.
“No.”
“That’s okay,” Riley said. “I don’t want to wake up with you, either.” He reached past her to shove the door all the way open. “So we’ll go in there and fuck each other because it feels good, and then I’ll leave.” He gave her a push. “After you.”
“You bastard,” Suze said, standing firm. “You make it sound horrible. Why can’t you just take advantage of me like any other guy would?”
“Because I am not any other guy,” Riley said. “Although if you don’t get your ass in there and lock the door, I will become him.”
“You really do want me?” Suze said, and Riley said, “Oh, Christ, that’s it, I’m coming in. Find a wall, and brace yourself.” He pushed her harder toward the door, but she pushed him back as she stepped inside.
“No,” Suze said. “You win.”
“If I win, why am I outside?” Riley said.
“But you’re wrong about me not wanting you for you,” Suze said. “I do, sort of. I’m still not over Jack, although if he really did sic Whitney on Nell, I hate him—”
“What?” Riley said.
“—and I really could use the sex, and I hate being alone, and I’m looking for somebody to save me, you’re right about all of that, but you’re in there, too. There is definite zing with you, and I’m not getting it with anybody else.”
“Really?” Riley said. “Maybe we should talk about this.”
“No,” Suze said. “Because if we talk much more, I will sleep with you for all the wrong reasons, and then you’ll be right and I’ll be wrong again.”
“Maybe they’re not the wrong reasons,” Riley said. “Maybe—”
“Good night,” Suze said a little breathlessly, and shut the door in his face before she could do something stupid. Through the glass she could see him wait a minute, and then he went down the steps, his broad back disappearing into the darkness of the street. She thought, I wish you weren’t going, I really do.
She watched from the front window as he turned down Fourth Street, heading back across the park to the agency, half hoping he’d turn around and come back. When she couldn’t see him anymore, she dropped the curtain and heard a car start up across the street. She drew the curtain back again and watched a BMW pull away, gunning its motor.
Jack.
I hate you, she thought. Watching me. Hurting Nell. And even then she remembered how sweet he could be, how passionate, how good most of that fourteen years with him had been. That was the problem with marriage. It sunk its hooks into your soul and left scars that were with you forever. They should warn the people who were getting married about what it was going to do to them. How it shaped your life and changed your mind and altered your reality until you didn’t know who you were anymore. How it hooked you on the presence of another person, maybe somebody you didn’t even like very much, maybe somebody you didn’t even love anymore, and made you need that person even when you didn’t want him at all.
Marriage was a drug and a trap and an illusion, and kicking it was hell.
I’m glad Riley didn’t stay, Suze thought. I’m glad I’m alone.
And then she went upstairs to bed.
* * *
An hour earlier, Nell had kissed Gabe in the darkened agency office, exhilarated that she’d faced down Tim and relieved she and Gabe weren’t fighting anymore. He’d caught her around the waist and pulled her to him, smiling down at her in the dim light from the street, and she thought, I have to stop making him so mad.
It was the same thought, she realized, that she’d had way too many times with Tim. That was sobering enough to make her step away.
“What?” he said, some of the light fading from his voice.
“Nothing,” she said. “Have I mentioned that I’m crazy about you?”
He slid his arms around her again. “So tell me the rest of the Suze story.”
“There wasn’t any more. She kissed me. She wasn’t you. Since then I’ve been kissing you.”
“Thank you,” Gabe said. “Anything I can do to show my appreciation?”
“Yes,” she said, and shoved him toward the couch. He stumbled back in the dark and sat down on it hard, and she straddled him before he could stand up again.
“This is probably not a good idea,” he said, testing it with his hand. “This is not the sturdiest—”
“Which is why I keep asking for a new one,” she said, settling against him closer. “A safe couch that won’t collapse under us. Or the clientele, for that matter. Kiss me and tell me we can get a new couch.”
He put his hands on her thighs, moving them up under her skirt. “We’ve had this conversation. You don’t get a couch. Come upstairs with me and you can have something else.”
He leaned toward her, and she put her hands on his chest and pushed him back. “Wait a minute. I have an idea.”
“Always bad news for me,” Gabe said.
“Here’s the deal, Dino. I am now in golddigger mode. I will let you do unspeakable things to me on this couch, right now, but you have to buy me.”
“With a new couch,” Gabe said, looking up at her in the dim light, his eyes hot on her and his hands hotter under her skirt, and she thought, Oh, hell, with a paper clip, anything, take me.
“Yes,” she said, her chin in the air. “I live for my job.”
“And you fuck for it, too.” Gabe shoved her skirt up to her waist and then pulled her close, and she shivered as she felt him hard against her. “Very professional,” he said. “Did I lock the street door?”
“Yes,” she said and licked into his mouth, and he said, “You do realize this is in front of a window.”
“It’s dark. You want me or not?” She bounced on him a little, and the couch creaked, and he caught his breath, and so did she.
“Tell you what,” he said, his voice husky, “if this couch breaks in the next half hour, you can have a new one.”
“Deal.” Nell pulled him down on top of her, rotating her hips to slide under him, figuring the couch would go that much sooner with him on top. Everything went according to plan for the next twenty minutes, both of them doing their usual good work until they were both too hot to stand it anymore and her underpants had been tossed somewhere on the other side of the desk. Then Gabe kissed her deeply and slid into her, and she braced herself for the storm to come.
It didn’t. Instead he kept her still, imprisoned under him, while he pulsed against her, barely moving but hitting everything that counted with a rhythm that made her skin itch and her breath come short. She swallowed her gasp and said, “What are you doing?”
“Getting you there,” he said in her ear, and she could hear the laughter in his voice.
She tried to bounce under him and couldn’t, he had her pinned against the damn couch cushions so that she couldn’t even get leverage on the floor.
“Harder,” she said, and he said, “Nope,” and slowed even more. She breathed deep as her blood thickened and said, “This isn’t doing it for me,” while she thought, If he doesn’t stop I’m going to come my brains out on an intact couch.
“You lie,” Gabe said in her ear, pulsing inexorably against her. “I can always get you there and I always will.” He kissed her neck and moved his hand to her breast, and she tried to bounce under him again, only to have him tighten his hand on her instead of picking up speed. She tried writhing, which he appreciated, and rocking, which he quelled with hot hands, and then finally, frustrated by her enforced stillness, she raked her fingernails down his back, lifting him off the couch with her hips and kicking herself into the first shudder of her climax. She jerked against him, and he sucked in his breath as she surged up from the couch, needing to move as much as she needed to come, and he bore down on her, pounding her into the creaking couch as she went mindless, everything in motion at last.
When she got her brain back, she realized the couch was still standing. “I am so disappointed,” she said as her blood sang. “We’ll have to do this again.”
“Another reason not to get rid of the couch,” Gabe said against her hair. “I’m going to have it reinforced when you’re not looking.”
“Get off me,” Nell said, and he pushed himself off her and stood up. She shoved her skirt down as he zipped his pants, and then she said, “I can’t believe this damn thing held.”
“They made stuff good in the fifties,” Gabe said. “Me, for instance. And, God knows, you.”
Nell had turned on the desk light and was behind the desk retrieving her underwear when the street door opened. She straightened and saw Riley, holding his key.
“What are you doing here?” Gabe said, tucking in his shirt.
“I work here,” Riley said. “You used to do that, too, before you gave it up to sexually harass your dognapping secretary. What a night.” He tossed his keys on the desk and collapsed onto the couch.
It held.
“I can’t believe it,” Nell said, staring at it in disgust. “I’m going to jump up and down on it before we do it the next time.”
“What?” Riley said. “You just did it here? There’s a window here, for Christ’s sake.”
“You have no flair,” Gabe said. “Also it was her idea.”
“Does it ever occur to you to say no to her?”
“No,” Gabe said, but he was frowning, his head tilted. “Look at the legs on that thing.”
“See, I told you,” Nell began, but then she looked at the couch legs and shut up. They were splayed out sideways, as if the couch were slowly doing the splits, and the long seat had skewed as if it were warped. “Ooh. It’s never done that before.”
Riley pushed himself off the couch and it sank a little farther. “What did you do?”
“Now we have to get a new couch,” Nell said, but Gabe ignored her.
He went over and grabbed the couch by the front edge, tipping it back until it rested against the window and he was looking at the bottom of it. “What the hell is that?”
“That” was a long piece of pipe, jammed tightly along the length of the seat at an angle.
“Well, no wonder it wasn’t breaking,” Nell said. “Of course, that also explains why it was so damn uncomfortable.”
“It’s not even welded in,” Gabe said, looking at it closer. “It’s just jammed in there. Give me a hand.”
Riley came to stand beside him. “You know, if you jerk that out of there, the couch is history.”
“Jerk it out of there,” Nell said.
“Brace the couch,” Gabe said, and Riley leaned against the seat, while Gabe grabbed the bar and yanked. “Damn it,” he said, “one more time.” Riley leaned harder on the back, and Gabe yanked again, and this time the pipe popped out, making him stagger back a step.
Riley let the couch drop back into place. “You want me to take this out to the Dumpster? Because it really is going to go if anybody—” He stopped because Gabe had the pipe upended and was shaking it. “What are you doing?”
“There’s something in here.” Gabe said, trying to peer into the end. “We need more light in this place.”
“Good,” Nell said. “I’ll buy lamps when I get the new couch.”
“Give me something with a hook on it,” he said, and Nell thought, Yeah, I have one of those, but then he said, “Wait a minute,” and dug out his pocketknife. He stuck the blade in the end of the pipe and began to lever something out.
“I repeat,” Riley said. “What—”
“My father was not a fixer-upper,” Gabe said. “And he jammed this pipe in the couch.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, it wasn’t you or me.” Gabe frowned as he worked on the pipe. “And I don’t see your mother or Chloe cramming it in there. And the likelihood of somebody else sneaking in here and jamming pipes in our furniture—” He stopped as he maneuvered a wad of white cloth out of the end of the pipe. He put his knife away and pulled on the cloth and it came out easily, unfurling as he pulled, until something heavy fell out at his feet and glinted on the floor.
“Diamonds,” Nell said, looking at the spilled pile of glittering circles.
“I can’t wait for Trevor to explain this one,” Riley said.
“I can,” Gabe said. “But I’m not going to.”
Chapter Seventeen
“You gave Margie the pin and the ring,” Gabe said half an hour later when he had the jewelry spread out on Trevor’s dining room table. “You gave my dad the necklace, the bracelet, and the earrings. And I want to know why. No lies this time, no crap about ungrateful sons. The truth.”
Trevor sat down at the table, looking older than Gabe had ever seen him. He felt no sympathy for him at all.
“There’s brandy there on the sideboard,” Trevor said.
Gabe picked up the brandy bottle, keeping his eyes on Trevor. “Who killed Helena?”
“Stewart,” Trevor said, and Gabe almost dropped the bottle.
“Stewart? Margie’s husband?”
Trevor nodded. Gabe splashed some brandy into a snifter and handed it to him, and he drank, not deeply, and then took a breath.
“Sit down,” Trevor said, “and I’ll tell you what happened. And then I hope you won’t tell anyone else.”
“Trevor, it’s murder,” Gabe sa
id. “That’s not something—”
“You’ll never prove it,” Trevor said. “If I could have proved it, I would have. I was divorcing Helena, but I didn’t want her dead. She was Margie’s mother. Margie’s never really gotten over it, you know. Imagine if it were Chloe and Lu.”
“Talk,” Gabe said, staving off sympathy.
“I had an affair,” Trevor said, sadly. “With Audrey. I loved her, but I wouldn’t have married her, Helena was my wife, after all. But then Audrey got pregnant and I wanted my child to have my name, and my marriage had really been over—”
“Trevor,” Gabe said. “Get to the part where Stewart shoots Helena, and my dad helps.”
“Helps?” Trevor looked revolted. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Your father was a fine man.”
“With a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds in his couch,” Gabe said. “Explain.”
“That’s where he put them?” Trevor laughed, but without much humor. “In that cheap couch? That was Patrick for you. Smart as hell.” He picked up the snifter again. “You could have thrown that couch out any time and then nobody would ever have known. How did you find them, anyway?”
“Nell wanted a new couch,” Gabe said. “I want the story. Spill it.”
“Nell’s an industrious woman,” Trevor said. “Helena wasn’t. She took the divorce badly.”
And most people take them so well, Gabe thought, wondering if Trevor had any idea of what a fathead he could be.
“I was prepared to provide for her, but she wanted half of my share of the firm, which was ridiculous. She wasn’t going to get it, of course, but the litigation was going to kill us. Jack had just married Vicki, and he didn’t have any spare cash since Abby had taken half of his assets. Stewart had just married Margie and wanted more money from the firm, but that wasn’t possible with the cash flow. And then he came to me and said he and Jack had talked and they had a way out of our problems, that he could shoot Helena while I had an airtight alibi. I said no.” Trevor stared at Gabe across the table. “I told them both no. I told him if we waited, she’d get tired and give up the fight, and we’d be fine.”
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