Unfinished Seductions

by Raleigh Davis

  She keeps sketching with the stylus, but her movements are slow as if she’s moving through syrup. “He hates me. That’s why. I’ve never done anything to him—except marry you—and he hates me. He’s your brother, and he hates me.”

  “Elliot? Elliot doesn’t hate anyone.” That’s not exactly true—he’d like to throttle Fuchs’s assistant, but she insulted his lawyerly prowess. Callie hasn’t done that.

  “He hates me. Every time he looks at me, I feel like I’m going to catch on fire.”

  Suddenly it occurs to me that we’ve never really talked about Elliot. When we first got together, it was so intense there wasn’t room for anyone else, not even family.

  “He looks at everyone like that. Elliot doesn’t have an off switch. Or even a dimmer. He was probably thinking about some contract or some case. Hell, he looks at me like that, but I know he’s not mad.”

  She rubs her arms. “It feels personal. He wanted you to divorce me, didn’t he?” That last line is very quiet.

  “Elliot doesn’t linger. When you left… He wanted me to move on. He thought it would be best for me.”

  “Has he ever had a relationship?”

  Oh fuck. How to answer that one? “He, uh, has some intimate partners.”

  A stupid way to say it, but I couldn’t say “fuck buddy” to her. Elliot isn’t exactly smooth, but somehow women flock to him. Maybe it’s the challenge of him. I’ve never met any of his partners, not formally, but I’ve seen him leave plenty of parties with a lady on his arm.

  Callie raises one eyebrow. “Intimate partners?” She holds up a finger. “No, I get it. So what happened with Mark and January? And who is she exactly? You never really said.”

  “For Mark, she’s the one who got away. She came to us looking for funding for her start-up, which Fuchs wanted. Turned out he’d kidnapped her roommate, and January was next on his list.”

  Her eyes go wide and she sets down her graphics tablet with a snap. “What?”

  That’s exactly how I reacted when I first heard. “Fuchs had put spyware on smartphones, snuck it in through all kinds of apps. Her roommate was working on it for him, and January built a program to stop him. That’s why I had Elliot give your phone to her.”

  Her skin is a shade of green that makes my gut clench. “That’s… unbelievable.” Her voice is weak, faded.

  “It all worked out.” I make my own voice firm, strong. She has nothing to worry about. “His spyware program is dead, her roommate doesn’t work there anymore, and Mark and January got together.”

  “Wow.” Some color comes back into her cheeks. “I missed a lot.”

  I raise my eyebrows in a shrug. “Never a dull moment.”

  I keep my tone casual because Callie doesn’t need to worry about that, but I can’t help but think of how Fuchs must have plans to take the rest of the Bastards down. Or at least try to.

  “That’s a lot bigger than just running a gossip blog,” Callie says finally. There’s doubt in her beautiful eyes.

  “Not to me.” My jaw tightens. “You left me because of it.”

  If I could go back, erase every last one of those awful pictures, I would. But I can’t, so I’m going to ruin that fucking blog instead.

  Her mouth turns down. “Not just because of that.”

  I don’t want to argue with her, not today. I want to enjoy being with her. So I change the subject.

  “Did you find any writers besides Brienne?”

  For a moment it looks like she doesn’t want to shift to that, but eventually she says, “I found a bunch of people on Twitter and pulled up their résumés.”

  I walk around the desk to peer over her shoulder at them. “Greg Tychie is good. I liked his stuff about the wider implications of a Bitcoin crash. And so is Lila Johnston.”

  “She and Greg are together,” Callie says.

  “They are? Why didn’t I know that?” I’m the details guy. I don’t like missing important ones.

  She cranes her neck to look back at me. “Logan, it’s not something you could figure out from studying their résumés for hours. Or their articles.”

  “So how do you know?”

  Her cheeks go pink. “I stalked their Twitters. They always like each other’s Tweets, even the pictures of their lunches, and they share in-jokes. Also, they’re both in LA now, while Greg was in New York just a few months ago. I think he moved for her.”

  The dreamy quality to Callie’s voice makes me frown. “Maybe he got a job in LA and they got together after he moved.”

  “They were couple-y on Twitter before he moved. And he’s freelancing now—I don’t think the journalism market in LA is that great.”

  That’s… that’s not something I could ever do. Just get up and move, without knowing I had a job waiting for me. Not that it matters since I have more money than I’ll ever need, but it’s the principle of the thing.

  But hell, it’s not my life. If Greg wants to act like a damn fool, it’s nothing to me. I’d just never do it.

  “We should go down to LA to talk to them. Take the jet, make it a weekend.”

  Callie raised an eyebrow. “You mean take a weekend off?”

  “You’re cute when you try to be stealthy.” I run the back of my hand down her cheek because her skin is driving me crazy this close. I have to touch. “It’s not a weekend off if we’re doing work too.”

  “But not all work? Some play?”

  I run my fingers down to her neck, sliding them under the cowl of her sweater. Her eyes darken.

  “Definitely some play.” I lean into her ear. “Maybe a lot of play.”

  “Mmm.” Her head falls to the side, giving me access to her neck. “I like the sound of that.”

  I do too, but I want to play now. I want to carry her off to my bed and spend hours losing myself in her.

  I take her earlobe in my teeth, flicking it with my tongue. She releases a luxurious moan, lifting a hand to reach for my arm.

  I kiss my way down to her neck, snagging the neck of her sweater with a hooked finger and dragging it down. I can’t wait to pull this sweater off her and see the beautiful curves it’s hiding—

  My laptop pings. On instinct, I snap up. That’s our Slack channel—someone’s messaged me.

  Shit. And here I was, getting distracted by Callie. This is exactly what I was worried about.

  Callie’s breathing is quick, shallow, but her cheeks have gone pale. She’s not pleased we’ve been interrupted.

  I could ignore the message, shut my laptop, and still carry her off to bed.

  But I won’t. I’m not that kind of man.

  “I have to check that.”

  She nods once, sharply. “Sure. And I need to go meet Brienne and see our new office space.”

  Callie leaves without even a goodbye.

  I sigh as I pull up our Slack channel. Okay, she’s pissed, but I can’t ignore a message from the office. And I really do need to get back to work.

  I’ll make it up to her tonight once I can give her my full attention. Work needs it right now though.

  Chapter 20

  I’ve been in office spaces before, plenty of times. But they usually weren’t empty. And I was never the one expected to fill them.

  “This place is great.” Brienne might be more excited about this entire thing than I am. She can’t stop talking about the space, the concept, and finally doing something real again.

  Her charities are pretty real, especially to the people they help, but I don’t think that’s what she means.

  “It’s nice,” I agree. Or at least it will be once we have some furniture and people in it. “I’ve got a friend who’ll do the interior. She’ll start tomorrow.”

  “That’s right.” Brienne snaps her fingers. “You used to be an artist.”

  “Graphic designer,” I say gently. I don’t say anything about how I still am a designer even if I haven’t been working recently.

  “And now you’re starting a news site.” Brienne lifts h
er eyebrows. “How did that happen?” She shakes her head. “No, wait. Explain to me how you’re the Silicon Wife. I still can’t believe it.”

  I still can’t believe that Brienne is KatinaKat, the commenter whom I suspected of having an MBA. I reached out to some of the blog commenters yesterday, anonymously, mentioning that I might have a writing opportunity for them. Brienne was the only one who wrote back.

  To say that I was shocked when I found out who she really was would be putting it mildly. I was probably as shocked as she was when she found out who I was.

  “I needed someplace to put my thoughts,” I say simply. “So I started the blog. The name was a joke, and I never expected anyone to read it.”

  “Then why not buy a journal?”

  She has a point. Maybe subconsciously, I did want people to hear me. People like her, who would understand.

  I smile. “I’ll do that next time.”

  “No.” Brienne’s eyes widen. “Don’t do that. I love The Silicon Wife. It says all the things I want to but can’t.”

  My heart warms to hear it, but I have to disappoint her. “There’s no way I keep on with the blog. Nobody knows I write it. Except for you.”

  “Really?” She leans in, sharing a secret. “But then how did TidBytes know about the divorce?”

  Answering that would take too long and give away too many things I have to keep secret. “It wasn’t from my blog,” I say quickly. “And I’m not getting a divorce.”

  I shift my weight, wishing I’d worn lower heels. These shoes are gorgeous, but my feet haven’t toughened up yet. They’re still used to going barefoot.

  “Hmm.” Something changes in her expression. “Logan doesn’t know you write the blog?” she asks carefully.

  Oh boy. This is not a subject I want to get into. My feet throb as I say, “It was just a hobby. And now we’re building this site together, so I don’t need it anymore.”

  Her eyes narrow. “You disappeared for months.” I can see the whip-smart intelligence now. “Left him without a word, according to all the rumors. But everything’s fine suddenly?”

  “We’re reconciling, yes.” I keep my expression and voice upbeat, steady. Brienne doesn’t need to know the ugly details of my marriage.

  “Well.” She rocks back on her heels. “I thought you’d finally got the nerve up to leave him and make it permanent.”

  My mouth drops open. “Excuse me?”

  She gives an elegant snort. “Have you seen the pictures in TidBytes? Of course you have. No one knew anything concrete about him cheating, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?”

  That’s exactly what I used to think. And it seems that’s what everyone else in the tech world thinks about our marriage.

  Fuchs’s scorched-earth campaign has burned more than I knew.

  “Do you know who owns TidBytes?” I ask.

  “New Media Holdings, a subsidy of Pelanos Corporation,” she rattles off without a beat.

  I’m impressed she knows that much. She really does follow the business side closely. But she doesn’t know everything.

  “No, who really owns TidBytes,” I say. “The owner of the hand holding that shell corporation.”

  “Who?”

  I hesitate for a brief moment. If I spread this information around, Fuchs could come after me again. I take a deep breath and blurt out, “Arne Fuchs.”

  “What?” People must have heard her screech from two floors away. “But he’s got Corvus to run and all those other companies he’s invested in… Why would he care about a gossipy news site?”

  “Think about all the pictures of Logan. Think about what they did to my marriage.”

  Her expression shifts like sunlight on water, revealing hidden depths. “Shit. There was a story on Jack recently. Nothing explicitly libelous, but still… it didn’t sit well with him. Or me.”

  “Yeah, I know the feeling.” We share a smile—small, wistful. “Technology is great, but what better way to manipulate people than through gossip? Humanity’s been doing it for millennia now.”

  “I’m actually surprised Fuchs came up with the scheme. He doesn’t really seem the type.”

  I start as I realize—she’s probably met Fuchs. Tons of times. Shaken hands with him, made small talk, and all the while he’s been pulling this BS.

  “Well,” I say carefully, “based on what Logan has been telling me, I think Fuchs is the type to do anything to gain power. And if that means buying up companies or breaking up marriages, that’s what he’ll do.”

  She sends me a shrewd, penetrating look. “But he didn’t break up your marriage.”

  “It’s complicated.” I almost laugh at myself because it’s so much more than complicated and to hide the hurt that bubbles up. “It’s hard to have a marriage when you never see your husband. The pictures in TidBytes weren’t the only reason I left, but they didn’t help.”

  Brienne holds my gaze, sympathy softening her face. She nods. “Oh yes. When the kids were little, Jack was never home. It was just me and them, morning, noon, and night. I kept thinking that once he got that next promotion, that next raise, that next position, we’d be secure enough for him to slow down. But these guys don’t work that way. It’s not about the money. It’s about the hustle.”

  I shiver even though the building is perfectly climate controlled. If she’s right, if Logan can never slow down, then we’ll be right back where we started. With me miserable and alone, and him at work, completely oblivious.

  “You have your charities,” I offer. That’s our prize for marrying so well—we get to do so much good in the world.

  She laughs without humor. “Oh yeah. And really, we do a ton of good work. But sometimes it feels like a toy Jack’s given me. Like we have all this money—he makes it and I play with it.” Her smile twists bitterly. “I sound like such an ungrateful bitch. Here we’ve got so much, enough to change the world with our foundation, and I’m complaining about it.”

  If she’s an ungrateful bitch, then I’m something even worse. But to hear someone else say all that, out loud instead of in a comment on my anonymous blog post, feels… amazing. Like I’m not quite as alone as I thought.

  “I know what you mean,” I say. “We’re all forced into that mold, aren’t we? We can’t work—then we’re taking a job from someone who needs it. And of course we have to do something good with our wealth, but… it’s complicated.”

  Brienne laughs again, this time closer to her usual laugh. “Exactly. But enough rich-lady complaining.” She claps her hands, her glee echoing through the empty space. “Let’s get back to this exciting new venture of yours.”

  “Can I help?” A stylish woman with ink-black hair pops her head in. Something about her is familiar, but I can’t quite place her.

  Something about her is unsettling too, like she’s part of a bad memory or something.

  “Sorry, maybe you don’t remember me.” She holds out her hand to me. “I’m January. My office is just around the way, and I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself. Offer any help you might need.”

  Suddenly I remember—she was with Mark when he confronted Julian and me at the private club. God, that was so humiliating.

  “I’m Callie.” I’m praying she doesn’t remember that, but of course she must. But if she’s willing to pretend that never happened, then so am I. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Officially, that is.” I gesture to Brienne. “And this is Brienne.”

  January must recognize her, but she gives no sign of it as she shakes Brienne’s hand. “So nice to meet you too.”

  “Same. Look, I’d love to chat,” Brienne says with an apologetic smile, “but I need to run. My masseuse threatened to fire me if I was late one more time, and she’s got the most magical hands.”

  Once she’s gone, there’s a beat of awkwardness between January and me. Mark can’t have told her anything good about me.

  But she still sought me out and said hello. Maybe she wants to draw her own concl
usions.

  “Mark told me about what you were doing,” she says finally. “I think it’s great. Fuchs is such a bastard.”

  A knot in my stomach unravels. “Yeah, he is.” I let my shoulders relax. “Logan told me what Fuchs did to you. Are you okay?”

  January smiles like she finds my concern funny, but in a friendly way. “Everything turned out fine in the end. And Mark and I got together, so…” Her grin turns wicked. “If I were a nicer person, I’d be thanking Fuchs for that.”

  I think I’m going to like this woman very much. “I’m sure you would have found each other even without Fuchs. And really, nobody deserves some meanness more than him.”

  January nods. Her skin is pale, and her hair is so black she looks like someone out of a fairy tale. But the spark in her eye tells me she doesn’t need any rescuing. “Oh, trust me, I hope you give him a heart attack with this website. Fuchs tried to attack my company, and he’s trying to get my friend deported—if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. I’m deadly serious.”

  I blink, feeling foolish for being so overwhelmed with emotion. Last night, all those people came to support me and all at the drop of a hat, while today both Brienne and January have offered their support.

  And Logan’s at home, waiting for me. It’s almost too much.

  “Thanks,” I say in a strained voice, trying not to let all that emotion out. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Logan is Mark’s friend. They’re like brothers, which makes us… maybe not sisters. How about cousins?”

  As she says that, the awkwardness comes rushing back in. January doesn’t know anything about why I left, and I can tell from her expression she feels like she put her foot in it.

  “Or not,” she says quickly. “Mark didn’t have all the details of your reconciliation. Or whatever it might be.”

  Her skin is going pink, probably as pink as mine is turning.

  Oh, this is silly. I’m trying to be nice, she’s trying to be nice, and we’re both tiptoeing around the horrible, awful incident we were both involved in. Might as well face the unspoken thing head-on.

  “Look,” I say, “about what happened with Mark and Julian—”