“So stalking runs in the family.” It was a double-edged joke, but Marcus received it good-naturedly and chuckled.
“Seems like it. He proposed during a boat ride on the same lake where they had met, and judging by tidbits Kai and I had involuntarily gathered, they had done much more on lake shores. An adventurous pair they were. Their history gives a man some ideas he can borrow.”
“Oh.” My skin grew hot again. “What kind of ideas?”
“See that patch of grass right there to the left of the lake? I’d like to take you there, Charlotte, feel you bare underneath me with nothing beneath us. Just you and me. I’d like to hear your moans mingling with the soft rippling of the lake.”
“Mm—what about the camellias?”
My evasion earned Marcus’s hearty laugh, and I turned to smack his chest, a small punishment for making me burn again. When he flinched, I was immediately remorseful for my action. Knowing he had been fighting with Brayden did not warm me up to his friend.
“They had been in my grandmother’s bridal bouquet. She loved them above all flowers, so they had to be close to the lake too. It’s like a big monument to their memory.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Tears gathered in my eyes for a pair I hadn’t even met and never would, for the beauty of their story, and for how badly I wanted to find the same love and devotion they had shared. Marcus kissed my temple again then whirled me in a pirouette and slammed me against his chest, no apologies and no warning. His mood had changed once again.
“Wicked man, leave me alone. I need time to recover,” I protested when I saw the lustful gleam in his gaze. At the moment, I felt deliciously sore, but from that to walking-funny-sore, there was only one tiny step.
“Do you, now? Because I clearly remember how you begged me last night not to stop.”
His lips hovered over mine, tempting me when I knew my body couldn’t deal with more. Pushing my hands flat on his chest, I jumped out of the circle of his arms. The man was not only convincing when he wanted to be but incredibly tenacious. He strode to me, reaching for my hand.
“No,” I objected and walked back inside the bedroom.
“Yes,” he urged, winking and smiling mischievously, enticingly.
“Marcus, no,” I screamed and ran for the stairs.
He followed, effortlessly keeping up with me. While I sprinted downstairs, I groaned, laughed, and yelled at him to stop. Before I reached the ground floor, his arm banded around my torso, beneath my breasts, and lifted me up, making me squeal and kick. I only hit thin air.
“I only want to feed you breakfast, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, sure,” I scoffed and struggled against his firm hold.
“It’s you who are corrupting me and not letting me rest. Please, Charlotte, you’re insatiable. You wear me out.”
Marcus pulled me down and covered the stone planes of his stomach while he shook with laughter. I had seen his bruises and knew he was hurting, but I couldn’t stop from smacking his shoulder. He dodged my strike and laughed harder.
“Don’t play the innocent,” I cried and bit my lower lip in a weak attempt to look stern. Evidently, I failed.
We did have breakfast, kissing and teasing each other between bites of food, and eventually, we did make love again, on the cream sofa in the living room, slowly and never breaking eye contact. When the time came to leave the bubble and return to our New York life, I felt a pang of regret.
SOPHIA WAS SURPRISED but still happy to see me. I stopped by her desk and let her get me up to speed with what had happened in my absence. The more she talked, the more disconnected I felt from the day to day reality of the firm. She cast me a knowing glance but said nothing about Jack Stewart or how his case drained me of energy.
“May I speak freely, Ms. Burton?” she asked at some point.
I rolled my eyes. As much as I appreciated her manners and ever-present professionalism, we had worked together for long enough to quit the formalities.
“You know you can, Sophia.”
“You don’t have to work alone, Charlotte.”
Sophia nodded toward Philip Foster, who was emerging from the interns’ office. He was relatively timid but loyal and diligent. He was a terrific researcher and utterly determined to find solutions for all the loopholes and issues of a case. Of all the interns, he was the only one who really excelled, the only one I was going to hire.
“Maybe you are right,” I said and pondered precisely how Philip could be of assistance, then I decided he was worth taking a chance on.
I went to him, and the way his eyes widened and his cheeks reddened just a bit was endearing. I motioned him to my office, and we walked in perfect silence. Sophia grinned encouragingly, Philip flushed and fidgeted, looking a little panicky, and I marched forward, enjoying the sight of my office, after all the time I spent in D.C.
“Please, take a seat, Philip.”
He looked around my office like a kid in a candy store, and it struck me that he had never been there before. Panic shifted into discomfort as he realized that I was studying him, and finally, he grew confused.
I told him about Jack’s case, which he was mostly familiar with already, then I shared my own uncertainties, but Philip was not entirely shocked to hear them. I told him about the urgency of locating Elana and doing it as quietly as possible. I stressed the importance of his full confidentiality with a sharpness that nearly offended him.
After realizing that I had been wrong about Cole, it was difficult to put my trust in somebody else, but Sophia had been right. I couldn’t work on my own, and I needed help.
“This is my guy,” I said, handing him a business card.
Reid Tanner was a college dropout, but a magnificent private investigator and tech-savvy. In fact, he was so slick that I suspected he was an undercover hacker, but where he was concerned, I preferred not to ask questions whose answers I wasn’t going to like.
“Tanner is frequently brusque, but tremendously competent, so don’t let him scare you. You could call him in the middle of the night, and he’d still get the job done.”
“I don’t think I should really do that,” Philip replied, faking terror, then he smiled coyly.
“You’re probably right,” I agreed and smiled too. Philip could also be funny—that was a new side of him, and I liked it.
“I need you to contact him and find where Elana Beckham is. It’s important that all communication between you and him remains private and completely unrelated to me. I suspect I am being monitored, so when you have any results, I would ask that we meet somewhere else, somewhere secure.”
“But shouldn’t that secure place be here, at the firm? Unless you think your office has been bugged,” Philip trailed off and looked around suspiciously.
“Truth be told, I’m not sure of anything at this point. Even what we’re saying now may be overheard, in which case, Elana is in more danger than we think.”
“If your office is tapped,” he whispered, “you could be accused of colluding with the prosecution and breaking attorney-client privilege.”
“I haven’t broken any privileges, but if Jack Stewart is guilty, I cannot be part of this charade.”
I didn’t add that embarking on this journey I had more to fear than an accusation of colluding with the prosecutor. Whoever looked for Jennifer’s secret was in as much danger as the one who still possessed it.
“Yet.”
“Philip, I know what I am asking is very difficult and potentially dangerous. I won’t hold it against you if you refuse.”
“I want to help,” he said, his eyes blazing with determination.
“Good,” I nodded and stood, stretching my hand out to him. His handshake was firm and cordial. “Then find Elana Beckham, but keep in mind that if we find her and we are not careful, we might put her in more danger than she’s already in.”
“Because we could lead the killer directly to her doorstep.”
“Exactly.”
&
nbsp; Philip threw me another somber look although I suspected he was secretly excited about the whole ordeal, then he made to leave.
“Also,” I stopped him, “you should give him this.”
I pulled out of my purse a clear zipper bag that contained the note I had received in D.C. with the cryptic message. Philip studied it with an arched brow. In his confusion, with his locks covering his forehead, he looked younger than his years. I found myself smiling and nearly stroking the hair out of his face. If I’d had a little brother, I imagined he would have looked just like Philip.
“Have Tanner run the card for fingerprints. Someone left it in front of my hotel room in D.C.”
By the time I left the firm, Philip’s desk was empty, and Sophia rolled her eyes in a way that indicated he had been gone a while. He must have already been handling his secret assignment.
I WENT HOME EARLY TO prepare for dinner with Christina and Logan. At seven o’clock sharp, a knock had me sprinting to the door with an excited grin on my lips. The smile faded some when I found nobody waiting in the hallway, but it grew enormous once my eyes stumbled on an adorable teddy bear with a heart of pink and white roses between its paws. In the middle of the heart, there was tucked a note that simply said:
On the roof
Marcus was leaning on his elbows against the edge of the building, with his legs crossed at the ankles and a distant look in his eyes. His handsome profile with the sky on fire as the background created a glorious canvas, one that I wished to hang on my wall and never look away from.
I wished I had grabbed the camera he had bought me, but instead, I pulled out my phone and snapped three quick shots, then I put it back in my pocket and walked over to him.
I felt peaceful, settled, just by having him close. Wrapping my arms around him from behind, I settled my palms against the steady pounding of his heart. He straightened, covered my hands, then brought them to his mouth to pepper soft kisses on my knuckles.
“What’s happening in that beautiful mind of yours?” I asked.
Marcus spun me in a pirouette then nestled me against his chest. “I wanted to show you this,” he murmured and glanced around at the flaming sky and the bruised-looking clouds. “It’s peaceful up here, almost another world.”
I caressed his cheek and rose on tiptoes to meet his mouth. There was nothing sexual in the gentle sliding of our lips but a slow, sweet encounter of two souls that needed each other to breathe.
“When I was younger, I used to go up to the roofs of random buildings. It seemed the higher the building, the closer to the sky I was. Sometimes I thought that if I reached out, I could stroke the clouds, feel them under my fingertips.”
I thought of his mother and how he had lost her while he was merely a boy. I thought of the little boy who in her absence still loved her and of the man who had grown to hate missing the people he loved.
The landscape was breathtaking, but that moment was not about the sunset or the beauty of New York as it prepared for sleep. That moment was about Marcus letting me in and showing me a part of him I hadn’t seen before. He was vulnerable.
“You spoil me, Mr. King.”
I looked up at him from under my eyelashes and pressed a kiss to his chest. Marcus smiled, innocently happy and just a tad proud.
“You deserve to be spoiled,” he whispered and kissed the top of my head.
Although my head hardly reached his shoulder, at that moment, with the sunset light reflected in his eyes, his arms tightly wrapped around me, and his lips sketching patterns on my face, I felt as tall as a mountain.
“Plus,” he added, mischief entering his gaze. “I thought I should give you the chocolates myself.”
There was a bench close to the parapet that had been strategically placed by some of my neighbors to face the fabulous view. Marcus bent to retrieve a box of Swiss gourmet chocolates, the kind that combined exquisite pleasure with the velvet texture of sin.
Sheepish, but not exactly repentant, I dug in, and by the time we made it to dinner, I had finished half the box. Marcus winked, promising a different kind of sinful pleasure, and took my hand in his. He knocked on my sister’s door while holding my hand tightly, a little too tightly.
His magnificent body was encased in a gray suit paired with a black V-neck shirt and black shoes. His hair was brushed back, and his cologne gave him the dangerously seductive air that he never lacked. Knowing he had truly prepared for officially meeting my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece made me smile and soften up a little bit more.
“You’re really set on impressing her, aren’t you?”
“I’m really set on impressing you, but since she is your sister and her opinion matters to you, I want her to approve of me, of us.”
I touched his cheek, and Marcus shut his eyes, nuzzling the palm of my hand. I wanted to kiss him, but instead, I only licked my lips, feeling his taste still lingering there.
“She will,” I promised.
It was Logan who opened the door and ushered us inside, a reserved but polite smile on his face. Dressed in dark blue jeans and a white shirt, which I knew Christina had a particular liking for, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the first two buttons left open, Logan seemed fairly casual, except for the tension around his eyes.
Neither Christina nor Marie was in sight, but if Marie’s gurgled chuckles were any indication, they weren’t far off. Logan pulled me into a warm big-brother hug, kissed the top of my head, then released me to inspect Marcus.
“Nice to finally properly meet you,” Logan said, extending his hand and shaking Marcus’s in that firm, painful-looking way men had.
“Likewise,” Marcus answered. “It’s a relief to actually stop stalking Charlotte and finally get an invitation.”
All three of us thought of that night when Marcus had obnoxiously assumed he could join us for a movie. I glared at him and was surprised to hear Logan laugh. That night, he had acted like a stalker, but he was right. It was a relief that now things stood differently.
“I’ll get that,” Logan offered, glancing at the bottle of red wine that Marcus had insisted on buying.
Marcus handed over the bottle, his hip skimming against mine. He was dreadfully civilized, completely cordial, and just a bit distant. I supposed the latter was because he truly felt nervous and didn’t want to do anything that could seem improper to my family. Yet, the heat between us was undeniable each time his body brushed against mine or his fingers encountered my skin.
We followed Logan to the living room, an ample rectangular space, elegantly separated into two sections. The first section consisted of a sitting area colored in shades of powder pink and burgundy. Two identical sofas faced each other, with a glass tea table between them, while two burgundy loveseats, placed perpendicular to the couches, faced the opposite wall where a huge flat screen hung above a contemporary fireplace. Ridiculously, what I loved the most about the room was the fluffy cream carpet underneath the low table.
The second section was a continuation of the first. Separated by an archway, the sitting area expanded into a stylish and very intimate dining room. A mahogany table for six dominated the space. The cream upholstery was still immaculate although I had been witness countless times to Marie’s adventures with her sticky little hands staining the fabric.
The table was set for four, and the spotlights cast a pleasantly dim light. I was humbled to realize that Christina and Logan had taken as much care in preparing for our evening as Marcus had. And little by little, I was growing nervous too.
“Good evening.”
Christina emerged from the kitchen, Marie cradled on her left hip, pulling excitedly at the straps of her black dress. Yet, Christina even in a modest, colorless outfit looked spectacular. I walked to kiss her cheek and retrieve Marie, who started burbling happily as soon as she took notice of our presence. She loved having guests.
“Hi,” Marcus replied hesitantly. He was never hesitant. He was never uncertain of how he should approach
somebody. “These are for you. I hope you like gerberas.”
“They are gorgeous. Thank you.”
Christina received the multicolored flower arrangement, smiled with that innate sensuality of hers, and rose to her tiptoes to press a chaste kiss to Marcus’s cheek.
“Please, take a seat,” Logan said. “I’m famished.”
We laughed and complied without any further ado. Marcus sagged next to me, and I could swear I heard him let out a soft breath of relief. After warning him that my sister was a tad displeased with him, he had certainly not expected to be welcomed and accepted so easily. I had to bite my tongue to muffle a chuckle. Had he imagined they would chop his head off?
“It seems there is someone I hadn’t been formally introduced to,” Marcus cooed and bent to get a better glimpse of Marie, who had decided all of a sudden that she wanted to play the bashful card.
“Oh, Mr. King, may I introduce my niece, Marie Barrett? Marie, this is your aunt’s very formal escort, Marcus King.”
We all erupted into laughter, and Marcus joined us, but he looked at me with a tense expression that warned me not to mock him. He wanted to make everything right tonight, and I respected his devotion. Yet, I also wanted him to enjoy himself. Neither Christina nor Logan would judge him or disapprove of him as long as he didn’t hurt me.
“Can I hold her?” he asked, glancing at Christina rather than at me who I was holding her.
“Of course. She might ruin your clothes, though.” And that Marie frequently did.
Despite her newfound shyness, Marie went willingly to Marcus when he held out his arms. She started playing at once with the buttons of his suit jacket, and encouraged by Marcus’s unexpectedly soft cooing, she took shameless advantage of him.
“She will end up a thief,” I complained, shaking my head when Marie’s little hands dipped into Marcus’s pockets, searching for small souvenirs. As if delighted by her mischief, he smiled brightly, stroking her soothingly on the back.
“She’ll have her aunt to bail her out of jail,” my sister said.
Darkside Love Affair Page 37
