His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels)

by Jenny Holiday

  What he would never be able to make her understand was that he wanted it that way. Yes there had been a traumatic inciting event—that day in the dining hall at camp. Yes, it had been awful in the moment. But he was actually glad it had happened. It had made him who he was, and he liked who he was. He had conquered the world because of the brittleness he’d embraced that day. That he was incapable of giving his heart to a man was a side effect, but not one that bothered him in the least.

  But damn, he was horny. And he blamed Cary Bell. That searing kiss in the hallway the other night had kept him up the rest of the fucking night, and he was still thinking about it.

  Still, he couldn’t call David. Even if Alexander was incapable of romantic feelings, of crushes, he understood, intellectually, that these things existed in the world for most people. And he liked David. David deserved to get what he wanted, not to be led on.

  Sighing, he grabbed his phone and opened Grindr. Ruthless, he tapped on and then rejected half a dozen profiles that had initially looked promising. Maybe he was a snob, but he had standards. He wanted a professional. He wanted someone athletic. He wanted someone with blue-gray eyes.

  What the fuck?

  Where had that come from? Who the hell cared about eye color?

  Disgusted with himself, he dropped the phone on his desk.

  Then it rang, startling the hell out of him.

  He harbored a momentary, irrational thought that it was Cary, but that was impossible. Very few people had his personal number, and Cary was most decidedly not one of them.

  He clamored to pick up the phone and see the display. Johan.

  Right. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought back to that moment at camp. That moment before he’d become brittle, when he could still feel everything. When things like love and betrayal still had meaning.

  He answered the call. “Johan?”

  “Mr. Evangelista, good evening. I’ve got something on your man.”

  He’s not my man, Alexander wanted to protest.

  “It’s probably not what you were thinking of,” Johan went on. “It’s more of an HR issue. That’s why it took me so long to get back to you. I dug deep, and I honestly couldn’t find any evidence of financial impropriety. Nowhere. Rosemann Investments is squeaky clean in that sense.”

  Because Cary Bell is a good guy, a part of him said. He quashed that part.

  “I don’t know what your…aim is,” Johan said. “But I thought this might be useful.”

  Alexander’s aim was to bring Cary Bell to his knees and win the Liu account. So he steeled himself. Sure, he’d fantasized about insider trading or something similarly juicy, but he would take what he could get. “Let’s have it.”

  “Sexual harassment.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Settled out of court, but only on the eve of a trial, with a gag rule. But there was a case brought against him by an employee—a male employee. My sources are saying the plaintiff alleged that Bell propositioned him and wouldn’t take no for an answer, and that those propositions escalated until the plaintiff was forced to take a stress leave.”

  It wasn’t true. Cary wasn’t the type. But it didn’t really matter if it was true, did it? “Any idea who the accuser was?”

  “Nope. The judge granted him the anonymity routinely given to victims of sexual assault.”

  “And that was it on Bell? Nothing else?”

  “Nada.”

  Alexander walked over to his window, which looked south, out across the very southern part of downtown and further over Lake Ontario. “This would be a matter of public record, then, would it not? The case, if not the identity of the accuser?”

  “Yep. It doesn’t seem that your man has a high enough profile that the media got interested—it was just your garden variety sexual harassment case. But sure, it would be in the court’s records.”

  “Could you get a copy of whatever is publicly available?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Alexander hesitated. And in the space of his indecision a phrase floated into his brain.

  Kitchen Boy and I hardly know each other.

  Alexander cleared his throat. “And could you see that whatever you find gets sent—on the down low—to the office of a man named Don Liu?”

  There was a beat of silence on the line. Alexander knew Johan’s MO was that he dug up the info his clients wanted, and that was it. What they did with it was up to them. Even though he spent much of his time mucking about in the underworld, he had a code of sorts. He would find the info, but he wouldn’t act on it. But the bank had given Johan a shit ton of business in the last few years. So Alexander let the silence extend a little longer.

  “I could,” said Johan, and Alexander breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Liu has recently moved—”

  “I know where to find Liu,” Johan interrupted.

  Of course he did. Johan knew everyone. Normally, Alexander hated being interrupted, but he allowed it because he knew he’d asked Johan for something way out of his comfort zone, and clearly the guy wanted off the phone.

  “Thanks, Johan. Send your invoice to my home address.”

  After he disconnected the call, Alexander was confronted by the still-open but useless Grindr app on his phone.

  “Fuck!” he whispered into his empty office.

  Then he laughed, bitterly. Because he couldn’t fuck. That was his problem. Cary Bell had somehow seen to that, hadn’t he?

  So he said it again, louder this time, because why not? He sure as hell wasn’t doing it.

  “Fuck.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Party time. As Cary stood on Don Liu’s porch Saturday afternoon, he rotated his head around like a boxer preparing for a fight. After several meetings and that surreal Cranium experience, he was still in the game. Liu had eliminated First Canadian, informing Cary, Alex, and Marcy that they were still in the running and inviting them to a party at his house.

  Cary accepted a glass of wine from a server who greeted him at the threshold of a great room filled with guests in cocktail attire. He scanned the room looking for one guest in particular. There was no point in even trying to be subtle about it, was there, given how fervently they’d been attempting to suck each other’s faces off exactly a week ago today?

  Cary didn’t know whether he should still try to apologize for camp. Maybe going over to Alex’s in the first place had been a mistake. Ruthless people didn’t apologize. Successful people didn’t apologize. His uncle sure as hell never had. He’d be laughing at him right now for even considering it. You didn’t start a company and will it into life by being soft. He knew that, but after their joking games day—after the way Alex had turned so coldly away from him that day—Cary hadn’t been able to stop thinking about doing what Marcus had suggested and trying to make amends.

  But if he’d been worried that he’d made Alex feel bad all those years ago, possibly even broken his heart, clearly he needn’t have, what with the appearance of the sleepy, disheveled model who had obviously been in Alex’s bed even as Cary had been about to blow a load in his pants merely from kissing Alex. It would have been totally humiliating if it hadn’t been so clear that Alex, model boyfriend aside, had been as into it as Cary had. At least in the heat of the moment.

  The problem was the heat of the moment was by definition transitory. Not real. In real life, a person had to work and go to parties and generally comport oneself as if one was entirely in control of one’s emotional life and in possession of sound judgment.

  “You never answered my question.”

  Case in point. That voice, from behind, low in his ear, was a jolt to his system. It reminded him, paradoxically, of how much they had not talked last time, of hands and mouths and bodies moving silently, purposefully, with no need for language.

  “And what question would that be?” he parried, without turning around.

  Alex came around to face him, and though it should have been impossible, he was even more
gorgeous in his signature slim, perfectly tailored suit than he had been in his underwear. “How did you get up to my condo last Saturday night?”

  “I have my ways.” That sounded better than the truth, which was that there had been no one at the concierge station and what looked like a fob for the elevator lying on the empty desk, so Cary had impulsively conducted a little petty crime. And that he hadn’t expected it to work—that he’d been as surprised as Alex when Alex’s condo door had swung open and put them face to face.

  “How did you even know where I lived?”

  “My friend Dax Harris used to have a place in your building.” Dax had sold his condo a few months ago, and he and his girlfriend Amy split their time between Dax’s house on the Toronto Island and Amy’s condo on the mainland.

  “The software guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice guy.”

  Hearing Alex call someone “nice” was strange. The grown-up Alex didn’t seem like the kind of guy who registered such a bland emotion. “Yeah, I’ve only recently met him, but…” Wait. Was he having a normal conversation with Alex Evangelista about something as mundane as a mutual acquaintance? Weren’t they in a war or…something?

  “I suppose you know him through your cousin. Don’t their companies both have offices in the Lakefront Centre?”

  Cary nodded, wary. “Yeah, I’m there, too.” He braced himself for something. An explosion, maybe, or at least a sneer. Surely bringing up the topic of his office would remind Alex of how much he hated Cary.

  “Ah, if it isn’t my two leading contenders.” Don Liu clasped Cary on the back and then shook hands with both men.

  “What happened to Evergreen Capital?” Alex asked the question that had immediately come to Cary’s mind when Liu called them the leading contenders. Cary had known that First Canadian was out of the running, but this was the first he’d heard about Evergreen.

  “I’ve further winnowed the list,” said Mr. Liu, leading them farther into the crowded room. “You’re the last men standing.”

  Cary glanced at Alex, but the pronouncement seemed to have no effect on him.

  “You mentioned that you two go way back,” Mr. Liu said, “but I don’t think you ever said how you knew each other.”

  “We went to summer camp together as kids,” Alex said without hesitating.

  There’s also the part where we made out in his hallway last week.

  Mr. Liu laughed. “Well, that wasn’t what I expected. Outdoorsmen, are you?”

  “Not anymore,” Alex said.

  “Not enough time, I suppose,” Mr. Liu said.

  “It’s more that I lost my taste for it,” Alex said, talking to Liu but looking at Cary. He didn’t seem as angry as Cary would have expected. Was it possible that their insane make-out session had smoothed things over?

  Alex’s look turned into an icy glare.

  Apparently not. No smoothing going on there. Alex’s apparent civility earlier had probably just been an act, a strategy. Like at the gala, when Alex had arranged it so they were seated next to each other. Should Cary try to apologize again? Finish what he’d started?

  The truth was he did want to finish what they’d started, and he wasn’t talking about the apology.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” said Mr. Liu, “I must greet some other guests.” He echoed both men’s good-byes and left them standing staring at each other.

  More silence. Cary shifted uncomfortably, unable to stop his mind from returning to last Saturday, where they’d also stood and stared at each other in silence—before Alex had pounced on him. God, this was going to be hard. If he couldn’t even stand and look at a fully clothed Alex in public without his dick stirring, how was he going to get through this party, much less this war? Because they were still at war, right? He should say something. He opened his mouth to do just that, not to apologize exactly, but to suggest that maybe they call a truce, but before he could get a word out, Alex turned and walked away.

  …

  “Alexander!”

  Alexander stifled a groan and turned in the middle of putting on his coat. He had almost escaped. He had put his time in, gotten face time with Liu and turned on the charm with Linda, who had been all over him with questions and compliments. It had been a little much, actually, but he’d invited it, hadn’t he, since he’d been so solicitous of her at the games day?

  Regardless, he was jumpy, getting that caged-in feeling he hated. All he wanted to do now was go home to a blessedly empty condo, pour a glass of wine, and take a long, hot shower.

  His mind flashed back again, as it had been doing so frequently the past week, to the image of a leather jacket. To the feel of said leather jacket sliding over his bare chest.

  Maybe he would make that shower a cold one.

  “Alexander, wait!”

  He forced a smile. “Barbara.” They were in the crowded entryway of Liu’s house, where a traffic jam of guests coming and going created a din.

  “Not so fast, I need to speak to you,” she chirped, giving him no choice but to halt his progress. The thing about their weird relationship was that at any given time, you never knew if you were getting Friend Barbara or Dominion Board Member Barbara. And since he reported to the board, Board Member Barbara was technically Boss Barbara. She beckoned him, and, resignedly, he followed her through the house and out a pair of French doors that led from the kitchen to a patio with a pool. Leave it to Barbara to have the whole place scoped out. It was a chilly May and too early in the season for the pool to have been opened, so they had the patio to themselves. The cool air was a relief. He wasn’t usually bothered by parties and social interactions. Hadn’t been for years and years. But ever since he’d spoken with Cary, he’d been counting the moments until he could get out of this one.

  Barbara steered him to a corner of the patio. “I understand the bank is courting Don Liu.”

  Crap. It was Board Member Barbara. And how the hell had she found out? He’d instructed Sara to keep it on the down low. They were going to win, but it was better to hit the board with a huge and unexpected piece of good news than to have them riding him about it as the process unfolded.

  He bowed his head, not wanting to show his frustration. “We are.”

  She waited until he looked up to say, “You should have told me. I can help.”

  He didn’t want to win the account because Barbara worked her social connections. He wanted to win it because he was the goddamned best. But, a little voice in his head piped up, if he won, it wouldn’t be because it had been a fair fight. So many times he’d almost called Johan, told him to call off mailing Liu the court document. There was just no way Cary had done it. He wasn’t a predator. But then Alexander would stop with his hands poised over his phone and tell himself that all he was doing was sharing information that was already public. He would tell himself that Cary’s appearance at his house, his bullshit apology, had all been designed to shake him. It was all warfare. And then he would put down the phone.

  “Linda Liu seems to have taken a shine to you,” Barbara said.

  He nodded. “She runs some of her father’s companies. And she has his ear.”

  “Does she know you’re gay?”

  He shrugged. “It’s common knowledge.” He’d wondered the same thing himself in there, but it wasn’t like he was going to start making “in case you’re attracted to me—not that I’m assuming you’re attracted to me—you should know I’m into guys” speeches to Don Liu’s daughter.

  “The board will want you to do everything in your power to get Liu,” Barbara said.

  “Jesus, I’m not playing straight, Barbara,” he snapped.

  She shook her hand and waved her hands around in front of her face. “I know. It was a foolish idea. I dismissed it as soon as it came out of my mouth. But you need to understand how high the stakes are. Your successful courting of Liu will reflect well on you when it’s performance review time.”

  It almost sounded like a threat, li
ke she was implying that his job might be in trouble if he didn’t win the account. Forget the fact that the bank had done nothing but thrive and post stellar returns under his leadership. “Are we done?” he asked, trying to keep the anger out of his tone. Barbara didn’t deserve his anger. This wasn’t personal. It was just business.

  “No.”

  He sighed and leaned against a deck post, settling in for more strong-arming by the board via Barbara.

  “I also understand that you broke up with your model boyfriend?”

  And quickly enough to give him whiplash, Board Member Barbara had transformed into Friend Barbara. “He wasn’t my boyfriend. We weren’t dating, per se.”

  “Well, I for one would love to ‘not date’ a model.” She made quotation marks with her fingers.

  He sighed. “How did you hear?” Though why was he even asking? Barbara knew everyone in this damned city. She was the poster child for the term “well-connected.”

  “I ran into the poor dear at Edwina Campbell’s garden party.”

  Ah. Alexander couldn’t help but smile at that. David had been hinting about wanting Alexander to go to that high-society party with him. Maybe it was heartless, but he took a kind of smug satisfaction in not having had to.

  “Is it true?” Barbara asked.

  “Well, since we were never really together, I’m not sure you can precisely call it breaking up.”

  Barbara waved her hand dismissively. “Not together, my ass. Looks like a duck…”

  “We spent time together, sure, but—”

  “Well,” she interrupted. “That’s what he called it. ‘Broken up.’ In fact, I think his exact phrase was “Alexander dumped me Saturday night.”

  Alexander waited for the rest of it. Surely if David had been that chatty with Barbara, he had told her the rest, trotted out the story of his midnight visitor. When she said nothing, merely stood there with her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised, he said, “He was crowding me. I’ve told you that. I told him that from the beginning. I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”