She was here, a warm and willing woman. He could say yes and give his aching flesh respite. Dear God, the very thought of it sent a shudder of lust up his spine. The body he’d forced into numbness for so long was roaring back to life with a vengeance.
But he could sense a sorrow in her, a sense that this was all she merited, a furtive coupling on a cot in the basement of the place where she submitted every night to the greedy gazes of any man willing to pay money to watch. An ex-con she barely knew.
She was entitled to better. And he might not deserve much, but maybe he was, too.
“I won’t try to tell you I’m not tempted. You’re a pretty woman, Gloria.”
She snorted softly, her mouth twisting.
He pitched his voice low. “You don’t think I understand about having to survive?”
Her glance was startled, her eyes, for once, naked and vulnerable.
“There are things that you don’t—” He looked away, shook his head. Then he fastened on her again. “No matter how much I want to take you up on that offer, you have a right to more than the trouble I could bring you.”
Her mouth tightened again. “I don’t need the bullshit, Lucas. I understand.”
“No, you don’t.” He took a step forward. “What I’m saying is that I—” He let out a huff, then inhaled deeply before continuing. “I could use a friend right now. Sex is easy to find, but friends…well, that’s a lot harder.”
He didn’t much like touching or being touched—except, he’d discovered, by Tansy. But this woman seemed as though she could use a friend as badly as he could. So he held out a hand and ran it over her hair very lightly.
She leaned into his palm, and tears spilled. “Friends can make love, unless—” She studied him. “There’s another woman, isn’t there?”
“Not—” He sighed. “I don’t know. It’s…complicated.”
“Want to talk about it?”
For a moment, he was tempted almost more than by the offer of sex. Confiding in someone, trusting someone…
No. That kind of faith had deserted him years ago.
“Maybe later. Right now, I’d better get finished. Want me to walk you to your train before I do?”
Gloria’s lips curved slightly. “You know what your problem is, Lucas? You’re a nice guy. Anybody ever tell you what happens to nice guys?”
Lucas frowned. “I’m not nice. Don’t kid yourself.”
“That what’s holding you back from this woman? You think you can’t be her knight in shining armor?”
“I can’t.”
“I suspect that you’re wrong. Maybe she does, too.” She stood on her toes and pressed one soft kiss to his cheek. “I’ll be fine, but thanks for the offer. See you tomorrow.” With that, she slipped out the door.
They were both wrong. He was a landless knight with rusty armor, a champion without a sword. He lived in a basement room and slept on a cot. Carlton Sanford had money and power and—
And if Lucas stayed away, Sanford might have Tansy.
Hell. He would go back, there was no sense lying to himself. As Lucas stripped and washed himself and carefully folded the secondhand clothes he’d bought to replace prison-issue new, he faced himself in the tiny, cracked mirror and wondered what the hell Tansy saw.
Because he saw old eyes, tired eyes in a face that was still prison-pale. A man who’d survived, but just barely, and had no business tilting at windmills.
But inside him, Tansy had spread peace for those few moments, had stirred a reckless hope. She made him want to believe that he could be more. Could be enough.
Sliding between sheets worn to smoothness, lying in the warmth of a scratchy, ancient army blanket, Lucas rested his head on his hands and stared up at Tansy’s bird perched on the box that served as his nightstand.
And admitted to himself that he wasn’t going to leave her. Not until she was safe.
Lucas muttered the first prayer of his life, spoken to a God in whom he did not believe, that he was not making yet one more mistake for which Tansy would pay.
Kat entered the tiny, smoky bar safely locked behind a plastic forest of decals shielding the windows from the slimmest possibility of light. She sucked in the cigarette smoke to relieve the stink of the streets outside, the mingled odors of fish and bones and blood. The streets were hosed down every day, but ancient cobblestones had absorbed the smells of generations of butchers whose gory wares graced the tables of the finest restaurants in town.
Why this little bar had become a hotspot for the trendy, she would never understand, except that the dilettantes of New York were constantly on the prowl for virgin territory to proclaim their own, to be absorbed in the timeless ritual of those who create nothing but feed like vampires off those who do.
Bohemian SoHo had moved to Chelsea, then been displaced again by vampires too trendy or too poor for the West Side. Way down on the food chain, artists had lost their havens, forced farther and farther from those who feasted on their blood and bones. Many no longer lived in the city but had retreated to Brooklyn or Queens.
Kat was aware that she could be called a queen of the vampires herself, but she chose to consider herself a patron. In truth, she had no more money to her name than those whose work she showcased.
Danny, the lesbian bartender who ruled this roost when Tim Mulgrew, the owner, was gone, shot Kat a look loaded with her usual loathing. “What the fuck do you want?”
Kat bared her teeth. “Good evening to you, too, Dan-i-elle.” She’d found out Danny’s given name and used it relentlessly.
“Fuck off.”
Kat leaned over the bar, showing generous cleavage, cognizant of just how offensive it would be. “I’d like Sex on the Beach, Danielle,” she said with a sweetness sure to rot the teeth.
“Why don’t you just take that tramp ass home and get out of my face?”
“Danny, the lady bothering you?” a deep voice spoke over Kat’s shoulder.
A quick shiver shot through Kat’s body. Of all the nights, all the places.
“First off, she’s no lady, Gamble,” Danny retorted. “Second, the day that little twat bothers me is the day I hang up my spurs.”
“And wouldn’t that send legions into despair?” Kat reached for the very dry martini Danny had mixed, instead, knowing Kat’s true tastes.
Behind her, Gamble unbent long enough to laugh, and the sound of it sent sparks down her spine.
Danny smiled at him and nodded dismissal to Kat.
Equally satisfied with their exchange, Kat nodded back.
“You going to turn around or are you afraid to face me?” he asked.
Kat took a long sip first, closing her eyes to steady herself. Then she complied, drawing in a deep breath and watching his gaze drop to the very low-scooped neck of her skintight black cotton top, then travel down her hot-pink excuse for a skirt. “The man who could make me afraid hasn’t been hatched.” She offered him the thinnest pretext of a smile, then perused his body with insolent languor. “What are you doing out of your cave? Won’t it ruin your art to have actual congress with humans?”
He spared no answering smile, his face a blank—except for those eyes that burned a vivid blue. “You sharpen that tongue every day? Use a whetstone or a strop?”
Kat felt the day’s melancholy slide away. God, she loved a good, rousing fight. “Sometimes I practice on small children, just to keep the edge gleaming. Though I prefer better sport.” She shrugged elaborately. “One can’t always be too picky.”
His mouth quirked in a reluctant grin. “So you come here when you need a little extra honing from Danny?”
She cocked one eyebrow and sipped again, taking her sweet time. “Careful, Gamble Smith. I might get the idea that you’re interested.” She perched one hip on a bar stool, aware that her skirt would ride up her thighs.
His blazing glance followed the flash of skin. He swept down his lashes, and the room abruptly dimmed. Cooled.
She found that she wanted that
heat back. So she crossed her legs, sure that her skirt was almost up to her crotch now. Holding the bar with one hand, her drink in the other, she leaned toward him and whispered, “Are you, Gamble? Interested?”
His eyes shot open, pure blue flame roaring out. He stepped close, grabbed her shoulder, sent her martini sloshing over her hand as he jerked her toward him. With one knee, he shoved her legs apart and stepped between them, bringing his mouth to within a breath of hers.
“You think you hold the power, teasing every man you meet until he’s stone-ached half out of his mind. You think you’re safe because you choose when to stay and when to leave.”
His harsh whisper stung her ears, and she wrestled down a tiny spark of nerves. “Get your hands off me.” Her own voice was shrill with unaccustomed fear.
“Isn’t that what you want? To drive every man you meet to distraction? Isn’t that why you dress like a trollop and cock-tease your way through the male population of New York?”
“Trollop?” Kat had been working up a good high dudgeon until he said that word. Now she started laughing. “Good God. Trollop.” It set her off again. “I haven’t heard that word since I left Dimmitt.”
Gamble’s rugged face couldn’t seem to settle into one expression. Fury turned to outrage, outrage to a wry grin. Wry grin became outright astonishment. “Dimmitt? Texas? You’ve been to Dimmitt? No way.”
“Way.” She held up one hand in a Scout’s promise. “Spent from eight to eighteen there. Shoot—” She was surprised at how easily she slipped back into the drawl that had become a child’s refuge. “I’ve even been to Amarillo, sugar.”
He laughed, the free, easy, straight-from-the-belly kind. “Well, hell. If you’ve been to Amarillo, why would you ever need to come to New York?”
The glowering artist morphed into someone she might actually like to know, God help her.
“It’s home.”
“Is New York ever truly home?”
Kat thought about how hard she’d fought to make it back. “Yes. For me it is…always was,” she said softly, lost in recollection of days when she’d been much younger, the world brighter. “I was born here…and it took a long time to find my route back.”
“Careful.” His eyes were very, very serious. “You just might make me feel sorry for you.”
“Do that, and I’ll have to kick in your teeth,” she growled. But they both understood she was playing this time.
He grew too still. “This is a problem, Kat.” He held her gaze until she yearned to wriggle away, but he stood too close. “I don’t want to like you, damn it.”
She slid off the stool, her body unavoidably grazing his. He reached for her, but she danced out of his grasp, tossing her head and backing away, slanting him her best hellcat smile. “I don’t want to like you, either.” She turned to go, casting one last sally over her shoulder. “So let’s just don’t.”
He grabbed her arm and spun her around so quickly the smile was still firmly in place. The man she faced was big and rugged and smoldering beneath the surface. Her smile vanished under the intensity of his gaze.
“I’m not one of your boy toys, Kat. You come with me you won’t leave until I let you.”
Molasses-slow heat oozed through her blood while needles of something akin to fear prickled over her skin. For once in her life, she was devoid of a snappy retort. Part of her wanted to run from something she could not name, something preternatural that put every nerve in her body on alert.
But then there was no time. His head lowered. The heat of him surrounded her like a second skin.
Something inside Kat shivered. And for the first time in many years, she didn’t stand and fight. Instead she skimmed to the side like quicksilver, veering between packed bodies, headed toward the dark hallway leading to the restrooms.
Gamble moved to pull her back—
Kat ran. And cursed herself.
Chapter Nine
Mona peered down at Forty-second Street from her office window, and wondered how long ago darkness had so securely closed the door on the day. She vaguely remembered Gaby telling her she was leaving—a date, had she said?—but she’d been too busy seeking a way to make the figures before her lie. Or murmur sweet nothings in her ear, the way Fitz used to do when he—
She squeezed her eyes shut, whirling back to the computer screen and the dreaded numbers. Circulation was down for the third month in a row, and Mona’s arm muscles screamed from the strain of preventing failure from dragging her over the edge of a very steep cliff while Jack Bradshaw looked on, amusement on his too-smooth, vulpine face.
The numbers weren’t terrible yet—still small enough to reverse with socko changes in layout, with the new blood she was determined to infuse. But the advertisers would notice soon, if they had not already, and she would lose the money to effect those lifesaving amendments.
And Bradshaw would be there. He was waiting for her to fail, had been for the whole year since she’d been given the plum of editor-in-chief of the magazine he thought should be his.
Fitz had offered more than once to rearrange Bradshaw’s features for her. She’d laughed it off, sure that she’d moved ahead in a decisive manner, that she wouldn’t feel the bite of his fangs nipping at her heels for long.
Maybe she should ask Fitz—
Mona shook her head. First she’d have to see him; they’d have to be in the room together, awake—something that hadn’t happened since last weekend. Some mornings there was evidence that he’d slept beside her, but never in the old way, never in that sleep-softened tangle of limbs, of waking in the night and hearing the steady beat of his heart beneath her cheek, feeling the crisp sandy chest hair, the weight of his arms and legs as she cuddled into the comfort of his body.
Theirs was a correspondence of texts and notes and voicemail messages, of obstacles to shared dinner, of showers and breakfasts grabbed alone. She couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking lately—she didn’t even know if he’d found a house he liked because she was dancing so hard around the chasm that had opened up before them.
Fitz was, too. Normally a man who confronted problems head-on and dispatched them, he seemed to be paying his respects to what had always been so alive between them by not disturbing a truce so fragile it might be spun of sugar. A candy-coated replica of what had always been so real but now felt utterly insubstantial.
Mona longed to tell someone how scared she was, but there was no one she could trust. For ten years now, Fitz had been her confidante, the only one who knew how hard she ran to keep from falling into the abyss that had always been there, waiting for her. From childhood, Mona had been alone. Paris and Tansy had been one entity, the light of Mama’s eye, and all Daddy had ever cared about was Mama. When Kat had come so many years after, Mona had tried to love her, but Kat had never needed anyone’s love. Exile had drawn them closer, but seven years was a lot of distance to bridge when it connected a teenager to a child. Now they were grown, and the distance of age had given way to one of lifestyle. Kat made her affectionate contempt for Mona’s choices only too clear.
Mona’s gaze fell on the teacup and saucer that sat on her credenza. The set had accompanied her everywhere since the day she’d picked it out of Mama’s things as her keepsake. Nana had told her that Mama always loved the porcelain so thin it was translucent, the tiny scarlet rosebuds intertwined on cup and plate, the deep, glowing green of leaf and stem, the tiny gold dots for accent.
There was a minuscule crack at the base of the cup, but within Mona, a faint memory stirred, of days when the crack didn’t exist. Of having tea all by herself with Mama in the dusty golden light pouring through the high windows of the apartment. She didn’t remember where Paris and Tansy had been or why she’d been granted this rare boon of time alone with her mother, of feeling the diamond-bright radiance of Juliette’s full attention. All she could recall was that she’d handled the cup and saucer with exquisite care, terrified she’d spill tea or drop the cup and the magic would vanish
, that she’d find herself invisible again. Back in the shadows cast by all those radiant beings: her achingly beautiful mother, her famous father, and the twins just one year older but also bathed in the golden light. Mona was the darkling child, the pentimento…the umber shading no one really saw.
She’d been very, very careful, and she’d been rewarded. Still, she could hear her mother’s voice, clear and so lovely it made your heart ache, made you want to sit quietly at her feet and simply listen. You’re a very good girl, Mona. You always try so hard. Juliette had been heavily pregnant with Kat then, so there had been no room for Mona to sit in her lap as she’d fervently wished. But the words and the tone had hugged her close, had warmed the dark, hungry place that gnawed inside her.
The screensaver suddenly swept away the figures on her computer, and Mona blinked. She’d been a good girl all her life, and where had it gotten her?
Her glance skimmed over the papers spread on her desk, across the folder with her notes on the party for her father. All of a sudden, she was swamped to her eyeballs with her good girl deeds, with the chains around her neck dragging her under. The magazine. Her father. Tansy, for whom she’d be responsible for the rest of her life.
And Fitz. Fitz and his damn baby craving. What the hell would he do with an infant? He’d get over this funk and go back to his hard-driving life—and who’d be stuck in the sticks being the good girl, attempting to be enough for some poor kid when she couldn’t even be enough for herself?
Her mother had done that. Been seduced into sacrificing everything for her father—her career, her identity, her bright, shining light. Mona would not. Fitz had known from the first how important it was to her never to be invisible again.
With choppy strokes, Mona shut down her computer and began gathering up her usual mountain of work to take home—then, quick as a lightning bolt, it hit her. She didn’t want to drag any work home. She wasn’t even sure she had any desire to go to the place that seemed now to be prison, not refuge.
Mercy Page 11
