by Julia Kent
“Wuss!” Vince called back, working on finding a way to shoulder a sandbag on each shoulder. He hadn’t broken a sweat.
Gerald felt the love.
“Get your ass on the rowing machine and warm up. Then get in here and push shit around from one spot to the other.” Vince paused and glared. “Bring my coconut oil?”
“I brought you KY jelly. Tastes better.”
“Quit talking about sex. That’s like dangling a piece of yarn in front of a kitten and never letting them play with it.”
“Since when did you start comparing yourself to a kitten, Vince?”
“Since I started dreaming about pussy nonstop.”
The comment caught Gerald off guard, his stone face rippling briefly as his heart sped up with the misplaced notion that Vince somehow knew why he was already awake when the text had come in.
“You, too? Man, we’re fucking monks, aren’t we?”
“You may be fucking monks, Vince, but I don’t swing that way.”
The guy grunted. “Warm up. Quit talking about your pecker.” He frowned. “You got a new woman?”
“An old one.” He regretted the words instantly.
“You’re sleeping with elderly women now?”
“Ha ha.”
“What do you mean, ‘an old one’?”
“Nothing.”
Vince had a way of stopping and staring at you until it wasn’t so much that he pried the truth out of you. Those eyes made the truth cry Uncle and flee.
“I saw an ex of mine.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Not Suzanne?” He’d mentioned her over the years.
“Yep.”
“How in the hell did that happen?”
“She lives here. In Boston.”
“And you just happened to run into her in a city full of hundreds of thousands of people? You’re a walking coincidence. Buy a lottery ticket today, man.”
“She delivered inheritance papers to me.”
Shocking Vince wasn’t easy. His face was damn near comical with surprise. “You? Inherit what?”
“Long story.”
“I got all day, man.”
“Don’t want to talk about what I’m inheriting.”
“You about to be rich?”
He snorted.
“Then let’s talk about Suzanne,” Vince continued. “You back together?”
“No.”
“You want to be?”
The short inhale, then hitched breath, that took over his body was unscripted.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Vince said dryly. “You gonna tell her the truth this time?”
“Fuck off.”
“Gerald, man, you gotta tell her.”
“We’re done.” Before Vince could respond, Gerald shoved earbuds in and jumped on the old rowing machine. Within two minutes, he was in the zone.
The zone where he couldn’t hear Vince.
Old Jorgen, the guy who owned the place, limped between two truck tires and said something to Vince, who paused and turned to give Jorgen his complete attention. Vince would eat a mountain for the guy. Old Jorg was about ninety, with the kind of near-perfect posture in old men that made them pigeon-chested. His hips couldn’t hide his age, and he walked a little bowlegged, but otherwise had the stature of a twenty year old.
Jorg had let Vince live in the office when his step-dad kicked him out at fifteen. Gerald hadn’t known Vince then. Just knew the tale. Vince had become a personal trainer the old-fashioned way: by being a towel boy for the crazy boxers who came in here. Step by step, he’d fought his way up.
That was literally all Gerald knew about Vince’s past.
And Vince seemed to like it that way.
Fine. Gerald wasn’t exactly the spill-your-guts type, either. They bonded over torn muscle fibers.
The more, the better.
As Gerald raced through his warm-up, he tore his eyes away from the old man and the beast, listening to the heavy metal pounding through his earbuds. If he closed his eyes, he could recall the image of Suzanne’s gloriously nude body.
Hey, there.
Bad idea. The rowing machine suddenly became unbearably uncomfortable.
He looked at Old Jorg and imagined the locker room toilet.
Better.
Understanding why he’d had that dream wasn’t exactly rocket science. Stimulus, response.
See Suzanne, dream about her.
But truly grasping why he kissed her—and why she let him—was a puzzle.
He hadn’t even opened those damn inheritance papers. Tucked away in his gym bag, he’d thrown them in on a lark. Vince had a keen way of cutting through bullshit to get to the down-and-dirty heart of an issue.
He’d ask him after they moved the equivalent of a skyscraper in weight.
A pinch at his ear and the muted bliss of death metal was interrupted by Vince’s hot breath.
“Gotta go. Emergency.”
“What’s wrong?”
But Vince was gone, the front door swinging, Old Jorg watching with blinking eyes, like an old wrinkled owl.
Shit.
Gerald tucked his worry away, knowing Vince would have told him if he’d wanted to. Instead, he jumped off the rowing machine and made a beeline for Vince’s tires.
Might as well flip rubber if he wasn’t going to wear any.
Bracing his legs as he lunged down, he lifted the huge, stinking black mass of petroleum, end over end, three times. Glutes screaming, he ignored them. Bodies in motion don’t sound like people screaming, thank God.
Self-torture he could handle.
By the time every muscle in his body shook, he was dripping with sweat and no more enlightened, but at least he wasn’t plagued by a racing mind with nothing better to do.
Vince came jogging back in just as Gerald sat on a boxer’s chair, drinking water.
“Wimped out already?”
“Where’d you go? Tea party?”
“Emergency,” Vince said tersely.
“Sorry. Everything okay?”
“Don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Fine. Don’t talk. Lift.”
“Too edgy. Spar with me.”
Gerald snorted. “I might be a masochist, but I’m not suicidal. I can tell you’re stoked. Too much anger. Too much energy. Pick some naive kid in here and beat him. I’m not going in the ring with you.”
Vince cursed.
“Run with me, then.”
“I’m wiped, man.” Plus, whatever had made Vince leave like that loomed over them like a bad spirit, not quite ready to move on.
“Too wiped to run?” Vince walked over to the weight racks and grabbed a vest. He began tucking little weight pouches into the pockets. By Gerald’s count, he loaded up eighty pounds.
“Three miles,” Gerald said grudgingly.
“That’s like getting your dick stroked over the pants, man.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a tease.”
“You’re comparing being your running partner with that?”
“Sex brain, man. I’ve got it bad.”
Bzzz.
Gerald’s phone buzzed in his bag, which was on a long bench next to him. He grabbed the phone.
James McCormick.
“My boss? What’s one of my bosses doing texting me at six a.m. on my day off?”
“They own your ass, G.” Vince began running in place, wearing a hundred-pound vest. “C’mon. Get it done.”
Gerald read the text:
I have a medical appointment that has been moved to eight a.m. Pick me up at my residence.
The guy got to the point.
Yes, sir, he typed back. Received.
“I gotta work early,” Gerald said with a sigh, half relieved not to need to run, half sad to have to drive James McCormick to the cancer center. For the past half a year, Gerald had managed his boss’s appointments, which the elder McCormick hid from his sons. The old man asked him
to keep it quiet, and Gerald was the only one he trusted to see him in a weakened state.
“G, it’s your day off.”
“Not anymore.”
“Fishing for a reason to leave?”
“No. James McCormick needs me for an eight o’clock medical appointment.” He knew he could take a different day off this week. The old man would never say it, but he needed Gerald—and only Gerald—for this errand.
“Haven’t met him yet.” Vince grunted. “Andrew’s decent.” He frowned. “Medical, huh? Is it serious?”
Vince’s casual tone, calling Andrew McCormick, CEO of Anterdec, Inc., by his first name, made Gerald shake his head.
“How do you get away with that? Andrew McCormick insists I call him sir.” Changing the subject meant preserving confidentiality.
“Charisma. Either you’ve got it, or you’re a loser.”
“You misspoke, Vince. You meant to say bullshit.”
Vince grabbed a medicine ball and pitched it at Gerald’s head. Gerald ducked. The thwock of the weight against the padded wall sounded like a gut punch.
“What was your emergency, Vince?”
“My dad.”
Gerald sucked in air sharply. “He’s bugging you again?” Once Vince began making steady money as a trainer, his deadbeat dad came back into the picture. Junkies love success.
“Yeah. This time, he OD’d.”
“He in the hospital?”
Vince’s braid swung across his back as he shook his head. “Nah. Refused transport. One of his junkie buddies knows I work out here, so...”
“I’m sorry.”
Vince gave him the hairy eyeball. “Go to work for the billionaires, Mr. Heir. Just remember we peons when you’re rolling in it.”
Ducking just in time, he laughed and shot through the front doors, wondering if he could beat rush hour traffic to get to Anterdec in time for a shower before his shift began.
As he left, he caught Vince’s eye, the look serious.
And then he remembered the inheritance papers in his bag.
It was going to be a long day.
A very, very long day.
Chapter 8
“I’ve never seen you behave so unprofessionally, Suzanne. What happened to the iron maiden? You’ve been rock solid for seven years. Hell, half the junior associates are convinced you’re part robot.” Norman Phelps, one of the law firm’s founders, glared at her from his desk. Remaining seated, wearing half-glasses, he looked up over the edge of both lenses with the air of a well-fed old man who doesn’t have time for anything but his own agenda.
Eight a.m. was too early for this. Suzanne took a long, hot sip from her black coffee and watched him over the rim of her cup, trying to decide how to respond.
With aggression, or more aggression?
“The fact that I’ve worked here for seven years without a single personal request like this should be a testament to my robotic nature, Norm.” She glared back. Suzanne wasn’t taking crap from anyone. This was anemic compared to the face-offs she’d had over the years from opposing counsel, various judges, and at times, her own firm colleagues.
Norm needed to try harder.
Suzanne wanted someone other than Gerald and herself to be pissed off at.
“I can’t take you off the Hopewell-Wright case, Suzanne.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“The difference matters to me.”
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
“Then how about I take my client base and find a firm where it does matter?”
Never before had she made the threat. She’d thought it, sure, plenty of times over the past year, since making partner. Not quite a year—eleven months.
“I literally cannot take you off the case.” Phelps looked at the open door, and to Suzanne’s amazement (which she hid carefully), he stood, crossed the room, and shut the door with a barely audible click that felt like a signature in blood on a contract from hell.
When he turned to face her, his eyes were tired. Norm Phelps wasn’t the most attractive of men (at least, to Suzanne), with hair the color of a young lion, artfully colored on a regular basis, and overly-white teeth that glowed as a result of his burnt-orange tan.
But he wasn’t an asshole, either.
She had to remind herself of that fact daily. Take nothing personally, his executive legal secretary, Inez, had told Suzanne on her first day. Not one single word.
“Look. The Hopewell case is sensitive. We’re in a nasty grey area with this one.”
“Grey area?” Phelps, Miller and Lin didn’t do grey areas. Nothing but black and white. She stiffened. “Are you asking me to act in ways that could compromise my license?”
“God, no, Suzanne.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, lifting his reading glasses up over his eyebrows. “You know I would never do that.”
“That’s not quite true. Remember the Kikendaal case?”
His sigh deepened.
“And the Brownlea, and the—”
“Fine. Fine. Let’s just say that your friend—”
“Ex-fiancé.”
“Your ex is inheriting one hell of a mess.”
Protectiveness for Gerald kicked in. “What?”
“It’s an artifact.”
“I know that.”
“A very rare artifact. A pre-Buddhist item that was supposed to have been destroyed by the Taliban.”
She frowned. “What?”
“And allegedly carries a curse.” He rolled his tongue in his cheek, jaw tightening.
“Phelps, now I know you’re pulling my leg. This isn’t a joke.” She let out a derisive snort.
He paled.
“I know. I’m not the type to get caught up in stupid New-Agey crap like this. But Harold Hopewell was clear: Phelps, Miller handles the case, and Suzanne Dayton is the point person. Period. The archaeologist from the MFA will be here at two p.m. for the meeting.”
“Meeting?” She gave him a blank look.
He waved a dismissive hand. “Letitia must have put it in your calendar.”
“Letitia is my paralegal. Not my assistant.”
“Oh. Right. That’s Margaret.” He shook his head quickly, as if re-centering.
Norm wasn’t usually this off. “What’s wrong?” she asked, as neutrally as possible.
“Nothing.”
“Margaret has been my admin for three years, Norm. You don’t magically forget someone like that.”
He swallowed, hard, the shell rolling off him, revealing the deeper man. The nervous glance at the door made her internal danger radar go off.
“This conversation didn’t happen.”
How bad was this?
“Of course not.”
“Look, the Hopewell case is a hot potato. The fact that your ex is an heir is a sick bit of bad luck.”
“We’re making decent billable hours off it,” Suzanne reminded him.
“And the terms of the will state that you, and you alone, must handle the case.”
She laughed. “Good one. That won’t hold up in court.”
Alarm filled his face. “We can’t take this anywhere near a court!”
She narrowed her eyes. “I think we’d better stop right here, Norm, and you’d damn well better explain what this is all about.”
Curses? Pre-Buddhist artifacts? The Taliban?
And what the hell did Gerald have to do with any of it?
“If you don’t, I resign. I know how many billable hours I bring into the firm. You guys need me. So spill.”
“The artifact is a rare religious item. Dates back centuries, likely millennia. Between age, historical value, political value, actual precious metal and gemstone content, and the competition to own it, that damn item may be worth a cool hundred million on the black market, Suzanne.”
Well.
She’d demanded the truth.
And now she had it.
Plunking her stunned as
s into a chair, Suzanne’s coffee dripped out of the small opening on the top as the cup slammed into the tabletop. “Gerald’s inheriting a hundred million dollar artifact? Gerald?” She bit back the phrase my Gerald just in time.
He wasn’t hers.
Even if she could still conjure the taste of that kiss last night.
“He’s inheriting a legal and political nightmare. But the guy has no choice. It’s his fault.”
“What?”
“Have you read the file? The full file?”
“Yes.”
Phelps pulled a fat envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Good. Then you’re ready for this.”
She took the envelope and began to open it. “What’s in here?”
“The rest of the story.” He tossed the envelope on the thick mahogany-topped desk. “Read it.”
She picked it up and took a step toward the door.
“No. In here.”
Suzanne looked at him in disbelief. “I can only read the documents in here? In your office?”
“Those papers do not leave the room. They’re not part of the official record. None of this is. Hell, the actual artifact doesn’t officially exist.”
Alarm buzzed through her bones. “I’m definitely removing myself from this case.”
“Suzanne,” he said softly. Norm Phelps was anything but soft. “Read. Then decide.”
Against her better nature, she pulled the thick batch of papers from the envelope and unfolded them.
And then she read.
And read.
And gaped.
Her coffee was cold when she reached for it, drinking anyhow. After she chugged the entire enormous cup, she looked at Norm. “These papers say that eleven years ago, Gerald Wright stole a very rare religious and cultural artifact from Afghanistan, smuggled it into the U.S., and somehow it landed in the hands of Harold Hopewell.”
“‘Stole’ isn’t the right word.”
“What is?”
“‘Rescued.’ Keep reading.”
She flipped through the papers, speed reading.
Her eyes halted abruptly on a name she hadn’t read or heard in ten years.
