The Client

by Jessica Gadziala

  But she didn't check her phone or look toward the door, didn't glance at the clock on the wall to her left.

  It didn't seem like she was waiting for a significant other.

  All the more intriguing.

  I hung back, letting the next guy try his luck. But the moron didn't even bother to take off his wedding ring when he went up to her.

  That seemed to get her attention when he waved his hand to gesticulate.

  Her head turned slowly, eyes keen, a predator sizing up her prey.

  I couldn't make out the words or the tone when she spoke, but the frigidness of her expression sent a chill through me from a solid twenty feet away.

  The man shriveled before her, shoulders curling in, chin dipping toward his chest.

  By the time she was done speaking, he looked suitably chastened, rushing off. Not to rejoin his friends across the room, but straight out the front door. I imagined home to his loving, unsuspecting wife.

  "Now how is he going to go home and offer his wife his balls if you have them in your pocket?" I asked, moving in beside her, facing forward, nodding at the bartender who already knew my drink. I'd been to this bar many times over the years.

  "That sounds like his problem," she told me. And for an ice queen, that voice was all milk and honey, sweet and smooth. I couldn't help but wonder what it sounded like when it was moaning.

  But one thing at a time.

  "If you're not waiting for your man, and you won't entertain any of the ones who are coming up to you, what are you doing here?"

  "Can't a woman enjoy a drink alone at a bar?"

  "Sure she can."

  "And how do you know I'm not waiting for a man? Have you been watching me?" she asked, half turning her head toward me, cold gaze doing a slow sweep. I wasn't sure I'd ever felt as exposed before as I did right then.

  "Yes," I admitted, figuring it would be useless to lie. "It's your own fault, though. You are very watchable." Something about that seemed to rub her the wrong way. When her head faced forward again, I could have sworn her eyes rolled. "It has been a long time since I saw someone dress three men down that quickly," I added, not ready to give in just yet, even if my usual charms appeared to be failing me.

  "It hasn't been long since three men have deserved it," she shot back.

  "Oh, we can't all be that bad," I told her, smile pulling up.

  "Like you?" she asked, giving me her attention once again. "With the boyish smile and the bone structure that speaks of good breeding and the nice suit, but the casual lack of tie and undone two buttons? You're one of the good ones? With the harem of girls still mooning over you from half a bar away?"

  "So I wasn't the only one doing some watching," I concluded, feeling like I had a leg to stand on now, making my grin go from boyish to cocky. "It was me you were waiting for, wasn't it? Had your heart set on me from the moment you walked in the door. Don't worry, you wouldn't be the first to fall head-over-heels in love with me at first sight," I teased, watching as one of her brows arched up slowly.

  "I wonder what it must say about a man who needs the attention of every woman in a bar?" she mused, speaking to the bartender who looked uncomfortable being put on the spot, seeming to sense her jab was at me, and not wanting to risk his tip.

  "I think it says he knows that it takes many women to fill the space of the one right woman."

  "I'm not the right woman."

  "You don't know what kind of right woman I am looking for."

  "Open legs, closed mouth, most likely."

  "See, now that is where you're wrong. I like mouths open too. Oh, don't look at everything under that cynical lens of yours," I suggested when her lip curled at my wording, misunderstanding my meaning.

  "It is the only lens I have, Mr.—"

  "Arlington. Fenway Arlington."

  "Fenway Arlington," she repeated, and I have to admit that I liked the way my name sounded on her lips. "Does anyone in the world have quite as pretentious a name as you do, Mr. Arlington?"

  "Well, I have a cousin named Love."

  "Their actual name? On their birth certificate?" she clarified, disbelieving.

  "On their birth certificate. And all her monogrammed baby blankets."

  "Alright. Love wins."

  "May I ask your name?" I asked. "Or should I just continue to call you Ice Queen in my head?"

  "Wasp."

  "Wasp?" I repeated, and it was my turn not to believe. "That has to be your bar name."

  "My bar name?"

  "The name you give random men at bars because you don't like the familiarity of them calling you by your actual name."

  There was a moment of bewildered interest before she banked it down.

  "I don't have a bar name. My name is Wasp."

  "Don't worry, Wasp," I told her, letting it drop there, knowing she would ask for more.

  "Worry about what?" she asked, unable to help herself.

  My gaze slid in her direction, holding hers for a long moment.

  "I don't mind getting stung," I told her, dropping some more cash on the bar, getting up, and walking out.

  Wasp, and I was still not convinced that was her actual name, needed to be left hanging. She needed to be on the hook. She wasn't the kind of woman you could seal a deal with in one night. And if she was, I wouldn't have been nearly as interested.

  Chances were, if she was at that bar, then she was staying at the hotel across the street.

  Which meant we had to serendipitously on-purpose happen to cross paths again.

  I shook my head at my driver, deciding to walk back to my own hotel.

  Suddenly, the city that had become so dull to me, everything dimmer and less exciting than when I first arrived, had burst back to life.

  Lights blazed.

  Music blasted.

  Lovers kissed on corners.

  Everything pulsed, begging to be experienced.

  Maybe I wasn't quite so done with Paris after all.

  I mean, I couldn't just leave a woman like her all alone in the city of love, now, could I?

  THREE

  Wasp

  Paris was everything I thought it might be. And more. And less.

  I had experienced that phenomenon more times than I could count over the years. When I built up my expectations to towering skyscrapers that nothing could measure up to.

  There was also something to be said for the fact that I was experiencing it on my own. There was something about sharing a travel experience with someone else that made it even more special.

  To have someone to point out things to.

  Did you see that?

  Do you hear that?

  Oh, my God, get a picture of that.

  I think we need to treat ourselves.

  Alone, I was both the sense of wonder and the voice of reason. So I didn't stop for that third pastry on my walk from my hotel to the corner store where I needed to pick up some fashion tape to be able to put on the dress I was going to wear to meet Fenway Arlington.

  Meet.

  But I'd had my eyes on him for two days leading up to the actual meet-cute.

  I needed to study him, since the client who hired me had been oddly tight-lipped about everything in her emails.

  I was used to women pouring their hearts out to me about their situations, everything from how they and their spouse met right up to when they suspected he was cheating. I knew the names and ages of children, physical descriptions of the porn stars they knew their spouses preferred. I knew their daily schedules and what their favorite drinks were.

  But with Fenway's case, all I got was a couple of cryptic messages claiming he was someone who had caused many international incidents because of women that had needed to be kept out of the society pages by a professional "fixer." And then I was told how he needed to be brought to his knees by a woman, so he could learn the repercussions of his lifestyle.

  That was a cold kind of revenge, if you asked me, but I understood that even more than I did the
hot, raw, exposed-nerve sort of revenge that most women typically approached me with.

  Cold was natural to me.

  And after watching the warmth that was Fenway Arlington—and all the women who flocked around him, pretty little trust fund bunnies—I knew that my natural cold, maybe even amped up a bit, was exactly what was going to set me apart, make me intriguing.

  Pair that with a dress that exposed more than it covered up, not even bothering to put flower petals on my nipples under the slinky material, and I was pretty much catnip to his tomcat self.

  He'd been an easy enough man to find, even in a city as bustling as this one.

  He was a man of wealth which meant he would flock toward places that had VIP sections and top-shelf everything. Which narrowed things down a bit.

  Then once I found him, uglied down in oversized clothes, glasses, and a hat for good measure, he was easy to pick out of a crowd.

  There was a magnetism about him that made you notice him immediately, even if you somehow missed his ridiculously good looks.

  It was almost obnoxious to be both breathtakingly handsome, fit, stylish, and immeasurably wealthy all at once.

  That said, obnoxious was a trait that did seem to come to him naturally at times.

  I'd followed him to a few establishments over the course of those first two nights of surveillance work.

  He was always the one getting loud, starting trouble, urging others to get into some as well.

  He was over-the-top, generous, and completely unconcerned with social mores or actual laws.

  A part of me had worried that, even if I did catch his eye, that his attention span was too short to be able to run a long con on him.

  Then there he was.

  And then he was gone.

  Leaving me hanging.

  Me.

  No one left me hanging.

  No one.

  That was not how it worked.

  I hanged everyone else out to dry.

  Not the other way around.

  I threw back the rest of my drink, got off the stool, and made my way toward the door, heels tapping so hard against the floor in my agitation that I was surprised they didn't snap.

  He thought he was playing me, I decided as I made my way into the elevator in my hotel. He thought that by schmoozing then rushing off, that he was going to have me salivating after him. He thought he had the upper hand.

  Well.

  He was just going to have to learn, wasn't he?

  No one got the upper hand over me.

  Certainly not in the game of cat and mouse that was intrigue and interest and sexual chemistry.

  Oh, no.

  I just had to ramp it up the next time I saw him. And I would see him again. No way was I going to turn down the life-changing kind of money that was being offered to me just because I was pissed off that this man-child thought he could out-intrigue me.

  "I told you not to call me," I grumbled at my phone to Raven, knowing it was barely six in the morning back in Navesink Bank, that she was going out of her way to check in on me so early in the morning.

  "You know I have to worry about you."

  "There's nothing to worry about," I assured her.

  "You are working an international job. There is plenty to worry about."

  She'd broken me when I'd dropped off Wanda. Don't ask me how she managed it, but she'd gotten the truth about the trip out of me. Then she'd promptly started fretting about it.

  "It's a very safe job," I assured her. "Really. The client is like a puppy dog. All tail-wagging and lapping tongue, no brain."

  "How do you know about his lapping tongue?" she asked, tone teasing.

  "Oh, ew. No. Gross."

  "So he's ugly?"

  "No. He's actually stunning. But that is beside the point."

  I wasn't necessarily morally opposed to sleeping with a mark. In fact, there were not many things my moral code was against. But I didn't want it to go that way. It gave some of the power away. The women held all the power up to the moment that backs hit mattresses. After that, in many situations, she ended up on the losing side. It was bad business.

  Sure, sometimes, there was some fumbling and making out. But I always saw it more as acting than anything else.

  Certainly nothing went as far as oral sex.

  And I planned to keep it that way.

  Men were easier to lead around when they were thinking with their unsatisfied dicks. They were malleable as little boys. As eager to please as well.

  You wanted him salivating, dying for one touch, one taste.

  And then you wanted to keep denying him.

  Until he was so overwhelmed with sex hormones that he was tricked into thinking he was madly in love.

  Then, well, he would offer you absolutely anything in the world to get you.

  Which was precisely when you ripped the floor out from underneath him.

  It worked like a charm.

  Every single time.

  It would work on Fenway Arlington as well, once he knew that he wasn't in charge here. "I was just teasing. I'm half-delirious from lack of sleep. The kids all caught some sort of stomach bug. It's been... rough over here. But Roman and I seem to be immune, so I took the night shift, and he is going to take the day so I can sleep."

  "You poor thing. I can't imagine."

  I really couldn't, either.

  I'd never been responsible for any living thing. My brother had once bought me an air plant as a skoolie-warming present when I finally moved in full-time. I killed it. An air plant. Something that practically lived on air alone and a couple spritzes of water every now and again.

  I kept myself alive. Sometimes, barely. That was about as good as I could do.

  Raven, and anyone who managed to keep children and loads of pets or even a whole bunch of finicky houseplants alive, amazed me.

  "It's times like these that make us seriously think about Roman getting a little snip snip. But then they get well and do something really sweet, and your uterus does this little squeeze..."

  "A squeezy uterus sounds like a medical condition."

  To that, a choked laugh escaped her, warm and happy to my ear even half a world away.

  "I know it sounds weird. I never understood it until Roman and I were together for a while. But then all a sudden, you see a sweet baby, and you get the squeeze."

  "I'm pretty sure my uterus doesn't squeeze. I see babies and I think of dirty diapers and spit up and a sporadic sleep schedule."

  "Yeah, but you're not with anyone."

  "And I never will be," I reminded her.

  Raven used to take that claim at face-value, acknowledging that not everyone was meant for long-term relationships, that some were happier alone.

  But marriage and a happy home life had turned her into a hopeless romantic who not-so-secretly had her heart set on me finding the right man who would get me to settle down. And then maybe I could have a couple kids, and we could raise them together.

  It was a cute image, I will admit.

  Except I never saw any of that in my future.

  "You know me, the only thing that brings me joy is destroying a man."

  I could practically hear the eye roll she was giving me. "Alright. Fine. So how is this man-destruction going?"

  "He threw a kink in the works," I admitted because I was comfortable admitting flaws to exactly one person in the world, and she was it.

  "Did someone get the better of you?" she gasped, as shocked as I was still feeling. "A man got the better of you?"

  "It kills me to admit it, but yes. Yes, he did. He approached, talked, and left in this infuriatingly cocky way. Like he knew he was getting the upper hand."

  "So now, of course, you must make him pay."

  "Naturally."

  "I know you need to stay up all night to plan this man's demise, but try to get some sleep. And keep your wits about you. I will check in before bed and when I wake up again. Text me if anything feels weird. I can't be the
re quickly, but I can be there."

  "You're the best, but everything is going to go fine. I underestimated my opponent. It won't happen again."

  "I believe you," she agreed. "Alright. The coffee pot is crooking its sexy little finger at me. I have to go. I love you."

  "Love you too," I agreed, hanging up, dropping down on the foot of my all-white bed, bending forward to undo the straps on my heels.

  On a sigh, I fell backward on the bed, staring up at the ceiling fan, wondering what my next move would be, what his reaction to it might be.

  Typically, very little thought actually went into a job.

  I had the opposite sex figured out by my sophomore year.

  There were three motivators for them.

  Sex.

  Food.

  And whatever it was that made them feel manly. Being good at football. Kicking ass at some war game on their gaming console. Knowing more about obscure slasher movies than anyone else. Whatever it was that gave them superiority.

  Sex was easy.

  Food could be bought and re-plated.

  And in my personal experience, that third one, that was one of the most powerful of them all.

  It was why comic book guys nearly jizzed their pants when they came across a good-looking girl who shared their passion. Why men put a ring on the finger of the girl whose favorite season was football.

  They wanted you to like what they liked. But not know more about it than they did.

  This little character quirk also explained the existence of chameleon women. You know the ones. With each and every relationship they have with a man, they become someone else. More specifically, they become exactly what that man wants them to be. The girl who once hated sports suddenly wore jerseys around all the time and just had to be home to watch the game. The one who couldn't stomach watching even a small bit of fictional gore suddenly excited for the next fight night. The girl who had always been a hardcore cotton candy pop fan getting gothed out and hitting metal shows because she had a thing for a bass player in a local band.

  Clearly, these women were lacking in self-confidence. But that being said, one could learn a lot from them. Because their methods worked. They worked every time, if they deployed them correctly.

  The problem was, Fenway Arlington didn't seem to have a niche that could be exploited.