Very attractive.
Filled with heady confidence, he almost smiled before it occurred to him that his little speech would be better served with a more sober expression, “Zara, in the interest of complete honesty, there’s something I’d like to get clear between us.”
She perked up. “Honesty?”
“Yes. I don’t want there to be any misconceptions between us.”
“Neither do I.” She sat up straighter, suddenly animated. “There’s something I need to tell you, too, and you’ve got to listen to me this time.”
Her intensity took him aback. “All right. You go first.”
She leaned toward him, and he breathed in her baby-powder scent. “‘What I told you before, about being Zara’s twin sister?”
He nodded carefully.
“It’s true. My name is Emma Sutcliffe. You have to believe me.”
He groaned and sank back into the seat. “This isn’t multiple-personality disorder, is it? My hotel room is only big enough for the two of us.”
She dragged a hand through her disheveled hair. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“Look, Zara—”
“Emma.”
“Your own receptionist identified you, all right? And what was all that talk about Hollywood and seven figures back at your office? You yourself admitted you were Zara Sutcliffe.”
“I... well, I lied. Then. For a reason. Now I’m telling the truth.”
“Uh-huh. Look, Zara, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull off here, but—”
“Pull off?” She put on a fairly credible display of indignation. Clearly, she wanted desperately for him to believe her, and that desperation roused his protective instinct, an instinct he’d just have to try and ignore in the present circumstance. She was pulling one over on him, he reminded himself; this was a game to her, in which she made up the rules as she went along. “I’m telling you the truth here!” Her voice wobbled just like the real thing. “All I want is for you to believe me.”
He nodded slowly, fighting his urge to cave in. “I think I know what’s going on here. You’re pretty nervy, I’ll give you that. And resourceful. You figure with everything you’ve put me through today, starting with the appointment you forgot about, that you’ve blown any chance you might have had of signing me on. But! If you can convince me you’re not Zara Sutcliffe at all, that you’re her... evil twin or whatever—”
“I’m the good twin,” she informed him sullenly.
“Says you. If you can actually pull this masquerade off, I won’t be mad at Zara Sutcliffe at all. If anything, I’ll be mad at her twin, and she—or rather, you—will still have a chance to represent The Next Grisham.”
Her jaw actually dropped. “Is that what they’re calling you?”
“Don’t be impressed. You, of all people, should know media hype when you smell it.”
“I’m impressed anyway. But your theory is ludicrous. What kind of flake would pretend to be her twin just to pull off some stupid...” Frowning in a sheepish way, she turned and looked out the window. “Deal,” she finished in a small voice.
“What kind of flake would walk the streets of New York with a ray gun taped inside her raincoat? I don’t know. You tell me.”
With a lengthy sigh, she slumped forward and rested her head in her hands. “I’m Emma Sutcliffe. I swear it.”
“Prove it.” He seemed to be saying that a lot.
“How?”
“A driver’s license would do nicely.”
“It’s in my bag. That creep has it now.”
“I accept all major credit cards.”
“They’re in there, too, as you’re well aware. Everything is.”
“You on Facebook? Instagram?”
“I was on Facebook, but I got tired of all the cat memes and pictures of people’s restaurant meals and goofy quizzes and shit. So I closed my account.”
“Business cards?”
“I have some. They’re at home. Look.” She gazed up at him with big, tragic eyes. “If I had any of that stuff on me, I could prove it to you, but I don’t. You’ll just have to take it on faith. You’ll just have to believe me.”
A burst of grim laughter escaped him. “Sorry, sweetheart, but that’s a bad habit I broke years ago.”
“What is?”
“Believing.”
“In anything?”
“In people. In what they tell you and who they make themselves out to be. The way I see it, a fella’s best off just ignoring what most folks have to say about themselves.”
She looked genuinely interested and genuinely shocked. “Why?”
“People lie about themselves constantly. They lie about other stuff, too, if they think it’ll get ’em what they want in life. The vast majority of humankind is inherently dishonest—completely lacking in integrity—and there’s just nothing to be done about it but steer clear of ’em and look after your own interests.”
“That’s pretty cynical.”
“What it is is realistic.”
“And you’re some kind of paragon of honesty, I suppose.”
“Compared to most folks I’ve met in this world, yes, I guess I am. I happen to think honor and honesty mean something—it’s how I was brought up. I was also brought up to expect others to be the same, but that’s where my parents failed me. They were just setting me up for disappointment.”
The cab swung sharply, lurching to a stop that left them in a jumbled heap in the corner where the back seat met the left-hand door. “Plaza,” the cabbie announced, and clicked off the meter.
Gage levered himself off Zara, his hands braced on the seat back and door to either side of her, but he didn’t move away; he wanted her complete attention. “I want to get this settled before we go in there.” He nodded toward the archaically elegant facade of the building in front of which they were parked. “I’m sorry, but I’ve had a long, tiring, preternaturally frustrating day, and I’m in no mood whatsoever to be stuck in a hotel room with someone who’s puttin’ on her own little one-woman play. So, what do you say? You willin’ to drop the act so we can get along?”
“Hey, buddy!” the driver barked. “That’ll be fifteen-fifty.”
Gage moved infinitesimally closer to Zara and lowered his voice just a hair. “That’s all I want. Just to get along.”
“Nothing I can say will convince you?”
He shook his head.
She bit that full bottom lip again. She had just about the sexiest mouth he’d ever laid his two eyes on. He reminded himself that he still hadn’t broken it to her that she was out of the running as his agent; he’d have to take care of that little piece of business at the first opportunity. Once that was settled, he could start practicing his “pretty please.”
The cabbie turned around and glared at him. “Hey, buddy!”
“Well, Zara?” he pressed. “What’ll it be? We gonna settle this or not?”
She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath; he felt her chest move beneath him. “You’re going to believe what you want to believe. And I’m exhausted from trying to talk sense to you.”
“Well, now, that’s progress, but it isn’t exactly full disclosure. I guess I need to hear it from your own lips that you’re really Zara Sutcliffe.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m really Zara Sutcliffe. Happy?”
“Happier.” He smiled. “Leastways, now you’re being honest with me. Only thing in the world I truly can’t stomach is being lied to.” Pushing away from her, he pulled a twenty from his wallet and handed it to the mollified driver, then escorted Zara out of the cab and into the Plaza Hotel.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’m sorry, Dr. Foster,” the desk clerk said, “but there are no double queen guest rooms available.”
Emma saw the clerk, a youngish man who bore a disconcerting resemblance to the Pillsbury Doughboy, give her a quick once-over, his studiously blank gaze taking in her torn stockings, harlot yellow suit, and tangled hair. She had to adm
it she looked just a tad out of place surrounded by all this deeply polished, old-money opulence. Her self-consciousness was magnified by the lack of her big, familiar bag with its comforting inventory of essentials; she felt naked without it.
Gage rested his hands on his blue-jeaned hips. “When I checked in earlier this afternoon, I was told I had my pick of a king or two queens.”
“That was this afternoon.” The Doughboy responded with the kind of studied politeness that implied some level of mental incapacitation on the part of the person being spoken to. “It’s—” he glanced at his pretend Rolex “—almost six-thirty now, and we’re booked up. All our rooms are taken. There are no more rooms with two beds left.”
Gage rubbed his jaw and looked in Emma’s direction. Now she was supposed to reassure him that it was okay, that one king-size bed for the two of them would do just fine. Instead she asked the clerk, “Do you have any cots?”
The Doughboy shook his head. “We ran out of our roll-ins an hour ago.” With an insolently knowing look in Gage’s direction, he added, “I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“That’s all right,” Gage replied, and indeed, he didn’t seem troubled at all. Not at all. “It’s no big deal,” he assured her as he led her away from the front desk and through the sumptuous lobby. “There’s this couchlike thing up there. I’ll be perfectly happy to sleep on that if you want.”
If you want. Those three little words were charged with meaning, Emma reflected, as Gage ushered her into an elevator and punched a button. They implied a certain... latitude for negotiation, which did nothing to reassure her of Gage Foster’s innocent intent.
Southern gentleman or no, she knew he found her—or rather, her all dressed up like Zara Sutcliffe—sexually attractive. She saw the way his gaze lingered on her sometimes, heard the hint of suggestion in things he said. But most of all, she felt it—a high, ambient buzz of awareness, like the barely discernible drone of electricity near high power lines. An intimate form of energy coursed between them, making her feel ultrasensitized and a little lightheaded whenever he was close to her—as he was now, in this too-small elevator. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the wall as they ascended.
“Zara?” She felt Gage’s hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”
Zara. Her head began to pulse just above her right eye. Maybe Officer Rogen was right, and she was hurt worse than she’d thought. More likely it was just a tension headache, a reaction to the irony of having to pretend to be someone else in order to mollify a man whose hot button appeared to be dishonesty.
He gripped both shoulders now; she felt the warmth of his breath on her face. “You all right, Zara?”
She opened her eyes to find him leaning down close to her, his gaze slightly anxious.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Fine. Just a little tired.”
“You can lie down in the room.”
When the doors opened, he surprised her by taking her hand to lead her down the hall to his room. Unlocking the door, he opened it and gestured her in ahead of him and flicked the light switch.
“Wow.” It was the most luxurious hotel room she’d ever been in: gold silk drapes, marble-topped furniture, a freestanding cheval mirror with etched glass...
There was a chaise longue upholstered in gold velvet—the “couchlike thing,” Emma assumed—with a flowered throw and a couple of needlepoint pillows tossed artfully across it. “It’s like I’ve died and gone to Martha Stewart’s,” she said.
“It’s a bit much for my taste.”
Emma imagined that was true, remembering the handsomely rustic log house in the picture on the jacket of Incision. Gage lifted a worn leather duffel bag from the bed and tossed it into a corner. “You can lie down if you want.” He helped her off with her coat and then hung it, complete with ray gun, in the closet.
“As long as I can get out of these—” Emma kicked off the stiletto-heeled pumps “—I’ll be fine.” She sat on a Queen Anne chair next to a gleaming mahogany desk. A parchment-shaded lamp cast a buttery corona of light on an arrangement of white lilacs in a crystal vase, a room-service menu, a beige telephone and a stationery box filled with writing paper imprinted with a crest and Plaza Hotel in ornate cursive. She breathed in a faint and pleasing perfume: lilacs and lemon oil. “This must be costing you a bundle.”
“Costing you a bundle, don’t you mean?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t be gettin’ cheap on me, sweetheart.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You don’t remember pleading with me to come to New York—at your expense? ‘I’ll put you up at the Plaza and introduce you to some editors. We’ll do the Russian Tea Room.’ I don’t even like tea. And I sure as shootin’ don’t have any use for subways and maniac purse snatchers and pissant little desk clerks, not to mention traffic and noise and filth and funky odors you don’t know where they came from. And talk about overpopulation.” He shook his head. “There’s just way the hell too many people breathin’ my air.”
She chuckled tiredly. “You’re not crazy about New York, are you? Don’t hold back—you can be frank with me.”
“This town sucks like a tubful of ticks. You’re a bright girl,” he added wryly. “Surely you’ve noticed.”
“Have I ever. I can’t stand New York.”
“Then why do you work here?”
“I have no choice.”
She was about to blurt out her tale of woe—losing her freelance work and being forced to move here and take the dreaded staff job at DIYhomecrafts—unmindful of the fact that it was Emma’s tale and not Zara’s, when he said, “Yeah, I guess if you want to play the hotshot literary agent, you’re pretty much stuck with New York.”
“Guess so.” Emma sighed, lifting the receiver off the phone and dialing nine for an outside line.
“Who are you calling?”
“I was supposed to meet... this guy, at his office this afternoon, but of course, I never showed—”
“Seems to be a bad habit of yours,” Gage muttered as he unzipped his duffel and dumped its contents into a bureau drawer, except for a leather dopp kit, which he took to the bathroom.
Glaring at his back, Emma called the number written in smeared ballpoint ink on her palm, but the call went to voicemail. A woman’s crisp voice said, “You have reached the office of MacGowan Byrne Ltd. Leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as possible.”
Beep.
“Mr. Byrne,” Emma said, “this is, um... Zara Sutcliffe.”
Gage smirked at her as he exited the bathroom; she raised her chin and turned haughtily away.
Emma said, “I’m sorry I had to miss our meeting this afternoon. Circumstances... well... anyway, I’m sorry. I still very much want to conclude this transaction. Please call me at my home number, 718-555-5734, and leave a message if I don’t pick up. I’m not home right now, but I’ll check my voicemail remotely and get—”
Beep.
“Right back to you.” Emma replaced the receiver in its cradle.
“You’ve got a 718 area code? That’s Queens, right?” Gage took off his jacket and hung it up. “I thought only administrative assistants lived in Queens. I woulda pictured Zara Sutcliffe... I don’t know. In some swanky apartment on the Upper East Side. Something with lots of glass and marble and... columns. Big ol’ important-looking columns.”
Bingo. He’d just described Zara’s home to a T. “Shows what you know,” she bluffed. “So happens Flushing, Queens, is a very happening place right now. Very trendy. Everyone’s moving there.”
He squinted at her, hands on hips. “Flushing? Where Shea Stadium is? Or was, before they tore it down. I saw the final game of the World Series there in 2000—the Subway Series, Mets versus Yankees. Isn’t there a fat-rendering plant near there that stinks to high heaven? Flushing River doesn’t smell too good, either, now that I think of it. Hungry?”
“Not anymore.”
Gage picked
up the phone, but waved away the room-service menu. “Yeah, this is Gage Foster up in 602. Can y’all make me up a couple of burgers, well done, with plenty of fried onions? Good. Now, when I say well done, I mean cooked. Don’t just hurt it, kill it dead.” He paused. “No, I don’t want any pink inside. No! None! Cooked. Through and through. Gray on the inside, black on the outside. Black. You writin’ this down? Well, write it down. Get a pen, I’ll wait.” He waited. “Black. B-L-A-C-K. On the outside. G-R-A-Y on the inside. Cooked. You got that? All right, and some fries and whatnot. Also a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses. That’s it, thanks.” He pressed the switch hook.
“Maybe I like my burgers rare.”
“So does E. coli.” He pressed another button on the phone. “Is this the concierge? Yeah, this is Gage Foster in 602. Can I get some first-aid supplies sent up to the room? Some gauze pads and tape, and a tube of antibiotic ointment. Stat. I mean, thanks.” Hanging up the phone, he said, “Gotta do something about those knees of yours.”
“They’re not that bad.”
“Even so, they should be cleaned and bandaged.”
The first-aid stuff was delivered in record time.
“Let’s do this in here,” Gage said, motioning for her to follow him into the brightly lit, white-tiled bathroom. He shoved aside his dopp kit and the various hotel-supplied toiletries and glasses laid out on the vanity, then unfolded a clean towel and set the first-aid supplies on top of it. Unbuttoning the cuffs of his blue chambray shirt, he rolled up the sleeves, then unwrapped a bar of soap, turned on the tap and scrubbed his hands. He really worked at them, washing them with the germ-conscious zeal of a surgeon, which, of course, he was—or, as he’d hastened to point out, used to be. Steam rose from the basin and she knew the water must be scalding.
Emma noticed something then, something about his right hand that she hadn’t seen before, because she hadn’t really looked at it. The little finger on that hand was truncated about halfway up; the tip of the ring finger was missing as well. In addition, several savage-looking scars marred his hand and wrist. From the slightly awkward way he held it, she could tell he didn’t have, full use of it.
Good to Be Bad (Double Dare Book 1) Page 6
