Take the Edge Off
Page 10
“So why were you there?”
“I needed a favor. He owed me,” Cal said. “That’s all.”
“What favor?”
“That’s my business.”
Frustration twisted at the corners of El’s mouth, but he let it go, that small bit of it anyway. “If you want, I can see if anyone knows more about Dexter and what went down back then.”
Cal thought about it for a second and then shook his head. “If you can,” he said, although he didn’t know if there was any point. He’d thought that Harry Bailey might have a shady past, bad enough that someone had passed their grudge down onto his son. It was still possible, but less likely the answers were in their grandad’s old records. Still, it might turn up something through Dexter. “I wondered how Grandad knew him.”
El looked away for a second, his profile backlit by the sun. “You know, I know when you’re lying,” he said. “Fine, don’t tell me. But don’t go back. Van and that lot, even Malcolm, they’ll drag you back in. You’re better than that.”
Cal scowled and squirmed in place as though he’d been caught on a hook. His ears were too hot, and he still wanted to punch El—an easy outlet for the hot-wire scratch under his skin. Most of the time, people accepted that he would live down to their expectations.
“Yeah, well….” He scratched his head and felt like an idiot as he shrugged. “Don’t know about that, but I’m done with Van. He looks like hell these days.”
El rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “That’s the reason. If you change your mind about Dexter, let me know. Take care of yourself, little brother. Or find someone who’ll do a good job at it.”
The incongruity of that made Cal snort as he stood up. He gestured at himself. “Do I look like I need taking care of?”
“Naw,” El said. He pulled Cal into a rough, sweaty hug and muttered into his ear, “But you do. I know you.”
One last, back-slapping squeeze and El took his leave. Cal watched his brother’s back disappear into the crowd with that scratchy mixture of annoyance and affection. He loved his brother, but El was wrong. Cal had never needed anyone.
Maybe, a quiet, stubborn voice whispered in the back of his brain, he wanted someone.
He ignored it.
Chapter Eight
THE EXCELLENT tapas sat, barely touched, in a collection of eclectically decorated bowls. The oil had started to separate into a thin film and puddled in the gaped shells of mussels.
“The Bailey Group isn’t going to do business in the UK anymore,” Joe said as he lifted the glass of wine. Bea had refilled it with the deceptively easy-on-the-palate sweet red… three times. He paused for a second, the rim of the glass cold against his lip, as he weighed the wisdom of another drink. His drive home was already arranged, and Cal could carry him in if he needed the help. The thought if it—Cal’s arm around Joe’s waist, his throat bare to Joe’s eager mouth, and the eyes of the hotel on them—curled heat in Joe’s chest. He took a long swallow of wine to quench it, not that it worked, and gave Bea a thin smile. “We won’t need a law firm on retainer.”
She leaned back in her chair, her arm braced on the low, curved back, and gave a careless, one-shouldered shrug. Her perfectly red matte lips curved in a slow, easy smile. “You’ll still do business in Europe.”
He gave her a dry look. “And how much use will an English law firm be for that?”
The practiced charm of her expression slid into genuine amusement as she tilted her head to the side in acknowledgment of his point. She reached over the table and plucked a spiced olive from the bowl to pop between her lips. At a nearby table, hunched over a tablet, a thin woman watched the show through her long, auburn hair with discreet interest. At least, Joe thought dryly, someone appreciated the moment… but not enough to distract her from her work as she tapped her fingers over the keyboard on the bright screen.
“I understand,” she said. “Your father’s made his position clear. What about yours?”
Joe raised his eyebrows at her. “What makes you think it differs from his??”
She paused as she studied him from under her lashes and licked the oil from her fingertips. “Because your father has had a stroke and would rather divest business holdings than turn over control to you,” she said. “I did my research when the partners asked me to court your father back, Joe. You’ve proven your value to your father’s company over and over, with negotiated mergers, hostile takeovers, headhunted investment opportunities. Yet here you are, left to put the chairs up and lock the door behind him. I’d have, let’s call them feelings, on that.”
She wasn’t wrong. Joe had tried for years to impress Harry, had tried to prune away all the bits of him that he thought would keep that approval away, and the last few months had proven it hadn’t worked. Harry didn’t trust Joe with the truth or the business.
“The plans to close our British holdings were already in progress before my father’s stroke. If anything, that delayed the process,” Joe said. As if on cue, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out and checked it with a quick glance down at the screen. Then he turned his attention back to Bea. “And I had my own reasons to want to come to the UK.”
It was another text from Edward. Joe wasn’t in the mood to deal with them.
Bea raised her eyebrows at him as though he’d admitted something. “See? That sounds like something I could help with.”
Joe studied Bea over the neglected spread. There was something uncompromising about her colorful, glossy dress, a probably false sense that this was the real Bea and not a socially accepted lawyer suit that she presented to the world. It made Joe want to like her, to believe her offer of assistance. The fact that it wasn’t selfless made it more convincing.
Or maybe that was the wine.
Joe put his glass down and gently pushed it away until it bumped into one of the bowls.
“Why don’t you let me think about that,” he said. “In the meantime, draw up all the required contracts for the sale of our properties. I have an engagement next week with the buyers, and I want everything ready.”
“I’s dotted and t’s crossed?” Bea asked.
“Exactly.”
She sighed and gestured her surrender. They chatted a few moments longer as she finished her wine and insisted the firm had the check, and then Joe finally got up to leave. He pulled his jacket on and the tailored fabric settled over his shoulders. Then he extended his hand.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’ll keep your offer in mind.”
She shook it briskly, the earlier linger of her long, warm fingers abandoned. “Do,” she said. “I’m an excellent solicitor.”
Joe turned to leave and nearly tripped over the red-haired woman who’d watched Bea eat. Her drink splashed down his shirt, red against the white. She caught his elbow with one hand and apologized as she swiped at his chest with a bundle of tissues.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to turn around so quickly. God, I’m such a klutz. Send me the bill for the dry cleaning.”
Her clumsy swabs at the wide, pink stain pressed against the bruises left on Joe’s stomach from the graveyard. They had already started to fade and blur to green at the edges, but they still ached when poked. Joe winced and blocked her anxious attempt at cleanup.
“I’m fine,” he said with an attempt at an easygoing smile. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
The woman pushed her hair back from her face and frowned up at him. She was older than he’d thought, Joe realized with surprise. He was usually good at ages, but the hint of fine lines around her eyes and mouth made him revise her age vaguely up from his initial “same age as me” guess.
“It was stupid,” she said. “I wanted to…. I saw Bea, but I didn’t want to interrupt. So when I saw you were about to leave, I thought I’d nip over. Now look at the mess.”
She poked her fingers against his stomach again in an odd gesture. Joe clenched his teeth and stepped back. He
put the chair between them.
“Forget about it,” he told her. “I should have been more careful.”
Bea had cocked her head to the side. “I’m sorry,” she said warily. “I don’t….”
The woman balled the wine-stained napkins up in her hands and laughed nervously. “Oh, I was blonde then,” she said as she tugged at a strand of hair. “Remember me now?”
There was a brief flicker of embarrassed panic in Bea’s eyes as she drew a blank. She grimaced apologetically and slowly shook her head. “Sorry, I….”
“Kelly,” the woman prodded with a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry. There’s no reason for you to remember me. It was ages ago. Oh God, this is not a good day for me.”
To Bea’s credit she didn’t pretend the “Kelly” was enough of a prompt to jog her memory. Instead she gave a slow, red smile and waved her hand at Joe’s abandoned chair.
“Sorry,” she said warmly. “I have a terrible memory for anything that’s not work-related—the plight of a solicitor. But join me. I can get to know you again.”
Startled color pinched Kelly’s cheeks, and she bit her lip on a return smile. “I should… I shouldn’t interrupt anymore,” she said. “You have business.”
Bea angled her wrist to check the time on her watch. “I think I can go off the clock now,” she said. “And Mr. Bailey is on his way out.”
Kelly glanced down uncertainly at her tablet and then relaxed slightly. “Okay,” she said as she tucked the pad into her bag. “I guess.”
Joe nodded to both and took his leave. He stepped outside and moved down the pavement, away from the smoky no-go zone that spread out from the door. It was still warm, but there was enough of a chill in the air to make his soaked shirt unpleasant. He fastidiously plucked the damp red fabric away from his stomach as he texted Cal to come and pick him up.
The pulsing dots of an answer in the works popped up immediately. Joe watched it idly until a bike squealed to a stop in front of him, its skinny tires close enough to his toes that he jumped back on instinct. He looked up from his phone and saw a skinny bike messenger, all wood-hard legs and sweaty T-shirt, peer at him from under a perforated helmet and then check his phone.
“Joseph Bailey?” he asked as he looked back up.
“Yeah,” Joe said, the acknowledgment out before he thought better of it. The image of Cal’s arm flashed into his head, the curved slash of red that laid his forearm open, and he took another step back. “Who’s asking?”
The messenger shrugged his pack off and efficiently unzipped it. “Don’t know. I just got a message for you, mate,” he said. “Sign here.”
He stuck out the phone, signature block maximized on the finger-greased screen, and waited. Joe glanced around at the crowd in front of the bar. A tall woman in a summer dress drew a wave of laughter as she punctuated a story with a wild gesture and knocked the cap off another drinker’s head. On down the pavement, two hikers sat outside, hips perched on the narrow shelf of a window, and ate something with their fingers while their dog snoozed on the ground.
Plenty of witnesses if the messenger did anything. Joe took the phone and signed it quickly, and the smooth, digital line skipped where the grubby screen misread the swipe of his finger. He handed it back, and the messenger traded it for a fat envelope he pulled out of the bag.
“Have a good day, Mr. Bailey,” the messenger said as he swung his bag back over his shoulder. He hitched himself back up onto the bike and took off. His bell jangled a warning as he cut through the edge of the crowd and then bumped down the curb and onto the road.
Joe turned the envelope over in his hands. It was soft—whatever was inside gave and shifted under his fingers—and securely taped up. His name was printed on the front in neat, anonymous block letters. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and tried to decide what was worse—that this was the stalker or that he’d been served again.
Either way, he thought with bitter humor, he knew better than to sign something after two glasses of wine. Last time he’d ended up in court for a month over a copyright issue.
“Mr. Bailey?” Cal’s voice interrupted Joe’s thoughts. “Joe?”
He looked up. The Bentley was parked at the side of the road, the engine running. Cal leaned out the window, his expression curious with an edge of worry.
“I’ll sit in the front,” Joe said as he tucked the envelope out of sight in his jacket and cut around the front of the car. The last dregs of his earlier good humor, sweaty-sweet afterglow, had hung on this far. He wanted to keep them until he got back to the hotel and had to deal with this, even if it meant he let himself pretend it meant more to Cal than a paycheck and sex to pass the time. He climbed into the soft leather front seat and slammed the door. “Do you ever listen to music?”
There was a pause, and then Cal shrugged. He poked the phone he’d hooked into the stereo system, and a low, practiced voice cut in midsentence.
“Podcasts,” he said. “But I can turn the radio on if you want.”
It was about travel. The voice thrilled with the delights of Saville. Joe shook his head. “No, I like it,” he said. He could pretend he was somewhere hot with a half-naked—or fully naked—Cal. There were worse ways to prolong a good mood.
THE BEAR sat lopsided on the clean, white counter in the small kitchen and stared at the world through melted plastic eyes. It had started life as a small cream bear with black eyes and paws that had shaped leather pads stitched to them. That was before someone had taken a blowtorch and left the thick fur matted into scabs and the stuffing melted in hard, charred lumps. It had been dunked in water after, and the smell of wet fabric and stale smoke oozed from it like body odor.
It was a nasty little present from a nasty little mind. Joe didn’t know why it made his throat close up and his heart race.
“Look, you have to tell Edward about this,” Cal said as he poked the dead bear with a spoon. “He can probably track it back through the delivery company or something, find out who sent it. Sick weirdo.”
The bear toppled listlessly onto its side, unbalanced by an arm charred all the way up to the shoulder. Joe flinched inside as though it were a dog or a child, with that wash of empathy. As it toppled over, he saw the folded wad of paper stapled to its underside.
“I thought we had an understanding,” Joe said. He sounded cold again, his voice filtered through a layer of tamped-down emotional noise. He reached for the bear. “You drive. I decide what Edward needs to know.”
“And the fucking?” Cal asked.
The bear had been in the envelope for a while, stuffed into the bag against the messenger’s sweaty back. It still felt damp where it wasn’t rough or scaled with char. Over-the-top revulsion bubbled up out of Joe’s stomach until he could taste the acid of it against the back of his throat.
It was a burned toy, he thought with irritated clarity. That was all. What was wrong with him?
“You drive me to that,” Joe said as he pulled the bit of paper loose. Shreds of it were left stapled to the bear. “I decide when Edward needs to know about it. See? It’s a perfect system.”
There was an edge to Joe’s voice that…. It wouldn’t be fair to say he didn’t mean it, because he did. But he could still wish it weren’t there. The low snicker from Cal cut through Joe’s mood like a dash of lemon, straightforward and amused.
“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” Cal said. “Because you’re a bit of a dick.”
“I don’t remember you complaining,” Joe pointed out with a flicker of humor. It guttered and died out again as he unfolded the note.
The handwriting scratched over the paper in an unexpectedly loose script, all bulges and fat, exaggerated curves on the rounded letters.
DID YOU MISS ME?
Joe twisted the paper up between his fingers and tossed it toward the bin. “It would be easier,” he said impatiently, “if they’d at least lay out why they hate me. It would help to narrow the field of suspects. And shut up, Cal.”
“You should go,” he said instead. “Take the afternoon off. I’m not in the mood to be good company, and I’d rather you didn’t join the ranks of those who want me to fuck off and die.”
Cal shrugged. “I’ve got a thick skin,” he said. “And you look like you saw your own ghost.”
“It’s frustration,” Joe lied. It wasn’t as though he could tell the truth. He didn’t know why the bear had gotten under his skin. “They seem to know everything about me, down to where I have lunch, and I know nothing about them.”
He voice cracked at the end of the sentence, and with a spike of anger, he swiped the bear off the table. It flew over the room, smacked into the wall, and bounced to the floor, scattering bits of burned plastic over the floor. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a lie. He took a deep breath and let it out down his nose.
“I don’t seem to know much about anything,” he said. His voice sounded brittle, even to him. “Not my parents, not my past, not the stalker… nothing much at all.”
Cal shifted and rubbed the back of his neck, visibly uncomfortable. “I’m kinda out of my depth here, Joe,” he said. “This sort of thing… you want a professional.”
It wasn’t, Joe supposed, the sort of thing Cal had signed up for. A basket case in the middle of a meltdown wasn’t exactly hot. He brushed his hands together fastidiously to get the last traces of ash and mildew off his fingers and pulled a stiff, humorless smile out of his lips.
“A therapist?” he asked.
Cal scowled. “Now you sound like my brother,” he muttered and then shook his head.