Tease

by Nathalie Gray

  She tried for a smile but Joan saw it for the painful grimace it was. “Go on.”

  “His girlfriend—or girlfiend, as I enjoyed calling her—got pregnant two years ago, from him she said, but had an abortion—”

  Joan’s knee-jerk reaction slipped by her. “It’s her body—”

  Mel shushed her with a hand. “Yeah, yeah. I know it’s her body, and Archer knew it too. He was there, Joan, holding her hand while…ugh. But I was the one to hold his hand when he got so drunk that night I was still wiping puke off the walls the next morning.”

  “Off the walls?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “He wanted to keep it, the baby, I mean?”

  Mel nodded. “Vickie, the girlfiend, left the province not long after. She lives in Toronto now. Has two kids.”

  A flare of anger hit and for the life of her, Joan couldn’t explain it. “That’s, uh, ironic.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will he kick your ass bad if he finds out you told me?”

  “Big time. You’ve never seen him angry.” Mel shrugged as she pulled her PDA from her pocket. “He’s full of surprises, that one.”

  Joan wasn’t sure she liked the turn of the conversation. “Surprises or secrets?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  Don’t answer that one.

  “But that doesn’t explain tonight. What else went on after, er, Vickie?”

  “His parents had died not long beforehand, so it was a double-whammy, you know. Anyway. He wasn’t the same after, started questioning his life, that stuff. Then a man contacted him, an Italian. Adriano. He made an offer to Archer. And he took it.”

  Joan couldn’t think of the kind of offer Archer would take from an Italian man and preferred to hear the true events instead of trying to speculate. This was becoming much stranger than she’d anticipated.

  Unless…

  Oh great, Archer was involved with the Montreal mafia.

  “He’s with the mob?”

  Mel’s look of pure horror settled it then and there.

  “What then?”

  “Archer is an escort.”

  Joan swore her blood pressure had just plummeted to dangerous levels. “Archer is an escort? Um, well, that’s not what I expected…but it’s okay with me.” Liar.

  “You don’t understand. He’s an escort. As in, he’s been paid to meet with you.”

  “I know, the police hired him.”

  Mel shook her head twice rapidly. “Someone else is paying him too. Aside from the police. He gets money to…well…Adriano, that’s his boss, he contacted Archer with your name and everything. He has connections, that guy— What?”

  Joan had started patting the air in front of her. “Whoa, slow down. I didn’t get half of it.”

  Mel shook her head. “Okay, Adriano is the Italian guy who contacted Archer. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “He owns that agency, it’s called Gentlemen Inc. They’re worldwide. A big network. Right?”

  “Right.” Joan uncrossed her leg and straightened. She couldn’t explain the sudden drop in blood pressure nor the fear tightening her stomach. Where was this story going?

  “He contacts Archer when he has a job for him. It’s all very clandestine, you know, very hush-hush and under the table. The money, I mean. And how he finds these women.”

  “That Adriano guy contacted Archer before the police did?” Joan asked, now as equally worried as she was disillusioned. If Archer had lied about this, what else had he lied about? “How did this Adriano know about police operations?”

  How the hell had she managed that polite request when she wanted to put her fist through the wall?

  “I have no idea,” Mel replied. Clearly, this was beyond the petite woman’s understanding. “All I know is that Archer wanted to tell you but after the job.” Mel’s voice was paper-thin.

  “How does it work, that agency? What’s Adriano’s last name? Do you have his number?”

  Mel shook her head. “Adriano wires money, a preset amount, from Switzerland. Then the agent does his job—”

  “How often does Archer do these jobs? I mean, ‘escort’ women? Does he sleep with all of them or is that more expensive?”

  Mel flushed, hurriedly pulled her PDA from her pocket. “Whoa, this is getting way beyond me. Um. He…he wants you to have this, and he explains everything to you but I didn’t read it…well, I did type it, but I had no choice…here, that’s what he said.” She snapped her mouth closed, proffered the PDA in a badly shaking hand.

  Joan couldn’t help feeling sorry for Archer’s friend. When he should be the one explaining himself, he’d given his friend a letter to give to Joan. How cowardly could a guy get? He couldn’t even tell her to her face he’d been hiding all kinds of dust bunnies under his rug. And to say she’d spilled her guts to him, told him how she felt comfortable with him, that there wasn’t any baggage trailing behind either of them. He must have thought her quite the dweeb.

  The guy is in a hospital bed because he helped you, cut him some slack.

  She extended her hand, palm up. It was shaking.

  “Don’t throw it if you get pissed, okay?” Mel pleaded as she gave Joan the PDA. “Go kick something but don’t throw it.”

  Joan would’ve laughed any other time. If her heart hadn’t been breaking, that is. Great timing for the realization too. She hadn’t considered how much she enjoyed Archer’s company until yesterday night at the club when he’d sat there with a knife sticking out of his chest. Regret, bitter and useless regret, squeezed her heart. And her who’d considered the possibility of perhaps making a life with Archer. All that waste.

  Man, I need a drink.

  She didn’t even drink.

  The screen glowed aqua when Mel thumbed it on, clicked with her fingernail to access the latest file and turned it toward Joan when she found what she was looking for.

  “I’ll, um, I’ll go to the bathroom while you read.” She walked away a few paces, whirled on the spot, both hands coming together like a tiny Tibetan monk wearing white cargo pants and a manga T-shirt. “Don’t throw it. Please.”

  There must have been hidden cameras somewhere. Surely this was some twisted reality TV show.

  Joan sat, the PDA on her lap.

  Joan,

  I’m an asshole.

  I should have told you earlier. And for that, you’ll never know how sorry I am. Truly. But it’s done. I wasted my chance and there’s nothing I can do to change it. So here it goes.

  I work for an escort agency called Gentlemen Inc. They contact me when there’s a need in my local area. Adriano called me a little while back to help the Montreal Police with a sting op by training one of their officers. I accepted. He paid me thirty thousand dollars. But something happened during the week, something that should have been good but turned bad. I lied to you about that and I lied when I said I don’t make a habit of sleeping with my students. I do. There are a lot of notches on that pole. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings or make you feel like you didn’t count. You do.

  So I changed my mind about the job and wanted to call it off. But I didn’t want you to lose your chance to cuff that son of a bitch or get hurt while trying, and decided to stay with it until after the sting, when I’d tell you everything.

  I never meant to hurt you, Joan. I swear. I was afraid to lose you, even if I knew you weren’t mine to begin with. Men like me don’t deserve women like you.

  Goes to show hell is paved with good intentions.

  I’m sorry.

  Archer

  A tiny drop plopped against the screen. Joan wiped at it absentmindedly then when another landed she realized she was crying.

  Feeling disconnected and strangely light, she walked over to the payphone, dialed collect call and could barely speak when Chantal’s gruff voice—what time was it anyway?—answered.

  “Can you come pick me up?”

  How she managed to link so many words together, Joan h
ad no idea. She felt so empty. Of everything. But something was brewing, she could feel it. As if she were preparing to hurt, that weird feeling of knowing pain was just around the corner and there wasn’t a thing she could do to avoid it. She’d had that once, carrying the laundry basket downstairs. She’d thought she’d reached the last step and started walking toward the washer when her foot encountered nothing but air. She’d realized she was still another step from the basement floor. That split second feeling was the same as what she felt now. The certainty of impending pain, the cringe and the “Oh shit, this is gonna hurt”.

  “Joan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I barely recognized you.” Her partner sounded worried. “Give me fifteen minutes, okay?”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re at the hospital still? Is he okay?”

  Chantal knew her too much. “Archer is fine. His friend is with him. He…he doesn’t need me to hover here as well.”

  “Oh. I’ll be there, okay, don’t move.”

  Joan hung up.

  She put Mel’s PDA on her seat, retrieved her gym bag and took the elevator down. The whole while, she felt as if she acted normally, too normally. She greeted with a nod a night cleaner who shuffled by, pushing a wide, partitioned wagon filled with cleaning products. The older man had worn blue paper slippers over his shoes. Down in the main foyer, only a couple of people sat, huddled in hushed conversation or alone, checking their watches or fingernails. One woman was in her night robe. It was sage green.

  Joan felt everything come to her, go through her then out the other side. She retained nothing. She was hollow.

  How could she be so calm, so normal outside? But there wasn’t anything going on inside either. She wasn’t hiding her emotions. There just wasn’t any to be felt, even if she knew a storm waited for her. Yet she felt no rage. She wasn’t angry at Archer. Weird. She should. He’d made her feel special, had even professed his love to her and the twenty or so police officers listening on the wire, when in fact, she wasn’t. Just another notch. Plus, someone had paid him thirty thousand dollars to accept the police offer. Would he have done it with without his generous Italian boss? Would he have taken the job for the measly amount the police gave him, helped out of the rightness of their cause? She didn’t want to consider the answer. Still, she should be mad as hell at him for no other reason than not trusting her enough to tell her about “Gentlemen Inc.”

  A secret escort agency.

  Joan sat in the hospital’s main lobby, hands crossed over her lap, her aching back as stiff as a two-by-four. To her right on a low table, someone had ripped a portion of a magazine cover. A good recipe maybe? Or an Internet site? No one would know now. It was gone. Ripped out and stolen. People had no respect.

  Chantal arrived not long after. She still sported pillow prints on her cheek and wore gray track pants on backward. Collège Nicolet arced over her crotch instead of her butt.

  “Mon amie, you scared the shit out of me on the phone. I thought you were a guy.” She took Joan’s bag. “You look like a ghost.”

  Joan felt like one too. Not connected to this world. See through. Dead.

  “Archer…he’s…”

  Joan’s eyes filled.

  “Le chien sale! He’s married, eh, le maudit cochon! That’s it?” Chantal slapped her thigh, let out a long string of rapid-fire French curses. “I knew he was too smooth to be honest. Crisse!”

  Joan hung her head. She was too much of a loser to be angry at him and even felt bad that her friend would call him “a dirty dog” and a “goddamn pig”. If that was what Chantal had said. Joan’s brain refused to cooperate any more than just the basics. Tear ducts and a few other essentials.

  In a very deep part of her she hadn’t known was there, Joan realized she wouldn’t tell Chantal about Archer’s extracurricular activities. She wouldn’t tell anyone.

  You’re a softie, Joan Blair, or an even bigger coward than he is.

  She wouldn’t tell anyone not because it was embarrassing to have been boned—ha—by a professional, physically and emotionally, but also out of courtesy and a sense that she owed him at least one. He had come to her help, had tackled two armed men counting the dangerous Ty. Chantal had relayed the details of Ty’s injury with great relish, listing by its Latin name every bone Archer had broken while pointing to her own body and kissing her fingertip afterward. Big goof was worse than her. Archer had done all that without regard for his own safety—to disastrous consequences to his health in fact—and this, she’d never let herself forget. George B. Archer may have lied about a few things, his love among those, but when it’d counted the most, he’d showed up ready and willing.

  She was standing in front of her door by the time she pulled herself out of her downward spiral. While Chantal did everything—Joan didn’t even have the strength or will to unlock her door—she leaned her forehead against the smooth panel, remembering how Archer’s long hands had felt around her shoulders. She’d give an organ to relive such a moment. Maybe some day, if she let a man come within ten feet of her. But not now. And not soon either.

  “I’m more for venting at the firing range, but if you want to talk about it, you sit me down and you vent.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “That was a backward way of asking if you want to talk about it. Don’t leave me hanging, mon amie, you know that makes me cranky. Think of everyone who’ll suffer if I go to work cranky tomorrow.”

  When Joan turned toward her partner, she caught the half smile. “Don’t try to make me laugh, okay. Just…just being hurts.”

  Sobering, Chantal nodded. “Désolée. Uh, is there something I can do?”

  “I don’t think anyone can.”

  “I’ll make you tea then get out of your face.”

  “No tea.”

  “Just get out of your face then?”

  “Please.”

  One last concerned look and Chantal was gone.

  Finally, Joan was afforded the luxury of falling apart. And did.

  Chapter Twelve

  They discharged him after six days. Six days of fun, fun, fun with either the nursing staff and their needles or the investigators with their just-as-sharp questions.

  Yes, he’d taken on Ty What’s His Name, had roughed him up a bit then gone after the knife-wielding maniac. No, he hadn’t tried to push him over the edge, seeing as he was busy with a knife planted in his chest and all. Yes, he’d testify in court. No, he didn’t want his name printed. Yes, painkillers, please, for the love of everything that’s holy. No, thank you, he could pee without a catheter. Yes, no problem, Sergeant-detective Pain, he’d stay away from Joan or else. No, Mel, he didn’t hate her for telling Joan about his loser life and Vickie.

  Yes. No. Yes. No.

  Fuck.

  Archer was trying to pick his slippers off the floor—Mel having thankfully left his room for a few minutes to sign him out—when a man entered. In his mid- to late-thirties, shiny black hair in waves slicked back over his high forehead, hazel eyes and aquiline nose gave the stunning man a Mediterranean look. A hot pink T-shirt that no one but this man could’ve pulled off without a public lynching complemented his lean frame, as did the low jeans and brushed silver belt buckle. A walking fashion catalog. Even the square-toed shoes were perfect for the outfit. Italian leather, no doubt about it.

  “What?” Archer snapped, his hand clutched on the tubular footboard. No matter if the guy accessorized better than most women he knew, Archer was in no mood for chit-chat.

  “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “I’m fine. Who are you?”

  “A friend of a friend.”

  Despite the situation, Archer felt his smirk rising. “I have one friend, and she never told me about you. And trust me, she would have.”

  The man smiled. Dazzling teeth created a perfect white crescent in the tanned face. “I think you have another friend, but this one might require a bit of finesse to win back, sì?”
<
br />   The guy flicked his Rs on the tip of his tongue just as a Spanish woman Archer had dated a few times did. Mmm, the tongue on that woman.

  For some reason, Archer felt he knew the guy, had seen that hot pink T-shirt before. “Do I know you?”

  The man shrugged. “I like your shirt. Cavalli?”

  “Whatever. What do you want?” Archer couldn’t help feeling he was being gauged and didn’t care for it one bit. That and jealousy over the perfect outfit. He wanted those shoes, man. They didn’t have that in Montreal. Eurotrash.

  The guy turned, poked his head out the door, chuckled then faced Archer once more. “Your delightful little friend is very clever. And very loyal. I am happy to see you are all right. You worried me.”

  Had he been feeling up to it, he would’ve grabbed the handsome prick by the front of his fabulous T-shirt for a good shake and a mano a mano, a hand-to-hand so to speak. Or knuckles-to-cheek.

  “Look, I’m not in the best of moods, okay, so either you tell me who you are or get the hell out of my room. I’ve had my balls squeezed by a gun-totting maniac, I’ve been stabbed by a Russian thug, I’ve lost…” He suddenly couldn’t push the words through. He’d lost the woman he loved.

  A look of melancholy flashed across the man’s face. He nodded. “I understand that sort of loss. But yours is still alive. Go after her or let her come to you if she chooses to. If you do not, you will take that regret to your grave. From one gentleman to another, believe me, life without her…” He closed his eyes briefly, checked outside the room again. “I must leave. Arrivederci.”

  He left Archer’s room, a faint ribbon of expensive cologne floating in his wake.

  Spaniards didn’t say arrivederci.

  Italians did.

  From one gentleman to another…

  “Fuck!”

  Mel entered the room not even two seconds later, flushed and grinning like a one of those hyperactive animé girls on TV. The only thing missing was the exclamation mark above her head.

  “That guy with the pink T-shirt. Did you see him?” Archer wanted to rush for the door but had to stop and take a breather. Ow, shit.