by Holly Hart
“Anyway, I’ve picked up a loyal clientele over the years and I think I can parlay my goodwill into enough money to buy a factory. Take Tricia’s genius nationwide.”
“That’s a brilliant idea, as long as you can keep the integrity of the products. I’m crazy about the goodies here. In fact, I rode my bike here from Park Avenue just to get some.”
I can’t wait to tell Tricia that Carson is a fan of the shop. She’ll probably wet her panties.
“So you can see where I’m coming from,” I say. “I’m tired of working for other people, too.”
That’s the first time I’ve told the truth since Carson sat down.
He nods. “Definitely. And with your experience, you should have no problem expanding.”
That’s true, too. I actually had to study supply chain management to be able to maintain my cover for so long. That’s the bit they don’t tell you about when you sign up. Of course, I’ll have to figure out marketing and other aspects, but I know we’ll be a success.
“What’s your long-term goal?” he asks.
“Same as you: take the company public, sell my shares for a small fortune and live a life of leisure.”
Again, just enough truth to be plausible.
“A small fortune.” He smiles. “Yep, that’s me, all right.”
We sit in awkward silence for a few moments. I know what he wants to talk about, but I just can’t. Not here. Not now. Not while I have to focus all my attention on the Chase, which I totally haven’t done since Carson walked through the door.
“I’m sorry,” I say, standing and picking up my purse. “I really am. I’ve got so much to do today. I’m working to get my capital together so we can get our leverage deal started.”
He stands up. Mr. Gallant.
“Who are you working with?”
“Tate Capital. My liaison is Miranda Winthrop.”
Carson lets out a whistle.
“That’s impressive,” he says. “They only back winning horses.”
I feel a wave of pride despite the awkwardness of the situation. The praise feels good coming from him.
He holds out a hand and I take it in mine. The touch is electric, even after all these years. He folds his other hand over mine and suddenly the heat is almost too much to bear.
“Have dinner with me,” he says. His eyes are pleading.
“Okay,” I hear someone say.
Oh shit, it’s me.
“Great,” he says. “How about I meet you here at eight tonight?”
“Sure,” says that same crazy person.
“Awesome. I’ll see you then.”
Carson holds onto my hand for a few more beats before finally letting it go. He gives me a look as though he can’t quite believe his luck, but then turns, clearly not wanting to push it.
He grabs his things off the table and heads out the front door to his bike, locked to the lamppost outside.
What the hell just happened?
Chapter Forty-Eight
17. INTERLUDE
The huge man watches as Carson leaves the ice cream shop, hops onto his bicycle and rides off into Midtown traffic. A few minutes later, Cassandra walks out and hails a cab.
His expression never changes.
He slides a sausage-fingered hand into the breast pocket of his enormous suit jacket and removes a smart phone. Despite his size, and the heat of the day, there isn’t a hint of perspiration.
He dials a number from memory. It wouldn’t do to have it in his contacts, just in case his phone ever ends up in someone else’s hands. The extension rings once and a click indicates that it’s been answered.
“We need to meet,” the man says in Russian. “There are unusual circumstances.”
The other end is silent. Finally, a woman’s voice says: “Two p.m.”
The big man slides the pad of his huge thumb over the end-call button and places the phone back in his pocket.
Chapter Forty-Nine
18. CASSANDRA
What the hell am I doing here?
Rule number one: I’m not supposed to significantly alter my routine during the Chase.
I’m not a hundred percent sure what that means, exactly, but I know I may be pushing it by going on a date.
Still, here I am, sitting across from Carson Drake in The Modern, in the center of the Museum of Modern Art. Carson and I are still chatting about the pre-dinner tour we took, about the masterpieces and the artists themselves. About the state of modern art today, and the future of art in the multimedia world.
And God, I haven’t felt this good in so long. Honestly, even though the last decade was nothing more than a long flirtation with adrenaline, none of it compares to this.
And this food is unbelievable. I worry that the dress I bought this afternoon is going to be busting at the seams by the time we finish the fourth course. Of twelve. Or something equally ridiculous.
“How’s your quail?” he asks.
“Heavenly. The morels add so much flavor.” Seriously, what’s happening? The life of leisure was supposed to start after Tricia and I sold the company for tens of millions.
Carson smiles. He went with the yellowfin tuna. Something about Matthias kicking his ass.
“Did I mention how gorgeous you look in that dress?” he asks.
“Several times,” I say. Part of me wants to jump him right on the table for saying so, but part of me knows he’s just avoiding what he really wants to say.
The conversation has been so easy up to this point. It’s been glorious going back to the days when we could share our thoughts like this, almost as if all the years and everything that’s happened since just melted away.
But I’d have to be insane to think it’ll stay like that for the rest of the night. Carson’s already running out of subjects to bring up. I can see he’s starting to avoid my gaze. I know he won’t be able to say goodnight without knowing the answer to what I’m sure has been a burning question for the last decade.
Namely, why did I disappear on prom night – and then never contact him again?
So if it’s a foregone conclusion, I might as well rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. My training tells me to always press your advantage, however small. My advantage here is to control the message before he asks.
“Carson,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry.”
It’s the first time I’ve told the full truth since we met up at the shop. Hell, it might be the first completely honest thing I’ve said in years.
I can’t read the look in his eyes. Is he angry? Hurt? This is a moment I’ve been dreading since that night in high school. I couldn’t have looked him in the eye back then. I can barely do it now.
He clears his throat. It’s as close as he’s come so far to showing anything other than pure charm. He takes a breath and looks me in the eye.
“What happened, Cassie?”
Part of me wants to tell him the whole truth, but the part of me that’s under a lifetime non-disclosure agreement knows I have to walk through a minefield.
“Dad got transferred to San Francisco out of the blue,” I say. “We barely had any notice. We had to pack up and move out of base housing that afternoon.”
That’s somewhat true: my father was actually outed as a CIA operative during a Senate committee hearing on the intelligence community. It was politically motivated – Dad was a climber and someone in the agency didn’t like that, so they leaked his name – and it was hushed up immediately. But the damage was already done.
Dad made plenty of enemies in his time with the Agency, and for our own safety we had to disappear immediately. The government shipped us off to a military base in Honduras because, technically, it was considered a “temporary” base and wasn’t on anyone’s radar. We lived there for a year until the Agency cleared me for return to the US. Dad and Mom moved to Southeast Asia, where Dad became a section chief.
He always hated the fact that his new post kept him away from “the action.” I think that’s why
he pushed me so hard to go into the service myself.
Of course, I can’t tell Carson any of that.
And the look on his face is telling me he’s not buying the story I’m currently selling him.
“You had my phone number,” he says.
Be careful how you answer, Cassie. Geez, now he’s even got me calling myself Cassie again.
“I felt so bad about standing you up that I just couldn’t call,” I say. God, that sounds so weak.
But the pained expression on my face is genuine enough that he should buy it.
I hope.
“What about after?”
I cried myself to sleep for a year, I want to tell him. I watched that stupid video of us at the science fair over and over and over.
“I just got so busy with school,” I plead. “You know how it is.”
That’s a total lie: I didn’t start at the Citadel until they let me back in the US when I was nineteen. Luckily I managed to finish in three years.
Carson finishes his fish and wipes his mouth with the napkin. He looks like James Bond in his tuxedo, and again I’m awash in amazement over how much he’s changed. Sure, we reconnected in the museum, but it’s impossible to avoid the fact that he’s completely transformed himself since I last saw him.
Is he still the same boy I fell in love with?
Am I still the same girl he fell in love with?
I honestly don’t know.
Chapter Fifty
19. CARSON
She’s holding something back, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.
And really, who am I to be demanding anything from her? It’s been twelve years. We’re both different people now. Am I such a child that I need an apology after all this time?
That kind of attitude was partly responsible for Cassie being the only girl in school who would look at me. The fact I was all gangly angles didn’t help matters, either.
Well, things have changed. Dramatically.
“Sure,” I say. “I know how school is. I guess it was my turning point.”
Cassie smiles. It’s dazzling, especially combined with the stunning sleeveless wraparound she’s wearing. The aquamarine color really brings out the blue in her eyes, and it lifts her cleavage to the point where I can barely keep my eyes off of it.
Where was I? Oh, yeah.
“My time at Harvard really showed me that I wasn’t learning much that I didn’t already know,” I say. “And it drove home the fact that I didn’t want to have my nose buried in books for the rest of my life. I wanted to live, not just learn.”
“You were totally bored in classrooms,” she says. “That was why you decided to build that nuclear reactor model for the science fair. You wanted to actually engineer something.”
I smile. “You remember that?”
She seems startled by the question.
“Vaguely,” she says quickly. “I remember that we won.”
I remember, too. I also remember going for dinner with our parents that night, and then heading off to the old abandoned barracks at the edge of the base. We made out until her hair looked like a rat’s nest. She barely got it back under control before we went home.
“A scale version of that reactor would have worked if we’d had some uranium,” I remind her.
She laughs. “I know! I don’t think the judges ever figured that out. If they did, they probably would have called the government on us.”
I chuckle, too. We sit in silence for a while until our server brings us a couple of lemon sorbets.
“I don’t remember ordering this,” Cassie says.
“It’s palate cleanser before the next course,” I say with a wry smile.
She blushes, shaking her head. “I’m such a hick.”
“Forget it. I guess you don’t come to restaurants like this very often.”
“No,” she says. “But I bet you do.”
She’s opened the door, now I’m going to walk through it. I want her to know about everything I’ve accomplished since she left me standing there like an idiot on prom night.
“Most nights, I order in from room service,” I say. “My building has a concierge and a full-service restaurant, so I just call ahead and tell them to bring something up when I get home.”
Cassie’s eyes widen.
“Wow,” she says. “Where do you live?”
“Park Avenue. Penthouse suite.”
Sure, I guess you could call that second sentence a bit of an asshole thing to say. And you would be right. I couldn’t help myself. Being around Cassie makes me nervous for the first time in a long time. I keep feeling this deep need to prove myself over and over again – a feeling I haven’t experienced in years.
She lets out a low whistle.
“I was thinking,” she says. “It was kind of strange that we’ve both lived in New York for so long and we’ve never run into each other before. But now I realize we kind of run in different circles.”
“I tend to travel a lot, too,” I say. “I spend a lot of time in Europe. Northern Australia during the winter. I love snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef.”
“Yeah, I can see you’ve become a lot more – uh, active than you used to be.”
I beam in spite of myself. Somehow she makes all the years of chasing every woman I met fall away, and I’m back as that skinny kid again, trying desperately to win her approval.
Who am I kidding? Every one of those women was just an attempt to either forget about Cassie, or to somehow validate that I was worthy of such a beautiful woman.
Jesus, I’ve got some issues. Is it enough for me to just admit that? I’m thinking not. I know I’m coming off as a show-off, but for some reason I can’t help myself.
“It’s important to stay fit,” I say.
Good one, buddy. How lame can you get? I can’t believe she still has the ability to screw me up like this after all these years.
“Well, you’ve done it in spades,” she says. “I bet you could get into action movies if you wanted. You remind me a little of Jason Statham these days.”
“Too much work,” I grin. “It would cut into my leisure time.”
“See?” she says. “That’s what I’m looking for! I want to have so much money that I can say things like that.”
I return her smile. Wonder what she’d say if she knew I just paid twice what she can hope to get from selling her shares of this Tricialicious venture, all so I could chase a woman and take her virginity?
Which is exactly when the realization hits me. Holy shit, I’ve wasted the entire first day of the Chase with Cassie Vincent!
What was I hoping to accomplish tonight? Some sort of revenge? Whatever it was, it’s not worth throwing $20 million down the tubes and condemning a poor woman to having sex with some creepy old pervert.
I hope none of this shows on my face.
“Something wrong?” Cassie asks.
“Uh, no. I was just thinking about something I forgot to do.”
“Nothing important, I hope?”
“Depends on how you look at it. But I don’t want it to spoil our catching up.”
She glances at her watch. “Actually, I was just thinking that I probably should be getting home. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
Shit, I’m so confused.
Part of me is struggling to believe Cassie’s not climbing all over me right now and the other part just wants to take her to bed and get it over with.
And all of me can’t stop thinking of the poor quarry being handed a hotel room key by some sadistic rich bastard while I stand around and try to figure all this out!
“Of course,” I say. “Besides, if we skip dessert, I can flip Matthias the bird tomorrow.”
She giggles and my stomach flips. No matter what I do, I can’t stop feeling like a horny teenager around her. She’s not like any other woman I’ve ever been with. It was always so much more with her.
Cassie collects her purse as I pull her chair out for her. At least I can try to
act like a gentleman.
She looks at me sideways.
“Don’t we have to wait for our bill?” she asks.
“They’ll just put it on my account.”
She giggles again. It’s like music to me.
“Quit teasing me, Carson. Your life, it’s like everything I’ve been dreaming about. I’m totally going to have an account somewhere when I’m rich!”
I can’t help but laugh, too. I put an arm around her waist and lead her toward the foyer. Touching her like this sends a jolt straight to my dick, making me feel like a teenager yet again.
We reach the coatroom to pick up Cassie’s wrap, but there’s no one at the desk. Cassie looks around with some alarm.
“I really do need to get going,” she says, glancing at her watch again. “Maybe I’ll just leave it here and pick it up another time.”
“Not at all,” I say, making my way into the room itself. “Come here and point out which one it is.”
She follows me in and the door closes behind us. The room is lit only by a tiny sconce lamp on the wall.
“Should we really be in here?” she asks. “What if someone sees us? They might think we’re stealing something.”
“Cassie,” I chuckle. “I spend about a hundred grand a year in this place. They know I don’t need to steal what I want. Now let’s find your wrap.”
She swipes through the hangers for a few moments before finding it.
“It’s up there,” she says, pointing to the shelf above the hanging rack. “I can’t reach.”
I move in behind her and reach over her toward the shelf. As I do, I catch a whiff of her fragrance and suddenly I can’t think. It has the same effect on me as her laugh, making me hard as a rock. And dropping me into a memory back into a time when we were still thick as thieves.
“You,” I whisper in her ear. “You smell so…”
She gasps as my hardness presses against her ass through the thin fabric of my suit pants. I’m helpless to do anything except stand here, breathing into her neck.
I feel her spin around in the dark and wrap her arms around my neck. Suddenly her breasts are pressed against me and her hips are pushing their way into the hardness in my pants.
