Wicked Beautiful

by J. T. Geissinger

  Please tell me we’re not thinking the exact same thing.

  “To be honest with you, Parker, I don’t know what to think. All I know is that your lady friend looks squeaky clean on paper, but has someone on her side who once intercepted the source code of the International Space Station, which caused NASA to shut down their computers for two weeks. If that doesn’t concern you, I want what you’ve been smoking.”

  Inhaling deeply, I rise. “I need to think about this.”

  Connor says with chilling softness, “Roger that. But you should know, brother, whatever you decide, I’ve got a score to settle with this motherfucker Polaroid. You don’t want to look further into Victoria Price, that’s your call. But her friend has cost me millions in contracts, and just fried all thirty-three drives on this Origin system I spent a year perfecting because I got a little too close.”

  He jerks his chin at the mocking cartoon cat bouncing around on his computer screen. “If I hadn’t secured the network with my own custom anti-intrusion software that cuts off an infected machine, my whole shop would be compromised right now. In other words, my entire business would be toast.”

  His gaze burns into mine. “Nobody fucks with my business, brother.”

  We stare at each other while the clock on the wall ticks and ticks and ticks.

  I say, “Give me a few days.”

  He nods. I pick up the phone from his desk, slip it into my pocket, and turn to leave. When I’m at the door, Connor’s voice stops me.

  “Parker.”

  I turn and look at him. He glances at his computer screen and then back at me. “Be careful.”

  Though I’m not anything close to happy, I smile. “Roger that.”

  Feeling as if my feet are sunk in quicksand and it’s only a matter of time before I drown, I head to Xengu.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ~ Victoria ~

  I’m up to my neck in bubbles when my phone, perched on the ledge of the bathtub, begins to ring. I stare at it with trepidation, as if it’s the gynecologist calling with the lab report on a suspicious-looking vaginal sore.

  Today has been one nightmare after another. My editor called to inform me that due to high demand for my next book, the publication date was bumped up, which means I need to complete copyedits within the next week; I haven’t even started on them yet. Then my long-time trainer, Duke, asked for a loan to open his own gym, which of course I shot down because Duke has the business acumen of a jock strap, which I told him, which is when he threatened to sell a highly unflattering story about me to People magazine, which is when I reminded him of the confidentiality clause in his contract and informed him I wouldn’t hesitate to crush him if he breached it, which caused him to call me a few choice names, ending with a four-letter word that ends in unt.

  That word was not aunt.

  To top it off, the hotel Tabby booked for my seminar on Friday called in a panic to say their ballrooms had all been flooded from a malfunctioning fire sprinkler system. I have to find a new venue with seating capacity for over two thousand people, and notify all those people…within the next two days.

  I’m tempted to throw the phone across the room and watch it shatter against the vanity mirror. Naturally I don’t—I love the Swarovski crystal–studded cover—but answer it instead. My voice holds all the cheer of a wake.

  “Victoria Price speaking.”

  “Why do you sound like your cat just died?”

  My lips tug upward; it’s Parker. “I don’t own a cat.”

  His answering chuckle is deeply arousing. “I happen to know for a fact, Ms. Price, you own a beautiful pussycat.”

  My smile grows wider. “Oh? Do tell.”

  “Well, let’s just say she’s quite high-maintenance and demanding, but if you stroke her exactly right, she’ll purr so loud the neighbors will hear. She’s the sweetest little pussy in the world.”

  I can’t help it; I break into a big, stupid grin. “I can be as high-maintenance as I want; I’m the one paying the bills.”

  “We were talking about your cat, remember?”

  “Ah, yes. My mistake.” I decide to torture him a bit, just for fun. In a playful tone, I ask, “Would it interest you to know what my kitty cat really enjoys?”

  I hear his slow inhalation before he replies, “Yes. That would very much interest me.”

  I lift my leg from the water and admire the way the bubbles slide down my wet skin in a glossy meander. “She loves to be kissed.”

  When he answers, his voice has dropped an octave. “I recall that.”

  “In particular, she loves to be kissed and stroked at the same time. It drives her mad.”

  He clears his throat. I imagine him loosening his tie.

  “And after that?”

  In a husky whisper I reply, “She likes to be fed.”

  Electricity crackles through the phone. “I hope she likes churros, because I’ve got a big one fresh from the oven that’s ready to go. I can be there in ten minutes.”

  High from the need I hear in his voice, I laugh. “Why, Mr. Maxwell, how generous of you! My kitty does indeed like churros!”

  “Churros in general, or mine in particular?”

  The smile flees my face. I lower my leg to the water and sit up, my heart beginning to beat a little faster. “Yours in particular,” I say softly, letting him hear the truth in my voice.

  There’s a long silence in which I can hear him breathing. Then: “I need to see you.”

  The rawness of that, the way he puts everything he feels into those five simple words, takes my breath away. “I…I have to work early in the morning. My schedule over the next few days is crazy; I’m not free until the weekend.”

  “All weekend?”

  There’s a sudden shift in his mood, from sexy to sharp. I hear it in his voice. It’s almost as if something has occurred to him.

  “Why? What did you have in mind?”

  After a short pause, he says, “A surprise. I know how you love those. When should I pick you up?”

  “After five on Friday. I have a seminar—”

  “Text me the location. We’ll leave from there—pack an overnight bag.”

  Taken aback by both his sudden intensity and what he’s just said about the overnight bag, I frown. “Where are we going?”

  This time the pause before he speaks feels intensely fraught. Or maybe I’m just imagining it because all my nerves are squealing like piglets at the thought of seeing him again.

  “To a place of no secrets,” he says quietly. Without another word, he hangs up.

  I stare at the phone in my hand for a long time, wondering what those cryptic words could mean.

  TWENTY-NINE

  ~ Parker ~

  After I hang up with Victoria, I turn my gaze back to the computer screen I’ve been staring at for the past thirty minutes.

  I’m in my office at Xengu. It’s hours until closing. I should be on the floor overseeing business, but tonight, for the first time ever, I’m incapable of conducting business.

  I’m in too much shock.

  Because after leaving Connor’s, I decided to look up that story about Victoria on the Drudge Report website that Bailey had told me about. It was short, only a few sentences long. But one word stood out to me like a glaring neon sign, the afterglow seared into my retinas:

  Laredo.

  I stare at that name—the name of the city where I grew up, the city where I lost my soul and buried my heart, the city where once upon a time I fell violently, irrevocably, fatally in love—and feel the first, faint tremors of anger stir in my gut.

  It’s not a coincidence. I’m sure of that. Especially considering Victoria’s initial story about California omitted any mention of Laredo. It wasn’t until I brought it up that she said she’d been to Texas…and now her tale about visiting the grave of her ex-boyfriend is in question, too. So is what she said about her mother being sick.

  I don’t need to ask myself if she could be that good a liar, b
ecause I already know the answer.

  But why? What’s her end game?

  I don’t know, but whatever it is, if that woman thinks she’s going to blackmail me with the ghosts of my past, she’s got another think coming.

  Because turnabout is fair play, and I’m not above getting my hands dirty if it means getting what I want. And what I want is her.

  No matter what it might cost me.

  THIRTY

  ~ Victoria ~

  The sound of thunderous applause jerks me back into the present. I smile, nodding and waving to the crowd, relieved the seminar is finally over.

  It’s been a hellish few days, but Tabby pulled off a miracle by not only securing a new venue but also communicating the location to all the ticket holders. Once again, it’s a standing-room-only crowd.

  Too bad I’m too distracted to enjoy it.

  I haven’t heard from Parker in days. I can’t get our conversation from Wednesday night out of my mind, and I’m not talking about the cat innuendos.

  I’m talking about the mysterious “place of no secrets.” The more I thought about that, the more ominous it sounded. At this point I’ve almost convinced myself he’s going to take me to a basement somewhere, tie me to a chair, and inject truth serum into my arm.

  Wouldn’t that be inconvenient.

  “OK, before we wrap up, I have time for a few quick questions from the audience—”

  Hands shoot up before I can finish my sentence. I point to a heavyset woman in the fourth row wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. She has an unfortunate haircut that looks like someone plopped a soup bowl on her head and hacked around the edges.

  “Yes—the lovely lady in the Disneyworld sweat shirt. Please hand her the mic.”

  An assistant trots over to the woman and hands her a wireless microphone. She holds it tightly in both hands as if it might try to escape.

  “Hi, um, I’m Barbara. Um, Victoria, you said earlier that confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can wear. But what about, um, the women who don’t have any confidence? How do we get it?”

  Flushed, she hands the mic back to the waiting assistant and sits down. Many heads are nodding in the crowd; she’s asked a popular question.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret, ladies; you don’t actually have to have confidence for other people to think you do. That might sound nonsensical, but in the same way studies have shown that forcing a smile will actually make you feel better when you’re unhappy, pretending you have confidence and rock-solid self-esteem will cause others to treat you better, which then makes you feel more confident, which then starts a feedback loop wherein you end up gaining confidence simply because you acted like you already had it. So the next time you’re in a situation where you’re feeling insecure, just ask yourself, ‘What would Victoria Price do?’ Then pretend you’re me, and do it.”

  I pause, smiling at the crowd. “Unless it’s chopping off your husband’s pecker. Please don’t blame that on me.”

  Laughter. I point to another woman standing on the far side of the ballroom, jumping up and down and waving her arms enthusiastically in the air.

  “Yes, the woman in the red polka-dot dress.”

  Another assistant holds out a wireless microphone to her. She doesn’t take it from him but leans over his outstretched hands to speak into it.

  “Victoria, I’m Claire from Kearney, and before I get to my question I just wanted to say you are such an inspiration to so many women. I saw you on Good Morning America last year and you said something that stuck with me. You said, ‘I’m fighting for all the girls who never thought they could win.’ And I just thought that was so amazing. So thank you for being such a champion for women.”

  Massive applause erupts from the audience. Touched, I put my hand over my heart. “Thank you, Claire. That’s so wonderful to hear.”

  Claire beams. Then she says, “OK, so my question is about men.”

  The audience hoots, and Claire laughs along with them. “Whenever I ask my husband to do something around the house, taking out the trash just as an example, he says he will but then doesn’t. Or he says he’ll do it later. There’s always some excuse. The shelf in my laundry room has been broken for six months and my husband has promised about ten times he’s going to fix it. How can I get him to do it without acting like a nag, which doesn’t work anyway?”

  The sound of two thousand women nodding as a collective is depressing. For about the forty-millionth time in my life, I wonder why men are such stubborn mules.

  “OK, here’s the answer. Are you ready?”

  I wait for their shouts and clapping to die down, and then say, “Sometimes you have to play the role of a fool to fool the fool who thinks he’s fooling you.”

  Crickets. Obviously an explanation is in order.

  “Men hate being told what to do. When a wife gives her husband a command, to him it feels like he’s being scolded by his mommy. Even if it’s something as innocuous as telling him to take out the trash, he’ll feel emasculated if you ask in the wrong tone, or word it the wrong way. The best way to get a man to do anything is by motivating him to do it himself.

  “So don’t mention that shelf to your husband ever again. What you should do the first chance you get is go ask the most attractive man in the neighborhood if he would be so kind as to assist you with fixing your shelf, because, and I’m quoting what you should actually say here, ‘You’re so much better at these things than I am.’ Then, when the neighborhood stud shows up to fix your shelf, watch how fast your husband moves. He’ll have built you a new shelf and probably an entire new laundry room in thirty minutes. Nothing motivates a man more than competition.”

  When Claire says, “Oh my God, I know exactly who I’m going to ask,” the room erupts into laughter.

  “Good for you, Claire! OK, next question.”

  I point to a mousy woman sitting quietly in the front row. Unlike the other women in the audience, she hasn’t smiled, laughed, or clapped once during the entire seminar. I’m surprised she’s participating now; she’s looked as if she’s been in pain all day.

  “Yes, lady in the front.”

  She stands. The assistant hands her the mic. She holds it for a moment, looking at the floor, and then raises her eyes and drills me with them. “When I told my boyfriend I was coming to this seminar, he tried to kill me.”

  The entire room falls silent. Goose bumps march like fire ants down my spine.

  “He said that you’ve done more to ruin relations between men and women than anyone else since Eve took the apple from the serpent.”

  Oh, boy. Religious nut job alert.

  “I guess that makes her the original bitch.”

  My attempt at a lighthearted joke falls flat; everyone is waiting nervously to hear what the woman is going to say next. Wondering if I’m about to get tied to a stake and roasted alive, I look nervously stage left, trying to catch the eye of the burly security guard standing in the wings, but am stunned to see Parker there instead.

  He’s unsmiling, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, watching me. When our eyes meet, a strange tingle of premonition zips through me.

  How long has he been standing there? And what is that look in his eyes?

  The woman continues. “But I remembered what you’d written in the afterword of your first book, Bitches Do Better. You wrote, ‘The beautiful thing about life is, you always have the power to say, “This is not how my story is going to end.”’ I remembered that when he had his hands around my throat. I decided that wasn’t how my story was going to end. So I fought back. And I got away. And now he’s in jail and won’t be able to hurt me again. So I guess I don’t really have a question. I guess I just wanted to say…you saved my life, Victoria. You literally saved my life.”

  My throat is closing up. A large, invisible fist squeezes my windpipe. After a long moment, I manage, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  The woman answers, “Jennifer.”

  I look
to the audience. With a little hitch in my voice, I say, “Can we all please give Jennifer a round of applause for being so fucking awesome?”

  The roar that explodes from the crowd is like nothing I’ve heard before. It sounds like a rock concert. Jennifer blushes and looks down. Before she can sit, I jump off the stage and engulf her in a bear hug.

  The crowd goes wilder. Suddenly there are ten women around us, then twenty, then who knows how many more, all of them hugging and clapping and hollering, patting me on the back, the shoulders, my hair. Jennifer and I break apart, grinning at each other. She tells me I’m her hero, I tell her she’s mine, and then I have to run away because there’s water pooling in my eyes and I’d rather have a colonoscopy with no anesthesia than be seen crying in public.

  I throw a final wave to the crowd before disappearing off the stage, where I bump right into a solid, unmoving bulk that turns out to be Parker.

  He grasps me by the upper arms. Blinking, I look up at him. When he sees my expression, his face softens.

  “You’re just a big marshmallow under all that titanium armor, aren’t you?” He pulls me against his chest, and I bury my face in his coat.

  “Don’t make me tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  That makes him laugh. He winds his arms around me and nuzzles his nose against my ear. “I wouldn’t care if you did. There’s nothing like a woman with a brilliant mind and a filthy mouth.”

  “Don’t forget the high-maintenance pussycat.”

  He presses his lips against the pulse in my temple. I can feel by the curve of his lips that he’s smiling. “How could I possibly forget? She’s all I’ve been able to think about for the past forty-eight hours.”

  Relieved that we’re joking, I peek up at him with an eyebrow cocked and pretend to frown. “A one-track mind, I see.”

  “It’s my finest trait. That and being smart enough to take out the trash before Fabio shows up to beat me to it.”

  I can’t help the way my lips twitch because I’m trying not to smile. “This is why men aren’t allowed in my seminars—now you know all our secrets!”