by J. R. Ward
Yeah, he had. He couldn’t deny it.
“The truth is,” she murmured, “although I shouldn’t have been with you, I don’t regret it.”
He wasn’t so sure of that, given the way she stared up at him like she was waiting for words of wisdom or…absolution. Which he really couldn’t give her. He’d never been in a relationship before, so it wasn’t like he could offer advice about her and Vin—and he only knew from one-night stands, so what might be shocking to her was all he had experience with when it came to sex.
One thing was clear, though. As this spectacular woman looked at him with those dark, luminescent eyes, he saw the love she had for the man she was with: It was in her heart, radiating out of her.
Man, Vin diPietro was a full-load idiot to fuck this up.
Jim lifted his hand to her face and brushed off one of her tears. “Listen to me. You’re going to forget it ever happened. You’re going to lock it away and never think about it again, okay? If you don’t remember it, it’s not real. It didn’t happen.”
She sniffled a little. “Okay…all right.”
“Good girl.” Jim tucked a strand of her soft hair behind her ear. “And don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay.”
“How can you be so sure.”
And that was when it dawned on him. Maybe this was Vin’s crossroads—right here in front of the man, wanting to love him, hoping to get the chance, but losing the fight to stay connected. If the guy could just see what he had, and not as in his real estate or his cars or his statues and marble, but what really mattered, maybe he’d turn his life and soul around.
Devina blotted at one of her tears. “I’m running out of faith, it seems.”
“Don’t. I’m here to help.” Jim took a deep breath. “I’m going to make it okay.”
“Oh, God…you’re making me cry more.” Devina laughed and clasped his hand. “But thank you so much.”
Damn…those eyes of hers made him feel as if she’d reached in past his ribs and taken his heart into her delicate palm.
“Your name,” he whispered, “suits you.”
A blush flared in her cheeks. “In school, I used to hate it. I wanted to be Mary or Julie or something normal.”
“No, it’s perfect. I can’t imagine you being called anything else.” Jim glanced down at the phone and saw that the light was off. “He’s ended the call.”
She dabbed under both eyes. “I must be a mess. Here…let me give you some amuse-bouche. Take them to him and keep him busy in the study while I go fix myself.”
As he waited for her to come back from the kitchen, Jim finished his beer and wondered how in the hell he’d found himself in the role of Cupid.
Man, if those four lads even thought about getting him to wear the wings and a diaper while he nocked his arrow, he was so renegotiating his employment contract. And not with words.
Devina returned with a silver tray of bite-size somethings. “The study’s down that way. I’ll come get you both when I don’t look so weepy.”
“Roger that.” Jim took the tray, prepared to act the waiter and babysit diPietro. “I’ll keep him in there.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
Before he said too much again, Jim took off, carrying the tray with both hands through an endless spread of rooms. When he got to the study, the door was open and diPietro was sitting behind a big marble desk that had a lot of computers on it. The guy wasn’t staring at the machines, though. He was turned around and focused on the bank of windows and the twinkling view.
Something small and black was buried in his palm.
Jim knocked on the jamb. “I got some amusements for your mouth.”
Vin pivoted around in his chair and tucked the ring box next to the phone. As Heron stood in the study’s doorway with a tray in his hands, the guy made an unlikely waiter, and not because of the flannel shirt and the jeans. He simply wasn’t the kind to be anyone’s servant.
“You know French?” Vin murmured as he nodded at the amuse-bouche.
“She told me what they were.”
“Ah.” Vin got to his feet and went over. “Devina’s a great cook.”
“Yeah.”
“You try one already?”
“Nah, I’m just going by the smells coming out of your kitchen.”
They both took a stuffed mushroom cap. And a tiny sandwich with paper-thin slices of tomato and leaves of basil. And a flat-bellied spoon with caviar and leeks on it.
“So have a seat,” Vin said, nodding at the one across from his desk. “Let’s talk. I mean, I know you want food…but there’s something else, isn’t there.”
Heron put down the tray but didn’t take a load off. Instead, he went over to the windows and looked out at Caldwell.
In the silence, Vin resettled in his leather throne and measured his “guest.” Bastard had a jaw like a two-by-four, hard and straight, and he was playing his cards close to the chest: There was no tell in his face whatsoever.
Which suggested the territory they were going to head into was dark and tricky.
As Vin twirled a gold pen around on his blotter and waited for the ask, he wasn’t worried about dark and tricky. Most of his money had been made in construction, but he hadn’t started out in the legitimate land of boards and nails—and his contacts with the black-market side of Caldwell were still good.
“Take your time, Jim. Money is easier to ask for than…other things.” He smiled a little. “You want something that isn’t readily available at the local Hannaford, by any chance?”
Heron’s eyebrow twitched, but that was about it as he continued searching the lights of the city. “What exactly are you talking about.”
“What exactly are you looking for.”
There was a pause. “I need to know about you.”
Vin sat forward in his chair, not sure he’d heard right. “Know about me how?”
Heron turned his head and stared downward. “You’re about to make a decision. Something significant. Aren’t you.”
Vin’s eyes shot to the black velvet square he’d hidden.
“What’s in there?” Heron demanded.
“None of your business.”
“A ring?”
Vin cursed and reached for what he’d bought at Reinhardt’s. As he tucked the box into a drawer, he started to lose his patience. “Look, stop bullshitting around and tell me what you want. It’s not dinner and it’s not to get to know me. Why don’t you assume that there is nothing in this town that is unavailable to me and let’s get this over with. What the fuck do you want.”
The soft words that came back at him seemed so wrong: “It’s not what I want—it’s what I’m going to do. I’m here to save your soul.”
Vin frowned…and then busted out laughing. This guy with the Grim Reaper tat on his back and the tool belt wanted to save him? Yeah, that made sense.
And PS: Vin’s “soul” wasn’t drowning.
When he took a break to do some deep breathing, Heron said, “You know, that’s exactly how I reacted.”
“To what?” Vin said as he rubbed his face.
“Let’s just say the call to duty.”
“You some kind of religious freak?”
“Nah.” Heron finally went around and sat in the chair, his knees falling to the sides, his hands resting loosely on his thighs. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, why the hell not.” Vin found himself echoing Heron’s pose, just easing on back and relaxing. At this point, the whole thing was getting so weird, he was beginning to think it didn’t matter. “What do you want to know?”
Heron glanced around at the first-edition books and the artwork. “Why do you need all this shit? And I’m not being nasty. I’m never going to live like you, so I’m kind of wondering why anybody has to have it all.”
Vin was tempted to blow off the question, and later he would wonder why he didn’t. But for some reason he answered truthfully.
“It gives me weight and grounds
me. I feel safe with beautiful things around my home.” The instant the words were out, he wanted to take them back. “I mean…shit, I don’t know. I didn’t come from money. I was just an Italian kid over on the north side of town, and my parents were always scraping to get by. I fought my way up because I wanted much better than where I’d been.”
“Well, you’re waaaaaay up, all right.” Heron glanced at the computers. “So you must work a lot.”
“All the time.”
“Guess that means you’ve earned this amazing view.”
Vin swung his chair around. “Yeah. Been looking at it a lot lately.”
“You going to miss it when you move?”
“I’ll have the river to stare out at. And that house you and your boys are building is going to be spectacular. I like spectacular things.”
“That beer was probably the best one I’ve ever had.”
Vin focused on the guy’s reflection in the darkened glass. “Is Heron your real name?”
The guy smiled a little. “Of course it is.”
Vin glanced over his shoulder. “What other languages do you know aside from French?”
“Who says I know it?”
“The fact that you don’t have a clue about exotic beer makes me doubt you’re a foodie and into gourmet lingo. And Devina wouldn’t have translated amuse-bouche because it would be rude to think you didn’t know what it meant. Therefore, I assume you know the language.”
Heron drummed his fingers on his knee as he seemed to think things over. “Tell me what’s in that box you hid in the drawer and maybe I’ll answer you.”
“Anyone ever say they had to drag things out of you?”
“All the time.”
Figuring it was no real revelation—because, really, when was Heron going to have anything to do with Devina?—Vin got the Reinhardt box back out and popped the lid. As he turned the thing around so Heron could see what was in it, the guy let out a low whistle.
Vin just shrugged. “Like I said, I’m into beautiful things. I bought it last night.”
“Christ, what a sparkler. When you going to pop the Q?”
“Don’t know.”
“What are you waiting for?”
Vin snapped the box shut. “You’ve asked more than one question. My turn. French?
My turn. French? Oui ou non??”
“Je parle un peu. Et vous?”
Je peu. Et”
“I’ve done some real estate deals north of the border, so I speak it. Your accent is not Canadian, though. It’s European. How long were you in the military?”
“Who said I was?”
“Just a guess.”
“Maybe I went to college overseas.”
Vin regarded the guy steadily. “Not your style, I wouldn’t think. You don’t take orders well, and I can’t imagine you’d be content behind a school desk for four years.”
“Why would I go into the service if I don’t take orders?”
“Because they let you do something on your own.” Vin smiled as the guy’s face remained utterly closed. “They let you work by yourself, didn’t they, Jim. What else did they teach you?”
Silence expanded to fill not just the room, but the whole duplex.
“Jim, you do realize that the more you stay quiet, the more I make up my own mind about your military haircut and that tattoo on your back. I showed you what you wanted to see—seems only fair you return the favor. More to the point, those are the rules of the game.”
Jim leaned in slowly, his pale eyes as dead as stone. “If I tell you anything, I’d have to kill you, Vin. And that would be a buzz kill for the both of us.”
So that tat wasn’t just something the guy had seen on a wall in some two-bit piercing and body art parlor and gotten it inked onto himself because he thought it was cool. Jim was the real deal.
“I am so curious about you,” Vin murmured.
“I suggest you get over that.”
“Sorry, my friend. I’m a tenacious motherfucker. Lest you think I just won the lottery to get all this crap you’re gawking at.”
There was a pause, and then Jim’s face broke into a small smile. “So you want me to think you have balls, do you.”
“Believe it, my man. And word to the wise, they’re as big as church bells.”
Jim settled back in his chair. “Oh, really. Then why are you sitting on that ring?”
Vin narrowed his eyes, anger flaring. “You want to know why.”
“Yeah. She’s an incredibly gorgeous woman and she looks at you like you’re a god.”
Vin tilted his head to one side and spoke what had been banging around his head since the night before. “My Devina went out last evening wearing a blue dress. When she came home, she immediately changed out of it and took a shower. This morning, I pulled the thing out of the dry-cleaning hamper and there was a black smudge on the back of it—like she’d been sitting somewhere other than on a neat and tidy chair in a bar. But more than that, Jim, when I lifted the dress to my nose, I smelled something on the fabric that was a lot like men’s cologne.”
Vin measured every single one of the guy’s facial muscles. Not one of them moved.
Vin sat forward in his chair. “I don’t need to tell you that it wasn’t my cologne, do I. And it might interest you to know that it smells a hell of a lot like yours—not that I think you were with her, but a man wonders when his woman’s clothes smell like someone else, doesn’t he. So you see, it’s not because I don’t have balls. It’s because I wonder who else’s she’s been touching.”
CHAPTER
10
Well, wasn’t this a fucking party.
As Jim stared across the desk at his host, he realized it had been a long, long time since he’d met a man he’d been impressed by—but Vin diPietro did the trick. SOB was calm, cool, collected. Smart as shit, and not a pussy.
And it was evident that the guy truly believed Jim hadn’t been with his girlfriend—at least, that was what Jim’s instincts were telling him, and as they rarely were wrong, he was inclined to trust them. But how long would that last?
Christ, if only he could go back to the night before and leave Devina in that parking lot. Or…shit, just walk her inside where it was warm and let her find some other guy to work out her confusion and sadness with.
Jim shrugged. “You can’t be sure she was with someone.”
A shadow passed over Vin’s face. “No. I can’t.”
“You ever cheat on her?”
“Nope. I don’t believe in that shit.”
“Neither do I.” Strange…for once, lying sent a shaft through Jim’s chest. In truth, he hadn’t cared at the time that Devina was with someone else.
As silence flared again, Jim knew the guy was waiting for another revelation so he sifted through his life, looking for ready-for-prime-time details. Eventually, he said, “I also speak Arabic, Dari, Pashto, and Tajik.”
Vin’s smile was part Cheshire, part respect. “Afghanistan.”
“Among other places.”
“How long did you serve?”
“A while.” He hadn’t been kidding about having to kill the guy if the information exchange went any further on his part. “And let’s end the conversation there, if you don’t mind.”
“Fair enough.”
“So, how long you been with your woman?”
Vin’s eyes went over to an abstract drawing that hung on the wall by the desk. “Eight months. She’s a model.”
“Looks it.”
“You ever been married, Jim?”
“Fuck, no.”
Vin laughed. “Not looking for Ms. Right?”
“More like I’m the wrong kind of man for that sort of thing. I move around a lot.”
“Do you. You get bored easily?”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
The sound of high heels on marble brought the guy’s eyes to the study’s doorway. It was obvious when Devina made her appearance, and not just because that faint, flow
ery perfume wafted into the air: Vin’s stare went slowly down and then up, like he was seeing her for the first time in a while.
“Dinner is ready,” she said.
Jim looked into the bank of glass across the room and studied her reflection. She was, yet again, poised under a light, the radiant glow making her stand out against the backdrop of the night view—
He frowned. An odd shadow floated behind her, like a black flag waving in the wind…as if she were being trailed by a ghost.
Jim whipped around and blinked hard. As his eyes searched the space behind her…they found a whole lot of absolutely nothing. She was just standing beneath a light, smiling at Vin as the guy came up to her and kissed her mouth.
“You ready to eat, Jim,” the man said.
How about a head transplant first, then the frickin’ pasta. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
The three of them walked down through the various rooms to yet another marble table. This one was big enough to seat twenty-four, and if there were any more crystal hanging from the ceiling above, it you’d have sworn you were in an ice cave.
The flatware was gold. And no doubt solid.
Are you kidding me, Jim thought as he sat down.
“As the cook’s on vacation,” Vin said as he settled Devina in her chair, “we’ll just serve ourselves.”
“I hope you like what I made.” Devina picked up her damask napkin. “I kept it simple, just some Bolognese sauce over homemade linguine. And the salad is nothing but microgreens, artichoke hearts, and red peppers with an ice wine vinaigrette that I whipped up.”
Whatever it was, the stuff smelled amazing, and looked even better.
After big bowls with gold on their edges were passed around and plates were filled, everyone started eating.
Okay, Devina was a spectacular cook. Period. That micro-whatever with the ice-la-di-da dressing was flat-out amazing…and don’t get him started on the pasta.
“So the work on the bluff house is coming along well,” Vin said. “Don’t you think, Jim?”
This launched an hour-long discussion on the construction, and Jim was once again impressed. In spite of Vin’s digs and his flashy wardrobe, he’d clearly had firsthand experience with the job Jim and the boys were doing—as well as everything the electricians and the plumbers and the siders and the roofers got up in the morning for. The guy knew tools and nails and boards and insulation. Hauling and waste removal. Blacktopping. Permits. Regulations. Easements.
