Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  He taps my nose in a fatherly gesture he usually reserves for at home. “Don’t worry about it. It’s old business, from years ago.”

  “He threatened you.” By threatening me. And I liked it.

  He sighs a ragged breath. “Blake’s overwrought from the pressure of his father’s death and having to take responsibility for his family’s estate. He’s a very young man to be thrown into so much.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Everyone knows the story about how Blake’s mother died, two decades ago, giving birth to his sister. A tragedy no one forgets. His sister lives in California. I don’t know if he has any other family for support.

  “It’s no excuse for upsetting you,” I say.

  The corner of his mouth lifts. “Don’t you worry about me. This is hardly the worst thing a client has ever said to me.”

  “You won’t tell me what he said?”

  He shakes his head, but his breathing is heavy. He’s reached his stress limit for the day.

  “You should meet Mom at the country club for lunch. Take the afternoon to spend time with her. She’d like that.”

  “But my clients—”

  I pick up the phone. “They’re already rescheduled with the other perfectly qualified lawyers in your practice.”

  He inhales as if to argue with me but seems to notice how worked up he is over this. “You’re sure?”

  “I’ll stay and man the desk this afternoon.”

  “Thank you.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “You’re too good to me.” He moves back into his office to grab his jacket, then leaves for the day.

  I make the dozen or so calls, inform the three other lawyers down the hall about the changes in schedule. Then back at my desk, I stare at the blotter.

  Blake has something planned for me, and God help me, I’m dying to know what it is.

  I’ll do more than look at her.

  My imagination is limited—everything I try to envision him “doing to me” seems too tame, too mundane. Nothing this man does would ever be mundane. It would be abrupt bursts of intense anger turned ultimate passion turned . . .

  I shake the thoughts from my head.

  Dad said I shouldn’t speak to him. Blake is the exact kind of Southern old money I’ve sworn off. Fantasizing about him is a waste of time.

  But I have to know why he threatened my father.

  I go back to my file cabinets and restart digging through old papers. There have to be some answers about him here.

  “You didn’t think I left, did you?”

  I jump at his voice and try to turn around. “Blake?”

  “Sh.” His hands hold my shoulders and he whispers in my ear, “Do you want the others to hear?” There’s a mocking humor in his voice.

  My breath speeds and my hands sweat. I really had thought he’d left, but I feel his breath on my neck, him hot at my back. I’m astonished to find I want him to press me into the cabinets and make me come alive.

  “Dad said I shouldn’t speak to you,” I murmur.

  He traces a hand up my arm. “But you’re not going to listen to him, are you?”

  I should, but just his hand lights up my insides. It’s too exhilarating to resist. “Are you going to tell me why he’s so angry at you? Why you were shouting at him?”

  “Maybe.” He nuzzles my ear, and I feel his lips brush my skin.

  I turn to face him, finding him closer than he should be, but as close as I’d like. He stares down at me with all the intensity that I’ve needed to have in my world.

  He’s a potentially dangerous man—full of threats and anger. But hell, I could melt with the way he looks at me, sink right down into my shoes on the floor from how hot his eyes are. His lips are right there, turned up at the corners, not with lightness but with malicious intent.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I can’t believe the words are out of my mouth until they are. What do I want him to do to me? should be the real question. Or more like: What don’t I want him to do to me?

  His gaze drops from my eyes to my mouth and back—like he can’t decide which he wants more, to look at me or kiss me. “Have dinner with me. At my estate.”

  “From threats to a date? You do keep a girl guessing.”

  He slips a hand to my waist and brushes it over my hip. “If you like games, I’m happy to play. Just know that you’ll lose.”

  “I like games. I’m very good at them.”

  “Don’t say that until you know the rules.”

  “Are you going to teach them to me?” I bite my lip.

  He brushes his thumb over my lip.

  “Give me a reason why I should ignore my father and come out to your estate for the second night in a row.”

  “A reason?” He stalks closer to me, pressing me into the wall.

  I grab the lapels of his jacket. “A good one.” Needing him to kiss me, begging to get my fill of him beyond just the promises of his eyes.

  He doesn’t disappoint.

  He grasps my face and tilts my head up to him. His lips meet mine in a rush of passion—all the things he’s holding back in his body and his words, set loose from his mouth into mine.

  As hot and hard as I’d hoped it would be.

  There’s no testing, no teasing, just full-on man, intense and unrestrained. Consuming me and filling me with all the rage roaring through his body. I feel it now—the compressed anger, the animal behind his mad gaze. Any hope I had of escaping him—every attempt I made to get away from him last night—it’s gone.

  I open my mouth and his tongue invades like a force of nature, unleashing a strength of feeling I had only guessed could come from a kiss. It sweeps through my body, heating me to my core, making me ache to be naked and laid out for him to do this to all of me—how he would awaken all the things in me I’ve been so desperate to feel.

  My hands grasp at his neck, his face, his hair, and I pull him against me, needing to go along on this ride he’s promised me.

  But too soon, he breaks the kiss and jerks away from me.

  I moan in protest and vainly reach for him, my whole body throbbing in want of him.

  He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stares at me like I’ve turned into a bomb—one that’s ticking and set to go off.

  I lean against the wall and brush my hair back from my face. “That’s a good enough reason for me,” I say, my breathing as jagged as his.

  His stare turns brutal—a flash of anger so hot it scorches. I stiffen in alarm. But he closes his eyes and grits his teeth, and when he reopens them, the brutality is gone.

  “I’ll pick you up when you get off work,” he grumbles, almost like he doesn’t want to, except I catch a glimpse at the crotch off his pants, where he is visibly hard. Oh, he wants to.

  “Six.”

  “Fine,” he says, then stalks away. Without a goodbye, without a backward glance, his footsteps echo down the hall, then the front door slams behind him.

  I’m in so much trouble.

  And that’s how I like it.

  Chapter Four

  The feel of her mouth still too sharp on my lips, I leave the office.

  It’s part of my plan to seduce her. It’s not part of my plan to be interested in her.

  Not like this anyway—not like my skin is still echoing with the need to feel her.

  It may have surprised me, the way that for a moment she made me forget that kissing her was just a ploy, but it makes no difference. If she’s going to become my captive, ball and chain, I may as well enjoy having her. And enjoy taking from her everything she wants to give me.

  With time to kill before I go pick her up—in the hours until I kidnap her willingly from her life and trap her in mine—I stroll through the university grounds.

  It didn’t feel as good as it should have, shouting at her father. Rather than feeling any relief, any satisfaction from confronting Nowell, it’s worse. Like the anger once cut loose doesn’t feel quenched but freed, and wrangling it back into its cage is
a feat beyond my self-control.

  I have to walk it off.

  The arboretum offers a protective cover, an easy place to hide. The campus is quiet. The students won’t arrive for the fall semester until next week.

  Plenty of people might recognize me here, so I wear a baseball cap and aviators to hide my face. The constant condolences for my father’s death grate on my nerves. They don’t know what kind of man he really was.

  What even I don’t know is if I’m like him.

  Once I was afraid of the demon he put in me with every slap of his hand, of the anger he pounded into me better than any other lesson. But now I’m embracing it. For too long I’ve held back. For too long I let the sins of my father go unpunished. I waited so long that he died before I could get the retribution my mother deserved.

  The guilt that stabs through my brain forces me to stop walking. I have to close my eyes against it. I didn’t help her. I could have, should have. If I were a better, stronger man, I would have. What I let happen to her when I was young was unforgivable. That I did nothing as an adult—there is no word horrible enough for that cowardice. That my father paid nothing for his crimes is a regret that will eat me alive for the rest of my life.

  And so taking revenge on Nowell is the next best thing. He’s the man who allowed it to happen, who knew how bad my father was and did nothing, even prevented the consequences from happening.

  And there is no better revenge on a man like Nowell than taking his only daughter from him.

  Her sweetness, her innocence, will be a small casualty on the scale of this mess my father and his minions created.

  My phone rings. I pull it from my pocket and the screen says it’s from the one person who I will answer for come hell or fire, disaster or apocalypse.

  “Penny?”

  “Hey, how’s home?” My sister’s voice is like a light in the fog. She used to be all rain and no sunshine, until she met her miserable excuse for a husband, who has turned out to be the help for her that I tried and failed to be.

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t lie. How miserable are you?”

  “I’m predictably in hell.”

  “I knew I should’ve come with you,” Penny says.

  “No. Don’t even think it. This has nothing to do with you.”

  She sighs, her breath a whoosh on the phone’s speaker. “Do I need to put Logan on? Or can you derail the ‘he-man must protect woman’ for five minutes?”

  I kick a stone on the sidewalk and try to see around my instinct to shelter her from everything. “I’ll be good.” An instinct to keep the secrets buried—another thing I share with our piece-of-shit father. But these habits—the ones he instilled in me—aren’t easy to kill.

  “Did you visit Nowell?”

  “This morning.”

  “And?”

  “He denied it all, of course. No surprises. Well, mostly.” His gut reaction wasn’t as strong as I expected. Less fear, more resignation, like he’d known this day would come. Not so surprising perhaps, but what was more so was his lack of anger and the trace of . . . concern. Like he was worried for me. Yeah, right.

  “What do you mean ‘mostly?’”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She groans. “Blake.”

  “Sorry. He was less angry than I expected.”

  “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  The questions—this is why I hate talking about things. “He’s guilty. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “You can never be completely sure with these things, Blake. If there’s anything we’ve learned these past few months, nothing is clear. Ever.”

  “Penny.” I fight to keep the growl from my voice. “I don’t need you poking holes in this. If you’re going to do that, I’m hanging up. Better yet, put Logan on. He believes it.”

  I will not derail this for anyone, not even Penny.

  A silence stretches between us. We may be making strides in being honest with each other, but our father fucked us up good. And I’m not sure if we’ll ever be right again. Not that we ever were.

  “Did you meet her?”

  “That’s none of your business.” I haven’t told her about my plans for Daisy, and I never will.

  “What’s Daisy like? She was at your party last night, right?” Penny feels a kindred spirit connection to her, I think: blameless naïve daughter of a scum father.

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  I can tell her some truth at least. “I recognized her from Fenton. She set off the sprinkler system.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She hacked the controls and set it off over the entire lawn. So bad everyone had to leave.”

  She laughs, hard.

  A small chuckle escapes me. It is funny. “I couldn’t even stop it from the pool house. I had to go in the main house to shut off the water.”

  Her laughter stops. “You had to go in the house?”

  I swallow, wishing I’d left that part out. “Yeah.” The awkward silence stretches again. I told her how I’ve been staying in the guest house. She knows, since I finally told her a month ago, what went on in that big house on the night she was born. I know now, thanks to Logan, that telling her was the right thing.

  I still wish she didn’t have to know.

  Her voice comes closer and softer into the phone. “I’m sorry you had to go in there.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, too sharply. “It’s just a house. Whatever.”

  “Right. You’re right.” She tries to brush it off. “So what’s next in your plan?”

  “I didn’t tell Nowell everything, since he was in his office. Tomorrow I’ll visit him at home and tell him the rest.”

  “Okay.” She says it with caution, like there’s something else wrong.

  “What is it?”

  “I wish you’d wait until we have more proof.”

  “I have plenty of proof.” I do my best not to shout, but she’s grating on me.

  “Layla is doing more research. Couldn’t you wait a week?”

  “Layla is—” I can’t insult my sister’s best friend. “I’ve waited too many years. I will not wait longer.”

  “It’s a few more days.”

  That’s it. I can’t take anymore. “No! I’ve been a coward all my life. Waiting for the right time. No more waiting. I’m done. No excuses. Our mother deserves this!”

  “Blake, I’m not saying—”

  “I have plenty of proof. Financial records. Emails.”

  “Layla’s looking for police reports.”

  “There won’t be any police reports. If there ever were any, they’ll have been destroyed by his friends in high places.”

  She gives a heavy sigh. “Promise me you’ll leave Daisy out of it.” I can’t lie to her.

  “It’s how you met Logan.”

  She gasps. “Are you blackmailing her?”

  It’s what Logan did to her.

  But I won’t tell Penny everything. I can expound on the little truth I can tell her. There is chemistry between and Daisy and me. “I’m attracted to her.”

  “Oh, Blake,” she scolds. “Don’t go after her. It’s so sketchy.”

  “I’m aware.” My plan is far more than sketchy. It’s blackmail.

  Chapter Five

  I shove the file drawer closed with a bang.

  Nothing. Nada. Not a single shred of information on the Vandershalls. It must be vaulted.

  I glance down the hall at the spot where he kissed me. I’ll never be able to walk past there again without thinking of him—without thinking of wanting more of him. More of that very hot, very devilish sort of man whose eyes are dark as sin and glow like fire at the same time. The one with the wide shoulders and long legs.

  I shake myself. He said horrible things to my dad. I have to remember that finding out the truth is half the reason I agreed to go with him tonight.

  What did he say to my father? Why was he so angry? How can a man so civilized become so
nearly feral? Like he was on the edge of losing control of himself—his temper, his aggression.

  The afternoon ticks by. I email the people who were in charge of the charity, trying to find details of what happened.

  But when the clock hits six, I leap from my desk with a smile. I collect my things, close the front door to the building, and find him outside, leaning against the shiny Mercedes on the curb. Aviators shield his gaze, and with his sinister eyes covered, I’m able to look at the rest of him.

  His legs in light khakis go on forever, crossing at the ankles. His arms, folded over his chest, bulge beneath the sleeves of his polo. I wonder what sport he played in college. He has too much physical self-assurance and naturally muscled physique not to be some sort of athlete.

  My heart thuds from the mere sight of him, and rather than being fearful of his gaze, I’m longing for him to take the glasses off.

  And what would I see if he did? He might look at me like he did this morning, or like he did last night. I don’t know if he’s here to scare me or woo me.

  I don’t know which I want more.

  I descend the front steps, not taking my eyes off him.

  He doesn’t say a word as I come closer, but his head turns with me, tracking me.

  I stop in front of him and he stands to full height.

  He pulls off his sunglasses and tucks them in his pocket. His gaze hits me anew. A penetrating scrutiny—a cross between the urbane and the wild. He’s attempting to restrain the threat in his eyes from this morning. He hasn’t succeeded.

  I wish, not for the first time, I’d found something to do with my life like my sorority sisters. I’m trying hard not to resent my choice to help my dad. I could’ve moved to New York City with Mary Beth, or gone to graduate school in Chicago like Lizzy. I don’t wish I’d gotten married like Gigi, but I am jealous that they have their own lives. Not like mine—stuffed so full of boredom I’m at risk of going home with a man who looks at me like I’m his next meal.

  Forget about killing cats—curiosity is going to get the worst of me.

  A thought of self-preservation prompts me. “Couldn’t we go to dinner? Instead of to your estate?” We should go on a normal date first. Even though I was at his estate last night and there was nothing dangerous there, tonight there won’t be all those people. We’ll be alone.