“Hi, Mis,” he sighed as he opened the door and she sauntered in, tossing her bag on the couch.
“Where have you been?” she asked without preface.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He knew it was an insulting question, even for Misty, but he couldn’t think what else to say.
“Dylan. I’m worried about you. I’ve been talking to your sisters. We’re all worried about you.”
“Why?” he asked, leaning against the back of the leather love seat for support. He was actually curious. Were his sisters really worried about him?
“You’ve been acting weird lately. Distant. And then, at the cabin, it’s like you were a different person. I mean, you were all fidgety, like you couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t even keep you in the hot tub with me. Or our bed.” Our bed. The significance did not escape him. She made a pouting face and stepped closer to him, running her fingers along his arm. “That’s not like you at all, baby.”
“Sorry,” he said softly. He looked down at his bare feet. Misty wore a pair of baby blue running shoes with rounded bottoms that were supposed to tone her leg muscles while she walked. Dylan had mentioned once that they looked ridiculous and incurred her wrath for days. She followed his gaze and slid one foot between his, her tanned leg grazing his rolled up jeans.
“You’re not attracted to me anymore?” she asked.
“That’s not it,” he said. It really wasn’t.
She took his hands from the back of the couch and put them on her hips. “Then what is it, baby? You don’t have a new girlfriend, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. That much was certainly true. He left out the part, however, where he had kissed Suzanne and then gotten hopelessly lost in Alpharetta trying to get back to her. And the part where he’d been on edge all day, the bottom of his stomach churning, trying to get her to call him back.
But other than that, what was there to tell, really? She wasn’t returning his calls; they had both agreed their relationship was a no-go. Was there any reason to rub it in Misty’s face?
He should just end it with Misty and get it over with. Maybe be alone for a while and try to sort things out between now and Kate’s wedding. He knew it was the right thing to do, and the words he needed were available to him: I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work. Walk her to the door, hand her the duffel bag, and spend the next two weeks defending himself from his sisters and hoping to talk to Suzanne.
But he didn’t. His feet felt stuck to the hardwood floor. His hands on her hips felt as though they were holding the only solid matter for miles. He did manage to turn his head slightly when Misty leaned in to kiss him, but she seemed perfectly content to kiss his neck instead. Her lips were thin and a little dry, and he wondered how Suzanne’s softer, fuller lips would feel against his skin. The familiar warm feeling stirred in his belly and he sucked in air as Misty sharply bit a small area of skin on his collarbone.
Tell her to leave. Push her away. “No,” he said softly to the ceiling. “This is not a good idea.” Exactly what he had said to Suzanne the night before. And she had agreed.
“Why not?” Misty whined. “I’m so hot for you.” In demonstration of this, she grasped his hand and pushed it down the front of her shorts, where he could feel the truth of her statement, warm and wet on his hand. She held his hand there and began to move her hips in little circles, pressing herself against him. She was familiar and inviting beneath his hands; he felt his body respond to her arousal. He remembered the pain of unlinking himself from Suzanne the night before, how his body had ached for hours afterward while he drove around lost in suburbia. It seemed as if he had used all his willpower to do that, and now he had none left to resist Misty.
No, he thought. It’s not right.
But why? a familiar voice intoned. It was the voice that had led him all his life toward pleasure and abandon, toward warm touches and good feelings and the impressed laughter of his friends. It had earned him his wild reputation and hosted countless parties that bordered on orgies. Who is it hurting? Misty and I have been dating. This is nothing new. Suzanne and I are not dating. She doesn’t even want to be friends. Hell, she’s ignoring my phone calls. No one ignores my calls.
Something burned in him—a combination of lust and anger, wounded heart and wounded pride. And Misty, grinding against his hips and hand and kissing his throat, seemed to sense the change and pounced. “Oh, baby, I’ve missed you,” she groaned into his ear. “Please, please let me show you how much.”
Without waiting for an answer, she peeled herself out of her t-shirt and shorts, revealing a lacy bra that was incongruous with her running gear, and a tiny white thong that barely covered anything. She planned this, Dylan realized somewhere beneath the fog. But did it matter? Did any of it really matter?
Misty hoisted herself onto his hips, crossing her legs behind him. He instinctively grabbed hold to keep her from falling. “Take me to bed, baby,” she commanded in his ear. Whatever his better judgment might be saying, whatever confusion he was feeling, even the faint sound of his phone buzzing softly on the table—it was all left behind as he staggered through the bedroom door and kicked it closed.
Chapter 20
The face glaring at Suzanne when she awoke was not Rick’s, or anyone else from her list. It was a familiar face, she thought, but not one she could place. Round, cherubic, surrounded by inky black tendrils of hair pulled into pigtails. Pretty, except for, perhaps, wearing too much makeup. Suzanne’s vision was blurry, but behind the girl she could see the familiar, if sideways, cabinets of her own kitchen. She was lying on her side in the carpeted intersection space of her apartment, where the kitchen and living room merged with the bedrooms and bath.
Her head ached and her face felt raw, as though she had been dragged across the carpet on her side. She started to reach up and touch her face, to inspect the damage with her fingers, and found she could not move her arms. A rough rope bound her wrists behind her back. The chubby girl, dressed all in black except for striped knee socks, sat a few feet from her with her legs crossed. As Suzanne tried to wriggle free, the girl spoke in a chirpy sing-song voice that reminded her absurdly of Snow White, and was in complete contrast with the content of her words. “Ah, ah, ah—no moving, please. I would hate to kill you, but I will.”
At the girl’s words, she saw the gun. Small and silver, the girl twirled it carelessly around one finger. Suzanne knew nothing about guns, but she felt sure it was dangerous despite the small size. As awareness returned to her confused brain, terror came with it. She looked at the girl again, and a name floated back to her as though from a dream. Patty? Penny?
“I’ll bet you don’t even remember me, do you, you self-absorbed bitch?” the girl said.
Suzanne frantically searched her mental files. The stalker was a woman. She’d been making all the wrong lists. “I remember you,” she said slowly, trying to keep her voice neutral while she worked to place the familiar face in front of her.
A memory floated up through the muck of her aching brain. “I saw you…at the bar the other night.” She remembered now, this girl, in striped knee-high socks, standing next to a tall man whose face Suzanne hadn’t seen. Maybe he was the key? “You were with…um, I can’t remember…” she fished, hoping for more information.
“You don’t know him,” the girl snapped. “But I think maybe he’d like to get to know you.”
This sent a chill down Suzanne’s spine. She tried to look around to see whether anyone else was with them, but they seemed to be alone. “We’ll get to him in a minute,” the girl said. “I told him I’d call when you woke up. I can’t believe you don’t remember me. You really are as narcissistic as I thought. That actually makes me feel better.”
“I’m sorry,” Suzanne said. “My head hurts, but maybe if you give me a minute…”
“I’ve given you years!” the girl shrieked. “We met at UGA, remember? You came back for that alumni luncheon three years ago, and I was your ambassador?”
Suzanne did remember, now. It had been one of those things she’d said yes to doing months in advance and then regretted as the actual date approached because she didn’t really have time to do it. At the height of her success, right after she had planned an absolutely stunning rooftop party for a new hip-hop label and helped organize a huge charity event for Elton John, the university had invited her back to be a keynote speaker at a humanities alumni luncheon.
She’d been super-stressed about it and almost canceled, until Chad reminded her that would not be good for her image. This girl—the name was Penny, she decided—had been an undergraduate art history student assigned to give her a tour of campus and to introduce her to key faculty before the luncheon. Later, she had been invited to make a substantial gift to the university as well, and she realized that having spent the morning with one of its hopeful future graduates was supposed to remind her of her happy days in Athens and grease the wheels for a donation.
Suzanne remembered two main things from that day. One was that Penny had been super-chatty and fairly annoying and that Suzanne had tried to ditch her at several points in the morning but failed. The other was that after lunch she had located her old art history professor, now divorced and head of the department, and canceled the rest of her day to relive old times with him—this time in his sad little apartment rather than behind the locked door of his office. Their time together had been a somewhat disappointing encounter with someone she’d once thought of as so powerful and sophisticated, but Suzanne had supposed that was a good lesson, too. In the end, people were just people.
Now, lying bound on the floor of her condo, she felt deeply ashamed of that day—how she’d blown off Penny, how she’d refused to even stay for dinner with Dr. Kimball, pretending she had a meeting to get back to in Atlanta. She’d never asked him about his marriage or how he was doing, or until just this moment considered that maybe the breakup of his marriage had something to do with the fact that he’d been fucking Suzanne during his office hours all those years ago. She hadn’t asked because she didn’t want to know.
“Of course I remember you. Penny, right?” she ventured, praying like crazy that it wasn’t Patty.
Penny brightened and Suzanne breathed a sigh of relief. The girl pulled her off the floor to a sitting position. “Well, I’m glad you remember that, at least. I told him you would know who I was.”
“Absolutely I know who you are, sweetie.” Suzanne knew she was going out on a limb with “sweetie” but figured she had a better shot with this girl while it was just the two of them. She didn’t know who “he” was, and she didn’t care to find out. Then her slowly-firing synapses put something together. “You’ve been calling us. About being an intern.”
“Yes!” Penny said. “I called for weeks, and I kept getting that awful Chad guy—he’s so stuck up—and I knew if I could just get through to you, you’d remember what you promised.”
“What I promised,” Suzanne repeated, not having any idea what this meant.
“Yeah, you know, after the luncheon, when you said I had potential because I was so persistent and you’d be happy to teach me the ropes in event planning. You said I’d be great in fundraising, especially.”
“Right,” Suzanne said. She did not remember this at all. She met so many people in the course of her work and at the Junior League, it often felt as though she were an actress on stage, delivering lines. Surely she could not be expected to remember every member of the audience? Maybe Suzanne had said those things, but people said those kinds of things all the time. Surely this girl hadn’t thought it was a job offer?
Penny was tearful. “When you didn’t return my calls, it really hurt my feelings. I thought we were friends, and I thought you were going to help me get a job. My parents kicked me out and I waited tables for a while, and every week I’d call you, looking for a way to work with you. I just admired you so much. I wanted to be like you.”
“I’m so sorry, Penny,” Suzanne said, and meant it. Of course, that didn’t excuse the stalking or the kidnapping, and Suzanne was planning to hit her over the head with something at her first opportunity, but still. She did feel a little sorry for the girl all the same. “Maybe I can help you now?”
The girl seemed to go cold at this. She glared at Suzanne. “Oh, you’re going to help me all right.”
Suzanne scrambled to soften Penny again, to win her over. She had to find a way out of this. “Of course I’ll help you. Maybe you can come work with me now. I’ve seen that you can be persistent and creative, at, er, problem solving.”
Penny laughed, a high unsettling sound. “You think you’re going to offer me a job now?” she asked, incredulous. “And they say I’m crazy!”
I’d say that’s an understatement, Suzanne thought. Not knowing what to say next, she was silent.
“Who are you to offer anyone a job? I’ve destroyed your career. You’ll be lucky if they let you plan kids’ birthday parties after how you’ve humiliated yourself. How I’ve humiliated you. Just like you humiliated me. I told everyone I was going to work with the great Suzanne Hamilton, and pretty soon I’d be on the Style pages like you.”
“I am really sorry, Penny. Please, just untie me and we’ll talk about it. Let’s make this right before it gets worse.”
“Oh, it might get worse for you, sweetie,” she spat back Suzanne’s endearment as though it were poison. “But things are going to be fine for me and Gunnar. Speaking of which, he’s waiting to hear from us.”
Silencing Suzanne’s protests with a glare, Penny pulled out a phone and pressed a button. “She’s awake,” she said simply, and then asked Suzanne, “What’s your ATM code?”
“What?” Suzanne asked. Immediately, Penny reached back and slapped her hard across the face.
“Next time, sweetie, I use the hand with the gun in it. What’s your fucking ATM code? If you tell us wrong, I’ll shoot you right now.” Her words were designed to sound cold and aggressive, and they were, but Suzanne thought she sensed a hesitation, like Penny was playing a role for the man on the phone. If that were true, maybe she had a chance.
Suzanne recited the numbers and waited. After a minute, Penny nodded in apparent confirmation that the code had worked and hung up. Gunnar was going to be clearing out her checking account. Well, it wouldn’t take as long as it once might have, Suzanne thought grimly.
She decided to try Penny again, feeling she had little to lose and that things could only get worse when Gunnar got back. “So what happens when my money is gone? I assume you have a plan.” She tried to sound calm, authoritative, like the person Penny had once seen in her.
“Of course we do. I’ve done my homework on you and your parents are well-off. I think once we get you out of here they’ll pay big money to get their sweet, perfect little girl back.” Suzanne’s first, shameful thought was that Penny might be barking up the wrong tree. Given his background in law and connection to politics, she could almost imagine a scenario in which her dad might say, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
But of course that wasn’t true. In her heart she knew her parents would have the house mortgaged and the family silver sold in hours to save her if it got that far. Something like this would absolutely devastate her parents. Her dad especially. This wasn’t about the fact that she hadn’t gone to law school or gotten married before thirty. No matter what had or hadn’t transpired between them, Suzanne had a sudden clarity that her parents’ hearts would break if they thought they might lose her. She wouldn’t put them through that. She wouldn’t let that happen.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and allowed herself one brief moment of absolute terror before she put her fear in a box in her mind and sealed it. She’d allow herself to be scared later. Penny was pacing back and forth in the kitchen, whispering to Gunnar on the phone again, something about which ATM he was at now and how many more he would need to find, to get the bulk of Suzanne’s money.
Suzanne tried to mentally size up
her captor the way she did an unhappy client or a needling reporter. Now you listen to me, you little overgrown mall rat. You caught me off guard and knocked me down. You made me look at the worst of myself, and live in fear. But now I am in this fight. I will defeat you. I will make you damn sorry that you picked me.
She sat up as straight as she could and forced herself to appear calm. When Penny snapped shut the phone once more, Suzanne asked, “How did this happen to you, Penny? You always seemed so sweet. This doesn’t seem like something you would do on your own.”
“You don’t know me,” Penny said, defiant. “I can think for myself.”
“Well, obviously, you’re smart enough,” Suzanne said. “I mean, you’ve been following me for weeks, and surely Gunnar hasn’t been with you that whole time.”
“No. He hasn’t.”
“So the ladder, that was your idea? Were you just trying to hurt me or hoping I’d break my neck and die or something?”
“No, I didn’t want you seriously hurt,” Penny said quickly. “I still hoped then, that if you had an injury from the fall that you’d need extra help with the gala at the High. It was supposed to happen a week earlier but you didn’t see the ribbon for a while.”
“You put the ribbon on the chandelier? So I’d have a reason to climb the ladder? What if Chad had climbed instead?” As if remembering, her arm began to ache a little. She fought off the rage building inside and tried for outward serenity.
“I thought it might serve the same purpose. Either way, you’d be short staffed. I called a few days before to see whether you needed help but Chad blew me off, so I knew nothing had happened.” Penny said this without emotion, as though she were talking about the weather.
Bless your heart, Suzanne thought with malice. “Still, pretty clever.”
Regrets Only (Sequel to The Marriage Pact) Page 19
