Reckless Games

by M. J. Lowell

  “You’re going,” she said in her most no-nonsense way. “I know how you operate, Lucy. You wall yourself off in self-defense, but that keeps out the good along with the bad. When was the last time you kissed someone?”

  I felt myself flush. “How is that relevant?”

  “Eight months?” she said.

  “Ten,” I admitted.

  “And sex? Please don’t tell me Sawyer was the last.”

  “Sawyer was the last,” I said flushing more. He was also, as Val knew, the first. I’d never told her the whole story about my relationship with Sawyer – I’d never told anyone the whole story. Mostly I tried to forget everything about that year and a half, to lock it all away in a far corner of my mind.

  “But that’s over a year!” Val looked horrified.

  “What does that have to do with why I should go to tea?”

  Val mimed deep thought. “Gee, I don’t know. Could it be because my dear friend Lucy, who wears black under the mistaken impression it makes her invisible, who hasn’t felt the passionate touch of another sentient being in almost eighteen months, and who changes in a bathroom stall at the gym because she’s so uncomfortable being naked in front of others – because this same Lucy apparently thought nothing of ripping her clothes off and throwing herself into a bathtub with this man?”

  “First of all, it’s only been thirteen months, not eighteen,” I objected. “And second of all, we weren’t in the bathtub together. It’s not like anything happened. And I only did it to save his life, because I can’t find out what he knows if he’s dead. It had nothing to do with him, specifically.”

  “Of course not,” Val said in her soothing mom voice. “It was all about the quest for justice.” She reached for her latte. “What did he say when you told him who you are?” she asked.

  I took a sudden interest in the list of special roasts and blends written on the chalkboard above her head. “Uh, that didn’t come up.”

  “You were naked in a bathtub with a man and your name didn’t come up? Sorry, I remember, you weren’t in there together. Right,” she added skeptically. “You must have told him something. What name did you give him?”

  “Tuesday Granite,” I mumbled. It sounded even more ridiculous now than it had last night.

  Val choked on her coffee. “Tuesday Granite?”

  I nodded.

  She was temporarily speechless.

  “It made sense at the time,” I said lamely.

  Val set down her latte and pressed her fingers to her temples. “Okay, let’s put aside my basic desire to see you have some semblance of a sex life. Let’s focus instead on how you identified this man as a potential source of information and now you have a chance to get that information. Why wouldn’t you meet him?”

  She was right. I knew she was right. But there was one other tiny problem, and though this one was a lot easier to talk about, it also seemed the most insurmountable. “I don’t have anything to wear,” I confessed. At least, I didn’t have the sort of outfit a player like Tuesday Granite, the woman Rhys Carlyle expected to see, would wear.

  “Finally!” Val said, triumphantly. “At last we’ve come to the real crux of the matter.”

  “It isn’t the crux. It’s just one more reason I shouldn’t go.”

  “Hush, baby bird, stop your squawking,” she said, patting my arm. “That’s a problem I can solve.” Then her gaze went over my shoulder and her eyes narrowed. “Great,” she said sourly. “Look who’s here.”

  I glanced behind me. Nico was heading our way with a coffee in a to-go cup. He smiled as he reached our table, displaying twin dimples and even white teeth. I was struck – and not for the first time, either – by how cute he was. He was wearing an overcoat with a slim-cut charcoal suit beneath. I’d only ever seen him that dressed up at my father’s funeral, and he looked handsome but a little uncomfortable.

  “Hello, Nico,” Val said, as aloof as a haughty Siamese cat.

  “Hello, Val,” Nico answered. It might have been threatening snow outside, but that was nothing compared to the sudden arctic atmosphere at our table.

  I tried to warm things up. “This is a nice surprise.”

  “Depends on how you define ‘nice,’” muttered Val.

  I ignored her and so did Nico, who said, “I’m glad I ran into you, Lulu. How are you? I was starting to worry. You must be insanely busy – it’s been impossible to get you on the phone.”

  I felt the familiar twinge of guilt, and a pang of something more bittersweet. Only my father and Nico ever called me Lulu. “Sorry. I know I owe you a call. Things have been a bit chaotic.”

  His smile turned sheepish. “No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s not that I expect you to check in with me. It’s just— I wanted to make sure you were okay. I know that sometimes it can be lonely….” His voice trailed off.

  Now I felt even guiltier. “I’m fine, but that’s really sweet of you.”

  Nico brightened while across the table Val rolled her eyes. “There was another reason I called,” he added. “I went through the files at the lab, like you’d asked, looking for anything about CF-64.”

  “And?” I asked eagerly. CF-64 was what my father had been working on right before he died. I didn’t understand much about it – I only knew it was a new kind of polymer, and he’d been excited about it. Really excited. And I couldn’t help wondering if it was somehow linked to his calls to Rhys Carlyle, and to his death.

  Nico shook his head. “Nothing.”

  My heart fell. I remembered the last time my dad and I had Skyped. I was supposed to be coming home for the weekend from Boston, where I was at music conservatory, but a friend had an extra ticket to a Joshua Bell concert. I was torn – the concert was too good to pass up, but I didn’t want to disappoint my dad. When I’d asked about postponing my visit, though, it seemed like he was hardly listening.

  “Of course, of course,” he said, but he sounded preoccupied. Only then did I notice how tired he looked.

  “Are you okay?” I’d asked. “Is something wrong?”

  He’d summoned up a smile. “There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Dad. What is it?”

  He furrowed his brow. “I’ve been rerunning tests on CF-64. This time they’re not coming out the way they should.” There was a faraway look in his eyes. Whenever I saw that look, I always imagined his mind busy with a tangle of equations.

  “Earth to Dad,” I’d said jokingly.

  “I’m going to run another set of the tests this weekend,” he said. He shook his head. “It should work. It has to work. It will change lives. Save lives.”

  I’d seen him in absent-minded professor mode before, but this was a new level of distractedness and it worried me. “Forget the concert,” I said. “I’ll come home this weekend, the way we planned.”

  “Don’t you do that, Lulu,” he said. “You know I hate fussing. I’m fine.”

  He’d died that weekend, leaving his notes reduced to a pile of ashes. But I’d hoped maybe there was more about CF-64 in his files at the lab, something that could explain – well, I didn’t know what it would explain, exactly. But Nico had come up empty.

  “Thank you for looking anyway,” I told him now.

  “Yeah,” he said with an awkward shrug. He glanced at Val and back at me. “Uh, Lulu, there’s something else I hoped we could discuss. In private?”

  “Maybe another time,” Val said. “Lucy and I were just leaving.”

  “We were?” I asked, looking at my barely touched latte.

  “Yes,” Val told me. “You’re coming with me to my office. Where we need to be—” she glanced at her watch “—five minutes ago.”

  “I was? I mean, we do?”

  She rolled her eyes again. “You were, and we do. To address that problem we were discussing.” She stood, grabbed my arm and nearly wrenched me out of my chair. “Say goodbye to Nico.”

  “It’s important that we talk soon,” he said to me. “
Maybe you could come by the lab this afternoon?”

  “She’s busy this afternoon,” Val told him before I could answer.

  “I could come tomorrow morning,” I offered. “Is that soon enough?”

  “I guess it can wait until then,” he said.

  “Of course it can,” Val assured him and pushed me out the door.

  “Why am I coming to your office?” I asked her, struggling to keep up as she power-walked up the street. “What problem are we addressing? And what is it you have against Nico?”

  “Nico is boring and a nerd. And the problem is what to wear to tea with a billionaire. Olivia always has a few dresses stashed at the office.”

  I’d opened my mouth to defend Nico, at least from the charge of being boring, when the last part of what she’d said hit me. “Olivia as in your boss Olivia?”

  “As in my extremely well-dressed yet conveniently out-of-town boss Olivia who also happens to be exactly your size, though nowhere near as gorgeous.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I said.

  “Have I ever led you astray?”

  “You told me the blue streak in my hair looked nice.”

  “I specified in certain lights,” she corrected. “Such as dim lights, night lights, lights that were not working. And I’m not talking about things that happened when you were ten. Flash forward to when you wanted to date Chuck Beiderman. Who stopped you?”

  “You did.”

  “And the guy from the comic book store? The one we later saw on America’s Most Wanted? Who stopped you from going out with him?”

  “You did.”

  “And if I’d known when you started dating Sawyer—”

  “You would have gotten a restraining order. You knew him for the manipulative slime he was the moment you met him.”

  “And so?” She looked at me encouragingly.

  I sighed. “Fine. I’m in your hands.”

  Val beamed at me. “You won’t regret it.”

  Chapter Seven

  I climbed the steps to the Plaza at two minutes to four, hoping my legs looked steadier than they felt.

  Olivia’s office closet had yielded a winter-white Max Mara dress, and Val also insisted I “borrow” the matching swing coat and white leather gloves with black piping. On my feet I wore my own black ankle boots since Olivia’s shoes ran a full size smaller than mine.

  “It’s too bad I can’t lend you Olivia’s pearl earrings,” Val said. “But there’s no way I’d risk them with DJ Little Girl Loses Everything.”

  “My DJ name is Little Girl Lost,” I corrected her. Not that I could argue with Val’s logic. I seemed to lose anything of value. And anyone.

  Even without the earrings, the expensive dress, coat and gloves were the perfect costume for the role I was going to play as Tuesday Granite. When I’d caught a glimpse of myself reflected in a store window, I looked experienced, worldly – like the kind of woman who’d expect every man to find her fascinating.

  But my knees were still shaking. I told myself it was only because Val wouldn’t let me ruin the elegant outfit with tights to protect my bare legs against the biting wind, but I had to admit I was terrified.

  I paused inside the opulent marble lobby, taking in the gilt and crystal fixtures and the faint sound of the harpist drifting in from the Palm Court. All you have to do is pretend to match Rhys Carlyle’s sophistication with your own, I reminded myself, trying to calm my nerves. There was no way for him to know Tuesday Granite was only an act, that I wasn’t that cool aloof girl with mysterious midnight appointments. I’d play the role and find out what was behind those phone calls and how – or if – they were connected to my father’s work. I just needed to stay focused and not let his physical presence cloud my thoughts.

  I squared my shoulders and started across the lobby to the Palm Court.

  “Excuse me,” a man said suddenly from behind me.

  I jumped and spun around, startled. So much for my mental pep talk – I was still as nervous as a cat.

  My eyes landed on a tall stranger with burnished olive skin, dark hair brushed back from a high forehead, a square jaw, and a polite smile. His well-worn cowboy boots and Texan twang seemed at odds with his tailored overcoat. He held out a white leather glove edged with black piping. “I think this belongs to you, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” I said gratefully, reaching to take it from him. Val would not have been pleased if I’d returned missing a glove. “I didn’t even realize I’d dropped it.”

  “They can be slippery little rascals,” he drawled.

  His delivery was so deadpan it took me a moment to realize he was joking, and by then he’d disappeared across the lobby. I probably looked ridiculous, left smiling to myself, but my nervousness had disappeared. I felt newly confident as I gave my coat to the tearoom hostess. You can do this, I told myself.

  Beneath the stained-glass dome of the Palm Court’s ceiling, tables for two and four dotted the blue-and-gold carpet. I scanned the room, expecting to find Rhys Carlyle front and center. Instead he’d selected a table in the far corner. He was dressed in a navy suit that looked like it cost more than I made in six months, and his phone was pressed to his ear.

  All at once he glanced over at me. It was a quick look, as if he’d sensed me there, but it was enough to set my alarm bells ringing, just as they had the previous night. My pulse quickened. Danger.

  He waved me over with an offhand gesture and returned to his call.

  “I’m not paying you for excuses, I’m paying you to get me that glass,” he was saying in a low voice as I reached the table. He paused to listen and then said, “I don’t care what you have to do – just get it done. Now I must go. I’ve a floozy waiting.”

  “Floozy?” I repeated in disbelief, almost choking on the word as he disconnected.

  “Wasn’t that the term you used?” he asked, not bothering to look up from whatever he’d immediately begun typing on his phone.

  I felt heat rising to stain my cheeks. “If I’m a floozy, you’re a- a- a scoundrel.”

  His eyes stayed on the screen but his lips curved in that infuriatingly mocking smile. “Scoundrel? At this rate we’ll be dueling with pistols at dawn.” The edge in his voice was somehow both sardonic and suggestive at once. My face flamed.

  “Why wait until dawn?” I retorted.

  He set down his phone and looked at me then, a real look. The bemused expression vanished. For a moment he didn’t say anything, just sat staring, rubbing his chin with his hand. When he did speak it was nearly a whisper. “Bloody hell.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, my stomach plummeting. But I knew exactly what was wrong. He was regretting asking me here. In the bright light of day, it had to be painfully clear I was no match for his usual glamorous blondes—

  “How is it you’re not dead?” he growled.

  “I-I beg your pardon?”

  “You were already inciting every woman here to jealous wrath, looking how you do in that dress. But with that flush on your cheeks, you’ll be lucky to get out of here without being murdered.”

  I had no idea what to make of that, what to make of him as he stood and politely motioned me to the banquette, but against my better judgment I slid onto the velvet cushions. “Was that supposed to be a compliment?” I asked.

  “That was merely the truth,” he said, lowering himself down next to me. His expression softened, and his cobalt eyes locked on mine. “A compliment would be if I admitted I feared you wouldn’t keep our engagement.”

  I bit my lip. It was as though his mask of assured control had slipped and I was looking at a sweet, charming boy. “Thank you.”

  Do not let yourself be taken in by him, a voice in my head cautioned sternly. He was still the same arrogant bastard he’d been the night before and – regardless of everything Val said – I was only there to learn what happened to my father. This man could well be a murderer. And he was only interested in me because he thought I was a player. It wasn
’t Lucy he’d invited here – it was Tuesday Granite.

  “A friend chose the dress for me,” I told him.

  The sweet boy disappeared. “He has excellent taste.” Rhys’s tone was bone dry. “Was it the man you were with in the lobby?”

  He’d noticed the Texan? “No, he merely rescued a glove I’d dropped.”

  “I see.” Rhys took a sip of ice water. “And how was your appointment last night?”

  Cool, I reminded myself. Aloof. “Fine,” I said breezily. “The usual. Drinks, a club. How was your evening?”

  “Fine.” A muscle worked in his jaw.

  Without warning, all of my nervousness and doubt came rushing back. Only seconds ago he’d seemed genuinely happy to see me, but I’d crushed that with my Tuesday Granite act. It was on the tip of my tongue to explain that Val had selected the dress, that the club was where I worked, that—

  That what? That I’d been following him? Because I thought he might be linked to my father’s murder?

  Rhys’s phone rang, breaking into my swirling thoughts. He didn’t even excuse himself – just snatched it up and started speaking – but I was glad of the momentary respite.

  None of this felt right. It felt forced and awkward and fraught and most of all, dangerous. I shouldn’t be there. In fact, I should go. The decision filled me with surprising relief.

  I started to stand, and Rhys’s hand came down on my knee.

  A shock of pure electricity jolted me back into my seat. I’d never felt anything like it. It was molten desire, an attraction so powerful it left me paralyzed.

  Rhys, though, seemed unmoved, impassive. “My expert needs a few more days with the documentation,” he was saying. “We’re meeting this weekend. You’re sure there’s nothing missing, Kola?” He listened, his gaze distant, his hand still on my thigh as if forgotten, as if he was utterly unaware of what his simple touch was doing to me. “Yes, and then we’ll talk price. Ta.”

  He hung up and stared at the screen a moment before sliding the phone into a pocket. Then he lifted his hand from my leg and turned back to me.