Deception

by Tory Hayward

  ‘Do you need a lift?’ A cabbie approached me from the taxi rank outside the hotel.

  ‘No, thank you.’ I shook my head. ‘I was looking for someone. Tall guy, white hair, pale grey suit. Seen anyone like that?’

  To my surprise the cabbie nodded. ‘Sounds like the dickhead who just got into the sodding great limo that has been blocking the taxi rank for the last twenty minutes.’

  ‘Did you get the registration number, by any chance?’

  He frowned, remembering. ‘Lots of sevens. That’s it. Sorry.’

  I nodded. ‘Thank you. It’s a start.’

  I met Jack as I headed back into the hotel. He held one of my shoes in his hand, looking like a confused Prince Charming.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He touched my shoulder, concern in his face. I shrugged him off.

  ‘I mistook you for someone else, Mr Jones. My original assumption, that you are just a thief, is correct.’

  He ignored my words, as if I hadn’t even spoken. ‘Can we talk about the jewels?’

  Irritation swept over me. I loathed it when people didn’t listen to me. ‘They are not for sale. Not ever. Not to you.’

  He blanched under his tan. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they’re for sale. Everything you have is for sale.’

  ‘I am never ridiculous.’ I turned and hurried back to the fundraiser, checking my phone as I went.

  ‘Wait,’ he called, loud enough to make passers-by stare. But I didn’t hesitate.

  He caught up with me at the entrance to the busy ballroom.

  I slid him a sideways glance. ‘Don’t waste your time. I’m sorry to disappoint you. Really I am—’

  ‘You don’t understand how serious this is.’ There was a note of desperation in his voice that made me turn to him.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’ I looked at him closely. There was more to this than just buying the jewels. I could sense it.

  For a long moment we stared at each other, the ballroom and its noise faded. Then he frowned, and spoke slowly and softly, as if the words were difficult to say.

  ‘No. I only want the jewels. I want them.’

  I tilted my head on one side. He wasn’t going to level with me. He was hiding something. I had no time for his tactics. If he’d stayed the hell out of it in the first place I’d be already onto the next stage, one step closer to Dad.

  Worry made my words sharper than I intended. ‘Want? Only want? So you are a spoiled boy who has his heart set on something and is angry because he cannot get it?’

  ‘I need the jewels, Lioness. Please. I’ll pay any sum you ask.’ The desperate anxiety in his eyes made me regret my sharpness.

  ‘If I could sell them to you, I would. I promise,’ I said. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘But you won’t?’

  I shook my head. ‘There is nothing I can do to help you.’

  Then I slipped away, into the crowd, my bare feet hardly noticeable beneath the long dress.

  I checked my phone again. No reply. I scanned the room for Brent Davenport. I needed to say goodbye to him before I left. Otherwise he’d be upset and that would lead to phone calls and fussing. Which I didn’t need.

  He hadn’t moved from his place at the table. But my progress towards him was frustratingly slow. The party was breaking up. Whilst I’d been with Jack, the MC had read out the results of the silent auction, and apparently I’d paid a large sum of money for a large and hideous painting. The money was a donation to the cancer foundation that I’d intended to make on behalf of Lib and her husband Nathan, who lay in hospital fighting the disease. I’d only bid on the painting because no one else had been brave enough.

  I’d hand it on to one of my art experts, who’d doubtless find someone to appreciate it.

  Hopefully.

  Now it seemed everyone wanted to congratulate me.

  My phone hummed in my clutch, and only because I was so desperately aware of it did I notice.

  I dragged it out; the message was horribly short.

  Too late.

  If they’d been trying to frighten me it backfired, I was just irritated by the melodramatic text. They wanted the jewels. They wanted them enough to kidnap a man and hold him for months. They knew the only way to get them was through me. Threats wouldn’t scare me.

  I might have made a mistake, thinking Jack was their drop boy, but it was not going to jeopardise their deal.

  Tell me when and where we should meet. I shall be there.

  I hit send and dropped the phone into my clutch. It was how it should’ve been arranged in the first place. They’d been so vague with their instructions, of course I’d been confused. And it seemed the blackmailers were not organised either, clearly they’d come to meet me and been refused entry to the ball. That was an amateurish mistake.

  I forced myself to take a deep breath. It was going to okay. I’d fix this.

  Smiling neutrally at everyone who glanced at me, I pushed through the crowd to Brent Davenport.

  ‘Ah, Merry.’ He stood and embraced me. ‘Are you departing? You look tired, my girl.’

  I shrugged and wrinkled my nose. ‘Been a long night.’

  ‘Congratulations on your new artwork,’ he said, heavy on the irony.

  I held up a hand. ‘One word about it and I’ll give it to you for your birthday.’

  ‘God no.’ He shuddered. ‘Then I’d be obliged to treasure it for the rest of time.’

  ‘I know.’ I fake grinned, the pleasant persona taking a lot of energy to maintain.

  ‘Are you driving—’ He launched into a fatherly spiel about muggings, car parks and other irrelevancies.

  ‘I will do my best not to get carjacked during the ten-minute trip home.’ I gave him an exasperated stare, an expression I’d perfected as a teenager and used on him to this day.

  ‘Just make sure you do,’ he said, cheerfully. Just like he’d always been.

  I leant forward and kissed his cheek, thinking of my huge empty house, and his equally huge one full of happy people. The usual envy settled beneath my heart.

  ‘Thanks Brent.’ I meant more for the fact he cared than his advice on how to avoid being mugged.

  He nodded, and with a squeeze of my hand allowed himself to be drawn into conversation with a hovering friend.

  Despite myself, I glanced around the room to see if Jack Jones was anywhere to be seen. He wasn’t.

  Then I slipped away. To the top level of the car park where the valet had my little Jag waiting for me. Then I sped across the nearly empty Harbour Bridge, through the sparse traffic, home.

  Chapter Eight

  I slept in fits and starts. I’d fall asleep, only to be haunted by vivid dreams of Jack Jones; in some we were naked and sweating, limbs entwined, as I clutched at sweaty sheets, in others I ran from him, into impenetrable, suffocating darkness, terrified he wouldn’t follow.

  Then I’d wake and check my obstinate phone for a message from the kidnappers.

  As the sky lightened, the silence of the house pressed down on me. I gave up pretending I was going to get any rest.

  I thought of my best friend, Libby, and the chaos that’d be unfolding at her place—with two small boys who thought that sleep was for wimps and were fired up and bouncing off the walls by 6 am. Part of me envied her, and part of me did not.

  The situation with Nathan, Lib’s warm and loving husband, was gut-wrenching. After being diagnosed with leukaemia eighteen months ago at the age of thirty-eight, he’d kept the disease in check through drug therapy. Though he hadn’t been well, he’d been able to stay at home, be with family and friends, and have an acceptable quality of life.

  But he wanted to be rid of the disease. After months of agonising, research and discussion, he’d decided to take the next step in the treatment and have a bone marrow transplant.

  It meant torturous rounds of high dose chemotherapy and radiation, and then the transplant.

  The fit, cheerful man, who loved his family, his home-brewed beer and his
bicycle, in equal measure—and when wearing his breathtakingly unflattering cycling shorts delighted in describing himself as a MAMIL (a Middle-Aged Man In Lycra)—was now a shell of himself. So thin he was barely recognisable. The laughter in his eyes dulled. His zest for life drained away.

  We all knew that the treatment might kill him. But no one ever spoke of it. None of us could form the words.

  I had tried, time and again to help Lib financially, knowing she was in trouble. But stubborn, proud, Lib wouldn’t accept anything.

  I understood, but being no slouch in the stubborn stakes, had arranged for a meal to be delivered every day to Lib’s doorstep. Lib had accepted with thankfulness and the stipulation that she didn’t need anything else.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Lib was drowning in debt, and it was getting harder and harder to stand by and watch.

  I swung my feet out onto the carpet and glanced around my large bedroom. The two hundred and fifty-year-old French tapestry hanging on one wall had once graced a bedroom in Versailles, the bookshelves were packed with rare books and artefacts, the huge walk-in wardrobe burst with shoes and elegant clothes. To sell any one would pay Lib’s mortgage for years.

  ‘Screw it.’ I picked up my phone and hit the number for Taylor Antiquities’ senior accountant.

  ‘Meredith? Is something wrong?’ Charles Smart answered groggily and I glanced at the small clock beside my bed: 4.55 am.

  ‘Apologies, Charles. I didn’t notice the time.’

  ‘No worries. Not a problem at all. Is everything alright?’

  ‘I want to pay off Libby Davis’s mortgage. Can you sort it out and let me know when the transaction is complete? No mention of my name.’

  Lib would know who’d done it as soon as she realised the debt was gone, and I had no doubt that a heated discussion about boundaries would follow. But enough was enough. Lib was the only thing I had that even came close to a sister, and there was such a thing as being too proud.

  ‘Sure.’ Charles didn’t hesitate. My accounting staff were used to strange requests from my father and I. From withdrawing eye-wateringly large sums of cash and dropping them off at odd locations at strange times of night, to locating a herd of pigs in a corner of Nepal for one of my agents to barter with a landowner for an artefact my father simply had to have. They had achieved it all.

  ‘Thanks. And I’ve got a sack of money here, which I found up at the beach house. Another one of Dad’s hordes. Can you send someone to pick it up? It’s in the basement strongroom. Donate it to the Leukaemia Foundation in the name of Nathan Davis.’

  ‘I’ll send someone this morning.’

  I heard a faint snore in the background.

  ‘Have a good day Charles, and say good morning to Raymond, I haven’t disturbed him, I hope.’

  ‘World War Three would not disturb that man.’ Charles had a note of affectionate amusement in his voice.

  I hit the phone’s off button.

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I wavered for a moment then threw the phone onto the counterpane to stop myself sending a text message to the kidnappers, begging for information about my father.

  I needed to hide my stress and worry from them. I had to keep up the icy-calm facade, so they wouldn’t think me weak or desperate.

  Instead I stalked into the walk-in robe to my private safe that nestled in the back of a cupboard. I typed in the access code and pulled out the Piprahwa Jewels. Then sank, cross-legged, to the carpeted floor and released them from the container’s airless grip.

  I stared at the jewels in their crystal eggs, and took in a long slow breath. As I let it go, a strange sense of contentment swept over me. The nagging knot of tension that’d sat in the centre of my chest ever since the first desperate message from my father had arrived loosened. Worries drifted away and were replaced with a few precious seconds of pure calm.

  Reaching out, I gently eased one of the eggs out of its foam surround. The pearls inside were surrounded by fine gold filigree. The crystal was warm to the touch, and I lifted it up, watching it glimmer and glitter in the light.

  An image, vivid and stunning, took over in my mind. Me and Jack Jones, in bed. Heat flowed through me, desire expanded deep in my abdomen and my nipples hardened against the thin silk of my nightdress. I gasped at the vividness of the vision, my hand tightened on the egg. In my imagination I ran a hand over Jack’s sweating chest, his skin slick beneath my palms except where a scattering of fair hair provided faint texture. I felt his groan rather than heard it, and he leaned towards me. He wanted me to kiss him. I could feel it. But this was my fantasy.

  Instead of devouring his mouth, I dipped my head and dropped my lips onto the thick length of his collarbone. I licked him, tasting the delicious saltiness of his sweat. I raised my head and met his eyes, and pushed him backwards onto the sheets of my bed. Then I gave him what he wanted. I leant over him and pressed my mouth against his. His mouth opened beneath mine and his tongue traced across my bottom lip. I wanted more. The touch of his tongue didn’t seem nearly enough. Though it sent sparks shivering down to my nipples, and further, to where I’d started to ache for his touch. I was so impatient. I wanted him instantly. I need him to take that ache away. I wanted to consume him. To have him. To make him mine. Straddling him I sank down onto his …

  Onto his …

  I groaned out loud, I couldn’t help it, and the sound snapped me out of the fantasy just as the egg slipped from my fingers and bounced silently on the carpet.

  ‘What the?’ I muttered. ‘Jesus.’ I reached for the egg, horror sweeping away the shivering desire. First rule of the antiquities business, never drop anything, ever. I hesitated, though, before my fingers made contact with the smooth glass. My hand trembled. What if the fantasy had come from the egg. Jack Jones was nothing but an irritation. A nuisance. He was the last person I should be fantasising about.

  ‘Get a grip, Taylor.’ I muttered and made myself pick up the egg.

  Want crashed over me. I rocked forward as, in my mind, Jack Jones placed his hands on his my hips as I knelt over him. He pulled me down, so that the smooth skin of the head of his cock nudged at the entrance of my very wet pussy. He pressed himself upwards and I cried out in a long moan at the sensation of him entering me, slowly. Stretching around his thick cock, until he reached that spot, deep inside me, to that point where I can no longer tell where he ends and I begin. He moves his hand and his thumb presses against my clit, and as I rode his cock the waves of an orgasm start to wash over me ...

  But then, the semi-functioning part of me shoved the egg back in the canister, and with shaking hands I sealed it shut. Standing on legs that didn’t feel steady, I pushed the canister back into the safe and slammed the door.

  I grabbed my running gear from one of the nearby drawers, peeled off my nightdress and quickly dressed. Once my sneakers were on, I grabbed my phone and headphones and sprinted through the house to the front door.

  Not even bothering to double-check the door was properly closed behind me, I ran, pushing hard to take my mind and my body away from the waves of unwanted desire.

  Sex made me weak and vulnerable. Sex made me feel emotion. Sex was something I’d sworn I’d never indulge in again. Two disastrous relationships with pretty men who saw me as nothing but a cash cow had taught me that.

  Sure, I’d marry one day; after all, I needed a child to hand the family fortune to. He’d be deeply suitable, have no need of my fortune, and would be an asset to the business. In fact, I’d already drawn up a list. I had no intention of loving him. In fact, I didn’t care if I liked him.

  I pounded down the hill, towards the Taronga Zoo ferry wharf. Usually I’d pause there, taking in the magnificent view of Sydney Harbour and breathing the salty air. But not today. My skin was hypersensitive, and even the movement of my clothes sent irritated shivers over me. The sharp, fresh scent of the seaweed-tinged air reminded me vividly of sex.

  I pumped up the volume on the high energy d
ance track that was blasting into my ears, turned on my heel at the bottom of the long hill and ran the three-kilometre rise as fast as I could.

  An hour later, and two trips up and down the hill, my legs cramping and trembling from the workout, I came to the end of my street and slowed as I approached the house. I pulled the earbuds out of my ears and consulted my fitness tracker as my heartbeat steadied. New personal best, apparently.

  As I walked through the front gate, a figure at the front door made my heart skip in a mix of fright and adrenaline. I stopped dead.

  ‘What do you want?’

  His sandy blond hair stood on end. He still wore his tux, though the tie was gone and the top button of the shirt undone. He looked delicious, even though he obviously hadn’t slept. I met his deep blue eyes, shadowed with tiredness, and my stomach clenched.

  For a moment the desire I’d run so hard to obliterate flowed over me. With a deep breath, I pushed it aside. Then, despite the fact I wanted to stare at him until he looked away so he’d know he wasn’t welcome, I dropped my gaze, afraid he’d see the lingering want in my face.

  When I glanced up, I saw a hint of speculation in his eyes. Dammit. He’d picked up on it. The man was far too perceptive. Not what I was used to at all.

  He took two steps towards me, purposefully, with such a gleam in his eyes I took a small step back. My heart accelerated, faster than when I’d sprinted up the hill.

  ‘What do you think I want?’ He accompanied the question with eye contact that went on too long and a smile that made me clench my teeth. He tipped his head to one side and lifted an eyebrow. He had a scar, from beside his nose down to the edge of his lip, and it gave him a piratical air, despite his surf-boy looks.

  ‘Mr Jones, have I not made myself clear?’ I drew up to my full height and gave him the chilly glare I reserved for members of the paparazzi—those charming individuals who had taken such glee in stalking me after my slime-bucket of an ex had sold the gossip magazines details of our relationship.

  ‘I won’t take no for an answer.’ The interest disappeared from his expression, replaced by irritation. Fear as well, I realised with a jolt. I was sure that for a moment he’d looked afraid.