"Ohhh-kay," Cara interrupted quickly. "Let's go get some fresh air, shall we?"
Simon looked positively delighted by this suggestion, and so did the man behind the bar. As she helped the billionaire down from his stool, she shot a look over his shoulder at the bartender and indicated with a quick gesticulation of her hand that she wanted to know how many drinks Simon had already imbibed. The bartender shrugged and slapped his white towel down over his shoulder. How do you not know? Cara mouthed angrily as she steered Simon away. He probably thought there were plenty of opportunities for clients of the hotel to get drunk without him, but Cara hadn't seen any indication earlier in the evening that Simon was pre-funking without telling her.
There were too many people clustered in the lobby and around the revolving doors at the entrance. She didn't feel secure taking Simon out that way—what if someone recognized him? "How do you feel about stairs?" she asked as she turned them back around to walk the other way. Simon grinned.
"Brilliant."
They climbed to the next floor without incident and wrapped around the indoor balcony. As they walked, Cara kept an eye on Simon's stride. He seemed basically coordinated, although he was blinking more than usual, as if he was having trouble seeing straight. "What happened to you?" she whispered quietly. They passed a group of women who did not appear to be there for the party, but Cara fell silent automatically. It was no good. They needed a quieter place to talk, and she still needed to get Simon outdoors so he could sober up.
She chose a dark hallway with an exit sign glowing at the end. One of the lights had gone out overhead, which suited their purposes just fine. She doubted they were going to be able to find a more private place to talk without renting out a room.
They were halfway down the hallway when Simon thrust her into a small enclosure indented in the wall. Cara went with a cry of protest; she hadn't expected him to be capable of such a maneuver right now, much less capable of the foresight to execute it successfully. Her back hit the wall, and his mouth was upon hers.
She shouldn't have enjoyed the unexpectedness of Simon's passion as much as she did. The man clearly wasn't thinking coherently, but since he was the one who had initiated it, she decided it would be all right… if she didn't let it go on too long. She threaded her arms around his neck and slipped her tongue past his scorching hot lips. His mouth moved against hers emphatically, and a moment later she felt a hand slip beneath her dress.
"Simon!" she gasped. She broke away to seize his wrist, but the arm that pinned her between her legs didn't retreat. He did slow his assault, opting to massage her through her panties. She squirmed and gasped some more and tried not to make the noises her body so desperately needed for release.
"You're wet," he murmured into the dip of her neck. His breath felt ragged and hot against the junction of her shoulder, and he was only succeeding in fulfilling his own prophecy. Cara could feel it between her legs, and her heart was already fluttering with anticipation and arousal. She knew that the typically mild-mannered Simon could be a different person in the bedroom, but the way he came onto her so strongly now was unlike anything she had experienced before. Still, she had her pride.
"That has nothing to do with it." She could feel her face growing hot beneath his scrutiny. No, this should definitely not be happening, not here, not now. What if someone walked in on them? They weren't even positioned in a room that could be walked in to. "You jumped me in the middle of a hallway. At an expensive hotel in London! At your own party, Simon!"
"I want you." The man shivered as if it was agony to be near her and not filling her. The hand continued to stroke her until she threatened to purr like a kitten beneath his caresses. This was insane. So much was at stake, yet she couldn't tear herself away from the sensations of her own body. If they didn't satisfy themselves now, then when? Simon had already put her over the threshold with his too-good fingers; if she didn't give into him now, then she was going to be thoroughly miserable for the rest of the evening.
She didn't return his claim, or say anything at all; all she could do was nod, once, to give consent. She had barely raised her chin again before Simon was pressing every line of his hard-muscled frame against the front of hers as he attacked her mouth once more. She could feel the considerable tent he had pitched in his pants as he ground it against her, and realized that there would have been no hope of them returning to the party anyway if it had persisted. She unbuttoned the front of his trousers quickly, happy to lend a helping hand.
But Simon didn't want a helping hand. He wanted her, all of her, and he wanted it right then and there in the hallway. As soon as she had freed him, he was pushing his erection beneath the hem of her dress and teasing her entrance. All that remained between them as a barrier was Cara's underwear, and even that was starting to feel completely inadequate in staving him off.
"Simon…" she murmured. He was worshiping the curve of her neck once more with his mouth, and Cara vaguely registered that he had pushed the strap of her dress down one shoulder. He was completely ravishing her in the darkness of a dimly-lit, all too public hallway. This was probably the craziest thing she had ever done.
The hand beneath her dress pushed the elastic band of her panties; as soon as its work was done, the hand gripped Cara beneath her thigh and lifted, forcing their hips together in one jerking movement. His member slid past her entrance and missed, although he might have only been teasing her on purpose, because the feeling of him moving against her clit was incredible. The back of Cara's head hit the wall, and she moaned a last futile protest. "We can't do this here…"
"Of course we can, love," the Englishman muttered, and in the next instant he was thrusting into her. He yanked her thigh up again to grant himself better access as he penetrated her fully. Despite Cara's own earlier warnings, the cry she gave was explosive.
He drove into her with quick, jerking thrusts. Soon her dress was reduced to a sweat-soaked, tangled garment, and she had no idea whether or not it was covering all the parts of her body it was meant to conceal from view. All of her felt thrillingly exposed beneath him.
Each thrust of Simon's lovemaking carried her back hard against the wall, and each time he held her more firmly pinned in place until Cara was being pushed halfway up the wall. His strength was incredible that he could do this to her.
"Hurry, Simon," she pleaded. She was beyond trying to talk them both out of it now. Their tryst was sending her into ecstasies. Simon must have known what a woman of filthy predilections she was if he had assumed all along that she would enjoy this.
A few more quick thrusts sent Cara over the moon. He muffled her unexpected cry of release with a kiss, drawing her moan of pleasure into his mouth as his grip on her thigh tightened. Soon enough he was coming as well, shooting his load into her in a hot, unbearable rush, and she swallowed his own exclamation with a fervent kiss.
There was no time to recover afterwards. Anyone might come by at any moment and find them in their compromising position against the wall. They needed to clean up and get out of there, quick. "Simon, what did you do with my underwear?" Cara slid down from the wall and hunted all around in the darkness for it as Simon withdrew. She noticed him struggling to button the front of his pants, before ultimately giving up and pressing his forehead against the wall with a little laugh. "Simon?"
His legs nearly gave way beneath him then. Cara rose from her desperate search and managed to catch him under the arm in time to keep him from spilling over completely. "What's the matter?" she exclaimed in alarm. She struggled to hold him and pull the strap of her dress back up as they made it to the wall for support. Simon leaned his back against it and gazed off happily into space. Cara wished she could say it was the after effects of having sex with her that had put him into a daze, but she had a sudden, dreadful suspicion that it wasn't. All of the puzzle pieces suddenly locked into place: Simon's strange behavior, and the relatively short amount of time it had taken him to arrive at this state, all added up to a possi
bility she hadn't even considered before.
"Oh my God, Simon. I think you'vebeen drugged."
CHAPTER 28
The billionaire's handsome head lolled, and for a moment Cara feared he was about to faint. She ducked under his arm, quickly, just in case he needed the extra support, and all but hauled him out the hallway's back exit. A gust of cool London air hit them; Cara felt it through every inch of her too-thin dress, but Simon seemed unaffected by it. She helped him sit on the fire escape, and he dropped his head into his hands.
"It's fine, Cara. I've just had too much to drink. I've been… overserved." He wouldn't raise his chin to look at her, and his tousled auburn hair fell across his eyes so that she couldn't get a good look at him. Cara bit the inside of her cheek. She had been at a party, once, where a girl she was acquainted with had been slipped Rophonyl. Cara had driven her home after noticing more than just the usual symptoms of being overserved.
"Let me see your eyes, Simon."
She didn't know if it would be the same for him—he seemed basically coherent outside of his strange behavior, and didn't look on the verge of unconsciousness. Simon reacted sluggishly to her request and moved his hands away from his eyes. Even in the light posted outside the door of the fire escape, she could see that his normally blue eyes were almost entirely black.
"Dilated pupils," Cara said aloud. Her mind was racing. "Simon, is this similar to how you felt on the night of the accident?"
"Yes," he confirmed. He then dropped his head back into his hands with a strange, unhappy sob. His moods were shifting faster than Cara could keep up with him, but he seemed aware of how out of control he was. "Oh God, Cara. I haven't changed a bit. I'm still the same person. I'm still—"
"No, you're not," Cara said emphatically. "You're not the same person, because you never were this person. Someone is trying to set you up. Someone is trying to ruin you, Simon, and he's doing such a good job at it that he even has you fooled."
"He?" Simon repeated airily. "Who?"
Cara hadn't noticed her own use of the male pronoun until he pointed it out to her, and he was right to be confused. Why had she said that? It's not as if she had a culprit in mind…
Or did she?
"Simon, I'm going to call security," she said carefully. "I want you to stay out here, and I'm going to send them to meet with you. They might run a few tests."
"What kind of tests?" Simon sounded horrified at the prospect, and she tried not to smile at his uncharacteristically childish tone of voice. It was endearing, but it was all wrong. He was reacting to everything she said on a very raw level, and she needed to be supportive of him.
"I'm sure they'll check your eyes like I did, Simon, and ask questions. I'll speak with them before."
"Don't go." Simon grasped her wrist as she made to stand. "Please, Cara. I'm sorry that I tried to have sex with you in the hallway."
"You, er… you succeeded." Cara blushed, and took advantage of his moment of speculation to gently pry his fingers from her hand. "And you don't have to mention that part, by the way, to security. Just tell them what you're feeling, and that your girlfriend thinks you're drugged. I'll try and be back before they get to you, but I really have to see to something first. Don't move."
"I love my girlfriend," Simon sighed as she kissed the top of his head and let herself back into the hotel. She didn't want to leave him there, not at all, but she wouldn't be gone for long.
This would only take minutes.
"Gerald!" She had the good luck of running into the butler on her way down the staircase. The elderly man paused, looking nonplussed by their encounter.
"Miss Langford," he greeted her. "Where is Mr. Banning?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that." She was gazing at him very hard now. He was dressed in his usual proper attire, but she noticed there was a slight bulge in his breast pocket. "What is that you have there? Ibuprofen? Oh, good thinking, Gerald. Simon is going to have a real doozy of a hangover tomorrow morning." And before he could stop her, Cara reached between them and plucked the pill bottle from his pocket.
She had rarely seen any expression at all pass across Gerald's face, but now she was treated to a glimpse of borderline animal panic that flitted across his expression. "No, Miss Langford, I'm afraid that's my heart medication. I'm going to need that back—"
"Funny, it certainly looks like a prescription bottle, but I'm afraid I can't read the label. What language is that?" Cara held the bottle out in front of herself, and Gerald made a swipe for it. The butler was out of luck—her reflexes were much quicker, as evidenced by her theft of the bottle in the first place. She raised it out of reach and brought it close to her nose. "Oh, you know what, actually? I forgot that there's a database for this sort of thing online! All I have to do is Google the color and shape of these pills, and their name will pop up! You wouldn't believe how easy it is, Gerald."
"What do you want?" the butler hissed. Cara was reminded of the change she had seen overcome Melinda that day in her bedroom when the other woman had realized she couldn't be swayed. "And what are you implying?"
"Wrong sequence of questions, Gerald." Cara backed from him a step for good measure and tucked the bottle down the front of her dress. She watched as the butler's eyes darted wildly about, but they both knew he wouldn't reach for it in plain view of any party guest who might just happen by. He thought he still had a chance of retaining his job, even though Cara knew otherwise. And she was about to prove why. "I know you've been drugging your employer. Not every day, maybe not even every month, maybe only two times total; but that's still twice too often." Cara crossed her arms protectively over the pocket she had improvised between her breasts. "You drugged him tonight, and you drugged him the night of the Pembrook accident. I'm half-suspicious that you drugged him that day in Connecticut when he nearly drove himself off the road and drowned."
"You can't prove anything!" Gerald's vicious tone seemed to imply that he thought otherwise. "And anyway, why would I do something like that? Mr. Banning is my employer!"
"You resent him," Cara said. "How long have you been working for his family? What have they ever done for you in honor of your service? I bet you aren't even in the will, are you? Or if you were, what Simon's parents gave you when they died wasn't enough. You had to go after their heir. You were planning on wearing him down slowly, weren't you? Making him think he was losing his mind, forcing him into solitude and driving him into the arms of the alcoholism he thought he already had." She was working herself up now, and when Gerald didn't deny any of her claims, it only made her angrier. "Were you hoping for him to leave his money to you? Or maybe you were just trying to have a bit of malicious fun at his expense. Me personally, I think you were shooting for both. You never anticipated the Stetson accident, but you worked that to your advantage too, didn't you? You were in touch with Stetson Pembrook's family; you were the one who advised them to go after Simon. And they probably agreed to give you a cut of what they were awarded for having their best interests at heart."
"You Americans and your crime TV shows," Gerald spat almost nonsensically. "You think justbecause you've seen it done on the telly that you can suss out the facts. Well, you're wrong. And I'll make sure Simon realizes once and for all what a lying little bitch you are."
Cara wasn't finished yet. "You poisoned Melinda," she said. "You poisoned Melinda and made it look like a suicide. She was threatening to cut the strings on your little marionette show. I bet she wasn't even aware of what you really are, was she? You two could have been like two peas in a pod, but you got greedy. Poisoning Melinda was the perfect incentive for Simon to leave the U.S. and come back to England, where you had a better chance of convincing him to meet with the Pembrooks and possibly settle out of court. You were the one who alerted the paparazzi, and you are the one who has been behind every terrible thing that has happened to him in the past year."
By the time she had concluded her tirade, Cara found that she was too disgusted to s
ign off with a better ending. She started back up the stairs, intending to return to Simon before security and the police arrived. Gerald grabbed her wrist, his gnarled old fingers digging into her with surprising strength for a man with a so-called "heart condition".
"Where are you going?" he growled.
"I think the better question is where are you going?" Cara yanked her hand free from him. "I'd lawyer up if I were you. And stay away with Simon."
She left him standing there, gazing at the ground, and she didn't look back.
#
Even though his butler was now in custody, Simon fired Gerald officially the next day. He said he wanted at least that satisfaction.
"And now I have to hire new employees," he muttered over breakfast. He had hardly touched his plate, and he was holding an ice pack to his aching forehead. Apparently whatever Gerald had dosed him with the night previous left lingering effects similar to those of a hangover. Cara, who had made breakfast for him in the absence of a cook, tried not to take his lack of appetite too personally.
"You definitely need a better screening process," she agreed. She sat across from him at the table with her laptop open, typing her story and frequently checking her e-mail for updates from the police. Since she had been the one to solve the case, she was being permitted unheard of access to the developments as they unfolded. With Simon's permission, she was going to turn his story in as her final project.
"Cara." Simon drew the ice pack away from his forehead. "Will you do something for me?"
"Sure." She didn't look up from her laptop.
"Will you kiss me before the Pembrooks get here?For good luck."
She glanced up in surprise at his request, and was met with a pair of earnest blue eyes. Cara closed her laptop and rose with a smile. "They were going to drop their lawsuit against you, you know," she said as she sat down in his lap and laced her arms around his neck. "Even before they found out about Gerald's involvement in the accident. They like you. I can tell."
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