He gives me a shrewd look. “Unless you’re naked.”
A knot forms in my chest with what is clearly an observation and a question I’m not ready to answer yet. “That’s a different topic for another time,” I say, cutting my gaze from his, and because I need to do anything but look at him in the next thirty seconds, I reach for my bottle of water and unscrew the lid.
Nick’s watching me, I feel his scrutiny—heavy, intense, and it makes my throat dry. I tilt the bottle back, drinking deeply, and when I lower the bottle, Nick takes it from me, holds my stare and the bottle goes to his lips. I watch him chug the liquid, my fingers curling on my leg, acutely aware of the intimacy of sharing my water with him.
He sets the bottle down, and I don’t even mean to, but I’m staring at him, and the look in his eyes tells me that his thoughts are with mine and I suddenly realize his message even before he says, “You can be naked with your clothes on or off, Faith.” He reaches up and caresses my cheek. “And I do like you naked, but as you said to me, tell me whatever you want to tell me, whenever you’re ready to tell me. I’ll still be here.”
“I just—”
“No pressure.” He eases back in his seat. “For now. You were telling me my control has to have limits.”
“Are you capable of limits?”
“Control is all about limits. Is that what you want, Faith? Limits?”
I’m instantly aware of where he’s leading me and I go there. “Control is about limits. Possibilities are not. But me owing you money feels like a limit. It might not change you, but it will change me. I need to pay you back. And I need to give you that money I got from my art as a down payment.”
He studies me for several beats, his expression unreadable. “You need this.”
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
“I won’t agree to ever taking any portion of the winery. Period. No conversation. And no interest, Faith. I don’t need the money. I won’t take extra.” I open my mouth to argue and he says, “Compromise. I’m agreeing to a payback for you, not me. Agree to my terms for me.”
“Compromise,” I repeat. “Okay. Yes. And for the record, I actually like that word. I like it a lot and perhaps I was unfair earlier. I know you just want to help and protect me. Just please communicate, Nick, and I think that makes all the difference.”
“This seems like a good time to tell you, that if I have to spend money to take care of the winery situation, I’m going to spend money.”
“And if I say I don’t want you to?”
“I’m going to take care of this for you and for us. You can’t be who you really are while being forced to be what you aren’t.”
That statement punches me in the chest with my mistakes, and pretty much defines a huge portion of my life. “I don’t know how to take your help and not lose myself too.”
“You’re putting too much emphasis on the money. Eventually you’re going to have to accept that is part of who I am. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a large bank account. I work too damn hard to get it. And I’m going to spend that money on you and with you.” He leans closer, softening his voice. “Make me understand why this is an issue. Who used money against you? Your father? Macom? Both?”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Not transparent enough, or I’d already know the answers to those questions. I need to know. Communication, remember?”
“Yes. Communication. Okay. My father was more about emotional baggage. As for Macom, I don’t know if it was money or fame, or both, but it went to Macom’s head.”
“Meaning what?”
“He would throw the money and fame in my face.”
“How?”
“Does it matter?”
“It affects you, Faith. So yes. It matters.”
“He’d criticize me and then build me up and then do it all over again. I knew that he was inherently insecure, which made his actions about him, not me. I tried to build him up and support him. Eventually though, with him and my father talking in my ear, it wore on me. Their negativity became poison and I started to doubt myself.”
“And the doubt led where?”
“I’m not sure it was the doubt that led me down a rabbit hole I couldn’t quite escape.” I think of the fight I just had with Nick. “Macom and I didn’t fight like you and I fight.”
“How do we fight, Faith?”
“We do what we just said. We communicate.”
“And with Macom?”
“He never hurt me, but he threw volatile temper tantrums and destroyed things. The next day, he would buy me extravagant gifts to apologize.”
“Well, to start. I’m not insecure, in case you didn’t notice. I’m good at what I do but you have a gift that I admire. You are brilliant, Faith.”
My cheeks flush not as much with the compliment, but the vehement way he delivers the words. Like he means them so very deeply.
He doesn’t give me time to reply, “And as for money. I’m going to spend money on you. Because I want to. If I want to do it just because, I will. Because I want to. And if I want to do it because I piss you off, I will. Because I want to. He doesn’t get to change that. He doesn’t get that kind of say in our relationship.”
“I don’t need you to spend money on me but I don’t want him to define me or us. I hate that we’re even having this conversation.”
“We needed to have this conversation. You lived with him. You must have thought you loved him.”
“I did. The man I knew before the fame and the money.”
“Money and fame don’t change people, Faith. Those things simply expose their true colors.”
“I don’t dispute that, but I don’t know how he hid those true colors so well. I’ve thought about that a lot. How did I miss so much?”
“Were you his submissive?”
“No. I told you. I’m not a submissive. You know that I’m not a submissive.”
“But he tried to make you one.”
“Yes. He did. I refused.”
He narrows his eyes on me. “He found that world while he was with you, not before.”
“Right after his first big sale, he was invited to an expensive, invitation only dinner club.”
“That wasn’t a dinner club at all.”
“Exactly. And I agreed to go because he was still the Macom I thought I knew.”
“And what happened?”
“For us, it was voyeurism and sex that felt daring and sexy at the time. Looking back, I think something was always missing for us, and that night, in that club, it felt as if we filled some void.”
“And so you went back.”
“Yes. And for a while I liked it. In some ways I always did, but why and how changed.”
“Meaning what?” he presses.
“Starting out, we kept to ourselves. Just going there made things exciting. But then he got darker at home. More demanding at the club.” I rotate and face forward. “The first time he crossed a line, he tied me up and then invited people to watch us without telling me, without asking. It spiraled from there.”
Nick rotates forward as well, both of us side by side, arms resting on the table. “But you kept going?”
I glance over at him, daring to look into his eyes. “It’s like you said earlier. I use sex to protect myself. That goes back to what I said a moment ago. I don’t know when or how it happened, but that club became the place that I trained myself to be something that I wasn’t before. It’s was where I learned to be in control, even when I was seemingly not in control at all. Sex became a different kind of escape. I actually found those moments, when I could be in a room of naked bodies and still feel alone, sanctuary.”
“From what?”
“Everything I didn’t want to face. In reality, my control in that club was a replacement for claiming real control of my life.”
“And then your father died,” he says, and I cut my gaze. I look at his arm resting on the table, his tattoo partially exposed. The word
s etched there are taking me back to a place I don’t want to be, but my father’s death always leads me there. I reach over and cover those words with my hand. “An eye for an eye,” I whisper.
“You keep going to it. You clearly want to tell me what it means.”
Now I look up at him. “No. No, I really don’t.”
He studies me a beat and then says, “Then don’t.”
Just that easily he has accepted my answer and offers me an escape. I take it. “I need air.” I slip off the stool and start walking but as I round the table, I realize that the past is in this room, when Nick is my present, maybe my future. I don’t want to shut him out. I want to take him on the ride with me. I rotate to find him still at the table. “Come with me?”
His expression doesn’t change—it’s unreadable—but his actions are what matter. He stands, and it’s only a minute later that we stand side by side on the balcony at the railing, and for several minutes we don’t speak. We just stand there, the blue sky and ocean stretching far and wide before us, like paint perfectly inked on a canvas. The wind lifts over the balcony edge, and I can almost taste the salt water on my tongue and with it, the words to be spoken and not just for him. I need to face the past fully and be done with it. I inhale and let it out. “There was another artist who went to the club. Jim was his name.” I rotate to face Nick again, and he does the same with me. “He was the one who got Macom the invite.”
“They were friends then,” he assumes.
“I believe that was Jim’s intent, but he and Macom sat on a high-profile board for a charity together. They bumped heads and Macom got kicked off. The day it happened, Macom called me at work and told me about it. I got home that night to comfort him and found him with Jim’s wife, in our bed. He invited me to join them. An eye for an eye, he’d said. I could help pay Jim back.”
“Had you been with Jim and his wife before?”
“No. His wife was a submissive and Jim was very possessive and protective of her. I’d actually found it enviable until she hopped in bed with Macom. Anyway. They were still fucking when I got the call about my father. I left. Macom called the next day looking for me.”
“And you never went back.”
“No, and honestly I hated the L.A. scene. I went to college there and learned the world there, and it just made sense to stay. And it kept me from my parents’ drama.”
Nick moves then, turning me to lean against the railing, his big body trapping mine, his hands at my waist. “Faith, I need you to know some things about me. This isn’t everything I need to share, but it’s a start and an important one.”
“I know you were in that world in some way, Nick. We’ve hinted at that in conversations.”
“I was. Not now. But I’ve played in that world that you were playing in and I did so for many years.”
“What drew you to it and why did you leave?”
“I was drawn there for the zero-commitment guarantee. There was just sex. No one believed I wanted more. No one asked for more. I left, because I met you.”
She inhales and lets it out. “That was recent.”
“Because I didn’t want a woman in my life. Now. If I never see that place again, it will be too soon. I would never take you there.”
“So it was one club?”
“Yes.”
“And why wouldn’t you take me there?”
“Because we are more than the sum of what I was there. Because we are better than that place. Because I damn sure have no intention of sharing you in any capacity and just walking into that place would make many a man and woman, want you.”
“Did you have a submissive?”
“No. Never. I cannot stress this enough. Until you, I didn’t do commitment and that is a commitment. But I liked the games and it was fucking without complication. Bondage. Check. Ménages. Check. Voyeurism. Check. No couple play though. I was never a couple and I don’t need another man comparing dicks with me.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“I didn’t want you to find out from someone else. And I didn’t want you to think that I want to be there, not here. The past doesn’t define me or you or who we are apart or together. It simply represents the paths that we each took to get here. To each other.”
I digest every word he has spoken with the realization that I am not shaken by Nick’s confession, that is not so unlike my own. How can I be? He has been boldly forthright, brutally honest about his interests. And he’s just told me that while Macom needed the club despite having me, Nick only needs me. And I choose to believe him. I choose to believe that he is right. All paths have lead us here, to a place where I have a paintbrush in my hand and this man in my life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nick
I once told Faith that I don’t do guilt. I make decisions. I own them. I move on. But as I leave her in her studio to paint, just beyond our talk about sex clubs and that bastard Macom, guilt is gutting me. It’s like I’m in a horror movie with some slasher sicko slicing and dicing me, and coming back for more. I fast-step down the stairs toward the living room, reminding myself that I told Faith all that I dared. I cannot risk sending her running for the hills and pushing me into the dog house. Not when it appears that someone wants the winery, or something connected to the winery, and that they most likely killed her mother and my father to get it. And Faith is the only person standing in their way.
Clearing the last step, I cross the living room, grab my briefcase in the kitchen, and then make my way to my office. Once inside, I shut the door under the pretense of the client conference call I told Faith I’d scheduled. A lie to hide lies. Jaw clenching at that idea, I drop my briefcase on my heavy mahogany desk, and then walk toward the bookshelf-enclosed sitting area at the far end of the room. Claiming a spot in the center of the brown leather couch facing the door, I mentally prioritize the gaggle of fucked up shit in my head right now. My focus is on Faith’s safety, which means keeping her close. Which means containing any threat that could push or pull her away from me. That means dealing with Sara Merit.
I pull my phone from the pocket of my jeans, and since I don’t have Sara’s number, I dial Chris. He answers on the first ring. “You’re afraid Sara is going to tell Faith about the club. And I can tell you right now. She would not do that.”
“You certainly know how to get right to the point.”
“Then let me do it again. You have to tell her.”
“I told her I was a member, with graphic detail,” I say, and aware Chris has a bit of a history himself, I add, “She knows the world. It’s not been kind to her.”
“And living the lifestyle versus owning a club that says you can’t live without the lifestyle are two different things.”
“Exactly. And I never really wanted the damn thing. Mark owned it. Mark was a client and a friend, and I picked it up.”
“You’re known. Someone could tell her you owned it and even if that never happens, you really don’t want that unspoken truth between you.”
“I’ll tell her at the same time that I tell her I dumped the damn thing.”
“Smart move in my book,” he says. “Do you have a buyer?”
“You interested?”
“Not a chance in hell, my man. But we both know money isn’t an issue to you. Kurt Seaver runs that place from sun-up to sun-down. Give it to him.”
“You read my mind. That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
“Good move. Good move.” There’s a voice in the background. “I’m actually walking into a meeting with a donor for my charity. Sara’s with me. I’ll fill in the holes she missed.” He ends the call.
I pull up my text screen and Kurt Seaver’s contact information, shooting him a message: Ten o’clock in my office tomorrow.
I move on to the next situation. I remove the money clip from my pocket, set it on the dark wood of the rectangular coffee table, and shoot a photo I then text to Beck. My superhero PI who had better start acting like a superhero.
I punch his auto-dial and he answers on the first ring. “How’s the black widow?”
“Since you’re supposed to be an ex-CIA agent/ hacker, who I now pay one hell of a lot of money to do PI work, I’d think you’d know how to google “black widow” and find the meaning. She’s never been married. She hasn’t killed her non-existent husband or any lovers.”
“Unless she was fucking your father right along with her mother.”
My teeth clench. “Don’t push me, Beck. You might be in high demand, but I’m paying you a hell of a lot of money to do your job. And that job now includes protecting Faith, not attacking her.”
“Relax, man. I was just pushing your buttons. Faith isn’t a killer, but considering that note you found, she was clearly fucking with your father’s head. And I sent a gift to your inbox.”
“Which is what?”
“That attorney she hired to go after her mother had a file on her that included correspondence with your father.”
“How did you get that?”
“Don’t ask what you don’t want to deny later.”
My jaw clenches. “Save me time. Summarize the findings.”
“Validation of her story. She went after her mother. Your father nickel-and-dimed her into giving up. The interesting part of this to me is that your father was paying Meredith Winter while acting as her attorney. If he wasn’t fucking her, I’d swear she was blackmailing him.”
“I told you. My father wouldn’t tolerate blackmail. He’d act on his own behalf and viciously. He was after the winery.”
“Here’s the thing. There are no dots connecting. I can’t find Meredith’s money. I can’t find your father’s money. This tells me that someone as good as me made it go away. I need to put feelers out in my underground circles and find out who, but that means two things: We need to offer cash in exchange for information. And we risk spooking someone into doing something we might regret.”
“Do we have other options?”
“They’re running out.”