“Hmm . . . is that a good thing?” I asked with my lips at the shell of her ear.
“Yes indeed, with you it is,” she said as she reached a hand up to my face. “I hope it’s okay I’m cooking in your kitchen. I figured it was a good idea to familiarize myself since I have to design a new one.”
I frowned at the thought, realizing I didn’t like her reference to the job. I didn’t want her in here just because I’d hired her to do a job; I wanted her cooking because she sought it out—after a smoking hot night with her man. I had changed roles on her without ever asking, though. I now wanted to be her man, not her boss. For the first time, it dawned on me I might have made a mistake in hiring her.
“It’s more than okay, Brooke. You can cook breakfast any time you get the urge. I fucking love it,” I told her, taking in a deep inhale of the scent of her hair. “How can I help you?”
“You can transfer these plates to the table while I pour coffee,” she said slowly.
“On one condition,” I said.
“And that is?”
“I give you a proper kiss good morning first.”
She froze beneath my hands as if she was trying to hold back. Then I heard it—the softest sob, and then another. She was crying.
“No.” I turned her and got a look: eyes closed, tear streaked, shoulders shaking. “What is it, baby? What did I do?”
She curled into me and sobbed a few more times before pulling herself together. I waited because I sensed it was the right thing to do. I do not know how I knew that, but something told me to just wait her out. I rubbed her back and held her while standing in front of a Viking range I rarely used, in my similarly unused kitchen, and waited for her to say something.
“It’s not you,” she managed to say on the breath of a sob. “I—I do this now. It happens quite a bit, a-actually. I think my accident has something to do with it because I never had this problem before . . .” She took some deep breaths and seemed to be coming out of it, and my heart started beating again.
Fuck. Me. Sideways.
I did not like her crying. It freaked me the fuck out.
I’d thought for a minute she was going to tell me last night had been a terrible mistake.
“Was it—was it me asking to kiss you good morning that brought it on?”
She nodded against my chest, almost as if she were afraid to look at me.
“I need to understand, Brooke. Can you talk to me?”
“I get emotional at the drop of a hat . . . and it’s led to a lot of embarrassing moments just like this one we’re having right now.”
“But, don’t be—please don’t feel embarrassed with me. I don’t mind, I just want to know why.”
“Whenever I talk about my problems to someone, my voice will crack and I’ll start crying. Even wonderful moments choke me up, like when Nan and Herman told me they were getting married, or just now when you said you wanted to give me a good-morning kiss.”
“Me asking to kiss you good morning was a wonderful moment?”
“Yes, it was, Caleb. For me it was, because it teaches me that you want me here.” She sighed heavily against my bare chest, and I could feel the heat of her breath move over my skin. It started things up down south again. All she had to do was speak and I wanted her again. Didn’t she realize that yet? “Rehearsing what I want to say to people doesn’t really help, either, because I end up sobbing and thus can’t get the words out of my mouth, or control that feeling at the back of my throat,” she added with another heavy sigh.
Jesus. Not what I was expecting her to say. Again, I reminded myself that Brooke was someone I barely knew. My feelings for her remained unchanged, but as she revealed more about herself, I understood there were many layers of complexity in her life. Complexities she struggled to work around so she could function as a person. We all had them. Same, but different complexities, pushing in at odd moments, making us dance to their tune. The bastard fuckers.
“Well, let me say this then: having you here to say good morning to, after the night we just shared together, is a wonderful moment for me.” It was more than wonderful actually, but I didn’t want to scare her with how I really felt. Insanely fantastic was closer to the mark. I tugged on her chin with a finger because I needed to see her eyes and I needed her to see mine. “If I cry, too, will that help you feel better?”
My teasing worked because she laughed and her eyes smiled—and my world tilted a little bit more. I got my good-morning kiss, which was spectacular all on its own, but there was more to look forward to. So much more.
I was going to sit down with her and eat the delicious breakfast she’d cooked for me.
And then I was going to carry her back to bed and make love to her again, and reassure her just how much I wanted her here with me.
After that, I was going to carry her into the shower and make her come against my lips one last time before we both got ready for work.
Then I would have the pleasure of dropping her off and kissing her good-bye before she walked inside her building. I would watch her as she went in and know I was seeing my girl. Mine.
Brooke Casterley was mine now.
Caleb
James R. Blakney & Associates, PC was the only firm I’d consider with something like this—since it was me with the request and James doing the investigating—because I didn’t trust anybody else when it came to my private business more than I trusted my best friend.
We met at boarding school when we were ten. Both of us dumped at a private institution where rich mothers and fathers sent their sons when only the most exclusive prep school would do. I remember standing in line for the phone we all had to share, so I could call my parents and beg them to let me come home.
When it was my turn, I made the call and got my mother on the line. I wanted to talk to my dad but she told me he couldn’t come to the phone right then. I let her know how much I hated living at school, and how badly I missed my brothers and my baby sisters. I begged and pleaded to be allowed to go to a day school and live at home, but she just told me to stop crying and that I was embarrassing her. I often wondered if I’d been able to catch my dad on the phone that day, if things might have turned out differently. Dad was reasonable. Mom was not. She let me know in no uncertain terms that I was staying put, and wouldn’t be coming back home until Isaac showed up at the end of November to bring me there for Thanksgiving. Then she told me it was for my own good and hung up on me.
Some of the other boys witnessed me crying and taunted me. They called me a baby and pushed me around before I ran off and hid behind one of the school buildings and cried some more. When I lifted my head up later, I discovered I wasn’t alone. The boy who was right below me alphabetically in the class was sitting a few feet away. James Blakney. I asked him why he was there. He told me he’d called his parents the day before for the very same reason as me. James had gotten his father on the line. The same cold, hard message was delivered to him, only it came from his dad instead of his mom. We bonded that day and found out that boarding school didn’t suck so badly when you had a friend to share it with.
That was twenty-one years ago, and boarding school had been exchanged for Harvard eight years later. Then it was grad school—Harvard Law for James and Harvard Business for me. Now our companies took the place that school had filled when we were kids. Not much was different between us today than it’d been back then, I thought as I walked through the doors of his law firm.
“He’s free now if you want to go on in, Caleb.” His legal secretary had known me since I was a kid, from back when she’d worked for Judge Blakney, James’s father.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy.” I gave her a wink.
“Aren’t you ever going to call me Marguerite?” she teased back.
“No, ma’am. It wouldn’t be courteous for me to address you as anything other than ‘Mrs. Kennedy’ on account of my oath. A scout is always courteous.”
“Still with the Boy Scout thing, Caleb, after all
these years?” This was our little game.
“That’s right, Mrs. Kennedy. I try to always remember to conduct myself like the Eagle Scout I am.”
James looked at me weirdly when I entered his office and sat in the buttery-soft leather chair reserved for clients. Right now I was a client.
“What has this girl done to you, my friend?” he said, after a minute of staring.
“How much time do you have?” I answered.
“That good, huh?” He didn’t look convinced.
I removed a piece of lint from my pant leg before replying. “The word good is insufficient and lacking in details to help you understand what she has done to me.”
He gave me another thoroughly weird look before opening the file on his desk. It contained the information he’d found since I’d called him from the car, after I’d dropped Brooke at Harris & Goode this morning.
“Three hours isn’t enough time to get a whole lot, but I’ve got some baseline stuff for you and it’s a start. Brooke Ellen Casterley, twenty-three years old. Birthday, seventeenth May, when she will turn twenty-four. Born at King George Hospital, Essex, England to Susanna Casterley and Michael Harvey. Here’s her birth certificate.”
James slid it to me across the desk. “And the husband?”
“He was a bit more of a challenge, but I found his name on the public marriage record filed when he married Brooke. Marcus Kyle Patten, age twenty-nine at the time of the marriage, thirty years old at the time of his death. Born in Salem, Mass., died in Chatsworth, an affluent LA suburb, just seven months into the marriage. Here’s his birth certificate.”
He slid that one over as well. “How did she meet this guy do you think?”
“I think I can make a good guess there. They met at Suffolk University where she was an undergrad, and he was probably just finishing up law school. Patten passed the Massachusetts state bar exam two years ago in February. He married Brooke a little over a month later in April.”
“But they lived in California and Marcus died there. Why take the Massachusetts bar exam and not California’s?”
“I’m still working on that, but Brooke probably knows what she’s talking about if she said the family operated in criminal activity. I’m thinking they needed an inside man versed in the law. Like the mob always sends their brightest bulb in the box to law school. Best way to keep all that money out of the hands of the IRS.”
“The family is organized crime?” I asked.
“Looking that way. They own storage unit rentals. Hundreds of them all over the state. Could be a nice cover for smuggling: drugs, guns, anything that’s controlled, plus a legit business helps to hide the money laundering activities they need to do. Oh, and this Marcus Patten had some anger management issues while in law school, and sounds like maybe a drinking problem, too. An aggravated assault charge was filed for a bar fight that turned vicious, before it was then quietly dropped. The family probably paid off the victim—that and maybe he was fearful of losing the other eye. Marcus ripped into the guy’s face with a broken beer bottle and left him blind on the left side. He reads like one crazy motherfucker.”
“Jesus, this guy and his family sound like Sleeping with the Enemy meets Sons of Anarchy.”
“I know. It’s a miracle your girl made it out in one piece.”
She nearly didn’t. “While we’re on the topic of crazy people, how is Janice?”
“I wouldn’t know, and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much. Besides I told you a few days later at lunch that I didn’t fuck her, I just let her into my apartment. Which was the worst, most terrible idea ever. Why didn’t you come down there and save me from her, bro?”
“Hey, I warned you to the best of my ability. I even let you know about the picture she sent me.”
His face fell at my mention of the picture. “That picture of her sucking cock? It wasn’t a picture of my cock. I don’t know what she sent you, but it wasn’t a picture of her and me. I did not let her anywhere near my dick even though she offered. Several times.” He grimaced. “I really wish you hadn’t deleted it so I could take a look.”
When we’d met for lunch a few weeks ago James had been adamant about no sex with Janice that night. I’d deleted the picture mere minutes after Janice sent it, so there was no way to verify whatever twisted plotting she was up to. “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t think it through in the heat of the moment. I just wanted to cut ties with her, and then warn you before I got rid of the evidence. Maybe it wasn’t you in the picture. Maybe I just assumed it was because I knew she was with you when she sent it to me. I didn’t analyze the fucking thing.”
“You know what they say about assuming things, Caleb?”
“Yeah. I made an ass out of you and me. Sorry about that. My heart was in the right place though—I thought of your dad and didn’t want it to blow up on you . . .” I let that ominous cloud of paternal doom descend for a moment before deflecting. “How wasted were you?”
His eyes narrowed at the mention of his father. The judge. James’s relationship with his dad was about as warm and cozy as mine was with my mother. “On my fucking ass, apparently, because I don’t remember much about the preliminary activities that led to her showing up at my place,” he said bitterly.
“I broke up with her after we came back from the American Cancer Society benefit and she went ballistic. By the time she left the penthouse, she’d given me the black eye and trashed my bathroom like something out of fucking Fatal Attraction.”
James dropped his head and shook it back and forth. “She told me about that, I remember now. She went to town on the bathroom, thinking of things to do to mess with your head. Like toothpaste on the walls, and towels in the toilet, and destroying a whole box of condoms. Which sucks, because the good ones are expensive.”
Destroyed condoms? “Janice didn’t mess with the condoms. I checked the cupboard where I keep them and the box hadn’t been touched.”
“Well, that’s good then . . .” He trailed off and tilted his head as if he was trying to remember. James had a really good memory, too, even while under the influence, so I tended to believe him when he said something important. And this was fucking important.
“James, what did Janice say?”
“She said she hated you, and that you would be sorry you ever fucked her over. Then she told me about trashing your bathroom and all the shit she did in there, and how much fun she had doing it. She said she wished she could see your face when you found out what she did to ruin your life.”
“She said that? Janice said she was ruining my life?” Something wasn’t right here with this story. “James, bro, you have to remember for me. A minute ago—why did you say she destroyed a box of condoms?”
James rubbed his head with the tips of his fingers. “Because—she said she did, Caleb. She told me about using a pin or a brooch from her dress and how she poked holes in them—”
Oh, my God. That is exactly the kind of psycho shit Janice would do, too. The bitch put them back in the box all neat and tidy so I wouldn’t suspect.
I jumped up from the chair in his office and grabbed the copies. “Bro, I’m glad I stopped in here today, but I gotta go. Thanks for the intel on Patten so far. Keep digging.” I nodded to the file on his desk and left him sitting there still rubbing his head looking disturbed.
As I waved good-bye to Mrs. Kennedy, I remembered the wisdom in keeping up to date with one’s friends.
You never know what important news they might have to share with you.
Jesus. Christ.
I had Isaac drive me straight from my meeting with James back to the penthouse. Ann had already cleaned the bedroom, and the trash was long gone down into the bowels of the building’s incinerator most likely, so I couldn’t check the condoms I’d used last night. I went for the box and emptied it out onto the counter. The packages were black so it wasn’t easily noticeable, but when held to the light, there were holes dead center in about three-quarters of them. Not ev
ery condom had been pierced, but a lot of them had.
I started opening condoms and filling them with water from the sink. Drip, drip, drip, right through the tips of the ones that had been poked. Janice, you fiendish cunt.
Well, fuck.
This was not good news.
I should probably tell Brooke, and I was fucking livid at my freak of an ex-girlfriend.
The more I thought about it, though, the more certain I was about not telling Brooke. It was a sordid tale of the twisted person I’d been with right before I met her, as well as the sleazy life I’d been living. I knew Brooke would be repulsed by all of it. But most of all, I was ashamed for Brooke to see me in such a horrible light. She always thanked me for being a gentleman, and I loved that she thought well of me. I was afraid to lose that earned respect in her eyes.
I rationalized the facts. I’d used five of the condoms from this box—four last night and one this morning. If I went with the seventy percent rule, three point five of them were damaged when I used them. But my selection had been totally random when they were spilled around the bathroom and later returned to the box, so it could have been more like two damaged condoms out of the five. Without the actual ones to inspect, I couldn’t be sure. What were the odds Brooke was even in the fertile time of her cycle? She might already be on birth control for all I knew. We hadn’t discussed it yet.
So, if there was some leakage, it still wasn’t like I’d come inside her bare. A few drops max. I hadn’t noticed any leaks when I removed them, but then I didn’t pay too close attention, either, because sex is always messy, and you just want to get the damn thing off your cock as quickly as possible.
I hate this.
But I loved Brooke.
And I wanted her to love me back.
Telling her about Janice, and what she’d done, would poison the beauty of last night. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Thank fuck the locks had been switched out. I didn’t need Janice showing up and confronting Brooke, and something told me she might try it when she returned from Hong Kong. This proved just how unstable Janice was, and I needed to figure out how best to deal with her. Because I wasn’t just going to let this one go. She’d crossed way over the line with this shit.