Page 50 of Love and Lies

“Well, it’s not to do her a favor, that’s for sure.” He sounded so bleak that I didn’t press any further.

“Well… society certainly seems delighted with you anyway,” I quipped, to lighten the mood. “Considering what went down between you and all those high-class princesses back in the old days, I’m surprised they let you back in.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I wonder about that myself sometimes.”

He looked so pleased with himself somehow that I had to laugh. “Is it true you crashed the chairman’s speech at a charity event for the restoration of some historical ferryboat by having sex with his daughter backstage?”

He was still grinning. “Might be. But I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

“What, sex?” I was being deliberately obtuse.

“Sex backstage when people are giving speeches,” he clarified nonchalantly. “I tend to go for other locations these days. More private ones.”

I let out a sigh. “So you got boring.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Oh, if only you knew,” he retorted. He sounded amused, but something else as well; there was an edge to his voice that made me feel a little too hot all of a sudden. “Sure, sex in public can make things interesting. But let’s be honest, it only gets really good when you can be uninterrupted.”

As he said it, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to kiss him. Touch him. To spend the night with him, get lost in him. My hostility toward Jessiah had vanished, replaced by this insistent hunger. My throat bobbed and I looked away, afraid he would be able to tell exactly what I was thinking.

It was Jessiah who spoke first. “I’ve never done it in a dark alley, at any rate. You’ve got one on me there.” He was looking at me intently, and the flame inside me fizzled out as my thoughts turned to Pratt again.

“That’s not what we were doing,” I protested. I felt the need to tell him that; I didn’t want him to think I was stupid enough to get involved with a dealer for no reason.

He looked skeptical. “Oh, so you weren’t flirting with him all night, and you didn’t disappear with him at the end of it?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Call me vanilla, but ‘with a knife to my throat’ is not exactly my favorite position.”

“So what was that all about, then, with him?”

“I…” I paused. Should I tell Jessiah about my plan? My first impulse was a resounding no. I couldn’t let anyone find out about my mission, certainly not anyone with the name Coldwell. And yet—I didn’t want to lie to him. Not after everything that had happened today. In the end I said vaguely, “I was trying to get some information out of him.”

“What kind of information?” he fired back.

I thought for a moment, then decided to bend the truth a little. “I heard a rumor that Pratt had been there in the suite with the others, before Valerie and Adam died. I saw him at the Glowfly, and I thought he might tell me something about it.”

Jessiah gasped. “Are you insane? Two people lost their lives and you just… brought that up to him? Guys like Pratt are dangerous, unpredictable—he could have seriously hurt you. Or worse.”

“He didn’t, though,” I replied. But all the same, I felt the full horror of the evening’s events. “I just wanted to know if there was anything she had said or done… anything I didn’t know about before.” A part of me wanted to tell him more, but I couldn’t let on that I was investigating the case, or that I now knew it was Carter Fields who had sent Pratt to the suite. I’d almost forgotten that I had actually achieved what I’d set out to do—and not only that, I knew Carter from the time before Valerie died. They’d known each other well, the pair of them, had partied in the same circles, and for a while there had even been more between them, but my sister had put a stop to all that a while back. In any case, Carter Fields and drugs was not a surprising development. But I would park that information for the moment. I didn’t want to think about Pratt anymore. “Don’t worry, though, I’m over it, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Only slightly,” Jessiah mumbled. “Promise me you’ll never pull that type of shit again.”

I looked at him. Suddenly I was struck by fear, and not just for myself. “Do you think those people you were talking about can really see to it that he never comes back?” Pratt’s I’ll kill you was still very present in my mind.

“For sure.” Jessiah nodded. “The contact I called is one-hundred-percent trustworthy, and he’s very good at persuading nasty guys to leave town.”

“Doing the Lord’s work there,” I murmured grimly. “One less dealer to spread their nasty wares around the place.”

Jessiah was silent for a moment. Then he took a deep breath. “Yeah. You’re right about that.” There was a sadness in those green eyes, whose gaze kept pulling me into their orbit. But after a while he broke out in a smile, and I knew he was about to change the subject. “You haven’t told me how you’re planning to avoid your parents’ attempts to set you up.”

I grinned, happy to move away from serious subjects. “No clue. I thought about pulling a real Jessiah Coldwell and hooking up with some random regular dude while my parents have some fancy guests around, but that would only get their backs up. I’ll probably have to bring someone they approve of, to get them off my case—but then I might as well just go for one of the guys they picked out. You see? It’s a vicious circle.”

“What would happen if you took someone they considered totally unsuitable?” Jessiah asked, his eyes twinkling again. I didn’t know if he was talking about himself, but right away the visions were back, along with that heat coursing through my body again.

“They’d kick me out, probably.”

He looked amazed. “You still live at home?”

“Not by choice,” I sighed. “It’s part of the deal if I want to be in New York again. I have to live with my parents and abide by all their rules.”