Duplicity (9 page)

“Good,” she said, resting against him again.

He didn’t speak but nuzzled the side of her head with his nose,
his fingers resuming their questing circles up her thigh.

Chapter 11

“
Okay, okay.
Your turn, Lilith.”

If it weren’t for Mal, Lilith would have glared daggers at Erin.
She knew damn well Lilith was trying to sink into the background. She was
tempted to break her own rules about having to make sure the birthday boy had a
great day no matter what her personal cost. After all, Mal had been an asshole
on her birthday; he wouldn’t be able to blame her if she sniped at his
girlfriend on his.

But then, Dana hadn’t done anything to her, and it was her
birthday, too.

Lilith climbed to her knees on the booth, lifting her glass of
Pepsi aloft. “Well, um. Let’s see.
To Malcolm and Dana for
making it through twenty-one years.
Here’s to being able to burn those
crap fake IDs we got ages ago.”

Everyone cheered, tossing back their shots. Lilith sipped her soda,
watching everyone else laugh and joke. She shrank back out of the way as one of
Mal’s
friends from school leaned over her to shout
something over the din of the bar.

“I’ll,
um .
 . . I’ll get
you guys another drink.
On me.”
She had to smack Mal
on the shoulder to get his and Dana’s attention. When they turned her way, she
forced a smile.
“Drinks.
Alcoholic
beverages.
Legal
boozeage
.
What do you want, kids?”

By the time she got an intelligible answer out of them, her
patience was wearing about as thin as a communion wafer. It was all she could
do to keep from breaking out into a sprint, eager to get away from the crowd of
rowdy friends.

It was tiring being around Mal and Dana’s friends. Her thoughts
tended to wander. Not many people could hold her attention. Rather than try to
concentrate on their silliness or whatever they were prattling about, her
thoughts retreated back into whatever books she was reading or show she was
watching. She didn’t think she was missing much. People talked about nonsense
more often than not. The struggle was in managing people’s expectations. They
expected her to be part of the conversation. They expected answers when they
asked questions.

Retaining what they’d said
,
being all the
way present was exhausting.

Lilith leaned against the bar, waiting her turn. She looked back
to the table where everyone else was gathered. Already, the others had spread
out, engulfing the space she’d occupied as if she hadn’t been there at all. It
was nice in a lot of ways. Not so long ago, she was Mal and Dana’s one friend.
That they had expanded to a small cluster of peers was good. Good for them.

They all looked happy, relaxed. Lilith wondered if she was a snob.
She wasn’t so easily amused or entertained by anecdotes. Maybe that’s why she
disliked gatherings so much. She just
felt .
 . .
other.

Lilith frowned at herself. What a melodramatic thing to think. It
was more likely she didn’t have anything in common with these kids. Their stories
were all about school or work. What was she going to do—tell them about the
whole debacle with Frank? Wouldn’t that be a roof
raiser.

That thought, like every other in her head that evening, faded
away. She’d spaced out, thinking about the myriad shows that had just gone on
spring hiatus.
So many twists—some of them more shocking than
others.
Some of them had her on tenterhooks while—

“Hey!”

Lilith snapped her head up. The bartender was staring at her with
a tired but bemused expression. “Can I get
ya
something,
hon
, or are you just holding up the bar?”

“
Er
 .
 . .” Lilith flushed when she realized she
couldn’t recall what Mal and Dana wanted.

She had just about decided to wing it when a broad figure stepped
up to her, leaning with his back against the bar. “I think she looks like a Mai
Tai kind of gal.”

Lilith was startled. The size of him gave her a brief heart
attack. On first glance she thought for sure he was Frank, come to give her
even more trouble. Wouldn’t that have been just her luck? But the smooth,
friendly lilt to his voice and the familiar way he leaned with his back against
the bar caught her attention before she could bolt.

Almost as soon as she relaxed, thinking she’d caught a break, she
realized that was not, in fact, the case. While she was ecstatic the man
looking at her now was not Frank, she was dismayed to find herself looking into
very familiar eyes.
Trey’s eyes.

The man in front of her was Trey’s brother, Will.

“Tell me if I’m right.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. Of course
he was flirting with her.
Of course.
“It’s on me
either way.”

“Um.”
This was an awkward situation, and one of them knew why. It was very obvious
Will didn’t recognize her. Of course he wouldn’t. She wasn’t dressed as a
little school girl, for one thing, and for another, that had been a good five
months ago.

Five months.
Where had the time gone?

But
there was no time for that musing. Will
was looking
at her expectantly. Lilith felt more on edge by the second. Years of practice
kept her unease from her face. She matched Will’s charming smile. “You’re
welcome to buy me a Pepsi. I’m afraid I’ve pulled DD duty. See, my friends over
there—” she pointed to the booth where Mal and Dana were the center of
attention “—just turned twenty-one, and I’m afraid they expect to be paid
attention to.”

Will made a mock scandalized face. “Some people are just rude,” he
said, shaking his head. “Well, if that doesn’t deserve a Pepsi, I don’t know
what does.” He turned to the bartender.
“One Pepsi on my tab,
please.”

“And two Mai
Tais
.
I’ll pay for them straight
up.”

They chit-chatted for a few
minutes while they waited.
When her drinks came,
Lilith gave Will an apologetic smile. “Thanks for the Pepsi.”

He winked at her. “Remember me next time.” He was an easygoing
guy, but then, Lilith had known that.
As she walked
back to the table, it occurred to Lilith she knew a lot about Will.

His full name was William Stephen Bauer—a fact he loved to rub in
his younger brother’s face. His father had been dead set against naming a child
after himself and his father before him only to amend that viewpoint two years
later when Trey was born. Like his brother, he too had graduated early from
high school. He was working toward his doctorate in physics.
They might have been trust fund babies, but the Bauer
brothers had no intention of frittering bits and pieces of their fortune away
doing nothing.

“I wouldn’t put it past Will to build his own lab if he can’t find
one that will listen to him,” Trey had told her once. The pride written all
over his face had been unmistakable.

Back at the table, Lilith’s mind began to wander again, but not so
far. She looked at each of her friends’ friends, listing what she knew about
them in her head. At most, she knew their first and last name and where they’d
met Dana or Mal.

Yet she knew so much about Will, who didn’t know her from Eve. If
she’d found herself in a longer conversation with him, she would have had any
number of things to chat about. Her familiarity with Will stemmed from the
startling amount of personal information she knew about Trey.

She looked across the bar to where Will had rejoined his own
friends. If she thought hard enough, she could probably guess at who they were
based on the stories Trey had told her.
What did it
mean that she knew Trey so well his brother was familiar to her even though
they’d exchanged ten minutes worth of words? The only people she knew with any
kind of depth were Dana and Mal; it had been that way for almost a decade now.

But what did knowledge mean at the end of the day? There was no
reason she should feel so disconcerted at Trey’s life brushing hers outside his
bedroom.

As much as Lilith tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous,
she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was changing, and she wasn’t at
all sure she liked it.

~0~

The warmth in Trey’s apartment was near perfect. That was a sign
of how rich he was: When he set his heating unit to 70 degrees, every room in
the place was that temperature and not a point higher.

The cozy air could be trouble. Sometimes, Lilith got a little too
comfortable. Sometimes, in the aftermath of whatever activity they’d been up
to, the warmth seeped down to her bones and drowsiness got the better of her.

She was thrust back into consciousness when her pillow growled at
her.
It took her a few bleary seconds to realize she was
not, in fact, resting on a pillow. She had her ear pressed against Trey’s
stomach. Judging by the noises it was making, he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Chuckling, Lilith got upright. She yawned and looked around,
trying to figure out where her shirt had gone. Lilith tried not to wake Trey as
she peeled through the rumpled blankets, but she failed. He gave a disgruntled
grunt, coming awake slower than she had.

“What’s happening?” he mumbled when he was coherent enough to
speak.

“I’m leaving, and you need to feed whatever beast you swallowed.
He’s snarling up a storm.”

Trey looked adorably confused until his stomach chimed in.
With gusto.
“Oh.” He smirked as he stretched. “I don’t want
you to leave yet.”

Lilith sat on the edge of his bed, but before she could respond to
that, her stomach gave a growl of its own. “We’ve been here for hours already.
You need to get something to eat.”

“So do you.” He yawned. “We can take a shower and go get
something.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

His eyes were more alert when he looked up again, proffering her
shirt from where it had been hiding under his pillow. “I’m not worried about
you. I’d just like to have lunch with you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, lunch isn’t on my list of services.”

For a second, he looked tired, wary, but he swallowed hard and
tilted his head at her, giving her a teasingly condescending smile. “Lilith,
I’m not asking you to lunch as a client. I’m asking you to lunch as a friend.”

Lilith wasn’t hungry at all then. Her stomach was too busy doing
little flip-flops to remember it was empty. “That’s not a good idea.”

He groaned and flopped back down on the bed, staring at the
ceiling. “Would it be the end of the world to have lunch with a friend? Why is
that not a good idea? It’s lunch, and I’m pretty sure people have lunch
together all the time. Some of them don’t even like each other. They just do it
for the company.”

“You haven’t thought this through at all. I know you saw what I
was wearing when I walked in here.”

Of course he’d seen what she was wearing. When she went to these
private appointments, she didn’t always dress in any kind of costume, but she
didn’t dress down either. She’d
taken
full advantage
of the wide range of skimpy skirts, corsets, too-tight shirts, and everything
else from the club. Smith kept their closets well stocked.

Trey sat up again, draping his arms over his knees as he looked at
her. “We can remedy that. We’ll just drop by your place. You can change. We can
eat. Easy.”

The idea made Lilith’s throat tight. “No.”

“You’re making a bigger deal of this than it needs to be,” he said
with a sigh. “This is not a big deal. Friends can—”

“We are not friends.” The minute the words were out of her mouth,
she regretted them, but she couldn’t take it back. It needed to be said.

Trey looked down at the blankets, and Lilith felt awful. She’d
seen the hurt that flitted across his features before his face was hidden from
her.

“Why aren’t we friends?” There was a challenge to the words though
Trey’s tone was still light. “I already told you—”

“I’ve heard everything you’ve said.” Trey was too convincing when
he wanted to be, and she needed to keep a clear head about this. “You are
stupid smart, Trey. I know you have to understand what’s going on here.”

At that, he looked up again, and there was a touch of hardness to
his eyes Lilith had never seen before. “Maybe you should tell me what you’re
talking about.” His words were measured, his voice lower than usual.

Getting to her feet, Lilith began to pace, wringing her hands
because why was this not obvious to him? Why was he making her spell out what
he should have already known? It wasn’t atypical for her clients to spin little
stories in their heads as to what was going on between them, but when all was
said and done, they returned to reality. “You pay me to enjoy your company.”

To her surprise, he didn’t react at all but kept looking right at
her. “You’re telling me you don’t enjoy my company at all? I don’t believe
that.”