Okay, well, that solved a huge mystery, Cera thought to herself.
Why her?
Apparently because she looked like this man’s wife.
His brother’s wife
. Shame curdled her entire stomach as she listened to Max chuckle at something Cole was saying on the other side of the line.
“No, I haven’t done a background check yet. But Gus is there with you, right? Okay, when he gets out of the bathroom, ask him if he made sure to get Pru 2: Miami Boogaloo checked out before he started banging her.”
Cera didn’t stick around long enough to hear the answer to that question. Face burning, she ran blindly for the elevator. Not knowing where she was going, just knowing she had to escape. She frantically punched the call button on the elevator. Luckily it was still there from her trip up. The doors slid open and she flung herself inside. Desperate to get away from the shark still laughing behind her.
“Sorry, Little Bro, you’re too late. Looks like I scared her away.”
That was the last thing she heard before the doors slid closed on Gus’s fishbowl of an apartment.
15
“I’ve got Cole on the phone, asking if you made sure to run a background check on this new girlfriend of yours,” Cole said with a laugh when Gus came out of the bathroom.
“What?” Gus asked, stopping in the middle of the hallway.
This had to be a joke. Except he’d never known Cole Benton to joke.
Also, Max had excused himself from this meeting with a Belgian corporation hoping to co-fund a possible Sorley in Bruges.
Both Gus and Cole had assumed he’d bowed out because Max was pretty much allergic to any activity that could be filed under boring. One of the many good reasons why he and Gus worked so well together. Max was a whiz at choosing the right investments, and Gus was really good at paying attention during business proceedings.
However, as Cole regarded him with a slightly bemused look, Gus began to see he might have miscalculated Max’s reasons for skipping this day of meetings. Miscalculated as in, Max knew Gus would be in New Orleans while the girl he’d refused to bring with him when he visited Max and Pru for the Fourth of July would still be in Miami.
“Give me the damn phone!” Gus growled at Cole.
A few of the Belgian businessmen, who’d been milling around outside the Sorley’s conference room during what was supposed to be a quick ten minute break, looked up.
Usually Gus never let others see him sweat. Especially where business was concerned. He hadn’t climbed nearly all the way up the Benton corporate ladder before the age of thirty-one by letting his emotions get the best of him.
But this was different. This was Max overstepping his bounds, and possibly ruining what he’d managed to build with Cera over the last eight weeks.
And though he respected the hell out of Max’s paternal half-brother, Cole, that didn’t stop Gus from snatching the phone right out of his hand in front of their potential investing partners.
“Put her on,” he demanded.
Yes, there was a chance she’d recognize his voice, but he had to talk to her, give her some kind of explanation—
“Sorry, Little Bro, you’re too late,” Max said on the other side of the line. “Looks like I scared her away…”
Fuck!
He could just imagine Cera running out of the apartment, scared and confused.
“What did you say to her?”
“Only the truth,” Max answered with a bemused chuckle. “I was so shocked you were hiding my wife’s doppelgänger here in Miami that I had to call Cole and apologize for doing the same thing to him. Though, at least Pru didn’t have the exact same hairstyle as Sunny when I started banging her. Seriously, Little Bro, this is all sorts of creepy.”
“No, it’s not,” Gus answered, gripping the phone hard and wishing it was his brother’s neck. “She’s from New Orleans. Just like me. I knew her when I was living in the Lower Ninth Ward. Years before I ever met Pru.”
“Oh,” Max answered, his voice suddenly much smaller than it had been a few seconds ago as Gus’s words sank in.
“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Gus confirmed. “If anything, I went after Pru because she looked like
her
.”
A long, digesting silence. Then: “I gotta ask, does she know that? Because the way she ran out of here, I’m pretty sure she didn’t. In fact she told me there was a lot she didn’t know about you, which frankly was hard for me to believe, knowing your usual M.O.”
True, Max and he had partied a few times with Pru in New Orleans. And both Max and his wife liked to tease him about his quick pick-up formula. What Pru called “dropping the NCCD Bomb.” Basically dropping his name, then grenade flashing a prospect with Cash, Charm, and Dimples, until she agreed to come home with him.
But…
“She’s not like that, Max,” Gus said, rubbing his temple.
Understatement of the year. All the usual things he did to impress girls, the sports cars, the best hotel rooms wherever he went, the name dropping and the endless self-promoting that came with being associated with a major hotel brand—that would have turned Cera off.
“Are you ready to get off the phone and come back in to this meeting?” Cole asked, holding out his hand for the phone Gus still had a death grip on.
Fuck, he still had to finish the meeting. But all he wanted to do was talk to Cera and try to make her understand.
Yeah, he wished this could be solved with his usual M.O. A piece of jewelry and a trip to a five-star restaurant. Because he’d get her the sparkliest necklace and take her to the best eatery in Miami. Hell, he’d rent out the whole damn place if that’s what she wanted.
And then what?
The voice of reason sneered at him.
Ask her to put on another blindfold?
“Listen, Little Bro, I’m sorry,” Max was saying on the other side of the line now. “I let my curiosity get the best of me, and I’ve obviously fucked this up for you. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll fix it.”
Gus just hung up on him.
“Is everything okay?” Cole asked him.
No. No, it wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t okay.
16
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
The message woke her up early Monday morning, just a few hours after she’d finally fallen asleep on the grad student lounge couch.
Gus had been texting her variations of “we need to talk” and “give me a chance to explain” since Saturday, but the texting had come to an abrupt stop on Sunday night. She’d hoped that meant he’d given up and had set the phone to vibrate just in case he hadn’t.
Big mistake. The phone loudly vibrating against the lounge’s coffee table not only woke her out of a tortured sleep, but the buzz that accompanied his latest message made it seem angrier than any of the ones that had come before.
Squinting in the dim morning light, she picked up the phone with a plan to set it on “Do Not Disturb,” but then a new message came through.
“Seriously, you need to answer me. Hank says you’re not at your apartment, and he hasn’t been able to find you. Let me know something or I’m going to start calling hospitals.”
God, how pitiful was this situation? She’d spent the last five years knowing she could die in a ditch without anyone realizing she was gone for weeks on end. And the first person to say he’d actually call the hospital to look for her was the guy who’d kept her blindfolded in his apartment all summer. Even worse, her heart had given a sad little lurch at the prospect of him even caring that much.
Wow, could I be anymore messed up?
she wondered as she typed back with trembling thumbs:
“I know I still owe you for the last week of July. And I’ll figure out how to serve out that week eventually. I promise. But not now. My mind is just not in a place to finish this now.”
Angry pause. Then:
“Where are you? Are you safe?”
Again with that weird pang. Why did he have to do that? Make her feel like he actually cared?
“
I’m fine,”
she typed back with more cheer than she actually felt.
“Totally safe. No worries.”
Which was true. While her back wouldn’t be sending her any thank you cards after a second night on the hard, second-hand couch, the grad student lounge in the School of Education building was definitely safe. And almost private. Most of her fellow grad students had either moved on to jobs or internships for the summer. The lounge had remained mostly empty all weekend, and only a few students teaching summer classes would be coming in for coffee that morning.
“I’m sorry about what happened with Max. But believe me, I didn’t make this arrangement because you look like his wife. He was wrong about that. Wrong to let you believe that. I picked you for YOU. Because I want you. Only you.”
God, she wanted to believe him. So bad. But that was part of the problem wasn’t it?
“Please don’t do this to me. I understand you want me. But I want things you can’t give me, and I have to figure out how to not want those things before I serve out my last week. I know I owe you for all the money you gave me, so I’ll do it. Just please give me some time to wrap my head around all of this.”
His answer came back immediately:
“I don’t give a fuck about the money. I want you back in my bed. For the rest of July and August
,
too.”
She shook her head at the phone, wanting what he wanted. But not nearly in the same way.
“I can’t come back yet. I’m sorry.”
A long pause. Then:
“I hate manipulating you. But it always seems to come down to that with us.”
She looked at the words, confused and a little scared. What did he think he could possibly use to sway her to come back before she was ready, when she wouldn’t even take a cool two million dollars from him?
“Your sister’s going on stage at 6pm tonight. It’s a sold out performance and there are no non-stop flights from Miami to Santa Fe today. So even if you left now
,
you wouldn’t get there on time.”
Her heart stopped beating.
And another bubble of text appeared on her phone’s screen.
“I have a private jet gassed up and ready to go. There’s a Front Orchestra ticket waiting for you at the venue, the best seat in the house. And I’ve reserved a hotel room for us nearby. One night. It’s all yours for one more night.”
Her heart constricted, because he was right. She’d been determined to stand her ground and get herself out of this situation with him. But just the thought of being there for her sister. Of supporting her from the front row…
She sighed. Hating him. Hating herself more.
And wasn’t it strange how circles worked? Because three months after the first text conversation, she found herself once again typing a very small:
“Okay.”
THE HOTEL ROOM AT THE BENTON SANTA FE WAS BEAUTIFUL. Not at all what she expected after the bare fishbowl penthouse in Miami.
No, this room was a very cozy affair, with warm adobe walls instead of glass ones, handmade carpets instead of marble floors, and plenty of distressed leather furniture to fill up it’s outer room.
Cera’s tight heart eased a little as she beheld the room. That is until she saw the red dress lying on top of the bed at the far end of the suite. The one she’d last worn for her “dinner date” with Gus, along with a pair of strappy black heels.
She found a note, lying on top of it, written in strong cursive:
Have fun tonight. –Gus”
This guy…
Cera snatched up the dress and took it in with her to the shower. She couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take her to get over him, when this messed up arrangement was finally done.
GUS HADN’T BEEN KIDDING about the quality of the seat he’d bought for her. A young college student ushered her to a seat in the very front row. So close, she could see all of the high school students in the orchestra pit, their intent gazes switching from their music stands to their young conductor in training as they played the opera’s opening number. So close, she had to resist the urge to jump up and wave at Dana when she entered stage left in a pretty white gown, wearing a wig of tumbling brown curls and carrying her therapy dog under one arm.
Cera wiped tears from her eyes as she watched her sister sing, while stroking Maria Callas’s curly brown fur. Who would have thought the little sullen four-year-old with a severe speech delay would end up like this? Singing her heart out—and in Italian, no less!—while holding the entire audience (and one mixed-breed miniature poodle) in the palm of her hand.
But when her sister left the stage, literally carried off by Hades’ underworld minions, the hairs on the back of Cera’s neck stood up.
Someone was watching her. The awareness creeped over her skin as the chorus sang of poor Persephone’s demise.
She looked around, twisting left and right in her seat. Knowing, without having to be told, that Gus was here. Somewhere in this audience. Watching her watch the opera.
And he was somewhere close by and in eye range. The Santa Fe Opera resembled an amphitheater, with none of the usual opera appointments, like box seats. But it was still a dark space and no matter how much she strained, she couldn’t clearly see any of the faces in the dimly lit audience.
After that, her heart stayed on a yo-yo. Rolling up with happiness every time Dana came on stage and spoke or sang in Italian, and then sinking with dread every time she left.
The sensation of being watched never let up. Not until after the very last song, when nearly everyone came out of their seats to give the young students a standing ovation.
He’d left. She already knew. He was probably headed toward the parking lot, destined to escape before she could get to him. But no matter. As soon as the house lights came on, she whipped around, scanning the audience.
And then when she couldn’t find him, she felt compelled to pull out her phone and text: “
You were here.”
Slight pause, then:
“Yes.”
“But you ran away before I could see you.”