OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (25 page)

Gus looked at her, his gut drum-taut, and considered the chance she offered, the trust she offered—the hot want of her low in his groin.

She didn’t know him, what he was capable of. Any way he looked at it, taking Keeley to bed now would be making love on a bed of nails.

Like Barton said, a sleep-and-run.

He could do that. Hell, it was a major part of his MO. What he didn’t know was whether or not he could walk away. If he’d want to.

Christiana lay on her back, unmoving, on the king-sized bed, her naked body damp, slowly cooling from the fire of morning lovemaking.

The hotel room, lit only by the lamp on Duke’s side of the bed, was shadowed. A square table bearing scrap-laden plates, smudged coffee cups, and empty wine glasses, sat under the heavily draped windows.

The floor was a scatter of discarded clothes.

When she heard Duke turn on the shower, she sat up and plumped the pillows behind her head. When thoughts of Keeley’s early-morning call intruded, she pushed them aside. Those thoughts were too hard and cold to process in the afterglow of lovemaking.

She touched her tender, sensitized vulva, ran her finger along its engorged, sex-slicked folds, and closed her eyes. Always a good lover, last night and this morning Duke had been extraordinary, taking her to a sexual peak she’d never experienced before. She could still hear his murmur in her ear.

“You like this, baby, don’t you?” His fingers sliding deep inside her, opening her. His teeth tugging her earlobe. “You want more? You open up for me. Wide. Wider.” His breath a hot wind against her throat. “Yes, that’s it, spread ‘em, baby. I’m going to fuck you good.”

She adored/despised it when he spoke to her that way, but it excited her. Sex excited her.

She loved Duke, and the ache of it wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times she told herself he was wrong for her.

He had entanglements, yes, but he’d had them from the beginning. He hadn’t tried to hide them, hadn’t lied to her about his wife. It was unfair of her to pressure or nag him about a situation she’d readily accepted at the beginning of their affair.

She loved him, and like the stone face of a steep mountain, that love endured.

Jesus! Listen to yourself, Christiana, rationalizing, excusing, prattling on about love and some damn mountain. Give me a break! This isn’t about enduring
love
.
It’s about hot sex. He’ll never leave his wife and you know it.

You’re settling for second place in his life, and for second best in your own. At the very least be honest with yourself.

Cold now, she leaned to pick up her silk gown from beside the bed. One strap was torn, a casualty of sexual impatience. She slipped the sheer knee-length garment over her head and glanced at her empty wine glass on the bedside table, wishing it were full.

With the sweat and distraction of sex worn off, she could use some alcohol courage. She owed Duke the truth about her birth circumstances.

Keeley hadn’t told her much, other than she had a sister and brother in a “rather unsavory business.” When she’d pressed for Keeley’s definition of
unsavory
, it turned out it fit with her own—and didn’t fit at all with her career plans. Keeley said the rest of what she’d learned was best left for when she could hear it firsthand; she’d asked her to come to Mayday House as soon as she could.

Christiana caught herself viewing the nightmare that had become her life as if from a distance. As a spectator without a ticket. Not a nightmare, she decided, more like a farce, a ludicrous, uncontrollable, ruinous farce.

But, like it or not, aside from his being her lover, Duke was her manager, and no matter how messy and upsetting the situation was, he didn’t deserve to be blindsided, didn’t deserve to read about her new family, murdered father, and no-name mother in the checkout stand at his local supermarket. He needed to be prepared. He couldn’t fix it, of course, but she knew he’d try.

“How about some coffee?” Duke stood in the open door of the bathroom, naked, toweling his hair. When he started toward the bedside phone, his every step accented the soft sway of his penis. He saw where her attention was and stopped beside her, smiling. “You keep looking at me like that, and we won’t see coffee until the end of next month.”

She smiled back, even though it felt like someone was loosening her jaws with a wrench, and said, “Order the coffee, Duke. I’ll take a shower.” When she was out of bed, she faced him. “I have something I need to talk to you about. I meant to earlier but—”

He touched his genitals. “Something came up?”

She couldn’t find a second smile, but she managed a nod. “Yes, it certainly did. Spectacularly so.”

He grinned and picked up the phone; she headed for the shower.

By the time she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in the hotel’s terry robe, last night’s dishes were gone, and the table was set with coffee and croissants. She took a seat, sipped a coffee, and attempted a bite of the warm, buttery pastry, but her throat felt as though it were lined with crinkled tin foil. She set down the roll and daubed her mouth with the napkin.

Duke, who’d donned jeans and a dark blue shirt, didn’t seem to notice, attacking breakfast with a man’s easy hunger.

“Duke,” she opened. “There’s something you should know.” She took a breath. “You’re not going to like it.”

He raised his eyes to hers, his expression relaxed, and took another bite of his roll. “What I don’t like is the interview we have scheduled today. This Harper character is one cynical hard-ass. You’re going to have to be careful. Your best bet is to say as little as possible. Don’t let him get you on that ‘cult of self-help, useless do-gooder’ track he goes on about. How ‘all you people live in glass houses.’” He put down his coffee. “What you have to do is rise above that, stand out from the crowd. What you need to do is—”

She held up a hand, palm out, then stood. “I think you should listen to me, Duke. Because we could be in serious trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

Now or never, Christiana.
“I’ve recently discovered I was adopted.”

“What?” The roll he had in his hand stopped on its way to his mouth, and his eyes turned quizzical. “Go on.”

“The adoption was, uh, unrecorded, and—”

“You mean illegal.”

She nodded.

“Okay,” he said the word slowly, frowning as he did so. Christiana got the sense he was already working on the press release. “Not a problem we can’t handle. This kind of thing happens all the time. Anything else?” He asked brusquely, sounding like a chairperson about to close a business meeting. Not a word of understanding or concern about what impact this finding had on her. Hurtful enough, but what bothered her more was she hadn’t expected it. She’d started this conversation nervous and confused, but now she was irritated. She rubbed at the knot in her throat and stared down at him. “Let me see … ’Anything else?’” She tapped her chin. “How about this? The woman who delivered me killed my birth father.”

“Jesus!”

“It gets worse.” Some twisted part of her was starting to enjoy this. “Much worse.”

His gaze snapped to hers. “Go on.”

Christiana realized that for the first time in months she had his full attention. Outside of bed. Most of the time it was Duke doing the talking, the telling, the controlling. Organizing what she did, how she did it. Right now he looked as if he couldn’t organize room service. He stood, then started to pace.

“I have some new relatives. Described as being ‘rather unsavory.’” Repeating Keeley’s words, she couldn’t stop the smile, the mad chuckle burbling upward in her throat. She tried to stifle it. She was crazy. Her life was going down the tubes, and she was greasing the skid with mirth.

Duke stared down at her as if she were mad. “Relatives. What relatives? And what do you mean by unsavory?”

“You might have trouble putting a spin on this, Duke. It seems they’re”—she choked up again, and this time her eyes started to water—“they’re … pornographers.” Barely getting the last word out, she clutched her stomach and doubled over, not to be sick but to stop herself from giving in to a full and inane laughter breakdown.

She failed.

Choking, air-sucking, throat-closing, eye-streaming hilarity cramped her belly and shut down her brain—like a swath of bright light, a clean ocean tide.

Sweeping in and sweeping out. Taking all the debris.

The debris …

She struggled for a lung-filling inhalation, but instead logic drizzled the stickiness of commonsense onto her laughter-infused brain and provided a searing moment of calm—of absolute truth. She had indeed been crazy. Life was absurd, she thought, sending clarity along during an attack of belly-clenching giggles.

Her face wet from the wash of tears, her skin hot, her stomach muscles tight and aching, she straightened her back, her mind clear for the first time since Mary Weaver’s midnight call.

An aghast Duke said, “Get hold of yourself, Christiana. For God’s sake. I can’t believe you find having a family of pornographers is funny.”

She drew in some air and with it some calm. “It may not be funny, but it’s
my truth
,
Duke, and something I have to deal with.” That and finding the secret behind her father’s death, who her real mother was.

He twisted his lips, the way he did when he was thinking hard. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, warming to a new spin. “There’s got to be a way to turn this to our advantage. Hell, the public loves a good underdog.” He looked away from her, walked a few steps. “That’s it. That’s the tack to take. Make a great first show. We’ll do a big reveal thing. The beautiful, smart, and ultra-successful Christiana Fordham, broadsided by life, taking on the task of redeeming her sick family, turning their lives around. Maybe do a kind of reality thing.” She could see his mind calculating, weighting the pros and cons.

Chilled, and feeling as though she’d been tipped and emptied, she said, “There is no
‘tack’
to take, Duke. I am not doing the show.”

“You’re not—” He stopped. “What are you saying?”

“I’m not doing the show,” she repeated, her voice cool enough to surprise even her.

She looked around the luxurious hotel room, her gaze sliding over the rumpled linens on the unmade bed, the fallen clothes, finally lifting to look into Duke’s eyes, the eyes of a handsome, insensitive, deceitful man. She swallowed, her tight throat aching as it dragged hard air into constricted lungs and the cramped emptiness in her stomach. So incredibly banal, this scene. A scene she’d starred in, playing the selfish, conscienceless woman screwing another woman’s husband.

There was only one thing to do. “And I’m not
doing you
anymore, either. I want you out of my life, Duke, both personal and business—and I want you to get out right now.”

“Morning,” Bridget said, coming into the kitchen wearing a short cotton sleep shirt and the ugliest lime-colored mules Gus had ever seen.

“Morning.” He turned back to his coffee and to beating himself up over last night’s episode with Keeley. Damn, he was a fool …

Yawning, Bridget put some bread in the toaster and pulled out a battered tray from a cupboard above the new dishwasher. She made the noise of a dozen kitchen flunkies working a mess hall.

“You got a plan for that?” He nodded at the tray and dragged his mind back to Mayday business and away from a bedroom where he didn’t belong.

“It’s for Erica. She’s getting dressed, but she says she’s not feeling well.”

I’ll bet.
Ransacking a house in the middle of the night, when you’re a hundred months pregnant, takes it out of a woman. He didn’t like Erica, but they had unfinished business, and he had said he’d help her—even if it was to further his own ends. No better time to start than right now, because her getting dressed signaled the possibility she’d split, maybe do something stupid like lead that Mace character back to Mayday. Not going to happen.

He got up from the table and went to the counter. “I’ll take it.” He gestured at the tray.

“Oh, no. Thanks, I’m—”

“You’re what?” He watched her tighten her hold on the tray, gripping it as if it were a lifeline.

“I want to help her out. A couple of days ago, she, uh, said something about maybe giving me a job. Acting in some movie she’s making.” Her blush told Gus she knew exactly what kind of movie. “I could use the money, and Erica said I was pretty enough.” She said the last defensively, as if she didn’t believe herself and feared being called a liar.

He scanned her sad, delicate face, too young to have pain lines for love and loss.
Jesus, women had it tough sometimes.
“You’re beautiful.” He stroked her cheek lightly. “Much too beautiful to work for Erica Stark. If I were you, I’d hold off on that job offer. Aim higher. I’m sure we can come up with something.”

She blushed. “You think so? That I’m pretty, I mean.”

“Yes, I think so.” He lifted her chin, smiled down at her. “But I still want to take Erica her tray. I need to talk to her.”

“Okay.” She hesitated, then nodded. “Tell her I’ll come get it when she’s done.”

“Will do.”

Two minutes later he rapped on Erica’s door and walked in. She was already dressed, on her cell phone, and agitated.

“Is he all right?” she said into the phone, her eyes going wide at the sight of Gus. “You’re sure?” She looked at Gus again, this time with a hint of nervousness.

“Yes, I’m getting closer … No, uh, no one’s onto me.” Again her gaze shot to Gus; then her tone sharpened. “Of course, I won’t do anything stupid … Now let me talk to my brother, so I can—” She clicked off, threw the phone on the bed, cursed, and glared at Gus. “What the hell do you want?”

She was angry enough for him to assume her telephone call would have taken a different turn if he hadn’t shown up.

“Settle down.” He set the tray on the bedside table. “Aren’t pregnant women supposed to stay calm?”

“As if a guy like you would know what the hell a pregnant woman needs.” She snorted. “I repeat, what do you want? I’ve got business.”

“I want you to tell me exactly where your brother is and everything you know about Mace.”