Club Prive Book 2 (Volume 2) (2 page)

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“I just want to see you again.”

He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he was obsessive. I knew it should have freaked me out, but it didn’t. There was something about his persistence that was flattering and sweet rather than creepy. I’d never had anyone pursue me even a fraction as passionately. He may have lied about the details of who he was, but I’d connected with him more deeply than on the surface. The parts of him that were intense and attentive, those were genuine. He was strong and had a fierceness to him, but I hadn’t detected a hint of violence in him. I didn’t need to be scared of him. I knew that. What I didn’t know was if I could ever trust him.

As I was deleting the last of his messages, a delivery man walked down the aisle next to my desk, a bouquet of red roses in his arms. It didn’t really surprise me when he stopped in front of me.

“Carrie Summers?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said with a sigh.

“Here.” He handed me the flowers, gave me a smile, and walked away.

I didn’t have to look at the card to know who they were from, but I did anyway.

“I’m so sorry – G.”

I threw the flowers into the trash and pushed thoughts of Gavin out of my mind. I had work to do.

There was one little problem with my plan to use work as a distraction. The only case I was supposed to be working on at the moment was the Howard Weiss divorce. I hadn’t considered how much Gavin was going to show up in my research.

Mimi had assigned me to find out as much as possible about Howard’s personal habits, before and after his marriage, as well as since his separation. The best place to start for anything that could be considered dirt was in the very place that did the mud-slinging: gossip magazines and tabloids. While the latter were notorious for making up stories, occasionally they did stumble across a little bit of truth. Besides, if Howard’s wife’s attorney was any good at his or her job at all, these rumors were going to be ammunition.

I went back nearly twenty-five years, to when Princeton graduate Howard Weiss had taken the business world by storm. He’d been one of the city’s most eligible bachelors by age twenty-two and, from the looks of things, had made the most of it. Nearly every picture I found had at least one woman on his arm, usually some new up-and-coming actress or model. Going through Howard’s dating history was like looking at a list of the country’s future stars. Most of them were names that were still big now. Cassandra Maltese had won a Golden Globe last year for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt, and Neesa Kole was considered one of the hottest lingerie models over thirty. I’d seen Tony Award-winning Iris Sanderson on Broadway two months ago when Mimi had given me one of her extra tickets.

As of fifteen years ago, the pictures shifted to Howard with one woman: heiress Meredith Decker-Weiss. Her family had invested in Howard’s companies at the beginning, helping him go from handsome, wealthy businessman to richer than they were. He and she had dated for just eight months before getting married in a huge, lavish wedding. For the first year, everything had seemed perfect. I found hundreds of articles and photographs where they were together, arms around each other, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes. I sincerely hoped that this was going to continue. We could deal with a reformed ladies’ man.

Then, other pictures started to creep in. According to what I read, Meredith had begun to spend more time doing charity work and less time pandering to the cameras with Howard. They both claimed that she preferred privacy, and he had no problem being the public face of the companies he ran. In the years that followed, pictures of Howard generally included pretty, petite blonds hanging on his every word.

I sighed. Once a dog... I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I couldn’t judge my client. Even if he had been cheating on his wife with every one of these women, the only way it was relevant was in regard to how it affected the case – who could prove what. Pictures at public events where the most intimate contact was his hand resting on a hip didn’t mean infidelity. Or so I told myself as I turned my attention back to the photographs.

At first, the women were dressed a little too... “party girl” for his formal events, but starting about six years ago, there was a subtle change. The women he was with in the newer photos looked more sophisticated and less like co-eds. Their hair, while probably still not natural blond for the majority of them, didn’t have the brassy, fried look of a cheap dye job. They too wore make-up, but less of it. Gone were the blood-red lips, changed out for something a little more subtle. Their dresses were still fitted and revealing, but looked more like something from the red carpet than from a frat party.

I wasn’t sure if that meant Howard had gone from girls he could flirt with while they went with him to events to women who could hold a decent conversation, or just that he’d finally realized that he’d started looking like someone having a mid-life crisis.

I was still pondering the reason for the change when a familiar face caught my eye. My heart skipped a beat as I saw Gavin standing off to the side at a charity ball. He was dressed in a tux and looking good enough to eat. I swallowed hard, then glanced at the date. Over a year ago. I didn’t know how long Gavin had worked for Howard, but this suggested at least fourteen or fifteen months.

I kept looking through the pictures, but instead of paying attention to the three or four repeating female faces that showed up next to Howard, I found myself scanning the background, looking for that handsome profile. The next time I spotted him, he was right next to Howard in the center of the photograph. I read the caption, hoping for some insight as to what Gavin did for his boss, but there was nothing there. Not just no information about Gavin’s relationship to Howard, but nothing about Gavin at all. It was like he didn’t exist.

Finally, I gave into my curiosity and typed Gavin’s name into a search engine. A few things popped up, but nothing that connected to the Gavin that I knew. Not a single social networking page, or photo tags. Now I was intrigued. I began combing through everything I could find even remotely related to Howard Weiss, searching for anything that could offer me more information about Gavin.

Even as I read, looking for his name, images of him began to dance behind my eyes. They weren’t of the photographs I’d found him in, but rather snapshots of my own memories.

The hungry expression on his face when he’d seen my bare breasts for the first time.

His eyes nearly glowing as he peered up at me from between my legs, his mouth fixed...

I pressed my thighs together as that memory brought a rush of heat. It didn’t matter how angry I was at him, my body responded to the memory of his. His lips moving over my flesh. His stiff, throbbing manhood sliding inside me. Our bodies dancing together.

“Dammit,” I muttered. This was making it very hard to concentrate, and worse, I was starting to soften towards him. Maybe forgiving him was the right thing to do. I just couldn’t be sure if it was my head, heart, or other things further south, talking.

Chapter 3

It hadn’t been easy, but I’d finally managed to focus on work by telling myself that the only thing I was allowed to look at were the dates on the articles and the names of the women with Howard. I hadn’t read the prenup, but it was standard practice for infidelity to void it. We needed to know which of these women, if any, would be able to confirm that they had been involved in a sexual relationship with Howard Weiss prior to the separation. I seriously doubted every one of these relationships had been platonic.

I hadn’t realized that it was time for lunch until Krissy came over and interrupted me.

“You’re looking busy.” She grinned down at me. “Trying to keep someone off of your mind?”

I glanced down at the trashcan and her eyes followed, widening as she saw the bouquet I’d thrown away. “Those came after I didn’t answer his six calls or dozen texts.”

“Wow.” Krissy looked impressed rather than creeped out.

“Yeah.” I sighed. I didn’t know what to do. I’d been set on being pissed at Gavin for a couple days, then moving on. I hadn’t expected him to try to win me back.

“Let’s go to lunch,” Krissy said. The sympathetic note in her voice told me that she could sense my inner turmoil. The two of us couldn’t be more different, but there was a connection that sometimes made it seem like we were twins. We could sense how the other was feeling and, like now, what the other was thinking.

I nodded. My stomach growled as Krissy and I headed to the elevator. She chatted as we rode down, keeping the conversation light and away from Gavin. The one-sided conversation about her cousin’s lengthy email containing a play-by-play of her trying to seduce a college professor continued until we arrived at the café a block away from our building. I ordered my usual chicken salad with a side of Italian dressing and Krissy decided on a panini. Neither of us spoke while we waited for our order, the air around us filled with the buzzing of the other patrons.

After we received our food, we found a small booth in the back where we could talk freely without being overheard. Attorney-client privilege wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Better safe than sorry.

“What did the messages say?” Krissy asked after she’d taken a few bites of her sandwich.

“What?” I asked. The last I remembered about her story was that her cousin had just discovered that the professor was gay.

“Gavin’s messages. The voicemails I know you listened to and the texts you read,” she clarified. She didn’t bother trying hide her curiosity.

I frowned at her. Apparently we were going to talk about something private, whether I wanted to or not. I stabbed at my salad with more vengeance than necessary.

“Come on, Carrie. What did they say?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” I asked. When she just looked at me with that steady, unwavering gaze, I sighed. No, she wasn’t going to let me get away without answering. “Fine. He apologized and asked me to forgive him.”

“What else?” she prompted.

I narrowed my eyes. How did she know he’d written anything else? “He said he missed me.” I could feel my cheeks getting hot.

Krissy grinned. “I thought so. A man doesn’t call that many times, send text messages and an expensive bouquet of flowers just to apologize to someone he doesn’t want to see again.”

“Are you forgetting what a bastard he was?” I asked, scowling at my lettuce like it had done something to offend me.

“No.” She shook her head. “But I believe he was telling the truth about why he did it.”

“What are you talking about?” I was starting to regret having shared with her the entire conversation Gavin and I’d had.

“He said that he wanted you, and I don’t think he was just talking about sex,” Krissy said matter-of-factly. “I think Gavin’s falling for you. I mean like serious head-over-heels, ass-backwards, falling for you.”

I shook my head. “That’s crazy. We’ve only known each other for two weeks. Less, actually.” I pushed my salad away, half-eaten. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Krissy leaned towards me, the expression on her face serious. “I’ve known, dated, and slept with a lot of guys, and trust me when I say: if all he’d wanted was sex, he never would’ve called the first time after.”

That made sense, but I wasn’t sure I could trust it. After all, look what he’d done. How did I know there wasn’t some ulterior motive? Maybe he was one of those men who wanted what they couldn’t have. If I’d been fawning all over him when he called, maybe he would’ve gotten sick of me and just ignored me.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

“Listen, he pulled a dick move, but I don’t doubt for a minute that his feelings for you are real.” Krissy touched the back of my hand and I lifted my eyes from my half-eaten food. “And unless I’m wrong, you feel the same way.”

I swallowed hard, wondering what she could read in my eyes.

“If you don’t at least try to make this work, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

She was right. I knew it and she knew it. I just couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge it. She pulled her hand back and returned to her sandwich, as if sensing that the conversation was over. After a few minutes, I started on my salad again. I wasn’t hungry, but I hated to waste food. Besides, I hadn’t eaten breakfast and I needed something in my stomach. Eventually, she started a new discussion, this one about the finale of one of our favorite shows, and that carried us through the check and back outside into the sunny spring afternoon.

We were halfway back to our office when a cab pulled up to the curb and, just a few yards in front of us, Gavin emerged from the back.

For a full thirty seconds, I couldn’t speak. He took two steps, then saw me. His eyes widened and his mouth opened like he was going to say something. The idea of having to listen to him apologize when he had the nerve to show up in front of my work was too much, and a flare of anger went through me. I was still in control, but I was mad.

“What the hell?” I crossed to him in just a couple angry strides. His eyebrows shot up as I crowded his personal space. “I’m pissed at you for stalking me and you figure the best way to apologize is to keep doing it?”

He put up his hands, palms out in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not stalking you. Honest. I have a meeting in that office building behind you.” He pointed. “I told you about it last week. Remember?”

Shit. I did remember. We’d made plans to have lunch together because I hadn’t wanted to commit to a dinner.

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

I cringed at how harsh the words sounded. I needed to leave before I embarrassed myself anymore. I started to step around him when he spoke again. But this time, he wasn’t talking to me.

“Krissy,” he said. “I’m truly sorry for what Jeff did. I had no idea he’d told you all of those lies about himself. All I asked him to do was talk to you, be nice, and buy you some drinks. I wanted him to invite the two of you to the club opening so I could see Carrie again. I swear, I never would have asked him to do any of that if I’d known he’d take it that far.”