High-heeled Wonder (A Killer Style Novel) (Entangled Ignite) (5 page)

Yes, boundaries she understood. All too well. To-do lists, checklists, and memorized lists of appropriate behaviors. Once Henry and Anton had welcomed her home to a pink, girly room with her name stenciled in lemon yellow on one wall, she’d sworn never to disappoint them. Never to let them wonder if they’d made the right decision in adopting her and Anya. For the most part, she’d accomplished that, but the insidious fear of making them shake their heads at their grievous error never completely left her.

Unable to regain their earlier natural ease, and confused as to why it even mattered so much, Sylvie gathered her dishes and deposited them on the counter.

In silence, he rinsed her plate, his jaw as rigid as concrete. The red sauce circled the drain before disappearing as if it had never been there. In two minutes, all evidence of their cozy dinner had been washed away, leaving them uncomfortably alone together in the brightly lit kitchen.

Her chest ached with the finality of his dismissal and his total lack of understanding of her. Like so many others, he couldn’t see beyond her name to discover the person she really was. She’d been stupid to think he’d be different.

“We’re all broken, Tony,” she said stiffly. “Some of us on the outside. Some of us in the deep, dark places inside where no one can ever reach.”
Where no one even tries
. She pushed past the tightness in her throat threatening to strangle her words before she could finish. “No one is whole. Not even the supposedly
charmed
ones. Not in this fucking world.”

Turning, she fled the kitchen.

“Sylvie.” His tortured voice stopped her in the doorway. “I’m sorry.”

Something in his voice hinted at more than just his apology, but she couldn’t stop to question it. She had to get out of there before he saw the wet evidence of how much his misjudgment had hurt.

Chapter Six

“Bravery never goes out of fashion.”

—William Makepeace Thackeray

The Darling House sat across the street from
Chantal
’s glass-and-steel high-rise on the ever-bustling Louis Street. As always at noon, the Chinese restaurant was packed with the fashion media’s minions picking up takeout for their well-heeled bosses, as well as editors and stylists hungry for a bit of gossip.

Sylvie scanned the dimly lit dining room, searching for Ivy Rhodes’s splash of red hair highlighted by the glow of her ubiquitous laptop. Ivy never missed her lo mein lunch.

“This is supposed to be an accidental meet, remember?” Tony’s words tickled her earlobe. “You’re just here for a quick lunch with your new boyfriend.”

Awareness trickled across her skin. He stood so close she couldn’t help but inhale his freshly scrubbed scent. The image of his taut muscles covered in soapsuds, his dark chest hair peeking through the white bubbles, made her mouth go dry. Clenching her jaw, she shoved the mental picture out of her head. He could not have made his intentions—or lack of them—any clearer last night. God, how many times did she have to make an idiot of herself before she stopped chasing men who didn’t want her? Wasn’t her misery box full enough after Daniel?

The hostess picked that moment to pop over, but her hot-pink plaid uniform failed to elicit Sylvie’s usual grin.

“Two for lunch?” the hostess asked.

Tony slipped his hand around Sylvie’s. “Yep. Can we have a table in the back?”

“Sure. Follow me.”

On automatic pilot, Sylvie navigated through the charged environment as the hostess led them through the crowded restaurant. She picked up snippets of stage-whispered snide remarks as they passed women in thousand-dollar shoes scarfing down ten-dollar plates of dumplings.

“Looks like Henry and Anton’s little girl found herself a rebound fuck…”

Sylvie shook her hair back and kept her eyes straight ahead.

“Caught Daniel blowing a waiter. How she didn’t know I’ll never understand…”

She jerked her chin higher.

“That one works fast. Should have expected it from her kind. Total riffraff…”

Tony stopped so abruptly she collided with his strong back. He sent a smoldering gaze down at the bleach-blond size zero pushing iceberg lettuce around on her plate. The testosterone level ratcheted up to a bazillion and the blond practically melted in her seat.

“Hey there.” Tony’s low voice took on a seductive tone that would force a nun to reconsider vocations.

“Hi.” The blond fluttered her eyelashes.

He leaned in closer. “Maybe if you’d been a little faster,
you
could have gotten me.”

Pleasure pinkened her cheeks.

“But I doubt it.” He tweaked her snub nose. “I don’t much like
your
kind. As in, a total bitch.”

The blond’s eyes rounded at the echo of her own insult.

Tony pulled Sylvie forward in the hostess’s wake before the other woman could even think to respond.

Strutting with a little extra bounce in her step, Sylvie struggled to remember that this was all a farce. Tony had stuck up for her as any good pretend boyfriend would. Still, she couldn’t turn off the happy bubbling up inside her.

“Thank you.” She smiled as she slid into the curved booth.

He scooted in beside her, his thigh pressed against hers. “Anytime.”

Heat sizzled up her leg, finding a home in the juncture of her thighs. Her brain had a firm grasp on the whole pretend boyfriend thing, but damn, her body had other ideas. Such as sliding her fingers up his muscular thigh until she connected with the hard bulge she’d glimpsed last night.

“So, can I get you something to drink?”

Latching onto the hostess’s question like a lifeline to Sanityville, Sylvie glanced over the menu. “I’ll take a ginger ale.”

“Just a water for me.”

“Great. Your waitress will be right out with those.”

The hostess spun on her four-inch heels, revealing the unmistakable redheaded occupant of the booth across from them. Ivy Rhodes.

“There she is,” Sylvie whispered.

“That’s why I asked for a table back here. I spotted her as soon as we walked in.” Tony angled toward Sylvie in the booth, bringing his lips millimeters from her ear. “So, that’s the former blogging partner who wouldn’t think twice about stabbing you in the back?”

To anyone watching, they were just a couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other. If only that were true.

“That’s the one.” She ignored the catch in her voice and prayed like hell he would, too.

Toying with her hair, he snuggled in closer. “Enough to do it literally?”

And that little reminder of mortality dumped the ice she needed to freeze the lust hardening her nipples. “I don’t think so.”

They were here for a purpose—to
accidentally
run into Ivy and pump her for information. Ivy was one of the handful of people who knew Sylvie was the woman behind the High-Heeled Wonder. If anyone would love to spill the beans, it would be Ivy.

“Why don’t you scoot a little closer, Sylvie honey?” Tony’s voice carried across the aisle.

Ivy raised her gaze from her laptop screen. She smirked, rose, and sauntered over.

“Aren’t you two just way too cute for words.” The redhead stood next to the table, one hip cocked.

Just as her name suggested, Ivy’s thin legs went up forever. She’d mostly stayed behind the cameras after checking herself into rehab a few years ago, but she still carried herself with the overwhelming sense of predatory confidence that had made her a star on the couture runways.

Without waiting for an invitation, Ivy sat down next to Tony. The deep green booth acted as the perfect foil for her red hair and porcelain skin. In the past six months, Sylvie and Ivy hadn’t spoken more than five words—a fact that burned a dime-sized hole in her gut every time she thought about it.

The two of them, along with Drea, had started Killer Style Blogging. Drea had covered all things cosmetic with her Make Me Up blog. Ivy took full advantage of her deep contacts within the modeling and fashion photography world to dig up the best gossip for Catwalk Strut. High-Heeled Wonder completed the blog trifecta with its focus on the latest designs and trends. All three of the blogs did well, but High-Heeled Wonder had become the breakout star, with more than half a million hits a day. About six months ago, Ivy left the group in a jealous huff.

Ivy flipped her hair over one shoulder. “You’re lucky Pippa and Anders are seated in the private VIP dining room. From what I hear, both would love to flay you, cook you, and pretend to eat you.” She turned the full force of her blue eyes on Tony. “You must be the stand-in.”

Sylvie slid her fingers between Tony’s. “Trying to dig up gossip for your blog?”

Arching a perfectly waxed eyebrow, Ivy grinned. “You forget I know you, Sylvie Bissette. Your type runs more…soft? Skinny? Beta? Gay?”

Sylvie’s last thread of patience, strung tighter and tighter since she’d walked into The Darling House, snapped and she grabbed Tony’s face in her hands. Without stopping to consider the consequences, she slid her lips over his. His surprisingly soft lips parted beneath hers and his strong fingers curled around her waist. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth and nibbled.

At the first taste of strong coffee and peppermint she forgot why she’d started kissing him in the first place. All that mattered was the magnet-worthy attraction pulling them together and blocking out the rest of the world. Everything that had been building between them since the night of her sister’s wedding exploded in a tsunami of sexual hunger that left her wet and wanting.

Tony’s hands never left her waist, but his touch managed to weave its way across her body on an electric current that turned everything hard into something soft, hot, and demanding. What she wouldn’t give to be locked in his arms anywhere else.

The
clank
of glass on the polished wood table acted as an unwelcome reminder that she wasn’t somewhere else. She was sitting in The Darling House, in full view of the biggest fashion gossip of them all, and acting like a giant horndog. Aching for more, she forced herself to relinquish what in those precious seconds had become her most sought-after fantasy.

Condensation dripped down her glass, cooling her hand as she grasped it and drank with the gusto of a Viking at a feast.

“Damn, I need a cigarette.” Ivy fanned herself and winked.

Tony rammed his fingers through his thick, dark hair and mumbled something incoherent as he squirmed in his seat.

Eyeballing the woman who used to be one of her closest friends, Sylvie took stock of the situation. The plan had been to covertly interrogate Ivy for information, but judging by the skeptical gleam in the woman’s eyes, a direct approach would probably be a better option. It was a risk, but so was almost everything in Sylvie’s life right now.

“Someone knows I’m the High-Heeled Wonder.”

Ivy’s gaze locked on the paper straw wrapper she was twisting between her fingertips. “That was bound to happen.” Breaking under the pressure, the wrapper tore in half. The white paper floated down to the table.

“You’re one of the few people who knows the truth,” Tony said.

She shrugged. “There are others.”

Sylvie did some quick mental accounting. Her family knew. So did Drea. A few random folks, like her CPA, were clued in, but that was it. None of them had any reason to rat her out. Other than Ivy.

“Yes, but no one else would have—”

“Betrayed you?” Ivy uttered a flat laugh, empty of pretense and joy. “Yeah, that does sound like me. We junkies, we’re known for being lousy friends with fast lips and slow minds. We don’t deserve any of the goodies in life.”

Some little ember of their friendship sparked at the resignation and bitterness in Ivy’s voice. Just as Tony had stuck up for Sylvie as they walked The Darling House’s gauntlet, she’d spent years defending Ivy to the snide bunch of bitches who would never let Ivy forget her fall from fashion’s pinnacle.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that. You’ve been clean for years.”

Ivy flipped a red plastic circle onto the table with a snort. “Ninety days.”

The air whooshed out of Sylvie’s lungs. Pippa Worthington could have ambled over on her four-inch heels and sat her bony butt down in Sylvie’s lap and she wouldn’t have noticed.

Sure, addicts backslid. It happened all the time, but Ivy had been so determined not to, Sylvie had never considered it a possibility. Dates and times flashed in her mind. Missed phone calls. Unreturned text messages. Late nights out with new friends—and some very old ones. Tired blue eyes that begged for what her mouth would never ask for. And Sylvie had been too busy to put it all together. Everything had been so crazy six months ago with High-Heeled Wonder hitting it big that she’d missed all the signs.
Some friend
.

“God. I should have noticed. I should—”

Another roll of Ivy’s proud shoulders. “I’m well versed at hiding things. Remember that accident I told you about involving my mom?”

Sylvie nodded, recalling how shaken Ivy had been a year ago after her mom accidentally hit a two-year-old while backing out of her driveway.

“Well, what I didn’t tell you was that before the accident, my mom had been sucking down martinis per usual. I figured I was just going to end up like her anyway, so I might as well have a little fun doing it. That’s how I ended up coming out of retirement to walk in Anders Bloom’s last show high as a kite and looking like some kind of slutted-up Miss Piggy. When I finally realized what I was doing, I couldn’t face myself in the mirror, let alone you and Drea. That left all of my old friends, like Anders, who always had plenty of cocaine.”

“I’m sorry.” Reaching across the table, Sylvie curled her fingers around Ivy’s ice-cold hands. “We should have helped you.”

“That’s the thing. I had to help myself.” Ivy straightened her shoulders. “But you’re right about one thing. I did sell you out.”

Chapter Seven

“Fashion goes ’round in circles.”

—Siobhan Fahey

“Out of everyone Ivy said she told, I’d put Anders Bloom at the top of the list.” With a sigh, Sylvie turned the key in her apartment door until it clicked. “However much he hates my guts right now, I really don’t see him being nuts enough to try to run me over. Figuratively, yes, but not literally.”

The door swung inward. She took three steps into her apartment, Tony on her heels, then her internal warning bells clanged.

Anya had a cast-iron stomach, but Sylvie, at the barest hint of trouble, went sprinting for the antacids. The ice dancing down her spine told her they’d bypassed subtle signs of chaos and gone straight into all-caps screaming about it.

“Something’s wrong,” she murmured.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. Without a word, he pushed her behind him into the hallway.

Contorting her body so she could see around his solid frame, she peeked inside the apartment. Everything looked right. The ever-present leaning tower of magazines stood proudly on the side table. Her desk, as usual, looked as though a paper tornado had touched down. Even the mountain of shoes by her front door remained intact.

And yet, she couldn’t shake the little itch of…
something
…curdling her stomach’s contents.

Tony leaned in close to whisper, “Stay here. I’m gonna take a look around.”

“It’s probably nothing.” Her belly flipped in disagreement.

“You trusted your instincts at the restaurant with Ivy. It was the right call.” His fingers squeezed hers. “Always listen to your gut.”

With a catlike stealth unexpected in a man his size, he slipped inside and disappeared around the corner.

Pressed up against the smooth wall, Sylvie traced an imaginary triangle with her worried gaze—from the end of the hallway with the fake potted plant to the other end of the hallway with a window overlooking the street to the open door directly in front of her. Then around again. And again. As the lion in her belly resumed gnawing on her stomach lining. For her part, she tried to ignore the dampness at the back of her neck by chewing her bottom lip until a metallic tang burst onto her tongue.

Pull it together, girly. It’s probably nothing
.

Yay for logic. Except the attempt to pep herself up did nothing for the dark little part of her brain that had never quite let go of her early life’s constant upheaval. Surrendering to base survival instincts, she dug her phone out of her ostrich-skin tote and punched in 911. Her thumb hovered over the call button, ready to summon help.

She was humming the second verse of
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
when Tony’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. Even with the obnoxious rent she paid, her apartment was the size of a shoebox, so his sweep hadn’t taken long.

“It seems pretty much the same as it did before we left, but you’d better take a look to be sure.”

She followed him in, skirting around the foyer table heavy with unopened mail. Quiet as models on the runway, they went from the living room to the kitchen, circled back to the bathroom, and finished their trek in her bedroom with its unmade bed and rumpled purple leopard-print pajamas on the floor.

Nothing seemed out of place. And yet—

Her laptop
.

An icy rush slid down her body from her forehead to her kitten heels, leaving a shivering panic in its wake. She sprinted to the kitchen. The table sat empty, its wood surface gleaming.

Fuck
.

The green walls mocked her with their satin-finished cheer. Afraid her Jell-O thighs were about to dissolve, she sank down onto the hard chair. Her head hit the tabletop with a
thunk
.

She gave a strangled moan. “My laptop. It’s gone.”

Tony leaned against the doorframe, his hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets. “They left the big-screen, the jewelry, the artwork, but took your laptop?”

“As far as I can tell.”

It didn’t make sense—not if this was a normal break-in. She had a Harry Winston diamond pendant necklace in a glass case on her dresser. Antique typewriters that went for several hundred dollars a pop dotted the apartment. Two fur coats, gifts upon her graduation from high school and college, hung in her walk-in closet. The burglars had left all of that, but had taken the three-year-old laptop with a scratch across the cover.

“What’s on the laptop?”

Yeah. Not a normal break-in.

Bitterness ate away at the back of her throat. “All my notes. Scanned documents. Passwords for my blog. Basically my entire life.”

“Everything Bloom needs to expose you to the world. Or for Pippa to smoke out your mole at
Chantal
.”

“Bingo.”

Her gaze narrowed on the bulldog mug sitting next to the coffee machine. She’d never backed down from a fight when she’d lived on the other side of the harbor, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to start now that she’d managed to make something of her life.

The rat bastards were about to learn that they’d fucked with the wrong girl.

“Do you have a backup?” Tony asked.

A tiny green light blinked across the room. The white, square, wireless hard drive sat on the highest of her kitchen bookshelves, tucked in among the cookbooks and more fashion magazines.

“Yeah, but it’s not synced. I haven’t backed up in a week. I meant to but…it hasn’t been a top priority.”

Instead, she’d been feeling sorry for herself, reliving every excruciating moment of humiliation at Anya’s wedding, worrying about her stalker succeeding next time he tried to run her over, and agonizing, horny and frustrated, over Tony’s steadfast refusal to take their attraction further than a steadfast “Not gonna happen.”

“Well, we better call it in.” Tony pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and swiped a finger across the screen.

“The police?”

“Yeah.”

“What will they be able to do?”

“We’ll find out when they get here.”

The answer to her question, Sylvie discovered several hours later, was diddly squat.

“You know, Miss Bissette, some people might interpret these events as you walking into the path of traffic, then having the bad luck to own one of the thousands of apartments burglarized in Harbor City each year. These things could be totally unrelated to your hate mail.” The doughy cop in a too-tight uniform held up his fleshy hand. “I’m not saying I’m that person but…”

“So there’s nothing you can do?” Sylvie already knew the answer but had to ask the question anyway.

He shrugged his shoulders and flipped his notebook closed. It shut with a smacking sound that boomed loud and as final as a judge’s gavel at a ruling. He stared at her front door before glancing across the room to the window that opened onto the fire escape. His jaw squared.

“Look, I’m passing this up the chain, but I’ll be honest with you. No one got killed. No one’s bloody. And even with who your dads are, you’re not high profile enough to make this B and E move up the ladder. This case is going to land at the bottom of someone’s inbox and probably never see the light of day again.” The officer nodded toward her door. “Those locks look tough, but they didn’t work. And that window there is practically an open invitation. That you made it this long without a break-in is a miracle.”

Leaving Tony standing by the couch, she walked the officer to the door with heavy steps. This outcome wasn’t unexpected, but still, a little official law enforcement help would have been nice.

The officer paused halfway out the door and turned. “Beef up your security and we’ll both sleep easier tonight.”

Goose bumps popped to attention on her arms at his pronouncement.
Great
. She had a better chance of becoming fluent in Chinese in one easy lesson than getting any shut-eye tonight.

“She won’t be sleeping here,” Tony said. “She’s coming with me.”

Sylvie whipped around. “This is my home.”

He arched an eyebrow at her, looking unimpressed. “Exactly my point.”

“Well then, I leave it to you two to work out.” The officer ambled down the hall, bypassing the stairs for the elevator.

Giving herself a few moments to gather her mental armor, Sylvie shut the door and methodically flipped the dead bolts. The idea of offering her stalker even one victory by running scared made her twitch. If growing up in foster care had taught her anything, it was that even a single sign of weakness was one too many. By the time she turned eight she’d known better than to let her real feelings show, let alone vulnerability. Not surprisingly, her Tums addiction had been well established by the time Henry and Anton adopted her at twelve.

She turned and kept her back pressed against the wood door. The smart move was obvious: Find new digs until she and Tony got to the bottom of this mess. The simplicity of it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Giving in twisted her insides like a clown with a balloon. If Anya were here, she’d be rolling her eyes at Sylvie’s stubborn attitude. Anton would be apoplectic. Her ex, Daniel, would be ranting.

Whatever.

She glanced at Tony. Tension tightened the line of his shoulders. The snap of popping knuckles broke the silence as he fidgeted with his hands. But in his heavily fringed eyes, she saw only understanding.

God. She must be easier to read than a Dr. Seuss book.

Or…did he just get her?