Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
VIVIAN
“Oh, shit!” I jump, grabbing my chest like I didn’t expect to see him. “What are you doing here?”
David scans the room. “Ditto, sugar pie. You weren’t at The Mercier.”
The bed is made. The evidence gone. The only thing I hope he can’t detect is the amber scent of Jace still lingering in the air. But I do.
It steels my spine.
“I was at The Mercier.” I use the truth to hide my deception. “Earlier with Zar Rollins, scouting the spa. But I came back here for my wide-angle zoom. It wasn’t in my bag. I don’t usually shoot clients with it.”
This idiot knows enough about photography, anything that’s focused on him, to understand.
He licks his lips. “You going back to the hotel?”
As if.
“Yeah, I told you; Zar gave me a room while I’m shooting the spa.”
Don’t drop the ball. Keep playing the game.
“Does my wife want some company?”
“Not anymore and no.”
“Oh, come on. Kinda miss you, and you know you miss me.”
Don’t gag.
“I prefer being alone.”
“No, you don’t.” He jeers at my rejection. “You like a gang.”
The heat in my veins is instant. Not from lust. From rage. Funny how the body knows who to trust and who to hate; you just have to listen to it.
“What do you want? Why aren’t you at some bar, hanging with your boys or hoes? Right? That’s what you call them? Since you like posing with all your prep school cred?”
“You went to the same prep school, rich girl.”
“Yeah, and I confront my culture. I don’t appropriate someone else’s because I lack respect and imagination.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re so woke, Vivian.”
“Better than being dead inside.”
None of that was wrong, and everything I’ve told him before, embarrassed by how he changed over the years.
It’s like once we graduated from college and David had to grow up, he didn’t know how to be a man, so he started posing like other men. The toughest men he could emulate because he’s so weak.
But right now, it works like a charm. He doesn’t want to spend a night with me, holding up a mirror to him.
“Yeah, well. You got a day to shoot that spa, and then my wife is coming home with me.”
I almost laugh. “You know I can’t shoot that space in a day. I worked my ass off to earn The Mercier as my client, and I won’t fail them and do a shitty job.”
“Not my problem.” He jostles his bird balls. “Shoot for a day, then tell your bestie, Zar Rollins, how you’re going home with me and’ll be back in two weeks to finish.”
The sudden ringing in my ears is deafening. I almost can’t speak through its screeching tone. “What? What do you mean home with you for two weeks? I live ten blocks from The Mercier.”
His pale face twists, exasperated and annoyed. I echo the feeling.
“I mean my home. With Daddy and Mumsie in Palm Beach.”
I balk. “What the fuck for? David, we’re divorced.”
He steps my way, trying to get in my face, but I shove him away.
“But they don’t know that,” he snaps. “No one but your bitch-ass lawyer friend knows we’re legally divorced.
To everyone else, you’ll always be my perfect wife, the prim and proper daughter of the esteemed August and Aurora Tate.
So you will fucking go with me to my sister’s wedding.
They have a bunch of bullshit pre-parties planned where you’ll smile like you’ve been trained, so they leave me the fuck alone.
Or…” His eyes glaze with lechery. “Everyone will see how August Tate’s daughter was really trained. ”
I ignite with rage but fight it.
He can’t know.
I’m almost free.
“We are NOT sleeping together.”
“Why not?” He gets this odd look: delusion laced with adoration. “You know you still love me. We’re soulmates.”
“I’d rather fucking die,” I sneer. “I’ll post that video on the screens of Times Square before I ever let you touch me again.
I’ll go. I’ll smile. I’ll stay in my locked bedroom, and you’ll party with your boys and get drunk and pass out somewhere else every night.
Daddy and Mumsie would expect nothing more from you. ”
I let him search my soul with his stoned eyes.
Every bribe has a breaking point, and this is mine.
Even if I weren’t in love with Jace. Even if my body didn’t still sing from his touch. Even if my heart didn’t feel completely melded to his. Even without Jace…
This is my pride, and I’ll die with it.
“Besides, you’ll be with your cousins, right?” Like a toddler, David’s easily redirected. I regain control. “DJ, Brayton, and Eric? They’ll all want their Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell nights away from their nagging wives, and you won’t want to miss out by coming home to yours.”
Something flashes across his eyes.
Holy shit, that’s it!
I can sense the connection. David’s cousins: a sleazy trio of rich men hiding their wicked ways behind red ties and golden crosses. They’re hiding the servers. They’re aiding and abetting his sex crime.
I relax my face, ignoring my fury, making myself look compliant and playing the game.
“I’ll give you two weeks,” I concede. “And—”
“Ms. Tate?” A deep voice from the hallway demands our attention.
David whips around to Jace, wielding a barbecue chicken wing in the doorway.
He points it at David. “Ma’am, he’s leaving, I’m eating, and we’re closing. Do you need anything?”
In one beastly bite, Jace sticks the meat in his mouth and sucks the bones clean.
I have to hide my laugh and the shiver down my spine.
Jace is a kind man until he’s primed to kill. Then the warmth in his eyes vanishes, and what’s left is a detached look. No emotion, just an empty, deadly stare.
I once saw Jace rightly suspect that two customers, a couple, were actually a drug dealer and an underage girl, who the man was trafficking.
I’ve never seen Jace like that. It wasn’t him.
He was a lethal machine, cracking the man’s head open on the stairwell banister before he held him passed out, bleeding, and choked until the police arrived.
“Uh, no, Mr. Ryan,” I answer the Jace who’s always sweet to me. “Thanks, but I just came here for some gear. I’m ready to leave.”
David hisses, “And she’s leaving with me.”
The dumbass has a death wish.
“Not protocol.” Jace is stone, and mindfucking David by aiming his ravaged chicken wing at him, then at the stairs. “Out.”
David seethes, “But she’s my wife.”
Oh fuck.
Jace barely cocks a brow. “And this is my work, and I don’t compromise staff safety. So I’ll extend you the courtesy of an immediate exit before I escort my colleague to her destination of choice, or I’ll show you how much I can lift when I bounce your ass down the street.”
David puffs his chest, posturing as if he can take Jace on.
And Jace smirks. “David, right?”
“Yeah.” He juts his chin. “What about it, man?”
Jace takes one step his way, towering over him. “David, I know in the Bible you beat Goliath, so you’d best call on Jesus now if you think you can beat me.”
David wavers, pouting. “Whatever, man.” Before he turns to me. “Tomorrow. Two weeks with my wife.”
Then he brushes past Jace, who mocks. “I like your cousin’s wings.”
There’s mad, and then there’s volcanic.
Jace went from cold and deadly with David to threatening to erupt in fire for me all over the sidewalk outside The Mercier Hotel.
“Two weeks with him, Viv?” He fumes. “No fucking way. Let me kill him now and end this.”
“You know that won’t work. If my hunch is right, David’s using his cousins, and they’ll release that video if you kill him.”
He seethes, “I’ll kill them too.”
“That’s a lot of bloodshed.”
“There’s never enough bloodshed when it comes to protecting you.”
The hour is late. The sultry city sleeps. The streets are quiet, but Jace is coming through loud and clear.
Deep down, he is Bratva. He does have murder in his DNA. Yes, he has a moral compass, but it’s clearly pointing at anyone who’s threatening me.
“I’ll call you,” I assure him. “You can follow my phone. I’ll wear tracker jewelry; that’s a thing, right? I’ll do whatever you think is best for my safety, but you know I have to go. I have to distract him and his cousins to buy us time.”
Jace clenches his fists, choking down his protective instincts.
I know he wants to hold me, to hide me like a damsel in a tower he guards. But that’s a fairy tale, and this is a real threat.
Eyes are on us right now.
“I’ll shadow you there.” He growls. “Me and Grant. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Okay.” I stay calm for both of us. “I trust you. Just trust me too. His parents are so bougie, I’ll suffer all day at uptight tea parties and droll wine tastings.
Oh, and I’m sure I’ll be asked to ‘take a few photos, dear.’ I won’t have a second away from their events before I hide in my bedroom every night. I’ll be fine.”
I’m not worried about myself; I’ll be safe in a snooty world.
I’m worried about Jace because, with his kiss, we became magnets—fused—and this is trying to rip us apart. We’re finally together, and now we have to stand, worlds apart, hiding it again.
“Viv, I swear. If he lays a hand on you, you will tell me, and I will kill him.”
“I promise I’ll tell you everything, and while I’m there, your team can search his cousins’ homes and find those servers. And—”
“Evenin’.” A Texas drawl slides through the night. It’s Zar, innocently interrupting us. “You rang?”
I startle. “No, I—”
“I did,” Jace informs me. “While you were upstairs with the sleazeball, I heard everything. I texted Zar to cover our tracks.”
Jace heard everything?
I don’t mind except for the one slur from David, that one cringing reveal.
Please tell me he didn’t hear it. I’ll be mortified if Jace knows.
Yes, we’re a lot alike. Jace has told me intimate secrets. He shared erotic reveals. I’m not angered by them, I’m aroused.
But it’s not the same for a woman.
One night with the perfect man who doesn’t judge you can’t erase a lifetime of cultural shame. Ask the women who’ve been crucified for trying.
“Jace asked me to secure a room for you tonight, Ms. Tate.” Zar nods warmly. “And I have. You’ll stay in our suite.”
This is practically Zar’s hotel, his town, and now I know that Jace is one of Zar’s kings.
It’s why Zar can read the anguish between us. How everything is so right and wrong. How I don’t want to leave Jace, and he doesn’t want to let me go.
Zar hooks his arm, beckoning me to take it. “So, please be my guest, Ms. Tate, for any eyes watching.” He lowers his voice for Jace. “And use the security elevator, as you know, to the fifth floor. We’ll be waiting for you.”