Chapter Nine
Kingston
T he irrational flash of sharp-edged jealousy isn’t something I expect.
There’s nothing to be jealous of. I might be physically attracted to her, but it’s not like I’m looking for anyone, and if I was, Sadie Hess would not be it.
Of course she’s had significant others. She wasn’t grown in a test tube or released from some nunnery.
It doesn’t help I’m between lovers, and my last relationship of any meaning ended a number of months ago. My life’s been too caught up with my work, and now with the fucking bullshit to do with my family.
I quell it. Pushing it away. The jealousy is nothing more than a blip, an inherent kick of my base self, wanting to claim territory because it’s there.
I’m not my fucking brother.
She’s talking, saying something about going, and part of me agrees. Another part wants to poke around in here, because there’s such a feel of the old man and I want to explore it.
I also want to pull the place apart, bare handed.
“Yeah,” I say, “we should go.”
She’s straightening the photos, then gestures to the safe. “If there’s nothing else, we should put things back.”
I do that, close the door and turn the dial, locking it again. And finally, I put the picture back in place. As we leave, she locks the door behind us and then she looks up at me. Those dark eyes are intense.
“Do you want to see his wife, let her know we’re going?”
“Ex-wife. Nope.” I never had a problem with Misty, but she’s not exactly someone I’d seek out. And my father didn’t marry her for her brains or personality.” I head back down and around the pool, and out to the Jag. There, I lean against the driver’s side.
It’s a beautiful piece of machinery and in the cold, clear air, the sun shines down and the deep green of it seems alive with other colors, down in its depths.
I’m not a car guy, but with this, oh, yeah, I could be.
“So.” I hold out my hand. “Who’s the ex?”
Sadie looks at my hand and then at me. “You don’t know him.”
“I might.”
“You don’t. Move.”
“I’m driving.”
“This isn’t my car,” she says, scowling at me as the cold air makes her shiver. I know because I feel its bite, too.
“Steal it?”
She tilts her head to one side. “Would it matter?”
“If I get a criminal record, it might.”
Sadie shoves me, but I refuse to move. “You’re a billionaire, you can make that stuff disappear.”
She’s probably got a point, but I’ve never had to try. “I don’t think you know how the law works.”
“Move.”
I’m ready to argue when my work phone rings. I pull it out and sigh. So much for things operating without me. I glance at her. “You’re lucky I have to take this.”
“Yeah, I’m quaking.”
And with that, I go around to the passenger seat and slide in. The car is small, the space overwhelmingly full of Sadie, and I’m too aware of her so the call, cowardly as it is, is the perfect excuse.
I pull out my personal phone and open notes. The drive here set my senses alight. Her scent teased and flirted. A lot of questions swirl, but they can wait until we’re in a space with room. A space I’m not locked up so close, where a small movement could result in touching her. Letting the frisson of energy from her to leap along my senses.
Why she has this effect on me is a mystery. I don’t like her; she’s hostile and a criminal and secretive and the kind of person who fascinates me. There are depths and I don’t like her because if I let myself, I would and I don’t know what that means except a world of trouble.
I shift my attention to my phone and my executive assistant. “Okay, Holly. Lay it on me.”
My call contained a lot of small things with big consequences and it took me the entire forty-five minute drive back to Manhattan to deal with everything.
We pull up near my building and I shift in my seat, fighting the urge to touch Sadie. “As disappointed as you’re going to be, I need to take care of this.”
She taps her fingers on the steering wheel and studies me for a long moment. “You don’t have an NDA or something up your sleeve.”
“For what?” I tuck the phones away in my jacket on the seat.
“All the juicy tidbits I overheard.”
I start laughing. “If you find all that juicy, you might need to get out more, Sadie.”
“I was fascinated.” She offers me a small smile.
We both know she wasn’t. It was nothing but tiny dry things that need to be done.
“Do you work all the time?”
“I’m on sabbatical. Taking a break.”
She frowns. “That’s you taking a break? You’re doing it wrong.”
I sigh. “If I want things to run the way I do, then I need to keep my hand in, even when I’m not doing the day-to-day stuff.”
“Isn’t there a saying about work smart and not hard?”
“It’s not that fascinating and there’s nothing to steal. And I’m a control freak in that way. I have people. Great people. People who do certain things better than I ever could. People who do things I can’t. This shit…” I shrug. “I can do this. I have to make decisions and delegate. I have to sign off on a lot of things.”
“So you don’t take time off?”
“I am.”
“This isn’t time off, Kingston,” she says. “It’s not being in the office.”
“I’ll call you later. I have to deal with all this.”
And I don’t give her a chance to argue, I get out of the Jag and go inside.
To work.
It’s only sheer will that gets me through it. My mind keeps wandering back to the morning, to the search and why it’s important who made the jewelry. The pieces. And why the tiara is the one missing.
I pour a drink. Then set it down. I’m finding my mother’s part in this wholly suspicious. That grows with each passing minute.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m clutching at anything. But I’ll do that. I don’t like being used. I don’t like being manipulated. I don’t like games.
I feel like that’s what’s happening.
Without another thought, I grab my coat and head out into the early Manhattan evening.
A swift walk across the park really doesn’t do much. Not the bite of cold that makes my nose a little sore. Not the freshness the cold lends to the air.
It’s not until I’m at my mother’s place on Sixty-Third street that I realize what I’m doing. She opens the door on the fifth bang.
“I have a camera,” she says, letting me in. “I could see it was you. No need to huff and puff on my door like some kind of beast. I was upstairs getting ready.”
I close the door behind me. “Did you know Misty is at Father’s place? In White Plains?”
“No, I didn’t know.” She says this calmly, checking her make up in the eighteenth-century French-style living room. There’s an oval mirror in an ornate frame hanging over a delicately carved and polished table. “You came roaring over here to tell tales?”
“So you knew of the place?” I ignore her jab. “In White Plains?”
Faye sighs. “Your father owned a lot of places. He had a number of wives after me.” She says this like it’s some kind of unknown number as she runs a hand over her perfectly styled hair. Then she looks at me. “Why are you here?”
“Visiting my mother?”
“Kingston…”
I cross my arms. “What are you up to?”
“Excuse me?” she asks after a pointed pause I completely ignore.
“That’s why I’m here.” I move to the entrance of the room, where behind me the wide hall sits with its dark golden polished floorboards. “You asked, I’m telling. I want to know the answer to that. The what are you up to part.”
“I’m heading out for dinner, dear.”
She walks up and then stops as I don’t move out of her way and a small frown mars her perfectly made up face.
“You know what I’m asking.”
“Kingston, if you’re that hard up for companionship, you should have called ahead. This is a lady’s night and I don’t think a group of fifty something and up women are going to do it for you.” She gives my arm a squeeze. “Move please.”
“No.” I don’t let her leave her swank apartment on the East Side, where she likes it a little quieter. She has a place on the West side of the park, but uses that for parties and guests she’s not overly fond of. I lean against the door in the foyer and annoyance flickers over her face. “Just wondering what your hand in all this is, why you’d want to help Father.”
“Because it’s complicated. Because regardless of the divorce, we remained close. I have my reasons and I won’t be questioned by my son.”
“You’re making me jump through hoops.”
“The tiara is gone, Kingston. No hoops anywhere.”
“Did you take it?”
Silence, sharp and heavy, comes down for a handful of seconds and she presses her lips together. “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Did you?” This is not the way to speak to her, and I know it, but I don’t give a shit. What I want is answers.
What I want is to end this sooner rather than later, because sooner removes the disturbing presence of Sadie from my life. So I wait.
My mother sighs heavily. “I’m not out to sabotage you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking there’s more to this than I’m seeing.”
“There is. And that’s for you to work out, Kingston. But I’m not trying to sabotage you or anyone. Find the tiara. That’s all I can say.” She pauses. “All I know.”
But I’m not finished. “You had her name.”
She doesn’t bother hiding it. “Sadie Hess is the best out there. You seem to have found her on your own. Now, I’m running late.”
With a sigh, I step away. I know that tone and I’ve pushed things further than I should have. And as much as I don’t care, she’s not going to give me anything else. At least not now. If she knows anything. Which I’m fucking convinced she does. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”
My mother gives me a tight-lipped look that morphs into a small smile. And takes my offered arm.
Back at my place, I’m not exactly happy. A caged lion paces within, throwing off my equilibrium. I’ve been trying to find things from the other people I have out there. And on my way home, I contacted my PI, the one Sadie told me to fire.
I stop and sip my bourbon.
Jenson.
That’s who I asked him to look into, along with Misty.
The woman’s at the house, so it seems like a good place to start, but there are others. My father’s divorce settlement gave her everything she asked for, everything she could in the confines of their pre nup. But he was generous by his standards, and Misty has been seen with some top surgeon in White Plains, so that explains a lot. She’s always struck me as someone who defines herself by having a partner, and I don’t think she has it in her to know the value of the tiara and to steal it. Then again…
Stranger things have happened.
But I just got a call.
Nothing on Misty.
Jenson on the other hand…
He has debt.
A lot.
And he’s a man who can cover that with his firm until he can’t.
Jenson is also in the perfect position to set it up. To steal.
Question is, how desperate is he?
I’m going to need to find out.