Chapter 3 #2
Curiosity pulled her toward the arched niche.
A couple was entangled. Despite the dimness, she saw red nails, broad masculine shoulders, and a stockinged leg wrapped around a hip.
The man’s hand up her dress revealed garters attached to stockings the same shade as her nail polish.
While he wasn’t detached from the scene, from the way she was grinding against him, she was by far the aggressor.
The sight, private and hot, ignited something inside her. Surprised, flushed, and embarrassed—despite insisting only minutes before that she wasn’t a virgin—Emily turned to go.
“Oh, Gunnar.”
Startled by the unusual name, she nearly giggled. She smothered it and was slinking away when—bang! She walked into the wall and dropped her tray.
She turned just as the man straightened. Her breath caught. Her knees wobbled. Alec. He looked older, his features sharper, faint creases at the corners of his eyes—but that jaw, that mouth, hadn’t changed at all.
Their eyes met, just for a second. She registered his surprise and something else her tired mind couldn’t process. That she’d caught him in an intimate moment made it more awkward. Before the woman noticed her, she scooped up her tray and quickly escaped, melting into the crowd.
In the kitchen, she slumped against the wall and let the tray slide from her fingers onto the service pass with a soft clink. Her pulse thrummed—not from exertion but from recognition, regret, and eight years of longing.
Not a day passed without missing him, wondering, and aching for the life she’d left behind.
Shame at the promise left unkept and the years of silence that followed.
Anger, not so much over the beautiful woman in his arms, although that stung, but that he wasn’t languishing alone without her, like she was without him.
The redhead seemed familiar, so there was a touch of curiosity thrown into the mix. More than anything, there was envy. She wanted to trade places with her—after clawing the bitch’s eyes out for grinding against him and kicking Alec for letting her.
“Stop,” she whispered. “You were an idiot for letting him go. You don’t get to want him back.”
But the harsh truth didn’t ease the ache. She’d made her bed. Now she had to lie in it—alone.
After a deep breath, she smoothed her hair. Her hands trembled as she adjusted her apron. With a forced smile she wore as routinely as rolling silverware, she returned to work because she had no other choice.
***
The clatter of metal on wood yanked Alec’s attention to the doorway.
Surprise, the sudden acceleration of his heart—shock and long-simmering anger—had Alec rooted to the floor.
For a beat, as their eyes met, everything around him faded except for Emily.
A woman now, she was more beautiful than in his memories.
Her eyes still broadcast every emotion she felt.
They flared, her lips parted, and she looked as stunned as he felt.
Then, she spun, her ponytail flaring out around her, and faded into the crowd.
She was gone before he could breathe her name or react in any rational way.
And just like that, the ache he’d buried for eight years cracked wide open.
Indecision consumed him in a single, brutal instant. Stay or go? Let the girl who’d been haunting his dreams slip through his grasp, or chase after her and blow the case he and Dev’s team had been working on for months?
“You seem distracted, amore mio.” Isabella Benedetti’s voice cut into his thoughts, syrup-sweet and sharp as a blade. Her fingers curled into his shoulders, a physical reminder of the role he played.
“Are you listening, Gunnar? Or am I boring you?”
Annoyance flared—hot and immediate—but he shoved it down. Duty snapped into place: keep the cover, earn the access, don’t give her the opening to see the man under the mask. He flattened his tone and let the smooth lie seep out of him.
“Of course not, darling. A server startled me, dropping a tray.”
Pacified by his excuse, Isabella pressed closer, while he tucked the image of Emily into the compartment of things he couldn’t afford to think about until the job was done.
Twelve weeks of playing art dealer Gunnar Lange had worn on him.
Isabella trailed kisses along his jaw, her crimson nails digging into his skin as she practically dry-humped him while the party for her husband carried on a few yards away.
She was pretty enough, but it was an illusion—permanent liner, fillers, a forehead that never moved.
To him, she was his mark: useful, possibly involved, and hopelessly shallow.
His prick didn’t so much as twitch as she rubbed against him.
It took the sheer force of his will not to shove her hands aside.
He could have had her a dozen times over during this investigation, but he preferred being in charge, and Isabella didn’t have a submissive bone in her body.
She got off on taking risks and the excitement of fucking around on her neglectful, cheating husband.
He could tell by the filthy things she whispered in his ear that she liked it rough, but she had no regard for the man she was with, or his pleasure.
It was me, me, me—the only sound he heard when she spoke.
Alec refused to take what she offered. His license and professionalism restrained him foremost. His resentment and disgust of the self-absorbed rich bitch had only grown as the investigation dragged on.
It wasn’t only her. For a long time, the women in his life hadn’t been what he wanted.
They weren’t who he dreamed about. None had long glossy dark hair or soulful brown eyes.
None tilted their head and flashed that tiny dimple that made his chest tight.
All women paled next to Emily. A few times, he thought he’d found someone who might erase her from his head, but something small—a laugh, a way of holding a glass, a hair flip—would start the comparisons all over.
He’d learned the hard way that he sabotaged promising relationships by measuring them against a ghost from his past.
He’d set rules: one-night limits, clear lines. It made him a selfish prick to some, but no one could say they didn’t know what they were getting with him. The club suited him: negotiate a scene, close the door, move on.
With Isabella, things were different. He had to get close and earn her trust to do his job. She never meant to leave her filthy-rich husband, using Gunnar as much as he was using her. That reciprocity mitigated whatever guilt he allowed himself.
Putting her off was getting more difficult, though. He needed to wrap this up tonight. Many were counting on a break in the case—innocent young women who disappeared without a trace and loved ones frantic for answers.
Alec took Isabella by the arms and eased her away, kissing her to soften the separation. “While the speeches drone on, it’s the perfect time for us to slip away and go where we won’t be disturbed.”
“Si, uomo sexy. Let’s,” she breathed, a seductive smile curving her lips. “My self-centered husband will greedily lap up the praise for hours. We’ll have the house to ourselves.”
Then he forced himself to do the unthinkable; he walked away with the wife of a suspected human trafficker—her involvement still unclear—leaving behind the only woman who’d ever mattered.
They moved through the corridors of the banquet hall.
His long stride made her hurry to keep pace, slightly winded from the effort.
It kept her from talking, and that suited him fine.
He needed one thing from her tonight: access to Benedetti’s study.
Tonight’s event was his only clear chance in months.
It would have been simpler to break into the house and the safe. Also, unfortunately, illegal.
“Wait,” she said when reaching the rear door. “I need to talk to Marco and give him an excuse for leaving. There will be people watching. We’ll have to go separately.” The ease of it as she said it—too familiar—told him she’d done this before.
He nodded and then glanced around. With the hallway empty, he continued the ruse and pressed his mouth to hers—swift, hungry, gone in a heartbeat.
“I had to have another taste of you. Hurry, Bella,” he breathed as if waiting bordered on torture. “I’ll be at the gate counting the minutes until we’re together.”
“No. I have nosy neighbors. Let yourself in.” She leaned in, breath warm at his ear, and spoke the code so softly he almost missed it. “One-nine-nine-three then the twelve—” she murmured, adding the last digit as an afterthought.
It slid into his mind with the precision of a key turning in a lock.
She gave him one last sultry-eyed look—hungry, possessive, appraising him as though he were a prime cut of grade A beef—before hurrying off with a click of her heels and an exaggerated sway of her hips.
He waited until she disappeared around a corner then strode down the service hall to the rear exit. Once outside, he tapped his earpiece, switching on the mic. “I’m heading out, Leland,” he murmured on his way to the disgustingly expensive sports car that was part of his cover.
“We’re ready,” Leland answered, low. “We’ll loop the feeds for a narrow window and keep eyes where you need them.”
“What about a timestamp for the keypad on the gate?”
“Callan has that covered. You won’t be exposed.”
“ETA ten minutes,” he said as he slid behind the wheel of Gunnar the art dealer’s Maserati—actually on loan from Rhys Langston, one of his fellow PIs—and in seconds steered the rental out of the parking lot.
A light rain had started to fall when he arrived at the main gate—on foot. If all went as planned, he’d get the evidence he was after and exit through the rear gate where he’d parked his car before Isabella got home.
Alec stopped long enough to pull thin gloves from his jacket and slide them on. Clean hands, clean work. The code worked on the first try, and the gate opened with a whisper.