Chapter 3
Edie
“So you’re telling me you turned down a night of hot, steamy sex with a thirty-something gangster who rubbed your feet because you told him they hurt, then rocked your world with a kiss? Are you insane, Edie?” my best-friend and colleague, Henrietta, hisses at me the following Friday.
It’s taken me a whole week to pluck up the courage to tell her what happened, and I’m already regretting it.
“Shhh, keep your voice down,” I chide, eyeing a group of ten-year-olds playing nearby.
It’s lunchtime at Haverfield Primary School, where we both work as teachers, and not exactly an appropriate time to discuss my recent encounter.
“I honestly think I was having an out-of-body experience that day, fuelled by emotional upset, a surge of hormones and very expensive champagne. I was not myself.”
Henrietta grabs my arm and pulls me to the relative privacy of the bike shed. “I’m serious. You passed up the perfect opportunity for some revenge sex. I wish I was there. I would’ve forced you into his penthouse suite, which, of course, a man like him must have. He was an effing gangster, Edie.”
“Have you got a thing for gangsters or something?” I throw back, avoiding her piercing hazel gaze. Her eyes are not quite brown, not quite green. They hover somewhere in between like the bark of a tree caught between a canopy of leaves.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“In romance books, not real life,” I reply, flapping my hand at her, as though trying to swat at an angry wasp. “Besides, I don’t even know if he was a gangster. He just had the vibe of one.”
“Whether he was or he wasn’t is neither here nor there. If he carried himself like a gangster, I bet he was a god in bed.”
“Maybe,” I shrug, wrinkling my nose at the way she squeals with excitement. Henrietta is only three years younger than me, but she acts like an excitable teenager when she’s not in teacher mode. Most of the time, I find it endearing. Right now she’s giving me a headache.
“Please tell me you got his number.”
“Nope.”
“No? What’s wrong with you? He clearly fancied the pants off you, and from your description, was hotter than Scott Eastwood and Tom Hardy combined.”
“A little younger, actually. A lot younger, in fact.”
“You said he looked about thirty-five. That’s only nine years younger than you, Edie.”
“He had the plump skin of someone far more youthful, zero lines, and not one grey hair. He was younger than thirty-five,” I protest, my gaze slipping to Rosie, a sweet six-year-old who recently lost her two front teeth.
Her gappy smile makes me grin. She waves and I wave back, watching her as she runs over to her group of friends and they start jumping rope.
“And? So what if he was? He was an adult, and hot-as-fuck. I can’t believe you passed up the promise of multiple orgasms. I know you love your vast collection of vibrators, but this is ridiculous.
You need a real cock,” she says, flicking her gaze to Molly, a curious eight-year-old who just happened to pass us by at that very moment.
Henrietta fixes her expression into serious teacher mode and says, “Ms Valenti is buying some chickens and a cockerel. She wants fresh eggs in the morning. Isn’t that lovely? ”
“Yes, Miss,” Molly replies, giving us both a confused look before running over to her friends.
“You know I’m not capable of having orgasms during sex,” I mumble, getting back to her previous point.
“Horseshit. You didn’t have orgasms during sex with that prick you had the misfortune to marry because one, he couldn’t find a woman’s clit even if it was hung with a neon sign—”
“He managed to find every other woman’s clit,” I interrupt.
Henrietta scoffs. “I doubt that very much. And two,” she says, jabbing my arm with her finger, “Robert hurt you so many times that even on the occasions you did have sex with him your body clearly shut down, refusing to give you any pleasure because it knew before you did he wasn’t good enough for you. ”
She practically screams the last past, and I yank on her arm, glaring at her. “Okay, okay, maybe you’re right.”
“I know I am. Which is why you really need to just let loose and enjoy some carnal sex, even if it is just for one night. You deserve it after fifteen years of marriage to that arsehole.”
“Maybe…” My voice trails off as my hand absentmindedly drifts to the pocket of my trousers and the business card I stuffed in there. Ever the hawk-eye, Henrietta notices.
“What have you got there?”
“Nothing,” I reply, stepping back so she can’t sneak her hand into my pocket.
“Liar. Let me see.” She lunges for me, and before I can stop her, she’s already got her hand in my pocket and is pulling out the business card. “And what is this?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “It was tucked beneath my hotel room door when I woke up the next morning after meeting Dorian.”
Henrietta stares at the little card, its edges gilded with gold. Both sides are gloss black with absolutely no writing on them. It’s not even embossed in any way.
“Do you think it’s from him?”
“If it is, I don’t understand its purpose. There’s no number on it, nothing to identify him or anything else, for that matter.”
“And if there was something on it, like a contact number, what would you do?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it, that’s for sure. I told you already, I’m not interested in a relationship.”
“I call bullshit. Besides, who said anything about a relationship? How about a nice, old-fashioned fuck?”
I shake my head, letting out a snort of laughter. “You’re incorrigible. I knew I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“Of course you should’ve. I’m your best friend, and I refuse to believe this beautiful gangster would slide this card under your door just to tease you. It’s a message of some sort. We just have to figure out what that message is.”
“Well, short of returning to the hotel, seeking him out and asking him, I’m not sure how we’re going to do that.”
Henrietta waggles her brows. “It’s not the worst idea in the world.”
“No. Nope. Absolutely not.”
“You don’t want to see him again, then?”
“I said so, didn't I?”
“Then if you didn’t want to see him again… Actually, let me rephrase that, if you weren’t a teensy-tiny bit curious about the man and what this card means, why tuck it in your pocket? Why not leave it at home?”
I blow out a breath. “Okay, fine. I’m intrigued, and I—”
“Knew that I wouldn’t be able to let this go without finding out exactly what your gangster was trying to tell you. I love a good mystery,” she says, clapping her hands together with glee.
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” I moan, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Nope,” she replies with a grin. “You’re going to be thanking me when you end up in that man’s bed having multiple orgasms.”
The school bell chimes, interrupting our conversation and telling us it’s the end of playtime. I hold out my hand for the business card, but Henrietta slides it into her pocket and winks at me.
“We’ll reconvene at your place, 7pm tonight. I’ll bring wine and pizza, and you’ll provide Wi-Fi and a laptop. Tonight we’re going to unravel this mystery.”
“Well, I guess that’s that then,” I say around a mouthful of pepperoni pizza.
I flick my gaze to the clock hanging on my kitchen wall.
It’s almost ten o’clock and, true to her word, Henrietta has spent the entire evening trying, and failing, to figure out what this card means.
I’ve come to accept it has nothing to do with Dorian Crow, and honestly, I’m a little relieved.
He was too young, too dangerous, and entirely too much of a good kisser.
A man like that has trouble written all over him.
“Absolutely not. We’re not giving up now,” she responds, picking up her glass of wine and pacing the room, the shiny black business card still gripped in her hand. “We’re missing something here. Something important.”
“Yes, a few brain cells. I don’t even know if it was him who left it. It’s probably got nothing to do with him.”
“You’re telling me a man dressed all in black, with slicked back hair, tattoos, and the darkest brown eyes they were almost obsidian—your words not mine—doesn’t have business cards as fancy and mysterious as this?”
“Well, when you put it that way…” I let my voice trail off and wipe my hands on a paper towel. “Either way, just forget about it. We’ll chalk this whole experience up to excellent masturbation fodder and leave it at that.”
“So you did fancy him then,” Henrietta says, sloshing her wine as she flops back into the seat next to me.
“I never said I didn’t.”
“You never said you did either. This makes all the difference. Now I’m absolutely determined to find out what this bloody means,” she says, chucking the business card onto the table.
“This isn’t you already being determined?” I ask, flicking on the UV lamp and shaking my head as I look across at her. “Let’s just do our nails and forget about all of this. Do you want to go first?”
Henrietta’s eyes widen, her mouth popping open as she lets out a surprised giggle. “Oh, fuck.”
“What on earth is wrong with you? I swear you are the biggest lightweight,” I say, trying to snatch the glass of wine from her hand. She slaps my hand away, grabs my chin and repositions my face so that I’m looking at the business card that seems to have something glowing on its surface.
“It’s fluorescent ink,” Henrietta squeals, releasing my face and shoving the card further under the UV lamp.
Sure enough, the light reveals some kind of emblem. It’s the image of a crow perched on an ornate mirror, droplets of blood dripping from the thick thorny vine wrapped around it. Beneath it is a row of numbers.
“Oh, this is exciting.” Henrietta grins, flipping over the card. On the reverse, in curling letters, is the word Avant Garde.
“That’s his nightclub,” I whisper.
“When I looked his club up earlier, the site was password protected. This must be the password,” Henrietta screeches, placing her wine glass on the table, and quickly pulling up the Avant Garde website on my laptop.
“He tried to convince me it’s a cabaret and not a sex club,” I mutter, my heart pounding as Henrietta carefully types in the fifteen digit code. “I didn’t believe him. We’ve all heard the rumours. Avant Garde is most definitely a sex club. Why all the cloak and dagger stuff if it wasn’t?”
“Does it matter? It’s exclusive as fuck, and if this is what I think it is, you’ve got an invite to it.”
“I’ve got a password to the website, you mean? Which is a little odd, don’t you think? If he wanted me to go to the club to hook up, why didn’t he just send me a text or something?”
“Because you didn’t give him your number, silly,” she reminds me.
“Ah, yes. I take your point.”
She nudges me with her shoulder and winks, her cheeks flush from the alcohol as we wait for something to happen. “This is exciting.”
“What’s it doing?” I ask, peering closer at the screen as the very same emblem on the business card starts spinning in a circle so fast that I have to angle the laptop away from me so I don’t throw up. “Actually, I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Oh, damn,” she whispers a moment later.
“What now?”
“You’re going to want to look at this,” Henrietta says as she starts wiggling around in her seat. Any minute now, she’s either going to start singing some random 90’s tune like she normally does when she’s over stimulated, or pass out from too much alcohol.
“Oh for crying out loud. What on earth could be so riveting?” I ask.
“Please tell me he’s your gangster,” Henrietta says, as she slowly twists the laptop back in my direction and shuffles closer to my side. “Because if he isn’t yours, I want him.”