Chapter Two
Two days later, Gabriela boarded a flight back to New York City.
It was ten o’clock at night and she wanted nothing more than to take a long steamy shower and slip her tired body between her thousand-thread-count, professionally ironed sheets.
Tomorrow she would get a manicure. She had no plans beyond that. Bliss.
“What the hell,” she said, her brown eyes narrowed, her Manolo Blahnik–clad feet firmly planted on her hand-scraped-and-finished wide-plank floor.
A man was passed out on her white chenille sofa.
He had a week-old beard and bedhead hair.
He was close to naked, wearing only Tom Ford boxer briefs and a half-eaten slice of pizza on his bare chest. She knew the man on her sofa, and she also recognized the voice that was belting out “Afternoon Delight” in her shower.
The moron crooning in the shower was her ex-husband, Rafer Jones.
The pizza-wearing idiot on the sofa was his cousin Harley Patch.
Gabriela had only recently moved beyond her contentious divorce to a more civilized relationship with her ex. That didn’t mean she wanted him in her shower. Or her condo. Or her life.
Calm down, she told herself. There’s probably a good explanation for this, so take a moment before you go in there and kick his naked ass out of your bathroom. Let the man get dressed before you threaten to carve him up into little pieces with your chef’s knife.
The singing stopped and Rafer Jones strolled out of Gabriela’s bedroom. He was six feet two inches tall and nicely muscled. His sun-bleached hair was out of control. He was beach-bum tan and had the beginnings of a beard. He was wearing a low-slung towel and a smile.
“Hey, Gabs,” he said. “Welcome home.”
One of the many reasons for the divorce was Rafer’s insistence on calling her Gabs. At the top of the list of reasons was the fact that ever since they’d met in kindergarten, they could never agree on anything.
“What’s the story?” Gabriela asked.
“I was hoping for a more enthusiastic greeting. Maybe a big hug and kiss.”
“Not going to happen,” she said. “You broke into my condo.”
“I didn’t break in. I have a key from last time I stayed here.”
Note to self, Gabriela thought. Change your locks.
She cut her eyes to Harley. “Why is he on my couch?”
“Okay, so that’s the story. It’s kind of complicated.” Rafer moved to the small high-tech kitchen and grabbed a bottle of cabernet from the under-the-counter wine cooler. He uncorked it, poured two glasses, and gave one to Gabriela. “Here’s the thing, he’s in a bit of a pickle.”
Gabriela sipped her wine and looked around her condo.
The walls were pristine white, and the floor was stained the color of her favorite dark chocolate.
The furnishings were clean lined, comfortable, and modern.
Two club chairs and the sofa in white chenille.
Large flat-screen TV. Rectangular glass-topped dining table with six chairs.
A home office in an alcove by a window. One bedroom and one and a half baths.
The rugs throughout were antique, hand-knotted Orientals.
As far as she could see, nothing had been trashed, and the pizza sauce was confined to Harley’s chest.
“The story,” Gabriela said.
“Maybe we should sit.”
“Maybe you should get dressed first,” Gabriela said.
Rafer grinned and looked down at the towel. “Does this bother you?”
“Yes. I don’t want you sitting on my furniture in a wet towel.”
“I could take the towel off.”
“That would be even more objectionable. And I’d appreciate it if you’d get Harley off my couch, or at least remove the pizza and throw a blanket over him.”
Rafer walked over to Harley and pried the piece of pizza off his chest. “Hey, Harley!” Rafer yelled. “Get up.”
Harley opened his eyes. “Yuh?”
“Gabs is home.”
Harley propped himself up on an elbow and looked over at Gabriela. “Hey, Gabs, how’s it going?”
Ten minutes later, Gabriela, Rafer, and Harley were seated at the dining table with the bottle of wine, a jar of peanut butter, and a box of Ritz crackers.
“This is great,” Harley said, scooping peanut butter out of the jar with his knife. “This is like high school when we’d sit on the dock in the dark and eat peanut butter and crackers and get high.”
Rafer and Gabriela grew up in Scoon, South Carolina. It was a small, blue-collar, coastal town that relied on fishing to stay alive. Harley grew up in a gated golf course community in Charlotte, but he spent his summers in Scoon with Rafer, working on the charter boats.
“This isn’t Scoon,” Gabriela said.
“But the peanut butter is the same,” Harley said, smiling.
Gabriela checked out the jar. It had been full when she left two weeks ago, and now it was almost empty.
“How long have you been here?” she asked Rafer.
“Ten days,” Rafer said. “That’s the second jar of peanut butter.”
“We’re hiding out,” Harley said. “I’m sort of in trouble, and we were hoping you could help.”
Gabriela slid a glance at Rafer. “You could have called.”
“This isn’t something you would want to discuss on the phone,” Rafer said. “Harley isn’t sort of in trouble. Harley’s in big trouble. Harley’s in trouble up to his eyeballs.”
Gabriela couldn’t imagine Harley Patch in big trouble.
Harley was Mr. Nice Guy. He was Mr. Blue Skies.
Okay, so he could be a bit of a doofus sometimes.
But he was a likable doofus. He’d graduated from college, gotten a master’s in finance, and landed an entry-level job in a large investment firm.
Gabriela lost touch with him after her divorce was finalized and she moved to New York.
And now here he was at her dining room table, eating peanut butter and crackers in his underwear.
“I know I’m going to regret asking,” Gabriela said, “but tell me about the trouble.”
“It all started when I took the job at the bank,” Harley said.
Gabriela made herself a Ritz-and-peanut-butter sandwich. “I thought you were working for an investment firm.”
“That didn’t work out,” Harley said. “There was a misunderstanding about the CEO’s wife.”
Rafer rocked back in his chair and grinned. “Harley slept with her. A lot.”
“I met her in a bar,” Harley said. “I didn’t know she was the CEO’s wife in the beginning.
She was so much younger than him. I didn’t put it together.
Anyway, while I was looking for a new job, I ran into a guy I knew from grad school.
He said his father was on the board of directors for a bank and he might be able to help me. ”
“Ever hear of Searl and Junkett?” Rafer asked.
Gabriela nodded. “It’s a pretty big bank but very under the radar. Privately owned. Caters to the worldwide elite. Located in Manhattan.” She looked over at Harley. “You had a position with Searl and Junkett?”
“I interviewed and they really liked me,” Harley said. “They told me I had potential and a refreshing attitude.”
“And?”
“And I got the job. It didn’t pay much but it had a great title. I was vice president of antiquity acquisitions.”
“That’s a strange job title for someone working at a bank,” Gabriela said.
“It was a new department, and the title was a little misleading. It wasn’t about acquiring antiquities.
It was about insuring antiquities. The board felt like insuring antiquities was a safe investment of the bank’s money.
In the beginning I didn’t have a lot to do.
The bank didn’t have a lot of antiquity insurance policies.
I was mostly playing pickleball and reviewing a handful of small accounts.
At the end of my first year, the bank president walked out of the building on his way to lunch and took two bullets to the head. ”
“He was killed?” she asked.
“Totally,” Harley said. “They were in a panic to replace him, and I was chosen to be interim bank president. Everyone else inside the company had actual work to do, but I was just playing pickleball. Even after I was made president, I was mostly playing pickleball. There was a corporate court in the basement of the building.”
“Okay, back up a little,” Gabriela said. “Who shot the bank president? Why was he gunned down?”
“No one knows,” Harley said. “It was a guy dressed in black, with a black hoodie, wearing one of those rubber Halloween face masks.”
“It was a Chucky mask,” Rafer said. “Classic choice for a close-range assassination.”
“Weren’t there any persons of interest?” Gabriela asked. “Rumors? Office gossip?”
“No persons of interest that I know about,” Harley said. “Lots of gossip. He was in the middle of an ugly divorce, and some people thought the board wasn’t happy with him, but I thought he was okay. I played pickleball with him a couple times.”
“Get to the good part,” Rafer said to Harley.
Harley grinned. “As acting president, I had a lot of business lunches and social engagements representing the bank. It was like all my life I was preparing for that job. I’m a people person.
Everyone likes me. I can do lunch and social engagements better than anyone on the planet.
And look at me. I’m cute. I’ve always been cute. ”
This was true, Gabriela thought. He was boyishly cute.
He had dark blond hair and freckles. Adorable nose.
Pleasant smiley mouth and perfect white teeth.
He was shorter than Rafer. She was guessing around five feet ten inches.
His body was okay but soft compared to Rafer’s, and their attitudes had always been different.
Rafer was kick-ass, and Harley was kiss-ass.
“Next thing you know, the board voted me in as permanent bank president because I turned out to be a good negotiator,” Harley said. “I was a freaking success.”
“Harley’s a schmoozer,” Rafer said. “And a moron.”