Текст книги "Darker the Release "

Автор книги: Claire Kent

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter 2

The cocktail party was an engagement celebration for an acquaintance of Caleb’s. Evidently the man was big in the local business scene, so the guest list included quite a few important and influential people. It was being held in a nineteenth-century mansion that had been converted to an upscale event venue, and Kelly had a hard time even beginning to estimate the price tag for this evening’s festivities.

Only in the last couple of weeks had Kelly started going out in public with Caleb as his girlfriend, so she was a little self-conscious as they circled the ornate ballroom. Her adoptive parents had been wealthy by most people’s standards, but they hadn’t been anywhere close to this league.

Her dress wasn’t cheap, but it was off the rack—which wasn’t true of most of the evening gowns she saw. And her only piece of expensive jewelry was the pendant at her neck. She could feel the weight of it as she moved—as if it were Caleb pressing against her skin.

She stayed mostly quiet, drinking the excellent champagne and letting Caleb take the lead as they circled. He worked the room like it was a battlefield, a thing to be conquered. She tried to keep the perspective she needed by reminding herself how fake it all was—how fake Caleb was as he schmoozed all of these important people—but he really was impressive, and it was hard not to recognize that. He charmed the women and created bonds with the men and generally made sure everyone he encountered had a favorable impression of him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her in a low voice as they moved on from someone who was evidently a former UN ambassador.

Letting him guide her to a quiet corner of the room, Kelly smiled up at him. “I was trying to keep up with everyone’s names.”

“That might be true, but it’s not all you were thinking about.” He eased closer to her, his eyes holding hers with that magnetic gaze that was so hard to resist. “What are you thinking about me?”

“What makes you think I’m thinking about you?” She kept her smile flirtatious, but it was deeply troubling that he could read her so easily, that he’d been able to see the direction of her thoughts from the expression on her face. She was playing a dangerous game here, and it was so hard to be on all the time. She was so tired of always being careful, always leading conversations the way she wanted them to go so she could get the information she needed, always guarding every expression of her face and nuance of her voice. She was getting so tired of all of it.

She took another swallow of champagne, starting to feel the relaxing buzz from the alcohol. She was on her third glass, and she better stop with this one. Being relaxed was good—was necessary—but being too relaxed would be a mistake.

“You keep watching me.” His smile was intimate beneath the characteristic cool smugness. He reached to run a hand down her hair, which was still loose and tousled from before. “I think it’s because you can still feel me inside you.”

She could still feel him inside her, and she was very aware that she probably looked like she’d just been tumbled in the back room. Her pussy gave a little clench at his sexy tone, but she shook her head. “Maybe you should dial back the confidence a little.”

His smile broadened. “If you say so. But you were thinking about me, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. I was just watching you conquer the room and wondering how you got so good at it.” It was safest to stick to the truth whenever possible. It was always the most convincing, and it was always easier to remember than the lies.

But more and more it was making even these little interactions between them feel like the real thing.

Caleb gave a nonchalant lift of one shoulder, although she thought he was pleased with her comment. “People are easy.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? You think so?”

“Well, most people. On this level.” He gestured out at the mingling, well-dressed crowd. “It’s all surface. It’s just a skill you can learn.”

“I’ve never found making small talk easy.”

He took her empty glass from her hand and put it with his own glass on the tray of a circling server. “That’s because you haven’t had as much practice as I have. It’s all politics—parties like this—and that’s a skill. People are easy.”

“I hope the implication isn’t that I’m easy too.”

He made a sound in his throat and slid an arm around her, pulling her closer to him. It wasn’t an inappropriate touch for public, but it felt private, tender—like it was something that other people shouldn’t witness. “Nothing about you is easy, blossom.” His eyes met hers without wavering. “I have no skill to fall back on with you.”

Her breath hitched, and her hands clenched in his jacket, holding on to him in the only way she could. Her heart was beating wildly, but she managed to conjure up a sexy, teasing tone as she replied, “No skill at all?”

His eyes went hot. “Well, maybe—”

Before he could respond, a voice interrupted from just over Caleb’s shoulder. “If I was prone to clichés, I might say something about getting a room.”

Both Kelly and Caleb jumped at the unexpected interruption of a conversation that had felt so intensely personal.

Caleb’s expression was briefly annoyed as he turned to see who had broken in, but it immediately transformed into a genuine smile. “Wes. I should have guessed it was you barging in where you’re clearly not wanted.”

Wes was evidently a real friend, if Kelly was to go by Caleb’s demeanor. He looked to be around Caleb’s age—early forties—and had a pleasant face, soft hazel eyes, and a warm smile. He wasn’t the powerhouse and sex god that Caleb was. Not even close. But he looked intelligent and rather nice. “Ah, but someone had to save your reputation. Gloria Cannon was starting to tsk her tongue at you.”

Caleb was grinning as he made the introductions. He liked this man. Kelly couldn’t help but see it, and it intrigued her, since he didn’t seem to be close to anyone.

Except her.

“We were friends at school,” Caleb explained, drawing her to his side, his arm resting on her waist.

“I guess you’ve known each other a long time, then.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like we’re ancient, but yeah, it’s been quite awhile,” Caleb responded.

“What do you do, Wes?” Kelly asked, genuinely curious and wanting to make sure she acted like a normal girlfriend would.

“I make cars.”

She was processing this as Caleb interjected, “Not with his own hands, just to clarify. He sits at a desk like I do.”

“I’m a corporate executive with the company, but it sounds more impressive if I just tell people I make cars.” Wes smiled at her. He seemed to be genuinely pleased to meet her, which wasn’t true of a lot of the other people at this party.

“You live in DC?”

“No. I’m in Paris, actually. But I’m back in town for a little while for family reasons.”

Kelly suddenly made the connection. The mother of one of Caleb’s friends had needed to go to the hospital for treatment several weeks ago. This must be the friend.

That day had evidently been rough on Caleb—he said he hated hospitals—so she figured he would only have done it for someone he was really close to.

It was strange to meet a friend of his, connections going back to his childhood. It made Caleb somehow seem more fully human.

They chatted for a few minutes, but then Caleb went to round them up some more drinks. As soon as he stepped away, Wes said with another smile, “Now that he’s gone, you can give me the real scoop.”

She lifted her eyebrows, but her heart gave a little leap, since it sounded like Wes believed there was some secret about her to be known. “What scoop?” Her mind was buzzing a little from the alcohol. She shouldn’t have drunk the third glass of champagne. She wasn’t as sharp as she needed to be.

“How did you and Caleb meet?”

She let out a breath of relief, trying not to reflect it on her face. “We just ran into each other by accident. At a park, actually. He was there with Ralph—his dog.” Wes evidently knew who Ralph was, so she continued, “I thought he was a client I was supposed to meet, so we started talking. We just hit it off.”

What had actually happened was they’d fucked each other like animals before they knew each other’s names, but no need to be quite so detailed about their first encounter.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I paint pet portraits. It sounds kind of crazy, but there are a surprising number of people who want to have their pets memorialized that way.”

Wes chuckled. “I guess so. So you’re from the area?”

“Yeah. I grew up in DC, and I still live here.”

“Where did you go to school?”

Kelly was starting to get uncomfortable with all the questions. Wes appeared to be just acting friendly, but he was obviously curious about her, and she preferred to avoid a lot of personal questions.

The more information she gave about herself, the easier it would be for someone to find out who she really was.

She was safe—because her mother had gone to great lengths to hide any connection between her and her biological parents when she was adopted as a child—but still, she didn’t want to give anyone any clues that could be followed.

No one was perfectly safe.

In response to his question, she mentioned the private high school she’d gone to and glanced around for Caleb, hoping he would come soon and rescue her. But he’d been waylaid by an elderly woman and clearly couldn’t get away immediately.

“That’s a really good school,” Wes said.

“Yeah. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I’m not that smart.” She was feeling trapped and rattled, although the conversation shouldn’t have been particularly dangerous. She really wished she hadn’t drunk so much, since her mind wasn’t working as quickly as it needed to. “The Watsons were donors, which is the only reason I was admitted.”

“The Watsons?”

Kelly blinked, trying to figure out what he was asking. Then she realized her mistake. Most kids didn’t call their parents by their last name the way she did her adoptive parents. She froze for a moment, a wave of terror overwhelming her at the idea she’d somehow given herself away, but she pushed through it.

She’d given away nothing. She just needed to focus again.

“My folks,” she explained, trying to make it sound casual.

“You call them the Watsons?”

Damn it. Why didn’t he just let it go? “I was adopted. I just got in the habit.”

“You must not have been adopted as a baby if you don’t think about them as Mom and Dad.” Wes looked even more curious than before, and his eyes were scanning her face closely. “How old were you when you were adopted?”

He must just be one of those people who ask a lot of questions of new people they meet. That was the only explanation for his interrogation. He probably thought it was natural, normal, but it left Kelly feeling naked and exposed. “I was…” For just a moment her mind went blank with the kind of blind terror she’d felt in an oral exam her senior year in high school, like her whole future rested on one answer that she just couldn’t think of.

“I was…I was a kid,” she finished lamely. “What does it matter?”

Her tone must have been too snippy because his brows shot up. “It doesn’t. I was just curious. Caleb has never been serious about a woman before, and I wanted to know more about who had managed to enthrall him.”

“Sorry.” She looked again for Caleb and was relieved to see him approaching them again, three glasses of champagne in his hands. “I just don’t like to talk much about the time before I was adopted. I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

It was a good answer. It sounded convincing. She gave Wes what she hoped was an ameliorating smile, and he returned it, but she still felt like there was an unanswered question in his eyes.

Like she’d triggered a suspicion in him that was going to be a problem.

Caleb gave them both a glass and then pulled Kelly against his side again. She burrowed against him instinctively, feeling safer, almost protected, now that he was back.

He leaned down to give her a soft kiss on the lips. “What’s wrong? Has Wes been harassing you?”

“No,” she said with a smile, trying to hide her mood from both men now. “He’s been telling me that you’ve never been serious about a woman before and that I’ve enthralled you.”

Caleb shot a look at Wes, but he was smiling down at Kelly when he said, “Enthrall? Is that what we’re calling it?”

“It’s what I’m calling it,” Wes said, looking friendly and unconcerned, although his eyes kept going back to Kelly with that same lingering question. “There’s a mystery here, and I’m going to uncover it.”

His eyes met Kelly’s and his expression shifted just a little, as if his words were meant as much for her as for Caleb.

Kelly swallowed hard, realizing she’d messed up. A lot. She’d made Wes suspicious, and he was going to keep asking questions she didn’t want to be asked.

She bit her lip, feeling like cursing and wishing she could go back in time just a few minutes so she could fix that conversation.

It had been such a silly slip. Hardly anything. A person just couldn’t pursue perfect strategy every moment of the day. It wasn’t natural. But she might have ruined her entire plan in the one moment.

Caleb laughed and shook his head. “Good luck with that.”

Kelly was desperately relieved when a couple of other people moved their way and the conversation broke up. She wanted to get away from Wes. She wanted to never see him again.

She wanted Caleb to never see him again either, even though he was evidently one of the few real friends Caleb had.

Things had been going so well. She hadn’t made any mistakes that really threatened to expose her. Until now. And now she was vulnerable. Now it all might be on the verge of falling apart.

She took a deep breath as Caleb introduced her to someone else, and she reminded herself that, even if Wes wanted to find out who she was, the evidence of her identity had all been hidden.

She was okay. She would be done with this whole thing before he could uncover her identity.

She had to believe she hadn’t lost everything in one slip of the tongue.

Her mind returned to the situation at hand with a hard bump when the name of the man she was shaking hands with suddenly clicked.

Sean Moore.

An older, balding man with a plain face and very dark eyes. Caleb’s former supervisor at Vendella.

The man whose phone had been used to call a hit man just before her father’s death.

If Caleb wasn’t responsible for her father’s death, then this man was.

She pulled her hand away from his, wiping it discreetly on her dress. The man looked harmless enough, but she didn’t want to touch him, to be close to him in any way.

He might have killed her father. He probably had. It didn’t feel quite true of Caleb, but it felt true of this man.

This could be the real murderer, the absolute bastard who’d taken her father away from her.

This man. In front of her.

Kelly felt a wave of nausea overtake her as she saw again her father’s body on the trail in the woods, his blood soaking into the dirt.

She managed to smile and act like she was listening to the conversation, but all she could hear was a buzzing in her ears.

This party had become like hell, all of these fake, smiling people who were secretly her enemies. Even Caleb with his intelligent mouth and warm eyes and strong hands might be someone she could only hate.

She was surrounded by them—no way to escape—and she kept trying to fight the nausea as it grew increasingly difficult to act normal.

She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be around these people. They weren’t her friends. They would only hurt her.

All she wanted to do was get away, but there was absolutely nowhere she could go.

Except the bathroom.

The idea came to her like a gift, and she excused herself to go to the restroom before the growing feeling of panicked claustrophobia completely overwhelmed her.

It was a large individual bathroom, so she locked the door and went over to the sink. She stared in the mirror at her face.

Her hair was still slightly rumpled and falling in loose waves all down her back. Her cheeks had been flushed before, but now they were a little pale. It looked like she’d even broken a sweat.

She wanted to splash water on her face to wash away the helpless feeling and the fuzziness from the champagne, but she was only carrying a clutch purse, so she didn’t have all of her makeup with her to redo her face afterward.

So she washed her hands for a long time, trying to relax and pull herself together.

She didn’t want to go back to the party right away, so she pulled out her phone to check her email—just for something to do—and she was surprised to see a text message from her mother. From the same anonymous number she always used to contact her.

She pulled up the message and read, Why haven’t you finished this yet? Stop stalling and get it done.

Kelly stared at the words for a long time, feeling sick and guilty and angry—a conflicted mingling of all three.

If her mother hadn’t showed up in her apartment a couple of months ago, she never would have started down this stupid, torturous road. Her mother had told her then that she’d only had three months to live, but she’d been as good as dead to Kelly for a lot longer than that. Kelly could understand desperately wanting answers before she died, but it was hard to forgive the way her mother had put her in an impossible position.

It had happened, though, and Kelly had agreed to do this destructive, irrational thing. And her mother wasn’t wrong in recognizing how conflicted she’d become in her feelings for Caleb.

She kept telling herself she wanted to get this over with, but that might mean proving that Caleb was guilty of murdering her father.

And if she were honest with herself, she’d admit she didn’t really want to do that.

She deleted the message without answering it and slid her phone back in her little clutch purse, trying to pretend she’d never seen the text.

Trying to pretend she wasn’t so pitifully weak that she would stall in seeking justice for her father’s murder.

Maybe she could have gotten this thing over with sooner if she hadn’t fallen for Caleb so hard.

She was feeling even more rattled and upset than before when she finally left the restroom. She glanced around the large ballroom, looking for Caleb’s fine body and handsome face.

She didn’t see him, so she started to circulate, wondering why she couldn’t spot him, since Caleb stood out in any crowd. It wasn’t just because he was so attractive, either. There was something about him that called attention, summoned any eyes in a room.

But he didn’t seem to be in this room, even though she’d left him just a few minutes ago to run to the bathroom. He wouldn’t have left her, and he couldn’t have just disappeared.

But she had no idea where he was.

So soon she was flustered on top of all the other tangled feelings, at a loss because Caleb no longer seemed to be at the party. When she happened to pass his engaged friend, who was the honoree of the evening, he must have noticed her futile search because he said, “I saw him go off into the anteroom back there.” He gestured toward a door at the far corner of the ballroom.

Kelly smiled her thanks and made her way in that direction, thinking it would have been nice if Caleb had spared a thought about how she was supposed to find him before he skulked off in a corner like that.

He’d probably run into a business associate and had sneaked off to deal with something work related in the few spare minutes he had.

Typical.

The door to the anteroom was partly closed, so she pushed it so she could enter. The room was small and mostly empty—with just some ornate chairs, a couple of mirrors, and some decorative tapestries on the wall.

Caleb wasn’t here. But there was another door that led to another room or hallway, and she walked toward it.

She heard Caleb’s voice before she reached the door. She wasn’t likely to mistake his voice for anyone else’s.

He was saying, “We both know what happened. And that makes us both guilty. Trying to justify it isn’t going to help at all in dealing with this situation.”

Kelly sucked in her breath and moved closer, leaning against a tapestry to get as close to the doorway as possible without actually being seen from the other room.

“Then what do you propose we should do? Because I guarantee it’s not going to go away on its own.”

Kelly wasn’t sure, but she’d guess that was Sean Moore. She didn’t recognize his voice like she did Caleb’s, but it sounded right for the man she’d met less than fifteen minutes ago.

She knew—she knew—what they were talking about.

“We need more information. There’s nothing we can do until then.”

To anyone else Caleb would have sounded calm and in control, but she didn’t really think he was. There was a kind of edge to his tone that she only heard when he was emotionally affected by something.

Whatever he was talking about was important to him.

“You have a whole little Hamlet thing going on here, don’t you?”

Kelly gasped and whirled around at the new voice coming from behind her.

Standing there was Wes, with an ironically amused smile on his face.

She literally couldn’t move for a few seconds as she was washed with a chill of guilt, fear, and recognition.

He somehow knew her. He knew all about her. He knew what she was doing with and to Caleb. He was going to reveal her identity to Caleb.

And there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Wes’s eyebrows lifted, and Kelly realized she needed to answer if she was going to have a chance of making it through this moment.

But what could she say? And how was it even possible that Wes could know she was seeking vengeance for the death of her father—as he must if he’d just compared her to Hamlet?

“Eavesdropping behind tapestries, I mean,” Wes added, evidently taking her silence for confusion.

She let out her breath in a whoosh, suddenly realizing she’d been ridiculous to think he could have found her out in the half hour since they’d talked. “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said without thinking. At his arched eyebrows, she added, “I mean, I was just trying to figure out if the conversation was one I could safely interrupt. He disappeared on me to talk about work.”

She thought she’d done a pretty good job, but Wes was still looking at her skeptically.

She’d convinced someone else, though. “I thought I’d be through before you got back,” Caleb said, coming up behind her through the doorway and slipping an arm around her. “Sorry about that.”

He looked and felt a little tense, but it didn’t seem to be directed at her. It must be the aftermath of the conversation he’d just had with Sean Moore.

Which had sounded very suspicious.

Like he might have killed her father.

The reality hit her so hard that she felt physically ill for a minute, the dizziness slamming into her as she felt Caleb’s lips on her mouth and then glancing across the skin of her cheek.

“If you spend any amount of time with Caleb,” Wes said in a friendly voice, “you’ll have to get used to that.”

She knew that already—that Caleb’s priority would always be his work, no matter what kinds of feelings he might develop. She didn’t need Wes to tell her.

At the moment, she didn’t care about Wes at all, though. She didn’t care about anything but the fact that her father’s murderer might be pressing his body against hers intimately right now.

And just a few minutes ago she would have wanted him to do that.

Even now she could want it again.

What did that say about her, about what kind of woman she was, about what kind of daughter she was? There was something twisted and unnatural about her that she couldn’t seem to beat back into submission.

They went back to the party, and Caleb was more handsy than he’d been before. She wasn’t sure exactly what was causing it, but she had a few ideas.

He was anxious or angry or helpless about something—whatever guilty thing he’d done that Sean Moore had brought up in that back room. And he was trying to distract himself and feel powerful again with her.

She understood it. She’d done the same thing with random men—and with Caleb—over and over again herself. Bury yourself in sex, in sensation, in some kind of visceral power, so you don’t have to acknowledge all of the things over which you have no power.

She could sense the same thing in Caleb now, and she was pretty sure it would get more intense when they left the party and were alone.

He would want to fuck her hard and rough.

And she would let him, even if she was so scared and confused and rattled right now that sex was the last thing she wanted to do.

Because sex was what she had with Caleb, no matter what ephemeral feelings they were playing with. It was the only weapon she had in this battle.

Even if she used it against herself.

She had to get things back to normal between them, and she knew just how to do it. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want it. Right now, sex was all she had to work with.

The evening went on and on, until finally Caleb said she looked tired and asked if she wanted to leave.

She said yes gratefully, wanting desperately to feel fresh air and not be surrounded by strangers.

As they were leaving, Wes came back over. He mentioned a few things in parting to Caleb about his mother and his plans for going back to Paris, and then he took Kelly’s hand.

He held it longer than he should have. It almost felt like he was about to come on to her. Kelly stared up at him blankly, wondering what was happening as he leaned toward her and whispered in her ear, “I’m not sure what you’re hiding, but keeping secrets from Caleb is a bad idea.”