Fatal Beauty (8 page)

“He’s getting the guest room ready and opening the wine,” she says
simply, tossing the phone into the backseat. EJ smirks and they drive into the
deepening dusk.

*

Night has fallen over Baton Rouge when the pull up to the
HillCrest
Luxury Homes. EJ eyes it silently as Charlie
chats up the guy in the security booth. She’s back quickly with a tag for the
Nova. “Park on the third level. That’s guest parking.”

EJ nods, and pulls into the parking garage. When they’ve parked
and she turns off the car, she lets out the breath it feels like she’s been
holding since they left Jacobs’ mansion in the bayou. “Are you sure this is
what you want?” she asks suddenly.

“We can still go back. Jacobs would forgive me, if I brought the
Nova home right now.”

Charlie stares at her for a long moment, and then pushes open the
door. “We’re going inside. I’m going to play nice with
Pax
.
And when he goes to bed and we’re alone, you’re going to tell me who the fuck
Jacobs is and why you own this car—all of it. Got it?”

She meets EJ’s gaze, hers unflinching and EJ finally nods. “Got
it.”

“Good. Get your shit and let’s go.”

Turning up on the doorstep of your college fuck buddy, she thinks,
as they stand in front of his door surrounded by two suitcases, a black duffle
bag and her Coach purse, is probably one of the more ridiculous things she’s
done in her life.

Where was this when she sat down and thought out her five year
plan? Who the hell plans for being on the run from a drug lord who helped you
dispose of a troublesome fiancé?

She giggles, a completely inappropriate noise in this situation
and EJ gives her a surprised stare. She shrugs, shakes her head.

“Charlotte,” a male voice murmurs, and they both turn. A smile,
coy and warm, is already turning her lips.

“Hello, Paxton.”

Chapter 16

Paxton
Blaincot
is almost stupidly
attractive. Blond hair so pale it’s almost white hangs around his ears and
brushes his shoulders with tiny soft curls. Big blue eyes stare at them—at
Charlie—like he’s terrified she’ll vanish. He’s tall, built, and moves with the
awkward clumsiness of a kid who was never completely comfortable in his body.

Charlie filled her in on the drive—he’s the son of a local doctor
with no stomach for blood, and went into finance because he’s brilliant. Four
years out of
Vandy
he’s working for the second
largest finance company in the country, running the Baton Rouge branch and
overseeing a few partners and meeting clients.

As she sits next to Charlie on his leather couch, and looks around
at the expensive, tastefully decorated loft, she had to wonder why he was only
a fuck buddy.

“Because I was with Tre. And he’s sweet—but too…
Pax
for more.”

“Right,” EJ says, rolling her eyes. “Because that makes all the
sense in the world.

Charlie makes a face, and then they both smile as
Pax
comes back into the room with a bottle of wine and three
glasses. He sits down across from them and gives Charlie a concerned frown.
“How are you, Char? I heard the news about Tre. I am so sorry.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that—and thank you for letting us crash
here. Things have been—crazy, since he vanished.”

“Was there any indication, before he left, that this might
happened?”

She shrugs, and forces a smile. “He was having an affair with a
paralegal. I know she was pretty serious about him. He might have run just to
get away from her. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, though.”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry.” He shakes his head and numbly
takes the glass EJ extends toward him.

The wine is dry and bitter, a rich red.
 
She sips it while the silence spins between
them,
Pax
staring at Charlie with the kind of deep
longing that makes EJ jealous, irrationally.

Not that he looks at Charlie, instead of herself. But that he’s
looking at Charlie, with proprietary desperation.

She clears her throat and swallows the last of her wine, and
stands.

“I’m going to shower and pass out. Let you two catch up. Do you
mind terribly?”

Relief brightens
Pax’s
face, and Charlie
manages, barely, to cover her scowl.
Pax
nods
amiably. “Of course. I’m so glad you’re here. And that she has you.” He stands
and crushes her in a fierce hug that knocks the breath from her and the thought
from her head. When he releases her, Charlie is fighting a laugh, and she
stands.

EJ wants to say something, anything, that puts this idiotic little
trust fund baby in his place, remind him that Charlie is
hers,
that
of course she’s been at her side. But instead she forces a smile,
and turns.

Charlie hugs her suddenly, and murmurs in her ear, “Problem,
darling?”

EJ goes still, and it makes sense, suddenly. She’s jealous and
it’s irrational, and she can’t seem to squash the emotion. She scowls and gives
an indignant sniff and Charlie laughs, low in her ear before releasing her.
“Don’t sulk, EJ.”

EJ scoffs and stalks out of the living room, and even as she goes,
that dammed knowing laugh chases her.

She’s never been jealous in her life, and she doesn’t like it.

She sure as fuck doesn’t like being jealous of Paxton
Blaincot
.

*

“She’s….nice.”

The assessment is made tentatively, and with caution, and it pulls
a laugh from Charlie as she relaxes into her seat.
Pax
is watching her because of course
Pax
is watching
her. Puppy dog, hopeful, and so damned gorgeous it’s almost enough to make her
not care that he has the temperament of a newborn kitten.

“EJ? Nice isn’t exactly the word I’d pick. She’s a crazy bitch.
But,” she shrugs, and flashes him a wicked smile, “She’s my kind of crazy.”

A concerned look crosses
Pax’s
face, and
Charlie sighs. Leans forward and pours another glass of wine. “Don’t do that
thing.”

“What thing?” he asks, confused.

“That thing you do where you worry needlessly. I’m not here
because I need you to worry about me.”

“Why are you here?” He asks softly.

Charlie rolls the wine glass between her palms, staring at it and
the swirling red. “Because I have nowhere else to go, and because I need your
help.”

His eyes widen and she licks her lips. Leans forward, watching
Pax’s
eyes dip down, hungrily, for a split second before
they come back up.

“He shouldn’t have left you like that, Char. It wasn’t right.”

“It is what happened, though. I’ll be fine. I just—I need some
help.”

“Anything.”

She hesitates, just long enough that
Pax
breathes a curse, and moves to sit next to her. He takes the wine from her and
places it on the table and pulls her up by her hands. “Charlie. Anything. Tell
me what you need and it’s done.”

“It might not be legal,” she says, slightly apologetic.

Pax
makes a dismissive noise
in his throat, and she gives him a slow smile.

“Money. I need my money invested.”

He grins, “I am very good at that, sweetheart. How much? Do you
have account numbers?”

She stands and walks to the door, grabbing the rolling suitcase.
She rolls it to him, and touches it with two fingers. “I don’t have account
numbers. But I do have seven hundred and fifty thousand. In cash.”

*

The beautiful thing—the only real asset he has, actually—about
Pax
, is that he doesn’t demand answers. Even as she
explains that she has three quarters of a million dollars in big bills sitting
in his living room, he doesn’t demand to know where it came from. When she
tells him that she wants it invested in a diverse portfolio with minimum risks
and plenty of reward, he doesn’t ask why. When she names a Swiss bank—the same
one her mother used for her personal accounts that Travis knew nothing about,
the accounts she inherited—his eyes go a bit wild and worried, but he pushes
through, scribbles the info down and nods.

When she says she needs it done in forty eight hours, he kisses
her cheek, and goes to his office.

EJ had doubts, and she had been worried, briefly. But coming to
Pax
was not only one of their few options—it was the best.

Because eventually, Jacobs would talk to the cops. Or he would
come after them—she could see that in EJ’s eyes every time she looked at her
friend.

Charlie finishes her wine, and stands, grabbing her second
suitcase—the one with clothes instead of cash—and goes down the hall to
Pax’s
guest room.

The room is, like the rest
of the apartment, sleek and modern and lovely. A big bed black with silver
accents, a dresser made of clear glass and shiny black handles. A black fan
turns lazily, and throws flickering shadows. A wide floor length window yawns
to the right, and she hits the light, stripping out of her jeans and bra in the
darkness before crawling into bed. EJ shifts as she settles on her side, and
Charlie blinks in the darkness at her.

“Will he help?” she asks, and Charlie hears the worry that no one
else would.

“Yes.” Charlie says simply, and a tiny sigh, heavy with relief,
slides through the other girl.

“You promised me a story,” Charlie says, and EJ nods. Her eyes are
shadowed in the darkness of the room. From below, the city lights stream in,
weak and unfocused.

Here, everything else is stripped away, and there is only the
brutal honesty.

It hits her suddenly, everything. Every stupid impulsive step that
led to this moment.

“Are we being stupid?” she asks, rolling to her back.

There’s a silence, stretching so long and heavy that she thinks EJ
is sleeping. “Yes,” comes the whisper, almost lost, and Charlie sighs.

EJ rolls toward her, curling into Charlie’s side, one arm lightly
wrapped around the other girl’s stomach and Charlie is still, tense, her heart
pounding—wondering if EJ is doing this on purpose, if this is another one of
their many games.

No. Games are for other people, for Jacobs and Tre and silly,
temporarily useful boys like
Pax
. For the disposable.
But games have never been for the ones who stay, and in their world, that is a
tiny number.

Only the two of them.

Slowly, the tension drains out of her, and she gets used to the
weight of EJ’s arm on her, the soft play of fingertips against her ribcage and
tickle of breath against her shoulder.

She thinks, once, that she feels the brush of EJ’s lips, but then
she’s exhausted, and everything is fading to that, smudged around the edges,
until it’s all black.

Chapter 17

EJ is in the kitchen, standing on one foot with the other braced
at her knee, hair in a messy bun on top of her head. Cheese, onion, and peppers
form fragrant, diced piles in front of her, and she’s stirring eggs as bacon
pops in a pan next to her.

“Where is
Pax
?” Charlie says, slipping
past her and pouring a cup of coffee.

“He had an early meeting, said he’d be back around ten. So I
thought I’d have breakfast ready when he got here.”

Charlie’s arches an eyebrow and EJ flushes. It still amuses
Charlie to catch her in a rare, domestic moment, but EJ enjoys it. Enjoys the
mindless task with visible results, and the tiny act of creating.

And she got to play with sharp pointy objects.

“How long did you give him?” she asks, redirecting Charlie’s
attention to something other than her domestic goddess efforts.

“Forty eight hours.”

A fission of fear snakes through her but she nods agreeably. It’s
a reasonable amount of time, and Charlie’s accounts would be enough to keep
them in money without Jacobs immediately being able to track it.

“Did you give him everything?”

Charlie scoffs. “I’m not an idiot, EJ. I kept two hundred in
cash.”

She nods again and pours eggs onto a plate. Charlie is still
watching her, and it’s somewhere between the speculative, hungry looks she
catches when Charlie’s had too much wine, and the impatient, demanding one she
perfected before she was talking in full sentences.

She wants the history. All the complicated sordid details.

“Jacobs is dangerous. You understand that, yes?”

“He brought me three coolers worth of fiancée. I do understand
that he’s a big bad motherfucker that we don’t want to screw with.”

“Right. Well. I just stole his car, and it’s been his prized
possession since he was fourteen.”

Charlie goes still, and EJ sighs, turning off the stove and
pulling the bacon off the heat. She comes to the table and Charlie sits across
from her, one leg crossed under her.

“I should have told you last night. The monsters are less
terrifying in the dark,” EJ mutters. Charlie is quiet, waiting.

“Do you remember when we were growing up, and I moved away for a
year? You might not—we weren’t close.”

“I remember it,” Charlie says, the only admission she’s ever made
to being aware of EJ before six months ago.

“Mom married a real estate baron in Dallas. They went to college
together, I don’t remember all the details. So we moved. It was husband number
five, I think. Things with him went south, fast. Mom could and would deal with
a lot for the social status of whoever she was married to at any given time,
but she drew the line at criminal activities.
 
I met Jacobs then.”

Charlie’s eyes widen and she can feel the other girl working it
out. So she fills in the gaps. “I was ten, that summer. Jacobs was sixteen.”

That lingers between them, and she can feel the tiny ripples of
shock and concern. Silly little bitch, concerned for that long ago girl.

“The first time I saw Jacobs, I was at a park. Mom was busy with
Louis, and I was alone. I was alone a lot that year. Things were already
beginning to go south even though it had only been a month or so, and I think I
knew it was going to end faster than the others. But that afternoon, I was
alone, and wishing I was anywhere but fucking Dallas. And I saw him, talking to
some older kids. He reminded me of home. The way he owned everything around
him, the way he effortlessly got them to do what he wanted, and made them think
it was their idea. They were too fucking stupid to realize he’d put them
exactly where he wanted, doing what he wanted.” A tiny smile tilts her lips up
and she laughs. “But I noticed, and I laughed. That’s what made him notice me.
And that was it. Then end and the beginning, and nothing was ever the same.
Jacobs saw me. In every way that mattered—we saw each other.”

Charlie inhales sharply, because it’s said so simply. So utterly
honest and heartbreakingly vulnerable. EJ stares at the table, trying to put
that familiar wall up between them.

It isn’t working, though. It hasn’t worked with Charlie in months.
Maybe because, like Jacobs in that park, so many years ago, Charlie sees her.

“I left, not long after. Before he was done toying with those
idiots I had seen him with. I think he scared me, even then. So I left and I
went home and I thought that’d be the end of it.”

“Why wasn’t it?”

“Because when I went down stairs for dinner that evening, my
mother and Louis weren’t there. But he was.”
 

Her gaze flicks to Charlie. “Louis had a son. One who spent most
of his time with his
mother.
”

“Jacobs is your
brother?”

Her voice is shrill and disbelieving, and just a little bit
disgusted.

“Stepbrother. For a year,” EJ snaps, her eyes flashing to
Charlie’s. “And we were always more than that.”

“You were ten, EJ. That’s fucked up on so many levels.”

“Right,” EJ scoffs. “Because you gave it up to the little virgin
you were dating when you went to prom.”

“Fuck no,” Charlie laughs. “I was thirteen and fucked one of
Hayes’ teammates. But I wasn’t fucking someone six years older than me when I
was ten. He wasn’t my stepbrother.”

“Do you want to imagine all the ways Jacobs took advantage of me
or do you want to know what actually happened?” EJ asks pointedly and Charlie
makes a vague motion with one hand.

“We talked, after dinner. He wanted to know why I had laughed. And
when I told him, he looked at me like I was some kind of rare
butterfly—something he’d never seen, that he didn’t know what to do with.”

“He left after that night, and I didn’t see him for a week. And
then he moved in. I didn’t ask why, and I didn’t get an explanation—but Louis
was furious. He brought the Nova with him, and I would do my homework in the
garage while he worked under the hood. It’s the only time I’ve ever known
Jacobs to get his hands dirty, when he was working on the damn car. And he
taught me things. About his family, and mine, and how to get away from the
plans Mom was making. He taught me to play chess and made sure I wasn’t alone
all the time. He taught me how to steal, and even better—how to make other
people steal for me. How to make sure, when I did something that wasn’t quite
legal, I wouldn’t be caught. My mother was gone the week of Christmas—Louis was
trying to keep her from leaving him, so Jacobs and I sat in the house for days.
He’d smoke weed and get drunk and we’d order shitty delivery and watch movies
that gave me nightmares. He taught me how to get what I want—how to manipulate
a pizza boy into thinking I was just a lonely kid whose mother forgot to leave
some cash for the food. It didn’t matter that I
could
pay. It was a lesson, like everything with him was. I think
Jacobs saw himself in me, but the self that he was before he learned how to
lie. He saw the kid he was before he started walking down the road that led him
to whom he became. And I saw someone who didn’t see me as a pretty bride in
training.”

“And you fell in love with him,” Charlie murmurs.

EJ hesitates. She wants to deny it. But she can’t. It’s the one
thing she’s never been able to deny, the thing she’s been fighting to run from
since she was a kid. A kid wrapped up in the one thing she shouldn’t want and
couldn’t walk away from.

“Didn’t matter, though. Jacobs knew—he wasn’t an idiot. But I was
a kid, and we were related, even if only by a marriage that was falling apart.
He wasn’t going to cross that line, even if I was pushing him to. Then Mom left
Louis, and I was back in Charleston, and that was it. Everything was the same
and everything was different.”

Charlie shifts. “I remember that,” she says softly. “You came home
and you were different. Not unhappy, not really. But—restless. Like you wanted
something you had found somewhere else and we couldn’t give it to you in
Charleston. You still played the part, when we were in school and at the
Burningtree
, but it was like—you were awake.”

EJ gives Charlie a startled, searching look and Charlie offers a
weak shrug. “I paid attention.”

“Clearly,” EJ says, dryly.

“That change—it was because of Jacobs?”

“Some. And because—it was my fourth stepfather. I was getting a
pretty clear picture of what Mom wanted for me. And it’s not what I wanted.
But. Most of it was Jacobs. After I came home, I couldn’t be happy with being a
mean girl in our little bubble world, and even when I pushed the
boundaries—there was only so much I could do if I didn’t want to burst the
bubble.” She shrugs. “I was bored out of my fucking mind.”
 

“If your mother left Louis, why are you still working with
Jacobs?”

“He moved to Charleston when I was fifteen. He was twenty one, had
a trust fund and his Nova and Louis was in jail for money laundering. He didn't
tell me much, but I knew he was into some shady shit--but he was smart about
it. Not like Louis. He got an apartment and started renovating some of the
property Louis had owned in Charleston, and we started right where we had left
off."

Charlie's eyes flash and EJ smirks. "Not sex. I figured out
pretty quickly that he wasn't interested in that—he was fucking his way through
the girls who worked in his clubs, and I was his friend. He had me working with
him as soon as he hit the city. I’d tell him when a party was happening and
he’d show up with party favors. He’d feed me dirt on whose parents were
frequenting his clubs and I’d blackmail them. They never expected me to waltz
into their office with pictures of them getting beaten in a club or fucking a
girl their daughter’s age. It always got their attention really damn
fast."
 
She smiles, a tiny,
nostalgic thing. “And I was with Jacobs. I think we could have done nothing and
it would have been enough, for me. Instead, he came back and gave me the world
outside the bubble.”

"You were a kid," Charlie hisses.

"Stop being so
pissy
and offended
on my behalf." EJ snaps. "We weren't normal. We didn't fit into the
stupid, neat, little boxes. It was messy and important and life changing--he
was my best friend and my teacher, and I was his family. The only one he had
left.
Him
and Mom got along really well--they had even
when Mom was married to Louis. So it was right. It was natural."

"So how did you go from that to what you are today?"

"I grew up," EJ says simply. "And so did
he
. We were kids. Playing an adult game, and confident we
knew what the hell we were doing. But we grew up. He went away for a year, to
finish school, and when he came back, we were both different. I grew up and he
couldn't keep looking at me like I was a child. He was harder, colder. I was
furious and wanted nothing to do with him and was sleeping around just to get
him out of my head. And he--Jacobs knew. He’d always known."

"The night everything changed," EJ's voice goes soft and
distant. "I was at a charity thing with Mom. The one for cancer research
that
Koonts
heads?" Charlie nods. She knows
exactly which event EJ is talking about, a big fluffy affair with too many
flowers and shitty food. "I was drunk and angry and Jacobs showed up
halfway through. He ignored me. Flirted with every woman in the damn place, but
ignored me completely. And when I finally stumbled out, so drunk and angry I
could barely see straight, he was there."

She's quiet, and then, "He didn't even say anything. Just
dragged me behind a pillar and went down on me until I could barely stand. Then
he took me out of there. He fucked me in the parking garage, on the hood of the
Nova. Changed my world. It was what we'd been pointed at since that first
afternoon in the park." She makes a face. "Even when we're running
from shit that other people decide for us, some things are inevitable. Jacobs
and me fucking each other and hurting each other? That was always
inevitable."

"What happened after that?" Charlie whispers.

"He took me home. Dropped me off and I didn't see him again
for six months." She laughs, and it’s bitter. “The next time I saw him, he
needed me more than I wanted him, and it made things even, for the first time.”

“For what?”

“The car. He needed to put it in my name. And I wanted to do
something, anything that would shake up the endless days of polite conversation
and playing tennis at the
Burningtree
. He agreed to
let me in, not the game we’d been playing, but the real shit.
 
So I put the car in my name.”

“Why would that matter, though? I don’t understand why the car was
so important.”

She shrugs. “It’s his baby. One of the few things that Jacobs
cares about. And putting it in my name keeps it safe from search and seizure.
If things go bad with him—and it’s not a matter of if, but when—the car is
safe. Everything in the car is safe.”

“You weren’t joking when you said you have a complicated history
with him,” Charlie says.