Not For Sale (6 page)

By two o’clock, she regretted her decision. A family of tourists, five of them, had run up a bill of $120.00 and left her a two-dollar tip. A woman in booth four was still considering what to order after reading the menu for the past fifteen minutes. And the man in booth six, a puffed-up talk show host, had sent back his hamburger three different times.

“Your burger’s up.”

Caroline nodded to the middle-aged waitress who’d breezed by her, went through the swinging doors into the kitchen, retrieved the burger and took it to booth six.

At least you could take back a food order.

You couldn’t take back behavior that made you want to die just thinking about it. Or, even worse, made you remember what it had felt like to be kissed and caressed as if nothing in the world mattered half as much as—

“Miss? Miss!”

Booth six. Caroline pasted a smile on her lips.

“Yes, sir?”

“Does the chef not understand the meaning of the word, ‘rare’?”

Caroline looked at the burger. It was bleeding into its plate like an extra in a slasher movie. She picked up the plate, forced a smile, marched through the swinging doors into the kitchen and set the plate on the counter beside the grill.

“Not rare enough.”

Caroline echoed the fry cook’s sigh before she hurried back onto the serving floor just in time for the woman in booth three to make “check, please” motions with her fingers.

Caroline nodded, took her order pad from her pocket and
tallied the bill. It came to a lot but then, everything in this place was costly.

Not as costly as what she’d done last night.

Sex with a stranger. A sexy, gorgeous stranger.

Thinking about it made her cringe…except, except there was this tiny part of her that kept whispering,
Don’t regret it. It was everything you ever dreamed and more.

“Miss!”

Oh God.
“Yes, sir?”

“Where is my hamburger?”

“Sir. You sent it back. The cook is—”

“I want it now, miss.”

“But, sir—”

“Are you arguing with me, miss?”

“No. Certainly not. But—”

“Get the manager. Get him now! I am not going to be insulted by—”

It was the final straw. The job, the patrons. Enough. There were other restaurants, other jobs, and she had five hundred dollars coming to her. Last night, she’d thought how awful it would be to take that money but that was ridiculous. She had done what Dani had asked her to do, and that was what Dani would pay her for doing it.

Caroline tossed her order pad on the counter. Undid the tie of the frilly white apron all the waitresses wore and tossed it at the idiot in booth six.

“I beg your pardon,” he sputtered.

Caroline flashed a smile. A real one, the first one since she’d awakened this morning.

“And well you should,” she said sweetly.

And she left.

Should she call Dani, or just show up at her door? She’d never been to Dani’s but she remembered the address. Just show up,
she decided. Get the money Dani owed her and that would be that.

Dani’s address turned out to be a brownstone on a trendy street in the sixties. Caroline raised her eyebrows. Maybe she only thought she’d remembered the address; maybe she had it wrong.

But when she rang the bell, it was Dani who opened the door.

“Caroline? What are you doing here?”

Caroline felt foolish. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. Dani was wearing a scarlet dress cut to midthigh and knee-high, stiletto-heeled black leather boots. Her perfect face was perfectly made up; her brown hair seemed sexily windblown but any woman who’d ever spent two minutes struggling with hair that really was windblown would know a hairstylist had probably taken an hour to get it to look that way.

Caroline swallowed dryly. “I came to—to…You owe me money,” she blurted.

“Oh. Oh, that’s right, I do.” Dani stepped back. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in. You can’t stay long—I’m getting ready to go out.”

“Go out where?” Caroline said, just to have something to say.

“Just out,” Dani said briskly, heels tapping as she made her way across the clearly expensive floor of a designer-expensive living room. “Five hundred, right?” she said, opening her handbag.

Caroline nodded as she looked around her. She’d been in the apartments of a couple of other grad students. They all looked like hers: thrift shop furniture, dingy walls.

Dani’s place was a palace.

“Wow,” Caroline said softly.

Dani swung toward her, followed Caroline’s gaze and smiled. “Like it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

Dani cocked her head. “You know,” she said slowly, “you could have a place like this, if you wanted.”

“Me?” Caroline laughed. “Right. By hitting the lottery.”

Dani smiled again. “By working.”

“Oh, sure.”

“I’m serious, Caroline. I could, you know, get you started. Introduce you to some people, help you buy some clothes.”

Caroline shook her head. “I don’t understand. You mean, model?”

“Model?” Dani laughed. “Well, that’s one way of considering it.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think—”

The doorbell pealed. Dani made a face. “I was
so
not expecting company this afternoon! Here.” She held out five hundred-dollar bills. “Well, go on, take the money.”

Caroline did. Hesitantly. Suddenly, accepting it seemed dead wrong. Her stomach gave a little jump.

“May I—may I use the bathroom?”

“Down the hall, on the right.” Dani rolled her eyes as she
click-clicked
her way to the door. “Just be quick, okay? I told you, I have a date.”

Caroline locked the bathroom door behind her. She felt hot and cold all at once. The money, the damned money had reminded her of everything all over again. Why had she come here? Why had she accepted the five hundred dollars? Well, she wouldn’t. She’d give it back. She’d—

Ohmygod!

She could hear voices. Dani’s. And a man’s. Not just any man. The voice belonged to Lucas Vieira.

Quickly, she undid the lock. Stepped into the hall. Saw
Lucas, his tall, powerful body so familiar to her now. And Dani, facing him, hands on her hips, face tilted up.

“Of course I’m Dani Sinclair,” she was saying. “And who the hell are you?”

“I am Lucas Vieira,” Lucas growled. “And you are not Dani Sinclair.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I should know who I—”

“Lucas?”

Caroline moved slowly down the hall. Lucas looked up. She saw the confusion in his eyes. “Dani?”

“Dani?” the real Dani said, and then she laughed. “I get it! You’re the guy from last night. And you think that she, that Caroline, is me!”

Lucas’s expression went from perplexed to confused. “What the hell is going on here?”

Caroline licked her lips. “I can explain. I’m really Caroline. Caroline Hamilton. See, Dani was supposed to—to be your translator—”

Lucas’s mouth twisted. “My date, you mean,” he said tonelessly. “The one Jack Gordon arranged.”

“I don’t know anybody named Jack Gordon. Dani arranged it. And yes, I was supposed to be your date.”

“And you agreed.”

“Well, yes. I didn’t want to do it. I really, really didn’t want to do it. But you have to understand, I needed the money.”

“You needed the money.” Lucas’s gaze fell to the bills Caroline clutched in her hand, then rose to her face.
“Cristos,”
he growled, the word thick with disgust, “you needed the money.”

Caroline drew herself up. “Five hundred dollars might not mean anything to you, but to me—”

Lucas swung toward Dani. “That’s it? Gordon paid you your usual fee and all you gave her was five hundred dollars?”

“No one’s paid me a dime yet,” Dani said coolly. “All I’ve had out of this so far is more trouble than I really want.”

“What usual fee? Who’s Jack Gordon? What trouble?” Caroline came quickly forward, stopped inches from Lucas, whose anger was all but palpable. “Lucas.” Her voice trembled. “Five hundred dollars is a lot of money. I needed it. And, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve never done anything like that before.”

She saw a stillness come over him, a coolness replace the rage.

“Haven’t you?”

She shook her head. Pretend to be someone she wasn’t? Of course not.

“No,” she said emphatically, “never!”

“You want me to believe last night was your first time.”

Caroline stiffened. “You act as if this was all my fault, but what about you? You were part of the game. You paid me to play a role.”

The muscle in Lucas’s jaw flickered. She was right. He’d paid her to pretend to be his lover. As for what had happened afterward…

That had been a role, too.

Going to bed with strangers was her profession. She was a call girl. A prostitute. A woman who sold herself to men. And he—he had thought, if only for a moment, that something special had happened between them.

Rage sent a flood of heat through his blood. He wanted to put his fist through the wall, to grab Caroline Hamilton and shake her like a rag doll.

Instead, he took out his checkbook and a gold pen, wrote two checks, tore both out and gave one to Dani Sinclair. She looked at it, then at him.

“Paid in full,” he said coldly.

“Indeed, Mr. Vieira.” She smiled. “Lucas.”

“Stick with Mr. Vieira,” he said, even more coldly, and held out the second check, to Caroline.

“What’s that?” she asked in bewilderment.

“It’s what I owe you for last night.”

Heat shot into her face. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Of course I do,” he said impatiently. “I told Gordon I’d pay you a thousand dollars.”

“No.” Caroline shook her head; she took a quick step back, her eyes never leaving the check in his outstretched hand. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Take the damned check!”

“I don’t want it.”

“I never renege on a deal.” He shoved the check at her. “Take it.”

“Lucas.” Her voice trembled. “Whatever you’re thinking—”

“You need the money,” he said coldly, “remember? And I sure as hell had everything I needed from you.”

She didn’t move. All the color had drained from her face. Tears glittered in her eyes. Something inside him seemed to crack. He wanted to take her in his arms, kiss her until she stopped weeping.

Cristos,
she was a damned fine actress.

But she would never make a fool of him again.

His hand closed around her wrist and he hauled her against him. He bent his head, took her mouth, kissed her hard enough to make her gasp. She raised her hand, balled it, hit his shoulder—and then her fist loosened, her fingers sought his cheek, spread over it and her lips softened under his, parted.

Lucas cursed.

Then he flung Caroline from him, let the check flutter to the floor and walked out.

L
UCAS
knew he was in a dangerous frame of mind.

Caroline Hamilton had lied to him, not just about who she was but
what
she was. The knowledge that he had taken her to his bed made him furious.

He knew there was no point going back to his office. Making decisions, even dealing with people, would be a mistake when he was fighting to keep his temper under control.

He had to work off some of his energy, find a physical focal point for the adrenaline raging through him. Going to the gym would surely do it.

An hour later, he was sweaty, breathing hard—but his mood was still the same.

Okay, he thought grimly as he showered, okay, there was only one other way to deal with this. To hell with permitting one deceitful woman to take up residence in his head. If a horse threw you, you climbed right back on.

He had numbers in his BlackBerry, women he’d met, women who’d made it clear they were eager for him to call. Within minutes, he’d filled his weekend with enough variety to erase the memory of Caroline Hamilton forever.

He went home, shaved, changed, phoned a restaurant where it took a month to get a table and, of course, got one for eight o’clock and prepared to enjoy the hell out of a brunette who greeted him with a big smile.

Two hours later, he pleaded an early appointment the next morning, took her home and left her at her door.

“I had a wonderful time,” she gushed, and he knew damned well it was a lie. He’d been the worst kind of company: silent, unsmiling, rushing her through a meal that normally would have taken three hours and then pretending he had no idea what she hinted at when she stepped close and turned her pretty face up to his.

“So did I,” he said.

Liar,
he thought…but not a liar anywhere near the equal of Caroline Hamilton.

He went back to his gym Saturday, played a couple of games of racquetball, lifted weights, traded the workout room for a run through Central Park. At night, instead of simply sending a check to a charity auction, he attended it with a redhead with an infectious smile and legs that went on forever. Afterward, he took her for a light supper because he knew it was the right thing to do but when she took his hand and said she lived nearby and the night was really young and it would be lovely if he came up for drinks, he pleaded another early appointment, delivered her to her door and left her there with a handshake.

Merda,
a handshake!

He made himself a vow. He would do much better tomorrow, when he had a date to take a stunning Broadway actress to lunch.

If anything, he did worse.

“It isn’t you,” he said, when she asked him what was wrong, and before he could say, “it’s me,” she was on her feet and gone.

Enough.

He went home, packed, phoned his pilot, flew to Martha’s Vineyard. A banker he knew had a weekend home on the
beach; the guy and his wife were having a big party. They’d invited him but he’d declined.

“Turn up if you change your mind,” the banker had said.

Well, he had definitely changed his mind.

He drank some excellent wine, ate a grilled-to-perfection lobster, got hit on by two women…and excused himself and went, alone, for a walk along the sand.

The day was not the kind chambers of commerce hope for. The sea was the color of pewter, the waves were high, the sky was bleak. All of that was fine.

It suited his mood.

Why in hell couldn’t he stop thinking about Caroline? He despised her, despised what she was. So what if she was beautiful? He’d had the chance to get involved with several women equally beautiful in the past couple of days and he’d walked away from each one. He hadn’t wanted to pretend interest in their conversations or smile at their jokes, and he sure as hell had not wanted to take one of them to bed.

And yet, he knew that if Caroline materialized in front of him at this moment, as willing and eager as she’d been the other night, he’d strip her of her clothes, take her in his arms, draw her down to the sand and bury himself inside her.

And she’d respond. No subterfuge, no games, no coy teasing.

“Damnit,” he snarled, because it had
all
been subterfuge. She, and everything she’d done, had been an endless, ugly, practiced lie.

Turning him on, making all those little sounds, those whispers, driving him out of his mind with want and need…

They were the cornerstones of her profession. She traded sex for money.

And if there were moments it had seemed as if she’d never let a man do half the things he’d done to her that night, maybe that was her specialty. What had he heard it called, that blend
of sex and innocence? The Madonna-whore thing. He’d never wanted those traits in a woman himself but then, he’d never been with a woman like Caroline before.

God knew, he would never be with one again.

The Elins of this world were more honest. They traded sex with powerful men for the tokens of that power. He wasn’t a fool; he understood that. He’d always understood it. Jewels. Gifts. Being seen in the right places at the right times. It was what such women wanted and absolutely, that was more honest, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

The sky went from gray to charcoal. Lightning flashed out over the Atlantic; rain beat down with a swift ferocity. He jogged back to the party, laughed along with everyone else at his soaked condition, took a taxi to the airport and got the hell out of Dodge.

Monday morning, things looked better.

He woke up feeling more like himself. His P.A. was back at her desk. His coffee tasted the way it was supposed to. Jack Gordon was history. Six months severance pay, no letter of recommendation.

Goodbye to the old, hello to the new. No question about it. Caroline Hamilton had become a meaningless memory.

He had meetings until noon, then a quick lunch at his desk. At one o’clock, in the middle of a complex telephone conversation with his attorney to tie up the final legalities of the Rostov deal, it all fell apart.

Nothing had changed. Why tell himself it had? That he’d filled the day with enough crap to keep six men busy was the sole reason he hadn’t spent it staring out the window.

Gordon was a sneaky, ingratiating little worm. He’d deserved to be fired, but what penalty had Caroline paid? She had lied to him. The scene at Dani Sinclair’s apartment, his
show of anger, tossing that check at her, hadn’t even come close to settling things.

And he had to do that. Settle things. Erase the memory of her lies. The only question was, how?

“Lucas?” his attorney was saying, “Lucas? Man, are you still there?”

Lucas took a breath. “Sorry. Yes, I’m here but something’s come up.” He paused. “Ted. If I needed an investigator…”

“I can recommend one.” The lawyer rattled off a name and phone number, and then it was he who paused. “Can I help in any way? ”

Lucas forced a chuckle. “No, no, it’s nothing special.”

The hell it wasn’t.

He hung up the phone and got to his feet. The only way to put this behind him was to confront Caroline, tell her what he thought of her, tell her.

How should he know what he’d tell her? The right words would come when he saw her.

A couple of hours later, he had more information than he needed. All he’d wanted was Caroline’s address. Now, he had her age: twenty-four. Her place of birth: some little town in upstate New York. Her education: an undergraduate degree in French. Now she was working toward a Master’s degree in Russian and Slavic Studies.

The P.I. didn’t come up with the rest of it, that she had an income on the side, but Lucas hadn’t expected that he would. Caroline was clever. Her occupation, if you could call it that, would be carefully hidden.

Her address was no surprise at all.

She lived in one of those Manhattan neighborhoods that had gone from providing shelter for those who sweated to make enough to live on to providing it to those who had more money than they could ever need. It was home to hotshot
young Wall Street traders who thought selling overvalued stocks entitled them to seven figure bonuses, and spoiled little rich girls whose parents funded their extravagant lifestyles while they played at working in the fashion business.

He’d been to a couple of dinner parties in Hell’s Kitchen, so he knew what Caroline’s place would be like.

An airy duplex in what had once been a tenement. A converted loft in what had once been a factory. Lots of pale wood, exposed brick, uncomfortable furniture and indecipherable art.

Expensive, but not a problem for a woman who was a student by day but had a source of income from an old but infinitely profitable profession.

Lucas almost laughed as he left his office.

Student by Day.

It sounded like the title of a bad movie. Only problem? It was real. And he, who had never paid for sex in his life, who had never been with a woman for any reason but mutual desire…

He had bought her services.

His laughter died.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered, and a guy walking by on the street, even here in Manhattan where people never looked at each other, never showed a reaction, even here, the guy glanced at his face and detoured around him.

Traffic was a mess. Forget hailing a taxi. Walking was faster. And it kept him moving, which was what he needed right now.

Gradually, the streets changed, went from commercial to residential until, finally, he was in Caroline’s neighborhood, then on her street.

It wasn’t what he’d expected.

A handful of streets had not been converted from careworn to chic. This was one of them.

Overflowing trash cans lined the curb. Gang names and symbols adorned graffiti-filled walls. A fetid breeze sent bits of debris scattering along the sidewalk. All the buildings looked tired, Caroline’s, in particular. It was a five-story pile of age-darkened red brick that seemed held together by a century’s worth of grime.

A police car was parked in front of it.

Lucas felt his heart thump.

He knew some cops. They were, for the most part, good people. Still, thanks to his childhood in Rio, there were times when the sight of a police uniform or police car still made him uneasy.

This was one of those times.

And that was ridiculous. The cops were here. So what? It was not his problem.

The building’s front door was not locked. His mouth thinned. Unlocked front doors were never a good idea but on streets like these, they were an invitation to trouble.

Not his problem, either.

The vestibule smelled bad. Dirt, cooking and something more pungent that was probably better not identified, hung thick in the air.

Again, not his concern.

There was another door ahead and, to his left, a panel of labeled call buttons. The one for apartment 3G read
C. Hamilton.

At least Caroline had the good sense not to use her first name. Not that it mattered all that much. Using only a first initial was pretty much a giveaway that the name belonged to a woman.

He thought of the women he’d taken out over the weekend.
They all lived in buildings with security cameras, locks and what looked like retired wrestlers as doormen.

So what? Caroline’s security—or the lack of it—came under that same not-my-problem heading, as did the fact that the interior door yawned onto a dim hall.

How she lived meant nothing to him.

It just ticked him off that an intelligent woman—and she was smart, he had to give her that—would live in a place like this. It certainly couldn’t be because of money, not when she made her living as she did.

Lucas frowned.

Then, why had she let him pay her only a thousand dollars for that night in his bed? God only knew what being with her should have cost him. He’d never put a price on such things but if he had—if he had.

Lucas spat out a word that was as ugly in Portuguese as it would have been in English. Who gave a damn? Not him.

He took the sagging stairs and paused on the third-floor landing. Apartment 3G was directly ahead. That feeling of unease, an icy clenching in his gut, swept through him again.

Something was definitely wrong.

The police car at the curb. The unnatural quiet of the old building, broken now by the barely imperceptible
snick
of the door to the apartment adjoining Caroline’s opening an inch, then quickly closing again.

He moved forward fast, pressed his hand, flat, against her buzzer, then hammered his fist against the door.

“Caroline?” He grasped the knob, rattled it. “Damnit, Caroline—”

The door swung open. Caroline stood before him, wearing sweats, no makeup, her face pale, eyes reddened, her hair damp and wild on her shoulders.

“Mother of God,” he said hoarsely,
“querida,
what is it?”

“Lucas,” she said, “Lucas…”

Every logical thought, all the rage, all the bitter desire for payback, flew out of his head. He opened his arms and she flew into them.

He gathered her to his heart, held her close, whispered soothing words to her in Portuguese. She was trembling; he thought of a puppy he’d once found in an alley in Rio, how it had whimpered and trembled, how he had held it in his arms until it was silent and still…

“Caroline. Sweetheart.
Que aconteceu?
What happened?”

“A man,” she said. “A man…”

“Excuse me, sir.”

Lucas swept her behind him at the sound of the male voice. Every muscle in his body went on alert—but the source of the voice was a uniformed police officer, emerging from a doorway to the left. A second, shorter officer stood just behind him.

The cops from the patrol car.

His blood became a river of ice.

“What happened here?” he demanded.

The first officer took a step forward.

“Sir? Please identify yourself.”

What he wanted to do was sweep Caroline into his arms and take her from this place, to turn back the clock so that it was still Thursday night and she was safe in his bed.

“Sir?”

Lucas nodded as he curved his arm around Caroline and drew her to his side.

“I am Lucas Vieira. And I asked you a question.”