Tattoo Thief (BOOK 1) (18 page)

“Not dancing,” he says, executing a complicated step that I don’t remember learning. But I keep up.

“My first time at a, uh, charity gala,” I explain. “I take it this is not your first rodeo?”

“Rodeo. That’s cute.” Peter chuckles, again displaying dimples that look like a sculptor poked them into clay. With the tux and his carefully styled hair, the effect is dashing.

“I’ve been going for years. My mom’s on all the boards,” he says. I take this to mean old money. Or at least big, new money.

The song ends and Peter holds me on the dance floor for another without asking. The wine has done great things for my confidence without killing my coordination. We sweep easily across the floor in time to the music, a sultry tango that has me pressed into Peter’s hips.

I feel my hormones surge and take stock: Anthony hasn’t called me since the disaster on Tuesday. Gavin’s bubble seems perpetually stuck on gray.

But now I’m here in the arms of a charming, probably filthy rich man who’s not scandalously older than me. It’s weird and wonderful and I try to forget for a while that I don’t fit in.

“May I cut in?” The song is not quite over and Peter scowls at the man who taps me on the shoulder. The man shrugs and offers me his hand, but says to Peter, “Your mother wants you.”

Peter turns me over to the man I take for his father, though there’s little resemblance. He’s shorter than Peter, with a wide belly and a thick, gray mustache, but his eyes are kind.

“Forgive me for interrupting your dance with my stepson,” he says, turning us into the crowd of dancers. “When my wife wants something, she won’t take no for an answer.” He nods to a woman in a floor-length black gown and red hair as vibrant as Peter’s.

“Tell me about yourself,” he says as the band shifts to a silver foxtrot. I offer my practiced lines about work and he smiles.

“Surely there’s more to life than work? What else do you do?”

I balk. It’s only ever been about work. Working through school. Working my first journalism gig. Working at the coffee shop and the brewpub. There’s not much left of me, unless you count canoe trips and hanging out with friends.

“I write,” I tell him. And it’s true. Since I left journalism, I’ve filled several notebooks with short stories, poems, and essays.

I didn’t suffer through four years of J-school just to end up as a coffee shop manager or a rock star’s house sitter. I need to
make
something. I need to create what wasn’t there before.

But I worry that I’m not hardened enough to cut it as a journalist or skilled enough to be some other kind of writer, and I find myself explaining all of this to the man on the dance floor.

I need a shrink.

What would my mother say?

“Let me give you a word of advice,” the man says, his deep voice rumbling through his chest, “and don’t you know free advice is worth every penny? In my life, I’ve learned that you have to do what you love. Or die. I know that for sure.”

I let him twirl me again and then raise my brow in a question.

“I did what I was good at for twenty-five years,” he says, “but it ate me alive. It nearly killed me—a heart attack and a triple bypass. So I quit.”

“I can relate to that,” I say, and tell him why I left my first journalism job. The hours sucked and the pay sucked, but what really made it horrible was writing about a new dead kid every week. I had to show up on the grieving family’s doorstep and ask for an interview.

I can’t count how many nights I drove home, blinking back tears as I thought of the story I’d just filed.

“You’ve got plenty of time,” he assures me. “You’ll figure it out.”

We turn to leave the floor at the song’s end and Peter is waiting for me, watching his stepfather with a tight smile. I’m transferred from one man’s hand to the other’s and Peter leads me away from his mother and stepfather.

“You want to get out of here?”

I search the room for Dan and see him chatting with an elegant couple near the bar. “Let me just go tell my boss I’m leaving.”

“I’ll get my car. Meet you out front.”

We part and I approach Dan, waiting for my cue to politely interrupt. He introduces me and then I tell him I’m taking a friend up on his offer for a ride home.

Dan hears the lie, knowing I couldn’t possibly have a friend at this event, but goes along with it in front of the couple.

“Text me to let me know you made it home, OK?”

I promise.

Outside, it’s a balmy night and I see Peter talking on his phone, but no car. I walk up to him and he smiles and disconnects the call.

We turn to the roar of a deep-throated engine. A valet pops out of a screaming yellow Lamborghini. Peter steps ahead of me to open the passenger door and I slide into the low-slung seat.

Truth? The bumblebee color scheme is ridiculous, with yellow leather down the middle of the seats and a yellow glove compartment beneath the dash.

Peter palms a tip to the valet and folds himself into the driver’s seat, giving the engine an extra rev before pulling out of the semicircular driveway. I feel my body pressed back as he drives fast.

I don’t know where we’re going, but I think we’re westbound. Soon I see signs for the Lincoln Tunnel and New Jersey.

“New Jersey?”

“It’s somewhere to drive,” Peter shrugs. “I want you to see something.”

I lean into the yellow seat, content to watch the city lights whiz past, electronica pumping through his car’s stereo loudly enough to discourage conversation. Twenty minutes pass in a blur and I don’t move Peter’s hand off my knee when he rests it there.

We pull up to a high-end hotel and another valet jumps to greet us, pulling open my door and averting his gaze as I attempt to exit the car without flashing him. Peter makes no such pretense, watching me intently and taking my hand. He exchanges his keys with the valet for a key card and takes me inside.

We bypass the lobby reception desk and I follow Peter to the elevators. My gut twists with unease. Peter wasn’t in a talkative mood on the drive here.

He swipes his key card in the elevator panel, punches the top-floor button, and we ascend, my eyes taking in the undone bow tie, his collar open by a button, his neat haircut tapering at his neck.

The effect is an aphrodisiac, and I let him pull me closer, his hand draped around my hip as he steers me to a door that opens with another swipe of his key card.

It’s a suite, but it’s not the striking, modern décor that takes my breath away. The floor-to-ceiling windows give us an impressive view of the New York City skyline.

“Pretty great, huh?”

“That’s not even the word for it.” I’m in awe, feeling the city’s magnetic pull. Peter leads me to a cream leather divan and roots around in the minibar. He pours two glasses of brown liquid without asking and brings one to me.

“How’d you get a key?” I ask, feeling a bit stupid considering how smoothly the exchange with the valet went down.

“A call and a credit card. Easy-peasy.” He smiles at me again but this time I don’t feel the warmth and mischief I experienced when meeting him. This time his eyes are sharper, more calculating. His hand snakes up my spine.

“Are you staying here tonight? You didn’t have any luggage.” I see the answer in his eyes even before the whole question is out of my mouth.

“I thought we might want a little privacy,” he says, and his fingers find the zipper on my dress, pulling it down in one fluid motion. “You weren’t just teasing, were you?”

Alarm bells are clanging in my head but I swallow another sip of liquid courage. Something’s different—I didn’t feel this chilly apprehension when Anthony and I were making out.

I reach to put the glass on a table and knock my clutch onto the floor.

Peter catches my hand before I can reach for my purse, pulling me to him and pressing a hard kiss on my mouth. “I wasn’t teasing,” he says, and his hand is under my skirt, grasping for me.

I flinch, but he doesn’t notice, intent on his mission. I squirm even as I let him keep kissing me, trying to slow his hand’s invasion. He holds me tighter, his hand moving from my thigh to reach between my legs and I twist my face away from his, slamming my knees together.

“Peter. Stop. It’s too much.”

His green eyes harden and his dimples vanish along with my expectation for a harmless make-out session. I want to get out. Now.

I stand up and he yanks my arm back. I land on my ass with an
oof
and nearly topple over. But Peter catches me, banding me between his arms, his hands sliding up my ribcage, thumbs reaching my breasts.

“Let’s try this again without getting all worked up about it,” he says. His voice is slithery-smooth, his tone comforting, as if I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“No!” I holler, and the warning bells are transformed into a five-alarm fire as I try to twist away from the anchor of his grip. I’m stuck, panicked, and so I move my arm fast toward his face. He ducks, my wrist just clipping his ear.

He grabs for my arm and I remember a lesson from a long-ago self-defense class, throwing a punch to his throat with my other arm. He sputters and chokes, clawing at me as I wrench my body from his grasp. I hear a sickening tear as my dress parts wide past the base of its zipper.

Peter snarls, recovering from my punch that probably surprised him more than hurt him. I flee the room, kick off my heels in the hall and yank open an emergency stairwell door. I take the treads two at a time.

I’m down four flights before I pause to listen for footsteps. Nothing. I keep moving, wondering if he’s taking the elevator to the lobby and if he’ll try to stop me.

I’m trapped, shoeless, with my ass hanging out the back of my torn dress. What the hell was I thinking, going with a complete stranger just because he asked? The truth is that I let his money do the talking.

I reach the lobby level, but instead of opening that door, I go one level deeper, hitting the service entrance, praying it’s unlocked. It is, and I’m in the bowels of this hotel, cheap lighting and dingy paint in stark contrast to the five-star lobby.

The employee locker room is vacant, lined with dozens of sealed lockers. I fish a dirty maid’s uniform out of a laundry basket and put it on, trying not to imagine what the woman who wore it had to touch.

Lulu’s beautiful beaded dress is almost completely split where Peter ripped it, but I can’t bring myself to leave it in the trash. I wad it up and tuck it under my arm.

I prowl to the back of the locker room and find an old pair of sneakers, dingy dark gray with the insides worn away. They’re at least three sizes too large, but I put them on anyway.

I leave the locker room and slink down the hall, away from the stairwell. I’m praying for some back entry point, somewhere I can escape. When I find a door marked EXIT, I freeze.

My phone. My wallet. My keys.

All of them are still on Peter’s hotel room floor.

I want to cry in frustration, but I’m too emotionally wrung-out. I just have to keep going. I hit the wide bar on the door, exploding into a warm, clear night with New York shining in the distance. I skirt the hotel, cutting diagonally toward the road where I find a lone cab waiting.

I am saved.

I yank open its back door and collapse inside, telling the driver Gavin’s now-familiar address. At least Peter doesn’t know where I live.

I shudder, imagining him snooping through my wallet, finding my Oregon driver’s license with my old address.

I’m glad I’ve password-protected my phone. I originally did it to guard against my mother’s prying eyes, but now she would be a welcome intrusion. I’d tell her
anything
if I could just end this nightmare.

The taxi pulls up in front of Gavin’s apartment and Charles is there, opening my door without a flicker of curiosity about my ridiculous outfit.

This guy is good.

“Charles, I need some help. My purse is lost—could you please lend me enough for cab fare?”

“It would be my pleasure.” I stand there awkwardly as Charles forks over a wad of crisp twenties to the driver. As the taxi pulls away, he takes my arm and helps me into the lobby, the extra-extra-large shoes forcing me to shuffle to keep them on my feet.

“I know you’re going to ask—” I start.

“Of course not, Beryl. We’re friends. I don’t need to ask, and you don’t need to tell.” He pulls a key ring from his pocket and finds a tiny key to unlock a cabinet behind the reception desk. He takes a key off a hook inside the cabinet and hands it to me.

“This is a spare.”

“Thank you.” My heart thumps hard in gratitude for this man.

“I’m glad you’re home safe and sound, and when you’ve put this far enough behind you to be able to laugh about it, well, then, come tell me the story.”

“I will.”

I throw the sneakers and the maid’s uniform in Gavin’s trashcan and leave Lulu’s ruined dress in a puddle on the floor.

I’m wrecked emotionally but stone cold sober. I pour myself a massive glass of ice water and collapse on Gavin’s new living room couch. It wraps me in soft leather.

But what I need is a
real
hug from a real friend—someone to tell me it’s going to be all right. Stella’s at a show. The rest of my friends are thousands of miles away. And the one person I really want to talk to is unreachable, no doubt traipsing through an African jungle or across a savannah.

And he doesn’t want me. I wipe my eyes hard as the tears come, loneliness threatening to overwhelm me. I realize how much I looked forward to chats with Gavin. He was important to me, just for being there.

I crack open my laptop and send him an email anyway.

Gavin. I need you.

Instantly, I regret hitting send—I swear, my fingers get me in trouble almost as often as my mouth does. He’ll read that and be totally confused. So I justify sending him another message.

Sorry about that weird last email. I know you’ll read it and think I’m crazy. Don’t freak out. I just need a friend to talk to tonight.

Things with Jasper are good, but things with me have gone from weird to worse. Tonight I went to a charity ball full of rich people, and like a dummy I though it made them trustworthy.