The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) (2 page)

He sat at the bar all night and watched me.

His constant gaze felt like a touch. I did my best to ignore him, but even while I was waiting on clients and chatting with my regulars, I couldn’t shake the oppressive sensation of being watched. Even worse, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t stop watching
him.
He rolled his glass between his hands, alternating between water and bourbon; made small talk with Mike; talked for a while with one of the dancers who approached him. And stared at me.

I wondered where he had gotten that suit. Maybe he stole it from somebody.

“What’s up with that guy at the bar?” Binh asked me in passing, when we were both waiting for Mike to make some drinks. “He’s giving you the evil eye or something.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen him before.” A blatant lie.

“Weird,” Binh said. “Maybe he’s got a crush on you. Like, a sexy, evil crush.”

“Maybe,” I said, and then Mike, bless him, slid my extra dry martini across the bar, and I was able to escape further questioning.

I glanced at Max as I walked away—stupid, so stupid. He was looking at me, of course. We made eye contact, and a sudden surge of heat rolled through me, from my head to my toes.

Damn
it. I’d forgotten he had that effect on me.

I moved away from him, furious, bewildered, bearing the martini on my tray.

I shouldn’t have slapped him.

Why
now
? I had been working at the club for five years. If he wanted to track me down, he could have showed up almost any night of the week for the last half decade. Why tonight? What did he want?

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world...

After I delivered the martini, and listened to Mr. Park talk about his newest grandchild, and accepted the folded hundred dollar bill he slipped into my hand, I turned back toward the bar, and my traitorous eyes moved unerringly to where Max was sitting.

Except he wasn’t sitting there anymore.

He had gone.

I exhaled. The knot in my chest didn’t unravel.

I had a feeling he would be back.

Around midnight, things finally slowed down. Wilkinson’s party had ended, and Amy and Tubs were back on the main floor. The older gentlemen who liked to have a drink in the evening and admire the pretty ladies on stage had long since departed for their homes and beds. The horny junior traders realized they had to be at work at the crack of dawn the next day and began trickling out. I let Binh take my remaining tables and retreated to the now-empty bar, where Mike had a plate of truffle fries waiting for me.

“You’re a godsend,” I told him, stuffing a few fries in my mouth.

“You ladies have had a busy night,” he said. “And I know you get crabby when you don’t have time for dinner.”

“Crabby,” I repeated. “I’m not a crustacean.”

“Near enough,” he said, and turned away to make another drink.

I sighed and ate my fries.

Scarlet was on stage, gyrating around the pole, wearing nothing but a g-string and tasseled pasties. I watched her idly as she finished her routine, admiring the way she could lift her leg above her head. I had no talent for dancing and no desire to get naked in public on a nightly basis, but the dancers at the club were the best of the best, talented as athletes and with the charmed tongues of Greek goddesses. Men became insensible fools around them, drooling, open-fisted. It was a wonder.

Scarlet ended her dance, posed, and descended into the audience to collect her tips. Then she shrugged into her dressing gown and made her way toward the bar, moving expertly in heels so high that I would have toppled over like a baby deer. “Glass of water, Mike,” she said, sidling up to the bar, and shooting me a wry smile.

“Just water?” Mike asked, filling a glass for her. “Don’t you want something stronger?”

She grinned. “Maybe later.” She hoisted herself onto the stool beside me and accepted the glass that Mike handed to her. “So, Beth. I heard a rumor about you.”

“Is that so,” I said. The club was a constant, seething pit of gossip and intrigue. I tried to stay out of it, but long experience had taught me that it was next to impossible to fully rise above the fray. I knew the waitresses and dancers saw me as something of a challenge: I revealed so little information about my personal life that they seized on every tidbit and created fanciful mountains out of molehills.

“Apparently you slapped a man across the face in Germaine’s office,” she said, and my blood ran to ice. Not just a rumor, then, and I would be hearing about this until the end of my days. These busybodies would never let it go.

“I heard that same rumor,” Mike said. “Funny how that works.”

I frowned at them, hoping I could brazen my way through. “I can’t imagine where you would have heard something like that.” Germaine wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone, so unless someone had planted a hidden camera in Germaine’s office, that meant—

“From the man himself,” Scarlet said, confirming my suspicions. “Nice guy. We chatted for a while and he told me he liked my tattoos. What’d he do to get you so pissed off? I’ve never seen you lose your temper.”

“Yeah, seriously,” Mike said. “Beth’s the ice queen. Nothing shakes you up. Are you sure you have feelings?”

“You aren’t funny,” I told him. “It’s nothing. It was nothing. He’s—it doesn’t matter.”

“Old boyfriend?” Scarlet asked. “Jilted ex-lover? Long-lost cousin?

“It’s nothing,” I said again, grinding out the words. I had no desire whatsoever to hash out my complicated history with Max. Especially not to Scarlet and Mike, who couldn’t keep their mouths shut if their lives depended on it.

Mike shook his head at me and went down to the other end of the bar to make a drink for Keisha. As soon as he was gone, Scarlet turned to me, a serious expression on her face, and said, “Beth, this guy isn’t, like… He isn’t stalking you or anything, is he?”

“No,” I said, surprised and touched by her concern. “It’s not that. It’s just—it’s complicated.”

“Isn’t it always,” she said. “Okay. Well. You’re tough. I know you’ll be smart about it. If you need help with this guy, I mean—you know Javier would wrestle bears for you, and Germaine won’t put up with anyone hassling her employees. If he’s bothering you, we’ll help you deal with him.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling at her, genuinely moved. As irritating as I sometimes found my co-workers, most of them had their hearts in the right places. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So, do you want to see Sassy’s wedding announcement?” she asked.

I was so grateful for the subject change that I could have kissed her. “Scarlet,” I said, “I would love to.”

CHAPTER TWO

Beth

Thursday was my day off. I woke up with a cold knot of dread in my belly that dissipated when I opened my eyes and realized what day it was. I didn’t need to go to work that evening. If Max was there again, I wouldn’t have to see him.

Not that he would be deterred by my absence. He would just keep showing up until I agreed to speak to him. I
knew
him.

Or had. Past tense. A lot could change in eight years.

I got up and made myself a cup of coffee, watered my houseplants, and sat down at my laptop for the day’s writing. The scene I had been struggling with yesterday stared back at me, the cursor flashing, waiting for me to finish my unfinished sentence.

Dusk rose from the ground
.

I erased the words and typed them again, on the off chance that my fingers would keep moving and produce something that I wouldn’t, for a change, end up deleting.
Dusk rose from the ground. It seeped up from the concrete, black as coal dust. The sun’s last light gleamed orange in the west. My hands were chapped raw from sitting outside all day in the wind blowing off the East River. I had lost my only pair of gloves. Max, beside me, lips chapped—

Stop. Go back. This book wasn’t about me. There was no
I.
There were no missing gloves.

There was no Max.

My Max, my first love. My first everything. Max the thief, the golden-tongued liar, the best pickpocket I ever knew. And I had known a lot of pickpockets.

Dusk rose from the ground…

I took every Thursday off work because my writing group met in the evening at a coffee shop near my apartment. When it was time to go, I went down the street to print copies of my recent work and then walked the few blocks to the cafe.

Someone’s French bulldog was sitting on the sidewalk outside, leash tied to a table leg. I paused for a moment to pet it. I liked dogs. Maybe I should get a dog.

The coffee shop smelled like freshly-roasted beans and, weirdly, cinnamon. I bought a cup of coffee and made my way to the back of the building. We always met in a small room in the back filled with an assortment of armchairs and weird outsider art. A few people had arrived already, and were chatting and taking off their jackets. I took a seat in the corner and shuffled through my stack of papers. Everything was stapled and collated properly. I was just nervous. Letting other people read my work made me feel exposed, like they were peering into the most vulnerable, secret portions of my heart. But I needed the input if I was ever going to finish this novel, let alone publish it.

A few minutes later, Claudia arrived in a cloud of patchouli and good vibrations. She ran the writing group, and she was a little… earthier than I would have liked, but she had a sharp literary mind and kept the ten of us more or less on track. I had tried four writing groups before this one, and despite Claudia’s New Age touchy-feely earth mother routine, her group was by far the best. I actually got useful feedback most of the time. The demographics didn’t hurt, either. It was a diverse group: a roughly equal mix of men and women of all ages and colors. That was another part of why I liked this group so much. I wasn’t overly fond of being the only black person in the room.

“Good evening, everyone,” Claudia called out, waving with both of her hands, her crystal earrings swinging as she took her seat. “I can sense that this is going to be a very productive meeting.”

“Good evening, Claudia,” we all chorused obediently.

She took her notebook out of her bag and looked around the room, beaming at all of us. “Well,” she said. “How is everyone’s week going so far?”

“Long,” Dan said, the standard response, and people laughed, probably relieved that they hadn’t been the ones to say it.

“Almost over now,” Claudia said. “So. Who are we hearing from tonight?” She consulted her notebook, and my heart beat a little faster. Two people shared their work each week, and we rotated through a schedule. This week was my turn. “Beth and Evan,” Claudia said. “Evan, why don’t you go first?”

“Sure, throw me to the wolves,” Evan said, to more laughter, and passed around copies of his latest chapter. He was a muscular Asian guy with bright scrolls of tattoos down both forearms, and he was writing a science fiction novel that I actually found pretty enjoyable. It was set on a space station and was an incisive commentary on the human condition, plus aliens. I always looked forward to reading his chapters.

We read his chapter in silence. The hero had just found out about a subversive plot to take control of the station, and this latest chapter dealt with his reaction to that information, and his growing role as unwilling revolutionary.

When everyone had finished, even the slow readers who always held us up, Claudia said, “Who would like to start?”

Naida raised her hand, and Evan groaned and said, “She hates science fiction!”

“Yeah, and that’s why you should listen to me, because I don’t get all caught up in your laser gun sleight of hand,” Naida said, and shook her sheaf of papers in Evan’s direction. He grinned. “I think your characterization is a little off in this chapter,” she said. “He hops on the revolution bandwagon too quickly. He’s spent the entire book complaining about how he wants a simple existence, and now he’s all gung-ho to overthrow the government? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, and that’s why I put in the scene with his mother, to
show
why he feels like he doesn’t have a choice,” Evan said.

“Wait, is
that
what that scene was about?” Colin asked. “Because it seemed like a complete red herring to me…”

They were off. I listened, periodically scratching notes in the margins. Claudia sat benevolently and asked questions from time to time. A consensus emerged that Evan’s attempts at foreshadowing weren’t always successful, and that some scenes consequently took the reader too much by surprise. It was a classic case of being too close to his work to see the flaws. He agreed that he would rewrite portions to make his intentions more clear. Everyone was satisfied.

And then Claudia turned her gimlet eye on me and said, “What do you have for us this week, Beth?”

I swallowed hard, and passed my papers around.

I tried not to fidget while everyone read through my chapter. Sharing my writing was like taking my clothes off and standing on top of a table in a crowded room. Everyone could see my soft underbelly, and every instinct told me to cover myself and hide. It was an act of will to hold fast, strong and brave.