The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club) (18 page)

But I didn’t. I met Regan, and now there was an empty place in my chest where she used to be.

I resented her for it. She had drawn me in, made me care about her in a way I hadn’t cared about anyone since Prentice, and she hadn’t cared about me at all. I was a diversion to her, an amusing pastime.

It wasn’t worth thinking about.

The food was excellent, as always. This was one of my favorite restaurants for a reason. We ordered creme brulee and coffee to finish off the meal, and I watched with great amusement as Jenna devoured her dessert.

“It’s so good,” she said, a little sheepish.

I said, “I will never judge a woman for enjoying her food. You can even get another one, if you’d like.”

“Don’t tempt me!” she said, smiling. Then she cocked her head to one side and looked at me, sobering.“You aren’t going to ask me out again, are you.”

I hadn’t expected her to say that, but there was no point in trying to deny it. I would be a disaster of a businessman if I couldn’t cope with unanticipated events and respond to them appropriately. I took one of her hands in mine and looked into her eyes. “It’s nothing about you. You’re an incredible woman, and any man would be lucky to have you.”

She chuckled wryly. “It’s not me, it’s you?”

“It’s me,” I said. “I’m... I haven’t quite gotten over my last relationship.”

“Ah,” she said, and nodded. “Haunted by the ex. I understand.”

“I wish that weren’t the case,” I said. “You’re a delight. If I brought you home to my mother, she would pass out from joy.”

“Heaven forbid,” Jenna said. “I couldn’t have your mother’s fainting spell on my head.” She sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ll just have to ask Carolina to set me up with some other eligible bachelor of her acquaintance.”

“Jenna, you are funny, smart, and drop-dead gorgeous,” I said. “I can’t imagine that men aren’t falling all over themselves to talk to you every time you step out your front door.”

“You really are dangerously charming,” she said. “Carolina should have warned me! Don’t worry, Carter. I’m sure I’ll find true love with one of the delinquents who meows at me while I walk to the subway station.”

“Do they really
meow
?” I asked.

“Oh, the stories I could tell you,” she said.

At the end of the night, I walked her out to her waiting cab and bent to kiss her on the cheek. “I truly enjoyed myself tonight,” I said. “This is going to sound horrible, but I’d like to be friends, if you’re interested.”

“That
does
sound horrible,” she said, smiling up at me. “Men always say that, and they never mean it.”

“I mean it, though,” I said. “Give me a call sometime, if you’d like. Carolina can give you my number.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said. She winked at me and climbed into the cab.

I waited until she had pulled away from the curb, then sighed and pulled out my phone to call Henry. No more blind dates for me, no matter how much Carolina thought it was a good idea. I felt terrible for wasting Jenna’s time.

When Henry arrived, I asked him to take me to the office. I could already tell that I wasn’t going to get much sleep, so I might as well get some work done. I checked my email on my phone as we headed south. My inbox was full, as usual, and I idly scrolled through, looking for anything that needed immediate attention.

One message caught my eye. It was from Richard Hackett, the fraudster I’d spent the last year trying to catch doing something incriminating.

He wanted to meet at the Silver Cross on Sunday night, to discuss some business.

Reading his email, I took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled until my lungs were empty. I had promised myself that I would stay away from Regan, in an effort to give us both the space that we needed, and showing up at her workplace would directly violate that vow. But if Hackett wanted to talk, I couldn’t let that opportunity pass by.

I would just have to hope that Regan wouldn’t be working on Sunday.

S
unday night at the Silver Cross was in full swing by the time I arrived around 8:00, but the hostess recognized me and sat me at a small table near the stage. I ordered a Scotch and watched the dancer gyrate around the pole, contorting herself into positions that broke at least three laws of physics. Blondes weren’t my type, but I couldn’t deny that she was incredibly attractive. Of course, Germaine ran a tight ship, and wouldn’t hire a girl who was anything less than jaw-dropping.

I looked around the room, noting a handful of familiar faces, customers and servers alike.

Christ. I should admit it to myself: I was looking for Regan. Hackett was the ostensible reason I had come here tonight, but the
real
reason was Regan.

Obviously a stupid decision. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t come looking for her, and yet here I was, pathetically looking over my shoulder as though she would materialize and beg me to take her back.

If I hadn’t told Hackett that I would meet with him, I would have left right then. I should have left anyway, and sent him an apologetic email claiming that something came up at the office. Hackett, for all his many faults, was a businessman at heart; he would understand that the demands of my company took precedence over everything else.

Well. Almost everything.

I had halfway talked myself into abandoning the meeting when I saw Hackett approaching me. Too late, then. I discreetly checked that my wire was still in place. If I couldn’t get Hackett on tape, it didn’t matter what he said to me: it would be my word against his, and the prosecutors would never be able to get the charges to stick.

I knew Hackett through my father. He had been something of a protégé, at one point, before my father realized that Hackett lacked a moral compass and had no compunctions about doing whatever it took to turn a profit. There was no overt falling out, but my father had subtly distanced himself from Hackett, and instead of becoming a VP at Sutton Industries like everyone expected, Hackett had gone to work for a hedge fund.

All of this happened before I was old enough to understand the details, but I still had enough of an association with Hackett that federal prosecutors had approached me for assistance with building a case against the man. That had been one of the strangest meetings of my life: two men in dark suits talking in circles until I finally figured out what they were asking me to do. I understood that they needed to make certain I wouldn’t go running straight to Hackett, but it was incredibly difficult to agree to covert observation when nobody was willing to outright state that they wanted me to perform said observation.

At first, I had felt a little like James Bond, wearing a wire to Hackett’s favorite sex club and doing my best to entrap him into revealing sensitive information. As the months wore on, though, the novelty wore off. I had been inviting Hackett to private parties at the club for a solid year, and he had shown every inclination to take advantage of the nude dancers and no inclination whatsoever to tell me the details of his ongoing securities fraud.

Also, I despised the man. He had no respect for women, and it gave me the creeps.

I stood up as he approached the table, and held out my hand for him to shake. His palm was clammy, and he looked, as always, both sweaty and excessively pale. He was pudgy in the way that settled on men as they approached middle age, unless they made concerted efforts to avoid it; and Hackett spent most of his time sitting behind a desk, eating greasy takeout. He was good at what he did, and one of the hardest workers I knew, but he had gotten greedy and succumbed to the timeless allure of insider trading and Ponzi schemes.

“Good to see you, Carter,” he said. “Jesus, what a day I’ve had.” He slumped down into an empty chair and rested his elbows on the table. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” I said. “I’m always happy to see an old friend.” The words tasted sour in my mouth. I didn’t enjoy lying, even when it served the greater good.

“Good man, Sutton,” he said. A waitress approached our table, and Hackett ordered a martini, extra dry, because he was evidently determined to be a walking stereotype. As soon the waitress walked away, he turned to me and said, “Business first, and then let’s party.”

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you want.” I had little hope that tonight would be the night he finally spilled something worth listening to, but the FBI agent who was primary contact had told me again and again that my most important duty was cultivating a friendly relationship with Hackett. Spend enough time making nice, the idea was, and eventually he would let something slip.

“We’re having this problem at the office,” he said. “New kid, real smart, thinks he knows more than he does but don’t they all, seems like he’s got real promise.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a problem,” I said.

“Yeah, well, he tried to screw the secretary, and when she told him to get lost, he told her that, and I quote, women are too stupid to work anywhere but on their backs. I mean, he’s right, but you can’t say that anymore what with all of the feminazis.”

God, I despised him. “Sure,” I said, forcing myself to nod in agreement. “Feminazis.”

“So anyway, now the kid needs a new job,” Hackett said. “And I thought, he’s smart, maybe Sutton can snap him up. He’d be a real asset, Carter. I had a chat with him about keeping it in his pants at the office, and I thought maybe you could—”

“I’ll try,” I said, seething inside. “You know I’m not directly in charge of personnel decisions, but—”

“Right, of course,” Hackett said. “I know that, but I thought, maybe you could put a good word in—”

“Send me his resume, and I’ll make sure it goes exactly where it needs to,” I said. I meant my trash folder, not HR, but Hackett didn’t need to know that.

“Thanks, Carter,” he said, looking relieved. “You’re a real champ. The kid’s dad is one of my best clients, you see.”

Ah, and there it was: nepotism at work. Hackett had likely promised to get the son a job to secure the father’s continued business, and with the job suddenly vanished into thin air, Hackett was concerned that the business would disappear as well. “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

“Yeah, I know you will,” Hackett said. “Okay. Great. Problem solved. Let’s drink.”

And drink we did: five martinis for Hackett over the next hour, while I sipped my Scotch and listened to him rant about his job. His co-workers were idiots, his superiors were incompetent, and whoever hired the black guy was taking affirmative action way too seriously. As he drank more, he talked less and spent more time staring at the dancers on the stage; and so I encouraged him to get refills as soon as he emptied his glass. A silent Hackett was, in my opinion, the only good Hackett.

My plan was so successful that he staggered to his feet around 9:30 and slurred, “Gotta get home. Work in the mornin’. Seeya later, Sutton.”

“Take care, Richard,” I said, and he stumbled off toward the door.

Christ. Another wasted evening. I was beginning to think that I would never get anything useful out of the man. Maybe I should start billing the FBI at my hourly consulting rate and donate the proceeds to Nelson’s robotics team.

I finished my drink and stood up, preparing to head home and get to bed at a reasonable hour. I looked around the club one last time, trying and failing to pretend that I wasn’t looking for Regan, when I noticed that Germaine’s office door was cracked open.

I hesitated. I had resisted the temptation to call Regan, or to show up at her apartment in a fit of deranged masochism, but surely speaking with Germaine...

Well. It likely counted as stalking. But I was here already, and I was—I missed her. That was all there was to it. I couldn’t explain the pull she had on me. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman I had ever met, or the wittiest, or the easiest to talk to, but being with her had been uncomplicated and
right
in a way I had never experienced with any of the other women I dated. Not even with Prentice, whom I had asked to marry me.

And I had screwed it up somehow, and lost her.

I wished I knew what had happened while she was in California.

Germaine’s open door beckoned to me. The light was on; she was in there working, and the temptation proved too much for me to resist.

I went over.

I knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Germaine said, and I pushed the door open and stepped into her office.

“Mr. Sutton,” she said, looking surprised but pleased. She stood up to shake my hand. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I hope everything has been going well for you.”

“Yes, just fine,” I said. “It’s good to see you again, Germaine. I was hoping you could answer a question for me.”

“I’ll certainly do my best,” she said. She sat down again and folded her hands on top of her desk.

“There’s a waitress who works here,” I said. “She served my private parties a few times. Regan, I think?”

“Yes, of course,” Germaine said. Her face was carefully blank. A polite fiction on both of our parts, then. She knew I had been dating Regan.

“I didn’t see her here tonight,” I said, “but I was hoping she would be available for a party later this week.”

Germaine sighed. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I will. Regan doesn’t work here anymore.”

I held very still, forcing myself not to react. “That’s a shame,” I said. “She was very discreet.”

“Yes, it’s a shame that she decided to quit,” Germaine said. “But I believe she was happy with her decision.”

She said it with such finality that I knew I wouldn’t get any additional information from her. “Well, thank you anyway,” I said. “I’ll leave you to your work.”

“Good evening, Mr. Sutton,” she said, already turning back to her paperwork.

That was it, then. Regan had quit to avoid running into me at the club.

It was a clear message: she never wanted to see me again.

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but I never seemed to learn the fundamental lesson that life had been trying to teach me, over and over again, for the last twenty years: everyone would leave me in the end. My best friend would sell me out to the tabloids, my fiancée would have an affair while planning our wedding, my father would walk out with no warning. My money was enough to lure people to me, but it wasn’t enough to convince them to stay.