Deceptive Innocence, Part Three (Pure Sin) Read online

  “Oh, you helped?” Lander gets to his feet and faces me. “Well, now you have to come.”

  For a second I feel a little dizzy. I can feel both Travis’s and Lander’s eyes on me as I try to come up with a response. Finally I venture a small smile and lock my eyes on Lander. “Forgive me, Mr. Gable—”

  “Lander,” he corrects.

  “Forgive me, Lander, but you didn’t exactly make yourself seem like a great date just now.”

  He smiles, a slow, knowing, and incredibly sexy smile.

  “So use me,” he says sweetly.

  “Excuse me?” I ask, my voice catching in my throat.

  “For the dinner, of course,” he clarifies, his smile widening. “I’m offering you a way into an event that might otherwise be financially out of reach. It’ll be fun.”

  I look over at Jessica. There’s a flash of something in her eyes that I haven’t seen from her before. It could be amusement, but it almost looks like . . . like triumph.

  Of course. She wants Lander to hit on me. She wants him to make me absolutely unavailable to her husband.

  My eyes travel to Travis. His look is easier to read. He just wants to throttle someone.

  And yet, what can he really say? He knows I’m dating Lander. And I told him that Lander wanted to keep our brief history as a couple a secret, and Lander has just reinforced that narrative by this interaction. Why he wants Travis to know he’s interested in dating me now is a mystery, but he’s still lying about when we met. And it was Travis who asked me to continue my relationship with Lander. So he can hardly fault me for any of this. And if Micah is watching, seeing me dating Lander out in the open, in full view of his family, it’ll make me look less subversive. It might even make Micah think that I’ve taken his advice.

  I smile flirtatiously at Lander. “I can’t imagine why you would want to spend a thousand dollars on a girl you don’t know, but I’m certainly not going to refuse the invitation.”

  “I’m not spending a thousand dollars on you,” Lander says dismissively. “I’m spending two thousand dollars on a politician who is important to my family.” He pauses and lets his eyes roam over me . . . although the look is a little less crude and a lot less insulting than the ones his brother gives me. “Since it’s only our first date, I think . . . I think I’ll spend only fifteen hundred dollars on you.”

  I shake my head. “Excuse me?”

  “For your evening wear,” Lander says. He turns to Jessica. “Do you have time to take her shopping for a dress? You do have a beautiful sense of style.”

  “Oh, Lander,” Jessica says, her voice almost sultry as she rises and crosses the room to take the seat next to him. “You’re such a flatterer and so very impulsive, but”—and here she stops to give him a playful kiss on the cheek—“that’s why we love you. Isn’t it, Travis?” She flashes a pretty but undeniably taunting smile at her husband.

  It’s a subtle provocation, but for Jessica it’s huge. My mind flashes back to the day Travis hired me. I remember the outburst and mild defiance that Jessica demonstrated and maintained for the space of two minutes.

  For two minutes she was defiant. For two minutes she stood her ground and she lashed out. And now there’s this little glimpse of her desire to strike back.

  Jessica turns her smile toward me. “Tomorrow, instead of going through emails and organizing fund-raisers, we’ll take a girls’ day out. We’ll start at De la Renta and work our way down to Lanvin. Or maybe we’ll just head straight for Bergdorf’s. You’ve been such a help to me in the few days you’ve been in my employ. You’ve certainly earned a little fun.”

  “She works for me!” The blood has rushed to Travis’s face, giving his normally cool complexion the heat of aggression. His eyes lock on mine. “You work for me. If you want to go shopping during the workday, you ask me!”

  “I suppose it doesn’t need to be during the workday,” Jessica says, her voice now slipping back into uncertainty. “We could go after you’re done or during the weekend—”

  “She needs to ask me!”

  “I don’t think the labor laws would support you on that,” Lander says, his arm casually draped across the back of the couch. “She gets to decide what she wants to do in her free time.”

  “Really,” Travis says flatly, turning his glare on Lander. “And what do you think she likes to do in her free time?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Lander replies easily. “We just met. All I know is that it’s her decision.” He cocks his head to the side. “Are you all right, Trav? It’s unlike you to get worked up over something so trivial as a shopping trip.”

  “I’m hardly worked up,” Travis says, his voice immediately dropping back to the casually rapacious tone I’ve become accustomed to. “But I do find this whole thing a bit impulsive, even for you. Bell had a point when she asked why you would want to spend so much on a stranger.”

  “Really?” Lander asks, his brow crinkling in puzzlement. “It’s certainly no more impulsive than when I took that waitress from the Millennium Club to Belize for the weekend.”

  A nervous smile pulls on Jessica’s lips. She clearly finds that amusing.

  I don’t. I didn’t know about the weekend in Belize.

  But the reference does seem to have the desired effect on Travis. He hesitates before giving a curt nod of acknowledgment. “You’re right, your behavior isn’t surprising, just typically irresponsible. That incident with the waitress ended up costing you your membership.”

  Lander shrugs nonchalantly. “If I had liked the Millennium Club, I wouldn’t have allowed them to take my membership. But as you know, it wasn’t my scene. So my behavior wasn’t irresponsible; I simply decided to take what I wanted and discard what I didn’t. And now I want to buy your assistant a dress and take her to a fund-raiser. Is that really an issue?”

  “No,” Travis says slowly. He throws Jessica a look and she immediately gets up and moves back to her seat in the corner as if she’s getting out of the way of an anticipated explosion. “If this is what you want to do I have no interest in stopping you,” he continues. “I’m glad you came around about Highkin. He will be useful.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Lander replies. “I only wonder that you have room in your pockets for another politician.”

  “Well,” Travis says with a small smile, “it’s a good thing my pockets are so extraordinarily large.”

  “Yes,” Lander says distractedly as he reaches inside his jacket for his checkbook. “Jessica, I’ll write you one check for the dress and another for the fund-raiser. Will that work?”

  “Perfectly,” she whispers. Her two minutes have clearly been spent and she’s now turned back into a pumpkin.

  Lander whips out a pen and walks over to the desk as Jessica, following him at a safe distance, tells him who to make the fund-raising check out to.

  Travis doesn’t object and instead busies himself with the emails on his phone. And yet, even though his eyes are on his screen, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s watching me. It’s like he’s sending me a silent warning . . . or perhaps a threat.

  When Lander’s done he puts his checkbook back into his pocket, only to pull out his cell. “So that’s all settled. Bell, can I have your number so we can make arrangements?”

  I rattle off the number he already has and he makes a show of typing it in. Travis looks up from his own phone, his expression hard and impatient. “It was good of you to stop by, Lander.”

  “As I said, it was on my way. I’ll see myself out,” Lander replies, easily taking the hint. “Always a pleasure, Jessica.” And then he turns to me, his smile filled with mischief. “I look forward to seeing your choice of attire.”

  None of us move as he walks out of the room, and we stay silent until we hear the sound of the front door clicking closed.

  The slow way Travis’s head turns in my direction reminds me a little of the Komodo dragon I saw at the Bronx Zoo. It’s a leisurely movement, almost nonchalant, and yet you j
ust know that whatever has attracted the beast’s attention is not long for this world.

  “I need to talk to Bell alone,” he says coolly.

  “Travis, I really—” Jessica begins, but he stops her with a small gesture of his hand.

  “I can talk to her alone in here or she and I can speak privately in the bedroom while you wait for us. Your choice.”

  Jessica’s shoulders rise up to her diamond drop earrings but she doesn’t say anything. Instead she just turns around and leaves her office, closing the door quietly behind her.

  “She’s very . . . tolerant,” I venture, because at this point not saying something feels conspicuous.

  “I usually don’t talk to her like that in front of company. I only make an exception to that rule when we’re in the presence of people I trust or people who don’t have the credibility or influence to sway the opinion of anyone who matters. You fit into both categories,” he says irritably. “Go after him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Go after Lander now and find out what the hell he’s up to.”

  “But he said he has a dentist appointment.”

  “Are you stupid?”

  I look at him blankly, pretending not to understand.

  “He doesn’t have a goddamned dentist appointment! What he has is an agenda. Go find out what it is. Now, Bell, or that sex tape will be the least of your concerns.”

  I really wish he’d stop bringing up that tape. If he does end up posting it on the internet it won’t be the worst thing in the world, but oddly enough, knowing that millions of strangers could see it is less disquieting than knowing that Travis already has.

  I also think that confronting Lander can wait. I want to find a way to get Travis to talk about Javier and maybe even about Micah. But if Travis doesn’t think I’m completely under his thumb he won’t share anything with me. So reluctantly I grab my purse and nod my consent. “I’ll let you know what I’m able to get out of him,” I say.

  As I pass a sulking Jessica in the hall, I realize that I can at least be grateful that my private exchange with Travis was far too brief for Jessica to assume that we did anything other than talk . . . unless of course Travis has issues that I don’t know about.

  chapter seven

  When I get to the street I’m not exactly sure where to turn. This latest series of events has me rattled and dazed. Lander has sort of kept and broken his promise to me at the same time. And Travis has apparently fed his inner asshole Miracle-Gro to the point that his dickishness can barely be contained. While Jessica . . . Well, Jessica’s the same pathetic mess she always is, so at least there’s that.

  I wander down the sidewalk, halfheartedly fishing for my phone inside my purse so I can call Lander and find out where he really is.

  But when I turn the corner he’s there, waiting for me with a smirk.

  “What was that about?” I ask as I approach, more curious than cross.

  “It’s simpler this way,” he says.

  “Simpler for who?”

  “Both of us I should think.” He’s leaning nonchalantly against a building, looking like a cross between a young Gordon Gekko and James Dean. Only Lander can make a suit look rebellious. “You don’t have to pretend not to know me anymore, so that should make things easier for you. As for me? Well, now you can tell Travis that you’re in the position to get the inside scoop on me. My brother doesn’t trust me? Let’s give him some cooked-up dirt and see where it takes us.”

  I am no longer in the middle of one of Sartre’s plays. I’m in the middle of The Twilight Zone.

  “I . . . I haven’t agreed to that,” I stammer.

  “And what have you agreed to, Bell?” he asks. “What bargains have you made with your demons? Because I suspect you’ve made a few.”

  “I think,” I say slowly, “that I could ask you the same question.”

  Again he smiles. An elderly couple walks past us, hand in hand, while a thirtysomething woman wearing a tightly fitted dress passes them with a longing glance. The world is moving at the pace it’s supposed to move . . . except for Lander and me. We’re in this holding pattern as we try to parse each other’s moods and secrets.

  Lander has his own plans, plans that I know nothing about despite all my research. I should never have made him a target. Targets should be simple, like Jessica, who is the equivalent of a red bull’s-eye; to take her down all I need to do is keep a steady hand and a focused eye. Or like Travis, who is a hawk: difficult to shoot, but easy to spot and identify.

  Trying to make a target out of Lander is like trying to shoot an entire colony of killer bees. Destroying him, even containing him, may be nearly impossible, and yet I suspect that he has a unique ability to destroy.

  Travis is in trouble.

  “Will you help me feed Travis some false information, Bell?” Lander asks. “Will you help me put some wheels in motion?”

  He’s asking me to do what I’m already doing. I wish I could tell him that. I wish we could laugh about it and work like a true team, the way bees are meant to work.

  But I can’t do that. I lift my face up to the sun and close my eyes. “I will, on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to know what the deal is with this waitress. We’ve been together almost every night this week and you still haven’t offered to take me anywhere.”

  Lander laughs and shakes his head. “That was a long time ago. I was about your age when it happened, I think. It didn’t mean anything. I just wanted to take a vacation and I wanted someone to sleep with while I was there. She said she was game, so I took her. I was kicked out of the club because their staff isn’t allowed to fraternize with the guests . . . and when the manager tried to fire her I lost my temper.” Lander shrugs and sighs. “I’m not pleasant when I lose my temper.”

  “Sooo, you’re like the Hulk.”

  Lander chuckles softly. “Something like that. But really, Travis is right; I didn’t handle the whole thing well. Like I said, I was young.”

  “Like me.”

  “Like you.” He crosses his arms. “So will you feed some false information to Travis or not?”

  “Oh, I’ll do it. But if we last six months and you still haven’t taken me on a trip, we’re going to have problems.”

  “Fair enough,” he says as his eyes follow a passing pedestrian as tall as an NBA player with a dog the size of a toaster. “Why did he send you after me? He is the reason you’re down here, right?”

  “He wants me to get a sense of why you’re coming to this dinner. He doesn’t believe that you actually want to support this politician.”

  That’s not entirely accurate, but I don’t feel guilty about misrepresenting Travis’s request. At this moment the lies are so much more logical than the truth.

  “Right,” he says slowly. “But what could you realistically get out of a man you’ve supposedly just met?”

  “Maybe he’s testing my skills as an interrogator.”

  “Tell him I said I think I’ll be able to make some good business contacts at the dinner. And tell him that you made plans with me tonight.”

  “Are you making plans with me tonight?”

  He reaches forward and brushes my cheek with his hand. “Meet me at my place at eight. I’ll have champagne chilled and dinner delivered.”

  “I might tell Travis that we’re just meeting at a restaurant,” I say with a smile, “since we just met and all.”

  “Very well, tell him that,” Lander says. “That is, if you think you’re capable of carrying off the lie.”

  It’s a funny line. Probably funnier than he realizes.

  I leave him without another word. I’m almost back inside Travis’s building when I get the text.

  Are you being good, Sweet?

  My steps slow to a stop and I take a moment to look around. Am I being watched? Shivering slightly I text back: Yes.

  I wait to see if another text is coming, but there’s nothing, and eventually
my screen goes dark.

  As I walk back into Travis’s building I have to remind myself that I’m the predator . . . not the prey.

  chapter eight

  When I get back up to the penthouse it’s Jessica who opens the door for me, a half-emptied martini glass in her hand.

  “He’s waiting for you in my office.” I can tell by both the phrasing and her tone that she’s still forbidden entry into that particular room. I offer her my best what-can-I-do smile, but she just glares at me through tear-filled eyes and watches me as I too disappear into what is supposed to be her space.

  “What did he say?” Travis snaps the minute the door is closed.

  “He says that he wants you to know that we’re dating. He thinks you’re going to ask me to spy on him. It’s a test.”

  “A test?”

  “Your brother doesn’t trust you,” I say simply.

  Travis turns his back on me and stares out the window. “Throw him off the scent.”

  “You want me to tell him you don’t want me to spy on him?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. That would be like Russia saying they don’t want to spy on China. It’s a blatant and easily spotted lie. No, when I tell you to throw him off the scent what I mean is I want you to pretend that I’m trying to get different information from the information I’m actually trying to get. Tell him I suspect him of betraying the family. Tell him I think he’s feeding information to HGVB’s competition. Tell him I think he’s about to jump ship and I want to know what kind of lifeboat he’s built himself.”

  “You really want me to tell him all that?”

  “Well, don’t be obvious about it!” Travis whirls around. “Lead him to believe those things, that’s all. You’re a smart girl, you work it out.”

  “But . . . how can I throw him off the scent when I don’t know what the scent is?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know what information you actually want me to get, other than his phone records. What do you really want me to find out, Travis?”

  Travis hesitates, and then I see a slow calm descend on him as he slips his hands into his pockets. “Find out what his interest is in Talebi.”