I smack him playfully against his hard stomach. “Jerk. That’s not funny.”
“On the contrary,” he rolls over until he’s pressed against my side, his mouth hovering inches from mine, “I think it’s hilarious.” He yanks the covers over both of our heads, pinning me down beneath him.
And suddenly all the air is sucked out of my lungs.
“Stop, Grady. Stop!” I spurt out between gasps, bucking him off me and working to free my arms so I can tug the duvet down. My chest heaves with the fresh, cool air. “You can’t do that to me,” I whisper through pants, my heart drumming against my chest.
He turns to stare at me through bewildered, pained eyes. “Jesus, Maggie. What just happened?”
“I’m claustrophobic.” I chuckle, more embarrassed than anything right now. “When I can’t breathe . . . I tend to get a little bit crazy.”
“I see that now.” He winces. “You nearly emasculated me with your knee.”
“I’m sorry.” I reach for him under the covers, my fingers sliding to the sensitive skin. He groans as I cup him gently, but it’s not so much a sound of pain anymore.
“I’m going to miss this when you leave,” he whispers.
“You’re going to miss getting bagged?”
He chuckles. “Maybe not that. But definitely this. And you.”
I feel him hardening against my wrist, so I guess the pain has faded. I help it along by wrapping my fist around the base, enjoying the feel of his velvety soft skin. “Are you going home for the holidays?”
“Nah. I don’t get enough time off here to make it worthwhile.”
“Seriously? What could people need so badly that they can’t wait a week or two?”
“This is an old building. I get a call or text almost daily from a tenant in dire need of having something fixed.”
“I was wondering what you did all day.”
He smiles. “I replace a lot of screws for Ruby.”
“I’m serious. Do you actually enjoy being the building super?”
He exhales, thrusting himself against my tightening fist. “It’s easy work. Low stress.”
“Not exactly ambitious, though. Don’t you want to do something bigger with your life?”
“Bigger?” He reaches over to hook a hand around the back of my thigh. He rolls, pulling me on top of him, lining us up perfectly. “Like what?”
I lift my body until I’m hovering, daring him to slip in. “I don’t know . . . I know I was kidding before, but you really could come to Africa with me when I go. You’re so handy; I could use your help.”
“You need someone to replace screws down there, too?”
“I could definitely use someone to do some screwing there.” My words end with my mouth on his and our tongues tangled again and him reaching for the nightstand to grab another condom.
————
“See? They know I keep odd hours.” Grady holds up his chirping phone, as if that tells me something. “That’s Ms. Sanders in 302. She’s texting me about her refrigerator making a weird noise. Wants me to come listen to it now, if I’m awake.”
“At four a.m.” I glare knowingly. “Is Ms. Sanders attractive?”
“For a fifty-nine-year-old, she’s smokin’ hot.” He fishes his clothes off the floor, working at turning them right-side-out in the dim light.
I prop myself up on my elbow and watch Grady get dressed, admiring his nakedness. “That reminds me . . . when did you fix that window for Celine? My PI said that the latch has been replaced recently.”
“About a week before she died, I think?” He yanks his pants on. “Look, about the other day. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you and your investigator. I would have, if I could.”
Mention of Doug brings me back to the jump drive and Celine. And Jace. The temporary relief that Grady afforded me tonight gives way to agitation once again. “That’s fine. We got what we needed anyway.”
“Oh . . . okay. Good.” He sits on the bed to pull his socks and shoes on. “What were you looking for?”
I sigh. “I wanted to see the surveillance on the night that Celine died. To see if she had any visitors.”
“A visitor? Why would that matter?” Grady pauses, turning to study my face. Realization dawns on his handsome features. “You seriously don’t still think . . . Is that really why you hired that guy?”
“I have a couple of lingering questions and I can’t stop until I have my answers, one way or the other.” I don’t have the energy to bring up the case of the missing vase right now.
He turns to stare at the window.
I sit up and reach out to touch his bare back. “I have to be sure, even if it’s only a small chance.”
“Yeah . . .” He hangs his head. “Yeah, it’s just . . .” He glances over his shoulder at the bed. I assume he’s thinking about where they found her.
Where he found her.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this in here again.”
I’ve gotten good at blocking out the knowledge that Celine died in this very bedroom. Now these are just walls to contain a bed and a dresser, the contents of its previous habitant packed away. New people will move in here. New people will laugh, will love, will have sex within these walls, without any clue of the horrors that have also transpired here.
If I hadn’t blocked those horrors out, I wouldn’t be able to sleep in this room. Hell, I would never have stayed in this apartment in the first place.
But now that Grady has labeled what we just did in here as wrong, I can’t help but feel downright filthy. “You’re right. We’ll stick to the rooftop. Or your place.” Which I still haven’t been inside.
He leans down to place a kiss on my nose. “I should get going. I have things to repair in the morning. And that new tenant wants to come by on Sunday. Are you cool with that?”
“Sunday’s not good. The movers come at ten to load up the boxes for storage and then I have a big charity ball to get ready for in the afternoon. How about Monday?”
“All right.” He tugs his shirt on. “Charity ball . . . that sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, Ruby’s going to be my date.”
“Kind of like bringing your cousin to a dance, isn’t it?”
“I guess, but I know it’ll make her entire holiday.” Just the look on her face when I invited her made my day brighten. “And I figured you wouldn’t be interested in that sort of thing.” Though I’m also guessing that Grady could clean up really well in a tux.
“You’re right . . . I wouldn’t,” he chuckles.
I crawl out from under the covers and grab hold of his belt to pull him closer.
With one last deep kiss, he slides the window up.
“Just use the front door!” I pull the covers up and around me as the draft chills my naked, spent body.
“But this is more romantic, don’t you think?” He winks, and then he’s gone.
CHAPTER 26
Maggie
December 13, 2015
“It was 1971 and we were in the Starlight Roof room. Oh, Maggie. You should have heard her. There was nothing like it.” Ruby’s eyes twinkle as she recounts her last time in the Waldorf Astoria, to see Ella Fitzgerald perform.
“Well, I don’t know that tonight will be as glamorous.” I lead her into the Grand Ballroom by the arm, my steps extra low and measured. The room’s décor of rich tapestries and crystal chandeliers is luxurious enough. Now, though, with the holiday bouquets and silvery linens and additional lighting, and the orchestra set off to one side, it looks pretty damn fabulous. And packed. Too packed for my liking, but with over fourteen hundred tickets sold at a thousand per head, plus some generous contributions, it’s certainly going to generate some well-needed money for VU.
“Well, it’s certainly more glamorous than what I normally do on a Sunday night,” Ruby muses, smiling at a server who floats past.
“Thank you for being my date tonight.”
“I’m just lucky this gown still fits, thirty years
later!” With her free hand, she smooths the black lace over her hip, adding in a whisper, “With a little help from my friend, Girdle.”
I laugh. “I can only hope to look like you in my eighties. You look lovely.”
“Not as lovely as you.” She nods to the overpriced gold couture dress that Hans threw a fit over when we went shopping earlier in the week, insisting that I buy it or not bother going to the ball at all. “I’m glad you treated yourself to this. There’s nothing wrong with doing that every once in a while, especially when you’re so good to everyone else.”
“Come.” I lead her toward the front. “Let’s go find our table. You get to meet my parents. Just do me a favor and try not to mention anything about Celine or the investigation, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.” She pats my arm. “But if I slip, just tell them I’m senile. They’ll believe it.”
I find my parents sitting next to each other at our customary table, off to a corner near the dance floor, with a prime view of the orchestra. Even after being divorced for fourteen years, they attend functions like this together. “It’s good for the company to see the Sparkes as a unit, even if we’re not” my mother always says.
“Magpie.” My dad stands as we approach. He was in China on business for Celine’s funeral. I haven’t seen him since last Christmas. He looks different. More trim. He’s always been a jogger, but he looks healthier, his complexion clearer. That’s a positive, seeing as he’s sixty. I can’t be sure, but I think his hair has taken on a darker—artificially enhanced—shade of gray than before.
“Daddy.” I don’t know why I always revert to my five-year-old self when I first see my father, as if I’m still waiting on the front steps for his car to pull through the gate after he’d been away for business somewhere. I’d run to meet him and throw myself into his arms, asking him if he was home for a while. Back then, two weeks felt like an eternity.
He wraps his arms around my shoulders and squeezes me tight, planting a kiss on my cheek. “You look radiant.” He pauses, a teasing eyebrow arched. “Who dressed you?”
“Celine’s friend, Hans. He has impeccable taste.”
“Ahh . . . Yes, I see that. It’s nice to see my daughter embracing her beauty every once in a while.”
I roll my eyes. “Dad, this is Ruby Cummings. Ruby, this is William Sparkes.”
My dad shifts his focus to a grinning Ruby, who reaches out to squeeze both his hands.
“You’ve raised an inspiring woman, William. You must be so proud.”
He smiles. “Her mother and I are. Have you met Melody yet?” Dad has two personas—fearless and to-be-feared Sparkes Energy exec and congenial people-pleaser, when politics and charity are involved. Ruby’s getting the latter now, as Dad introduces Ruby to my mom, and I listen to Ruby go through the whole “I lived across the hall from Celine” spiel.
“Your date’s a little old for you, isn’t she?” Dad quips in a low, teasing tone.
“Funny. When did you get into the city?”
“Just this morning. I have to fly to Bangkok tomorrow.”
Disappointment pricks me. “Too bad. I would have liked to have dinner with you, at least.”
“I know, dear.” He squeezes my wrist. “But I’ll be in L.A. for Christmas. Maybe we can actually spend one together. It’s been a while, and I think it’s going to be tough for you.”
“I’d love that.” And I love that he’s actually aware. This holiday will be my first one without Celine, and likely my last one with Rosa.
A striking blonde approaches Dad’s side. He turns to smile at her. “Good, you’re back. Maggie, this is Cindy. Cindy, my daughter, Maggie.”
All it takes is the sight of his arm hooked around her miniscule waist and I realize what’s going on here. My dad’s dating someone. I’ve never seen him with another woman besides my mom, even after this long. And to bring her out to a company event like this . . .
She can’t be more than thirty, at most. My father’s dating a woman my age. One who, if I had to guess, spends more time at the gym, lying around the pool topless, and in the salon than anywhere else.
My father is sixty and dating a woman half his age.
I try to keep my facial expression even, as I remember Jace’s words just the other day, about how I’m easily readable. I don’t want to be rude, even as I wonder if this is what other people felt like when meeting Celine on the arm of her much older “companions.” If they looked at her and wondered why she would date a man twice her age, unless it was for his money.
So is Cindy after my dad for his money, or is she more like Celine? An escort?
The very idea that my father would feel the need to pay for companionship makes me ill.
But . . . no. William Sparkes would never bring an escort to a charity ball.
“Your father has told me so much about you,” Cindy says, offering a slender, manicured hand.
“Has he now.” I accept her hand, all the while casting furtive glances over at my mother. Did she know he was seeing someone—someone he planned to introduce to me? If she did, why wouldn’t she have warned me over lunch last week? Did she think I wouldn’t care?
Dad pulls Cindy’s chair out for her and then, turning, pulls the one on the other side of him out for me.
“Isn’t your date a little young for you?” I force out through gritted teeth, turning his words from earlier as I slide into my seat and distract myself with my napkin.
Trying to decide what I think of this.
He leans in and whispers, “Be nice, Maggie.”
“I’m always nice.”
“I’m happy.”
“I’m sure you are.” Now I see why he’s in such great shape.
Cindy’s preoccupied with conversation on the other side, allowing me to ask, “Seriously, Dad, how old is she?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Is she younger than me?”
“No. She’s thirty,” he assures me with a patient smile, and a look that says we’re not talking about this here anymore.
I’ve never responded well to that look. “How long have you known her?”
“Almost seven months.”
“Are you . . . Is she . . .” I stumble over my confrontational words, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Do you pay her?”
“Jesus, Maggie!” he hisses, shaking his head at me. “No. And if I did, that’d be my business and not something I’d discuss with my daughter.”
I’ve definitely pushed him too far.
He sighs. “We get along well, and she’s the first woman since your mother to actually challenge me, which is a nice change. And before you ask, she has more than enough of her own money.”
I shift my gaze between the two of them again. Yes, there’s a huge age difference. No, I don’t see the appeal of a man twice my age, but . . .
Reading through Celine’s diaries made me sick because I was picturing a certain kind of man hiring Celine, but maybe what’s stuck in my head is wrong. Maybe Celine was with guys like my father—fit and well put together, distinguished and charismatic. Men she might have even been attracted to, had the circumstances been different.
“So? You must be almost finished up with the estate. I can’t imagine it being that complicated,” my dad says through a sip of his drink, changing topics.
You have no idea how complicated it is. “Almost there.”
“Good. And you’ll be heading back to Ethiopia in January?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you about Rosa?”
“Well, yes but . . .” He frowns. “You have an organization to run. You have people who rely on you.”
“Rosa needs someone, too.”
“She has people. Your mother said that the Mexican community she’s a part of down there is close. They’ll make sure she gets what she needs. I’m sure one of them will take care of the bills if you send the money through.”
“Cut a check from the other side of the world while the woman who raised me dies?” F
orget the bimbo next to Dad. Even suggesting such a thing gets my blood boiling and my voice raised. That’s the difference between my mother and father—my mother knows there’s no point trying to convince me to change my mind. My father still thinks he needs to sculpt me, and it’s usually with a hand too focused on business to balance human need. He’s not pushing me to go back to Ethiopia because of the poor, needy children.
It’s all about being a responsible leader.
“Oh look, I guess I’ll take this seat right next to you,” Ruby says, interrupting my father’s retort, which I’m sure will only make me more angry. “I just love this music. I may have to get up later and dance, if I can find a suitable partner. Maybe we can find you a young man and you can join,” she says to me, dousing the heated conversation.
“Yes, that would be nice,” my dad agrees, taking a large gulp of his champagne. “Your mother said something about you investing with Dale Everett’s son. Anything there?”
My stomach turns sour with mention of him. For a couple who has been divorced for so long, my mother and father talk to each other about personal things far too much. “Absolutely nothing, and there never will be. He’s a disgusting human being.”
“He’s quite handsome, though,” Ruby throws in with a sly smile.
I shoot a glare her way, and she shrugs.
“So, he’s a disgusting human being and you’re investing your money with him. Did I get that right?” my dad asks with a smirk.
I pour the rest of my champagne back in one gulp. “Something like that.”
————
“A Cold-Blooded Ginger,” I order from the bartender, breathing in the free-flowing air with deep pulls, my lungs feeling light again. It’s my third trip out of that stifling ballroom and into the hotel bar, where the rich mahogany walls are comforting rather than suffocating. The first time I ducked out, I felt bad for abandoning my eighty-one-year-old date. But upon returning to my table, I found a white-haired man in a tuxedo leading her onto the dance floor, and I realized that Ruby makes friends much more easily than I do. She’ll be just fine wherever she goes.