Zac handed her the drink, taking the opportunity to caress her fingers.
Her eyes met his and he wasn’t sure what he read in them.
Some chicks were just hard to read.
Manoeuvring his body closer to hers, Wilson made a point of reaching behind her, essentially to place his drink on the table.
She stared over his shoulder, her eyes constantly on the dance floor.
Time for a new tactic.
Bringing his hand up, he slid it along the small of her back, moving his face into the smooth, silky skin at the crook of her neck.
Her perfume smelled of summer at the beach, the feminine aroma enough to drive him wild.
Ah, there it is.
A delicious shiver as she sucked in her breath.
She was all his now.
Chapter Eight:
Damon sipped his Perrier, surrounded by a group of his father’s business associates.
They all spoke in French, despite being as British as he was.
So, they could speak the language. Didn’t mean they had to.
He excused himself, bored with the facade, moving towards the banister to see what the rest of his guests were doing.
Drinking, hooking up, doing drugs…
This so wasn’t his scene.
Maybe he should just go to bed. He had no pressing need to welcome in the New Year with these people.
But then he sensed someone watching him.
He tried to locate his spectator, spotting Burke staring up at him.
An electrical current arced between them and for a brief instant, he was flattered.
She was a beautiful woman. He’d be an idiot not to be interested.
But they weren’t ‘come hither, I want to flirt with you’ eyes she was giving him.
There was nothing even remotely flirtatious in her gaze.
No – she was studying him with the same hostile intensity one reserves for a plague-carrying amoeba.
For a while he played along.
He was just about to concede defeat and call it a night when Zac Wilson approached Burke, introducing himself, setting warning bells ringing in Damon’s brain.
It was his responsibility to protect his guests, and that meant protecting the women from parasites like Zac Wilson.
Damon knew Wilson’s type.
He treated women as possessions to own or obstacles to conquer.
And he was laying it on thick in his attempt to win over Burke, kissing her hand in what was supposed to be a gallant act.
There was nothing noble about him. Sleazy maybe. Lecherous definitely.
Now the fool had concocted a fictitious reason to encroach on personal space – reaching across her body to put his drink on the table.
Ah yes, and now he was introducing physical touch – brushing imaginary particles off Burke’s shoulder, touching her arm as he shared a personal anecdote, accidentally grazing against bare skin.
She continued to stare at Damon across the room, unfazed by Wilson’s brazen attempts to seduce her.
Or perhaps she was conveying a silent plea for help.
Did she want him to come and rescue her?
When Wilson moved in for the kill, nuzzling her neck like she was a honey pot to be fed upon, Damon took it upon himself to intervene.
It took Charlotte less than thirty seconds to know she wasn’t interested in Zac.
Sure, he wasn’t bad looking.
With his ash blond hair and muscular body, he could almost pass for a younger, British version of Matthew McConaughey.
Of course, the lighting would need to be low and she’d need a permanent squint.
Most of all, Zac would have to keep his mouth shut because the second he opened his trap, the real him came flooding out like a broken dam, revealing the black hole that was his personality, or lack thereof.
She tried to ignore him, to look anywhere else but at him, but he refused to take a hint.
Now that the fool thought he could place his cheese-grater mitts all over her, she was going to have to give him a piece of her mind.
There was just one problem.
Damon Harvey was headed her way.
And she had become a deer frozen in his headlights, unable to move, to flee to safety.
She was suffering a fatal case of lockjaw. Her heart galloped in her chest, loud enough to be heard above the music.
What the hell does he want?
The closer he got, the more inconsequential everything else became, his body a powerful magnet sweeping all other concerns out of the way until she was only vaguely aware of Zac’s hands on her body, his breath hot in her ear.
Of the two threats, Zac was the lesser evil, even when he began nibbling her ear.
‘Come back to my room.’
Any other day, Charlotte would have extricated herself from the situation, told Zac he was barking up the wrong tree and if he still didn’t get the picture, laughed off his ludicrous proposition.
But it wasn’t any other day.
It was today.
And Damon Harvey was bearing down on her like a missile up Al Qaeda’s ass.
How much did she want to avoid her fear of all things Harvey?
Trapped between a horny fool and a man that reminded her of her past for all the wrong reasons, she needed a way out of her predicament.
Wilson whispered his invitation again, pressing a bulging groin against her so she couldn’t mistake his meaning.
How far would she go to escape her past?
In a heartbeat Charlotte made her decision, knowing she’d regret it in the cold light of day.
Wilson’s eyes met hers, his hand sliding further down her dress until it stopped at her ass. He squeezed hard, as if testing the ripeness of fruit.
It was all she could do to hold her rage in check but Damon’s hand hovered over Wilson’s shoulders, his mouth opening to say God only knew what.
Perhaps ‘Hey, I know you. Aren’t you the daughter of the guy that ripped off my family?’
Charlotte turned her head, meeting Zac’s hungry lips, holding back the vomit as his horrible tongue probed her mouth like an angry snake.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she kissed him back.
You either had luck or you didn’t.
Tonight, it was shining on Isabelle.
BJ had asked for photos of all twenty journalists – but he wanted her to pay attention to three guests in particular.
As the song went, two out of three ain’t bad.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
She snapped the shutter with dizzying speed, the wide-angled lens catching the intimate action, not wanting to miss his hands groping her ass, or their faces mashed together.
She moved like a blur, covering the action from as many angles as possible, retreating to the dance floor where target number three had just caught the attention of a minor celebrity.
Damon only ever intended to give Burke an alternative, a way to politely shoo Wilson away.
Not that she had any need to be polite.
A blind man could see she had no interest in the randy creep.
Yet the closer Damon got, the more spooked Burke became.
When he was a metre away, he realised the horrific truth.
Burke wasn’t scared of Wilson. She was scared of him.
Entwined in Wilson’s arms, Burke was doing a great impersonation of a fox caught in a trap, willing to chew off her own leg than accept help from him.
It would have been comical if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.
Damon admitted defeat, walking right on by Burke and Wilson, heading for the front door, no longer in the mood for celebrating.
The Virtual Private Network, or VPN, connected to the File Transfer Protocol – FTP - site, downloading the latest batch of photographs from an office in Paris.
Bill’s eyes zeroed in on a series of images taken of the dance floor.
A group of women danced together but his interest lay with one.
The redhead.
He knew from his research that she was a virgin – a church going saint that worshipped her father as much as her dead god.
Catching her in a compromising situation was going to take equal parts luck and good planning.
Bill needed both. It was vital he got something on Robertson.
Without it, the next phase of the plan could not begin.
So while his father scanned the subjects in the foreground, Bill’s eyes were searching out the background, looking for the secret weapon he had put into play.
He wasn’t above playing dirty.
‘Go back.’
William clicked back a few images.
‘Zoom in.’
‘That’s nothing, son. Just some drinks on a table.’
Bill knew better because he knew what to look for.
Jacobs had just slipped a roofy into Nancy Robertson’s drink.
‘You’re right. It is nothing. Move on.’
William began clicking through the photographs again, slowing down when he got to a series of photos of a man and woman sucking the enamel off each other’s teeth.
‘Hey, he did it,’ William said. ‘He actually came through.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Dad. Nothing has happened yet.’
‘But they’re kissing. He’s all over her like a cheap suit. You said this guy was good.’
‘I said his history pointed to the possibility. Wilson can be quite persuasive. We’ll know soon enough if he is as good as his reputation.’
Bill couldn’t use photographs of consenting adults kissing. He needed more. He needed ammunition.
The basement door opened and BJ entered the room, biting into a crisp green apple.
‘What are we looking at?’
‘The party in Paris,’ William said, as excited as a teenager viewing porn for the first time.
‘Thought you were at a party yourself,’ Bill said.
‘I was. I got bored. I’ll head back just before midnight. Did you get the cameras in the bedrooms?’
‘Yep. All the way up to Dubai. If we don’t have ammunition by then, it will be too late.’
‘Who do you think she’s looking at?’ William asked, enlarging a photograph of Burke just before she kissed Wilson.
Bill bent low, studying the image carefully before clicking on the next few.
He laughed. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘What is it, Dad?’
‘Your brother. He’s been there five minutes and already he’s acting like her knight in shining armour, rescuing the damsel in distress.’
He enlarged the image that showed Damon approaching Burke, his mind already searching for ways he could use his son’s weakness to his advantage.
‘Show me.’ BJ seized the mouse, moving through the images with something akin to frenzy, the frown deepening into a full-blown scowl.
Well, well, well. It seemed more than one son had developed an interest in Charlotte Burke.
Scalding tears slashed Charlotte’s cheeks, burning with humiliation. Hail struck a sympathetic battle cry against the glass, leaving furious rivulets in its aftermath.
What the hell was I thinking?
That’s just it. She wasn’t thinking.
She was reacting.
And as usual, her reactions had steered her up shit creek and left her high and dry without a paddle.
In the corner of the room lay her red silk dress, crumpled like a discarded newspaper, a scarlet letter exposing her for what she was.
You led him on. Gave him mixed signals. Is it any wonder you can’t get rid of him now?
Voice husky with desire. ‘It’s okay. You’re scared. I understand.’
Just ignore him. Maybe he’ll get the message and leave.
Who was she kidding? Wilson was too thick for hints.
She pulled the blankets high around her chin, the action masquerading as belated modesty.
His voice became more urgent, alcohol slurring his speech.
‘Let me in. I know you want this.’
You’re wrong Zac. You’re the last person in the world I’d want to sleep with.
So why had she kissed him.
Because it was the only way to stop Damon Harvey.
‘Go away Zac. I’m sorry… I’m tired… It was a mistake.’
‘A mistake? I was a fucking mistake? Let me in you little cock teasing bitch.’
She was stunned at how quickly he moved from cajoling to verbal assault.
She had expected him to be annoyed, maybe even hurt. But vicious?
Fear kick started her heart.
‘If you don’t go away, I’ll…’
What could she do?
‘I’ll call…’
Who did she even know that would come to her rescue?
The door shook as he rammed his shoulder against the wood.
How secure is that lock?
‘I will call security, Zac,’ she said, panic making her voice tremulous.
What if the door breaks?
Two floors above, the crowd began their countdown to midnight. If Zac got in, nobody would hear her scream.
‘Please go away. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’
‘Mother fucking little bitch. I swear, when I get my hands on you...’
The threat hung in the air, making fear clutch Charlotte’s heart.
He kicked the door again – so hard, it actually came away from the frame.
She reached for the first hard thing she could find.
An antique bronze statue on her bedside table.
If he came at her, she wasn’t afraid to use it.
Thankfully the lock held.
‘You just fucked with the wrong guy. You will pay for this.’
From the menacing tone, Charlotte knew he meant every word.
Chapter Nine:
Timber steps groaned like a bellyache in the pitch-black, unlit stairwell.
It was an old habit, from the years when he’d actually shared the immense house with a wife and family.
When insomnia jostled him awake, he would creep downstairs, heat up some soothing milk and sit in the darkness, not wanting to wake his slumbering family.
But his family were gone.
His wife had been dead more than a decade and his children had long since grown.
They had off-spring of their own now.
Still, traditions were hard to break away from.
William rubbed the support stockings, prescribed by his physician for the painful thrombosis afflicting his body. The compressed elastic pinched the skin on his thickened legs.
Boiled milk cooled in his mug, leaving a thin film hardening on the surface.
He sipped slowly, glancing up at the illuminated hands on the kitchen clock.
4am.
He had two choices.
Return to bed and try to battle a reluctant sleep.
Or check on his project.
He chose the latter, slipping the key from around his neck.
It turned in the lock, brass against brass making a satisfying click as it slid open.
Only three other people had crossed this threshold.
Bill and BJ had keys of their own and could enter at will.
The other guest had been uninvited, at a time when William had thought a simple lock able to keep intruders from his secrets.
Of course that intrusion had been the catalyst for a paranoia-filled upgrade of security measures.
Two decades later, they were still trying to recover from that one security breach.
Once inside the doorway, a pressure sensor took a thermal image of his unique handprint.
When the database confirmed he was who he purported to be, a retinal scanner swivelled from inside the wall.
Keeping his palm in contact with the sensor, a blue light scanned his eyes.
An electronic beep sounded, and a cover slid off a small keyboard. Only when he had correctly entered a thirteen digit, multi-c
haracter pass code did the titanium door hiss open.
Plenty of people had secrets.
Not everyone had killed to keep them.
She had tried to sleep but Zac’s threats, coupled with the demons of her past, swirled like a vortex in the night, threatening to consume her.
In the end, she booted up her trusty MacBook and set to work on her memoirs, her willowy fingers flying across the keyboard.
She could be as truthful as she wanted in the tome as no one was ever going to read it.
It was for her eyes only – a cathartic form of therapy.
The chapter she was writing now was about her best friend, Joanne Parker.
One of the problems with the foster care system – one of the many, many problems – is that nobody gives a damn about our birthdays.
And why would they?
Sure, you get the occasional foster parent that does this work out of the goodness of their heart but for the vast majority, it’s just a pay check.
Kids come and go in machine gun fashion. Keeping track of special occasions is just too much trouble to go to for some bratty kid that will have moved on in a couple of months.
Birthdays; they are just another day.
My twelfth birthday started in much the same way as the previous eight had – alone.
I was almost used to it now. If only I didn’t still remember those earlier celebrations when my parents were still around.
Celebrations in the true sense of the word.
If I close my eyes, I can still recall the parties – balloons, streamers, piles and piles of presents. A pretty dress, dozens of friends, masses of sugary treats I’m no longer allowed to eat.
And parents. Two of them. One behind the camera, recording the joyous event for the family album.
I think it’s real but I can’t be sure.
My therapist says my mind conjures up these scenes as a coping mechanism. That’s why when I watch television and see distant cities – London, Paris, Washington, Los Angeles – I can convince myself I have been there.
I know she says the memories aren’t real. So why are they more real than anything I have experienced since then?