Читать книгу: «Playing Dirty»
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Susan Andersen
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and served up with empathy and a humorous flair.”
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Palpable escalating sexual tension between the pair,
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Ava’s Taco Soup
1 lb ground turkey
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 large bag frozen mixed veggies (cook’s choice)
2 cans diced tomatoes & green chilies (such as RoTel)
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can black beans
1 can white beans
2 packages taco seasoning or ½ cup Costco taco seasoning
1 cup red wine
1 cup/can chicken or vegetable broth
Brown turkey, onions and peppers and toss in a large Crock-Pot. Add rest of the ingredients and simmer all day long. Leftovers can be frozen in ziplock baggies for on-the-go individual servings.
Playing Dirty
Susan Andersen
MILLS & BOON
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This is dedicated to my little corner
of the immense Facebook community—
especially the ladies (and occasional gent)
of the SusanAndersenFanPage. You make me laugh,
make me think and—I gotta tell ya—make me
feel much more important than I actually am.
Your collective willingness to open up pieces of your lives
to my voracious curiosity just knocks my socks off.
You all rock.
—Susan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Virginia Bogert of
Laughing Dog Productions for the fabulous information
and peeks into the world of a working documentary
producer. I so appreciate all the time you gave me,
your wonderful ideas and your patience
with my many questions.
I hope I did your information justice,
but if any inaccuracies arise, they are solely mine.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Dear Diary,
I didn’t know you could feel such pain and still live.
Country Day School, Upper School building
Thirteen years ago
AVA SPENCER DANCED down the hallway toward the cafeteria, her hips slowly swiveling and her plump shoulders grooving to the Goo Goo Dolls’ rendition of “Iris” playing in her head. She supposed she could’ve picked something faster, but hey. She was in the moment, feeling good.
Really, really good.
“Ava! Wait up!”
Glancing behind her, she saw her two best friends hustling around a group of stragglers who, like her, were running late for second lunch. The music in her head shut down as she waited for them to catch up, only to be promptly replaced by the everyday rhythms of school lunch hour: the squeak of shoes against linoleum, the slam of an occasional locker door, the laughter of little kids out on the Lower School playfield competing with the muted roar of the teens behind the lunchroom door just down the hall.
“What’s up, girly girl?” Poppy demanded, striding up to her. The bangles on her wrist clinked as they slid down the arm she raised to brush back a curl that had strayed from the mass. “You’re looking exceptionally happy.”
“No fooling,” Jane agreed. “It’s not every day we see you boogie down the hallway.”
“I am feeling so fine.” If she felt any finer, in fact, they’d have to haul her down from the ceiling like a bouquet of helium balloons. She beamed at her friends. “I might even go so far as to say I’m feelin’ beautiful.”
And wasn’t that amazing. She felt reasonably attractive most days, pretty on occasion, but beautiful? That was something so rare it was the next best thing to never. Given her constant struggle with weight, it wasn’t an adjective anyone at home ever applied to her. Her parents were more likely to give her grief for not doing enough to lose her “baby” fat.
“Hey, you are beautiful,” Jane protested loyally.
“Yeah, ‘She’s got such a pretty face,’” Ava quoted dryly. “What a shame she’s so plump/heavy/hefty.” That was a conversation she’d overheard more than once.
“You know Janie better than to think she implied that, Av,” Poppy said. “She said you’re beautiful—and you are.”
“I love you both for saying so, but that would be you, Poppy, not me.” With her Nordic blond hair and breezy confidence, Poppy was in a category all her own. She could’ve been part of the popular kids’ clique if she’d given a rat’s ass about that sort of thing. Hell, Ava thought proudly, Poppy could’ve ruled that crowd. She and Janie, on the other hand, would have never made the cut.
Not that Jane wasn’t attractive, but it was a quiet prettiness that sort of snuck up on you. She had shiny brown hair and really great legs, but the clothes she wore made Goths look colorful. Plus, she was a brainiac—something most of the so-called in crowd were too stupid to appreciate.
Ava gave a mental shrug. Neither she nor Janie gave a rip any more than Poppy. The kids in that crowd were mostly asses, and the three of them had something worlds better than winning a high school popularity contest—each other. They were tight. BFFs. They’d met at this very school in the fourth grade and been a unit ever since.
Ava sure wished, however, that she were a size zero—okay, eight—like Janie and Poppy. Usually, in fact, she was fairly green-eyed over the knowledge that, no matter how nice her clothes, she always seemed to look like a sausage that had been packed too tightly into its skin—while her friends wore their Old Navy duds like runway models.
Today, however, it didn’t matter. Because last night Cade Gallari had kissed her, touched her, made love to her. And since the moment she’d opened her eyes this morning, she’d felt almost skinny, wholly desirable and, yes, beautiful.
Not that her first foray into sex had been completely wonderful. If the truth be told, the foreplay had been awesome, but the actual penetration part…well, that had been uncomfortable and over so fast she’d never actually gotten the chance to cross the finish line. But hey, it had been her first time, so it wasn’t as if she’d expected angels to sing or anything.
Still, Cade had made her feel special. Between kisses, he’d told her how gorgeous her lips were, how pretty her hair, how soft her skin, how awesome her breasts. And afterward he’d held her as if she were more precious than platinum.
Which didn’t prevent her from being blown away that she’d done it with him. She sure never would have predicted that. Up until six weeks ago, in fact, she’d have sworn it wasn’t even a remote possibility, since she couldn’t remember a time when Cade hadn’t been a giant pain in her butt. They’d known each other since birth, practically—yet at the same time hadn’t truly known each other at all. But the little she had known of him?
She hadn’t liked. He was part of the crowd that reveled in ridiculing anyone who didn’t fit their standards, which, face it, was nine-tenths of the student body. So when she and Cade had been assigned partners in Mr. Burton’s year-end seniors science project, she’d seen Titanic stamped all over it. Because, c’mon, her and Gallari? On a project that accounted for a quarter of their grades?
When the two of them were eight, he’d pulled her hair and trod all over her toes in cotillion class. In the tenth grade the guy had looked up her skirt from beneath the bleachers, for God’s sake, then told everyone she wore pink panties! Before last night, in fact, her blood had congealed at the thought of him seeing her fat thighs and probably laughing about them with those asshole buddies of his.
Yet over the past month and a half, she’d seen another side of Cade, a sweet, funny, thoughtful side she hadn’t dreamt existed. And sitting across from each other in the library or at the coffee shop tables they’d taken to staking out to work on their project, an insidious attraction had begun to grow. Soon they were sitting in the dark in his car just talking, talking, reluctant to call it a day.
Until one night he’d kissed her. And once that frontier had been crossed, there was no going back. Every time he’d kissed her these past couple of weeks, every time his hands had grown bolder charting new territory, she’d just melted, finding it really difficult to call a halt as, little by little, he’d pushed the envelope on their intimacy level.
Until, last night, she just couldn’t make herself say they had to stop. Her lips curled up in a secret smile.
“Okay, that’s it!” Stopping in front of the cafeteria doors, Poppy grabbed Ava’s arm. “What is up with you?”
She laughed.
Tried to keep the news to herself.
Then ultimately caved, because they were a sisterhood and she told them everything.
“I did it, Poppy. I thought for sure I was going to graduate—if not die—a virgin, but last night I…” Heat crawling up her chest, she suddenly turned shy at the idea of saying the words aloud.
Jane’s mouth dropped open. “Oh. My. Gawd,” she said slowly. “You did the deed?”
She nodded.
Poppy looked perplexed. “With who?” Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, crap, please tell me it wasn’t Buttface Gallari!”
“Don’t call him that!” Okay, so she was the one who had given him the title way back when. But still—
“Just…don’t, okay?” she said in a softer tone and shook her head. “Look, I want to tell you guys everything, and I will—after school when the potential to be overheard isn’t so high.”
“Yeah, all right,” Poppy agreed. “But the minute we’re clear of this place, I’ve got some questions for you, sister.” Turning Ava loose, she pushed open the lunchroom door, and they walked into the chaos and bedlam of second lunch.
Trays and crockery clattered, voices reverberated off walls, and students seemed in constant motion as they either moved between the long tables or jockeyed for position at them. Peering around a couple of jocks tossing a baseball back and forth, Ava looked for Cade. Not wanting to appear too obvious when she didn’t immediately locate him, she followed her friends to the lunch counter.
She’d picked up a tray before she noted an unaccountable lessening in the noise level. It was never quiet in here, yet except for a few conversations still going on at the farthermost tables, the usual babble had faded to near silence. She looked over her shoulder to see everyone looking at her.
Someone snickered.
She smiled uncertainly, so damn dumb that even then she didn’t get that she was the butt of some joke. It wasn’t until Dylan Vanderkamp, the biggest ass in Cade’s crowd of mega-asses, rose to his feet, smirked at her and brandished a fat roll of cash that she began to get an inkling that this was not going to be good.
“Here you go, Gallari,” Dylan said, “two hundred bucks.” He extended it across the lunch table. “A bet’s a bet, my man. You said you could bag the fat girl, and by God you did it.” Giving Ava a slow up and down that left her feeling naked, he curled his lip. “I’d say you more than earned it.”
It was a bet? a voice shrieked in her head. I’m the “fat girl” he slept with on a bet? Her hands went numb, her legs lost strength and sickness rose in a sour tide up her throat.
Dylan stepped to one side, and for the first time she saw Cade, who was lounging on his tailbone looking bored. He glanced at her, and for one crazy, hopeful second, she thought he’d slap the money out of Vanderkamp’s mitt. But he merely raised a languid hand and plucked it from the other boy’s fingers.
“Thanks,” he said and tucked it in the front pocket of his jeans.
Everything inside her turned to ice. At the same time, all those eyes avidly waiting for her reaction seemed to burn pinprick holes everywhere they touched.
But she couldn’t simply stand here, taking shit off Cade’s group of over-entitled Neanderthals. Her chest might feel as if a two-ton rock sat on it, and God knew she desired nothing more than the ability to turn invisible—but she and her friends had always given back as good as they’d gotten from these idiots. Suckered by Gallari’s sweet talk, she’d forgotten for a while who she was dealing with.
She sure as hell remembered now. And, dammit, she would get a handle on herself, if it killed her.
A bitter laugh almost escaped her. Because the treacherous, lying, two-faced bastard had gotten a jump on that, hadn’t he? Still, if she was going down, she’d at least do so dealing a little damage of her own.
“I think I should get part of that,” she managed to drawl past the huge lump in her throat. “One session with Quick Draw McGraw here pretty much put me off sex for life—and if that doesn’t entitle a girl to a cut, I don’t know what does.”
It was the slightest balm to her wounded heart that a few people laughed at Cade’s expense rather than her own. It wasn’t enough—she’d prefer that his dick shrivel up and drop off—but it would have to do. That lump was growing and she couldn’t force out another word.
As if she knew, Poppy placed an unobtrusively supportive hand on her back. “Yeah, what was it she told us, Jane?”
Jane shrugged. “That if she ever got over the trauma of Gallari’s fumbling and worked up the nerve to try it again, it would be with someone who knew what the hell they were doing.”
Cade continued lounging and looking bored, but Ava had the satisfaction of at least seeing a little dull color climb up his razor-sharp cheekbones.
She’d take more pleasure in seeing him experience a fraction of her humiliation, but God, she just hurt so bad. She felt shattered, as if her insides had been torn apart, then put back wrong. She would never, ever forgive him for setting her up this way, for lifting her up—only to slam her down.
Swallowing hard against a rising tide of grief, she turned her back on him, blindly grabbed a bowl of Jell-O and slapped it on her tray. No way would she be able to swallow a bite.
But damned if she intended to turn tail and run from Buttface Gallari. Even if, inside, a piece of her had just died.
CHAPTER ONE
I’m not sure if I just made a really savvy move—or the biggest blunder of my life.
Present day, the ninth of November
THE BASTARD was late. Ava Spencer cursed the man she was waiting on as she paced the front foyer of the Wolcott mansion, alternately hugging herself against the cold and trying to rub some warmth into her arms through her coat sleeves. The place had been closed up for several weeks, and between the wind currently buffeting the mullioned windows and the rainstorm that had blown through earlier, leaving a Seattle-centric damp-to-the-bone chill in its wake, she was freezing her ass off.
She would’ve turned on the heat, but there was little point. If the guy ever deigned to get here, she’d be showing him the mansion from attic to wine cellar. And while Jane kept the front parlor and hidden closet in Miss Agnes’s upstairs sitting room climate-controlled for the preservation of the Wolcott collections that weren’t currently sold or on loan to museums, it would take until noon tomorrow to warm up the rest. And although she had turned on every light in the house, the illusion of warmth from the yellow glow of the lamps and overheads didn’t come close to replacing the real thing.
A laugh that went a little wild escaped her. Like that was the crucial issue here. Because… It’s not some guy, Av. It’s Cade Calderwood Gallari.
Jeez Marie. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this. So, yes, she was concentrating on the minutiae for all she was worth to keep from thinking about him. Because it was too freaking late to second-guess herself now.
Wasn’t it?
She froze for an arrested second. Hell, no, it wasn’t! The heavy feeling in her stomach lightening, she snatched up her purse and started down the hallway to the kitchen. Its exterior door was the direct route to where she’d parked her Beemer. Cade was late? She was out of here.
Headlights swept the east wall across from the kitchen archway, stopping her dead. “Shit.”
Too late.
She did a little dance in place to shake off the tension that had her tighter than an over-wound watch, throwing in some yoga breathing for good measure. Exhaling a final gusty breath, she nodded to herself. “Okay. Time to pull on your big girl pants.”
She forced herself to shove down her irritation over Cade’s tardiness, over the fact that he breathed, and bury it deep. It’s been thirteen years, girl. He’s a footnote, someone who no longer matters. Who hasn’t mattered for a very long time. So it probably wouldn’t do to snap his head off first thing.
But, oh, boy. The temptation.
She watched him through the back-door window as he climbed the steps and stopped beneath the porch light, and her annoyance surged back with a vengeance. She fought it to a standstill once more, pushed out a final exhalation and reached out to unlock the door.
The knob turned before she could open it, and he blew into the kitchen, shaking himself like a wet dog and sending raindrops flying in all directions from his sun-streaked brown hair. Looking beyond him, Ava saw that it had begun to pour again.
“Man, it’s wet out there!” He flashed her his trademark Gallari smile, white teeth flashing and deep creases bracketing his mouth. Only she noticed that this time the blue, blue eyes glinting between dense, dark lashes held…something. Wariness maybe or…calculation? Something cooler and edgier than the smile that for years had haunted her dreams.
It just bugged the hell out of her that she felt his impact like a cattle prod to the breastbone. Why was it like this every damn time she laid eyes on him: this immediate, visceral one-two to the heart? It was identical to the reaction she’d had around teenaged Cade—and even after everything she knew about him, everything he’d done—seeing him gave her that same hot punch to the solar plexus.
Well, it would be a cold, cold day in hell before she felt the least bit tempted to act on it. She raised an eyebrow. “And you call yourself a Seattle native?”
“I forgot how fast the rain can soak a guy up here.”
She gave him a polite smile. “I suppose living in southern California will do that to a person.” She made a show of glancing at her watch. “Tell me why you think I should give you the time of day—let alone rent you the mansion for a documentary.”
“O-kay. No small talk.” His mouth developed an unyielding slant that somehow looked more at home on his chapped lips than his old smile. “Sorry I’m late. There was a wreck on I-5 and it took a while to get traffic moving again.”
She nodded her acceptance of his apology and watched as he looked around the kitchen. A small pucker of dismay appeared between his dark eyebrows. “It’s been modernized.”
When Ava looked him fully in the face this time, she found it less unsettling. “Surely you didn’t expect it to be the same as it was back in the eighties?”
“I guess I’d hoped it would be.”
“As soon as Poppy, Jane and I inherited it, we had the awful sunroom addition removed and, yes, modernized the place throughout. We were expecting to sell it, Slick, not rent it—and even that’s not a done deal.” She raised her brows. “Your pitch?”
“As my production assistant told you on the phone, I want to do a documentary on the Wolcott Suite mystery. But more than that, I want to feature Agnes Wolcott.”
She had, and Ava had to admit that was the reason she was standing here. But—“Why? I mean, sure, the Wolcott diamonds gained urban legend status locally, but I doubt the story surrounding it is nationally famous.”
“Maybe not, but I grew up in this town, and I’ve been fascinated by the mystery of it since I was a kid.” His blue eyes lit with enthusiasm. “It’s got everything, Ava—a cool old mansion, a fortune in diamonds that were never recovered, a murder…and a woman at the heart of it that I find more and more remarkable the deeper I dig.”
She really liked that last part. What she didn’t like was him. “And I should care about what you want, why?”
“Because I can do justice to a woman I know you cared for. And because I’ll give you and your friends thirty grand for six weeks’ use, pay all the peripheral expenses for the time Scorched Earth Productions is here and landscape the grounds back to the way they were in the eighties.”
Oh, low. The mansion had turned into an albatross around her and her friends’ necks in this economy, and he undoubtedly knew it. Desperately, she wanted to spit in his eye. But she thought of her friends. Poppy and Jane had never complained, but she knew this place was a drain on them, too. So, sucking up her ire, wondering if she was making the worst decision of her life, she gritted teeth and said through them, “Fine.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes.” What the hell. She wouldn’t have to see him. “Have your assistant call me for my lawyer’s number—you can send him the contracts—and if he finds it agreeable you’ve got a deal. Do you want a tour before you go? Since you seemed concerned about the work we had done, I’d be happy to show you. I think you’ll agree our crew did a wonderful job of preserving the spirit of the original design in their restoration.” She stepped back.
“One more thing,” he said, halting her. “I want to hire you as the production company’s concierge, as well.”
She laughed in his face. “No. Do you want that tour or not?”
“Forget the tour—”
“Works for me. Send your paperwork to my lawyer.” She turned to go.
“Look. I’ll pay you two grand a week plus a fifty thousand dollar bonus if the documentary comes in on time and on budget.”
“Which somehow won’t happen, right?”
“The bonus is a legitimate offer, Ava. I’ll email my own contracts for your attorney to look over while he’s going over yours, and you’ll see I have a lot more to lose than you.”
Doesn’t matter. Because it’s not going to happen. But damn him. Damn him, damn him, damn him! Not only had her trust fund taken a huge hit in the economic downturn, so had the finances of many of the clients who formed the foundation of her concierge business. And as one of the gazillion mortgage holders who’d been caught up in the subprime lending disaster, she was facing a huge balloon payment on her condo that was coming due in the not-nearly-future-enough future.
Well, too bad, so sad for her. She’d rather lose the place than spend six weeks in this bastard’s company.
Seriously? her hardscrabble practicality demanded. She had to admit that was pretty cut-your-nose-off-to-spite-your-face idiotic. This could actually be the answer to her prayers. And hell, it wasn’t as if she were worried about falling under his spell. Been there, done that.
“You’d be in place to make sure I do credit to your Miss Wolcott,” he said softly.
She blew out a defeated breath. “All right. Contingent on my attorney’s evaluation of the contracts, I’ll do it—to see you do justice to Miss A’s story.” And if she was also doing it for the money, he didn’t have to know. “Do you want that tour? We can start with the dining room across the hall.”
She turned, only to feel Cade wrap a hand around her forearm to halt her. Heat seeped through the cashmere of her coat sleeve beneath his light grasp, and she promptly swung back around, twisting her arm free.
“Do not,” she said with hard-fought calm, “touch me.”
Releasing her, he stepped back. “I just wanted to tell you, before we get started, how genuinely sorry I am for what happened back in high school. I was—”
“Forget it,” she interrupted. She so did not want to rehash the ugly details of the past with him. “I have.”
“Really?” An eloquent eyebrow rose, surprise flashing in the depths of his cobalt eyes.
She gave him a regal nod. She had cut him off at the knees the other times he’d sought her out over the years to apologize, but if acknowledging his regret would move him along to a place where they didn’t have to discuss the past, then, fine. She’d grant him his damn redemption.
“You forgive me then?”
No. Hell, no. That would be a snowboarding day in hell.
But she gave him a serene smile, knowing from this point on she had to be professional. “Let’s just agree to leave the past in the past, shall we?” Not awaiting a response, she led him to the dining room and got down to business. “As you can see, great care was taken in here to preserve the integrity of the era in which the Wolcott Mansion was built—”
SHE MET JANE AND POPPY at Sugar Rush, her favorite neighborhood coffee shop/bakery, the next afternoon. As they took their seats at a round table by the play area, she sucked in a quick inhale, then eased it out. “I did something last night I hope you’ll be okay with,” she said to her two best friends amid the clatter of crockery and conversations. She hesitated for a brief second, then blurted, “I agreed to rent the mansion to Cade Gallari.”
Okay, her ripping-off-the-Band-Aid delivery was clearly a little too abrupt, for Jane’s blue eyes went round with shock. Then her friend slapped both hands onto the tabletop, came half out of her seat to shove her face closer to Ava’s own and said, “You agreed to rent it to who?”
Ignoring the two women at the next table whose attention was drawn by Jane’s incredulous rising voice and aggressive stance—a look at odds with her neat, shiny brown hair and dark-hued clothing that always looked so conservative at first glance—Ava focused on her friends. She knew perfectly well she’d been heard. Nevertheless, she repeated evenly, “Cade Gallari.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.” Poppy’s voice might have been calmer than Jane’s, but as the curly haired blonde set her coffee cup down the expression in her topaz-brown eyes held identical disbelief. “Why would we let that douche anywhere near our inheritance?”
It was a fair question. Miss Agnes, the cool old lady who’d started having the three of them over to her mansion for monthly teas when they were twelve, who’d given them their first diaries and gotten them started on their lifelong journaling habit, had become a friend and a mentor. In Ava’s and Janie’s case, she’d been more parentlike than their own parents. And when she’d died a year and a half ago, she’d left a big hole.
Even in death, however, she’d been full of surprises, and Ava, Jane and Poppy had been astounded to learn she’d bequeathed them her estate. Miss A might well be rolling over in her grave at the thought of Cade in her home. God knows she’d played a large role in helping Ava pick up the pieces after his betrayal.
Feeling a little beleaguered, she stared at her friend. “It’s not as if I would’ve chosen to let him use the Wolcott mansion, either, Poppy, given any other option. But I’m fresh out of those. I said yes because the market for houses in our price range is stagnant and we’re paying through the nose for taxes, lights, utilities, yard maintenance and all the other crap that goes along with maintaining a place this size. He’ll pay very well for the privilege.”
She told them the terms. “And he’ll pay even more if we decide to rent him a few of Miss Agnes’s collections to use in his production—something I told him he’d have to discuss with you, Janie. You both know he produces documentaries about unsolved mysteries, right?”
The other women shifted guiltily, and she laughed, feeling tension she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying—in her neck, her shoulders, her spine—release its grip. “Relax, I don’t doubt your loyalty—you guys have boycotted all things Gallari forever. But we’d have to live in outer Mongolia not to have heard something about the name he’s making for himself.”
“Okay—I confess—I saw one of his films.” Poppy held her hands up in a Don’t shoot! gesture when both Ava and Jane gaped at her. “I didn’t pick it out—Jason ordered the damn thing from Netflix one night. He-who-shall-not-be-named is never mentioned in our house, so Jase had no way of putting the documentary maker together with the guy he saw upsetting you in that bar in Columbia City last year. Murphy’d just told him he had to see it.”
