Page 50 of At His Beck & Call

My mind flicks to a dark, low-lit place, a deep voice instructing me to do whatever he wants, and the intoxicating thrill of obeying his every whim.

Then James looms large in the image, a twisted, cruel sneer on his face as I cower away from him.

Don’t I deserve to be happy? To be cared for by someone for real?

“Sure,” I say, the word sounding foreign on my tongue. “That sounds great.”

Chapter 17

Oliver

Carmen Reynolds sits opposite me in a Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s our first meeting, and she looks as if she’s turned up for a fashion show.

She is in her early seventies but looks fifty-five. She’s wearing a long diamond necklace that plunges down the front of her suit jacket. She isn’t wearing a shirt, the narrow neckline exposing the edges of her fake breasts where the necklace hangs down between them.

She has long, glossy, black hair, bright red lipstick, and sunglasses perched on her head with diamonds at the corners.

I have to admit that Carmen Reynolds is an incredibly beautiful woman.

She’s also completely crazy.

“I want tonail his balls to the wall,” she says, in a clipped British accent. “He has taken everything from me. Everything. I am going to drag his life, his money, and all the things he loves out of him and build my empire with it. The fucker can sit in his ivory tower, sipping champagne and snorting coke with his new harpy, and I’m going to make my millions while he rots away without me.”

She takes a long sip of her red wine, narrowing her eyes as she checks the bottle label. She raises her eyebrows.

“My God, that’s good.” She sits back in her chair, giving me a once-over with unabashed interest. “You know if I were ten years younger, I would climb you like a tree.”

I take a sip of my soda water and raise my glass to her. I really need a glass of wine to get through this meeting, but it’s lunchtime, and I have lots of work waiting for me when I get back to the office.

“And I might just let you.” That’s a huge lie, but I have no idea what else to say.

She throws her head back and laughs at that. “I bet you hate me,” she says with feeling. “I would hate me, too, in your position. You’re like a tax inspector who’s discovered that his new client has been keeping track of her accounts on post-it notes and cigarette packets for thirty years.”

“It’s fine, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Oh, Christ, call me Carmen. I’m chucking that fucker’s name away, as well as everything else he’s left me with. I know it’s a mess. I was angry, and I shoved everything together before he could get to it, but Iknowthe little dickhead is hiding something.”

“Like what?”

“Look, Oliver,” she says, giving me a lascivious smile, “my husband and I lived a lavish lifestyle. I haven’t had to work a day in my life. IknowI’m a despicable human being who most people hate, but it’s my life, and I want half my assets back. He fucked his way through half of London before he met me, and the other half afterward. Seeing as he’s been living on and off in LA for the past ten years, I would suggest you start there.”

“You think he has a mistress?”

“Oh, hundreds of them, I imagine. Is that enough for me to get fifty percent?”

“Infidelity? No. Not usually. But if he’d beenpayinga mistress, buying properties in her name, cars, gifts, tuition fees. That’s something the court will sit up and take notice of.”

“Hm,” she says, sipping her wine as the entrees arrive. “I’ll have a think about it. I imagine some poor bitch lives out in LA thinking she’s the only one he loves. He never could keep his dick in his pants. One time, I walked in on him fucking our nanny with my diamonds draped around her neck. The little whore. I wish I’d had the balls to fuck more men, too.”

I clear my throat. “And you think there will be evidence of his infidelities in the paperwork you provided to us?”

“Well, I nabbed a lot of it before he could get his meaty fingers on it. He was ever so pissed off about it. But who knows? Maybe after seventy-five years, he’s learned to be careful with paper trails. But that’s whatyou’refor, isn’t it? The legwork is all on you, that’s what I’m paying you for.”

I give her a tight smile and bite my tongue to stop myself from explaining justhowmuchlegwork she’s created. I stab at the fish on my plate, knowing that arguing with this woman would be futile.

I’ve had clients like her before. She’s the sort of person who’s your best friend until she runs out of patience, and then all hell breaks loose. This case is going to take a lot of investigating. It’s the kind of work I longed for as a junior lawyer, but now I can’t be bothered with it. Spying on people, having them followed, and discovering what they’ve been up to in their covert lives isn’t my idea of fun.

But then, Noah Finnigan seems very interested in impressing me; maybe I can make him do all of that while the rest of the team works through the documents.