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“Hm,” she replied, but he could see a thousand questions in her eyes. Questions he’d probably asked himself a million times. Questions the cops asked when they’d arrived. Even more questions Lynne’s lawyer had asked during the custody hearing.
None of them he could answer, because leaving a loaded gun anywhere, even in a safe he thought he’d locked, was stupid. Stupid and deadly.
“Regardless of how it happened, it was my fault,” he told her, not looking at her. He didn’t want to care what her questions were, but he did. And it pissed him off.
“I’m sorry—” she started, but he cut her off.
“Yeah, me too. Everybody’s fucking sorry. It was an accident, but it was my fuckingstupidaccident,” he said, rolling onto his back. “An unnecessary accident.”
This was just a gig, and she was just a piece of ass, he told himself. And telling her what he did, well… that was for his own mental health, and nothing more. This trip was his confessional, and he’d return home absolved in his own conscience.
She rolled with him, though, leaning on his biceps when he tucked his hand behind his head.
“And so this is your last job,” she said, nodding slowly. “So you can be with your son. Makes sense.”
He didn’t respond. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was over. He searched for some other topic, but the only one taking up all of this mind’s space was the death of a young child.
Thankfully, Nita found a different topic.
“I guess you’ll be able to go back home in about a week. Mags’s change of plans has moved everything up,” she said, and a shield had come down over her face.
Thank fucking Christ. Work was a great distraction. Except she leaned away from him and it gave him a view of her tits. An even better distraction.
“In that case, maybe we should take advantage—” he started, but she didn’t just lean away from him. She rolled away, shucking off the covers as she did.
“No time,” she said, her voice all business. “I’ve got a full day of helping Lindsey prep the staff. Things are going to go fast now.”
He watched her tight and tatted body disappear into the dark bathroom, closing the door before flipping on the light. A few seconds later, he heard the shower start.
It was better this way. A great fuck session, then back to work.
He slipped back under the covers, wondering if the sentiment would hold after she got out of the shower.
When he opened his eyes, it was too late. It was three hours later, and he could tell in a nanosecond that the apartment was empty.
24
Nita sat in the grand hall of the Spanish Villa, her mind circling back to a few hours ago.
After her shower, she’d listened at the bathroom door, relieved to hear Ryder snoring. The thought of snuggling up against any man after a night of sex had always been alien to her. But with Ryder, not only was it an uncomfortable idea, it had felt dangerous. As if her nerve endings were too raw for touching. As if she was giving up something by wanting to be close.
Sneaking to the living room, she’d sacked out on the couch for a couple of hours. She tossed in fitful sleep until six, then got dressed, moving more and more quickly as panic rose that Ryder would hear her and wake up. She got away without being discovered.
She drove her cart in the chill morning air, texting as she went. Neither Fontana nor Lindsey, the Cavendish facilities manager, replied to any of her messages, so she headed to the English Manor. Once in her office, she repeatedly ran through the details for Mags’s Arabian Orgy until they were etched on her brain.
Lindsey finally returned her text at 8:30 a.m., inviting Nita to the Spanish Villa for the staff run-through.
“I know three days is short notice,” Lindsey told the group of twelve, who huddled attentively around the villa’s curving staircase in the main foyer. “But this is Cavendish. We deliver, right?”
Nita watched the young mix of male and female staff nod and murmur enthusiastically. Cavendish implemented a harsh interview process for staff, since the kind of intel about guests that could be sold to newspapers or magazines was literally earth shattering, but it also meant they had committed, energized staff.
Lindsey skimmed through the details of the engagement for the serving staff and behind-the-scenes prop handlers, heads nodding as they followed along on their own sheets of paper. Smart questions were asked and answered, and clever suggestions made, which Lindsey noted. All in all, the infrastructure for the event seemed as solid as steel.
Nita’s phone buzzed, and she read Fontana’s text message.
I have a presentation with the consultants at the SV ballroom this aft. Want to join?she texted.
Maybe if nothing else blows up, she replied. She added an exploding head emoji and aJK.
