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There’d been that one in Portland three—no, four years ago, he remembered. God, she’d been relentless sexually. Then again, he’d cleared nearly eight hundred thousand before he ended their relationship. And her.
He’d done very well for himself, enjoyed his life, his work, his travels. And his success rate had been perfect, because he’d earned perfect. He deserved perfect.
Until Morgan Albright.
The one that got away.
It grated still, and he could admit the miss had left him shaken. More than a little shaken. Enough to take a break, indulge in a long vacation.
The bitch would’ve talked to the cops, to those asshole feds, and maybe, just maybe, he’d let something slip with her he shouldn’t have.
Not likely, but the nagging maybe pushed him to take a breather, to put a few thousand miles between them.
He could afford it, after all, some time in San Diego, then a couple of months in Malibu, before some island hopping in Hawaii.
Nothing better than a fine hotel on a beach, to his mind.
And as the saying went, all work and no play made Gavin a dull boy.
But even in fine hotels on fine beaches, he thought of her, and thought of her. He’d taken what was hers, but she’d lived. She’d broken his streak and that ate away at him.
He had to fix that, fix her, reclaim his luck. To add to it, he was bored. Work was play for him, and he missed it, and missing it, had gone into research mode.
He’d need to reclaim that luck, start a new streak before dealing with Morgan.
He had two likely candidates on the mainland, and he’d choose the lucky winner soon. But Morgan? She proved people were stupid, gullible, and always ripe for the picking.
She’d changed her passwords—as if that mattered—and had shut down her already sparce social media accounts over the last year.
But her mother had them all. She posted regularly for the family business in Vermont. Pretty photos, cheerful marketing, with a personal touch.
So he knew Morgan, flat broke, had moved to Vermont, back with Mommy and Grandma. And all those happy posts helped him keep an eye on her. He’d researched her family, the family home and business before he’d walked into that two-bit bar, so he knew the setup, the finances.
When he was ready, he’d use her mother’s accounts to find a back door and hack right back into Morgan’s.
When he was ready.
Maybe he’d been meant to miss her the first time around. The idea of “meant to” soothed him. She’d hurt him by living, he could hurt her so much more by letting her live awhile, then taking everything again.
A second shot required a change of tactics, a different method altogether. But with the potential of more, much more. More money, more pain, more pleasure for him.
What if, just what if, he killed all three?
Something to think about.
But first, he had to get back in the game. Time to choose that lucky winner, he decided, and started making a plan.
Morgan loved going back to work, the routine, the structure, the schedule. Putting on her uniform made her feel productive, capable. Meeting the staff meant she was, again, part of a team.
Training proved straightforward enough. Après was certainly a bigger and more upscale operation than any she’d worked in before, but she’d handle it.
Maybe her visit to the wine cellar left her a little breathless—those racks upon racks, and the vintages far beyond any she’d decanted in the past—but she’d handle that, too.
The menu from the back of the house ranked several classy steps above the Round, and guests received maple-roasted almonds and picholine olives with their drinks instead of pretzels and bar nuts, but that was all a matter of style.
She breezed through her training week, serving guests not unlike those she’d painted for Nell during her interview. Though she considered Nick the best of those who tended bar, she had no complaints.
As for the waitstaff, their training showed.
