Under Contract Read online

  “You had your own language, when you were really little. You grew out of it.”

  “I kinda remember that. But I was thinking—even though Carls drives me crazy sometimes, she’s always been there. There was a story about these twins that felt when the other one got hurt and, even though they weren’t together, they died on the same day.”

  Tina’s chest tightened. She hadn’t known when Ara died. Not for hours. She hadn’t felt a thing when the other half of her heart vanished from the face of the earth. “I’ve heard some of those stories, too. I’m not sure how true they are.”

  “Yeah, and I thought, ‘That’s how Carls and I will be, if she dies, I’ll die, too.’ But then I realized that Mom—don’t cry, Antina.”

  “I’m not.” She wiped away the tears as if to make it true. “No, I didn’t feel it when Ar—your mom died, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m not. I mean—I didn’t mean to, if it sounded like it. That’s private. Just, with all this thinking, it kinda hit me that your life has pretty much sucked since...everything happened. Losing your twin and getting stuck with us. And you never let on. Before today.”

  “Josie.” She took her niece’s hand, sorry to see her eyes well with tears also. “I did not get stuck with you two. You’ve been the only bright light for me. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have lived, if you and Carly hadn’t needed me.”

  Josie gave her a watery smile and that one-shoulder shrug. “I guess that’s good, huh?”

  “It’s very good.”

  The door creaked open and Carly peeked in with one wide brown eye. “Are you guys talking about me?”

  Josie ostentatiously rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Carls, the world does not revolve around you.”

  Carly stepped in, scowling, and folded her arms. “Then what—why are you guys crying?”

  “Oh God!” Tina wiped her cheeks again. “There. I’m not, okay?”

  Josie shook her head. “We were talking about Mom. You know.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Carly glanced at her twin and back again. “So, Jo says I should apologize so I am. Kasey Pearlman can suck it with her criticism.”

  “Now Kasey is the major beyatch,” Josie chimed in and she and Carly touched fingertips, then fluttered them away, their gesture of solidarity, grief set aside for the time being. “She was totally picking on Carls’s footwork at dance team.”

  “Isn’t that the coach’s job?”

  Both girls rolled their eyes in perfect harmony, a synchronized sarcasm team.

  “Ms. Atwater?”

  “Ms. Passwater, you mean?”

  They giggled. Sarcastic young women one second, silly girls the next. She was doomed. Better that than dwelling on what they’d lost, though.

  “Ms. Atwater,” Josie said in a prim tone, “was otherwise occupied with Mr. Bates.”

  “Master Bates,” Carly whispered and snickered.

  “Carly!”

  The girl opened her eyes wide in faked innocence.

  “You should come volunteer,” Josie jumped in to rescue her sister. “Now that you don’t have a job, you have time. You’re a way better dancer than Passwater.”

  “You quit your job?” Carly demanded. “We thought it was PMS.”

  “No.” Tina shook her head, then couldn’t help laughing a little. They thought nothing of it. So exuberant, so preoccupied with their own lives, which was as it should be. They didn’t know how bad it was and they never should. This was her problem and they deserved to be shielded from the ugliness of their situation. “Just a really bad day.”

  “Can you get another one?”

  “Maybe. What if...what if we had to move?”

  “Move?” Josie said it like she’d never heard the word.

  “To where?” Carly demanded.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m looking into some things. New England, maybe?”

  “Don’t people, like, freeze to death there?” Josie looked panicked.

  “No,” Carly scoffed at her. “But it is practically Canada.”

  “Oh, it is not Canada and they have central heat. We’d adapt. Or Seattle. It’s not as cold there.”

  “It’s not exactly sunny either,” Josie said.

  “Do they even have dance teams there?” Carly asked.

  “We’d find out these things. It could be an adventure.” A poor choice of words. Both girls gazed at her unhappily, disturbed in a way she understood. As with her, all of their changes had been bad ones. “Those are just options,” she reassured them. “Probably not very likely ones at all. We don’t have to talk about it. Let’s do something fun.”

  “Want to build a blanket fort and watch Pitch Perfect?” Carly said and Josie jumped off the desk.

  “Yes!”

  Her lovely, wonderful nieces. They’d been through so much. Would she have made it without them? Hard to say. But there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for them, wouldn’t try to spare them, if she could. She had a chance to dig them out of this hole. They’d never have to know how close things had come. She’d keep looking for another job, but in the meantime, she did have a way to make sure they could stay at the school they loved. They were worth it.

  “I’d love to.”

  After they were asleep, she’d call the number Black gave her. The thought gave her the jitters.

  Or was that a shiver of dreadful anticipation?

  * * *

  His cell vibrated and Ryan surreptitiously slipped it out of his pocket to glance at it under the tablecloth. An LA area code, but unfamiliar number. Yes. His blood surged in his favorite blend of sex and triumph. She’d called. And much sooner than he thought she would. Though it could be just to talk, he cautioned himself. If that was all, he wouldn’t push.

  Much.

  “I’m sorry,” he interrupted his dinner companion, holding up his blinking phone, “I have to take this call.” Absolutely have to.

  The man nodded curtly, offended. Good. Double duty if he got to chat with a beautiful and fascinating woman, hopefully about sex, while delivering a mild insult to a pompous ass.

  He popped the Bluetooth into his ear and accepted the call, to stop it from going to voice mail, but waited until he’d moved a few paces before saying, “Celestina. How delightful to hear from you.”

  Her startled pause nearly echoed through the phone, then a little intake of breath. A lovely sound he craved to hear more of. “How did you know it was me?”

  “Only a few people have this number and all are programmed in. Process of elimination. Of course, now I have you, also.”

  She hesitated and he pictured her dark eyes firing with annoyance, though she spoke evenly. “You do not have me.”

  “As a contact in my phone, I meant,” he replied, smiling at the pleasure of the back-and-forth, and stepped out a side door onto a little balcony. The ocean gleamed in the moonlight, a shimmering contrast to the sharp glitter of the city. “How are you—did your day get better?”

  A small laugh, a private, self-conscious one that made him wonder what she’d been doing. “Actually I guess it did.”

  “Good. I’m glad.” He nearly said something more, but thought better of it, reining in his impatience. Let her say it.

  “So...” She dragged out the word, took a breath at the end. Let it out again. Charmingly nervous. Tempting to rescue her. More rewarding to hear what she might say. “About your...offer.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  “What would be the fun of that?”

  She huffed out an impatient sound. That got her. Something about the concept of fun triggered her, probably because her life had seriously lacked any for far too long. He planned to change that. No reason they couldn’t both enjoy wha
t he longed to do to her.

  “I’d like to discuss it more. If it still stands.”

  “For you, Celestina?” He loved the sound of her name, sensual and elegant at once. “Always.”

  “All right then.” A tapping sound. Her nails on the table? “We should...meet?”

  “Now? We could have drinks.” And he could ditch out on this dinner. The possibility of seeing her, perhaps even having her tonight, had his cock hardening in delicious anticipation.

  “My nieces are asleep. I can’t.”

  “Ah. Thoughtless of me.” Thinking with the little head there. “Tomorrow—will they be at school?”

  “So soon? I mean, yes, that works. What time? My schedule is obviously flexible.” An ironic tone to her voice. She sounded more certain than she had that afternoon. Less lost.

  He scrolled through his calendar, mentally juggling. He was booked, but this took priority. “Ten thirty? My house. We can discuss terms and then...have lunch.”

  She didn’t reply immediately, effectively confirming a direct hit from the way he’d spoken the innocuous phrase. Was she blushing? He wished he could see her face.

  “That would be fine.” Formally phrased, with a faintness beneath. God, she would be a brilliantly responsive lover.

  “I’ll text you the address.”

  “Okay.” She paused. A breath in and out. “Good night then.”

  “Celestina? Sweet dreams.”

  She clicked off, but not before he caught the whisper of her laugh.

  Chapter Six

  He called his go-to tech innovator, not caring if he woke her. Though of course he didn’t—Cat answered on the second ring.

  “Yo, boss! Please do not tell me the server crashed again.” In the background, keys clicked and he envisioned her fingers flying over the keyboard as she brought up the server status.

  “Not to my knowledge. But wouldn’t you know if it did?”

  She made a disgusted noise. “Do I have alarms rigged to tell me if it does? Yes. Do either of us believe they couldn’t fail? Ha! But yeah—Baby is humming along. What’s up?”

  “I have an emergency job for you, if you can handle it.”

  “I can handle anything. That’s why I deserve the big bucks you pay me.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. It’s time-sensitive and confidential.”

  “Shoot.”

  “My idea is this—a tablet or mini, with a special program. The user would be able to select from a menu of options, with drill-down to specific details, not unlike the online sites that let a customer choose the components for a computer. So each component would be associated with a price, with a final summation of the total. Could you do that quickly?”

  “Piece of cake. The content?”

  He looked thoughtfully over the water, leaned his hands on the stone balustrade. “That’s the rub. Is there a way to set it up so I can enter the content and pricing? Some sort of idiot-proof data-entry fields?”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult.”

  “Then another step—could it link to one other tablet? Encrypted so only those two could read the current status, but it could be continually updated.”

  “I can do that,” Cat answered, more slowly, thinking it through. “Tougher to QA. Could you enter content and bounce it to me for a cross-check?”

  “No—this would have to be private.”

  “In-ter-es-ting.” She drew out the syllables, clearly dying to ask more, far too accustomed to working for him to do so. “So, the user is also private. We’re not looking at commercializing the product down the road?”

  He laughed, imagining Celestina’s shock even as his business intuition pinged. Probably he could sell something like it. Married couples could bargain sexual favors for chores. Hook-up sites like Grindr would no doubt go crazy over it. And, inevitably, pimps and other exploiters of prostitutes would jump on it also.

  “No. I would never take this public.” Probably.

  “Okey-dokey. How sensitive is time-sensitive?”

  He gave it a beat. Not that Cat—and many other employees—hadn’t pulled all-nighters at his behest on many occasions. As she noted, that’s why he paid them well. Money provided the best of motivations. Never before had it been for something personal, however. Certainly not to do with his sex life, which he’d always kept assiduously separate from his work life. “I need them by early morning. I have a ten thirty meet and I’d need time to enter content.”

  “Yeah. Might not be perfect, but I’ll set it up so you can wipe content and hand it back to me to fix any bugs if they crop up. I’ll drop them by your house. What’s too early?”

  Given how revved he felt, he might not sleep at all. “Don’t worry about it. Come by when you’re done and I’ll make sure I’m available. I’ll pay you privately—at twice your usual rate—and approve you to take a paid day off tomorrow. Fair?”

  “More than!” She sounded cheerful but distracted, already working through the details. “I have to head in to the office to pull a couple of fresh tablets from the inventory. Check them out to you, I take it—any code you want on that?”

  “No. Personal use.”

  “You got it.”

  “I don’t want to hear any gossip about this.”

  “Can’t spill what I don’t know. I got you a couple of tablets for personal use. Story stops there.” He almost heard her shrug. “Who knows what you eccentric tycoon types get up to?”

  He laughed. “You might be overstating.”

  “Don’t say that—then I can’t pick up boys in the bar by saying I work for an eccentric tycoon. See you around dawn, I’m guessing. I’m totally expensing the caffeine I intend to pound, by the way.”

  “Bring me the receipt, you mercenary.”

  “Music to my ears, boss.”

  * * *

  She fretted over what to wear. Like an idiot.

  But, seriously—what did one wear to an occasion that was half first date, half job interview, not to mention mostly illegal. And 100 percent crazy. In the bright light of morning, she almost regretted making that call. It had taken her a full hour to press the green phone button, staring at his number sitting there innocuously. And then he’d answered so fast. She’d prepared a voice mail message, something breezily professional, along the lines of “Let’s talk!” But he’d picked up, practically purring her name in that goose-bump-raising way of his.

  Then he’d toyed with her, teasing her into saying what she wanted. This was what it would be like with him, that much was clear. He liked getting her worked up and off-balance, which would no doubt be part of these games he had in mind.

  What the hell was she getting herself into?

  She really, really wanted to chicken out, even as she picked out a sexy wrap dress and put on her best lingerie. Going for first date then, huh, chica? To shore up her resolve, she reread the tuition letter and looked at the pile of bills, making herself absorb the damning numbers. Definitely helped incentivize her.

  Rather than the lesser of two evils, she’d opted for the lesser of two fears.

  As she carefully curled the ends of her hair, wishing she’d had time to get it shaped properly, she had to be honest with herself that she wasn’t fussing with her appearance due to the numbers. In fact, she needed to think about them more, focus on this as a business arrangement, to forestall the uneasy anticipation of seeing Ryan Black again, with all his potent sexuality. We can discuss terms and then...have lunch. How did he do that—make a phone conversation feel like a physical caress?

  No, this was not about romance. Even if she did have a different life and they’d met in the park and he’d invited her to lunch, what followed would have been a sexual affair also. Adults—not her, but everyone but her, apparently—did this kind of thing all the
time. The stuff she tried to keep the girls from watching, even on free network TV, was full of the hookups and booty calls and God knew what else. Her tween nieces probably knew more about it than she did. At least this affair—nice euphemism, that—would give her a better education to guide the girls with.

  Look at her—coming up with brilliant rationalizations right and left.

  After she completed her makeup, she took final stock of the finished product. Good to keep in mind, chica. Don’t forget what you’re selling. Funny how her internal voice sounded an awful lot like Ara. Would she have been horrified or egged her on? She didn’t know. Ara had always been bolder, more adventurous and flirtatious. She’d been the one to fall in love and get engaged first. Tina studied her face for signs of her sister. More than the hair, the image in the mirror no longer looked like Ara, who would never be older than thirty. Tina would age without her, which seemed tragically unfair to them both.

  Shaking off the sudden melancholy, she banished Ara’s voice. Her twin couldn’t go with her on this journey. Or any adventure, ever again.

  She had to do this on her own.

  Pulling up to the gates of the cliffside estate in her patched-up Volvo, she had to clamp down on the sense of shame. Josie and Carly hated the car with a passion, insisting on being picked up and dropped off at least a block away from where anyone might see. Given how much they avoided walking anywhere, that was saying something.

  Job interview with wealthy client. That’s all this is.

  No good thinking about what might happen to her between this moment and when she drove out of the gates again.

  The gates swung open soundlessly before she even hit the intercom button. Watching for her arrival then. Feeling like she should pull around the side to the servants’ entrance, if only to hide the shabbiness of her car, she instead stopped her car in the circular drive at the foot of the grand front steps with a flare of defiant pride. A fountain that looked like it might have been relocated from Barcelona stood dry in the center island. Water would have changed the drab lines of the stone, brought out the color in the mosaic tiles, but they were dull with the dust of the drought slowly killing the entire region, not just her bank accounts. It hurt her heart to see it.