“Prepare to have your mind blown,” she said.
“Is this an invitation for a hookup? Because I find it hard to believe anything but your cunt can evoke such—or any—emotion in me.”
I left the romantic stuff for the notes I’d written her. I still couldn’t bring myself to say any of it out loud, but I wanted to. Badly.
She shook her head and smiled, sliding Polaroid pictures my way. Of my father dining at a restaurant with the channel’s bigwigs.
I raised an eyebrow. “How did you get those?”
“James Townley.”
“And how did he get those?”
“He hired Dan, who works here, to run an investigation on Mathias.”
“So did I,” I shot back. “So?”
She shrugged. “Townley paid double.”
“That fucker Dan.” I sucked in a breath.
Jude put her hand on mine and squeezed. “Not at all. He’s brilliant. He took you both as clients because you had the same goal: bring Mathias down.”
I leaned my hip against her desk and browsed through the images. There were more in her file, but this wouldn’t cut it. “That’s all nice and dandy, but what the fuck am I looking at? My father having lunch with the investors without me? I can use it for nothing, other than maybe research for making voodoo dolls.”
Jude slid a bunch of documents from the file toward me. “Read the highlighted areas. There’s a lot of fluff, profanity, and chauvinism to weed through, but in the end, you’ll find the conversation quite interesting. Especially the revelations in this transcript of the original recording.”
“This is all recorded?” I picked up the papers, eyeing her.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I still won’t be able to use it in court.”
I was testing her, treading carefully over my own secret—a secret I didn’t want to make known yet so Judith wouldn’t feel pressured into anything. My heart beat so fast I thought it was going to burn a hole in my chest.
She waved her hand in the documents’ direction. “Just read it, Célian.”
I started skimming through the text, hitting the highlighted parts:
M.L: “…ridiculously easy. I knew he was there, so I pulled out the CCTV footage and found the girl—Judith something. I made sure the right arrangements had been made and sure enough, the Judith girl got called for a job interview at LBC, although there was a mix-up and she somehow ended up in another department. I rectified the situation right away, though.”
M.L: “…it was a long shot, but my son is not as calculating as I am. I figured it was worth a try. And it worked. He got attached so easily, and discarded his fiancée completely. Now, we need to decide what we’re doing with LBC…”
M.L: “…I’m pulling out the ads slowly, though we will need to think of ways to terminate the contract completely. My lawyers are working on finding a legal loophole.”
I set the papers down, sitting on the edge of her desk and lacing my fingers nonchalantly. So Mathias had planned it all along. My meeting Jude, my falling in love with her, giving up on the Davis family—every single thing. And I’d walked right into his trap. Well, almost.
I didn’t make the mistake of asking Jude if she’d known about it. Of course she hadn’t. Instead, I focused on how to deal with this shit.
“We’ve both been set up,” I said.
She put a hand on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to pull her into me and bury my face in her hair. Judith had this touch that made shit go away. Bad shit. She must have known I thought it—maybe I even said it out loud—because she took a few steps back and swallowed. It was the kind of swallow that said that there was something more, and I wasn’t necessarily going to like it.
“I read the Post-it notes,” she said.
“I thought you did a long time ago.” It felt good, knowing she hadn’t. Knowing she hadn’t chosen to ignore me.
She shook her head. “It hurt too much.”
“And now?”
“It still does, but a little less. Also I’m more concerned with your well-being than my own right now. James wants to talk to you.”
I immediately wanted to say I wasn’t interested, but I knew better than to fuck it all up. She was talking to me, after all. I needed to play nice if I wanted a nice girlfriend.
Fuck. Yes. That’s what it was. I wanted Jude to be my girlfriend—not a fake one and not a temporary one.
“I’m pressed for time,” I said instead, wondering if it were still true, now that she and I were on speaking terms again. “But I guess I could squeeze him in tonight if you come with.”
“This is your family and personal business. I don’t think I belong.”
“I don’t think I give a fuck. Wait, this just in…” I pretended to listen to something on an invisible headphone. “I don’t give a fuck. Grab your shit, Chucks.”
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she said as I tugged on her hand.
Like hell it didn’t. She wanted to help me, and she’d come all the way to work on a Sunday afternoon to give me something she thought would be useful. It meant everything and more, and I was going to milk the hell out of it.
I made a stop in my office and took the laptop out of the trash can, putting it neatly back on the desk. Jude never asked what it had been doing there in the first place.
She knew.
I’d never been to James Townley’s place, and I’d been content to think I never would. He lived in another penthouse, in another New York ’scraper, and it was amazing how one of the most dazzling architectural cities in the world had managed to be home to so many identical, clinical, and impersonal penthouses.
James opened the door in a robe (douchebag), and said he was glad to see me. When he spotted Jude next to me, he made a face like I’d pissed in his drink.
“Deal with it,” I replied to his nonverbal annoyance, walking into his living room.
His twelve-year-old wife, who was 85% made of plastic, unglued herself from the couch, her heels click-clicking toward their hallway, and then I guessed their bedroom. James went to the kitchen to get us some drinks. I couldn’t figure out why his wife would wear heels at home. I elbowed Judith lightly as we sat down on the same sofa the busty morning show host had vacated a second ago.
“Do you wear shoes indoors?”
Jude’s eyes darted to me, and she frowned immediately. “I don’t even wear underwear and a bra at home. Dad’s lucky if my clothes cover my private parts. I’m a free spirit.”
“I fucking love you,” I blurted, and I nearly choked on the air inside my lungs.
Not that she didn’t know by now, but still.
She grinned. “I think I’m beginning to believe you.”
“Let the record show that I took another job just so you could keep yours at LBC,” I told her before my throat closed. “Being away from you would feel like living without limbs. And I very much enjoy my limbs.”
The look on her face was priceless. It was every fantastic Christmas gift a second after you unwrap it. I was about to dive down and go for the kiss, sealing this shit for good, when James sauntered back in with a tray and something alcoholic on it.
Fucker.
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see him, so I straightened up on the couch and tried to think about sad things, like global warming and The Big Bang Theory, to take care of my inappropriately engorged cock. James dragged over a settee and sat directly in front of me, leaning forward. The silver tray with the drinks sat between us on the coffee table, but nobody touched it.
“Are you sure you’d like Junior to be here? What I’m about to tell you is very personal.”
“Stop calling her Junior, and yes, she can be here. My life is her life.”
They both stilled in their seats, but I didn’t miss a heartbeat. I had a flight out of JFK to LAX in five hours, and I wasn’t going to be on it. That made me feel eerily calm and happy. Judith was here. Everything was okay.
“Well…” James shook his head, running his hand through his hair.