Chapter Eight
Candlelight bathed the warm room in its soft glow. A D’Angelo album played faintly from an iPod in the bedroom, but here inside the spacious bathroom with its cream-colored tiles and marble tub, the world was warm again, and the water was the perfect temperature.
Hot.
Julia leaned back against him, her slim body lining perfectly with his, the waterline bobbing near her breasts. He was sure he could stare at them for quite a while and not ever want to look away. They were gorgeous, full and round with rosy nipples that he couldn’t resist touching. He cupped one in each hand, kneading them.
“Hmm. Where did we leave off? Something about deep dark secrets and skeletons in the closet.”
She leaned her head back against him, her hair fanning out in the water, like a mermaid. “Yes. I believe you were going to tell me about yours,” she said.
“Ah, so many skeletons,” he said, running his index finger across the soft skin of her belly. She sighed happily, snuggling in closer against him.
“I was once a dirty businessman and ran a Ponzi scheme like Bernie Madoff,” he said with a straight face.
She turned to look at him. “Really?”
He’d said it so matter-of-factly that it had taken her a moment to realize he was teasing. “No. But the truth is I ran a high-class call girl ring as a side business to my law practice,” he said, in a deliberately confessional tone.
“Shut up,” she laughed as she slinked deeper into the water.
“You got me. I never did that. A buddy of mine did, but he got out of that racket recently. Reformed.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”
“He’s the one who runs the poker games I was telling you about. He’s also my go-to guy if I ever need to track down intel on someone I’m not so sure about.”
“Like an investigator?”
“Sort of. He just knows stuff. He can find out anything about anybody like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. He shifted away from talk of his friend. “But those aren’t my skeletons.”
“What are yours then?”
He reached for a bar of soap from the side of the tub, soaped up his hands, and began washing her legs, enjoying the feel of her sexy body sliding across his palms. “Actually, I don’t think I have too many skeletons. You know about my family already. I’ve been a lawyer for ten years, I work hard for my clients, I like entertainment, and I hate lies,” he said and she tensed instantly. He briefly wondered why she’d react that way. But then, he reasoned, nobody liked lies. She probably hated them as much as he did. He kept on going, moving from her calves to her thighs. Then he stopped because this was important, what he had to say. “They’re a deal breaker for me. There’s no need for lies. You agree?”
“Of course,” she said quickly.
“I don’t like being caught up in something that’s a game, or a cheat. Been there, done that. I won’t go there again,” he said firmly, using his negotiation voice, as memories flashed by quickly of his ex. She was the reason he felt this way, and he needed Julia to know he didn’t want and wouldn’t tolerate a repeat. “I was involved with a woman named Sabrina for a few years. I thought I knew her well, but her whole life was a lie.”
“How so?”
“She was addicted to painkillers and denied it for the longest time. She started taking them for headaches, and she kept on taking them. And she became so wrapped up in it that her life was dictated by it. She missed work, she wrote fake prescriptions, she started doctor shopping. Selling her stuff to pay for more pills – jewelry, her iPhone, Coach purses. Anything that had value she sold off to buy more,” he said, stopping to gently wash off the soap from Julia’s legs. “I tried to help her too. Get her into rehab.”
“How did she react to that?”
Clay shrugged heavily, the defeat of those days with Sabrina rising back to the surface. It had been a while since he’d ended things with her for good, and there certainly weren’t any residual feelings or lingering love. Still, the memories had a way of wearing him down because that last year with her had been rough. Her furtive phone calls, the late-night texts to slimy dealers and doctors who started providing for her, and the slide into all those lies. He could still recall the unabated shock he felt when he woke up in the middle of the night to find her rooting around in his wallet and pocketing some bills to buy more drugs.
It wasn’t even about the money she took. He couldn’t care less about that money. It was the lies and the secrets, and how they both had wore away at him. That last year with her had been the worst year for his firm. The only year his revenues were down from the one before. Precipitously. He couldn’t concentrate on deals, couldn’t focus on clients. The way she’d toyed with him had nearly cost him the business he’d worked so hard to build. Flynn had landed a big client for them – the action film director – and in the span of those last few months with Sabrina, Clay had gone and lost that client for them.
If he were a ballplayer, he wouldn’t just have been benched. He’d have been called back down to the farm leagues for the way he’d messed up that deal.
“She was game for it on the surface. Did the whole contrite act. Said she had a problem and needed help. But she relapsed every time and kept going back for more,” he said, and while it hurt like hell at the time, it didn’t hurt anymore. She was the past, and he’d learned from it. He wasn’t going to repeat those mistakes again.
Julia laid a gentle hand on his arm, resting it against the strong, curved strokes of his tattoo. “I’m sorry, Clay. That sucks.”
“Yeah, it did,” he said. “It’s hard when someone you care about won’t change and won’t even try. I kept trying to help her and she kept promising to get help,” he said, drawing a circle in the air with his index finger. “But it never happened. And so on you go.”
“On you go indeed. And here you are,” she said, twisting around to lay a sweet kiss on his chest. Then his shoulder. Then up to his jawline.
“Here I am.”
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” she whispered, and it was so unlike her to let go of her hard edge, but he liked it when she did in moments like this. “I’m loving this weekend.”
Here he was, falling faster than he expected to.