“I need to change my hair color.” Her heart thumped in her chest, adrenaline starting to flow. Was she really going to do this? Alex was going to be pissed, but she couldn’t let him go without proper backup. And in a club, she might be more effective than he was about gathering information. Women gossiped. A lot. He had to have a sub the other women would trust or it wouldn’t work.
“Makeover! Oh, this is going to be fun.” Avery clapped her hands. “I think you would look gorgeous with a nice walnut shade. It would totally contrast with your skin.”
“Is it safe to come in yet?” Adam poked his head out of the kitchen. “Because the hors d’oeuvres are getting cold. Sean is going to be pissed if I serve them cold, but you ladies looked like you were talking about men, and not in a happy, fun way. I refuse to be the dude who gets his balls kicked in because he was stupid enough to walk in at the wrong time.”
Poor Adam. Stuck with the ladies. “Yes, I think your balls are safe. And besides, I need a favor from you. We’ve been plotting, you see.”
Adam was in the living room in a flash, a wicked grin on his face. “Oh, I love a good plot. Count me in.”
She took one of the canapés off the platter. She actually had an appetite for once.
One way or another, she was going to make sure her husband came back from Florida in one piece. And then they could finally have closure.
Chapter Six
Alex glanced down at his watch and silently cursed.
“They’re going to be here, right?” Kristen cast a nervous glance toward the stairs and the door at the top where apparently the great Chazz Breyer was going to eventually make an appearance.
It was the door to the office he would eventually have to get into. Alone.
“Sean texted me. His flight landed an hour ago. They should be here any minute.”
“I don’t like last minute changes in plans,” Kristen grumbled. She was dressed casually in jeans and a V-neck T-shirt that showed off a nice rack. Her strawberry blonde hair was in waves across her shoulders, but he couldn’t get the sight of Eve spread out on her desk out of his head. He’d thought of nothing else for the last twenty-four hours. He’d tried to call her, but she wouldn’t answer her cell. He’d skipped the dinner party where he’d been sure to see her because he’d wanted to get packed and ready, and now he wondered if that had been a mistake.
He shouldn’t have left things that way between them, but she hadn’t given him a choice.
“So, what do you think of the place, Anthony?” She dropped his fake name casually. For now he was Anthony Priest, known to most as Master A.
He had to pull it together because they weren’t alone. Several young women were currently milling about either cleaning tables or restocking the bar. As far as he could tell, the club was a repurposed industrial warehouse. Sanctum was the same, but Cuffs had maintained much more of its former identity than Sanctum. The floors were concrete and the walls, for the most part, were still metal and girders. There was a bar area and what appeared to be a roped off VIP-type area. The VIP area looked like someone had ordered a bunch of BDSM equipment off the Internet and tried to approximate a play space, but nothing was set up properly. He hoped no one actually tried to play here. “It looks like crap.”
“Yeah.” Kristen frowned as she crossed her arms over her chest. “They would have been better off hiring a decorator, but Chazz decided he would save the money. You have to understand that most of the regulars who come here are just tourists who read a couple of books and decide they’re in the lifestyle. Then there are the college kids who just want to drink, and the guys who come out because our cocktail waitresses are dressed in fet wear. No one knows what they’re doing.”
“But you do.” He’d been studying her from the time they’d met at DFW through the hours on the plane. She was odd. Totally competent one minute, he was halfway intimidated by how smart she was. She had been talking about trying to map out Evans’s organization and the methods she’d been using to track him, and then the flight attendant had brought around the wine and she’d clapped like a little girl and claimed that first class was “the bomb.” And the girl seemed deadly intent on drinking her share. She’d had five glasses of wine, but he couldn’t tell she felt a thing. She was perfectly steady.
He’d sat beside her on the plane, studying the files she’d hacked into while she’d read something on her e-reader that made her fan herself more than once.
She was a complete enigma.