Eric, though, had his own ideas. Stage a secret meeting of their so-called “society.” Lure the whale into the net instead of waiting for him to swim buy.
Jane wasn’t having it.
“No,” she snapped. “He’ll know what you’re doing. He’s thought one step ahead of you this whole time. Eric, he will know.”
Eric just stared at her, clearly getting his argument together. I wasn’t sure where I stood.
On the one hand, I was plenty interested in investigating the Janus society. From the outside, it sounded like a rich-boys’ club that also sounded an awful lot like the mafia. Its members met in defunct graveyards, smuggled booze and other goods, and in general took pleasure in fucking with regular people. If Eric wanted to give me the goods, I wouldn’t argue. Especially since getting a list of members wouldn’t just help the case—it would probably make my career.
On the other hand, I understood Jane’s trepidation. It wasn’t the safest plan when both she and Eric had already been abducted by these assholes.
Before he could answer, however, the buzzer announced another visitor.
“We’re not done,” Eric said on his way to the call button. “Yeah?”
“Mrs. Gardner is here.” Tony’s voice vibrated through the fuzzy speaker.
“Oh? Sure, send her up.” Eric unlocked the door. “This should only take a minute, Zola. It’s just my cousin. She’s been a huge help with all of this shit.”
I shrugged and took another sip of wine. “Fine by me.”
Heels soon clicked up the marble stairs. A second later the door swung open, and a bluster of white, blonde, and sparkle wrapped in a familiar gray coat whirled into the apartment with the force of the rainstorm outside.
“Hello, hello, I’m so sorry to interrupt your evening.” The visitor’s back was to us as she shook out her umbrella and set it by the door. “I’m a bit desperate, and I needed to see Jane immediately. I—oh!”
When she turned around, I could barely hold my glass. I couldn’t speak at all.
It was her.
The woman I’d been seeking for months.
The elegant work of art I’d been dreaming of every night since January.
She stood by the door, her large gray eyes locked with mine. She was a statue. I was a statue. Only the bit of pink at the tip of her nose and the crest of her cheekbones betrayed the fact that she was human. And that she was as surprised—or more—to see me too.
“Matthew.”
The word was so faint, it was barely audible. But hearing my name from those lips at last, I managed to find my own voice as well.
“Nina.”
Chapter Four
Nina.
Nina Astor.
Was here.
In this apartment.
Staring at me with the exact same expression she’d worn just before I kissed her for the first time. Lips partially open. Jaw dropped an inch or so. A dewy sheen over her plump bottom lip.
Kiss me, she seemed to say.
And I couldn’t. Fuckin’. Move.
“You two know each other?”
Eric’s voice knifed through the tension, and with regret, I watched Nina assume a mask I’d noticed her cousin take several times. Family trait, apparently. She smoothed her dress—a fitted white thing, conservative but for a tasteful slit above her knee—and turned to pick up a binder she had set on the entry table.
“We’ve met.” Her voice was calm as she crossed the room to stand by the couch. “Calvin made a donation to Juan Ramirez’s campaign last year. It was at the fundraiser, wasn’t it, Matthew?”
I couldn’t stop staring at her legs long enough to answer.
“Nina, wine?” Eric asked from the kitchen.
She nodded, though she didn’t look up. Not at him. And certainly not at me.
Finally, I managed to move enough muscles to swallow and clear my throat. It wasn’t easy. “Oh. Yeah, um, yes. Yes, that was probably it. Good to see you again, doll.”
I couldn’t help it. It slipped out. The seemingly harmless moniker had come as naturally with her as breathing. It was special, “doll.” The name my grandfather used for Nonna when he was still alive. The one that made her blush well into her seventies. The one that made her his.
Not everyone grows up with that kind of model for a relationship. But I did. My parents were good for fuckin’ nothing, but the two people who raised me, staunchly Catholic Italians who took on five kids in the Bronx, had been in love with each other since they were teenagers and stayed in love until my grandfather’s last breath.
“Doll,” he called her even on his deathbed, like he was about to whisk Nonna off to see Frankie Valli at the Copa. And she squeezed his frail hand and blushed and chattered at him in Italian, like they were still kids.
Fools in love until the bitter end.
Maybe I should have been more careful. But the second I met her in that goddamn bar, Nina was “doll” to me. For better or for worse.
Nina focused on her binder, but the tinge of pink on her cheeks spread. Good, I thought. At least I wasn’t the only one feeling something here.
Eric returned with Nina’s wine, and we all watched awkwardly as she took a very long drink. When about half the glass was empty, she cleared her throat.
“Ah, yes. Yes, it’s nice to see you too, Matthew.”
She looked me over for a few seconds longer than necessary. I resisted the urge to drag her out of the apartment like a fuckin’ caveman.
Nina blinked, like she had just remembered where we were, and turned. “Actually, Jane, this isn’t purely a social visit. I have a dreadful favor to ask you.”
Much to Eric’s obvious irritation, Nina took his seat on the couch beside Jane. He sat in the other chair while I remained transfixed by the way Nina’s skirt rode up her thigh. You would think it had been three years since I’d gotten laid, not three damn days. You would have thought I’d never seen a woman’s legs before tonight. All I could think about was the way her skin felt under my hands—velvety and smooth, taut and responsive. I remembered sliding my palms up those limbs, memorizing the lean curves of muscle and bone as I went. Up, up, up to the promised land waiting between them.
As I sipped on my wine, I could barely even make out the conversation. Something about a gala. An event Nina desperately needed Jane’s help with. Fancy, rich-people shit.
It only reminded me that I was the odd man out here. Eric and Nina were old money, the sort that didn’t know anything different. Jane was from more middle-class stock like me, but if this apartment was any indication, she’d taken to extreme wealth like a fish to water, shitty taste in wine aside. Being a de Vries obviously had its benefits.
That was when it hit me. De Vries. Nina was a de Vries. Eric had mentioned his only “cousin” often enough, the daughter of his aunt, his deceased father’s sister. Nina was the other grandchild of one of the oldest families in New York, a genuine heiress to a shipping dynasty.
In other words, from a completely different world.
“De Vries. Is that your last name?”
Was it my imagination, or did she recoil?
“No,” she said emphatically. “It is not.”