“Will do.” Another lie to his best friend. This one as pleasant as chewing crushed glass.
Marco dropped a bill on the counter and hurried from the diner, eager to get to his wife and dote on their unborn twins. Envy lassoed Jack, but he shook it off. It wasn’t like he had time to entertain a relationship. He needed every second he could milk out of his day, which included keeping up appearances and maintaining his routine. He was a creature of habit. The town knew it. If he altered his morning run or coffee hour, questions would arise. Maintaining normalcy meant working longer hours and spending the remaining time rehearsing in the estate’s sound room, but he could do it.
“Hello, Maxwell.”
Jack’s neck tensed. He knew that grating voice, hated hearing it taint his given name. Alistair Murphy was the last person he cared to waste his seconds with. He faced the tribute artist, noting Alistair’s smug grin and oily hair. “Have the winds changed so soon?”
Alistair glanced out the diner window. “Winds?”
“Seems early for garbage to be blowing into town.”
“There was no garbage in—” His lips thinned, Jack’s insult finally sinking in. Never quick on the draw, that one. “Don’t be testy,” Alistair said. “I won last year because I’m the best. And my back view is almost as nice as my front. You’ll enjoy looking at it again this year.”
“Especially when it’s driving out of town.”
“Maybe I’ll stay this year. Move to this godforsaken stretch of dirt.”
“There’s a kennel on the outskirts. I’m sure they have room.”
Alistair made a show of slicking back his immobile hair. “I doubt Ava would approve of the accommodations. Not that she doesn’t like to get dirty.” He smirked. “She’ll be arriving next week.”
Jack fisted his hands, one flared nostril away from smacking that lewd smirk from Alistair’s face.
Jack hadn’t seen Ava since she’d left him to hitch her star to last year’s festival champion. She’d seemed genuine when they’d first met. He’d fumbled when flirting with her, as he always did. She’d pushed and pursued and made him feel as though his dating ineptitude was attractive, a tenderness some men lacked. Exactly as his mother had insisted during his awkward high school years. “You’re perfect as you are,” Sylvia David had told him. “Kindness and integrity are the traits of great leaders. A woman will see how special you are one day and love you for it.”
Ava hadn’t wanted kindness. She’d enjoyed Jack’s money, probably more than his company, but it was a Vegas ticket she’d been after. Anything to reach her popstar goals.
Aside from one very important reason to win this year’s top tribute artist, Jack would relish watching Ava and Alistair choke down a pan of humble pie. “I hope you two enjoy the town. I’ll go enjoy rehearsing in front of my signed gold record—the one you’ll never have.”
Waving his prized possession in Alistair’s face was childish, but the record made the man green with envy.
Alistair’s cheeks flushed. He stepped closer as his eyes darted around the diner. “My offer from last year still stands.”
Unbelievable. “You mean the one where you return sweet Ava to me if I give you Elvis’s last known signed record?”
Alistair ticked up his pointy chin.
Jack couldn’t hold in his disgusted laugh. “I want nothing to do with Ava, and women aren’t possessions. Seems to me you two are perfect for each other.”
He strutted past Alistair with the confidence he wished he’d displayed around Clementine, who went by Samantha, who was judging the Elvis competition, who also didn’t seem to be an upfront woman interested in a nice guy. On top of saving David Industries, making sure everyone thought his father was out of town, and beating Alistair at this year’s festival, Jack added avoiding Clementine to his exhausting to-do list.
Clementine needed to meet with Jack again. There was no choice. The Van Gogh wasn’t hung in his home. It was housed in his family’s estate, and he was her ticket in to that monstrous piece of real estate.
She barreled into her motel room and spread out her Maxwell David files on the starchy sheets. At least the starch implied they’d been washed. The first thing she’d done after arriving yesterday was toss the maroon comforter on the floor, which matched the carpet’s unsettling shade of not-quite-blood.
Legs tucked under her, she pushed the surveillance photos around, livid at Lucien’s contact for not noting Maxwell’s commonly used name. Furious at herself for failing to recognize Jack. The blunders had obviously thrown her off, but revealing her name had been an epic screw-up and Lucien couldn’t know, which meant she had to regroup.
She studied the photos. One shot showed Jack entering the Whatnot Diner. The swinging door obscured his face, but not the long lines of his lean frame. A second and third showed him running, part of his morning routine. One image was too blurry to decipher. The other was botched by the photographer’s thumb.
The last one gave her the most pause: Jack as Elvis.
The shot had been downloaded from the internet, commemorating last year’s tribute artist champion. Jack had come in second. He was off to the side, not the focus of the photo, his face less clear. She pulled it closer, looking for the shy man she’d met on the road, the slightly awkward man today, who had ferreted out her true name. She couldn’t find either man. What she found was exceedingly worse: increased sex appeal.
When first scanning these photos, she hadn’t noticed the allure. She had wrinkled her nose at this whole Elvis thing, unable to grasp why grown men dressed like a dead man and sang dated songs. Impersonators. Pretenders. A judgmental reaction that had been overhauled.
She wasn’t sure if it was the sweaty, sexy handshake, or the shyness that had hit her in her heart, but looking at the Jack she now knew, dressed in a glittery top and tight pants, his helter-skelter hair tumbling over his forehead, she saw his appeal in stereo.
There was no shyness in Jack’s festival photo, nothing but confidence in his cocky grin. She couldn’t connect the man she’d met to the one in the picture, but she didn’t have time to puzzle it out. She also couldn’t let this unwelcome attraction blossom. The Maxwell Jack David she’d researched had recently fired a handful of workers, all long-time employees nearing the end of their working prime. They would struggle to find work elsewhere, but Jack would save cash by hiring younger blood. He was the ruthless sort who sliced and diced without caring where his blade landed.
Clementine’s father had been fired by a man like Jack. Cut and tossed out without a care. Finding him dead in their garage, the car running, had been as traumatizing as Clementine thought life could get. So young and naïve she’d been. A clueless nine-year-old.
She knew better now. Men like Jack David were nothing but trust-fund brats who coasted through life. A fact she’d remember next time his baby blues struggled to meet hers. It was time to take the upper hand. She was behind on the job. Lucien would check in again soon. If she didn’t get an invite inside the David family estate, she’d have to break in. A worst-case scenario.
Break-ins led to bungles like the disastrous Monet job.