Criminal Confections (5 page)

This time, I also saw my way out of this standoff with Rex. So, drawing on years' worth of time spent trawling SoCal bars with my buddy Danny, I offered him our shared, silent, barely detectable secret signal: a head scratch. Originally, we'd used it while acting as each other's “wingman” to ditch dates that weren't going well. Today I was using it to ditch Rex Rader.

Danny caught my signal without breaking his stride.

Filled with mingled relief, annoyance (he
was
late again, after all), and appreciation, I watched Danny approach. I'd just decided he'd missed my signal when he reached me, pulled me into his arms . . . and planted a big, passionate kiss on my lips.

Uhh . . .
that wasn't our usual greeting. I was tingling when Danny released me, deliberately placing his body between me and Rex. He smiled, and I had second thoughts about the cleverness of this rescue. Because while Rex was
supposed
to be charming, Danny actually
was.
He just didn't usually unleash it with me.

“Hey, babe. Sorry I'm late.” His voice rivaled Travis's for sheer sexy huskiness. He winked. “I'll make it up to you later.”

My heart fluttered. For Rex's sake, I pretended to swoon.

Barely noticing, Danny confronted Rex. “Rex Rader!” He slapped his hand on Rex's shoulder. Hard. “How's it hanging?”

“Uh, fine.” Rex cleared his throat. He was too busy keeping a wary eye on Danny to let his gaze wander anywhere near my T-shirt-covered breasts. I was too busy wondering how in the world Danny had identified him so quickly to appreciate the reprieve from being leered at. “Just trying to convince Ms. Mundy Moore to do some consulting work for me.” Rex gave a weak laugh.

“Really?” Danny crossed his arms, appearing interested.

Okay, to be honest, he appeared to be an interested
thug.
No matter what else he did, his rough upbringing never quite got completely sanded off. His short brown hair made people wonder if he was ex-military; his intense eyes could be jovial or hard.

I guessed Rex saw
hard
right now. “Yes, really,” he said.

“Well, be sure to give Hayden your card.” Danny tossed me a smart-alecky look. “She's awful at remembering faces and names.”

You liar!
I was about to yell, but then Rex obediently reached for his wallet to retrieve an
mmm
-Melt business card . . . and came up empty, instead. “My wallet!” he yelped. “It's gone!”

Hmm.
I stared fixedly at Danny. He gazed innocently at me.

“Have you checked the hotel's lost and found?” he asked.

Swearing, Rex patted his pants pockets. His T-shirt. He turned in a circle, then started pacing. “It's really gone!”

“Seriously. Ask at the front desk,” Danny suggested.

Rex nodded. The moment he distractedly entered the distant elevator and I heard the doors
ding
shut, I turned to Danny.

“You idiot!” Frowning, I held out my palm. “Hand it over.”

“Hand over what?” he asked with exaggerated guilelessness.

“You know what. Rex Rader's wallet. I know you lifted it.”

Danny shrugged, unbothered by my theory. My heart sank at his tacit acknowledgment that I was right. He'd promised me more than once that he would shed his shady past and go wholly legit.

Today's antics only proved he hadn't. I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. This wasn't the first time Danny's easy-fingered ways had gotten us both out of a sticky situation.

If I knew us, it wouldn't be the last time, either.

As expected, Danny brandished Rex's expensive wallet. He grinned unrepentantly. “We should at least riffle through it once, just to make sure Rader's on the up-and-up,” he said by way of a compromise. “Then I'll turn it in to the front desk.”

Like the world's most audacious con artist, Danny crossed his hand over his heart. The fact that he used his
stolen-wallet-holding
hand didn't add much authenticity to the gesture.

I gave in. “Fine. Just quit giving me those puppy-dog eyes. I'm trying to be mad at you for being late to the retreat.”

“Yeah. It seems like a real classy affair so far, what with you being mauled in the hallway and everything.” With a wry look, Danny stuffed Rex's wallet in his jacket. “Why didn't you just drop him cold, like that would-be mugger in Barcelona?”

At the memory of that incident, I cringed. I wasn't proud of fighting back—it had been dumb, frankly—but I'd survived.

“I'm here at Maison Lemaître to network,” I reminded him crisply, “not to become the ultimate fighting champion.”

“Right. How's that working out for you so far?”

“I'm still optimistic. And
you're
still late.”

“The more things change . . .” Danny flashed me a carefree grin. He looked me up and down. “You look great, by the way. Nice T-shirt.”

Then he produced a glossy keycard, opened my hotel room with it, and chivalrously stepped back to allow me to enter first. Always a consummate gentleman—that was Danny. I was so happy to see him that it almost didn't occur to me to wonder . . .

How had
Danny
gotten ahold of
my
hotel room keycard?

In the minutes before we were due at the Lemaître welcome reception in the ballroom downstairs, I intended to find out the answer to that question. In the meantime, I decided to hug him.

 

 

As you might have predicted by now, I didn't wrangle any answers from Danny—not about my hotel keycard, not about his late arrival, and not about what he'd been up to lately, either.

At my first question (about my keycard), he merely raised his eyebrows in a “who do you think you're dealing with?” way that told me all I really needed to know about my (mostly) former-thief friend . . . although he swore he “only used his powers for good” these days. At my second question, he simply changed the subject. At my third, he began stripping to put on a suit for the gala welcome reception. I was forced to improvise and push his chortling, partly naked self into his own adjoining room.

I'd glimpsed enough bare skin and rippling muscles, though, to know Danny wasn't all talk when it came to his freelance security business in L.A. He was capable of action, too.

Now, ensconced in the midst of the welcome reception, I had more important things to think about than Danny's secrets, his musculature, and that whopper of a kiss. I had to get serious.

The atmosphere should have made that easy. The ballroom was spectacular, furnished with chocolate brown wallpaper, plenty of mirrored surfaces, lots of gleaming marble, and gold accents galore. A string quartet played, filling the room—and the moonlit patio visible through the opened French doors that lined one wall—with classical music. Waiters passed drinks and canapés and chocolate delicacies; fancily dressed chocolate-industry bigwigs surrounded me, conducting laughing conversations.

I'd dived in an hour ago, having entered the room with Danny, only to split up almost instantly to circulate.

So far, I'd conversed with at least a dozen people, gabbing with the kind of loquaciousness that could only come from my gypsy upbringing in multiple countries. I'd even managed not to fidget too much, which counted as a big victory for me.

But while my initial apprehension faded, I noticed that Adrienne's had never left her. If anything, it had increased.

I glimpsed her running around behind the scenes, wearing a pristine white chef's coat over her party dress, darting into the ballroom with refills of ordinary (non-nutraceutical) Lemaître chocolates. Evidently, Christian had ordered her to wait until the right moment to unveil the caffeinated version.

I hoped the line succeeded. I still had my doubts. But more than that, I was concerned about Adrienne. She seemed unusually tense and pale. Her ordinarily springy blond curls were lank—from the heat of the hotel kitchen, no doubt—and her face was shiny with perspiration. Sweat even darkened the underarms of her whites. When she headed back to the kitchen, she swayed.

Worried, I followed her. But by the time I caught up with Adrienne in the hotel kitchen, she insisted she was fine.

“Look! I've got my patented instant-energy healthy green juice to keep me going!” Manically, she brandished a carafe full of icy green slush. She poured two tall glasses of it, handed one to me, then clinked glasses. “Cheers!”

I took a tentative sip. I made a face. “What is this?”

“Kale, banana, powdered greens, avocado, pineapple, lemon . . .” With a confiding air, Adrienne leaned closer. “
And
a teensy bit of my booster powder, of course.” She nodded toward her supply of anhydrous caffeine, waiting where we'd left it earlier, next to the supersensitive culinary scale. “Just enough to keep me going,” she added when she saw my dubious expression. “It's like coffee, only better! You were right, Hayden. I
did
need something healthy.” Adrienne toasted me. “This is it!”

I stared at its dismal color. “This looks like something a socialite would try to ‘detox' with. How about some water?”

“No time now! Gotta run!” Adrienne pointed at my mostly untouched glass. “Drink up, Hayden. It's good for you.”

“I don't know about this, Adrienne,” I called after her, raising my voice to be heard above the music and the sound of a hundred-odd noisy voices. “I think I'll help you instead.”

But by then, my fellow chocolatier was gone, vanished into the ballroom again. When I looked at the array of serving trays Adrienne had lined up—clearly with an elaborate system in mind—I wasn't sure which one to choose. When I glanced at the leftover blocks of chocolate, whisks, and waiting stainless-steel bowls, I couldn't be sure what she'd been working on, either.

With no other alternative, I headed back to the ballroom.

Isabel was the first to notice my homebrew “energy” drink.

“Hayden! What in the
world
are you drinking?” Tipsily, she peered at my glass. I'd forgotten I was still holding it. Isabel weaved in place, dressed to kill and clearly drunk—but interested. “It looks
disgusting.
Just like my detox drink!”

I saluted Isabel with it, grinned, and kept mingling. I spoke with Nina and Bernard, Christian (briefly) and Rex Rader (ditto). I gave Adrienne an “are you okay?” nod as she passed me. I traded back-of-the-house war stories with a local pastry chef. At the urging of a photographer for a local newspaper, I even posed along with everyone else for a group photo op.

“I'm
sure
I looked horrible!” Adrienne whispered to me as we all regrouped afterward. “I don't take good photos.”

“
Nobody
thinks they take good photos,” I assured her. “Believe me. Everyone looks better in real life than on film.”

“Isabel Lemaître doesn't,” Adrienne groused. She examined the assorted drinks that had been temporarily abandoned on a nearby table during the photography session, then chose one. Her (very recognizable) green juice, of course. She handed me mine. “Someone told me Isabel used to be a lingerie model.”

I believed it. “That explains why she went braless today,” I joked. “I guess she's already worn her lifetime bra quota.”

Adrienne guffawed. She almost snorted green juice.

I wanted to hang around and make Adrienne laugh again—if only to make up for the potential devastation I might wreak on her nutraceutical chocolate line after my report to Christian was turned in—but I spied Danny giving me a panicked-looking “head scratch” signal just then and had to run to his rescue.

After I'd extracted him from a clingy blogger from a San Francisco-based culinary site, I pantomimed scratching my head.

“You'd better watch that, pal. Might be dandruff.”

“Har, har.” He got his revenge by pinching me as I sailed away, but I was okay with that. It was only fair that I helped him as much as he helped me. Danny didn't know it, but that was partly what this impromptu retreat was all about: helping him. Specifically, helping him stay
away
from the lowbrow, bad-influence buddies who tended to congregate around him.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed before I realized I hadn't seen Adrienne for a while. Despite the general sense of urgency, the reception had been running two steps behind all night. The nutraceutical line hadn't even been unveiled yet, and it was getting late. Adrienne must be frantic by now. Thinking I might be able to help, I put down my “energy” drink and went to check on her. Partway there, I spied Rex Rader buttonholing a reporter—a woman who seemed
far
more interested in him than
I'd
been, judging by her enraptured expression—and I decided to make a detour to the ladies' room first.