Exit Strategy (20 page)

“Hell yeah, I’m jealous of her. She had something I’ll probably never have,” I say with a frown. “Tristan’s heart.”

CHAPTER TEN

Tristan

“Your not returning wasn’t our agreement, Keisha,” Tristan says. “The way I understand it, my brother should be the one worried, not Ms. Jameson.”

He paces the floor of the hallway near his office, where Velasquez and his security team have appropriated his conference table for their use as a temporary operations center.

“Jada is in a fragile state of mind right now, Sir,” Keisha says. “She needs me, and I would like to be here for her. Just as she was for me not too long ago.”

Tristan bristles at the reminder. Moses told him how she broke down in the limo and ran straight into her roommate’s arms when he dropped her off. For him, it was like watching Aimee self-destruct all over again. He doesn’t want to push Keisha to such lengths for something that could be solved with a compromise.

“Okay. What time can you be here tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure just yet.” She’s hesitant. A first for Ms. Beale, in his humble opinion. She usually reacts first and damn the consequences. “Mama wants Jada and me to come to church tomorrow and have Sunday dinner with her. She wants to discuss our parts in her wedding.”

“I see,” he says, but he’s not at all pleased with the weekend’s developments.

“I’m very sorry, Sir. If I’m able to make it tomorrow, it will probably be late.” She sounded genuinely contrite. Another first for her. If he weren’t so determined to get something going on this goddamned investigation, he would take time to put her through the paces, but he would get an opportunity to soon enough.

“Let’s play it by ear, but call me if there’s a problem. Velasquez and his security team are still here. Keep me in the loop.”

“I will, Sir.”

Before he hangs up, he needs to remind her of something in the worse way, though. He lowers his voice and says, “Who do you belong to, Keisha?”

He thinks he hears a sigh before she replies, “You, Sir.”

Tristan hangs up, but he doesn’t go back to his office right away. He meanders through the hall and down the stairs. Since moving Aimee and her staff into the condo, he’s found himself dropping by every day, sometimes a couple of times a day.

He didn’t realize how much he missed her until she was in close proximity again. The monthly visits were about all he could bear in recent years. His excuse had been the distance to her facility, but now he didn’t have one. And she told him so the day after she moved in, along with a few other things.

“You’re like a stranger, T.X.,” she said. Only Aimee addresses him by his initials, because she was born and raised—for the most part—in Texas, and she uses his initials as an homage to her state. “If I weren’t living proof of the impossibility, I’d say you’ve gone and let yourself fall in love.”

“Bite your tongue, woman. You’ll likely be the closest I’ll ever come to that.”

She laughed. “You say that with your tongue thoroughly in cheek, but I watch
Entertainment Weekly
, and I also have access to the Internet. That expensive special computer you gave me a few Christmases ago comes in real handy. I also saw Ms. Keisha Beale in the flesh when she was on the way up to see you last evening.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, the elevator stopped on this floor when Nursie summoned it to go down. I saw her for just a few seconds.”

“Nursie?”

“My pet name for Janet. The EMTs were still debating about the best place to set me up in my new digs.”

He tried not to have a reaction but failed miserably. She picked right up on it. “Don’t worry, T.X. Janet sent Keisha on her way and the technician fixed the glitch that caused it to stop in the first place. We didn’t mean to cause any problems for you.”

“It’s not a problem. I just want to protect the privacy of all concerned. You needed use of an elevator that isn’t accessible by the rest of the building, and it saved time and a boatload of money for us to share mine.” Plus there was the minor detail that he hadn’t told Keisha about Aimee. Yet.

“Anything necessary to keep you sleeping at night.”

That comment reminded him why he didn’t visit her more often. Her snark is legendary, and having it issue from the pretty head atop a frail, atrophied body had the very opposite affect it used to have on him. She’s too proud to accept his pity, so he stayed away, and keeping up a cheerful demeanor on his part is exhausting.

For whatever reason, he heads to her place again. Even if it turns out to be for more punishment, he’ll bear the brunt of it because her smart mouth is all she has to remind him of the woman she had been. He moves into the elevator on autopilot, inserts his key, and presses the button for the floor below.

The door to Aimee’s bedroom is open, and he can hear voices emanating from there. He knocks.

“T.X., come on in,” Aimee says excitedly. “There’s no possibility you’ll find me in a more compromising position than you’ve already seen me in the past, so stop all this foolish knocking.”

Tristan puts on his manufactured smile, nods to Nurse Hathaway, and kisses Aimee on the forehead.

She juts out her chin, says, “I keep telling you my lips are down here,” and laughs at her own joke. When she was in her prime, one of her favorite things to say to men who ogled her rack was a reminder of where her eyes were located.

Tristan is a good sport and gives her a kiss on lips. That used to drive him insane. It gets no rise out of him now, and for this, he is grateful.

Mrs. Hathaway slips out of the room, as she’s prone to do when he shows up.

“You’re going to spoil me,” Aimee says. “If I count your visit before daylight this morning, this makes three visits today.”

Tristan rolls his eyes. “Velasquez has my office tied up right now. I thought I’d get out of their hair a while.” He sits in the chair the nurse vacated. The television is on but muted. “So, tell me again why you even have this on if you’re not watching it?”

“Oh, television is my company keeper. It makes me feel like I’m never alone.”

“Mrs. Hathaway employs someone to sit with you the twelve hours she isn’t, so you’re never alone.”

“But they aren’t company. They’re here to make sure I don’t get bed sores or asphyxiate on my own saliva. The TV brings the world to me. You know what I mean?”

He’s chafed but understands. “Yes, I do. So, this place is good? It’s getting more comfortable for you, notwithstanding the discomfort you experienced last night?”

“Yes. And even though it’s way better than the nursing home, I figured out what had me so agitated.”

“What’s that?”

“When I was there, I’d have other visitors, even if they were just as fucked up as I am. They’d roll into my room and sit and chat with me for a while. I don’t have that here.”

“I’m sorry, Aimee. I didn’t think about how much that place had become your home. When I got the threat, it was just a knee-jerk reaction to bring you in close to me.”

“It’s doubtful that person is after me. We haven’t been associated in years.”

“I couldn’t take that chance. This person could have been watching me for a long time and know my patterns, which included visiting you regularly.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m flattered you think of me as family. I just wonder what your new sub thinks about all this.”

Tristan feels like a cad even contemplating lying to her, so he doesn’t. “Keisha doesn’t know about you.”

Aimee’s green eyes widen. “So that’s why she didn’t seem to recognize me. And those imbeciles had me on an oxygen mask instead of my cannula, so she probably didn’t understand me when I spoke to her.”

“She could have been preoccupied, as well. That was her first night back in three weeks.”

“Really?” She raises her eyebrows.  “What did you do?”

He lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Nothing . . .”

“Ha! Don’t give me that. You and I both know you can be an intense fucker.”

“Honest, I didn’t do anything. This time.”

“Then what happened?”

“She had a couple of anxiety attacks when we were in scenes, and she got scared and safeworded.”

“So, other than your superior fucking skills, how did you woo her back?”

He raises a brow. “ ‘Superior fucking skills’?”

“Stop fishing for compliments. You know damned well you’re good.” She rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I dream... oh, never mind. How did you get that pretty young thing back?”

“With my charm.”

Aimee laughs.

“. . . and my superior fucking skills.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You know, had things turned out differently, I would never have needed another submissive. You had a singularly unique skill set of your own. You were unmatchable,” he says.

She smiles wanly. “I appreciate the compliment and the sentiment behind it, but you and I both know that isn’t true. It’s revisionist history concocted by a man who’s never forgiven himself for something he isn’t responsible for. It took a shitload of therapy to get me here, T.X., but I own what happened in Telluride.”

Tristan has heard her say this more than a dozen times in the last five years, but like all the times before, he rejects it. He was culpable, indirectly. He’d been honest with her, but he’d possessed no integrity in addressing her feelings until it was too late. His unrelenting stance on relationships had forced her hand just as if he’d pushed her out of the car.

But if he were honest with himself, he’d admit she’s right about one thing. If their Dom/sub arrangement had somehow survived until the previous year when that sassy olive-skinned, hazel-eyed beauty had strolled into his office, all bets would’ve been off on whether he would’ve been able to resist temptation. Keisha has gotten under his skin like no other. He’s still waiting for the excitement to wear off, but so far it hasn’t.

“Like I said before, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“I’m going to keep trying to convince you, because I know when I do, you’ll finally be ready and able to love someone and have someone love you the way you need to be loved.”

“The last person who loved me turned down my proposal, if I recall correctly.”

“We wouldn’t have had a real marriage, T.X. You were chivalrous to offer, but I wasn’t about to guilt you into making me your missus and trap you in a loveless, dysfunctional marriage in the prime of your life. That would’ve been the epitome of selfishness on my part, because you didn’t love me.”

“I loved you then, and I love you now, Aimee.”

“Bullshit. You loved me as a friend. You were never in love with me.”

Tristan sighs. He could never win this argument with Aimee, and with his life in the state it is now, he’s grateful for that.

She breaks the awkward silence. “By the way, why are you here?”

“Come again?”

“This is a role-play weekend. Isn’t Keisha waiting on you?”

“No, she’s back at her place.” He needs to leave now in the worse way. When he looks into Aimee’s eyes and sees how glassy they are, he almost changes his mind, but he stands instead. “I’d better get back upstairs and see what my security team’s been able to uncover.”

“Yes, you should go,” she says cheerfully but is unable to mask the shakiness in her voice.

If he doesn’t go now, she’ll get emotional, and she hates being reduced to tears. Always has. Then he won’t be good company for anyone for the rest of the day. His gut churns like it always does after seeing her in an emotional state, and as he gets on the elevator, he punches the button as if it offends him.

~*~

“We have three persons of interest as a result of the wide net we cast,” Velasquez says.