Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) (25 page)

Funny thing is, I don’t fucking care.

She’s agreed to give it a try. Just a try—but it’s enough, dammit. If she wants to charge me another forty million for that miracle, then so be it.

And yeah, I
am
choosing to call it a miracle. Something exists where it didn’t before—I actually
want
to get up every morning—and isn’t that what a miracle is?

Come to think of it, I kind of like the afternoons that come after those mornings too. And dear God, the magic into which Ella Santelle has turned all my nights…

The enchantment she has cast over my
life…

The power she now has over my heart.

It’s a recognition with damn shitty timing, because something tells me it’s the most evident thing on my face as Chantal Dunne stares up through her lashes, her reindeer now still…and ruthlessly assessing.

Sharpening her antlers.

Someone shouts that we’ll be back on the air in thirty seconds.

Chantal smooths her skirt. Swivels back toward us, rearranging the notecards in her lap, plastic smile on her lips. “All righty,” she croons. “You two ready for a little more fun?”

Ella settles a little deeper into the crook of my arm. Cuddles there for a second, her smile remaining curved in sugar-sweet sincerity. But in her eyes, something has changed. Blazed to life like a pair of crystals activated by a sorceress’s spell—and not one made of bird song and gum drops. Even Chantal recognizes the belladonna cast of it…the stabby things Tinkerbell’s been sharpening too.

The things now carving edges to Ella’s calm reply. “Something tells me your only idea of ‘fun’ is torturing puppies, Chantal—and neither Cassian nor I plan on fetching any balls for you. That being said…bring it on.”

*

Mishella

F
unny, that a
very real thought has struck me in the middle of a fake living room, overlooking a fake city, sipping water that came from fake mountain springs.

Bitches are the same no matter where one journeys in life.

Given a better haircut, a more flattering dress, and a few court etiquette lessons, Chantal Dunne is like every social climbing
bamboo
of the Arcadian Court. The word is not even my innocent idiom mash now. In Arcadia, we have no problem likening idiots to hollow, invasive plants. It has certainly made it easier to handle her, watering her stems with vapid comments that have become easy jumping boards for her own witty banter, though I am certain she considers the roots firmly in place, the plant prepared to bloom.

Cassian squeezes my shoulder. Flashes me a subtle wink. In addition to melting every cell in my blood at once, the moment conveys another important thing. He knows about bamboo too. We are unified. Chantal Dunne and her garden are getting no more fertilizer from us.

“And we’re back!” chimes the woman herself, punctuating with a toss-toss of her hair that makes me cringe on behalf of all women with curls, especially me. “Along with more of my exclusive sit-down with Cassian Court and Mishella Santelle, surely the most alluring memento he’s ever brought back to New York from his world travels.” She beams a teasing look across the coffee table. “Better than a dorky T-shirt, eh, Cas?”

Cas.

I hook both hands around my knees, digging my grip in. I have only ever heard the nickname from Mallory and Kate: his mother and the woman who might as well be his sister. Chantal Dunne has no right even sniffing at that special category—but if she has no right, neither do I. It is Cassian’s transgression to correct—and I am glad to see he looks ready to. While pulling in a long sip of the fake mountain stream, he eyes the reporter with an equal pretense of affability.

“Oh, she’s far better than a T-shirt, Chantal.” He winks again at me. “All my other T-shirts agree, since she looks damn good in them.”

“Dear Creator.” Until now, I have managed not to blush despite the hot set lights. He certainly changes that.

“Oooo la la!” Chantal clips her index cards between two fingers in order to join the crew in approving applause. “Somebody has certainly bewitched the playboy!”

Cassian sobers his demeanor. Though setting down the water, he remains angled forward. Palming a knee with his good hand, he impales Chantal with the jade lance of his stare. “Playboy? That implies that I ‘play,’ Chantal. I’ve never ‘played’ with the women I see. Everyone knows where they stand, at all times.”

Chantal’s riposte worries me from the start. Not a second’s worth of awkwardness, like what happened after I called out the slithery tactics of her research team. Her composure remains sleek—nearly as if Cassian has played right into her script.

“So that position applied to Amelie Hampton, as well?”

Or walked into her trap.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

If the same refrain has slammed Cassian, I—and everyone else—are not privy to it. “Of course it applied to Amelie.” His brow simply furrows, as if Chantal has questioned whether his suit is custom-tailored or the sky is always blue. “And she was well aware of that.”

Chantal dips a bewildered look to her note cards. “That so? Then why did she appear on this very show to claim you ‘crushed her like a Mack truck’ two months ago, by showing up at the New York Literacy Ball with Mishella instead of her?”

“The event at which she was as drunk as a punk?” I ignore the perplexity on the woman’s face. I cannot simply sit back while the woman uses Amelie’s sloshed escapades to skewer Cassian. “She had so much, she was able to waste some on the front of my dress—before throwing the glass at Cassian.”

“Right before
you
walked out on him, Mishella.”

Triumphant razors gleam in the woman’s eyes. She rocks back a little, letting me wince through the suicide for which she’s gleefully assisted.

And worsens.

“You walked out because Amelie started talking.” Her head tilts as she dares going for the “best girlfriends” angle—at least to the viewers’ eyes. “And she spilled the truth, the
whole
truth, about what happened to Lily Court.”

She pushes forward again.

Just between us, Ella.

Reaches for one of my hands.

You can talk to me, Ella.

“Do. Not. Touch. Me.”

I barely get it seethed before the witch leans closer, though any outside observer would interpret her as the compassionate friend to my emotional wreck. “It must have been so much to take in. A first wife with emotional instability and substance abuse problems. All those trips Lily took to rehab—”

She’s sliced into silence by the man who almost lunges across the table at her. “How the hell did you find that out?”

One corner of Chantal’s mouth twitches. “Are you denying it?”

“I’m saying that those records are sealed, and that someone broke the law giving them to you.”

“Because you wanted to hide the extent of Lily’s substance abuse?” The smirk is gone from her lips but lives on in her cutting gaze. “Because she was so desperate to stay high, she abused drugs even when pregnant with your child?”

My heart punches to my throat. Sticks there, in the moment Cassian pounds a fist to the table.

“Enough.”

His snarl impacts Chantal as nothing more than a breeze. The note cards are coyly set aside. Her upper body slinks forward, calm and knowing as a she-snake. “Maybe you just want to hide the biggest kernel of it,” she murmurs. “That the night Lily Court leapt to her death, she was
still
carrying your baby.”

*

Cassian

“This interview is
over.”

My own words thrash the inside of my skull like ravens in a church: dark wings beating at stained glass, fury bashing the illusion of anything civilized and sane.

I watch my numb fingers tear the button of a microphone off my lapel. Next to me, Ella’s doing the same thing, though uses the extra two seconds to hiss something down at Chantal. The black thrum in my head doesn’t put all of it together until the words are out, and the reporter is responding with nothing but a saint-on-stained-glass smile.

“Creator have mercy on your sorry, awful soul!”

As she sucks in breath, gathering strength for a follow-up, I grab at her elbow. Pull hard. The last thing this moment needs is a Tazmanian devil channeled through an Arcadian blonde, ripping things up worse than Chantal Dunne already has.

Chantal Dunne, who now has what
she
showed to work for today.

“Enjoy the glory while it lasts, Miss Dunne.”
Your ass as at the center of my dartboard now.

The thought powers into my steps as Doyle falls into step beside me, seemingly from nowhere, though I know he’s just watched every second of what went down from the studio shadows. His cell is already at his ear, and he barks at the party on the other end to hold while he addresses me.

“Legal’s been told to put everything else on hold and meet you in the conference room adjacent to your office.”

“Good.” Still without breaking stride, I scoop a hand to the small of Ella’s back and hurry her the direction Doyle leads. Being in this building at all makes my skin fucking crawl; the sooner I can get her out of here, the better.

We rush around a corner into a utilitarian hall, where a stage hand nods at Doyle then leads us to the freight elevator. It’s ready, open, and empty, a detail for which I send D another quick nod of gratitude. Taking the public elevators down, to the lobby continuously packed with fans of the TGN shows, would be like taking the Virgil express into hell right now. This catastrophe isn’t over, not by the furthest stretch of imagination, and I don’t allow myself a single delusion about that—or one moment’s worth of an unguarded moment. Yeah, that includes even
thinking
about touching Ella more than this. Even the warmth of her hand is a risk, calling to the stupid caveman inside who clamors for an embrace, a kiss, the sweet goddamn nothingness of getting lost inside her…

Anything to help cope with the rage. The frustration. The pain. The self-recrimination.

I’m sorry, Lily. Goddammit, I’m so sorry.

For all the issues she was dealing with, and the ways she kept me locked out of them, Lily didn’t deserve to have her secrets exposed between commercials for dog food and fabric softener, with a tofu chef demo station waiting in the wings.

We
didn’t deserve it. Her or me—or our baby.

He’d almost be four by now. A toddler with Transformers and Legos.

Or she. A little princess with star wands…and Legos.

I chuff at my stupid joke.

Then pinch two fingers to my eyes, gritting back the hot sting behind them.

“Fuck.” It grates out, as rusty and rough in my throat as the gears lowering us to the basement. “
Fuck
.” Then louder than the collision of the brakes when we arrive, finished by my swing of a punch to the iron wall.

Ella’s quiet sob fills the ensuing silence. “Cassian…”

“Not now, Ella.”

The door slides open. Scott is waiting with the Jag, even
his
face set in stoic lines. Well, hell. I’ve never seen the kid ditch his smile, even after Hurricane Sandy took out his parents’ place.

Christ on ice. Was every goddamn person in the country watching
People and Places
this morning?

Apparently, yes.

I am the subject of nobody’s pity.

Yeah. Fucking great life mantra—

Except for the day I’m the subject of
everyone’s
pity.

“Cassian?”

I flinch from Ella’s voice. Force myself free from her touch. Like either’s going to stop the nightmare from reversing itself—all the disgusting details of Lily’s death from being bled all over the tabloid media for the next week.

I need to move.
Have
to move. Be free to attack this clearly.

Be free of needing Ella so near.

Of being weakened by it.

My steps from the lift pound through the garage, punching hard on the cement walls.
Cement. Much better than stained glass
.

One by one, the ravens freeze then die.

Thank fuck.

By the time I get to Doyle, I’m ready to hand them to him, laid out on the steel platter of my resolve.