The Client: Short And Steamy (17 page)

T
he penthouse was too quiet
.

That was the first thing I noticed after I closed the door behind Leslie.

I had the insane urge to open the door and call her back – fuck Brinke. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been running around on me for years. I wasn't an idiot.

But Leslie was right.

Besides, everything was about to change.

The divorce was going to be hell on Carter. Even though Brinke was hardly ever there for her anyway, it was going to change things in a big way and before long, I’d be…

“Shit.” I shoved the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I’m going to be a single dad.”

More than that, I’d be a single dad with sole custody if things went right.

I didn’t want to keep Carter from Brinke, and if she ever got herself together, we could change things. Leslie was right. Shared custody would eventually be fine, but not while she was messed up like this.

Worry started to gnaw at me, and I tugged my phone out, sent a quick text to Brinke. She didn’t respond so I tagged Alex.

The nanny responded immediately.

E
verything is fine
, although we’re probably going to be late. She decided she was starving
and
we ended up at one of the busiest places in Manhattan…and she was recognized.

W
ell
, that was just great.

But not entirely shocking.

Brinke ended up responding a few minutes later, and the text was more than a little bitchy.

For fuck’s sake, stop checking up on me. Everything is cool. She ate a nice healthy breakfast and lunch – no sweets, just like we agreed. You worry too much.

Sighing, I shoved the phone away and then pushed away from the door, moving into the tomb-like silence of the penthouse. Why hadn’t I ever noticed how quiet it was here? Probably because I was hardly ever here alone. But once the divorce was final, there would be times when I'd be here by myself. I’d probably arrange for Alex to go with Carter whenever she was with Brinke. Brinke got along with her well enough, and I knew I could trust Alex.

A hell of a lot more than I could trust my wife.

Ex-wife
. Soon to be
ex-
wife.

Guilt rubbed me raw inside because part of my brain was still occupied with thoughts of Leslie, and now with Brinke and the upcoming divorce weighing down on me, I had to think about what I’d done. It pissed me off all over again, and I stormed into the living room, randomly grabbing up a few toys that hadn’t gotten picked up from yesterday. The cleaning people were in twice a week, but they couldn't be here around the clock, and still have plenty of work.

Carter and Brinke made sure of that. At least my daughter was only six. She was still learning.

I burned through nervous energy setting things to right, trying hard not to think about why I was anxious.

“Everything’s fine,” I told myself.

This wasn’t like the last time Carter had been with her mom all day. That had been in California, and Alex hadn’t been with them then. In the end, that was why we’d left California and moved to New York. The rest of the guys had already called the city their home base, but we’d always been fine traveling back and forth when it came time to record. After that mess with Brinke, I realize we needed a clean slate.

What happened still tore me up inside when I thought about it. They’d gone to an aquarium, then shopping. Everything had been fine up until Brinke got 'thirsty.' I could still hear her explanation.

I don’t know what the fucking problem was – she was in the car maybe twenty minutes and the windows were down. Not like she was going to die of a heat stroke. Everybody is all up in my ass because I’m famous and that fucking judge had a hard-on for me. That’s the whole problem, baby.

But a guy had come into the little open air restaurant where she’d been belting back her third martini and said somebody left a kid alone in a car – anybody know who she belonged to? He’d already called the cops.

Then, to make matters worse, Brinke had tottered on off and gotten into the fucking car – drunk.

Sometimes I got sick thinking about what might have happened if somebody hadn’t put two and two together and followed her, managing to get the keys while she'd still been trying to get them into the ignition.

She’d done a six-week, court-ordered stint in rehab, and had come out more level. I’d hoped she'd stay that way. Now I was kicking myself for thinking things might work out.

I grabbed my phone after dumping an armful of toys in the giant crate Alex had found for just that purpose.

Pacing over to the window, I pulled out my phone and almost sent another message.

But what was the point?

Alex was there. Carter was safe with Alex there.

I
stood
in front of the windows and stared outside.

I wasn’t seeing the city’s brightly light skyline, though.

In my mind’s eye, I was seeing Leslie.

Her and Carter. For a while, it had been easy to just kind of…wish.

Stupid, maybe, but easy.

I’d had a million things go through my head once I'd found out I was going to be a dad, but none of them had been like the reality. The reality of picking Carter up when I realized Brinke was getting sick in the bathroom because she’d drank half the night.

The reality of not just baby proofing the house, but daily – and nightly – checks to make sure my wife hadn’t left pills laying out.

I was an idiot.

I should have ended this a long time ago. The reason I hadn’t was because Brinke had
gotten
me. Before. She’d been the first one to ever understand who I was. But now, we were so far apart, we might as well be strangers and worse, she was a stranger who wasn’t good for my kid.

I’d started to think that maybe the only way my daughter would ever have somebody
good
around her would be through people I
paid
– like Alex – or through the friends I was lucky enough to have, like Decker and LaToya.

Then Leslie had sort of just dropped into Carter’s life and made my baby girl laugh. She’d talked to her like she mattered.

With Brinke, sometimes Carter was like a doll, something fun to play with when she had time – and was sober enough. But beyond that? Brinke was what mattered to Brinke. I knew she loved our daughter, but never enough to put Carter's well being above her own.

Maybe if Leslie had been a little less amazing, I wouldn’t still be thinking about her. Maybe I wouldn’t have coaxed her into staying the day. Laughed with her, talked with her.

I’d had fun with her, and not just when I was balls-deep inside her either.

And I’d cheated on my wife with her.

I could rationalize the hell out of it. Brinke hadn’t been faithful since the first year of our marriage. I’d seen it with my own eyes. I’d walked in while she was fucking a guy from some other band.

He’d seen me.

She hadn’t.

I'd walked back out and told myself to find a woman, but I hadn’t. All these years, I hadn’t. And now when it was almost over, I’d cheated.

I didn't know why it bothered me so much. It'd clearly never bothered Brinke to break the promises she made.

I’ll have her back by eight, sugar. Promise.

Promises.

Setting my jaw, I looked over at the clock and saw that it was just after seven.

I wasn’t going to think about it.

Heading to the practice studio I’d set up, I grabbed my guitar and moved back into the living room. I was no master with the instrument. I could strum my way through a song, and that was it, but having a tune helped when I was trying to put new lyrics to paper.

Killing time, I played with the melody that had been going through my head for weeks – longer. The song had been chasing me.

Broken promises.

I knew plenty about those.

Although the song was
there
, dying to be written, it hadn’t wanted to come; but tonight, whether loosened by stress or something else, I managed to get a few more lines down and fix the opening.

I had Leslie in mind as I played.

Wrong as it might’ve been, I could no longer pretend that Brinke was any kind of inspiration. She hadn’t been for a while, and I’d been writing without a muse.

There was nothing romantic about the lyrics coming out of me – it was all sex and heat and that was fine.

It felt like the sun coming out after months of storm.

I looked up only when the phone rang, and I realized it had gotten dark. Dark. And it was still quiet in the penthouse, which meant it was well past time for Brinke to have been home with Carter.

Swearing, I started to fumble for the phone I almost always had in my back pocket when I realized it was already ringing. On the coffee table.

I grabbed it, seeing a picture of Alex and Carter flash on the screen. My gut, already slippery and twisted with tension, eased a little.

“Yeah?”

“Paxton.” It was indeed Alex and her normally calm, confident voice was
not
calm or confident.

Don’t panic,
I told myself.
Don’t panic
.

“What’s up, Alex? You guys running late?”
Obvious answer is obvious, genius
.

“We were finally getting ready to go, and I got up to use the restroom. Carter didn’t want to go with me so I left her with Brinke. I just got back to the table and they're gone.”

I blinked, my brain not processing. “Alex?”

“They're
gone
, Paxton,” she nearly screamed. “The manager is here telling me that Brinke said I was taking care of the tab because it was her birthday – the bill is over three thousand dollars – ” Her voice hitched and then steadied. “I’ll handle it, but they're
gone
.”

“The fuck you’ll handle it,” I said, furious and getting more so. “Give him the business card I gave you for expenses and…” My brain stopped functioning after that because that was the only thing I had a definite solution for.

Don’t panic,
I told myself.
Don’t panic
.

“She’s probably fucking with us,” I told Alex, forcing myself to calm. “We both know she was pissed off because I insisted you go with her. Go on outside and see if you can find them anywhere nearby. I’ll try calling her.”

Don’t panic
, I thought again. And I managed to listen to my own advice.

For a while.

I sent text after text to Brinke. No response to any of them.

Alex came rushing in less than thirty minutes after she’d called, her eyes half-wild.

I’d shaken my head and after a little while, I told her to go ahead and go on down to her place. No reason for us both to sit there and stare at my phone like it was a snake.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic
.

But by the time midnight rolled around and I still hadn’t heard from Brinke, fuck it, I was ready to panic.

T
he hours drifted
by in a haze.

I knew I’d gotten in my car, driven back home, and put my car back into my space. I knew I came inside and changed into my pajamas.

After that?

I thought I sorta drifted around the apartment, smiling stupidly as I gazed toward Manhattan and the general direction where Paxton would be. Carter would be home by now.

Hopefully, she’d had fun, and now she and Paxton were settling in for the night. Having dinner maybe, or she was taking a bath, and he was cleaning up in the kitchen. The mega-rich, mega-beautiful Paxton Gorham didn’t mind getting his hands dirty in the kitchen. It was kind of hot.

At some point, those silly daydreams turned into real dreams, and I fell asleep on my bed, curled up on my side.

Paxton was there and this time, we didn’t have borrowed time or a few stolen hours.

We just had each other.

When the phone rang, it jolted me out of a hot, sexy dream, and I sat there a few seconds, confused. The phone rang again, and I grabbed it, staring at it blearily before the number clicked and I realized who it was.

“Hello?”

“Leslie. It’s Paxton.”

“Yes?”

A few taut moments of silence passed before he said anything, and my heart began to beat in hard, slow beats, each one of them becoming more and more deafening until I could barely hear anything past it.

When he finally spoke, I was aware of nothing but his voice.

“It’s Brinke,” he said finally.

I swallowed, my hand going damp where it clutched the phone. Shit.

“Leslie…she…she hasn’t come home yet. She and Carter…they’ve disappeared.”

I
heard
the words – they made sense, logically.

But, in that moment, all I could do was picture Carter and the way she and her father looked at her.

Carter…

“Leslie!” Paxton’s voice barked out of the phone in harsh demand.

“I heard you,” I said quietly, struggling to keep my voice level. My mind spun.

“They’ve disappeared, dammit! What in the hell am I supposed to do?”

F
irst
, I would like to thank all of my readers. Without you, my books would not exist. I truly appreciate each and every one of you.

A big “thanks” goes out to all the Facebook fans, street team, beta readers, and advanced reviewers. You are a HUGE part of the success of all my series.

I have to thank my PA, Shannon Hunt. Without you my life would be a complete and utter mess. Also a big thank you goes out to my editor Lynette and my wonderful cover designer, Sinisa. You make my ideas and writing look so good.