Wicked Burn (19 page)

“Got no reason to be grouchy tonight, do you, boy? You got yourself a winner there,” she stated baldly. She’d glanced over at Niall, who was encircled in Vic’s arm, and winked mischievously. “The play wasn’t half bad, either.”

Vic looked down at Niall. “My mom always does pick the winners,” he said in a low rumble. Then he kissed her unashamedly as Meg and Ellen looked on with identical smirks on their faces.

Niall walked out of the theater a minute later and breathed deeply of the refreshing, cool air. “The city looks beautiful tonight, doesn’t it?” she asked, genuinely amazed at the surreal uniformity of the midnight blue sky, the sharp, crisp outlines of the buildings against it, how vibrant and colorful the lights from the high-rises were.

Meg laughed softly and took her arm as they headed to get a cab. “Oh, honey, you’re in it deep, aren’t you?” she murmured fondly. She laughed when Niall gave her a look of puzzlement.

When they arrived at the private room at Mina’s, Niall was a little surprised at how crowded it already was. She realized that she knew several people there. Many patrons of the theater were also sponsors for the museum. She was glad that she didn’t have to depend entirely upon contacts that Meg and Ellen had made through Vic’s earlier productions in order to socialize, and could introduce them to some interesting people as well. The overall atmosphere of the party was buoyant and energetic, just as it should have been on the night that symbolized the pinnacle of achievement for a company that knew they had a hit on their hands.

The three of them were chatting with an eclectic group consisting of Caesar Ramirez, Vic’s lighting designer; Marcus Alvion, a CEO for MarketTech, a Chicago-based company that supported the Hesse and who also sat on the fund-raising committee for Niall’s museum; and Mya Shore, a friendly, outgoing young woman who was an entertainment writer for the
Chicago Tribune
, when Eileen Moore joined them.

Eileen greeted Ellen and Meg with a kiss. She regarded Niall curiously as Meg formally introduced them, but without any of the rancor that she’d shown that evening at The Art. Perhaps she had no time for animosity, as aglow as she was with the evening’s success.

And she deserved it, Niall acknowledged. Her performance had been electrifying, and she told Eileen as much. She and the actress were in the process of feeling each other out, deciding whether or not they liked each other, when Vic entered the room. He received such loud, resounding applause from the partygoers that the regular diners in Mina’s restaurant must have thought a bomb exploded. He grinned slowly, waved, ducked his head, and turned aside to speak to the man who accompanied him into the room. Niall knew instinctively that while he appreciated the crowd’s sentiment, it couldn’t be over quickly enough for him.

She also noticed that Eileen clapped louder than anyone else in their group, and that the expression on her face as she stared at Vic bordered on idolatry.

Eileen stiffened even more than Niall did when Jennifer Atwood suddenly appeared out of the crowd and touched Vic’s elbow. Even from her distance across the crowded room Niall saw the marked change that overcame Vic’s countenance as he looked down at her. Jennifer went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

“
That bitch,
” Eileen hissed softly as her clapping slowed to a stop. “She’s got nerve coming here on Vic’s special night after what she did to him.”

“What did she do to him?” Niall asked, not at all sure she really wanted to know.

“Fucked him up good,” Eileen muttered under her breath before she took a long draw on her martini. Her eyes never moved from the sight of Vic staring down at Jennifer Atwood’s beautiful face.

“He’s never told you about her?” Eileen asked bitterly, although she was careful to keep her voice low enough so that only Niall heard her.

Niall’s lips pressed together tightly. If Eileen had asked the question condescendingly, in a way that implied Niall couldn’t possibly mean anything to Vic if he’d never revealed his secrets to her, than Niall probably would have tried to turn the subject. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d asked like she was totally preoccupied by the situation. Eileen obviously cared deeply about Vic and didn’t want to see him hurt again.

The fact that Jennifer still had the power to wound Vic was becoming uncomfortably obvious to Niall.

“No,” Niall admitted finally. “He hasn’t mentioned her to me.”

Eileen finally ripped her eyes away when Jennifer brushed Vic’s arm with her hand in a lingering caress and turned back into the crowd. “He was supposed to marry her, you know. But she was never happy with him, always scolding him for not living up to his
potential
, harassing him to move to Los Angeles and compete with the big boys like her slick-ass husband, complaining that his provincialism was bringing her career, as much as his own, to a halt,” Eileen said before she took another long drink, nearly emptying her glass.

Eileen gave a harsh bark of laughter after a few seconds. “I swear she tore him apart from the inside out. Vic wanted to please her, but he never could, you know? It got to the point where he just tuned her out, ignored her. That’s the worst sort of punishment for a woman like Jennifer,” Eileen murmured in that magnificent, deep voice that she used to such stirring effect on the stage.

“So she got back at him by jumping in the sack with ol’ Max over there, staging things just right so that Vic found them going at it full force.”

Niall flinched at the harshness of Eileen’s statement. She hated to think of Vic being subjected to something so painful.
She tore him apart from the inside out.
From the look that she’d seen on Vic’s face just now Niall had no problem wholeheartedly believing the accuracy of that statement.

All the effervescence and joy Niall had felt earlier that evening seemed to be dissipating as quickly as the bubbles in her untouched champagne.

“But Jennifer ended up being the butt of her nasty tricks,” Eileen continued. “She thought she’d whip Vic into a frenzy of jealousy and rage with her little plot, believed that he’d be even more desperate to keep her at all costs. But instead Vic dropped her faster than a stranger’s germ-ridden snot rag.” Eileen laughed softly, genuinely seeming to enjoy the memory. “She tried to get back in his good graces for months afterward, but the only thing she got from Vic was silence and ice. Finally she gave up and married ol’ Max a year later. I don’t think Vic has given her the opportunity to speak more than two words to him since then.”

“Until tonight,” Niall said softly.

“Yeah. Until tonight,” Eileen agreed with wary speculation.

Both women’s gazes flickered across the crowded room until they found Vic. His head stood above everyone else’s, so he wasn’t too difficult to spot. He was conversing in earnest with a bald man Niall didn’t recognize. His typical impassive expression was once again in place, so Niall couldn’t guess at his emotional state.

She cleared her throat with difficulty. “You seem to know an awful lot about the whole situation with Vic and Jennifer, Eileen.”

“I should. What do you think I was acting out on that stage up there tonight?” she asked with a bitter laugh.

 

 

Annoyance flickered across Vic’s awareness as he pretended to listen to a half-drunk Chicago socialite who had legs up to her armpits. He’d been trying to send Niall a “save me” signal for the past ten minutes now, but for some reason her gaze always seemed to bounce in the opposite direction whenever it got near him.

And where had all the luminescence that had been shining in her face earlier gone? Granted, he studied her from across a crowded room, but she suddenly seemed distant . . . drained.

Maybe she hated this type of affair almost as much as he did.

When he saw Niall make her way across the room an interminable few minutes later, he muttered a gruff “excuse me” during the socialite’s mid-ramble, barely noticing her shocked, offended expression as he walked away without a backward glance.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath a few seconds later when he caught a glimpse of Niall’s golden hair before the ladies’ room door shut with her on the other side of it.

“I think the boys’ bathroom is over there.”

Vic stiffened before he turned to face Jenny.

“I’m waiting for my date.”

“That blonde girl? Niall, wasn’t it?”

Vic didn’t respond, knowing that Jenny knew precisely to whom he referred. Besides, she was baiting him by calling Niall a girl.

He’d been so shocked by her sudden appearance earlier that he hadn’t been clear on what he’d been feeling since then. He suspected that Jenny’s presence
must
be having a profound effect on him on some unconscious level.

How could it not?

But in all honesty the only thing Vic had been focused on since he’d arrived at Mina’s was being with Niall. It seemed like every goddamned person in the room had adhered to him at some point, making it impossible for him to merely cross a span of fifty feet and claim her. He saw that she was always conversing with someone, including his mother, his sister, and a middle-aged, powerfully built man who looked like he was considering taking a bite out of her as she looked up at him with her huge, sexy eyes. His friend Caesar—who went through women like Vic did number-two pencils when he was on an editing spree—had a glazed-eyed, goofy look on his face as he vied for Niall’s attention. Best forget what Caesar looked like he was about to do when Niall laughed at one of his dumb-ass jokes if Vic wanted to maintain their friendship.

It never occurred to him to question the fact that he didn’t have a clue as to what Jenny had been doing for the last hour in the crowded room.

“May I have a word with you in private?” Jenny asked, her omnipresent hand settling on his lower arm.

“I can’t right now.” Her perfume found its way to his nostrils. Just the hint of it used to drive him wild with lust.

“Just a minute of your time, Vic? Didn’t what we had together warrant at least that?” Jenny asked in a trembling voice that struck Vic at that moment as totally genuine.

He answered her honestly. “I don’t owe you a damn thing, Jenny.” He glanced back at the closed ladies’ room door. “But it’s no sweat off my back if you want to talk to me for a minute.”

Much to his surprise, he realized that what he said was true. Why shouldn’t he listen to what she had to say? She was a human being, after all. He no longer felt the nauseating, blinding rage that he’d suffered in various degrees since he’d found her in his bed bouncing up and down on Max Blake’s cock.

That image—not to mention the cumulative effect of the hundreds of cruel, petty things Jennifer and he used to do to spite each other—had clawed at his insides for years like a vicious animal demanding release. But in that singular moment when he’d caught Jenny in bed with Max, Vic had been enlightened. He’d realized that he’d become an addict whose sole purpose consisted of getting his next fix. His entire world had narrowed down to the positive reinforcement he received from stoking Jenny’s insatiable fires. In the end, he hadn’t cared if he did it by igniting her desire or her fury.

It wasn’t a pretty thing to learn about oneself. He guessed that’s what he’d meant when he asked Niall what she thought about the play earlier.

Jenny tilted her head back toward an empty corridor. “Come here,” she coaxed softly.

Vic hesitated for a second as his gaze fixed on the rear view of Jenny’s phenomenal body.

What the hell?
he finally thought as he followed her. Better to face the truth about how he felt about her than to always be running from it.

 

 

Niall felt a little better when she left the ladies’ room. She’d splashed some cool water on her face in an attempt to revive herself and then reapplied her makeup. When she’d inspected herself in the mirror a moment later, she realized how pale she looked. She dug in her purse for some lipstick to add some color to her washed-out palette, becoming unreasonably irritated when she realized she’d left if in her coat pocket.

“Get a grip on it,” she whispered to her reflection a few seconds later. She took a deep breath and exhaled.

Eileen Moore might be wrong about Vic’s feelings for Jennifer Atwood. Art often imitated life, certainly, but it also varied from it greatly. Besides,
Alias X
reflected a certain time in Vic’s life, like a snapshot in a photo album. That didn’t necessarily mean that Vic was still wildly, passionately in love with Jennifer.

Did it
?

Were ties of the soul—even twisted ones—so easily severed?

Niall threw her comb back into her purse with a frown. She wasn’t going to come to any earth-shattering revelations about Vic’s love life by staring at herself in the mirror.
She
was the one he’d asked to his play tonight,
not
Jennifer Atwood.

Niall turned the corner that led to the coat check, planning to get her lipstick from her pocket before she went and found Vic.

She found him all right.

She came up short and stared at the sight in front of her. Vic leaned back against the wood paneling of the narrow corridor, his head bent downward while Jennifer Atwood craned up, their bodies sealed together as tightly as their mouths.

Niall didn’t think she’d made a noise, but she must have. Because suddenly Vic’s gray eyes were on her, the impact of them striking her like a blast of sleety, frigid wind.

She turned and fled.

“Niall,” Vic called out sharply as he straightened, knocking Jenny slightly off balance in her stiletto heels.

“Vic, hold on, please! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen . . .” Jenny said breathlessly as she put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, you did,” Vic said distractedly as he moved past her. “And maybe I did, too.”

Jennifer stared after him, her jaw hanging open as he strode away from her.