Mimi stared at him incredulously. "Did you just call me nouveau riche?"
Jack barked a laugh as they got on the elevator. "I guess so."
"Bastard!" Mimi pretended to be terribly offended. "Our money is so old it's drawing social security. Bankruptcy's out of the question. We're flush."
"I hope so. Didn't you say Lawrence reported a huge dip in earnings? And I've listened in on the latest investor appraisals. FNN is down several points. It's not good news."
She faked a big yawn. "Don't bore me with details. I'm not worried."
They walked out into the night. Across the street, horses hitched to hansom cabs awaited clueless tourists. It was cold—the last dredge of winter. Vestiges of the most recent snowstorm remained in the form of yellowy, cracked ice on top of garbage bins and the sidewalks.
Jack raised his hand, and a sleek black Bentley as large as a hearse pulled up to the curb.
"Home?" Mimi asked as she slid into the seat.
Jack leaned over, his arm resting on the edge of the door. "I'll see you there in a bit. I told Bryce and Jamie I'd meet them at the club."
"Oh."
He bussed her cheek. "Don't wait up, okay?" Then he shut the door and rapped smartly on the window. "Take her home, Sully."
Mimi waved at him through the tinted glass, her good mood evaporating as she watched him walk across the street to catch a cab headed downtown.
"Home, Miss Force?" Sully turned around.
She was about to nod. She was tired. Home sounded like a good idea. Though she was a little piqued that she had to go home alone. She toyed with the idea of following him, but Jack had been so devoted of late…There was nothing to suspect … He always met Bryce Cutting and Jamie Kip at the club…silly boys. And besides, she'd been watching him like a hawk in the past few weeks, ever since Venice, and had felt guilty because she had found nothing. What was she so worried about anyway?
But she had to be honest with herself. She was worried. "Not yet, Sully. Let's see where he's going."
The driver nodded. He'd heard this request before.
"Make sure he doesn't see us."
The car trailed the cab heading south on the West Side Highway. Block 122 had closed, and the new hot club of the moment, the Dante Inn, was located farther downtown, in the West Village, in the basement of one of those new glass buildings right off the highway. Mimi remembered Jack telling her how the family had bought an apartment there, as an investment. The place was currently being rented out to some celebrity.
The cab pulled up to the entrance, a velvet rope hooked between two fire escape railings and guarded by a tall man in a black greatcoat. The Dante Inn was a smaller venue, less flashy than Block 122, but even more exclusive. Jack got out and disappeared inside.
Mimi leaned back happily. "Okay, let's go." She watched as a white limousine drove up in front of them. God, people were so tacky. And Jack was calling her nouveau riche?
She tried to see if she could recognize the rowdy people from the limo—that one had to be a famous actor, because he was wearing a trilby hat like a moron—when she saw something else: someone emerged from the shadows and slipped inside the main doors to the building. A figure in a silver raincoat, with dark hair.
No.
It couldn't be.
It couldn't be Schuyler Van Alen. Could it? Of course it was.
Mimi felt her heart clench. It was too much of coincidence. Jack was in the club that was located in the basement of the same building Schuyler had just entered.
It couldn't be. Her mind raced; had she missed something? But he had been so indifferent, so cold to Schuyler. He couldn't still be infatuated, could he?
He doth protest too much.
Mimi was never a big fan of Shakespeare, not even during his lifetime, but she remembered the important lines. This was definitely the winter of her discontent.
She knew, without having it confirmed, that no matter what kind of front Jack put up to the world, what kind of lies he told her, there was a secret place in his heart that she could not read or fathom. A secret place that was devoted to someone else. A secret place inhabited by Schuyler Van Alen.
Strangely enough, Mimi did not feel betrayed, or stricken, or devastated. She merely felt a heavy sadness. She had tried so hard to help him. She had tried to keep him loyal to her.
How could he act with no fear of reprisal? He knew the laws as well as she. He knew what was at stake. He knew what he could lose.
Oh, Jack. Don't let me have to hurt you. Don't let us be estranged in this way. Don't make me have to hunt you down.
"I thought you'd forgotten."
Schuyler smiled as she removed her raincoat and hung it on the hook. She had just entered the apartment with her key. A key she kept on a silk ribbon around her neck. She never took it off, for fear that it would be stolen. She'd entered the building in the normal fashion. Had a polite word with the guard. Headed up in the elevator, exchanging pleasantries with the neighbors. Cooed at their baby bundled inside a fleece-lined thousand-dollar stroller. Pretended she was just like them. No more vampire tricks for one evening.
"Have you been waiting long?" she asked.
"I just got here."
He was standing against a column, his arms crossed in front of him. He was still wearing the same white shirt from that morning, a little crumpled at the end of the day, and he had loosened his tie, letting it fall to the side. But he was still golden and gorgeous. His sea green eyes danced with amusement and desire. Jack Force. The boy she had been waiting to see all evening. The boy she had been waiting for all her life.
She wanted to run to him—to skip, giggling into his arms—but she savored the way he was looking at her. She could drown in the intensity of his gaze. And she had learned a little about seduction in the last few weeks they had been together.
Had learned that it was sweeter when she made him wait.
So she took her time, removed her shoes, brushed her bare feet on the carpet, and let him watch her.
Outside of this place, they could be nothing to each other. He would not even allow himself to look at her. He could not afford it. So she wanted him to enjoy himself, to look at her as much as he liked.
"Get over here," he growled.
And then, at last, she ran—leaped into his arms, and together they crashed against the wall in a tight embrace. He lifted her with graceful ease, covering her body with kisses.
She tightened her legs around his torso and bent over, brushing his cheek with the tendrils of her hair.
Jack.
She felt liquid in his arms. Pressed against him, his heart beating wildly in time with hers. When they kissed, she closed her eyes and saw a million colors bursting in the air, glorious and alive. He smelled earthy and lush, warm and brutish. It had been a surprise: she'd assumed he would smell like ice—like nothing—and she liked that he smelled coarse and real. He was not a dream.
She knew that what they were doing was wrong. Lawrence had warned her that vampire bonds should not be broken. Jack was sworn to another. She had promised herself to stop, but she had also promised Jack she would always be there for him. They were so happy together. They belonged to each other. Yet they never spoke about the past or the future. Only this existed, this little bubble they'd made, this little secret. And who knew how long they had?
When she was in his arms, she felt sorry for Mimi.
It had started right after she'd settled into that palace of gilt and marble the Forces called home. The place was part fortress and part Versailles. There were rooms and anterooms filled with magnificent antiques polished and theatrically lit on display. Oceans of expensive fabric swathed the windows, and a silent crew of servants moved around the house, dusting, cleaning, offering its occupants tea or coffee on silver service trays.