If the Shoe Fits (22 page)

“Or not. Whatever you want. Probably not a good idea.” And he meant it. He would probably want to devour her all over again if they were alone in the spring forest. Best to avoid the occasion of sin.

She laughed a little. “It’s not like that. You don’t need to be so abject about everything. Let’s just try to be regular… whatever…” She trailed off again, then added, “I’m glad you called.”

He breathed. He looked down at the river and thought it looked muddy and uninviting. Living might be tolerable after all. The sun was shining. Sarah James was on the line. He might not be beyond redemption.

“Me too. It’s really good to hear your voice.” That might have been a bit much… that “really” was a tad emphatic. He tried to recover. “Do you want me to come solo this weekend? It’s no big deal for me to change plans.”
Please
say
yes
, he thought desperately.

“Well…” She hesitated, then said, “No need to be rude to your… friend… you might as well stick to your plan. I’ll see you Friday, okay?”

He was actually smiling. “Okay.”

“Thanks for calling… Devon.”

“Bye, Sarah.”

The line cleared and he breathed again. He tapped Max’s number into his phone and hit TALK.

“Hey, Dev, what’s up?” his brother answered without preamble.

“Just wanted to let you know you were right as usual. I spoke to Sarah a few minutes ago and everything is totally copacetic.”

“Thanks for that, Dev. It will be a beautiful weekend. Let’s do a little shooting on Saturday. We can head over to Carlton Towers and get a few birds. No reason for you and Sarah to be on top of each other if there’s any awkwardness. Gotta run.”

Devon laughed at the abrupt end to the conversation, then settled into willfully misconstruing the idea of he and Sarah on top of each other. He finished crossing the bridge with more optimism than he’d felt in ages and returned to his office at a brisk clip.

Narinda gave him a quick smile while she finished her phone conversation, then hung up and swiveled her chair to face him.

“So what time are we leaving on Friday, anyway?”

“Yeah, about that—”

“Listen, Dev, it’s bad enough you are asking me to pose as your girlfriend—I don’t know why I ever agreed—but I told you I am not going to share a room with you. It’s just too ridiculous.”

Devon laughed at her crystal clear understanding. She was so perfectly honest. “Kind of the opposite. I finally called Sarah James and cleared the air a bit. So you don’t need to pretend at all. It should be a fun weekend regardless. I still want you to come, but your duplicity in the fake girlfriend department probably won’t be part of the plan.”

“Even better. Maybe there will be some other friend or foe I can lure into my clutches.” She steepled her fingers and clicked her perfectly manicured nails together in a theatrical display of greed. “Your brother’s already taken, I gather. Who else? Cousin? Long lost villainous heir?”

“I cannot believe you would abandon me so easily. You are such a traitor,” Devon joked as he returned his attention to the project he had been working on before lunch.

Narinda gave up talking, since she knew Devon’s mental energy would be elsewhere for hours to come. She watched as the incomprehensible code started scrolling up his screen.
Devon’s matrix
, she thought, and swiveled back to deal with her own assignments.

In reality, Devon was working on a pet project that had nothing whatsoever to do with the architectural firm of Russell + Partners.

While he had been pacing around Sarah’s apartment that unfortunate night in Chicago, all of her board reports and financial statements had been sitting on the kitchen counter, for all the world to see, more or less. He certainly didn’t think it was an invasion of privacy—a little
snoopy
maybe—since it was all going to be available information for shareholders within a few days, and theoretically, he could be considering an investment, so he had taken his time going over the documents.

After his disastrous show of insane jealousy, he’d forgotten about the discrepancies he had suspected after reading over the projected sales figures several times. A few weeks later, unable to sleep and finding himself with a nasty urge to get inside Sarah’s world without actually contacting her, he
did
breach the firewall of her company’s website.

He could tell that Sarah was a terrific businesswoman—adept at building her brand, visually creative, financially savvy—but she was clearly an ingenue when it came to corporate security. A clever teenager could have burrowed in as far as he had in about an hour of trying some of the different security and code-cracking tricks he had picked up over the years.

Not that she was guarding state secrets or the recipes for making dirty bombs in her basement, it was just shoes after all (not that he would ever say it quite like that to
her
), but he started spending some time each evening tracking the activity on the supposedly password-protected areas of her company’s site. Servers in Chicago and New York were frequently accessing varying levels of secure information on a constant basis throughout the workday, which was to be expected.

Then, after about a month, he started noticing the occasional late-night log in. Because he was painfully aware of Sarah’s whereabouts—not really stalking exactly, but he always seemed to know if she was in England, for example—he knew there was no way she was the one accessing the site at three in the morning from a server in Chicago. At that point, he had to be honest with himself: tracking IP addresses was one thing; going deeper into her company files was something else entirely.

The
Internet
Protocol
addresses
were
practically
public
information
, he argued with himself,
like
sitting
across
the
street
(maybe in an unmarked car, but still) and watching who went in and out of someone’s house. Delving any further into the actual corporate documents was tantamount to sneaking around someone’s bedroom and checking the contents of their dresser drawers while they were asleep in their bed.
He resisted, with difficulty, the idea of investigating the inconsistencies beyond this (already morally questionable) level.

Even so, he kept a thorough log file of all the activity on the site and stored it for future reference. Something about those three-in-the-morning site visits never seemed right.

He finished a final round of converting the data he had tracked over the past months—he’d tried regression analysis, dot plots, cryptanalysis—in a vain attempt to draw some conclusions from the seemingly meaningless compilation of data. He knew there was a pattern in there somewhere. He just needed to find it. But it looked like it was not going to present itself tonight. He logged off and shut down his computer.

Devon looked up and stretched his neck, feeling like he had returned from lunch about half an hour before. Apparently, five hours had passed. Narinda was gone for the day; the office was sparsely populated with other architects and designers who chose to work unpredictable hours or were working on deadline.

He stretched his neck in the opposite direction and double-checked the time. It was past seven o’clock. The long days of spring had begun. The sun’s rays still stretched across the river from the west.

He wanted to call Sarah again.

He stuffed that thought as far down as he could and decided to meet up with a couple of friends at a pub over by the Tate Modern instead. It felt like the beginning of summer and people would be congregating in huge packs, taking in great gulps of air, and drinking large quantities of beer. Devon loved this time of year in London: the masses emerged from their respective warrens and looked to the spring sun like near-blind moles, pasty and grateful.

When Friday afternoon finally rolled around, it was only through sheer force of will that Devon had not called her again. He was preoccupied to the point of distraction.

Narinda was the perfect traveling companion: prompt, efficient, and amusing.

“Not that I am even partially adept at maneuvering a V12 Aston Martin engine, but it might be safer if I drove,” she said. “I see your body is here in the car, but your mind is clearly elsewhere.”

Devon turned his attention from the crowded motorway to catch her look, then tried (again) to concentrate on the road. “I’m sorry, Narinda. I’ll try to stay on task.” He downshifted the powerful engine and gave up trying to squeeze between the lorry and the bridge abutment. “It might not be easy.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about her? I have no vested interest either way—I mean, you are a perfect piece, don’t get me wrong, but the two of us were never going to work. So let’s treat the next hour as a free shrink session. The doctor is in.”

Devon looked at Narinda’s sexy brown, almost black, eyes, slightly shaded with some smoky eye makeup, her satin skin glowing in the early evening, her long black hair hanging like a silky curtain across her shoulder, and had to momentarily remember why it was they were never going to work. She was quite something.

“Very funny,” Devon said. “I don’t really want to talk… well, I guess I do. But it feels like a violation of Sarah’s privacy somehow. You’ll meet her soon enough. She’s kind of innocent and naughty all at once. She’s got this thing, where she asks these really blunt questions with no artifice, and…”

For
someone
who
supposedly
doesn’t want to talk
, Narinda thought with a smile,
Devon
certainly
has
plenty
to
say
about
Miss
Sarah
James.
He spent the next two hours talking about
not
wanting
to talk about her.

The traffic had been vicious, and the trip, which should have taken an hour and a half, took nearly three. When Devon finally pulled the thundering car into the forecourt of Dunlear Castle, it was almost half past seven, and dinner was at eight.

“Do you mind if we go in through the back?” Devon asked. “It’ll be quicker.”

Narinda was trying to keep her jaw from dropping open at the sheer scale of the building. She worked in an architectural firm after all. She had stood on I-beams forty stories over Kowloon Harbor and in private palaces in Dubai; she had overseen the construction of bridges that spanned valleys in the Andes. The part of this that was so awe inspiring was that it was Devon’s home… not just a grand, historical pile, but the place where her friend had spent most of his youth. It was incongruous and exciting.

“Narinda?”

“Yeah, sorry, Dev. It’s a bit large. I don’t care which entrance we go in. I’ll do some sketches tomorrow for the hell of it.” She craned her neck to look down a seemingly endless allée of trees toward the setting sun, then turned her attention back to Devon. “Would that be all right?”

“Of course, that would be great. Actually, maybe you could do something that I could give to Bronte and Max as a gift. I already bought the obligatory sterling porringer and rattle, so something that captures the actual day would be really nice.”

“Perfect. I’ll work on it tomorrow.”

They had pulled into a smaller side court, near a long block of former stables that had been converted into an eight-car garage. The Aston Martin DBS engine seemed to growl defiantly one last time before Devon turned it off.

A middle-aged man in a khaki shirt and work pants came out of a mudroom and smiled broadly at Devon. “Hello, Devon!”

“Hello, Jeremy!” Devon was up and out of the car in seconds, gripping the man’s hand with warmth and affection. “This is my friend Narinda Channar.” Narinda had made her way around the front of the car. “Narinda this is Jeremy Paulson. He does everything around here.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Channar.”

“Mr. Paulson.” She shook his hand and gave him a smile.

Devon cut in. “All right, Jeremy. Enough of the niceties. The ride took an age and I’m sure Bronte is in a lather about making dinner festive and all that. Will you please show Narinda up to whichever room Bronte has chosen for her?” He handed Narinda’s bag to Jeremy. “I’ll grab my own things.”

Turning to Narinda, Devon gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then, in a lower voice, said, “Thanks again for the moral support.”

She smiled and rubbed his upper back in an encouraging way. “It’s all going to turn out well, Dev, I’m sure. You’re too good a catch for her to throw you back into the water.” She winked and followed Jeremy into the surprisingly plebeian mudroom of the magnificent castle.

Devon looked up toward the second floor apartments, wondering which room Sarah had been given. He suspected Bronte would have wanted her close to the ducal suite, and when he let his glance travel toward the front of the building, he froze when he saw her looking down at him.

He smiled involuntarily and gave her a little mock salute, figuring she would let the curtain fall back and turn away from the window. Instead, she stood staring at him with one hand on the glass, her palm flat against the pane, and the other hand holding the golden velvet fabric back from the window. He felt like an idiot, just standing there, his leather satchel in one hand, staring up at her, but he didn’t care. She looked gorgeous.

Her head turned abruptly as if someone had called her name, then the curtain was pulled back wider to reveal a tall, despicably handsome Eliot Cranbrook. Sarah and Eliot turned away from the window and the curtain fell back into place. Devon felt like he’d been punched squarely in the gut.

He let his hand drop slowly back to his side and tried not to let a scowl of frustration show on his face, then he turned back toward the side entrance of the castle. Devon was nearly at the side door when he heard a female voice calling his name. He stepped a few paces back onto the driveway and looked up. Bronte was leaning halfout the window two to the left of where Sarah had been, and laughing. “Hurry up!” Bronte called. “I want you buffed and polished, chop-chop! Meet us in the drawing room ASAP!”