My Wicked Valentine (Club Wicked 1) (14 page)

“So I won’t see you for three days?” She couldn’t keep the
disappointed tone out of her voice and hoped he didn’t notice.

“No. I’ve decided to take some time off after tomorrow.
That’s why I’ll have to spend so much time tying up loose ends.”

“Can you do that?”

He smiled and winked. “I’m the boss. I can do whatever I
want.”

“Point well made. Good night, Isaac.”

“Good night, beautiful Lucia.”

It turned out that Lucia didn’t see Isaac the next day or
the day after or the day after that. An unexpected complication happened while
he was getting his work caught up in order to take three weeks’ vacation. So
instead of being able to leap on him the next day, she’d daydreamed about him
incessantly. It also didn’t help her efforts to get over her crush when he
called her every evening on the pretense of talking about the party. While they
did discuss the details, they ended up talking more about themselves than
anything else. Last night she’d stayed up until past midnight talking about her
time in college and what it was like for him to have grown up in such a
different world from the one she’d been raised in.

She thought about him while researching what the best
whiskey during Prohibition would have been as well as absinthe and champagne
fountains. This party needed to be authentic yet fun, so she read books and Web
sites about Prohibition until her eyes burned. This morning she’d interviewed
skilled carpenters to make a couple of custom pieces she had in mind. One of
the carpenters had blue eyes that reminded her of Isaac’s.

Her head already ached, and it was only ten a.m. That meant
she had at least another eight hours of work ahead of her. While she understood
Isaac had his empire to run, she sure as shit didn’t envision doing this alone.
Her staff was working overtime and then some to get everything ready. She’d
told her employees as little as possible about the party, just that it was for
a private club, and let them know if any of them blabbed about it, they’d be
without a job.

Then she’d given all of them a thousand-dollar cash bonus.

Isaac had suggested that in his nightly phone calls. It made
sense; that money would help soothe any irate spouses and reward her employees
for remaining loyal to her when things were tight. She and Isaac didn’t talk
for long, but she still hung up the phone with a huge smile. In a way she felt
like she was back in high school with her first major crush. God, what had
Isaac been like in high school? He’d for sure have been one of the in crowd,
something she’d never been.

The beeping on her phone let her know someone was at the
side door the employees used. She checked her security cameras and recognized
her assistant, Rita. While Rita was very sweet and could make the most unbelievably
lifelike sugar flowers, she had a tendency to be a bit absentminded about the
real world going on around her. Things like keys and purses were items she
could never seem to remember, but if Lucia asked her to make an intricate
sugar-flower bouquet, all she had to do was tell her the instructions once.

“Can I help you?”

Rita squinted up at the camera and gave her the finger. “It
is like ten degrees out here, and my ass is about to fall off from frostbite.
Let me in, you evil bitch.” Her voice came out in a melodic accent that turned
her words into an exotic purr.

Laughing, Lucia pressed the button to let Rita into the
warehouse now converted into the staging ground for the parties she planned.
Her office, formerly the production manager’s office, sat almost a story up
from the rest of the warehouse, allowing her a great view of what everyone was
doing. Being able to look down on her employees working below gave her the
ability to keep an eye on everything at once. Rita called it her sniper tower.

The old but sturdy elevator groaned to life, and she made a
few notes on the file open on her computer. She’d had to make some executive
decisions about things like flowers so she could get them delivered in time.
She wanted Isaac to be proud of her and didn’t think asking him about every
little thing would go far to building his confidence in her.

The squeak of the elevator doors opening made her glance up
with a smile. Rita strolled in, and a hint of her delicate perfume flavored the
air. She was a beautiful Puerto Rican woman who looked like a goddess but swore
like a sailor. However, she was so stunning with her green eyes and light
chocolate skin, not to mention tiny waist and long legs, that most men found
her foul mouth cute and endearing.

“Thanks for making me stand out there, you heartless
asshole.”

“Morning, Rita. Did you get my e-mail about the wisteria?”

Rita hung her coat on the rack next to the door and slipped
out of her heels and into a pair of house slippers. “Yes. The wisteria will be
no problem as long as I can secure a few blossoms from one of our florists. I
have the general shape, but I can’t get into the
soul
of a flower by looking at pictures.”

Lucia nodded along like she agreed, used to Rita’s artistic
temperament. “Did you find anyone to help you out?”

“Oh, yes. A very delicious young artist from the local
university. Enormously talented in sculpting.” She sighed. “Such long, skilled
fingers.”

With a snort Lucia checked her e-mail. “I can’t even call
you a cougar, because you’re only a few years older than him.”

“Yes, but women mature faster than men, so I’m the emotional
equivalent of a ninety-year-old man.”

Lucia’s breath caught in her throat, and she clutched her
suddenly cramping stomach. There on her computer screen were pictures of her
dressed in the next-to-nothing outfit and walking down the stairs of Laurel’s
store. From the angle of the photo, the cameraman must have been outside the
store and zooming in through the big glass windows. Next were a series of
images of her being carried into and out of the back entrance of the club. She
scrolled down, and bile flooded her throat in a sour rush.

Someone had done a fantastic job of manipulating her face
onto a woman in the middle of a circle jerk. It really looked like her, down to
the smallest detail. There were a dozen pornographic photos, each more graphic
than the next, and they all looked like her.

At the bottom of the pictures was a simple message.

Quit your job as the
event planner for the Valentine’s Day party, or these images would be mailed to
your family, your friends, and everyone that lives by you.

She let out a watery giggle that sounded creepy even to her.
“But half my neighbors are too old to own computers.”

“Lucia?” Rita crossed the room with a concerned expression.
“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m freaking out here, Rita.”

“What is it?”

Lucia rolled her chair back and allowed a gaping Rita to
scroll through the pictures and note. Rita let out an angry hiss. “Those
motherfucking bastards.”

“What am I going to do? Should I call the police? I don’t
want to expose Wicked to the local authorities. I bet that would lose me the
job quicker than anything else. Shit, my mom can’t see these pictures. She’d
die! I mean, fuck, I look at them and think it looks like me! Who did this? Why
would they do this? I’ve never hurt anybody!”

Rita pushed away from the desk. “You call that partner of
yours and tell him to fix this shit. Now.”

She took a deep breath and tried to control the panic
gnawing at her. “Yes, Isaac needs to know.”

It took her a few tries to get through her contact list
because her hands were trembling so hard. She’d never had to deal with
something like this and didn’t even know where to start. Blackmail happened to
people in the movies, not in real life.

It rang three times before Isaac picked up. “Morning, Lucia.
To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice?”

The words stuck in her throat, and she made this weird noise
somewhere between a cough and a sob. “Isaac, someone is blackmailing me!”

There was silence on his end before he swore with such
profanity that Rita would have been proud. “What do they have on you, and what
do they want?”

She took a hitching breath, hating how whenever she cried,
she cried hard. No pretty tears here; she got all puffy faced and blotchy.
“They have these pictures of me doing some really nasty sexual things. But it
isn’t me. I mean, it looks exactly like my face, but it isn’t me. And they have
pictures of me at Laurel’s place and then of you carrying me into and out of
Wicked.”

“Fuck. I will take care of this, I promise.” His voice
burned with conviction and anger. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this, and I
will do everything in my power to protect you and find the people responsible.”

Relief filled her, and she took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“I need you to take a closer look at the picture, Lucia.
Don’t see it as a photo of you, but of someone else, if that helps. Can you
identify where the club is if you didn’t know? Did they take exterior photos of
the club or just the back door? I need to know where they might have been
hiding to take these photos.”

“Give me a sec and let me look.”

Rita handed her a tissue, and she stuck the phone under her
armpit as she blew her nose. The last thing she wanted her ill-fated crush to
hear was her honking like a wounded goose fighting a cobra. “Sorry, back.
Looking at it I can’t really see anything outside of us in the spotlight going
in and coming out. Everything else is black. They were probably in the woods
behind the parking lot.”

“Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “Now, what are they
threatening to do with these pictures?”

New tears rolled down her cheeks, and Rita handed her
another wad of tissues. “They said they will send them to my family, friends, and
neighbors if I don’t quit planning the party at Wicked.”

He growled menacingly. The sound made her feel better. There
was something reassuring in a primal way about a powerful man being angry on
her behalf. It made her feel like she wasn’t alone in fighting this. “Hang on
one moment, Lucia.”

The muffled sounds of men’s voices came through the line,
and she wiped her face with the never-ending supply of tissues from Rita. He
still sounded angry when he came back on the line. “I’m arranging for a
helicopter to bring me back ahead of schedule. Don’t do anything until I get
there, so we can take care of this together. I promise you that I will make
this right.”

Even though her heart lightened at his words, she hated
disrupting what was probably an important business meeting. “Isaac, you don’t
have to go to all the trouble of renting a helicopter.”

“Actually, I own it. And this isn’t any trouble, believe me.
If I stayed, all I would be thinking about is you, and I would just get in my
lawyers’ way.”

“Thanks,” she whispered and tried to rally her feminist side
to protest she didn’t need help, but fuck it, she did, and he was the only one
who could rescue her like a dark knight in shining armor.

“I’ll be there in less than two hours.”

“Okay. Thank you, Isaac.”

“Two hours, Kitten. Just hold on.”

She hung up and blew her nose again before tossing the wad
into the basket beneath her desk. Rita held out a mini candy bar from their
leftover Halloween stash. She took it with a grateful sigh and let the sugary
bliss help her regain her composure.

“Madre de Dios. Lucia, what kind of people are you getting
yourself involved with?” Rita pulled over her chair from her desk on the
opposite side of the room and sat next to Lucia. “What kind of people am I
working with for that matter? Are there going to be pictures of me having sex
with a goat or something in my e-mail?”

That mental image helped break the sorrow and fear
surrounding her. She rubbed her face and gave Rita wry smile. “I don’t know if
even that would make your mom bat an eye.”

“True.” Rita crossed her legs and sighed. “I know you can’t
tell me much about the club, not unless you want to be taken to jail for breach
of contract, but at least tell me it’s not a mob place or anything like that.
We aren’t planning a party for drug dealers, are we?”

She shook her head and allowed the conversation to distract
her from looking at her computer screen. “No, nothing like that. These are all
upstanding citizens, the movers and shakers. If you met any of them on the
street, you’d whisper and point because you just saw Mr. and Mrs. Famous. The
inside of the club is stunning and luxurious, not at all the black-painted
basement scene that you see in most movies.”

“Hmm, maybe you could get me into this club.” She glanced at
the screen and raised an eyebrow. “Though I’m not a big fan of a bunch of guys
raining spooge on me.”

“Ew, what is wrong with you?” Laughing, Lucia minimized the
e-mail and felt much better when she didn’t have to look at it.

“I’m just saying that all of my dates lately have been
booorrinng.”

Eager to be distracted from her own troubles, she gave her
friend a watery smile. “What about artist boy?”

“He is a space cadet, all big dick and no brains. Wonderful
to fuck, but I want more. I want that shiver that you get in the pit of your
belly when you lock eyes with the right man. I want that chemistry that makes
your pussy wet just to think about them. You know what I mean.”

“Oh yeah.”

Isaac made her feel like that. She sighed and looked down,
regretting her choice of worn jeans and a fuzzy black sweater. She had planned
to go visit a local farm to sample their cheese. Now she had to spend the rest
of the day trying to figure out how to show those pictures to her family. There
was no way in hell she was going to give in to their demands. If popular crime
shows she watched had taught her anything, it was that with blackmailers, once
is never enough. They will always try to get more.