Rock Chick 07 Regret (2 page)

Nanette quit talking and I looked behind me. Daisy was there.

I caught the pain in her eyes before she looked
at me
like I was slime.

Then she walked away.

I knew why. I’d been nice to her; I’d been hoping she’d be my friend. She thought I was talking behind her back which was worse than what Nanette and Monica were doing. Everyone knew Nanette and Monica were bitches, it was expected.

I called Daisy half a dozen times and went over to her house twice. She wouldn’t see me, or at least that was what her husband said when he turned me away from the door.

In the end, her husband Marcus had come to visit my father. My father had told me under no circumstances was I to try to communicate with Daisy Sloan again. He explained it was crucial, it was duty, it was business. Bottom line, Marcus was a powerful man, nearly as powerful as my father and my father couldn’t have Marcus as an enemy so I needed to back off.

Ever the dutiful daughter, I didn’t try to contact Daisy again.

I didn’t blame her for thinking what she thought of me though I would have liked to have the chance to explain. Even though I didn’t blame her, it hurt all the same.

I never spoke to Nanette or Monica again. Well, that was, I never spoke to them again after the “incident” a couple weeks later when I
outed
Nanette’s husband at a cocktail party at an art gallery, he took that opportunity to share he was gay, he divorced her and was now living in Miami with his boyfriend, Pedro, but how would I know all
that
would happen?

Nanette and Monica had been “friends” for years. I didn’t miss them.

Daisy had been a semi-friend for a couple of months. I missed her.

“Is Hector here?” Ally asked Shirleen and I just stopped myself from sucking in my lips. Instead, I stared at the plush carpet in the offices.

“Ally.” It was a male’s deep voice, I was guessing Luke Stark’s as it was coming from his direction. His voice held a warning.

“I’m just asking,” Ally said.

I gave the impression that this exchange bounced right off my armor too but my stomach clenched.

God, I hoped Hector wasn’t there. That would be awful.

I knew there was a chance I’d run into him as he worked for Nightingale now but I was hoping he was busy doing private eye stuff, gallivanting around town bringing down
perps
and taking photos of cheating husbands in the act and whatever else private eyes did.

Even though Hector worked for them, I chose Nightingale Investigations because they were the best. Better than the best. My father said Lee could move his operation to New York or Los Angeles and corner the market on investigations, security and bounty hunting, he was that good.

One of the things my father taught me was always but always get the best.

“He’s here all right,” Shirleen answered Ally’s question and even though I felt my heart beating faster, I allowed myself to lift my chin and look calmly and coolly at Shirleen.

She was pretty, middle-aged and hitting it well. She had beautiful mocha skin and the biggest afro I’d ever seen, but it suited her perfectly. She had magnificent eyes.

I knew she once was competition for my father in the drug scene but she’d pulled out and gone straight. I admired her for that. That must have taken a ton of courage and it said a lot about her.

Still, it didn’t stop me from staring her down. My cool blue eyes locked with her arctic tawny ones. We had a stare down and even though she was very scary, I won.

Then again, I always won. I was good at the stare down. I could hold a cool, calm, unaffected stare for hours. It was something else I had loads of practice with.

Once she looked away, I aimed my composed glance at Ally then at Indy. They had attitude (the good kind), I could see it
and
sense it. Regardless, they were also no match for me and both looked away before I did.

I knew I was not making friends and winning allegiances. That was the point.

These people would never want me to be their friend.

I looked down at my toe again and thought about Hector.

When I knew Hector, he’d been a man in my father’s army. My father liked him a great deal. My father told me Hector reminded him of… well,
him
. Smart. Sharp. Good instincts. Loyal. Skilled. Hungry, but in a good way, an ambitious way.

My father had a high opinion of himself.

Hector was one of very few men my father trusted and respected, totally.

It was a mistake.

What we didn’t know was that Hector was also an undercover DEA agent. In fact
the
undercover DEA agent that brought my father’s empire down.

What neither Hector nor my father knew was that I helped him.

The Feds took everything, my father’s house, his cars, his condo in Boca, his furniture. They froze his bank accounts. They even tried to get my trust fund but since it had been set up for me by my grandmother
before
my father was a Drug King, they couldn’t touch it.

I was glad they took all my father’s stuff, it was tacky and ostentatious. My father had been a nothing, a nobody and married a rich girl. He’d come up from nothing the hard way, the dirty way, the vile way and he’d proven himself to my mother’s family, to the world by becoming rich, powerful and very,
very
frightening. He’d driven my mother to leaving us that was how frightening he was. She left me behind. She left everything behind. Didn’t even take a suitcase.

She just disappeared.
Poof
. Gone.

And she never looked back. Not once.

I’d been eleven.

I didn’t dwell. I’d lost a lot by then, a lot of friends, a lot of servants I’d tried to make into friends (a mistake I learned early not to make again), my grandparents were all dead. Losing my mother was just another in a long string of loss. I was used to that too and it didn’t faze me. Or, I should say, it fazed me (truth be told, it destroyed me), I just never let it show.

Hector was something else.

I knew right away he wasn’t what he wanted us to think he was.

I’m not a super-sleuth or anything. It was just that, you spend enough time around bad people; you know them when you see them.

You also know the good ones too.

And there was something about him. Something about the way he held himself, the way he looked, the way he looked at me.

God, he was beautiful. Quite simply the most handsome man I’d ever clapped eyes on in my whole, entire life. This was saying something. My father surrounded himself with fit, athletic, good-looking men; his personal army was recruited specifically to reflect on him.

Hector had flatly refused the makeover my father usually demanded of the boys from the streets that he fashioned into gentlemen criminals. My father respected that too.

Hector was Mexican-American. He looked rough and was straight out tough. One look and you knew you did
not
mess with him. He had thick, black, wavy hair, black eyes, long legs, broad shoulders and a lean, amazing body. He knew who he was and what he wanted and he had a confidence that was unreal.

It was hard to describe but, put simply, he was magnetic.

He never gave a hint that he was who he was. Actually, I thought he was a cop not a DEA agent. Still, I did what I could.

It wasn’t much. I would just, say, leave my father’s keys lying around when I knew he was going to be out of the house for awhile but that Hector would be around. Then I’d notice the keys gone for an hour then back right where they were before. Then I’d get in my father’s secret safe (he gave me the combo) and I’d take out files or books and I’d set them in locked file cabinet drawers, drawers to which Hector had the keys. I’d lay them right on top (a time saver). I’d wait then go back and put them where they were supposed to be.

Once, when I overheard something I thought would be useful, I even left a note in what I thought of as “Our Drawer”. When I went back, it was gone and I knew my father didn’t take it, he was playing golf.

The note was kind of stupid not to mention playing with fire. My father could have found the note. He wouldn’t have suspected me (I typed it out on my computer). He knew I would never,
never
do anything like that to him. But he would have gone through his workforce and someone would have gotten the blame.

I never did that again, by the way.

In the meantime, I tried to show Hector the cold shoulder. I really did, honestly. For months I was what I knew all my father’s men and all the society boys and all my father’s colleagues called me, the “Ice Princess”.

No, it was not original but it was effective.

I was Pure Chill to Hector like I was to everyone else.

Then, one night, I melted.

I blamed lemon drops.

I’d gone out and had way too many lemon drops. They tasted like candy. I forgot they had so much vodka in them.

When I got home after a night with “the girls” (my semi-friends or, at least, the women my father wanted me to hang out with which was to say the women who enhanced his reputation – what could I say, everyone around my father had a job, that was one of mine), I’d been drunk.

I heard noise coming from my father’s study. It was late and the house was dark but this was not strange. My father worked odd hours. So I thought it was my father in the study.

I went to say goodnight like any good, dutiful daughter would do. Being a dutiful daughter was another one of my jobs and I did it both publically and privately. I didn’t have the courage to get on my father’s bad side not even behind closed doors. I knew what he was capable of, my mother didn’t leave for no good reason, trust me.

But it was Hector in my father’s study. Looking back, he was probably in there for reasons my father would frown on, frown on so much he’d have ordered Hector’s murder. No kidding, what did I say about my father’s bad side? I was being very serious.

I was too drunk to think twice about what I was doing. Not to mention I fancied that I was half in love with Hector (in the very, very back of my mind, the only place I let my true thoughts free).

Seeing as I was three sheets to the wind, the very, very back of mind was at the forefront for one shining moment. This allowed me to do something I rarely, rarely did.

I acted on impulse.

I threw myself at him.

And Hector caught me.

He didn’t even hesitate. I was all over him, he was all over me. We’d exchanged nothing but civilized pleasantries for months and that night, in my father’s study, we went at each other like animals in heat.

I think it went like this:

Me (with
tilty
head and stupid smile, all the while unsteadily walking toward him): “Hi.”

Hector (with cocked head and a small grin playing at his fantastic mouth as he watched me unsteadily walk toward him): “You okay?”

Me: “I will be when you kiss me.”

Oh God, just thinking about it makes me cringe but then again, it worked.

That was it. I had made it to him and was sliding my arms around his neck as I told him to kiss me. I pressed my body to his and he kissed me.

It was fantastic. It was so hot I couldn’t believe I didn’t melt on the spot. He was good with his hands, his tongue, his mouth, even his teeth.

Almost as good, he seemed to think I was good with those things too.

After awhile, he had me against the wall, my skirt up around my hips, his hand in my panties cupping my behind. His other arm was wrapped tight around my waist. Both were pulling me in deep, pressing me close to his hard hips. His mouth was at my neck, mine was at his, both my hands in his t-shirt, running up the hot skin of his back.

I didn’t think that it was tacky (my father would have thought it was tacky). I didn’t think anything. I
couldn’t
think anything. My entire mind was centered on Hector and what he was doing to me and how much I
liked
it.

Then Hector said, his voice a low, hoarse rumble against my neck, “I’ve been waitin’ months for you to get in the mood to go slumming.”