The Dark Glamour (8 page)

Chapter Twelve

“S
o
then
he acts like he doesn’t even remember me telling him about the opera—not just that it was that Friday, but
at all
. But if he really didn’t, then why did he think we weren’t going to that vapid Nathan girl’s insufferably dull soirée in the first place? But that’s just the way he thinks:
his
plans are important, and if he didn’t make them then he must not have any. No, no; if we’re not going to his precious Nathans’, then he must be free on Friday, so he can get smashed with those frat-boy friends of his and wake the whole house up on his way back in.
And
very nearly damage some antique sideboard thing that’s been in the family for about a gazillion years.”

“And
that’s
how he fractured his shin?” Jane asked hopefully. It wasn’t that Laura didn’t have valid complaints about her husband’s behavior. She just had a
lot
of them, and Jane was beginning to realize that she’d only ever heard the tip of the iceberg during her stint as Laura’s soon-to-be second-cousin-in-law. They had barely started the main course and Jane could already feel her eyes glazing over. She had come to dinner prepared to Be a Good Friend to Laura, but hadn’t realized that nodding and making sympathetic noises was virtually all that would be asked of her.

That and eating well,
Jane admitted to herself, twisting a couple of strands of squid-inked linguini around her fork. The restaurant Laura had chosen featured five-star cuisine, twenty-seven varieties of vodka, and the priciest commodity in Manhattan: elbow room. The high, vaulted ceiling emphasized the sheer extravagance of the space around them, which was dotted with tables with yellow tablecloths set just far enough apart to seem truly private. Although she was aware of the low buzz of conversation around them, there was really nothing nearby enough to compete with the long string of Blake-bashing coming from her dinner companion.

“So he says,” Laura snorted inelegantly, taking a sizable sip of her cabernet.

Jane, who had no idea what her new friend’s skepticism was even implying (was the shin not fractured? fractured in some other way?), fought the temptation to do the same. She had, after all, started unusually early with her Manhattans, and she needed to stay relatively sharp now. “Men.” She sighed ambiguously, rolling her eyes and hoping that the gesture would be enough to prove she had been listening. A woman in a low-necked blue dress about a hundred yards away looked faintly familiar, and Jane amused herself by trying to imagine her striking features framed by tabloid headlines.
Game-show hostess? Reality-show personality? Weather girl?

Laura’s Nars-glossed lower lip stuck out in a sudden moody pout. “I know,” she agreed dejectedly, “but I really just don’t know what else I could do.”

She really didn’t, Jane realized sadly. Even with Ella’s (fictional, but empowering) example, it would never in a million years occur to Laura to simply pick up and leave Blake Helding. Jane had always assumed that she stayed for the money, or the connections, or even out of fear of Belinda Helding. But now she was seeing a new side of Laura: one that thrived on the drama. She might find a happier relationship than her current one, but that happiness could never make up for losing her license to complain and curry sympathy from her friends. And since, as far as Jane could tell, Blake felt roughly the same way about his wife, they were pretty much stuck with each other.

As if responding to some cue only she could hear, Laura straightened up sharply, her whole face brightening at once. “So tell me about
your
love life,” she demanded.

A bow-tied waiter discreetly deposited a fresh roll on Jane’s bread plate with a pair of silver tongs. She tore it open, releasing a little cloud of steam and flour.
Well, I’m married to a co-fugitive I haven’t seen since our wedding because I found out he was a murderer, and I kind of had a crush on this guy whose sister was nearly killed because of me, so I’m avoiding him and now he seems to be dating my roommate anyway, and then there was this hottie at the bar this afternoon who definitely was flirting with me. No, no, and yes.
“I actually met someone interesting today,” she began awkwardly, but didn’t get any further before Laura pounced.

“Oh my
God
! Already? You don’t waste any time, do you? Tell me everything. What does he look like—wait, did you meet him on the Upper East? I might know him. I mean, I assume he’s, you know . . .
our level,
right? Oh, tell me you’re not rebounding with someone totally inappropriate; it’s so cliché, really. Although I have to admit that the fling I almost had with this
adorable
pool boy in St. Barth’s was so hot it
still
gets me through some long nights, so maybe there’s something to be said for inappropriate, as long as you don’t go doing anything silly like marrying him, or leaving a marriage, or bankrolling his ‘dancing’ career.” She sighed, her pale, watery eyes far away.

Finally, a story I want to hear!
Jane leaned forward a little in her chair, but this apparently only served to remind Laura that Ella hadn’t answered her barrage of questions yet. “So? What’s he like?”

“Different from my ex,” Jane answered carefully, sweeping some imaginary crumbs from the yellow tablecloth; that much was certainly true. “I met him at my hotel, actually. So it was in your—our—neighborhood, but he’s not from here.”

Laura clicked her tongue against her laser-whitened teeth. “Not local. Bad sign. Unless, of course, he’s from somewhere fabulous and you two could split your time between here and there. I’ve always wanted to try Dubai, haven’t you?”

“We just met today,” Jane pointed out sensibly, “so I think planning our second home together is a little premature. Besides, he’s from Romania. Love the accent, but aside from that, no thanks, you know?”

“Romania?” Laura was sitting up straight again, her glass frozen halfway to her lips. “About thirty, thick black hair, moves beautifully, wears a little too much leather for an American but it totally works on him?”

“He looked a little younger than that, I thought,” Jane offered lamely, but the rest of Laura’s description sounded suspiciously accurate. “He said his name was André.”

“That’s it!” Laura cheered, drawing surprised looks from some of the closer tables that she seemed completely oblivious to. “André Dalcascu. I met him last week, and then my mother-in-law basically
forced
me to take his sister shopping yesterday after brunch. Let me tell you: I
needed
that champagne we all had! That Katrin woman barely speaks in full sentences, and she
never
smiles. I mean, I’m all for feminism and all that, but it’s possible to go overboard with the ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ crap, don’t you think? But she goes stomping around like she’s in the middle of World War III. It wouldn’t surprise me if she carried a
gun
in that giant clunky purse of hers, although she’d probably prefer a machete. They don’t let you carry those in New York, do they? Prawn?”

Jane blinked rapidly, trying to sift through the tangential mess of words. She could rule out the offered prawn right away, which she did with a shake of her head and an “I’m full” pat of her stomach. Laura had definitely mentioned something during brunch the day before about a dreaded trip to Bendel’s, but Jane hadn’t been paying enough attention to remember the context.
How the hell am I supposed to know when she’s telling me something important?
For all she knew, it could eventually become a matter of life and death to know whether New York allowed one to carry a concealed machete—or maybe to know that Laura had never been to Dubai. But it was impossible to retain every detail of Laura’s stream-of-consciousness revelations, so Jane suspected that she would spend most of her time just trying to keep up. “You know André, then?”
I think she said that, somewhere in there.

“Oh,
he’s
a catch,” Laura confirmed, nodding sagely. “Maybe not for long term, because you wouldn’t want to be stuck with that battle-ax of a sister, but he seems to have inherited
all
the charm in the family. I spent pretty much their entire welcome party just watching that man work the room. Of course, Auntie Lynne spent it fuming that after we’d gone all-hands-on-deck—like, they called Ford McCarroll back from fucking Sri Lanka—the Dalcascus only sent two people.
Two!
But then she decided that it wasn’t so much an insult as a sign that they were less . . . they couldn’t afford to send more. And it works for us if they’re, um, cash-poor, I guess, so then she was all happy again. Which I was already, because instead of trying to control every little thing in the world I was just focusing on André’s ass in these fabulous leather pants he had on.”

I totally get that,
Jane thought fervently, but just then a memory clicked into place. “Welcome party? So he’s on the other side of that merger thing you mentioned yesterday, along with the woman you had to take shopping?”

She clutched her fork so hard that the handle bit into her palm, but Laura was too busy chatting to notice. “Yeah, that’s Lynne’s big thing. It’s really like she can’t cope without a giant project. There was Malcolm’s wedding for a couple of months, and then, well, you probably know all about
that
fiasco. And she’s still in the papers sounding all panicked about it, but not even two weeks had gone by before she was completely focused on this wild intercontinental merger business. She’s just dropping quotes to reporters now and then, but behind closed doors she’s totally over it. Honestly, can you even blame her son for taking off? I mean, I’m totally against drugs, but who
wouldn’t
have some problems, growing up like he did? Obviously Belinda screwed up Blake about thirty different ways, but his poor cousin probably got it even worse.”

Jane felt almost winded by the time Laura finished speaking.
Why isn’t Lynne worried about Malcolm—does she know something about where he is? Does Laura really believe the drug nonsense? Who the hell are these people, and how did I find myself needing to get even
more
mixed up with them?
“Malcolm, um, Doran?” she asked casually, although she felt fairly sure that the fork would leave a permanent welt on her palm. “I think I read about some drama he had last month. I assumed it would all be settled by now, though.”

“Not at
all,
” Laura countered, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Lynne’s bribing half of South America for information, but so far he’s still missing, and the wife, too. And after she threw that wedding! My parents could barely bother to sober up for mine, and God knows Belinda was
no
help. Meanwhile Lynne’s flying in caviar from the Caspian and orchids from Cuba, and she’d only known the girl for, like, a month. Blake and I dated for
years,
and . . .”

Jane bit her lip as Laura went further and further off the topic that Jane cared about the most.
South America?
Did Lynne think that he was there somewhere . . . or did she know it? Was Malcolm pinned down, or was he still staying well ahead of the pursuit? Jane had no idea, and she had no way of finding out unless Malcolm came through with his promised e-mail. She checked her phone compulsively, but so far that day all she had gotten was an update from Dee about her awesome first day of work at her totally perfect new job, three ads for cheap Canadian medications, nine requests from total strangers to add Ella Medeiros as a Facebook friend, and yet another discount offer from theknot.com, which apparently was the only entity in the world that hadn’t already heard about Jane’s disastrous wedding.

She longed to shake Laura until the woman’s brassy highlights rang and demand to know what the South America stuff was all about. But she had a plan, she reminded herself firmly, and she didn’t have enough time as Ella to screw it up. She had to get into Lynne’s house, and no matter how friendly she got with Laura, Laura was just one stepping stone toward the front door. André, however, could turn out to be even more useful, so it was only prudent to keep working on both angles . . . and leave Malcolm out of it altogether.

Jane set her fork back down on the yellow tablecloth, smoothing a stubborn crease in the heavy fabric. She heard the song of clinking crystal somewhere off to her left, and she inhaled deeply and looked up again. “I’ll admit, we only just met, but I’m in dire need of a really good rebound, and André could really hit the spot. Do you have any idea what he looks for in a woman? Does he have any hobbies? Is he close with his sister? Should I try to be nice to her, too?”

And, most important, does the next merger-related event call for a plus-one?

Chapter Thirteen

J
ane arrived back at the Lowell close to midnight, her head buzzing with a little too much alcohol and way too much of Laura’s gossip.
Some of it was useful,
she reminded herself as she narrowly avoided colliding with the white-jacketed doorman. His face remained impassive, but she noticed that he stood behind the glass door rather than beside it as she passed through.
Occupational hazard,
she guessed, placing one careful ribbon-tied wedge in front of the other on the slick marble floor.

She made her way slowly toward the elevators, but she really wasn’t in a mood to sleep yet. Late as it was, she had a lot to think about, and the prospect of doing so in her empty hotel room was not especially appealing. A movement in the lobby bar caught her eye and she turned. The bar area was darker than it had been during the afternoon, lit mainly by little tea-lights on each table. André was seated in an armchair like a delicious sliver of fate, nursing the last few drops of what looked like a snifter of cognac. He had chosen a chair at the edge of the shadowy zone, facing out, and Jane felt absolutely positive that he had been waiting there in the hopes of running into her again.

The certainty mingled with the whiskey in her stomach and warmed her all over, and she pivoted confidently to approach him. The difference in lighting between their two parts of the lobby made her feel as if she were on a stage, crossing it under a spotlight while he watched from the audience. His black eyes followed her every movement appreciatively, and by the time she reached the chair opposite his, she felt as though she might burst into flames. “You should be careful,” she told him, folding her long body into the blue-cushioned chair across from his. “I might think that you never leave here.”

Laura hadn’t known a ton of useful information about André, but it was more than Jane had known before. Unfortunately, all of it added up to “Trouble with a capital
T
,” but Jane reminded herself that she wasn’t looking for the love of her life while living undercover.

He smiled slowly before raising two imperious fingers in the general direction of the bartender. “I find the company more pleasant here than any place I have been in New York so far,” he told her with a courteous nod. The bartender deposited two fresh snifters of cognac on their table, then discreetly retreated back into the shadowy, wood-paneled bar.

Jane’s better judgment suggested that she should avoid the golden-red liquid in front of her. But André raised his glass in a toast and waited expectantly, and wasn’t she supposed to be getting closer to him? Besides, she didn’t really want to do any more thinking at the moment, and besides
that,
it had been months since she had had a proper glass of cognac, and the sweet, earthy smell wafting from the glass told her unambiguously that this was the good stuff. She raised her glass and tapped it briefly against André’s, sending a soft, chiming note through the empty bar, and sipped. It was sweet, smoky, and strong, like almost-burnt caramel, and she let it spread across her tongue and down her throat hungrily. It tasted just like home.

“It’s always inspiring to meet a man who enjoys his own company,” she observed tartly once the burning of the cognac had passed. She and Laura had both concluded that André was the type of man who enjoyed pursuit all out of proportion to his enjoyment of the woman being pursued. Flirting with him, she guessed, would mostly be about resisting the force of his attention long enough to intrigue him, and if there was one thing France had taught her, it was the vital importance of being intriguing. She had gotten a slow start in the art form under the watchful eye of overprotective, thoroughly American Gran, but Elodie and her other Parisian friends had been more than happy to provide remedial classes until Jane was nearly as expert as they were.

André smiled and leaned back in his chair, all signs pointing to intrigued.
Not that I have to guess what he’s thinking,
Jane realized abruptly.
I’m a freaking mind-reader, right?
It wasn’t a talent she had ever been very comfortable using, especially on people she knew and liked. But, however likable she found André at the moment, this was still business; it was only masquerading as pleasure.
And a convincing masquerade it is,
Jane admitted, sipping at her cognac and continuing to banter on autopilot.
But I really need to remember that I know better.

She inhaled steadily and began to pull at the threads of her power, but although she could feel its strange hum in her veins, it was hard to find; harder to hold on to.
It’s late,
she reminded herself, conveniently ignoring the other plausible culprit swirling in the cut-crystal snifter in her right hand. She reached again and missed; it was like trying to lift water in an open hand. Still, there was no harm in trying, so she focused the scattered sparks of magic on André’s mind, opened her own, and listened hard.

Nothing
.

She felt herself almost physically repelled by his brain, or, rather, by something just in front of it, keeping her away. She rallied her power and tried again, but there was just a smooth wall and no way in. Jane sat back in disappointment, and had to remind herself sternly to keep smiling; keep flirting; keep playing hard to get. Suddenly,
André
was the uncatchable quarry.

It’s late,
she repeated to herself,
and I’ve been drinking. But still, I should be able to see something in there, even if it’s just what’s in the front of his mind right this moment. Unless he’s a witch, which is genetically impossible, or . . . related to some.

Jane almost laughed aloud as the realization struck her.
“Magic calls to magic,”
Malcolm had told her. The overriding, unthinking chemical attraction between two people with magic in their genes made it hard to think about anything else. It felt like true love, like soul mates, like meeting someone made just for her. The feeling was so basic and primal, so instinctual, that it never seemed to occur to her it might be supernaturally enhanced. She had felt it with Malcolm, then with Harris, and Malcolm’s crazy brother, Charles, had obviously felt it with her.
Of
course,
someone she found as appealing as she found André couldn’t be anything but a son of a witch.
Is there anyone in this damned town who isn’t?

Still, she decided, her mind starting to drift pleasantly from the alcohol, there was no reason to run the other way. So the Dalcascus were magical. This was definitely an important piece of a bigger puzzle that she needed, at some point, to try to fit together. At some point when she was sober, preferably. But in the meantime, André himself was just a man, no matter what strangeness ran in his blood. He might be magical, but the rules were the rules: he couldn’t
do
magic.
I can just enjoy this moment now, and then worry about strategy and implications and all that crap afterward,
she decided thickly, remembering almost too late to chuckle throatily at a double entendre of André’s.

She stood, stretching to her full height and trying to ignore the gentle spinning of the room. “The company here
is
good,” she declared boldly, “but I’m getting tired of the view. Any suggestions?”

André stood as well, stepping gracefully around the table between them to offer her his arm. “The view from my suite is exceptional,” he murmured, his breath sending shivers down the back of her neck.

She let him steer her into the still-waiting elevator, where his arm unlinked from hers and slid around her waist. His hand traced the hem of her emerald silk halter top, finding and exploring the space where it met her skirt. His warm, rough fingers brushed the smooth skin of her waist and she closed her eyes. When the elevator stopped, she started forward, eyes still closed, André’s hand pressed against the small of her back.

His suite looked something like hers, but a bit smaller and with its parts rearranged into an unfamiliar pattern. His sitting room was to the left of the hall rather than the right. She saw the cloudy gray marble of the kitchen a bit farther along, and caught a glimpse of the down comforter on his king-size bed through the open door at the very end. It looked inviting, and she knew it was probably just as comfortable as hers. But she was enjoying herself, and she wanted to draw these moments out. Her shoes tapped gently a few times on the chocolate-colored floorboards before she stepped onto the thick, pale carpet of the sitting room. In the darkness, the low couches and the heavy walnut coffee table created obstacles that made her move even more slowly and carefully. The hairs standing up on the back of her neck told her that André was navigating the room just as slowly a few steps behind her. She drifted toward the tall windows that faced tree-lined Sixty-Third Street; the lights along Madison Avenue were just visible through a corner of the glass panes. André caught her wrist and spun her toward him, and she forgot all about the view outside. She was too busy taking in his thick eyelashes, the shadow of stubble under his olive skin, the half-amused arch of his eyebrows that was echoed in the turn of his lips that were moving steadily, inevitably, closer to hers.

He kissed her softly the first time, then again with more intensity, and then she felt the magic in her blood catch fire as he drove her back against the window with so much force that she briefly wondered if the glass would crack. His tongue parted her lips as his fingers found the hem of her top again. This time, when he found it, he pulled it up roughly, breaking their kiss just long enough to pull the scrap of green silk over her head and drop it somewhere behind him. Fortunately, the rest of their clothes could come off while allowing their mouths to stay locked, and for a long moment Jane found herself pressed between the cool glass behind her and André’s smoldering body in front of her, both touching every inch of her bare skin.
Not mine,
she reminded herself,
Ella’s. Who cares who’s scandalized?

But André apparently had a bit more of a sense of decorum left. He whirled her away from the window, twining his leg around hers so that she lost her balance and her weight was entirely in his arms. Then he set her down on the nearest taupe couch, and followed her body hungrily with his own. He entered her immediately, without hesitation or warning, but she found that her body was fully ready for him, and her back arched so hard that she thought she might leave the couch entirely. Then he was driving her back down into the thick fabric of the cushion, his mouth roaming across her neck and collarbone as he thrust. Her hands glided across his back, and then she felt a sudden spasm of heightened pleasure and her fingernails bit into his skin as her back tried to arch up again. He caught her wrists deftly, one at a time, and pinned them gently above her head.

In the darkened room, she could still see his even darker eyes and the hint of a smile on his lips. Acting on impulse, she drove one heel into the back of the couch and flipped him, their still-interlocked bodies free-falling to the ground. He grunted a little as his back struck the plush carpet, but the smile was still in place, and she pulled herself upright to straddle him, her body shining in the moonlight, her now-freed hands winding ecstatically in her own hair. He came with a final series of powerful thrusts, and the change of the rhythm triggered shockwaves in her own body, and she leaned down again, kissing him helplessly, until they passed.

After a long few minutes, she rolled to the side, separating from him. He stayed where he was, breathing deeply, but his hand snaked out and circled her wrist again, this time in a much firmer grip. “Don’t go far,” he murmured forcefully, and then released her.