Lauren Blakely - After This Night

“I take it Liam isn’t doing it for you?”

“See, that’s not fair. How can you be so observant about my feelings for Liam, but so clueless about how I felt for you?”

“Pretty amazing how I can have blinders on about certain things, isn’t it?”

“I do like him . . .” she said, then let her voice trail off.

“But?”

“But, it’s hard to like someone when you’ve been focused on someone else.”

“I can understand that,” he said, since Julia was his whole world.

“You’re madly in love with Julia, aren’t you?”

“Madly doesn’t even begin to cover it. But we really don’t have to talk about her,” he said softly.

“I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Talk to me.”

“I mean it, Michele. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. You need to tell me if it upsets you if I talk about her.”

“I survived six hours of poker with you having your hands all over her, and watching that dopey look of love in your eyes the whole time,” she said, both teasing and being truthful. “I can handle talking about her. And if I can’t, I’ll let you know.”

He patted the couch. “Sit next to me.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“What, are you going to throw yourself at me? I’m strong. I’ll fight you off.”

“Oh, gee. Thanks.”

“C’mon. We’re friends, and hell if I’m letting you go over this.”

She moved off the chair and sat next to him on the couch, tentative in the way she folded her legs up under her, keeping a bit of distance. He took her hand, clasped it in his. “I need plenty of fixing. Trust me on that.”

“Okay,” she said playfully. “You need Dr. Milo again?”

“I always need Dr. Milo, but I also need you to know I think you’re an amazing, beautiful person, and you are going to make some man the happiest man on the planet, and you probably won’t need to fix him either.”

She squeezed his hand, and it felt good, comforting. Like something he didn’t want to lose. “But now you need me to fix something, don’t you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You just said you’re tired of fixing people all day. I’ll be okay.”

“I said I don’t want to fix the man I’m going to be involved with. But I think we’ve established that we’re friends. And besides, I have a feeling—call me crazy—that you might really need my help. You screwed things up with Julia, didn’t you?”

He nodded, guilt written all over his face.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

He didn’t tell her everything. He’d promised Julia to keep her secrets about her debt. But he told Michele enough about what he’d done. “So what do I do? Just wait for her to decide if she’ll move to New York for me?”

Michele nodded. “I’m afraid in this situation, patience is going to be a virtue. But I also think you need to find a way to show her that you can fix things. That when a mistake has been made, you can do more than apologize. Show her through your actions, not just your words. Show her you can fix the things that matter to her.”

And with blinding clarity, he knew what to do.

Julia’s jaw dropped at the mention of all the zeroes. “That’s the size of the prize?”

Glen Mills nodded and said yes, again and again and again.

“I won a contest I didn’t even know I was in AND you want to just give me that much money? No strings attached?”

Glen chuckled, and even his laugh sounded proper. “Well, the string attached is we would very much like to offer you a contract to manufacture the drink in conjunction with Farrell Spirits,” he said, mentioning the name of one of the world’s largest premium drink makers that was home to many top-flight rums, vodkas, gins and whiskeys bottled around the world.

“Oh my God, like those cosmo and mojito mixes you see in grocery stores,” Kim said with a shriek.

Julia turned to Kim, and it was like looking in a mirror and seeing a grin as wide as the sea, eyes twinkling, surprise and shock etched across her face. She returned her gaze to the gray-haired gentleman, who’d become something of a Santa Claus. Dropping in unexpectedly, bringing only presents, and a ho, ho, ho. But Santa wasn’t real, and there had to be some loophole he’d spring on her. The devil lived in the details, and bathed himself in fine print. She rearranged her features, fixing a more serious look on her face. “There has to be some kind of catch? Do I have to give up my bar, or my firstborn, or an arm, maybe?”

Glen laughed, and shook his head. “No, Ms. Bell. We simply want to be in business with you. Farrell Spirits contracted my magazine to embark on a nationwide hunt for the best cocktail and the string attached is that the company would very much like to make it and turn it into a mass-market available product.”

Chills raced over her skin, goose bumps of sheer possibility. She didn’t know what to do or say. But this must be what it felt like to win the lottery: disbelief of the highest order. “So you want the recipe, of course?”

“We are going to need the recipe if we agree to the terms, but I assure you it will not be printed in the magazine. It would become a trade secret of course, and Cubic Z can remain the only bar where the drink can be made or ordered fresh.”

Julia grabbed Kim’s arm in excitement. “Do you have any idea what that would do for our business? It’d go through the roof,” she said, now shrieking. “And that’ll be so good for you and Craig and the baby.”

“I know,” Kim said, her face glowing.

“There is one small item though,” Glen said, interrupting, and Julia’s shoulders fell. This was the moment when the devil revealed himself. There was no such thing as a free lunch. Her life was not X-Factor with Cocktails. There would be a catch; there always was.

“Yes?” she asked through a strangled gulp.

“Even if you don’t accept the Farrell offer, I will still be writing about this drink in our magazine because it is divine,” he said. “And there are no strings attached to that recognition. I would simply be shirking my journalistic duties to do anything less.”

Julia’s smile returned. “Far be it from me to turn you into a shirker of duties,” she said, and extended a hand to shake.

Later that night, when she returned to her home, she couldn’t wipe the damn grin off her face if she’d tried. Because for the first time in a long time, she’d won something based on her skills. Sheer talent alone had made this happen. She wasn’t saving the world, and she certainly wasn’t curing cancer, but she could mix a damn fine drink, and build a damn fine bar, and no man could ever take that away from her.

Funny that she hadn’t even known she was a contender, but that made this victory all the sweeter. It was her victory, her prize, and her success. Based on something intrinsic to her that no one, no mobster, no douche of an ex-boyfriend, could ever twist or manipulate.

As she unlocked the door to her home, she was filled with a sense of pride over a job well done.

The only trouble was there was someone she desperately wanted to share this moment with.

She settled for her sister instead. McKenna had just returned from her honeymoon, so Julia called her to tell her the news.

* * *

Three days later, McCoy’s was bustling with the usual lunch crowd. This was Midtown Meeting Central, and everyone must have gotten the memo to wear a suit today because the restaurant was packed with sharp-dressed men and women, angling for deals, pitching their wares, hoping to get the person across the table to sign on the dotted line. Clay recognized that hard and hungry look in many of their eyes; he had it himself. Only this time he was hunting out information, and the best purveyor of intel in all of Manhattan was digging into his steak right now.

“Someday I’m gonna charge you, but for now, let me say this is delish, and I will happily take my payment in the form of a meal,” Cam said, as he stuffed a forkful into his mouth.

“Like I wasn’t going to pick up the tab. And you know I’d pay you in a heartbeat for your services,” Clay said as he worked through his pasta dish. “But are you ever planning on telling me what you found out?”

“No. I’m going to eat this steak and run,” Cam joked, with his mouth full. He chewed, and then took a long swallow of his dry martini. He subscribed to the notion that steak was meant to be enjoyed properly with spirits, the time of day be damned. It was one of the very many reasons Clay called this man a friend. He was steady, reliable, amusing as hell, and loved to share his special talent of finding anyone or anything with friends, asking only for the cost of a meal.

Picking up the tab was nothing if he could deliver what Clay needed.

Cam wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, then set down his fork and knife for a break from the food. “I’ll put you out of your misery. My guys found him. All those stories Liam was telling about real estate in the Bahamas? You were onto something.”

Clay’s eyes lit up, and a spark of anticipation ran through him. Could it be this simple? That he’d been found, coincidentally, in the very place where Liam had randomly been asked to buy a condo? “He’s in the Bahamas?”

Cam scoffed, and waved a big hand. “No. That’d be too easy. What world do you live in? The land of coincidence? He’s not in the Bahamas, but you were right to put all those clues together from what this fucker did. He’s taking pictures of homes.”

“Exactly what he was doing when he was in San Francisco,” Clay added, raising an eyebrow in question.

Clay had supplied Cam with the clues, tracking down every last one Julia had ever told him about her ex. He’d shot homes for realtors. His niche behind the camera was making rooms look much bigger, and Dillon had told Julia on their first date that someday he’d be sipping a drink in the Bahamas. Clay had added up those details, alongside Liam’s unexpected recon work, and Charlie’s brief comment at the cafe on Sunday, and went with a hunch that Dillon might be in the islands snapping shots for scams.

Cam tapped his nose with his index finger. “Bingo. Because here’s the thing about men like that who run scams. They tend to fall back on old habits. They do what works. Whether it’s taking pictures, or conning money. And he seems to have gotten in good with some of the scam artists on a certain island, trying to hustle money selling time-share condos that don’t really exist. His job is to take the pictures of the one good condo, make them look majestic, and the other guys peddle the properties that don’t really exist.”

“But where is he?” Clay asked, because that was all that mattered, and he damn near wanted to cross his fingers with hope, but he wasn’t a finger crosser. He was a man who knew the law, and knew that when you ran afoul of it there were certain islands where it was better or worse for you to be.

He hoped to hell that Dillon was in one of those countries that would be worse for Dillon.

“Can you say Montego Bay? Because if you can, I’ve got the address for where Dillon Whittaker is living now,” Cam said, and slapped a piece of paper on the table.

Clay grinned, a pure, wicked grin broke across his face as he picked up paper. “God bless Jamaica and its fine extradition laws with the United States of America. Looks like someone is going to need to pay the taxman.”

Taxes were a bitch.

* * *

“So what’s your verdict?”

“Uncross your legs,” Gayle said.

“I hardly think uncrossing my legs is the answer to all my romantic woes,” Julia said after telling her stylist most of the details of her situation.

Gayle winked at her in the mirror as Julia followed orders. “I don’t know, sweetie. Kinda sounds like uncrossing your legs has been working pretty well for you with this guy.”

Julia laughed. “Fine, you got me on that.”

“Champion race horse in the sack, right?”

She covered her mouth with her hand daintily, pretending to be shocked. “Did I say that?”

“No. But it sure as hell sounds like it, from the stories you’ve told me about his prowess.”

“Prowess doesn’t even begin to cover it. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I need to know what you think I should do next. A woman can’t make this kind of decision without consulting her stylist.”

“Don’t consult me,” Gayle said, brandishing her silver scissors playfully in the mirror.

“Consult the scissors?”

Gayle shook her head. “Ask the ink,” she said, and tapped her bare arm with the silver scissors, pointing to the cursive letters on her arm spelling out I want to be adored. Julia had always admired the tattoo, even more so because Gayle’s wish for love had come true. Julia leaned in close to the tattoo and whispered, as if offering a plaintive plea to an oracle. “Ink, what should I do?”