“You wanted to intimidate me?”
She twisted her lips to the side and brushed her hair over her shoulders even though it was already back, fussing with it for a second before she straightened. “Oh, sugar, no. Bless your heart.” I was struck by how blue her eyes were as she met my gaze dead-on. The sun streaming in from outside just reached us, and her irises glittered brighter than the sky outside. “This is not intimidation.” She glanced around with a sly smile. “Though I wouldn’t try anything in here if you value your life.” Nearby a short redheaded woman wiping off tables snorted, then moved along to a table farther away to clean it. There were already customers waiting for the seats because the place was packed. “Were you injured on the way here?” she asked more softly, maybe aware of our potential to be overheard.
“No,” I replied. “Not that you’d care. And you can’t convince me you would with thisMother Superioract you have going on right now. I know who you are.”
Her blonde eyebrows flew high, and she glanced down into the depths of her cup, leaning over it as if she was peeking to the bottom of a deep well. After a few seconds she sat back and studied me again. “Believe it or not, I was attempting to meet you without… the posturing of my position at the Courtesan. I am friends with Camden’s mother, and whether he knows it or not, I think fairly highly of him. He’s always been very accepting of me. Never nasty and pointing his nose in the air. Unlike some people.” She lifted a finger from her cup in my direction, and I flushed, tugging at my collar.
“You want me to feel bad for the way I acted at Ross’ party, but the fact that you forced me here proves you’re the same as I always thought you were. If you were trying to teach me a lesson before, by sending Cam after me that night, all you did is convince me I was right.”
“Excuse me?” she said in a deadly whisper.
My body vibrated with anxiety, but this was it. She might be a dangerous woman, but I had to get this out before I exploded. “Yousayyou like Cam and his family, but you did hurt him. Me too. Us.” I waved my hands around, at a loss, then let them rest in my lap.
She sighed. “Do go on.”
For a moment I hesitated, but she didn’t sound upset, simply curious. “Cam thought I agreed to what he wanted. On the night of the auction, he thought I was a willing participant. We both know how that shook out beforehand, so we don’t need to try to lie to each other.”
She elegantly lifted a shoulder. “As I already told him, obviously you enjoyed yourselves or I wouldn’t have met you again.” She tilted her head as if she was genuinely confused.
“Have you seen Cam? He could have really hurt me.”
She sighed. “No bullshitting around, sugar?” There was something different in her voice—still refined, but I felt like she’d stripped away another layer of the playacting she normally engaged in. She blinked at me and dipped her head forward. “This life is hard.” She tapped one of her red painted nails on the table. “I wanted you scared. Men like you… whoo, boy. You do get ideas about life, don’t you? And who’s going to change your mind?” She leaned back and lifted her chin. “And maybe I did want you hurt. Not permanent, but a little bit.” She raised her fingers and only had them a smidge apart. Then she widened that gap. “I do like Camden and his momma, but he was a tool.”
“You think that’s okay?” I couldn’t stop myself from scowling.
She shook her head and sat back hard in her chair. “It don’t much matter if it’s okay or not. Men like you, safe and stuffy in city hall, they keep the people at theCourtesanscared. Whether the attitude of disdain is real, like I think yours is, or put on for the public, like Ross’ was when push came to shove, it all makes my people unsafe. No laws protect us the way they should. The cops don’t care about us. We keep ourselves safe. I keep my Courtesans safe.” She stopped and lifted her cup, sipping. My spine was so stiff my back hurt. She settled her dainty cup onto the saucer again. “What happened that night was justice. You got a small taste of what life is like for us. For the men and women you were so intent on despising. But”—she met my gaze and smiled, this time with a touch of apology—“I’m not nearly as happy with the outcome as I’d imagined I would be.”
My mind spun. “Is that why you wanted Ross and Vane at the Courtesan all the time, then? To have something to hold over them?”
She smiled at me and reached across the table. I forced myself to stay still as she rested her hand lightly on mine for a moment. “Honey, if a man ruins himself, it’s not my business. Vane knew better. He patronized my establishment as long as Ross did. He came out the other side just fine. You love Ross, I can tell.”
I sputtered. “I… he’s my friend. So yes, in that way I do. He was my life. I worked for him and helped make him a better politician. Maybe it wasn’t right, but I was proud of him because I made him the man he was.” My throat squeezed until I felt like I might choke on the air I dragged into my lungs.
She nodded. “Now you learned you can’t put lipstick on a pig. Sometimes people gotta go up in flames before they figure out where they’re supposed to be. I have it on good authority Ross is happy right now, even if you don’t like it. I can’t say I would have called him a content man before he got together with my Lane. Smug, sure. Not happy.”
We sat in silence, and a burst of laughter from a nearby table startled me badly. I wiped the back of my hand over my sweaty forehead and focused on her. She was cool as ever. “You cared about Ross? Because I did.”
“In my own way, yes. I still do. I see him off and on when I visit his boyfriend.”
My heart twisted. I hadn’t been trying to spend any time with Ross. I was still too hurt about everything. “It’s terrifying to me that you care about Cam. And it makes me feel a little… cheap that he paid for me. I hate that we’re alike in any way,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to be the man he bought.”
She smirked. “Oh, I think we’re more alike than you’re aware, but honey, Cam didn’t pay.” She pouted at her cup and pushed it away. “This espresso is such a delight. I might have to get a machine at the Courtesan.”
“What? I mean, about the money, not—” I waved a hand impatiently at her cup.
She grinned. “I knew that you, with all that piss and vinegar you carry around, would be good for Cam. You’re full of fight. I might have been angry as a copperhead, but I knew you’d come out of it okay. He bid, but it was just for show.” Her smile was serene and she looked very proud of herself, while I gaped and struggled to figure out a reply to that.
“Really? Did any money change hands that night?”
“Oh, certainly. And forty thousand dollars was donated to charity as well. Human trafficking is awful, and I donate to Mission Against Trafficking every time we have an auction. They help get people who’ve been rescued from that life set up in apartments and jobs.”
Her generosity disturbed me almost as much as everything else about her. It still didn’t mesh in my mind, but I was beginning to realize maybe I didn’t know as much about anything as I liked to imagine I did. “Fine. One more thing.” Real anger blazed in me, and I squared my shoulders. “I’m not their father, so I can’t make this law or anything, but I don’t like you around my girls. Addy and Eloise. They’re… they’re amazing little people. I want you to tell Cam’s mother you won’t come over when they’re at her house.”
She narrowed her eyes but then nodded carefully. “That’s fair, sugar, though it does make me sad to hear it. I enjoy them as well.”
“You’re not safe to be around. Don’t you agree?”
She nodded once more.
