“Well, we’ll have plenty more interviews to do so,” Delilah said, switching back to professional mode. Fuck, she wasn’t just good. She was one of the best.
No, the best.
And it sure didn’t hurt that she was one of the sexiest women I’d ever seen.
Now is it going to hurt if you get yourself burned with this?
“In that case,” I said, gradually regaining my footing. “You let me know when our next interview is. And come to my office when you do so. I think you’ll learn more in person.”
“I think both of us will,” Delilah said. “You have a great night, Adrian.”
She hung up before I could say anything more; the game ended on her terms, not mine. Well, not the game, but tonight’s session of the game. Still.
Wow.
Fucking Delilah Reyes.
It was one thing to withstand my pressure and my game. That only made me work harder and smarter, to both of our benefit, but it wasn’t the first time someone had been able to stave off my best first pass.
But to turn it on me? To make me feel like the one under pressure and heat?
How very interesting a twist.
How very interesting a spark.
How very interesting things were becoming.
CHAPTER 6
Delilah
Ihad to hang up before things got too out of hand.
Truthfully, asking Adrian what made him the King of Diamonds wasn’t a question I had planned or even a smart, nimble follow-up I’d had in my back pocket. It was a desperation question, something to turn the attention off me and relieve some of that explicit pressure and heat.
Because, damn, no source, no man, really, had ever put me in a spot where the tension was so great I couldn’t think straight.
Being a fit, healthy journalist brought with it plenty of male gaze. Some of it was the kind of unspoken looks that were easily brushed off and never amounted to anything; some thought they could be far more overt, but that just made them perverted; and some just outright tried to barter sex for information or interviews.
But no one, and I truly mean no one, had ever played this cat-and-mouse game as well as Adrian. The closest was an article on politics, where the attorney general had artfully deflected my questions and answered with what seemed like riddles. That man, however, was in his sixties, overweight, and about the furthest thing I would ever want from a dalliance of a man.
Adrian Vale, on the other hand…
I’d never been in this situation before. I suspected the professional thing was to offload the task to a second reporter, or at the very least do as many interviews around Adrian Vale before going to him one more time, just to do my due diligence. But every part of mewantedto go to his office, wanted that exciting game of speaking to him, wanted to see how strong my professional boundaries were.
There was a thrill in it, no doubt. There was danger in it, no doubt. High pressure, high heat, long, raw processes… of the metaphor of what Adrian had said was alive and well, and I knew going into it was riskier than any other assignment I’d ever taken on. At the very least, I’d never hear the end of it from Sarah, Talia, and Bridget.
At the end of the day, though, Iwasa professional, and some assignment invariably was going to be the hardest of my career. It looked like it was going to be this one.
Just for none of the reasons I ever would have expected.
Nothing happened for the next twenty-four hours. It was almost strangely disappointing to check my email or texts and see nothing new from Adrian. That was silly, and I told myself that the emotions and thrill I felt weren’t marching orders to follow. There had been many sources who were objectively handsome or charming that I had resisted; why should this one be any different?
Because you know as well as anyone that rational thoughts don’t always override irrational feelings. If anything, the latter usually wins.
But I was able to depend enough on years of practice of journalism to get done my other tasks. I worked on the drafts ofsome of my longer-form work; I made a few calls here and there for news of the day; and I posted to social media some important updates. Nothing that would go viral or break news reports, but just what my job entailed.
All seemed normal until just before five p.m., right before I was about to pack up for the evening and head home, when I got a phone call from a number I did not have saved. It was a 702 area code, so I knew it was from someone in Vegas, but these days, numbers not saved were as likely to be spam or bots as they were legitimate sources. Still, I never let a phone call go unanswered.
