“Well, here we are alone again—just like old times.” Merchant smiled.
Constance Hodges knew that smile so well. Flirtatious. Insincere. Manipulative. “Not exactly alone.” She gestured to the lunch crowd in the Four Seasons Pool Room.
“Would you rather be alone in my apartment?”
“No, thank you.” But that wasn’t entirely true, and he probably knew it, too, she thought. “Why did you ask to see me, Thomas?”
Merchant laughed. “Don’t play my therapist, Constance.”
“But it’s what I am.” She shrugged. “Even after all these years.”
He sipped the dry white wine in his sweating glass. She waited. He had never been able to outwait her.
“I hate the media,” he finally said.
“They’re not very nice to high-paid financiers or cheating husbands, are they?”
He sipped again. She craved a drink, but she wasn’t going to have one. She was the therapist right now, and she wouldn’t show her vulnerabilities, although Merchant would test her sorely. She would go back to Park Manor after this lunch and calm her nerves in private.
“You could help me, Constance.”
“Help you how?” She sipped her ice water.
“We could hold a press conference at Park Manor. You could tell them how I supported my wife.”
“I’d rather tell them all the things I can’t tell them about your past.”
“Why are you being so hostile, Constance?”
“You know the answer to that perfectly well. Your bank is financing the end of my career.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend with me, Thomas. BNA is behind Eldercare Elite’s bid, and when the deal goes through, my job goes away. You know that as well as I do.”
He laughed. “Come on. They’ll still need an executive director.”
“An Eldercare Elite director. Not me.”
“What are you saying?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”
“I want that deal to go away. Permanently.”
“And how am I supposed to make that happen?”
“I don’t care how you do it.”
“And that’s your price for saying a few nice things about me to the press?”
She let her silence be her answer.
“They’re going to crucify me,” he said. “And I did not kill Lucy. You must know that.”
She stared into his pleading eyes. As a patient, he had never wanted to acknowledge the truth about himself. He had flirted his way through their sessions without doing any transformative work. And now, twenty-one years later, he was still the same man who had walked into her office grudgingly. She had treated so many men like him. They went a little too far with a female employee, endangered their career, and did their “rehabilitation” time with her. But they never really changed. At best, they just got a little more careful. But Merchant hadn’t been careful. “What about Baiba Lielkaja?” she asked.
He leaned forward. “I didn’t kill Baiba,” he whispered.
“You know what? I almost believe you. You know why? Because you don’t like them dead. You just like them playing dead.”
He looked at her coldly. “That is not a therapeutic thing for you to say, Constance.”
“You said you didn’t need a therapist anymore.”
“Why are you provoking me?”
She wasn’t going to answer the question, but at least she was willing to admit the truth to herself. Despite his massive flaws of character, she had felt a powerful attraction to him all those years ago. She had imagined becoming the commanding wife who would keep him in check. But he had married Lucy Merchant. And after all these years and all his bad behavior, Constance still wished he had chosen her.
Eighteen months ago, when she’d sat beside him on her office couch and showed him the layouts of two available suites in Nostalgia for his wife, she’d still felt that attraction. As his dark eyes compared and contrasted the features of the two apartments available for his wife, she’d inhaled the scent of his subtle expensive cologne, and when he turned those eyes in her direction, she’d felt an exquisite little explosion of adrenaline in her chest. “Which rooms get the best light, Constance?” he had asked, and although the words were a question, his tone was a confident statement. I know you want me. His knee had brushed hers “accidentally,” and her excitement had turned into pulsing desire. She still wanted him, she thought now, but he had shown far more interest in Baiba than in her.
Hodges stared at his wine glass. She examined her fingernails and resisted the urge to bite them. “I just don’t like to see you act like a fool,” she said. “It doesn’t become you. Why do you do it? Why do you feel the need to dominate every woman in your life?”
“I don’t,” he said.
“You do,” she insisted. “And now you’re trying to dominate me with this Eldercare deal. But I’m not Lucy. I’m not your daughter. I’ll fight back, Thomas. I’m not going to let you destroy my career.”
He narrowed his eyes, and she could see the anger in his clenched jaw and tight mouth.
“How many times did you drug her, Thomas?” Hodges pushed him even harder. “Lucy, I mean.”
“Stop it, Constance.”
“You shouldn’t have asked me here if you didn’t want me to go all the way. We’re both grown-ups. I know you, and you know me. There are very few secrets here. So why don’t you tell me why you really called me.”
When he didn’t answer after a full minute of silence, she leaned across the table and said, “Then I’ll tell you why. You can control everyone else, but you can’t control yourself anymore. You went too far with Baiba. You knew it was foolish, and yet you couldn’t stop yourself.”
“I had nothing to do with her death.”
Hodges shook her head. “Maybe not, but you’re in trouble and you’re terrified. And inviting me to lunch is as close as you can come to asking for help.”
Merchant finished the rest of his wine, waved at the waiter, and asked for a bourbon. He didn’t speak for the four minutes it took the waiter to return with the glass. Then Hodges watched him drink it in two large gulps. “You really piss me off, Constance,” he finally said.
“That’s not my problem.”
“Talk to the press. Tell them I’ve been there for my wife.”
“Kill the Eldercare Elite deal,” she countered. “Do that, and I’ll tell them anything you want me to. You can write my script.”
Merchant signaled the waiter and pointed to his glass. “Fine,” he finally gave in. “Schedule a five o’clock press conference and consider it killed.”