Ari glanced at the address on her cell phone screen then up at the numbers on the arched doorway. “Two doors down on the corner,” she said.
Valerie followed at a close distance until they reached another possible location for Ari’s upcoming show. They’d been hunting all morning, pausing only for a quick lunch, then continuing their search. Everything they’d seen was out of her price range or too small to hold more than a few canvases.
One likely possibility required her to sign a two-year lease. Ari refused to commit to anything that long-term when her whole life was in flux. Plus, she still held out hope that she’d somehow be able to gain hold of her former gallery again. Her lawyer, Sean, had cautioned her against that dream, but didn’t deny the possibility.
“Here it is,” she said, knocking on the black metal and glass door of a modern-looking storefront in a newly gentrified neighborhood in D.C. “The manager, Carlos Banning, should be meeting us here. After the Literacy Gala, one of my father’s friends offered the space for a reasonable discount.” They waited a minute until the door was opened by a flamboyant-looking man dressed to kill in a light gray suit and sky blue tie.
“Ms. Rose,” he said, and stepped back a fraction of an inch to let her pass into the storefront. “Ms. Arianna Rose?”
Ari froze in the act of pushing past him and turned to look at him. They were nearly eye to eye and she was no giant. “Yes, Mr. Banning, I’m Arianna Rose. Tell me right now if you have a problem with that, and I’ll leave.”
He grinned and widened the entrance, stepping back a foot. “No, of course not. This neighborhood is full of notorious characters; you’ll fit right in. Please, call me Carlos.” He grasped her by the elbow and leaned in. “And if you want to bring any of your strong-bodied, low-IQ boyfriends along, I’ll lower the rent.”
Valerie let out a peal of laughter and poked Ari in the back. “See, Ari, not everyone who read Sorenson’s interview believed it.”
“Oh, please. I could see right through that load of baloney. No one with your sense of style would choose to be called Anna over Arianna, or…” He turned to Val. “What did you call her? Ari? Perfect.”
Arianna spun around the nearly all-glass room. “A lot of people did believe the lies in the article. I’ve been getting hate emails and phone calls.”
“Ignore them,” Carlos advised.
“Or,” Val said, “arrange your own interview with a reputable journalist. Set the record straight.”
Carlos clapped his hands together. “I love it. Brilliant.”
Val smiled. “Told you. Listen to your friend who works in PR.”
Ari walked to the window and looked out. “My lawyer would have a heart attack.” She watched an eclectic mix of people walk past the store—nannies pushing strollers, teenagers shouting to each other despite their close proximity, and a family of tourists holding a guidebook—while she pondered Val’s idea.
There was some merit to the thought. Valerie had quite a reputation in the industry as the go-to public relations guru when a CEO got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It was how she’d met Jason. He’d been caught in a compromising situation, and the county had hired her to rehab his and the other firefighters’ images.
She turned back to face Carlos and Val. “Okay, let’s do it, but I need your help to make sure I don’t make a fool of myself on camera.”
“Camera?” said Carlos.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Sorenson went to second-rate bloggers. If I’m going to do this, I’m doing it right. I still have the card from that producer at NBC who called when Dad was first investigated. I’ll give her a call; see if she’s still interested.”
“Go big or go home,” Carlos said.
“You said it.” She laughed, feeling more lighthearted than she had in days. She took a step toward the door to the street, then turned back to the owner. “Carlos, this is a gorgeous property, but it’s not right for my purpose. Too many windows; I’d have nowhere to hang all the canvases. Thank you, though. It was lovely meeting you.” Feeling flush with energy and excitement, she pulled Val along and headed back to her parked car.
“I’m going to marry her, Sullivan.”
“What?” His boss rose to full height and leaned forward, planting both beefy hands on his immaculate wooden desk.
“You heard me. I’m going to ask Arianna Rose to marry me. It’s crazy, it makes no sense, and yet nothing seems more right.”
Sullivan sat back down with a huff and propped his polished-to-a-mirror shoes up. “Does your father know?”
He shook his head. “You’re the first person I’m telling.”
“Me?” He raised a brow. “Why tell me first? We’re not friends.”
Lance inwardly chuckled at Sully’s no-nonsense bluntness. “I’m telling you first because I want you to call off the hounds. Tell the FBI to stop following her.” He kept talking at his boss’s shaking head. “Hear me out. Arianna is innocent.”
“Of course she is.” Sully snorted. “I’ve seen the news and surveillance video. If a pretty piece of ass like that was in my bed, I’d believe anything.”
Lance clenched his fists and reminded himself hitting his boss was not only a fireable offense, but possibly illegal too, given that Sullivan reported to the president of the United States. “I’ll say it again. Arianna is innocent. Stop following her.”
“Sorry, Lance. That’s up to the feds, not me. I simply offered to lend a hand in this case.”
Lance sat in the chair facing Sullivan. “She doesn’t know shit about her father and hasn’t spoken to him in eight months.” He mentally glued his ass to the chair. He wasn’t leaving until Sully picked up the phone and made the call to the FBI surveillance team and called them off.
“Why should we believe you? You’re clearly biased and under the influence of her magic hoohah. All records show that Ms. Rose lived with her father alone from the tender age of seven until she left for college. Phone records from two years ago show almost daily calls between the two. She is the best lead to finding Stanley Rose.”
Lance’s heart clenched at the head games Stanley Rose had played on his daughter. Poor Ari. No wonder she was averse to risking her heart to him. Her father had shit all over it without looking back. “Stanley Rose screwed her over, Sullivan. She had no fucking clue he was stealing the money. Her own trust fund is gone, thanks to him.”
“Then all the more reason she should want to find her father.”
“Trust me, she wants to find him more than anyone else, and if she knew where he was, she’d tell the FBI,” he said.
“Would she?” Sullivan’s brow rose.
“Hell yes, she would.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he was infused with a sense of conviction and belief in Arianna. “Of course she would.”
He waited for a response, but his boss had turned to check something on his computer monitor. “So you’ll do it? Call off the FBI?”
Sullivan turned back to him with a frown. “Sorry, no can do. Everyone’s out for blood in this case. The president’s own brother-in-law lost money to Rose. But look on the bright side. You’ll be back at work next week and you’ll have the mental comfort of knowing your woman is being looked after by professionals. Won’t that give you some peace of mind? Didn’t you tell me someone’s been gunning for her? Playing pranks?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but we found him. Poor teenage kid turned himself in.”
Sully chuckled. “A teenager? No shit? The kid evaded D.C. police and you for nearly two weeks. Tell him to send me his résumé in a few years.”
With a view of Sully’s back, Lance realized he was fighting a losing battle. He stood to go. His boss was never going to make the call. “Fine, keep the feds on Arianna, but you’ll get nothing more from me. I’m there for Ari, period. I’m staying out of anything to do with Stanley Rose.”
He turned to leave and missed his boss shaking his head and muttering expletives about delusional, lovesick bastards.
Ari threw armfuls of shirts into the open suitcase without folding them. She had to get out of Lance’s apartment before he got home, but the large body filling the doorway told her it was too late.
“What the hell is this? What are you doing?” Lance had returned from his meeting with Sullivan.
Ari looked up from the suitcase on the bed rapidly filling up with her clothes. Darn it. She’d thought she had more than an hour, but Lance had arrived at the apartment earlier than expected. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m packing,” she said in what she hoped was an indifferent tone, although inside, her heart filled with unshed fat, salty tears.
How had her day gone this terribly wrong? She’d left Carlos’s building full of energy and optimism. Now she felt surrounded by dark storm clouds and it was all thanks to the handsome man in the room. He might look like an angel, but she knew the truth now. He was a rat bastard. A two-faced jerk.
“I can see you’re packing. What I want to know is why.” His censorious and autocratic tone lashed at her. “Didn’t your gallery hunt go well? Where’s Valerie?” Lance peered around the room as though looking for her best friend.
“I’m leaving. Going to a hotel, like I should have done in the first place.” She focused her attention on the semi-packed suitcase, willfully ignoring Lance’s bewildered gaze. His hand caught her wrist, freezing it in place. She tried to shake free, but he inserted his body between her and the bed, leaving her no choice but to look at him.
“Talk to me.”
“Why? So you can report what I say back to your boss?”
The sudden tautness in his face told her what she’d already known: that he was a sneak and liar. She was such a fool. How had she fallen for his pretty lies about love and trust?
“How did you find out?”
“That you’re a fraud and a bastard?”
He released her hand and sat down heavily on the bed. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh? Did you, or did you not, spy on me for the FBI?”
“Not.” He crossed his arms over his chest and amended it to “Not really.”
She stared at him and narrowed her eyes. The bastard was still lying to her. Her arms crossed over her breasts and she waited for him to defend himself with more lies.
“My boss offered to shorten my leave time if I aided the FBI.”
“Well, that makes it all right, then.” She used her sarcasm as a protective cloak against more of his self-serving tales. “And what about—no, never mind.” She couldn’t ask about his declarations of love. To hear those had been lies would cut too deeply. She stepped over his outstretched legs to slam more clothes into her suitcase.
“Ari, please stop packing and listen to me.”
Desperation laced through his voice, rekindling the onslaught of pain once again. Every word out of his mouth stung like lemon juice poured over a paper cut.
“I didn’t report anything. I told them I’d only report back if there was actual contact with your father, anything to give a clue to his whereabouts.”
She froze her packing and turned to glare at him. “And you think that makes it better? It doesn’t change the fact that you were willing to spy on me, to…” She took a deep breath. “…To sleep with me to advance your career. No matter how you slice it, it makes you a whore.”
They both fell silent.
“Is that what you think of me?” Lance finally asked in a hoarse voice.
“For all intents and purposes, right now, yes.”
He rose unsteadily to his feet and stumbled to the door of the room, pausing only to place something gently on the tall dresser. Her gaze followed him through the doorway, but then he turned back. “It all changed for me once I got to know you. It was real as hell for me. Still is and always will be. I never lied about loving you.”
She stared after his retreating back, feeling the hot tears dripping off her chin onto the front of her t-shirt, then looked over to the object left on the dresser. A small box, tiny and black; the perfect size for an—ohmigod. She tiptoed over to it and ran a finger over the velvet, feeling the grain of the material on the pad of her finger. With a deep breath, she flipped open the lid and widened her eyes at a tiny emerald-cut diamond set in platinum that caught the light even in the box.
It was perfect, the type of ring she’d select for herself, not that she was selecting rings anytime soon. She’d had no idea Lance’s brain had moved this far along the relationship ladder. She’d barely copped to loving him. What did this ring prove? Sure, maybe he loved her, but he’d proven not to be trustworthy. Like her father.
She snapped the lid shut on the ring box, trying not to relive her earlier conversation with her FBI tag team. Why, oh why, had she thought to be friendly and bring them coffee? It only opened the door for conversation, a conversation that resulted in them revealing that Lance was a spy for them. She was such an idiot, especially when the agents had smirked at her and stated in surprised voices that they thought she knew Lance was double-teaming for the Secret Service and FBI.
No, she hadn’t known, but she should have. What a fool she was. Of course he’d reported back to his superiors on her movements. Why else would he have checked in on her daily, and insisted she move in with him? And she’d allowed it. Idiot. Berating herself further was a waste of time. She had a suitcase to pack and an apartment to find. Maybe Valerie and Jason would come back for the rest of her things so she’d never have to face Lance again.
Ten minutes later, she zipped up the suitcase and attempted to heft it off the bed, but Lance moved silently into the room to face her. He eyed the suitcase as if it were a bomb about to detonate. “Help me?” She gestured to the suitcase. She could only get out two words over the massive lump in her throat.
His brows raised. “You want me to help you run away? Nice, Ari.” The look on his face reminded her of one of the violent summer storms that came crashing through D.C. on hot afternoons.
The lump in her throat magically changed to angry fighting words that flowed out of her. “Well, what did you think? That’d you’d flash a diamond and I’d forget that you’ve been lying to me for weeks? How can I ever trust you again?” She yanked at the suitcase and managed to tug it off the bed onto the floor, smashing her shins in the process.
“Ari, do you know why I went to my boss today?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “To tell him I was done spying. I told him I wouldn’t do it anymore, and I told them you don’t know where your dad is.” Since she couldn’t hold her gaze on his eyes longer than a second, she kept her attention on his hands, which were curled into fists with white knuckles.
“That’s nice, Lance, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve been sleeping together, and all the while, you’ve been under orders to report details back to the feds. It’s so sordid.” She couldn’t look at him anymore. “I knew it would end like this. I knew I couldn’t trust any man.”
“You can trust me, Ari. I swear.” His hands changed from fists to open palms, pleading, pointed in her direction.
She shook her head and dragged her suitcase a step to the door. “No. I can’t do this right now. Let me go, Lance.” Her skin felt as if it would shatter if he tried to touch her, and her knees threatened to buckle under her.
He’d moved to block the doorway, and she attempted to push past him, but he stood like a wall. “Don’t go, Arianna.”
She tried to push past him again, but the suitcase acted like an anchor. “Lance, don’t do this. I’m leaving.”
Their eyes met, and finally he stepped aside, grabbing the suitcase to carry it downstairs to her car. It was hard to tell through her own tears, but it looked as if his eyes were glossy with tears also. She walked a few steps behind, biting her lip against saying anything more. In her current state of mind, she couldn’t guarantee that she’d reject his apologies, and she needed to.
“This is good-bye, I guess.” She slipped around Lance and entered the car without once looking him in the eye again, scared of what she’d see. He stood by the hood of the car staring down at her as she sat holding back sobs while huddled in the driver’s seat. His shadow fell on the car like a menacing dark cloud, which obviously mimicked his mood. Her own body felt weak and insubstantial, as if she couldn’t harness the energy to lift her hands onto the steering wheel and control the car.
With great effort, she lifted heavy, shaking hands to turn the key, then drove one block before she pulled over to the side of the road. The dividing white and yellow lines on the street blurred from behind a curtain of tears, making driving hazardous.
She’d let Lance into her heart, knowing how vulnerable she was post-Dad scandal. If she had a psychiatry degree, she’d tell herself that her vulnerability made it easy for Lance to worm his way past her defenses. After all, he was a worm. A few more sobs escaped, then she took a deep breath and merged back into traffic on the road to who knew where.