Patrick was in the rooftop bar of his Denver hotel, enjoying a local beer and the view of the setting sun’s light gleaming off the capitol dome when the call came in. He grinned at the name on his phone screen.
“Syd, what kind of trouble are you in now?” He smiled as he said it, because the woman’s web of lawyers and shell companies was airtight. Nobody was ever going to know that this wealthy former socialite was D.C.’s most powerful procuress.
“Patrick. Pet. Your sense of humor never gets old.” Her dry tones told a different story, but he just chuckled. His joke had had its intended effect, ruffling the mostly un-ruffle-able woman.
“Well, then to what do I owe the honor of this call?”
“I have an assignment for you.”
He tipped the bottle against his lips and took a long sip before answering. “I’m retired. For good now. That’s a young man’s game.”
“Not in this case, darling. Someone of your years is exactly what the doctor ordered.”
A flame of interest flickered before he snuffed it out. “Not possible.”
“Oh, I can assure you that it is very possible. Have you heard of Anthony Stuart?”
“Please don’t tell me he’s the potential client. Even in retirement I have a firm no dickbag policy. Especially in retirement, actually.”
“That refreshing sense of humor again. So amusing. No, the client—” Patrick didn’t miss that Syd didn’t take him up on the potential part, “is his ex-wife.”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the lady.” It could be one of several women, if memory served.
“Possibly not. She’s a political image consultant. And a very good one. Also, her daughter is getting married in two weeks.”
Patrick reviewed the little he knew about Anthony Stuart. None of it was good. The man had cashed out of his tech company just before the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000’s to the tune of just under a billion dollars. The tech that came for so much cash was obsolete in five years, but Stuart had gone on to remain in the public eye for even less interesting reasons: his womanizing, his marriages, and his lavish lifestyle. Patrick had met him briefly at a party once and the man had been insufferable—a vain, preening void with the air of someone who had pulled the wings off flies for sport as a child.
Exactly the type of person Patrick loathed.
“How—hypothetically—would I come in on this scenario?”
He swore he could hear Syd smile. The woman should be a professional angler, every hook perfectly set. “He’s on wife number six, aged thirty. Wife number one, the mother of the bride—the mother of Stuart’s only child, if that matters—is fifty-two. The event is a weekend affair at a resort at Deep Creek Lake.” Distaste dripped from Syd’s tone. The woman thought the National Arboretum was wilderness. A three-plus hour drive into the western Maryland panhandle might as well be a trip to the moon as far as she was concerned.
“Ah. And she’s not looking forward to the reunion with her ex?”
“In a word, no.”
“The lady’s name?”
“Tove Nilsen.” Syd paused and Patrick braced himself. Speaking of the world’s best angler… “She’s the daughter of Katrin Nilsen, if that helps.”
Patrick’s eyes widened. He loved women. All kinds of women. Beauty was only one small factor in the greater equation for him. But the Norwegian model had still been doing print campaigns when he hit puberty and his libido had imprinted on her face as if it was a baby duck. What might her daughter look like?
He hoisted himself out of the club chair, already heading for the exit. “Fine. Send me the brief. I’ll take a look at it. But no promises.”
Syd’s rare laugh told him she didn’t buy the lie for a single moment.
Patrick let himself into his suite with a soft beep and a whirr from the lock. He might talk in veiled terms about business in a public place, but there was no way he was going to research a client—make that a possible client—in public.
One of the reasons why he’d been able to retire at forty-five was that he’d been very, very discreet. Which had made him valuable to very wealthy people. Which, in turn, had made him rich. He’d enjoyed the decade since, doing exactly what he wanted.
Toeing off his shoes and padding across the plush carpet to the desk, he sat and opened his laptop. Syd’s email was already there, a password-protected PDF attachment waiting for him with a string of numbers as the filename, nothing to give the contents away in case his email was hacked.
Patrick looked at the password entry form for a few seconds, passing his fingertips over his lips before entering the combination of characters his brain generated all too easily, given how long he’d been out of the game. Syd was too canny to assign a single password to her files. Instead, each client dossier’s password was a complicated cipher based on the file number, the client’s name, and a couple of other factors.
Syd was paranoid in all the best ways.
The file opened and Patrick found himself staring at a page labeled Tove Nilsen.
The headshot that graced the first page of Syd’s dossier showed a blonde with icy blue eyes and a challenging tilt to her square jaw. Patrick blinked, a slow smile taking over his face by degrees.
The slight lines bracketing the woman’s wide, wary smile only accentuated her sculptured cheekbones. The hard look in those faded denim eyes said she’d seen hardship and eaten it for breakfast. He scrolled through the rest of the dossier, his brows lifting at her many accomplishments and awards. A quick internet search showed him that she’d basically remade herself when her husband left her with a five-year-old daughter, a bachelor’s in communications, and no job experience, working her way up various ladders until she and another woman had started their own firm.
“Impressive,” he said to the screen. “Now for the ex.”
Googling Anthony Stuart made him want to take a shower. Make that several showers, at least one a full Silkwood with extra brushes. The man had parlayed a career in Wall Street investment banking into a dot-com CEO role, then a rapid initial public offering followed by a skyrocketing stock price and a blisteringly fast sale to an internet giant, and then…
Wives.
Seriously, the man was the Olympic gold medalist in picking up and discarding women. All of them high-profile, all of them significantly younger than he was. Even Tove was a few years his junior, though the gap only grew as he got older and his wives got younger.
How old was his daughter, anyway?
Patrick opened up a new tab and found the daughter with ease. Emily Stuart, twenty-five, cinematographer. Also a blonde like her mother. Blue-eyed like both her parents. Her prettiness was less angular than her mother and grandmother. A wide, open smile and softer cheeks, though she had her mother’s bone structure.
So, who was she marrying? Patrick clicked another link. A New York Times society profile. Okay, then. The family continued its life in the public eye. The photograph of the brides, faces together, blond hair mingling with black dreadlocks, pink and brown cheeks bunching in irrepressible smiles, was frankly adorable. So, who was the bride’s bride?
Hayley Cooper, TikTok flautist. Okay. A quick scan of the profile and Patrick had the general picture: the up-and-coming musician and influencer fell in love with her cinematographer. The flute player had started as a DIY YouTube sensation, then her reaction videos on various platforms, duetting with established stars, had been met with collaboration instead of copyright lawsuits. She’d upped her game with more elaborate videos, hiring Emily Stuart to shoot and produce. Love ensued.
And to think, that adorable child, her equally adorable fiancée, and her formidable mother had to deal with the cesspool that was Anthony Stuart on what would be simultaneously one of the happiest and most stressful days of their lives.
Patrick sighed. He was such a soft touch. He dug his phone from his pocket and tapped Syd’s contact info.
“Fine. You got me.”