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a
pampered pet. Now it seemed the leash had tightened.
    “Those charges are nothing but smoke and mirrors. I’ve
already sent out some inquiries,” he said. “This will all be fixed soon
enough.”
    I watched his gaze flicker away for just long enough to let
me know he was bluffing.
    * * * *
    I tracked Ella to the kitchen, which came as something of a
surprise unless she was there to steal the silverware. Only the appliances
gleamed gray, the flat-brushed metal nestled among swirled granite and
knotted-wood cabinetry. The room was beautiful, warm, and complex—Adrian’s
domain.
    Ella sipped from a steaming mug as Adrian set a plate of
biscotti down in front of her. He frowned when he saw me but without the usual
mixture of distrust and anger in his eyes.
    “Would you like some coffee?” he asked, and it sounded like What the fuck did Philip do?
    Seemed I wasn’t the only one adopting pets.
    “I’m good. Can you give us a minute?”
    Adrian left us, shooting daggers at me with his gaze that I
interpreted as a warning to play nice. Obviously he wasn’t as familiar with
Ella’s right hook as I was.
    Ella stared fiercely at her coffee, stirring it with a piece
of biscotti.
    I pulled up a chair to the hand-scraped oak table. “Wanna
tell me about it?”
    “About what?”
    “Any of it, sweetheart. What happened with Philip. Why you
were working for Henri. What your damn name is. You’re killing me here.”
    “I thought if I could… I didn’t want…” She dropped the soggy
biscotti into the mug with a weak splash. “Like you said, if I had just done
what I was supposed to do, you wouldn’t be in this mess. I didn’t want you to
have to…have sex with Philip because of me.”
    A too-full emotion welled in my chest. I looked away. “It’s
not so bad.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” she said drily. “Apparently even when I
want to seduce someone, I do it wrong.”
    “Well, you don’t have to do that. Neither of us does.” I
tried to infuse an optimism I didn’t quite feel into my voice. “We’re his
guests.”
    She looked doubtful.
    “Philip and I will take care of Henri,” I said with more
false assurance. “So you just stay put. Let me know if you need anything. I’m
sure we can order you some clothes so you’re not stuck wearing my hand-me-downs.
Right, Adrian?”
    “Right,” came the muffled answer from the hallway.
    “Um…” Ella’s gaze darted to the closed kitchen door.
    “Adrian’s a terrible gossip,” I explained.
    Muttering drifted through the thick, knotted oak.
    “We love him anyway,” I said. “Couldn’t live without him.”
    “Damn straight.” Adrian bustled back into the kitchen, armed
with a laptop. “As if I needed to eavesdrop. You can be sure, I have more
advanced surveillance methods if I were even interested in what you were
saying.”
    He flipped the laptop open on the table and pulled up the
Web site for Nordstrom. Ella’s wardrobe would probably be better than mine, as
retribution.
    I suppressed my smile. “You two have fun.”
    Philip was a bit of a Luddite. I used to call him a
sixty-year-old man trapped in a thirty-year-old body. He retaliated by fucking
me silly. But there were laptops and tablets sprinkled throughout the house if
you knew where to look. I found one in one of the cozier sitting rooms. In my
mind, I had dubbed it the library for its cushy chairs and dark paneling, even
though there weren’t any books.
    I pulled up my cell phone’s Web site to check my call logs.
    Shortly after we left the party, I had received the first
call from Henri. A series of calls from him after that, where I guessed he was
trying to figure out what had happened. And then nothing, which I supposed was
when he’d ordered the hit on the men in the hotel suite, and thus on me and
Ella by proxy. If those men had spilled their story, Henri’s elite escort
business would have suffered. Normally he would have compensated them with
girls, but considering Ella’s