Poker Face Read online

  Chapter Fifteen

  CHRISTIAN STEPPED back into Senator Lacey’s office in Washington, DC, with a heavy heart. He’d gotten into town last night and had put off coming here until this morning. The disastrous trip to Miami seemed like a distant nightmare, but then he stood in the doorway and looked at Jack’s empty desk, and it all came back to him, far too real.

  Senator Lacey was in Switzerland, where Jill had taken him and set him up in a long-term care and rehabilitation facility. She was due back in the office sometime today.

  If Jack cooperated with his doctors and therapists and got lucky, he might be able to pee through his reconstructed penis in the next year or two. He would likely never have sex again.

  In public, Jill was devastated. In private… not so much.

  Jack was still technically a senator. But the reality was that he was in no position to do the job. Jill had quietly taken over doing all of the behind-the-scenes work of his office. The only thing she couldn’t do was vote in his place. There was already talk—a lot of it—that she should run for Jack’s seat herself next year.

  He had no idea if she would run for office. She was pissed off enough at her husband to do it to spite him.

  Christian had no energy for another campaign. This one had all but killed him. Well, losing Stone had technically been what did the damage. But that had been his fault. He’d been so hell-bent to keep Jack Lacey’s campaign on the rails that he’d blown it with Stone.

  Too much. This job had cost him too much. He had no love for the rat race anymore. He worked morning, noon, and night at it, though. Losing himself in the minutiae of government work was better than facing his cold, sterile apartment. Or facing sleeping in his big, empty bed.

  Every morning, he still reached out instinctively when he woke up, looking for Stone’s sturdy, welcoming warmth beside him. And every morning, he wasn’t there.

  An urge to go home, or maybe to head to the other end of the country and set up a quiet law practice, came over him yet again. And every time the urge to run came, it was a little stronger.

  He couldn’t live in this VIP and security-filled town without envisioning Stone every time he turned around. He caught himself hunting for Stone’s familiar silhouette, the dark hair and sexy jaw at least a dozen times a day.

  His therapist said to give it a few months. But it had been a few months, and it was getting worse, not better.

  No doubt about it. He needed to leave this town. He’d lost his passion for the job over at Justice when Stone took all his passion away with him.

  He couldn’t blame the man for continuing his regular life. But God, he’d hoped Stone would consider changing his life around so they could be together. Hell, if Stone called tomorrow and asked him to move to London and become a house husband, waiting for him to come home in between security gigs, he would do it in a heartbeat.

  But Stone had been dead silent since he’d walked out of that hospital waiting room and had never looked back.

  “Good morning, Christian,” Jill said behind him.

  He whirled. “I didn’t expect to see you at the office until later, ma’am. You should go home and rest. Get over the jet lag—”

  “I flew back here in a private jet and got a perfectly lovely night’s sleep.” She dropped casually, “I got a call from the Justice Department while I was in Geneva.”

  His gaze snapped to hers. Was he being investigated for the mess in Miami?

  She continued, “Apparently Stone Jackson forwarded your résumé to someone he knows there. They were impressed and called me to get a recommendation. I told them you were the most outstanding senior staffer in Washington, not to mention a man of sterling honor, whom they would be lucky to have on their prison reform task force.”

  He landed heavily in one of the chairs in front of Jack’s—her—desk. She moved around behind the desk and sat down at it, running her palms over the burnished cherrywood as if to familiarize herself with it.

  “I guess this is mine now,” she commented.

  He managed to make some inane gurgle that he hoped passed as a sound of agreement.

  “Here’s the thing, Christian. I would love to have you stay on, even if for a little while, to help bring me up to speed and get me settled in the job. I’m willing to shamelessly dangle a substantial raise in front of you and name you my chief of staff.”

  God, it was tempting.

  Funny, though, ever since Stone had walked out of that hospital and taken Christian’s heart with him, the appeal of clawing his way up the Washington ladder had dimmed.

  A month ago, he would have been exultant over landing the chief of staff position, let alone having the Justice Department sniffing around about hiring him. Now he was only vaguely pleased. Mostly he was disappointed that he had no one to share his success with. And by no one, he meant Stone.

  “Stay with me to the end of this term. One year. And then I’ll do everything in my power to help you get that dream job of yours.”

  It wasn’t a bad offer. Thing was, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to stay in DC. He’d been having wild fantasies about moving to London. Maybe he could hook up with Stone between his bodyguarding jobs—

  He broke off the thought. It was foolish to think about chasing after a man who’d walked out of his life without a backward glance. By the time Jack had gotten out of surgery and Christian returned to the hotel, Stone had packed up, checked out, and was long gone. A few calls had confirmed that Stone was already on a plane bound for London.

  “Can I think about it before I give you an answer?”

  “Of course. But I’m going to keep working on you to say yes.”

  He pulled out a tablet computer. “In the meantime, I took the liberty of building a rough itinerary for you.”

  “Whatever’s on the morning schedule is going to have to be canceled. I have a very important meeting.”

  “With whom?” he inquired.

  “It’s private,” she said cryptically.

  “When does it start?”

  A door opened and closed in the outer office. “Sounds like right now,” she said.

  He stood and opened the connecting door. The first person he spied was the Laceys’ personal lawyer from Texas. What was he doing here?

  And….

  Valerie?

  What on earth?

  He turned his attention to the second woman and stared in shock. “Chesty?” he croaked. She’d obviously had a significant breast reduction, but now sported a definite baby belly. “How did you get out of jail?”

  “Mrs. Lacey hired me an excellent lawyer and got the case moved to Texas. He argued that it was a crime of passion. Baby hormones made me distraught and I went temporarily insane. He got me two years’ probation and a thousand hours of community service instead of jail time”— she stroked her belly—"seeing as how I’m pregnant, and Mrs. Lacey herself begged the court for clemency in my case.”

  It sounded a little fishy to Christian, but stranger things had happened. And Jack was so well known as a womanizer in Texas, Christian suspected that had weighted heavily in Chesty’s favor with a jury. And he supposed Jill’s plea for leniency would have also carried a lot of weight. A quiet, but hefty campaign contribution to the sitting judge probably wouldn’t have hurt either.

  God, he’d gotten cynical. It was definitely time for him to leave this job.

  Someone moved at the edge of his peripheral vision, and he glanced to his right.

  Froze.

  Turned slowly.

  Stared.

  “Stone?” he breathed. The name stuck in his bone-dry throat.

  “Christian.” A heartbeat long pause. “You look like hell.”

  “It has been a little hectic around here,” he replied. Lame, lame, lame, he chastised himself.

  “Well?” Jill called out. “Bring everybody in.”

  Startled out of his stupor, Christian ushered the strange collection of people into Jack’s—Jill’s—office.

&
nbsp; “Thank you all for coming today,” she said, standing up and waving everyone to seats.

  For his part, Christian took a seat off to one side where he could see everyone’s faces. What in the ever-loving hell was going on?

  “Clarence?” Jill said. “Do you have the papers?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The lawyer passed her a thick sheaf of legal documents, and then passed similar sheaves to Valerie and Chesty.

  Jill glanced through them quickly without reading them. “Everything’s as the three of us agreed to?” she asked the attorney.

  “Yes. Jack’s estate has been liquidated and split equally between the three of you.”

  Christian’s jaw dropped.

  The three women started signing the documents and passing them around, and Christian managed to glimpse one of them on its way past him.

  We, the undersigned, in recognition of our joint service to John J. Lacey these many years, Jill Lacey as his wedded wife, Valerie Micklethwaite as his long-term mistress, and Chelsea “Chesty Hills” Jenkins as the mother of his child, do agree to share equally in all the worldly goods given over to Mrs. Lacey in accordance with Senator John J. Lacey’s power of attorney, executed this tenth day of….

  “What on earth?” he exclaimed.

  Stone leaned forward, pinning him with a stare. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Christian?”

  “Figured out what?”

  The Texas lawyer leaped up hastily, gathered up all the documents and all but ran from the office as if he didn’t want to hear the rest of this conversation. At all. What on earth? Christian turned his gaze from the door as it slammed shut behind the lawyer back to Stone.

  Stone murmured, “The three of them. I’m guessing they were in it together from the beginning.”

  “I don’t know what beginning you might be referring to,” Jill objected. “We only met after Chesty called me to let me know she was pregnant with Jack’s child.”

  Something exploded behind his eyelids. That was it. He’d officially had an aneurysm.

  Valerie dived in, chewing gum furiously as she spoke. “He promised Jill he wouldn’t divorce her until after he left the Senate. He promised me he’d leave her and marry me by the end of this year. He promised Chelsea she wouldn’t get pregnant, and when she did, he promised he’d marry her. The way we figure it, he didn’t plan to keep any of his promises.”

  “Why didn’t you satisfy yourselves with blackmailing him?” Christian asked. “Why attempted murder?”

  Chesty—Chelsea jumped in. “Oh, I tried blackmail. I got him out on that boat and demanded that he pay up or I was going public with the baby.” Her voice took on a tone of disgust. “All he said was that maybe his bitch of a wife would finally divorce him.”

  “Did he indicate that he would marry you or Valerie after that?”

  Chelsea, actress that she was, rolled her eyes dramatically. “He said he was never marrying any woman again and that we’re only good for one thing.”

  Christian shook his head. The man obviously had no sense of self-preservation when it came to the female half of the species.

  Christian frowned, looking around at the women. “So, you set up Jack and knocked him down? Took him for everything he’s worth, and even took his job away from him?”

  Three pairs of female eyes blinked innocently at him, as if they had no idea what he was talking about.

  Sonofabitch.

  “What I want to know,” Stone drawled, “is which one of you took the groin shot.”

  Chelsea blushed. “My daddy used to take me hunting with him when I was little. I could knock the eye out of a squirrel at fifty paces. But I’m not admitting to anything, mind you. I swear I never would intentionally shoot the father of my baby and have no memory of having done anything like that.”

  Christian rolled his eyes. That was a lie.

  “Nice shot,” Stone commented dryly.

  Chesty merely shrugged.

  Christian shook his head to clear it from the fog of fuckery enveloping them all. “Were all three of you sending the threats?”

  “That was Jack’s idea,” Valerie offered. “He thought it would get him sympathy from the public. He thought Jill might try to ruin his reputation when he asked for the divorce.”

  Christian stared at her as shock numbed his entire body. “How did you disguise the origin of the messages? Even the FBI couldn’t figure out where they came from.”

  Valerie grinned. “My family might engage in certain extracurricular activities from time to time. I have connections, if you get my drift.”

  Oh, he got her drift, all right.

  He looked around at all three women. “The three of you shot Jack?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jill replied mildly. “Bless your heart, but that’s downright crazy talk.”

  “Does Jack know?” he asked weakly.

  Jill leaned forward and said coolly, “That’s not the real question now, is it? The more salient question would be whether or not Jack would do anything about it if your wild speculations happened to be true.”

  “Look. I’m a lawyer. An officer of the court. It’s my duty to report all crimes.”

  “And what crime would that be?” Jill asked evenly. A note of steel had crept into her voice.

  Stone spoke up. “As you know, Christian, I sign an ironclad nondisclosure agreement with each of my clients. But that wouldn’t prevent you from taking an educated guess about a recent job I took… if you’d like.”

  Christian stared hard at Stone, who stared back as if begging him to figure it out.

  “Is it possible you escorted several ladies to, oh, I don’t know, Switzerland, recently?”

  Stone nodded. “I can’t reveal the destinations of my clients.”

  “Did your most recent clients perchance ask somebody else to sign certain legal documents… maybe enacting power of attorney for one of them?”

  Stone’s chin lifted in a slight nod. “No idea,” he said aloud.

  “Was some sort of agreement struck that, in return for somebody pressing no criminal charges and filing no lawsuits, someone might be allowed to live out one’s days quietly and without any more shootings?”

  Stone broke into a big smile. “You are so smart! But I think you’re way off base on this one. The police never identified the other shooters, and seeing as how Chesty can’t remember any of the whole day Jack was shot, we’ll probably never know. There was even speculation at her trial that she might have been hypnotized.”

  Christian snorted. “No sane jury would buy that.”

  Jill grinned. “Who says all juries are sane?”

  Valerie said pleasantly, “I hear the sanitarium Jack’s in is a nice place. Picturesque valley in the Alps. Lots of pretty young nurses he can fantasize about while he fades into obscurity.”

  “Who else knows about all of this?” Christian asked.

  Jill frowned theatrically. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Only the people in this room have heard your wild theories, and I’d be obliged if you could keep it that way. Unless, of course, you have any proof….” She trailed off expectantly.

  Christian fell back in his chair, utterly speechless. In point of fact, he had no proof at all. And not one of the women had said anything today that would directly incriminate herself.

  “You want me to look the other way on this?” he finally demanded. “I can’t in good conscience do that.”

  Jill said soberly, “I’m sorry if you feel like you’ve been put in an awkward position. But I’ll ask you one more time. Do you have any proof whatsoever of what you seem to believe happened?”

  “No.”

  “Then what good would it do you to go to the authorities with your theory. Would anybody believe you? Especially when Jack himself is prepared to say it’s not so?”

  He released a long, slow breath. The woman was not wrong. “Here’s the thing,” he said heavily. “I don’t believe I can continue working for y
ou, Mrs. Lacey. You may have no conscience, but I still have mine.”

  Her jaw tightened, but she nodded. “I understand. I’ll be happy to write you a glowing letter of recommendation on behalf of the exemplary service you gave to my husband.”

  “Thank you,” he said stiffly.

  He stepped out into the outer office and released the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He’d done the right thing. Why, then, didn’t he feel the least bit satisfied with the outcome of it all?

  The Texas attorney had sorted the documents into three piles. As Valerie and Chelsea came out, the lawyer gave a stack to each woman, and stowed the remaining copy in his briefcase. Stone escorted the lawyer, Valerie, and Chelsea out. The door closed quietly.

  God, it still hurt as bad as the last time he’d had to watch Stone walk out of his life. His heart felt as if it had turned to ice in his chest and stopped beating, locked in still, silent agony.

  The door opened again and a man stepped inside.

  Stone.

  He stared.

  “You?” he finally choked out.

  “Phone call for you,” Stone said, holding out a cell phone.

  What the—

  Christian took the phone and put it to his ear.

  “Mr. Chatsworth-Brandeis? This is Peregrine Cardiffe from Wild Cards, Inc.”

  “Mr. Cardiffe?”

  “Peregrine, please. Or just Pere.”

  “What can I do for you, Pere?”

  “I have a problem, and I’m hoping you can help me out.”

  “How?”

  “One of my top field operators came home from an assignment in Florida a few months ago, completely wrecked. He hasn’t been the same, since, and he’s showing no signs of pulling out of this tailspin he’s in.”

  “What do you want me to do, sir?”

  “He’s been offered a position as chief of security to a young congressman from Colorado. He was recommended by a gentleman named Travis Tucker.”

  “Was he, now? And did he accept the job?”

  “He has declared he won’t take it unless he has a compelling reason to stay in Washington, DC. I’m hoping you might be able to help him come up with one.”