42

Jason stood next to the intercom, waiting for Brenda’s voice to break the silence. She must not have heard his first ring, or maybe the system was broken. He reached toward the button again, but her voice came across to interrupt his movement. He spoke his name into the panel, and the door clicked open.

Serena’s face floated in his mind. She was a presence behind him. He stepped faster. He couldn’t bring himself to stop to call the elevator. As if he could outpace Serena’s presence, he bounded up the stairs two at a time. At the third floor, he shoved through and saw Diane’s door closed ahead. He had to get in there fast, or Serena would tear him away.

He didn’t bother knocking. The door was unlocked for him. He burst into the room. It was lit by candles. Their flames dimmed with the force of the air from the door. Brenda stood beside the table. Silk the color of peaches draped from her shoulders. She smiled, her hand slipping an inch toward him over the back of a chair.

Serena fled.

He slammed the door and crossed the room in three steps, and she was in his arms, pulling him to her, the softness and hardness of her flesh and bones formed to his. Her lips were sweet; her arms gripped his sides. Her hands moved over his back, and heat rose up within him threatening to explode.

She pulled away a quarter-inch, regaining her breath. “I made this dinner.” Her hands went to the sides of his head, and she pulled him to her. Another kiss. Urgent. “But all I want is you.”

* * *

Later, Brenda fed him cold meat from the platter that had been steaming when he arrived. She slipped pieces of beef between his lips, and the taste of her fingertips mingled with what she’d cooked for him.

“Don’t you want to sit at the table?” Jason’s back rested against the front of the sofa, his legs stretched out on the carpet.

“I’m fine here,” she said. She had her legs stretched out alongside his. The plate she’d made for him lay on his other side, and she had to reach across him and press against him to serve him.

She took up beet slices and held them to his mouth. A drop of bloody juice dripped from the beets onto his bare chest, a cool tap and trickle. She bent to it and licked it from his chest.

The vinegary tang of the beets washed through his mouth. He swallowed. She plucked another sliver of beef with her fingertips and brought it to his lips. Jawing it, he watched the movements of her shoulders and arms, her skin’s swell and stretch with her motions. She had a small mole on her right shoulder. He passed his finger over it—no imperfection in the smoothness of her skin.

He looked into her eyes over the slice of potato she held up to him. “That’s enough.”

She took the potato into her own mouth, swallowed, and brought her lips to his. Another kiss on his cheek, and she rested against him, fit her head into the hollow underneath his shoulder. His left arm surrounded her back.

Unease in his chest wrestled against the sensations of her skin against his. Serena had returned. A vision of her floated in his mind. Serena at the altar, veiled and facing him, expectant when he lifted the veil for their first kiss as husband and wife. He shook his head.

“What is it?” Brenda brought her face up to his. The candles were dying, the lights flickering to cast thousands of conflicted shadow lines from her eyelashes.

“Thinking about tomorrow.” A lie. In his mind swam the question of whether he’d told more lies in his life than truths. He spoke again so the question couldn’t surface. “I have to do some dirty work for Vince.”

A frown drew a black line up between her eyebrows. “I hate him.”

“He’s my favorite guy.”

“Sometimes I wish . . . Never mind.” She pushed her cheek into his shoulder. Stray blonde hairs tickled his chin.

“What? What do you wish?”

She lifted her face to his again; her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Sometimes I wish we could do something to get back at him. Get back at all of them. For the way they’re treating you. It’s so unfair.” In this light, her eyes were deep jade, tiny flashes from the candles glistening at the whites. Her eyelashes webbed crisscrossing shadows around them.

The banker in him said they shouldn’t talk about it. Some things were better unexplored, were too dangerous to let your mind carry fleeting fantasies into uttered words.

But she smiled and let her hand move over his chest, and the motion seemed to draw the fantasies out. “It’s silly; I know. But just for fun.” She brought her eyes back to his, the hand roving his skin. “You have so much authority, Jason. There’s got to be something you could do.”

“Just for fun.”

“We’re just talking. There’s nobody here but you and me.” She shifted against him, bringing her face even closer, the fragrance of the food they’d shared blending with the fruity scent of the candles flickering to their smoky deaths. “What if we just went down to the vault one day and cleared it out?”

He laughed. “Sure. Nobody would stop us from doing that.”

“Just tell them you have to check on a customer’s cash. They’d buy that, right?”

“Oh, that’s a great plan. I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.” He smiled at her. “Anyway, if I really wanted to do something the vault’s not where I’d go. That’s not where the real money is.”

“What do you mean? I was down there once. There are stacks of it.”

“Hundreds of thousands. Maybe a few million on a big day. It’s not enough for the risk of doing something like that. You always have to balance out the risk-reward. One of the cardinal rules in business.”

“Well, where then?”

Jason swept his hand through the air. “In the ether. In the wires. Debits and credits. Settlements every night in the tens of millions. The hundreds of millions. Billions. Banks wiring money back and forth through the fed. Loan advances and paydowns. Companies getting bought and sold.”

Brenda’s lips were parted as she followed his words. He could still feel those lips on his, their tenderness and need, could still taste them.

He touched her chin. “It amazes me when people commit a federal crime for a few thousand dollars. Get the FBI after them, not just the local police. They’d be better off holding up a liquor store.”

“Well, I know you could do something. With all the authority you have.”

“There’s a lot of things I could do. That wouldn’t be the hard part.”

“Mm. Right.” She brought her lips to his ear and spoke with her lips brushing against it. “It’s getting away with it.”