“Hi, Avery!” Claire Prentice beams at me, as vivacious and stylish as I remember her.
“Hello,” I reply, as she draws me to her for an air kiss at the side of my face.
Four months ago we met for the first time at Vendange, after a friend who was supposed to housesit Claire’s apartment here at Park Place stood her up at the last minute. On her way out of the country for an acting job for several months and left with no one to watch her place while she was gone, Claire convinced me to move in to her apartment instead.
Actually, it was her five thousand dollars in cash that convinced me.
On top of the fact that I desperately needed to find a place to live, since the crappy apartment building where I rented a tiny one-bedroom hole in the wall had been sold out from under me.
If not for Claire, I never would have had a reason to come to this building.
Nor would I have almost crashed headlong into Nick in the elevator that first night, when we both were hit with the intense attraction that drew us inexorably together—beginning with our chance encounter that night, followed by our explosive second meeting at his gallery, Dominion, which ended with the two of us in a hot, sweaty tangle in his bed.
It boggles my mind sometimes to think that I owe all of my current happiness to Claire’s shitty friend.
I take in her glowing tan and chic designer sheath dress. She looks like she just walked out of a fashion ad, while in my BoHo casual outfit and sparsely made-up face, I feel like the barista who should be serving her a skinny latte.
It boosts my confidence immensely when Nick casually wraps his arm around my back as if to tell her and anyone else in the immediate vicinity that I’m with him.
“I haven’t seen you around lately,” I say to Claire. “How’s the talk show going?”
She had been going to Japan to shoot the pilot when she hired me to housesit for her. Three and a half months later, she returned home and I filled her in on the basics of how I’d met Nick and was moving in with him.
She’d seemed excited for me, but I didn’t get the sense that she and I were going to be much more than occasional neighbors. She seemed fairly private with her personal life, and God knows Nick and I are too.
“The show got cancelled, unfortunately. I was just telling Nick about it. They ran a bunch of audience tests on the pilot recently and the producers decided to kill it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Smiling, she gives me a dismissive wave of her bejeweled hand. “Ah, well. C’est la vie. Or whatever the Japanese equivalent is. There’s plenty of other gigs out there.”
“We should get going.” Nick’s hand urges me toward the idling limo where Patrick waits to open the door for us. “Claire, nice to see you.”
“You too. I’ll see you around, Avery.”
I nod as Nick guides me to the car and we climb into the back.
I watch Claire Prentice step into the building, noting how Manny and every other male in the lobby can’t take their eyes off the stunning woman. Hell, even I find it hard to tear my gaze away from her smooth stride and radiant sex appeal.
But Nick stares forward, almost deliberately so.
I can’t deny the sudden, sharp stab of suspicion that needles me. With Patrick not yet inside the vehicle, I look at Nick. “I didn’t realize you and Claire know each other.”
He gives me a disinterested shrug. “I own the building. I’m acquainted to some extent with everyone who lives here.”
“But you never mentioned it. Not even when I told you that first night at the gallery that I was housesitting for her.” When I even went so far as to lie to him and tell him I was a friend of Claire’s, he never acknowledged her. Not at any time in the past four months. “You never said you knew her.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No. You didn’t.”
Now he turns his head to look at me straight on. “Is there something you want to ask me, Avery?”
I sense the challenge in his tone, even though his gaze remains unflinching, unreadable.
Jealousy reduces my voice to a whisper. “Have you and Claire Prentice slept together?”
He reaches out, tenderly cupping my jaw. “No. We haven’t.”