Lap of Luxury (Love Don't Cost a Thing)

“There you are, my lady. Champagne?” Without waiting for her reply, I pour her a glass. “Isn’t this the life?”

Bethany takes a cautious sip of her champagne, watching me. “Not forgotten your great mission of revenge, have you?”

I grit my teeth. I’m trying to forget about Mikhail and Ciara for a little while. I’ve briefed some private investigators on who I’m looking for, and Boris is still searching flight records, so I’d rather think about more pleasant things until something turns up. Like Bethany.

“What sort of movies do you like?” I ask her.

“Horror,” she says immediately.

“Do you really? I rather like horror, too.”

She lays a piece of smoked salmon over some goat’s cheese on a cracker, and pops it into her mouth, munching appreciatively. “I think I’ve gone off them, though. I feel like I’m living in one.”

I grin and pop a grape in my mouth. “Last night you mean? Yes, that was rather fun.”

“That’s not what I said.”

No. But it’s what she meant.

“I’m still your prisoner, no matter how much smoked salmon and champagne you feed me.”

“Yes, you are. And such a beautiful one, too.” I take a sip of champagne. I think I’m rather good at this kidnapping business. Just look at us, sitting here together by the pool, our re

lationship already consummated. More or less willingly. How many other villains in my position could say they’ve achieved so much, and so quickly?

Bethany plays with a grape, turning it round in her fingers. “I’m not going to help you hurt anyone. Have you lived so long in your crazy, cynical world that you’ve forgotten how normal people think?”

“In my cynical world, things are very simple. Betrayal has consequences. Do you know what else is simple? Attraction.”

Still looking at the grape, Bethany bites her lip. Then she pops it into her mouth and chews quickly. “Maybe I did let you touch me in your office and maybe I did like it in a weird, twisted way,” she says in a low voice. “But that doesn’t mean I like you, trust you, or think you’re anything close to sane.”

I grin broadly. “Who says I’m not saner than all of you?”

“If you were sane, you would understand why Mikhail and I wanted to help Ciara. I know you don’t want to hear it, but she’s a nice person. I knew her a little from classes. She was always nice to me when I made the effort to speak to her, and trust me, I wasn’t that nice to her. I get all prickly around normal—around people. I’d watch her taking notes in class with different colored pens and highlighters. It was cute.” She subsides into silence, thinking. “I saw her on the first day of class, when she knew she owed you money but had no idea how she was going get it for you. She just wanted her life back. It wasn’t much, just her freedom and her studies, but it was hers. I know how that feels. Growing up in foster care, nothing is yours.”

Bethany seems lost in thought, rolling another grape between her fingers. I want to know what makes a girl like Bethany tick. She’s so unlike anyone I’ve ever met. “What happened to you?”

She hesitates for a moment, and then says, “Google the baby in the hatbox London.”

I reach for my phone and type the keywords into the browser. Up pop a handful of articles from about a decade ago. An investigative journalist got interested in a cold case. A baby left in a hatbox on a high street at Christmas twenty years ago. The journalist failed. She never found out where the baby came from.

I show Bethany a picture of a sleeping newborn. “This was you?”

She nods. “I could probably do one of those ancestry DNA tests and see if I match with anyone in the database, but what would be the point? I’d only discover the names of the people who didn’t want me. Fun.”

Bethany turns away as she drinks her champagne, but she can’t hide what she’s feeling from me. What happens when you’re young shapes you for life. I get it. Mikhail probably thinks that I’m the way I am because of how our mother and father treated us, but it was Nataša’s death that changed me, because that’s when I saw how little our family valued loyalty. I should have remembered that before I returned to London and started Ravnikar Enterprises with Mikhail. He couldn’t wait to forget her.

I look down at my glass, swirling the remains of my champagne. “Did Mikhail take Ciara overseas anywhere? Or talk about taking her overseas?”

Bethany opens her mouth to answer, and then closes it, frowning. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Just curious.”

“No, you’re not. You’re fishing for clues.”

I bare my teeth at her in a smile. “You got me. So?”

But Bethany folds her arms and looks away. An ugly sensation burns through me. “I played those voicemails he left for you. He waited, what, an hour before taking off without you?”