Scandal in Seattle (Great Exploitations #2)(2)
Author: Nicole Williams

The crease between my eyebrows couldn’t seem to iron out. “Condo?” Eves did hotels. We didn’t do condos, apartments, or houses.

“You’re not going to finish the Callahan Errand in a couple of weeks. This one’s going to take months, if not years. I thought you’d be more comfortable in a condo.” G opened the door and glanced back at me over her shoulder. “Especially a beach front one.”

The Meet

I COULD FEEL the calories being burned as soon as I entered the gym. After checking in at the front desk, I was told Mrs. Hendrik was in the middle of a private spinning class and to head on up. From the other side of the door to the spin room, I heard the whir of the spinning machine.

Burn, baby, burn.

I gave the door a quick knock before inviting myself in. A personal trainer rode beside Mrs. Hendrik who was, as suspected, going to town on that machine like she had a personal vendetta against it. Mrs. Hendrik used a spinning machine; I used a punching bag. They were healthier options than what we could have chosen after discovering we’d devoted our lives to men devoted to philandering.

I’d never met or seen Mrs. Hendrik, but I’d been in the business long enough to recognize a Client at the Meet. Since they were engrossed in their routine, I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Hendrik?” I waited for her to look up. “Is this a bad time?”

Her eyes widened for a moment as she took me in. She was pretty, of course—all Clients were—petite, young, with an Eve-esque body. If a woman like her couldn’t keep her husband’s dick from misbehaving, I realized something else about Mr. Hendrik: He was a prick.

“No,” she said, checking the clock on the opposite wall. “You’re right on time.”

I was always on time.

“I’ll finish this set on my own, Gina,” Mrs. Hendrik said to her trainer. “I’ll catch up with you in the Pilates room.”

I worked out religiously—it was just a reality of the job—but I had a feeling Mrs. Hendrik’s daily routine could put me to shame. After the trainer left, I approached Mrs. Hendrik, still whirring away. She wasn’t sweating, she was barely breathing hard, but her legs couldn’t have spun any faster.

“You know, I told G this, but maybe I need to tell you.” She scanned me up, down, around, and around. “Ian likes young girls. You look older than me.”

Mrs. Hendrik was leading with the claws-out introduction. Thirty percent of Clients did, and one hundred percent of Clients like Mrs. Hendrik did.

“I’m twenty-five. How old are you?” I asked, whipping out my own kitty claws. “Thirty? . . . Ish?” I added because her face went a special shade of pissed.

Insulting the Client wasn’t my preferred approach, but I had to fight fire with fire or I’d go up in flames. Sometimes we had to break someone to build them up, and Mrs. Hendrik looked as if she needed to take a topple from that glass house of hers.

I was there to help. She’d called us. I wasn’t the enemy. Her husband was.

Time to remind her of that.

“Don’t worry about my age, Mrs. Hendrik,” I said, stopping a few feet in front of her bike. If it had been real, I knew she wouldn’t have swerved to avoid plowing me over. “What I might lack in the just-legal department, I more than make up for in the skill department.”

She huffed, glaring at the handlebars of her bike. “Ian could give a shit about skill. All he cares about is screwing as many young model-sluts as he can.” She gave me that once-over again. I’d been once-over’d half a dozen times in less than five minutes. “You’re a few years older and a few pounds heavier, but you’ve got that general model-slut look. I’m sure it won’t take much convincing to get his snake out of its cage.”

If I had the model-slut look, then so did she. She was shorter and had smaller boobs, but we had pretty much the same “look.”

“He’s a cheater,” I said. I already knew that before I entered the gym. Probability and statistics, that’s the name of the game.

“He redefined the word,” she said with another huff. “But the son of a bitch has made an art of keeping it hidden.”

“Then how do you know?” I asked, thankful we’d gotten past the “warm” welcome and moved on to the reason I was there.

“Women’s intuition. A gut feeling. An instinct.” She lifted a shoulder. “I just know.”

Worked for me. Most of the time, a woman’s intuition about their man cheating on them was infallible.

“Plus, he was kinda with someone else when he . . . met me.” For the first time, Mrs. Hendrik showed some emotion other than apathy or disdain.

“You mean, when he slept with you?” Some Clients made it easier to feel compassion for them than others. Mrs. Hendrik was in the others category. She’d played a part in the cheater’s game, then she went on to marry him. Drudging up sympathy for someone like that was difficult.

She rolled her eyes. “I just know he’s sleeping around, all right? He comes home late and smelling like other women. He hardly comes to me for sex anymore which means he’s getting it from someone else.”

True. A man’s sex drive didn’t change. It always stayed the same: full power ahead. If he wasn’t getting it from his wife, girlfriend, or lover, he was certainly getting it from someone else.

“And now it looks like he’s about to get some from you,” she added, taking a drink from her water bottle and trying not to look my way.

“If I do my job, and you’ve done yours.” I eyed the tote bag on the chair beside her. I guessed the overstuffed folder in it was what I went there for. I was really ready to get out of that Meet. “That’s the whole point, right?”

“If it means I get half of everything and I never have to smell some other skank on his dick again, then yeah, that’s the point.”

We’d pretty much flown through the emotional stages of the Meet. I guessed Mrs. Hendrik didn’t regularly show an impressive level of emotion, so I’d take her last statement as her show of acceptance. All I needed was the file, and I was hightailing it out of there.

“Is that the file?”

“In all its exhaustive glory,” she answered.

“Is everything in there?”

“Every last dirty detail.”

Decisive. That was the first point on Mrs. Hendrik’s scoreboard. After grabbing the folder, sliding the Errand phone into its place in her tote, and going over my phone rules and don’t-say-anything sermon, I headed for the door.

“That’s it?” she called after me, not missing a beat in her spinning frenzy.

“That’s it.”

She chuckled a few notes. “You’ve got the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am thing down. You’re going to do just fine with Ian.”

I never did just fine. I certainly didn’t close Errands with just fine. I closed them with perfection.

TEN HOURS LATER, I was in the lobby of the Four Seasons, pouring over the Hendrik file. I was on my second Cherry Coke with extra cherries and almost to the last few pages when I noticed a figure coming my way. I’d tucked myself into a chair in the corner for privacy—wasn’t that obvious?—but it looked like privacy was going to take a temporary hiatus.

I tried to look positively enraptured with the file. I tried to play ignorant of the stranger hovering in front of me, but he apparently wasn’t going to accept my ignorance of him.

“Can I help you?” I said with an impressive level of ice, slamming the file closed.

“We’ll get to that in a minute, but right now all I want you to do is help yourself to a drink with a bit more kick and a few less cherries.” A martini glass appeared on the table in front of me.

I sighed before glancing up at the stranger. If he hadn’t already ticked me off by interrupting my study time, he’d certainly pissed me off by dropping that devil juice on my table. If I liked the taste of paint thinner, maybe I’d be a bigger martini fan.

“And I’d like you to help yourself to a . . .” I shot back as I glanced at him. I double-checked to make sure my folder was closed. Once I was sure of that, it took everything I had to keep composed.

The man in front of me, grinning that all-too familiar player smile, was the same one I’d been flipping through pages and photos of for the past few hours. That—coming face to face with a Target while studying said Target’s file—was a first. Hopefully a last, too. I had to quickly wipe the loathing off of my face and replace it with something less hateful and more playful. We were at the arms-length part of the Errand.

“I’m not a martini kind of girl,” I replied. “Thanks, though.”

“You sure about that?” Mr. Hendrik took the seat across from me and propped a foot up on the coffee table. He was a fashion photographer if ever I’d seen one. His clothing was a cross between punk and grunge, his bronze hair the same, and to complete the look, he had a flavor saver on his chin and tattoo sleeves on both arms. He looked younger, much younger than his thirty-five years. Maybe that was why he liked his girls barely legal.

“I’m drinking a Cherry Coke.” I glanced at my almost empty glass. “A martini’s a long way’s off from a Cherry Coke.”

Mr. Hendrik wet his lips and leaned back. “Do you have something against gin?”

Only when it came from a Target who’d caught me by surprise. “No.”

“Something against alcohol then?” He ran his eyes down me in a way that wasn’t meant to be subtle.

“No.”

His eyebrows peaked as a hint of a devious smile formed. “Underage?”

I could almost feel his hard-on. At moments like those, when most women would get the heebie-jeebies and retreat, I dug in and got comfortable. Those moments, a Target’s expression alight with the knowledge that I was nearly half his age, were ones I didn’t shy away from.

I slid my braid over my shoulder and looked down. Looking down was a sure sign someone was lying. “No.”

I didn’t have to see it to feel his smile grow. “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me,” he said. “If you need a fake ID or something, I know a guy who makes one so good even the cops can’t tell the difference.”

I bet he did.

“Thanks, but no thanks.” I glanced at him, and he was leaning forward in his seat. Like he was already moving in for the kill. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got some homework to finish up before morning or else I’m going to fail the assignment.” I decided to keep the part about him being the assignment to myself.

“High school or college homework?”

By that point in the conversation, I realized Mr. Hendrik was a regular bastard. Certified and all. It could have been stamped across his forehead. Those kinds of guys were so easy, and their motives were so simple. I really couldn’t wait to get to work on the big Ten/Callahan Errand because I needed a challenge. My brain felt like it was in danger of shriveling up and dying due to underuse.

Shooting him a coy look, I played with the end of my braid. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”