Beyond Ruin (4 page)

"All right, kiddo. Ready to go home? You must be exhausted." Frankie nodded her head before placing it on Caroline's shoulder, sleep threatening to take her once more. "Okay well, it was nice to meet you, Natalie. And Audra I'll see you in the office tomorrow?"

Audra smiled politely and patted at Frankie's hair as Caroline disembarked and put Frankie in the waiting second car and departed, presumably to James' penthouse at
The Jacqueline
.

"Thank you for the plane ride." Natalie set her purse and suitcase down in the darkened foyer and searched for a light switch. She wasn't yet used to the large condominium that served as both home and office. Her fingers found and flipped a switch and the living space was doused in ambient light no brighter than candlelight.

"My pleasure. Well, almost..." Audra's smile was beautifully wicked in the low lighting.

"Next time we'll make sure there isn't anyone around to interrupt."

"Sounds like a plan." Audra leaned in and kissed Natalie's lips with tender affection, lingering on her bottom lip until it flushed with a fresh current of blood. "Good night."

"Night." Natalie watched her until she re-entered the elevator in the hallway, then closed the door and sighed as her fingers locked it shut. After a moment of solitude she stepped deeper into the living space and nearly jumped when she spotted a pair of bare feet making their way down the spiral staircase leading up to the loft.

"Now I know I've had a few glasses of wine and the view from up here isn't great in this dim lighting, but I'd bet any amount of money that I just saw you kissing Audra Robertson goodnight."

"Hi Quinn." Ignoring the terse pounding in her chest Natalie climbed the steps, passing her pajama-clad friend with relative ease, and walked to the makeshift bar they'd setup in the loft space. As promised there was a chilled bottle of wine; Natalie poured herself a glass and sipped it slowly. Quinn followed up the stairs, her expression agog at what she'd just witnessed.

"Well?" She waited for explication.

Natalie shrugged. "Yes, you saw me kissing Audra. Had you been in the bedroom of her private plane a few hours ago you would have seen a hell of a lot more than that."

Astonishment marred Quinn's pretty face. She reached for Natalie's wine glass, snatching it out of her hand before Natalie could react, let alone protest. "Okay, no wine for you. What the hell is going on?"

"Nothing," Natalie answered patiently, meeting Quinn's disbelieving gaze with nothing but civility.

"Nothing? You go away for the weekend and come back half a month later a lesbian?"

"I'm not a lesbian," Natalie argued. She leaned back against the bar and considered pouring herself another drink. Quinn would probably just steal that one, too.

"Then you're making out with Audra Robertson
because
...? Does James know?" She did a double take at some thought that crossed her mind. "Is this some weird billionaire sex kink they've got going on with you?"

Natalie was losing her patience. "Do you hear how ridiculous you sound?" She pushed past Quinn and made her way double-time down the stairs towards the dining room.

"Well pardon me, Natalie, but you're not exactly the type!"

"I am not having a threesome with James and Audra!" Natalie half yelled, half laughed. As expected there was a recently uncorked bottle of red wine sitting on the table. She was never one to enjoy red, but would make an exception. She poured a generous glass and sipped, swallowing without any attempt to taste the dry wine. "I like her, okay?"

"Since when?
Natalie!
" Quinn reached for the second glass of wine and snatched it from Natalie's grasp again. "Tell me what the hell is going on with you. Starting with where the rest of your hair is!"

Natalie rolled her eyes. "It's in an envelope in my purse," she dismissed with a flourish of her hand. She untucked a cushioned chair from underneath the dining table and took a seat, eyeing her two glasses of wine in Quinn's possession.

"Fine. You like her. Why the hell are you making out with her? What about James?"

"
Seriously Quinn
?" Natalie spit, her patience officially gone. "You haven't noticed that he hasn't been around these past few months?"

"No!" Quinn huffed. "Between you skipping town, launching the new agency and moving my entire life into this place I've been somewhat preoccupied." She set the wine glasses on the dining table and sat adjacent to Natalie. "Why? What happened?"

"We broke up!" Natalie couldn't look at her. Instead she chewed on the insides of her cheeks and lips in an attempt to tamp down the emotions that were ready to take full control of her facial muscles.

Quinn looked genuinely, terribly surprised. "What? When? Why?"

Natalie took a deep breath. "Well, let's see," she began, trying and failing to keep her eyes from watering with hot tears. "It would have been the day James received the results of the amniocentesis conclusively determining that he
is
the father of the baby Celine is carrying. Coincidentally that was the day after I suffered a miscarriage."

She couldn’t bring herself to look up to see Quinn's reaction. Quinn said nothing; she merely slid the two glasses of wine across the table until they were within Natalie's grasp, then stood and ran across the living room to the winding staircase leading up to the loft. Natalie heard a few glasses clinking around, and when she looked up Quinn was bounding back down the stairs, a bottle of Patron in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. After reclaiming her seat Quinn poured them each a shot and clinked their glasses together. Natalie took the shot without question and downed in unison with Quinn, her face screwing at the awful taste of the potent liquid. It burned the entire length of her throat and down into her stomach, but otherwise went to her brain with near immediacy.

"I don't want to dwell on it or cry about it," Natalie began again. "I have no interest in talking about my feelings or in any way re-living what was undoubtedly the most painful 48 hours of my life. Things with James just got to the point where it was all too much to handle, and now it's over."

Quinn opened her mouth but shut it again before she could speak. Instead she reached for Natalie's hand on the table and squeezed it gently. She held it there for a long while, the two of them sitting in the midnight silence of their shared living space, staring off into the distance.

Finally, after a considerable amount of time passed, Quinn said, "But why Audra?"

Natalie's lips picked up in a smile, at once breaking the gloomy mood that had settled between them. "Have you met the woman? She's intelligent, business savvy, and not to mention gorgeous." And after seeing her half naked all Natalie could think was
why not Audra
? She shrugged and sipped from the white wine glass. "It wasn't planned or expected. It just kind of happened."

"So you're..." Quinn's eyes roamed around the room as if the word she was looking for were sitting amongst the decoration somewhere. "Hooking up?" she finished.

"It's casual. I'm attracted to her. Why not act on it?"

"Does
she
know that it's just casual?"

Natalie nodded. "The easiest part of being with Audra Robertson is that there is no expectation of a future." Being sure of that fact was a comfort she needed.

"You know if you wanted to explore your sexuality you could have just asked me. I went to college; I had the requisite Sapphic fling." Natalie's eyes narrowed, her lips pursed. "What? It's true!"

Without warning Natalie leaned across the table and planted her lips on Quinn's, suckling alternately on her top and bottom lip. When she pulled away Quinn looked a bit shell-shocked.

"Did you feel anything?" Natalie asked.

Quinn thought on it for a moment, then answered, "Not really."

"When I kiss Audra it's like lighting a firecracker in my sternum. And her breasts," she added dreamily. "Oh my god her breasts-"

"Okay!" Quinn cut her off. "Yes, great rack. Let's leave it at that." She poured them each another shot. "To kissing whomever you want to kiss. God bless America," Quinn toasted. Natalie clinked her glass to Quinn's.

"Cheers."

Natalie downed the liquid and slammed the glasses onto the table with Quinn, smiles breaking through their faces as the liquor coursed through Natalie's body.

Quinn picked up the bottle, her shot glass, and stood from the table. "Okay, I've been dying to see what's in those boxes you had shipped home."

Transcendently drunk and blissful, Natalie sank into the bathtub, a fizzy bath bomb exploding into a kaleidoscope of pastel color and sensual creamy rose at her feet. Though her mind was exhausted from travel and drink, her body was alight with bundling energy radiating from her center. Heated water lapped against her skin, re-sensitizing it to a state of heightened arousal. Her fingers roamed her body, skating over smooth wet skin beneath the sudsy surface. She breathed in slowly, her mind rewinding the hours to the plush queen size bed on the plane, Audra between her legs with her lips on Natalie's breasts.

The bathroom door opened with a loud jolt and Natalie jumped when she saw it was only Joe, his hand ready to unzip the fly of his jeans.

"Jesus!" he screeched when he noticed Natalie in the tub. "Why are you in my bath?"

"It's bigger than mine," Natalie shrugged.

"Fine," he growled. "But I have to piss and since this is my bathroom you forfeit the right to complain about it."

"Deal." She closed her eyes again and zoned out at the sound of his pants zipper sliding down and the subsequent relief that followed.

"You have a good flight?"

"Could have been better," she sighed.
Much better
. "I flew out with Audra and Frankie. Why didn't you tell me you'd reached a custody arrangement?"

"I figured it could wait until you got back," Joe responded over the sound of the toilet flushing. "Welcome back, by the way."

"I have some good news for you," she teased as Joe turned away from washing his hands at the sink.

"Oh?" He grabbed for a towel to dry his hands. She didn't mind that his eyes took in the full sight of her in the tub. "What's that?"

"A new client. A
big
new client."

"Who?"

"The one Fitson property not currently handled by Brighton New Media."

Joe crouched down at the side of the tub, his eyes glinting with humorous surprise. "You're joking. The Golden Palm?"

"You've heard of it?" Natalie asked, taken aback at hearing the name spoken by someone who wasn't Audra or Quinn.

"Are you kidding? It's legendary. Remember when I told you about walking in on Fitzgerald and Celine making out? Back when we were college kids?"

She rolled her eyes. How could she forget the story of how James and Celine met? "Yeah."

"That party was the unofficial first auction. But I hear the club is super exclusive today. You can't even get in unless you're a millionaire several times over. And the women..." He inhaled deeply, his eyes touring the length of the bathtub from end to end before meeting her eyes again as he exhaled. "I hear they are equally legendary."

She noticed then the scent of alcohol mixed with cologne emanating from his body, and the patch of tan skin that peeked out from his shirt, the top two buttons of which were left undone.

"How do
you
know about
The Golden Palm
, Red?"

She bit her bottom lip to keep from smiling. "Like you said. It's legendary."

"And you got us the account?"

"Actually, Audra gave it to us."

A brief but deep chuckle escaped his throat. "Goddamn. I feel like a kid who was just invited to take a tour of the North Pole at Christmas."

Natalie could no longer hold back her smile, and emboldened by her state of relative inebriation, said, "Little did you know you've been living with two elves this whole time."

Joe's laughter receded, but his eyes - searing pools of whiskey-colored intensity - remained on her. "No way."

Her head cocked slightly to the right. "You don't believe me?"

"I believe you about Quinn. But I can't for a second picture you putting yourself up for auction to the highest bidder, Natalie Harlow. You're too..." His tongue ran across his bottom lip, eyes never once leaving her as he settled on the right superlative. "Sweet."

A few months ago that comment might have incited her frustrated wrath, but instead a kernel of pride swelled into a pleasurable arrogance inside her. "It just so happens I hold the record of receiving the highest bid.
Ever
."

Joe set his elbows on the edge of the tub, his chin atop his left hand. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you, Red?" His breathing was hypnotizing to watch. Controlled. Purposeful.

Had she never before appreciated the rugged charm that radiated off him like waves of heat on a scorching summer day? There had been flirtation, innocent at first when they initially met and even after he found out she was seeing James - whom Joe did not like - but it was always within the realm of friendly and acceptable. Like Quinn, she hadn't told Joe any details about her breakup with James, and she doubted he even noticed the breakup to begin with.

Still... she never failed to appreciate that Joe was handsome, especially after Quinn's apt description that he was like a tree any woman would love to climb. Deep tan skin, dark hair and those eyes; he was the visual definition of the kind of sexy broodiness every woman secretly wanted in a lover at least once in her lifetime.

After several quiet and intense moments passed he groaned through his teeth. "I think I need to take a cold shower."

She noticed a smudge of ink on his arm and reached up to rub at it with her wet fingertips. After it dissipated her fingers remained, tracing along the path of a thick vein that traveled from wrist to elbow.

"Natalie..." he began, his tone a warning despite the rasp of laughter that followed. "I'm drunk."

"So am I."

"What about Fitzgerald?"

Her eyes widened playfully, her shoulders giving a noncommittal shrug. "What about him indeed?" She waited, secretly challenging Joe to instigate a movement towards her. In her periphery she could see his chest rising and falling in quiet but rapid succession. His hair was a mess of dark waves that had once been slicked back into his usual style. "Unless you don't want-"

His lips were on hers before she could finish, soft but fierce in their exploration of her already swollen lips. She accepted him readily, tasting of his mouth as his tongue swept against hers. His arms dove into the water and found her sides immediately, fingers grasping to her saturated skin. She pulled at the opening of his shirt, smiling with satisfaction as each button popped off one by one until his chest was exposed.