Deaver nodded. There was no overt sign, no button pressed, but the steel door suddenly opened, two bodyguards at the other side ready to accompany him to where he’d get his ID.

“By the way,” Drake said in his cool, precise voice when they were standing on the threshold. “When you recover your diamonds, bring them to me. I can get you a very good price.”

The steel door closed on Deaver’s astonished face.

Summerville

“Oh yeah, baby, give it to me,” she purred. “Big and thick and hot.”

“You got it, honey.” Sanders McCullin obliged, holding the woman’s skinny hips and bucking up into her. It was pleasant enough. She was very wet and was enthusiastically bouncing up and down on his dick.

Sanders couldn’t remember her name. Karla—Kara—Karen. Something like that. They’d met last night at the Zig Zag. On Christmas Eve, the bar had been bouncing and loud. She had slid over to the empty barstool next to his after the girlfriend she’d been with dumped her for a guy.

They’d been fucking for the past twenty-four hours, breaking only to eat, shower and go to the bathroom. Not being sure of her name wasn’t that hard. Honey did just fine.

Kara-Karen threw her head back, eyes closed, hips pumping.

Sanders guessed her age to be about thirty. Except for her breasts and nose, which were probably about four.

Women with breast implants shouldn’t be on top. Everything wiggled except the breasts, which looked bolted to her chest. Fascinated, Sanders watched her breasts—big stiff things that didn’t move, like water balloons under the chest wall. She was skinny everywhere except for the balloons on her chest—tits on a stick. And with her head back, he could see the signs of plastic surgery on her nose.

And…on her face? Jesus. He hadn’t noticed that at the Zig Zag, and they’d been fucking in the dark ever since. So maybe she wasn’t thirty after all.

After pumping energetically for a few minutes, she came with a great howl, cunt pulling hard on him, startling him into his own climax.

With a cat that ate the cream smile on her face, she settled back down on top of him, clearly intending to stay there, head on his shoulder.

“Wow,” she purred. “That was fantastic.”

He could smell the sex on them. Ugh. Cleanup time.

“Hey, honey, sorry. Nature’s calling.” Sanders nudged her off him and rolled from the bed, padding naked into the bathroom. As he walked past the dresser, he caught a glimpse of himself and stopped, pleased. Those hours at the gym sure paid off. He had a flat stomach and some good definition, except right now he looked…inelegant with the condom hanging off his dick. He pulled it off.

Not bad, he thought. Still holding up. The ladies sure weren’t complaining.

In the bathroom, he threw the condom in the wastepaper basket—there were four of them on the bottom.

He loved his bathroom. He’d spent $30,000 remodeling and loved every inch of it. Next to the shower was a stand-alone bathtub carved from a single block of marble that weighed one ton. The floor had had to be specially reinforced before it could be winched into place.

Sanders stepped into the shower and felt his spirits lifting at the sight of the gleaming fixtures and pale cream Valentino tiles. It was a spa-quality steam shower with thirty shower jets, a foot massager, piped-in music and a hands-free phone system.

As he soaped up with his Clinique for Men shower gel, Sanders realized that he wished the woman in his bed would just disappear before he got out of the shower. He was all fucked out and didn’t like her enough to spend time with her not fucking.

She wasn’t the brightest tool in the woodshed and she had an annoying, screechy voice. She was good in bed and gave great head, though there’d been a shocked moment when he looked down at himself afterwards and seen a black cock, as if it had suddenly turned gangrenous. It was just Karla-Kara’s trendy Goth black lipstick all over his dick, but he’d had an ugly moment there.

Karla-Kara worked at an advertising agency and talked about music he’d never heard of, films he’d never seen and bars he’d never been to. It was tedious.

He wanted her gone, so he could enjoy the big jar of contraband Crimean caviar and the bottle of two-hundred-dollar Dom Pérignon in the fridge. They would be totally wasted on Karla-Kara, whatever the fuck her name was. At the bar where he’d picked her up, she was drinking some sugary drink and eating a club sandwich.

Maybe if he took enough time in the shower, she’d get the hint, get dressed and leave.

Fat chance. She looked settled, there in his bed, as if she didn’t ever want to leave. It was really annoying. He wished there were just a button he could press and hey presto!

No more Kara. Or Karla.

He was wishing that more and more often lately after sex.

She was okay in bed, but boring and vulgar outside of it. Sanders had had just about as much sex with her as he was willing to have. He looked down at himself, checking with his dick, seeing what happened at the thought of another round.

His dick stayed firmly down. So that was that.

The thought of more sex with her was actually just a little depressing.

Nope, Karla or Kara or whatever the fuck her name was, was shit out of luck.

He’d chosen the wrong woman with whom to spend Christmas Day.

He knew the right woman, though he’d have to wait until after Christmas to get her into his bed. Back into his bed. Back into his life.

Caroline Lake.

Their time had come, Sanders could feel it. He and Caroline had been dancing around each other since they were teenagers and the time had come to make it permanent. They’d broken up a few times, the first time in their teens. Well, he was going off to college back East, wasn’t he? And he couldn’t have a small-town girlfriend dragging him down, no matter how rich her family, no matter how pretty she was.

And then Caroline had come back East too, to Boston, an hour’s train ride away. And she’d become even more beautiful. They’d had a couple of tumbles in the sheets and he was seriously thinking of an engagement ring when her parents died in a car crash.

It was impossible after that.

Robert Lake had been making some bad investments when he died, and what with the medical bills and her father’s debts, Caroline had skated bankruptcy, surviving by a hair after opening that bookshop of hers. With that and her grotesque brother, there’d been no time for him.

When Sanders had returned to Summerville, he’d often thought about getting back together with Caroline, even though she didn’t have any money.

There were a lot of advantages to Caroline. She was beautiful, cultivated, and you could take her anywhere. As Sanders’s law practice grew, he often wished Caroline were by his side when talking with big clients. She had a magic touch with people that rubbed off on him by association. The few times he’d managed to convince her to accompany him to an important event, his stock went way up.

But she made it clear that her first, second and third loyalty was to Toby and that Sanders came in a miserable fourth.

Unacceptable.

It never failed to appall him—that she’d prefer a writhing pathetic cripple to him, and to the life he could offer her.

He knew she was struggling, but that was her own damned fault. She insisted on holding on to that ancient pile of bricks that was falling down around her head and simply wouldn’t listen to reason, no matter how many times he told her to sell.

Sanders had quietly had Greenbriars appraised, and to his astonishment, though it was falling to pieces, it was worth over a million dollars. Something about the design. But still. Even more reason to sell it. It was at least seventy years old. She was sliding into genteel poverty, heading straight for ruin, and he could save her ass, give her the life she’d been used to, but she turned her pretty nose up at him and chose to stay with her crippled brother.