PORTIA
Manhattan was dark in the late afternoon, such was the power of winter. It had frosted across the twinkling city, quieting the commotion and turning the streets to ice. In some ways, it felt too cold to snow—a theory Portia had developed about weather in the coastal northeast. Frigid temperatures could kill all trace of humidity, suck the air dry in a sense, and leave the skies gray and depleted. At least the sleeting rain had stopped.
She kept moving down Fifth Avenue, ignoring the dazzled-up window displays of the stores she briskly passed. She didn’t have much time. With Nathan otherwise disposed in a meeting at the Cromwell Corp, she’d estimated she had an hour at best. But factoring in the time spent walking, that would cut her own timetable down to less than half that. She didn’t want him to know she’d snuck off. She was already formulating the excuse she’d offer if she returned after him—that she needed to mail a personal letter. Why would he question her further? He wouldn’t. It was a good plan, yet she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.
One thing she gave the frigid air credit for: she could no longer feel the burning of her bruised wrists. Damn, Karen Flores hadn’t been kidding when she’d described Nathan Cromwell as a ‘stormy’ man. Portia had known going into this that the Cromwell’s were dangerous, and assumed Nathan would be no exception, but if she had been prepared for what was going to unfold in that secret chamber, she never would’ve shown up—not to the Winter Ball and not to Manhattan—the latter having been her first destination after learning about the truth of why her late brother’s body had ended up cremated six years ago.
That had been the catalyst of her family’s ruin—Trystan’s death. Portia had only been sixteen, her parents in their early fifties. The house had felt empty for years without her older brother stomping around, but that had been when he was still alive, just ‘out there’. After they’d gotten word of his passing, the house hadn’t felt empty; it had felt hollow. Spiritless. Hope having evaporated like any chance of snow on a frigid night. It had felt like a dark frost had swept through the Rothschild household, and that feeling hadn’t been the worst of it.
After the cremation, the service that had felt all wrong, after a little more than a month when their midwestern friends and extended family had moved on, when life was supposed to go back to normal… that’s when things had gone from bad to worse. The pretending. The showing the small-town how ‘fine’ they were. Portia’s father hadn’t been able to do it.
It wasn’t Portia who had found him swinging—lifelessly—from a rope in the barn, but that was the image that had surged to her mind and stayed there when her mother, having gone outside to feed the chickens and tend to the horses, had uttered the darkest words of both their lives…
‘He’s left us for the Lord.’
It had been a stoic moment, but that was what had been so disturbing about it. ‘Hung himself,’ her mother had concluded as she’d held an arm around Portia while they waited on the front porch for the police to arrive.
Her mother hadn’t lasted much longer after that, but her particular brand of suicide was slow and devastating. She’d chosen to drink herself to death, and though, four years later, it had been falling asleep with a lit cigarette between her fingers that had technically caused her life to end—death by raging flames that took with it the Rothschild farmhouse—Portia knew as she’d dragged herself across the wet lawn, having narrowly escaped the same fate, that her mother had meant to end it this way, to leave Portia and all of life in order to be with the same cruel lord who had allowed Trystan to wind up in a body bag.
If her gloved hands hadn’t felt so numb they’d be balled in angry fists by now. Her cheeks were too stiff with the cold to express the grimace she felt. She’d loved her family, but God damn them all for having collapsed so easily. She knew it was low, but she blamed Trystan most of all. Maybe it was easier that way, to hold the dead responsible.
She pushed the callous thought from her rage-clouded mind and took note of the building numbers once she realized she’d just crossed 28th Street. The coffee shop should be right around here. She slowed her step as pedestrians, bundled-up and hunching against the harsh weather, streamed past her in all directions.
There it was.
The Coffee Bean, one of probably thirty in this city, but this was definitely the correct location.
She glanced over her shoulder as the claw of her freezing hand scooped at the entrance door handle. It wouldn’t be easy to tell if she was being followed given the low light and sea of pedestrians, but she’d checked over her shoulder and across the street time and again during the long walk. She hadn’t seen any of the same faces, certainly none from the Cromwell building; that was all that mattered.
Inside the warm coffee shop, she stripped off her gloves and blew on her hands, eyeing the three cramped tables that spanned the storefront windows. All were occupied by customers with laptop computers, each showing no signs of leaving. She could use the overcrowded setting to her advantage.
It was the middle table.
She eyed it and its occupant for a careful beat. The man at the table was middle-aged, bald, his glasses pushed so far up his nose that his eyelashes were probably brushing glass. He wasn’t typing away, but his computer had clearly caused the bustling room to disappear all around him. The chair opposite him was empty.
Portia sat.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she apologized when he glanced up, all the while her thawing fingers grazed along the underside of the table.
Searching. Feeling. There!
The small package was taped securely. Damn, she wouldn’t be able to tear it off without rocking the whole table.
“Not at all,” he said, his eyes brightening with an idea. “Do you mind watching my computer while I run to the bathroom?”
Perfect.
“Of course not. Go ahead,” she encouraged.
The second he started off for the back of the coffee shop, she slid her eyes across the room. No one was looking at her.
Yanking hard, she freed the package and discretely slipped it into the deep pocket of her winter coat. She could open it in the elevator of the Cromwell building. She needed to get back. There were mailboxes on nearly every street corner in Manhattan and though she’d set her mind on the excuse should Nathan or anyone ask, she didn’t feel like coming off like some kind of moron who couldn’t find a mailbox to save her life—which would be the drawn conclusion if she returned a full hour after having set off into the night.
When the man returned after taking advantage of the situation by standing in line to buy himself another cup of coffee which seemed to take an eternity, Portia sprang to her feet and barely heard him thanking her as she hustled out of The Coffee Bean and up Fifth Avenue.
Nathan was a dark man. She’d known that going into this thing. But she hadn’t expected to be attracted to him.
She knew what it meant to sign a contract with The Infidelity Corporation. She knew it had been her only option in order to get close to him, get inside Cromwell, and play her part in righting the serious wrongs of the past. No one had sugarcoated it. Signing a year of her life away to Nathan Cromwell meant she was interested in exploring the same sexual proclivities that made him tick—proclivities that she’d been warned about. But she’d gone into this calculated. She’d been informed about how picky Nathan was even before she set foot in Infidelity. She’d been matched with Nathan, as planned, because she’d convinced all involved that she got off on ‘being anyone a man wants her to be’.
Still, nothing could have prepared her for that room.
And even more shocking, nothing could have prepared Portia for how much she liked it.
He had only tied her up—wrapped her wrists in leather-clad handcuffs, leaving her feet free.
Yes, he’d stripped off her sweatshirt, and yes, he’d left her nude from the waist up. But like last night in the wing of his Long Island estate, he’d only looked at her.
He hadn’t touched.
That was what was so puzzling about it all.
She had gone into this thing wanting or needing or expecting to hate him.
But so far, the greatest emotion she felt while in his presence was ‘yearning’.
She wanted him to put his hands on her.
Why?
As soon as she reached the Cromwell building, the blustery wind at her back, the glass doors slid open and one of the guards at the far side of the grand lobby where a line of turn-styles slowed employee foot-traffic down waved her over.
It seemed all the Cromwell staff in the security department had been made aware of Portia’s importance. The uniformed guard invited her through the turn-style he was overseeing and barked at the long line of disgruntled people who didn’t appreciate being ‘cut’. She thanked him and as she set off for the elevator banks, another security guard met her immediately and wasted no time helping her into an open and vacant elevator he’d apparently been holding just for her.
“May I ride alone?” she asked then quickly confided, “I’d like to powder my nose.”
Without a word, he nodded and barred anyone else from stepping inside. There were more complaints from the cluster of impatient employees who had been waiting, but Portia didn’t feel so much as a twinge of guilt. She needed every moment of privacy she could get to open the package.
The elevator was fast and she felt her stomach drop, as she tore the little cardboard box open and pulled the device out—a flat, round microphone with a wire poking out, otherwise known as a ‘bug’.
Shoving the empty, torn box into one pocket, she scrutinized the bug until she determined which flat side of the microphone was adhesive, as indicated by a thin piece of plastic. Having figured that out, she stripped away the plastic and, cupping the bug in her balled hand, tucked it into her other pocket. It might be awkward to walk around with one hand hidden deep in her winter coat, but she had no choice at this point.
The elevator dinged open on the thirty-seventh floor and she stepped into the handsome anteroom where Nathan had left her. As she neared the lounge area, she cut her eyes to his office door—still closed—good.
“May I take your coat?” she heard a woman ask from behind her.
She was just about to round into the lounge area and take a seat, but she turned to see who was addressing her.
The doe-eyed receptionist had left her post and was smiling up at Portia.
“Thank you,” she said, shrugging off her winter coat, her right hand remaining balled around the bug. This felt risky, but she couldn’t very well get inside Nathan’s office all bundled up for the freezing outdoors.
The Cromwell building and most importantly, both Nathan and Guinevere’s offices, had been combed, all prior recording devices discovered and discarded. They both presumed their offices were ‘safe’, which meant they might be loosening their lips already. She needed to get inside Nathan’s office, press the sticky bug somewhere out of sight, and not get caught.
Her heart was punching hard in her chest and she felt like she couldn’t catch her breath, as she watched the receptionist disappear around a corner with her winter coat.
She took a seat, but had no chance to settle and calm.
Nathan’s office door breezed open and he escorted three business men through the anteroom and into the marble corridor where the elevator banks were.
Portia watched him as he engaged in what sounded like hushed, grave conversation. He was giving the men his full attention, his back to the anteroom.
She cut her eyes to the receptionist who had just taken a phone call, her big eyes now glued to her computer monitor, fingers typing away.
Now or never.
Soundlessly, Portia slipped into Nathan’s office and began frantically scanning the large room, her gaze darting from his massive desk to the potted plants to the leather couch and minibar, hunting for a suitable place to tuck the bug.
“Any calls?” she heard Nathan ask the receptionist.
He was heading this way.
She sprang around to the business side of his desk and, with her heart punching up her throat, pressed the bug to the underside of the lap drawer then, pulse racing and head pounding, spilled towards the floor-to-ceiling windows and stilled, staring out at the impressive view.
Sensing Nathan had returned and also sensing his sudden tension at finding her in his office, uninvited, she said without taking her eyes from the twinkling view as wind beat against the thick pane, “Forgive me, but I had to see what Manhattan looks like from the thirty-seventh floor. I’ve never been up so high.”
“Forgive you?” he challenged.
When she finally glanced over her shoulder at him, his eyes darkened.
“Punishing you would be far more appropriate.”
It scared her.
But she was too thrilled to care.