“Miss me already?” she asked archly.
“Probably as much as you miss Constance Sharp, now that her family’s collected her.”
“I enjoyed the old bag’s company while I had it. It was useful.”
“You’ll find that particular usefulness has a price.”
Missy toyed with the ruby pendant in her cle**age. “Men like you know what everything costs, don’t you? What’s it costing your little friend Trey, I wonder? His aunt raised such speculations about his childhood before her children whisked her away. Do you suppose Trey’s mean old daddy explains why he turned out the way he did?”
Zane had heard those speculations. He supported Trey in his decision not to address them publically. If people discovered how he and Trey were raised, so be it, but for every person who understood there’d be ten like Missy who’d twist the facts somehow. The world might enjoy putting them under that microscope, but it wasn’t their business.
No one should be forced to share their history.
“Careful,” he said to the model. “You sound like you’re implying bisexuality is a condition that needs explaining.”
“It would need explaining, if it hadn’t been invented by people who can’t admit what they are. If you’re g*y, just be g*y. Don’t lead honest women like me on.”
Zane let out a sigh, knowing this conversation was pointless. “I’m here to give you a warning. Leave off bothering me and mine, or I’ll make you sorry we ever met.”
“You’re threatening me?” she asked in mock horror. “That’s hardly cricket, Zane. I’m only here to support this fine charity.”
He looked straight into her eyes, waiting an extra beat for her to understand he was serious. “You don’t matter to me. Not as a supposed girlfriend and not as an enemy. Cause me the slightest inconvenience, and I’ll cut you off at the knees.”
This brought true anger into Missy’s expression. Face hard, she opened her mouth to speak. She was too late. He’d given Caroline the signal. The phone she always carried in her clutch purse rang.
“You’ll want to get that,” he said.
She dug it out with a muffled curse. It was a videophone, of course—the latest, smartest model available. The minute she answered, the file Charlie and Pete had found on the chauffeur’s laptop began to play. It showed her and Owens in bed in a hotel room. The picture was excellent, the sound a testament to Owens’ skill at concealing microphones. Missy gasped—and not because of the video’s graphic nature. Quite obviously, she hadn’t known she was being filmed. As she rode her young panting lover, not as gracefully as she thought, she gave him instructions for planting a camera to spy on Zane in his home. She called Zane a revolting cocksucker and Trey a flaming queer. Owens negotiated an additional payment for his risk, and Missy agreed to pay. If this got out, GLAAD would have her ass on a platter—and never mind Zane’s lawyers.
This, however, wasn’t the worst the footage had to reveal—or not from Missy’s perspective.
Excited by the topics she and her lover had been discussing, Missy tossed back her hair and came.
A sound like a dying walrus issued from the phone’s speakers. Missy might not mind the world seeing her naked, but she’d damn well mind them knowing the noise she made when she cl**axed.
Missy jabbed her phone off, but not before half a dozen people turned curiously toward the noise. “You wouldn’t,” she hissed, her eyes shooting flames. “That . . . that is a private thing!”
“I would,” Zane said, hard as steel. “What’s more, I want you to know I can. Anytime. To anyone. Any damn where you go. If you want your privacy respected, you need to stop violating other folks.’”
“No.” She grabbed for his sleeve, her fury tinged with pleading. “Don’t do this.”
Zane shook her off and touched his earpiece. “Make the delivery,” he said to Caroline.
Thankfully, this event was packed with people who didn’t turn off their lifelines for anyone. All around the ballroom, hundreds of phones in purses and pockets chirped and buzzed and played an endless variety of tunes. Attendees laughed, cheery from the free-flowing booze and food, assuming the charity had arranged a stunt to entertain them and raise money. As they opened the message they’d received, a chorus of moaning walruses succeeded the previous cacophony.
“Damn you,” Missy cursed, humiliation tears in her eyes.
Zane caught her wrist before she could storm past him. “It’s a cartoon.”
“What?” she said, tugging to get free.
“They’re watching a cartoon. Not your face. Not the rest of the vitriol you spouted. It’s a cartoon woman having sex, making that sound you do. The caption says, ‘What’s more generous than a big fat O? How about a check with a lot of O’s that helps save endangered tigers?’”
“I don’t believe you,” Missy said.
Zane turned his phone around to show her. “This is your only warning,” he said as she took it in. “Pull anything against anyone I care about, and this will seem like child’s play compared to how I’ll go after you.”
She looked from the screen to him.
“Child’s play,” he repeated.
He saw the intelligence he’d once admired come into her face. “You mean it,” she said, searching his expression.
“I will do whatever it takes to protect the people I love.”
Hurt flicked across her eyes an instant before she looked away. She shoved her own phone into her spangled purse. “I won’t bother you again,” she said.
~
Rebecca and Trey snagged a small stand-up table to sample the hors d’oeuvres. She’d meant everyone to share it, but they seemed to have disappeared. Most troubling, after Mystique’s big entrance, Zane had strode across the ballroom in the same direction.
Rather than give in to paranoia or jealousy, Rebecca frowned at the cell phone she’d just shut off.
“That was weird, huh?” she said to Trey. “Who knew the wildlife people were such pranksters?”
“Mm,” he said, attention focused where the well-dressed crowd might be concealing Zane and Mystique. He didn’t seem worried, but like he was distracted.
“They had to hack everyone’s phone to do it.”
“Maybe they had people’s numbers from their fundraising.”