LITMIR.BIZ

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always preferred his own company to that of others. Well, except for Charlotte, but that was because she had been a solitary creature herself. Marcus had never really felt as if he had that much in common with others, anyway. If he wanted companionship, it was easy to find it. There was always someone he could call or someplace he could go where, in a matter of minutes, he would be surrounded. Sometimes by friends, more often by acquaintances he pretended were friends, but the point was, he liked being alone.

      He didn’t like it this morning. Della’s absence surrounded him like a rank, fetid carcass.

      He rose and shrugged on his robe, knotting it around his waist as he moved to the window. In the sliver of moonlight that spilled through a slit in the curtains, he glimpsed a piece of paper lying on the table between the two chairs where he and Della had sat only hours ago.

      Something hitched tight in his chest as he reached for it, because he thought it was a note from her. But it was the paper on which he’d written his numbers for her the day before. She’d left it behind. Because she’d wanted to make clear to him that she wouldn’t be contacting him in the future.

      She’d said she’d found trouble in New York. He couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble a woman like her could be in. But if Della said she was in trouble, then she was in trouble. And if she’d said he couldn’t help her …

      Well, there she could be wrong.

      Marcus crumpled the paper in his palm and tossed it onto the table, then pulled back the drape. The sky was black and crystal clear beyond, dotted with stars that winked like gemstones under theater lights. Uncaring of the bitter cold, he unlatched the window and shoved it open as far as it would go—which was barely wide enough for him to stick his head through—then gazed down onto Michigan Avenue. He’d never seen the street deserted before, regardless of the hour, but it was now, even though the snowplows had been through. People had yet to brave their way out into the remnants of the blizzard and probably wouldn’t until after the sun rose.

      For some reason, Marcus looked to his right and saw the red lights of a retreating car disappear around a corner some blocks up. Another light atop it indicated it was a taxi. Della’s taxi. He knew that as well as he knew his own name.

      As well as he knew her name, too.

      Never had he been more grateful for his lack of decorum than he was in that moment. Had he not rifled through her purse, he would have nothing of her now save her first name. Well, that and the memory of the most unforgettable weekend he’d ever spent with anyone. Now there was another reason he wouldn’t forget it. Because he knew where to find Della Hannan. Maybe not in Chicago, but he did in New York. And that alone was worth its weight in gold. Provided one knew the right people.

      And Marcus definitely knew the right people.

      His cheeks began to burn in the freezing temperature, so he closed the window and retreated into the room. He scooped up his jacket from the back of the chair as he passed it, then sat on the side of the bed and dug his phone out of the inside pocket. He and Della had switched off their phones shortly after entering the room and had promised to keep them off, and he had kept that promise—at least where his own phone was concerned. Now that their brief interlude was over, he switched it back on. A dozen voice mails awaited him. He ignored them all and went right to his contacts, scrolling through to the one he wanted. A private detective he’d used a number of times, but always only with regard to business. Nevertheless the man had an excellent reputation when it came to investigations of a personal nature, too. Just how excellent, Marcus was about to discover.

      He punched the talk button, and after three rings, a voice on the other end answered. Answered with a filthy epithet, but then, that wasn’t unexpected considering the source. Or the time of night.

      “Damien, it’s Marcus Fallon.” He gave the other man a few seconds for the synapses in his brain to connect the dots.

      “Right,” Damien finally said. “Whattaya need?”

      “I need your services for something a little different from what I normally hire you for.” “No problem.”

      “I have a name, a physical description and a former address in New York City. Can you find a person who’s now living in Chicago with that?”

      “Sure.”

      “Can you do it soon?” “Depends.”

      “On what?” Marcus asked.

      “On how bad the person wants to be found.”

      “How about on how bad I want the person found?”

      It took another few seconds for more synapses to find their way to the meaning. “How much?” Damien asked.

      Marcus relaxed. This was the thing he did best in the world. Well, other than the thing he and Della had spent the weekend doing. He started to turn on the bedside lamp, then remembered he would only see an empty room and changed his mind. “Tell you what,” he said, “let’s you and I negotiate a deal.”

      Della had been forced to part with a lot of things in her life. Her family, her friends and her home—such as they were—when she left the old neighborhood at eighteen. Jobs, offices and acquaintances as she’d climbed the professional ladder, moving from one part of Whitworth and Stone to another. An entire new life she’d built for herself in Manhattan. Soon she’d be parting with everything that had become familiar to her in Chicago.

      But she didn’t think any of those things had been as painful to part with as the crimson velvet Carolina Herrera gown and Dolce & Gabbana shoes, not to mention the Bulgari earrings and pendant and the black silk Valentino opera coat. Not because they were so beautiful and rich and expensive. But because they were the only mementos she had of the time she’d spent with Marcus.

      The only physical mementos, at any rate, since she’d left behind the paper on which he’d recorded all of his phone numbers—something for which she was kicking herself now, even if she had memorized all of them. It would have been nice to have something he’d touched, something personal in his own handwriting.

      And when had she turned into such a raging sentimentalist? Never in her life had she wanted a personal memento from anyone. Not even Egan Collingwood. That was probably significant, but she refused to think about how.

      Besides, it wasn’t as though she didn’t have plenty of other reminders of Marcus, she thought as she watched Ava Brenner, the proprietress of Talk of the Town, write out a receipt for the return of the rentals. Della had her memories. Memories that would haunt her for the rest of her life. The way Marcus had traced his fingertips so seductively over the rim of his champagne glass when they were in the club. How his brown eyes had seemed to flash gold when he laughed. The way his jacket had felt and smelled as he draped it over her shoulders. How the snow had sparkled as it had fluttered around him on the terrace and came to rest against his dark hair. The way his voice had rumbled against her ear when he murmured such erotic promises during their lovemaking

      But mostly, she would remember the way he looked lying asleep in their bed before she left him.

      He’d been lying on his side facing the place where she had been sleeping, his arm thrown across the mattress where she had lain—she’d awoken to find it draped over her. He’d been bathed in a slash of moonlight that tumbled through the window from the clear sky outside. His hair had been tousled from their final coupling, and his expression, for the first time since she met him, had been utterly, absolutely clear. He’d looked … happy. Content. Fulfilled. As if he’d learned the answer to some ancient question that no one else understood.

      She’d tried to write him a note, had tried to capture in writing what she so desperately wanted to say to him. But when she’d realized what it was she wanted to say, she’d torn the paper into tiny pieces and let them fall like snowflakes into the tiny handbag that now lay on the counter between her and Ava. They had been silly, anyway, the feelings she’d begun to think she had for him. Impossible, too. Not only because she’d known him less than forty-eight hours. And not only because he was still carrying a torch for someone else.

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