Talia’s gaze moved from the manuscript back up to Drex. His smile was smug, his eyes glinting with insinuation, and she was certain he shifted them ever so subtly to the spot near her mouth that he’d touched with his thumb.

Before she gave in to the temptation to cross the room and slap him as hard as she could, she turned her back to him and addressed Elaine. “I’m sure he’ll benefit from your opinion.”

“He already has. He bounced several titles off me, and we decided on one just before you got here. Am I at liberty to tell her, Drex?”

“I’d rather keep it between us for now.”

Taking in the scene, Talia noticed that Elaine’s high-heeled sandals were lying on their sides in front of the sofa. Drex’s suit jacket was folded over the arm of a chair. Two half-filled highball glasses were on the coffee table. A gas fire flickered in the fireplace. It lent a romantic ambiance, but wasn’t radiating any heat.

Talia’s cheeks, however, were. She was furious over the way he had played her. It was an insult that he had asked Elaine to read his manuscript when he had soundly rejected her offer to do so. He was also playing Elaine in the very manner that Talia had warned him against.

“What’s keeping Jasper?” Elaine asked.

Talia hid her anger behind a rueful smile. “He sends his regrets.”

“He’s not coming? Why?”

“I would have notified you, but I didn’t know myself until we were due to leave. He waited until the last minute to tell me so I wouldn’t cancel on you. He insisted I come on. Besides, the plan was for us to drive you tonight. He didn’t want to stand you up. As it turns out…” She let the statement go unfinished except for a one-shoulder shrug and a backward nod toward Drex.

He said, “Why isn’t Jasper coming?”

She turned around to face him. “Tummy issues.”

“A bug?”

“The oysters he had for lunch.”

Elaine said, “I used to warn my husband against eating them raw.”

Neither Drex nor Talia contributed anything to that. He was still looking at her as though they shared an inside joke. A naughty inside joke. Spending an evening in his company would be intolerable.

“I hate to bail on you, too,” she said to Elaine. “But I really feel I should go home and make certain that Jasper is all right.”

Elaine stepped forward and hooked arms with her. “Nonsense. You know how men are when they’re sick. They’re either pitiful and want their mommy or they’re ornery. I believe Jasper would fall into the second category. Besides, I’m not about to let you waste that knockout dress. Drex, you don’t mind escorting both of us, do you?”

The dimple appeared. “It’ll be my pleasure. And I would hate to waste one of the desserts I took the liberty of pre-ordering.”

“Oooh, what?” Elaine said.

“Chocolate soufflé.”

The sly look he gave Talia set her teeth on edge.

He walked over to the bar, turned to her, and arched his brow. “Can I pour you a nice red wine?”

Ungently she tossed her handbag into the nearest chair. “No. Vodka martini. Dry. Straight up.”

He wanted to kill her.

But first, he wanted to fuck her.

No, he wanted to fuck her, then torment her, then kill her.

Drex had been experiencing these violent urges ever since he’d seen her in that photograph taken aboard Marian Harris’s yacht, separated from Jasper Ford by several yards, but there. The two of them.

“All that bullshit about the client complaint, the email exchange, the hand-delivered roses, was just that: bullshit,” he’d told Mike and Gif when he’d recovered from the shock and was composed enough to call them.

“You’re sure it’s her?” Mike had asked. “I mean, Gif and me thought so, but we’re going only by pictures. You’ve been up close and personal.”

They didn’t know how up close, how personal. “It’s her.”

“So what do you think?” Mike had asked. “Is she her husband’s next victim, or his accomplice?”

“Hell I know,” Drex had muttered in reply.

After seeing her and Jasper in such close proximity on the yacht’s deck, when they weren’t even supposed to have known each other at the time, he had methodically reviewed each of his own encounters with Talia, assessing them in a new light. Especially her unannounced visit to his grubby living quarters.

Providing him a list of restaurants had been an acceptable excuse for her coming over, but it was just as likely that Jasper had sent her on a fact-finding mission. If she had come to his door wearing a see-through negligee, it couldn’t have looked any sexier than her jeans and t-shirt. But maybe that downplayed wardrobe had been calculated to make the visit seem neighborly and innocent.

Was the speck of icing an accidental and unnoticed leftover from breakfast, or had she dabbed it on deliberately, placing it in a spot that couldn’t possibly escape his notice? A spot that had made his loins achy and tight.

The question about her culpability hung there unanswered until Mike said, “Drex, let me pose a question that might simplify and clarify your thinking.”

“Shoot.”

“If she’s in the dark about her husband and his past misdeeds, why did she lie to you about how they hooked up?”

The three of them had pondered the question in silence.

It was Drex who finally spoke, grumbling, “Here I’ve been losing sleep from worrying about her safety.”

And here he was now, topping off Elaine’s wineglass with the last of their second bottle. He’d never endured such a long dinner in his life. It was torture. From the instant Talia had come through Elaine’s front door, he’d been baiting her, and it had worked. She had flung her small purse into the armchair as though throwing down a spiked gauntlet.

Inside that dress—which, by the way, was a slinky knockout worn with no detectable undergarments—she was steaming. Her entire body vibrated with indignation every time she looked at him, which wasn’t often. In fact, for most of the dinner, she ignored him completely.

He wondered if her obvious ire had anything to do with that laden moment on his threshold, from which she had run like the apartment had burst into flames. Maybe his suggestive action had offended her.

But he figured her truculent mood tonight had more to do with Elaine, who was reacting to his courtly attention as forecast, which was exactly what Talia had wanted to guard against.

Elaine’s effervescence made her impossible to dislike, but, as though sensing the strain between Talia and him, she’d appointed herself social chair of the trio and couldn’t leave even the briefest silence alone. She filled any gap in the conversation with prattle. Drex responded as though delightfully entertained by every inanity, which fed Elaine’s flirtatiousness, which fueled Talia’s anger.

When they finished their entrées and were waiting for the soufflés to be served, Elaine excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, leaving him alone with Talia for the first time that evening. She took her cell phone from her handbag and typed a text.

“To Jasper?”

She said a terse yes. While waiting for a reply, she took a slow visual survey of the drapery valance, the chandelier, the weave pattern of the tablecloth. She picked at her slender diamond bracelet as though discovering that it had been clasped around her wrist without her knowledge. She did not look at him.