All the Lies We Tell Read online

  “Yeah?”

  “Ilya, it’s Theresa.” She started talking before he could answer, not wanting to give him a chance to speak. “I know you’ve spoken to Alicia about this offer. I want to talk to you about it.”

  “I already told her the same thing I’m going to tell you,” he said. “The answer is no. And, also, right now I’m staring out at a beach and the ocean, so this is the last thing in the world I want to talk about.”

  “Wait! Please,” she added, softer. “When will you be back?”

  There was silence, and she was sure he was going to disconnect, but after a long, disgruntled sigh, Ilya said, “The end of next week.”

  “Will you at least meet with me? You and Alicia. I can outline all the plans and what will happen—”

  “None of that matters. You can tell me whatever you want, but you know as well as I do that once they get the property, they’ll do whatever they want with it.”

  “I can make sure the contracts are written in your favor,” she said, her fingers crossing that she could make that be true.

  Ilya made another of those noises. “What’s your deal with this project, anyway?”

  “It’s a lot of money. I work on commission.” He didn’t need to know why she needed the money, what she intended to do with it. That was her business, not his.

  “I don’t want to talk about this now, Theresa. I’m about to head out into clean, warm water and look at beautiful things. And I don’t just mean the fish, I meant the women in bikinis,” Ilya said.

  Theresa felt herself grimace, though why should she care what—or who—Ilya Stern did? It was the way he said it, like he was trying to rub her face in it for some reason. She wasn’t going to let it get to her.

  “Just say you’ll meet with me and Alicia when you get back,” she said.

  “Fine. If it will get you both off my case. I gotta go,” he said again, and hung up.

  Maybe it was because he felt bad about what had happened in their family so many years ago. A guilt that had nothing to do with him, but one she would exploit to get what she needed. She didn’t have to be proud of herself. She just needed to get him to agree to do it.

  She had another call to make: one of less importance, but one that at least had a bit less selfish motivation behind it. She pressed in the numbers and waited.

  “Hey,” Wayne said, somewhat warily. “What’s up?”

  Theresa closed her eyes briefly, then forced a smile. People could hear it, if you were smiling. It made them feel better about your conversation. She’d learned that in one of those trust-building classes she’d taken, one that had done very little to make it easier for her to trust and a whole lot better at manipulating people into trusting her.

  “Hey,” she said. “So, listen. I can come pick up those boxes tonight, if you’re going to be around.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “And, Wayne, do you have some time to also talk about something?”

  She heard the hope in his voice when he answered. “Yeah. Sure. I thought you didn’t want . . . but sure, of course. I’ll see you when?”

  “In about an hour.”

  “Great. See you.”

  He thought she wanted to talk about getting back together. She knew it. She also knew that when she told him that she’d secured the verbal commitment from the co-owners of the old Quarrytown quarry, along with the existing dive shop and all the accompanying equipment, he was going to move on the acquisition, because if there was one thing Wayne craved, it was always that next deal.

  Her phone still clutched in her palm, Theresa allowed herself to take a long, deep breath. Time was closing in on her. If she didn’t get this deal signed, sealed, and delivered, it was going to fall through, and while it wouldn’t be the end of her career, it felt very much like it might be the end of her rope.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Dinner and a movie. Nothing terribly special about it. Pretty standard date fare. Pretty normal night out, even if you weren’t on a date but simply hanging with a longtime childhood friend, the younger brother of the man you used to share toothpaste with.

  This was so a date.

  With dessert afterward at the coffee shop, right out there in public where anyone in the whole world could see them, Alicia did wonder for half a second if they weren’t making a big mistake. If maybe it would’ve been smarter, better, easier, to keep meeting in hotel rooms and having furtive, fantastic sex. It had been Nikolai who’d asked her to go out with him, and although it hadn’t taken her more than three seconds to make up her mind and say yes, Alicia was second-guessing her decision a little bit now.

  “Niko! Hey, man!” The guy with the receding hairline who clapped Nikolai on the shoulder shot Alicia a look. “Hey, Allie.”

  Nikolai looked a little confused at first, so Alicia filled in the blanks for him. “Hey, Mike. Good to see you.”

  “I didn’t know you were back in town. Heard about your grandma. I’m sorry.” Mike Taylor, the guy who’d once bragged to Niko about kissing her, glanced at Alicia again and gave her a nod. “Where’s Ilya?”

  “He’s on a dive trip,” she answered. “Jamaica.”

  “Lucky bastard. Here we are freezing our tits off, and he gets to go to Jamaica?” Mike shook his head and, without asking, pulled out a chair and sat. “Niko, man, where’ve you been? What’ve you been up to?”

  The positive side to this was that Mike clearly did not seem to think he was interrupting anything important, which meant he didn’t assume they were together as anything more than old friends. The bad thing was he was totally interrupting, and there wasn’t much Alicia could say about it. She shot Nikolai a pleading look, but he was leaning forward to hear something Mike was saying and didn’t see her.

  In the next minute, she caught a wave from across the room from another high school friend, Tammy Peters. She was sitting with a bunch of her girlfriends. Alicia had seen them all around, of course—she and Tammy had been good friends a few years back, before Tammy had a baby and had sort of dropped everything in favor of being a stay-at-home mom. They still kept in touch, but since all the conversations had started revolving around baby stuff, the friendship had faltered.

  “Be right back,” she said to Nikolai, and got up to say hi to the table of women clustered in the corner. Each of them had a copy of the same book, some battered and some pristine. Ah. Book club.

  “Allie, hey! Hi! Grab a chair!” Tammy said.

  “Oh, I can’t interrupt book club,” Alicia said. “Besides, I haven’t read the book.”

  A woman sitting against the wall shook her pixie haircut so her long silver earrings swung. “You didn’t miss much.”

  “Amy hated it,” Tammy said. “Most of us liked it. But what have you been up to? It’s been ages.”

  Amy clearly had other concerns. “Is that Niko Stern over there with you and Mike?”

  “Yeah.” She remembered Amy now. A year ahead of her in school. She and Jennilynn had been frenemies, both of them on the cheerleading squad.

  “He grew up nice,” Amy said with a slide of her tongue along her teeth that made Alicia want to slap the smug right off her face.

  “His grandma died, right? My sister-in-law works at Country View. She said she’d seen you there.” Tammy frowned. “Sorry. I know she was a nice lady. I met her once, that time at your house.”

  Alicia glanced over her shoulder. Mike seemed to be regaling Nikolai with some complicated story that required a lot of hand gestures. Nikolai was listening, laughing even, but when he looked up and his eyes sought the room for her, the look on his face as his gaze settled on her sent a rush of warmth through her so fierce it made her sweat. This man, with one look, could make her shake.

  “Sure you don’t want to sit? We have a space. We’re all done talking about the book.” Tammy grinned.

  “I’m actually on my way to the ladies’ room,” Alicia said.

  “Maybe next month you’d like to join us?” Tammy glanced around a