The Notorious Pagan Jones. Nina Berry
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A slim figure in a perfectly tailored black suit detached itself from the shadows and stepped into a pool of light.
Devin Black was in New York, waiting for her.
The maître d’ swept his narrowed gaze over Devin and Pagan. When he looked up, he was smiling. They had passed some unspoken test. “Welcome to the Panorama Room,” he said. “Do you have a reservation?”
“Do we need one?” Devin stepped closer and slid a folded bill into the man’s ready left hand.
“Not at all!” The maître d’ slipped the money into the interior pocket of his suit jacket. “This way, please!”
He led them across the polka-dot carpet around the perimeter of the dimly lit circular lounge, to a table overlooking the restaurant’s sweeping view of the curving interior of the Pan Am Terminal. Taking hold of one of the transparent Lucite chairs, the maître d’ slid it back and bowed a little toward Pagan. “Mademoiselle.”
Pagan sank down on the cushioned seat as Devin sat opposite. Below them the white expanse of the new terminal spread like some adult version of Tomorrowland. On a Tuesday night, the place was quiet, the baggage check-in empty. Ladies in Pan Am blue rested their elbows against the white seat-selection counter, talking in low voices. A few waiting passengers smoked in rows of square padded seats, feet up on coffin-shaped tables. Beyond the outer wall, or rather, a curtain of glass, skycaps waited for arriving passengers on a wide concrete porch.
A white-coated waiter arrived to turn their water glasses over and give them menus. Devin waved him away. “I’ll have a salad with vinaigrette and a flank steak, medium rare.”
Pagan’s simmering frustration and anger at being tracked down nearly boiled over. That was exactly what she wanted to order. She pondered snatching a menu and making them both wait for a good long time while she pretended to decide, but she was hungry. “I’ll have the same,” she said.
The waiter put the menus under his arm with a flourish. “And to drink?”
She looked Devin dead in the eye. “Water.”
Devin smiled. “As the lady said. And please let the cook know we have to catch the flight to Berlin in an hour.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll put your order at the top of the list.” The waiter gave a little bow and hustled off.
Pagan kept staring at Devin. “I know how you did it.”
He stared back. “And I know how you did it.”
That almost threw her, but she plowed on. “Somehow you arranged for every seat on every direct flight to New York to be sold out, which forced me to do a stopover in Chicago. That delayed me long enough to let you get here first.”
His blue eyes narrowed. “Your father had a bunch of cash in his safe, and you knew the combination.”
“And you have your own boatload of cash—enough to buy up every empty seat on every plane to New York,” she said. “The benefits of working for a big movie studio.”
“You know every creaky board in your house,” he said.
She shrugged. “The benefits of a misspent youth.”
He opened his hands as if releasing all control. “Perhaps all this was meant to be.”
“Nicky used to say that all the time, about the two of us,” she said with heat. “We were ‘meant to be.’ Turns out he was full of baloney, and so are you.”
His expression got serious. “So you heard about Nicky.”
She shot him a poisonous look and said nothing.
He studied her, eyebrows furrowed. “I wanted to break that to you gently.”
She took a sip of water to calm herself. “Nicky told me he would marry me the first day we met. I told him I’d never get married, but he didn’t believe me. Nobody believes me.”
“He’s a romantic.” Devin’s voice was dry. “Romantics believe what they’re saying when they say it. And they believe it just as much when they say the opposite a few days later.”
“He had rheumatic fever when he was a kid, and it damaged his heart.” Pagan took another sip of water, watching Devin’s face closely. He didn’t appear surprised, even though Nicky’s condition wasn’t public knowledge. “It makes him want to live every moment to the fullest. He doesn’t pussyfoot around. He jumps right in.”
“And you think he jumped into the first girl who looked like you and married her.” Devin considered the prospect. “Probably. He’s a fool.”
“I was his girlfriend for nearly a year,” Pagan said, not ready to forgive Devin yet for tracking her down. “What does that make me?”
“Young,” he replied.
“When you are so old and wise.” She eyed him, seated so comfortably across from her in his pricey suit with the sophisticated air of a man twice his age. He was awfully cagey, Devin Black. He must have a lot to hide.
Time to find out more about this so-called legal guardian of hers. She needed leverage if she was ever going to truly escape him. She made a wild guess, based on nothing more than instinct. “Coming from a rich family makes you pretentious, not more mature.”
He smiled skeptically. “Whereas growing up in Hollywood makes you down-to-earth?”
She waved aside this attempt to insult her, intent on wringing some kind of admission from him. “No studio pays press agents enough to have custom-made Savile Row suits,” she said. “Did your mother pick it out for you?”
His smile broadened. “Mother can’t be bothered with my suits. She’s too busy ruling her little kingdom of wealthy socialites.” He shrugged the elegant shoulders of his jacket. “You’re right, of course. I had no idea you were so observant.”
So his mother was still alive, and he referred to her as “Mother” rather than “Mom.” A distant, formal relationship then.
The waiter was approaching with their food. She moved her water glass aside. “And your father? Does he rule that tiny kingdom by her side? Or is he like my dad was—just happy to be on the team?”
Devin’s face went blank. The emptiness there was so profound, a chill ran down the back of her neck.
Then the waiter was at the table, putting down plates of rosy butterflied steak filets and snowy white mashed potatoes dolloped with chunks of golden butter.
Devin picked up his fork and knife, contemplating his food with anticipation, and the moment was gone.
“Looks good, doesn’t it?” He nodded at the waiter. “Thank you.”
He began cutting the steak, and she took up her own utensils, waiting for a response to her question. But he only made a small appreciative sound as he took a bite. “I always eat here if I’m stuck waiting for a flight,” he said. “Better than the Clipper Club.”
The warm rich smell wafting up from her plate was making her mouth water, so she cut into her steak. But she made a mental note: Devin didn’t like discussing his father. That relationship held some kind of secret pain for him, and knowing that, she’d gained a tiny victory. He knew so much about her, it was only fair that she find out more about him, and she resolved to dig further into this whole father issue of his when she could.
The filet melted between her teeth. She groaned involuntarily with pleasure. She hadn’t tasted anything so delicious in months.
“See?” Devin cut himself another neat piece. “Did you want sour cream for your potatoes?”