Taking Turns (Turning #1)(20)

Why are there so many people here? It’s after one in the morning.

Why, Chella? You know why.

It’s a gentlemen’s club.

This is a sex club and Smith Baldwin brought me here to f*ck his friend.

“Chella,” Matisse says, gently grabbing my arm as I wait my turn at the coat check. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’ll take you home.”

“My car—”

“I’ll take you to your car.”

“No,” I say, pulling away so he has to let go of my arm. “I’ll get a cab.”

The girl comes with my coat, even though I never asked for it, and I slip it on and escape outside before Matisse can say anything else.

I stop on the wet sidewalk, the cool air washing over me. Small snowflakes stick to my face. Melt from the heat of my embarrassment.

The door opens behind me and I’m sure it’s going to be Matisse, but it’s not.

“My driver will take you to your car, Marcella.”

It’s Smith.

The driver is suddenly there, opening the door of the long, black car.

“Get in,” Smith says. “If you walk, I’ll follow you, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want that to happen.”

I get in, expecting him to get in with me. But he doesn’t. He closes the door, speaks to the driver, and then walks back inside Turning Point Club, hands in his trouser pockets, like this is just another task he needed to check off his list for the day.

The driver takes me to my car. I don’t even have to tell him where I’m parked. But I guess it’s easy enough to find out, if someone was stalking me.

Someone was definitely stalking me.

I get out of the car before the driver can open my door, and I’m inside my Mercedes breathing hard and confused before he can say anything. I turn the car on, check my mirror, and back out. The limo is still here. The driver backed up far enough to let me maneuver. But when I make my way to the garage exit, he follows me.

He follows me out onto the street. All the way to my townhouse on Little Raven Street. When I close up my garage, he’s still waiting. But when I get inside the house, go up one flight of steps in the dark, and look out the guest room window that faces the alley, he’s gone.

I check the front of the house too.

No one.

And then I do something I almost never do.

I set my house alarm.





Chapter Seven - Smith




Her house is huge. I’m surprised she needs so much space. It’s got five bedrooms, plus an office and what might be a library. That room is lined with custom shelves, but no books. In fact, there’s almost nothing personal about this place at all. It looks… staged.

Is she selling it? Does this furniture belong to someone else?

I do a quick search of her address on a real estate site, but no. Not listed for sale.

“Huh,” I say out loud as I take a seat in a low chair placed in front of the window that faces the brick-walled courtyard in the back.

I don’t know what to make of Marcella Walcott. Why did she agree to whatever plan Rochelle had? Why did she let Quin f*ck her? Why did she come to dinner tonight if she was just going to walk out?

It doesn’t add up. If she wants to be Rochelle’s replacement—if, in fact, that was what Rochelle’s plan was—then why walk out on Matisse?

I could think of a lot of worse-looking men than Matisse. I think he’s good-looking. If I was into men that way, I’d f*ck him. And he’s a goddamned celebrity in her world. She was gushing all over his work today. The smile on her face…

I sigh as the garage door rumbles open in another part of the house.

I could just ask her.

But not tonight.

I smile and get up out of the chair just as she comes bursting through a door in some other room. A few seconds later she runs past me, taking the stairs two at a time. Footsteps over my head as she goes into one of the guest bedrooms. One that faces the alley. A few seconds later she crosses the hallway—I can see her through a cable railing above—and goes into another guest room.

What the f*ck is she doing?

I wait, listening. She’s breathing heavy when she comes out of that room and jogs up the stairs to the top floor where her bedroom is.

And that bedroom, wow. Talk about boring.

There’s a series of beeps as she arms the house alarm.

I smile again.

Because she just locked me in here with her.

I sit back down in my chair and wait her out, staring at an ugly-as-f*ck orange accent wall that needs to find its way back to the Seventies where it came from. I wait and see if she comes downstairs to get something to eat. But she doesn’t. She gets in the shower. It’s a long one. So long I get bored and go upstairs to watch her through the clear glass. She’s got her eyes closed as the water flows down her face, her breasts, her legs.

If she opened them right now, she’d see me. But she doesn’t. Just stays like that, like she’s washing something away.

I shrug and step back into the bedroom, casually looking through her drawers. When she turns the water off, I take a pair of panties out of her underwear drawer and push it closed. They are black lace. Boy shorts, I think they call them. The ones that ride up the ass cheeks. I like those, so I put them in my suit pocket.