Elastic Hearts (Hearts #3)(68)

“I’m not in the mood for games today. The pictures you sent me the other day were nothing.”

His expression turned serious as he set the glass of water down. “How much is Nicole Lane worth to you?”

My heart dropped. I stared at him for a long moment. “Her name is Nicole Alessi, and she doesn’t have a price tag.” I paused, feeling at odds with the situation for once. “Are you printing a story?”

“Not yet. I knew she was yours so I wanted to bring it to you first.”

Mine. Clearly he didn’t know the half of it if he was so nonchalant. I intended to keep it that way. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a USB, setting it on the table and sliding it across.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Compromising pictures.”

My throat tightened. I swallowed past the knot sitting there. I didn’t want to ask what kind of pictures they were. I took the USB from the table and put it in the pocket of my jacket. My chest burned in that spot.

“How’d you get it?”

Quinn shot me a look. “How do I get anything?”

“Who’s shopping this?”

“You know I can’t give you a source.”

Slow, hot anger started to burn through me. “This isn’t . . .” I stopped talking when the waitress came by and put the plates on our table. “I can’t have somebody shopping naked pictures of her right now.”

“It’s not just her that’s naked,” he said, taking a bite of the steak he ordered while I nearly choked on mine.

“What?”

Quinn nodded slowly. “I wanted to bring it to you first.”

“Who else has seen this?” I asked, taking the USB out and reaching for the laptop in my briefcase.

“No clue,” he said, shrugging. “As far as I know, I’m the only one. I usually get first dibs on things like this.”

I inserted the USB and waited for the items to load. Without even clicking and enlarging, I could already feel the burning anger returning. My ears felt like they were on fire. I was undoubtedly staring at a semi-naked Nicole sitting in front of Gabriel Lane. In the next picture, her head was thrown back, his mouth on her neck. I felt bile rise in my throat. I hadn’t expected for it to bother me as much as it did, but the longer I stared at the image, the hotter my blood simmered. I knew it was her ex-husband. I knew she was with me now. Sort of. But f*ck, it hurt seeing her with him. It hurt knowing her lips, lips that belonged to me, were on his just short days, maybe weeks before they were on mine.

In the next frame, she was looking at the camera with a look of shock on her face. And in the next she’d stood up and was fixing her shirt. I felt sick. Physically ill. My stomach was turning in disgust. The shots were grainy, no doubt taken on a cell phone, but it was her. It was her curvy frame and her perfect tits, and that incredible mouth of hers. I took a deep breath. I needed to stop thinking about it before I made myself sick.

The next photo was one of her and me on the balcony of her house. It was similar to the one Quinn had texted me before, but these were less grainy, sharper, and from the angle they were taken it definitely looked like we were kissing. My heart pounded as I looked at them, at the way she was looking at me in the picture. I was uneasy about the way I was looking at her. It was as though nothing else in the universe mattered but us. If anybody got hold of it, there would be no sense in denying what was going on between us. Nobody would believe it. I cleared my throat.

“I’ll buy every copy of this. Every single f*cking copy. And I’ll throw in a bonus if you give me your source.”

“Vic, you know I—”

“How long have we known each other, Q?”

He sighed, running a hand over his face. “People will want to see this. This is huge. They’re supposed to be getting a divorce, and they’ve been popping up everywhere together and now these pictures . . . this is the type of thing that breaks the Internet.”

I propped my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands, closing my eyes to try to forget the image of her half-naked in front of another man. I needed to think of her as my client, not the woman I felt I could say anything to without second thought. Not the woman I’d had the most meaningful sex of my life with, because that’s what it was. Meaningful and hot as f*ck.

“What’s going on with you and Nicole?” Quinn asked. My head snapped up. “Off the record.”

“Off the record, I want you to give me your goddamn source and help me make these pictures go away,” I said, shutting my computer. He studied me for a long moment.

“Yours or all of them?”

My eyes narrowed. “Every single one of them.”

Quinn smiled. “This one’s special.”

“Don’t start with your shit, Q. I don’t have time for it.”

“I’m not judging. She’s beautiful,” he said, raising his hands.

“Keep your f*cking opinions to yourself. I’m having a hard enough time accepting that other people have seen this shit. And I don’t think you want anybody to know how much you’ve been visiting an unnamed married woman. We should probably keep that between us,” I said. “For now.”

His eyes widened, but his smile stayed intact. The reason Quinn and I got along so well is because we respected each other, and we knew not to call each other’s bluff. We were both ruthless. We’d claw the shit out of anybody who stood in our way, regardless of who it was.