Клео Коул - Latte Trouble

“You’ve been asking a lot of questions about me, Ms. Cosi.”

“Good evening, Fen. Or should I call you Mr. Goldin?”

An intrigued gray eyebrow arched. “Actually I’m still Stephen Goldin, of Goldin Associates, though few connect my financial endeavors with my line of apparel. While I try to keep a foot in two worlds, I do like to keep them separate.”

“You didn’t have to kidnap me to have a meeting,” I replied. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for days.”

“You and that tiresome detective, Quinn.” Fen waved his hand. “I have little time for such nonsense during Fashion Week.”

“There was time enough to grab me off the street, though.”

Fen chuckled. “Were you surprised by my associates?”

“Oh, no. In fact, I think I’ve seen them before—as extras on The Sopranos .”

“Some things are unavoidable, Ms. Cosi. I design and make my clothing here in America, and you know what that means. Those men…my associates…they help me avoid strikes and other union problems. They are useful in other areas as well.”

“Like kidnapping?”

“Like acquiring this place…I purchased it for a song from an entertainment entrepreneur who had an unfortunate gambling addiction, and was prone to borrowing money from the wrong men…”.

“Loan sharks, you mean. Your associates? How are they at poisoning people?” I shot a sharp glance at Bryan. He gave me a Billy Idol sneer.

Fen sighed. “Now you’re being tiresome.”

“Oh, am I? Then listen to this. I know you were Lottie Toratelli’s lover twenty years ago. I also know that you slept with Lottie’s sister during the same period, and that Mona ended up prematurely dead.”

Fen looked past me, gestured to his nephew. Bryan Goldin jumped to his feet and fetched a French Provincial chair from the corner. A matching chair came by way of the Japanese woman in the yellow kimono.

“Sit, Ms. Cosi. You have suddenly become interesting again.” I sank down, and Fen sat opposite me. He crossed his long legs and leaned toward me. “I had absolutely nothing to do with Mona Toratelli’s death. Nothing .”

Bryan Goldin appeared again and set a delicate carved table between us. The Japanese woman brought us a bottle of plum wine and two crystal glasses. Then she and Bryan Goldin slipped into the shadows of the room, appearing to vanish.

Fen picked up the bottle. While he poured the dark purple liquid into his glass, I examined my own—ran my finger inside it and sniffed. He laughed at me, a mirthless bark. “If I had wanted to poison you, Ms. Cosi, I wouldn’t have brought you to my club to do it. And I certainly wouldn’t be pouring us both drinks from the same bottle.”

I raised an eyebrow as he took the glass from my fingers and poured me a drink. “To your health,” he said, handing my glass back to me and raising his own. I watched him take a healthy swallow.

My lips were dry, my mouth parched. Needing something to calm my rattled nerves, I carefully sipped my own drink, detecting no taste of almonds or bitterness. The only two things that registered were the sweetness and the strength of the alcohol.

“Please, tell me more,” said Fen, taking another sip from his glass. “What else do you know about me—or think you do?”

I took a second sip of the sweet wine, then another before I spoke.

“I know you tried to force Rena Garcia and Tad Benedict to sell you their shares in Lottie Harmon,” I began. “I also know how you entrapped Rena in a fashion design knockoff scheme, blackmailed her, and threatened to expose her unless she sold you her shares. You even waited to make the threat until she and Tad were officially engaged so you could pull him in as well. A two-for-one, so to speak.”

Fen’s left eye twitched. I took it as a victory and pressed ahead. “I know Tad and Rena tried to outmaneuver you by selling their shares to other investors—in an effort to help Lottie retain control of her company. Poor Rena obviously died because she was trying to protect her boss.”

“Rena was a greedy little fool, Ms. Cosi, but I had nothing to do with her death, either. I was as shocked by the news as anyone.”

“Nice try. But I don’t believe you.”

Fen slammed the table with his fist. “Then you are a stupid woman. Her death has thrown her estate into legal limbo. Rena Garcia died without a will. Now I can’t touch those stocks—nobody can. Not until the legal mess is worked out.”

Fen leaned back. Forcing self-control, he coolly crossed his legs again. “So you see, Ms. Garcia’s death in no way benefits me.”

I still wasn’t convinced, but I let the subject drop. “So what were you saying about control of the Lottie Harmon label?” I asked, continuing to boost my nerve by gulping down more of the plum wine.

“Not the Lottie Harmon label . I don’t give a damn about that. I want control of Lottie.”

So, I thought, Madame had been right. “You’re still in love with her.”

Fen sighed and glanced away, his gaze raking the wall of gilded oil paintings, women posed in empire waists and velvet gowns, Elizabethan collars and powdered wigs, hoop skirts and floor-length furs. “She was addictive, back then,” he said softly. “Intense. Soft and sensual, but dangerous too. Tempestuous and totally unpredictable. Like a psychotropic drug. I’ve had countless women since her, but I’ve never met one whom I could feel even a fraction as strongly about. I want her back in my bed, you see?”

“And you’re a man who gets what he wants?”

Fen shrugged.

It was sad, really. Fen’s memories of the wildly sensual Lottie just didn’t add up to the somewhat restrained woman I knew Lottie to be now. Clearly, the woman had changed over the past twenty years, but Fen hadn’t noticed—or didn’t want to.

I didn’t know much about this Fen/Stephen Goldin character sitting across from me. Maybe the man lived his life in a succession of obsessions and Lottie was just the latest. Or maybe middle-age panic had recently kicked in and regrets were making him yearn desperately for something that simply didn’t exist anymore—if it ever did. He certainly wouldn’t be the first person to idealize a past relationship to make up for a present emptiness.

I set the glass down on the intricately carved table with a loud clink, and realized this particular plum wine was much more powerful than any I’d ever consumed. “Those feelings,” I said, a little woozy, “I suspect they all came back for you when Lottie contacted you again after all these years?”

Fen nodded as he refilled my glass. “Lottie was finished when she walked away all those years ago—from her business and me. She’d been washed up for decades. This new line of hers, the java jewelry thing, it was interesting and commercially viable—if wholly conventional. But I saw it could be lucrative. Like something Isaac might produce for Target. Or David Mintzer for the Bullseye stores—”

My jaw dropped. David Mintzer. Good lord, I thought, that’s who I’d been talking to at the Pierre Hotel, one of the most successful clothing designers in the industry. Mintzer owned two restaurant chains; three magazines; and lines of clothes, handbags, shoes, fragrances, and bath products; plus exclusive product lines just for the Bullseye chain of mass merchandisers. For god’s sake, Clare, the man regularly appears on Oprah, and you didn’t even recognize him!

I took another swig of the plum wine as Fen continued to talk. “I knew I could help sell Lottie’s collection, of course, so I helped her, expecting she’d want to become involved with me again—but she’s kept me at arm’s length for over a year now, and I’ve run out of patience.”