Red-Handed Ch. 01

Mackenzie Lewis brought his BMW to a crunching halt in the Horseshoe and Castle's gravel carpark and sat for a moment with the engine running. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and his steel-blue eyes looked back, weariness outlined in half-circles beneath them. What a difference six months could make. How they could drain a man.

"Sometimes it's best to cut your losses," Alan Sinclair had said on their most recent meeting. "You're not a vindictive person, Mac. I know you feel stitched up here, but realistically you're not going to win this. You could lose more, potentially. Make the offer -- I'll draw up the papers here today -- and if she accepts it, put the whole business down to experience. Move on with your life, my friend."

When a lawyer as astute as Sinclair provided advice of that kind, you knew it was time to settle. The competitor in Mac hated to let Miranda win, but she'd played him supremely well. Had she not burned him so badly for so long, he might have found himself admiring her style.

He switched off the ignition and listened one more time to her phone message, the voice less clipped and more warm than it had sounded in over a year. "I've been considering your offer, Mac, and I think maybe we can both live with it. Perhaps we could leave out the lawyers for once and meet you-know-where? Our one-time favourite place. Call me sentimental. Why don't we put it to bed, darling? Hey, maybe we can do that in bed. Or is that just my wishful thinking? Let me know..."

Mac's cock stiffened and stretched against his boxer-briefs. He wouldn't have felt the anger so keenly if that voice didn't still turn him on. There was no denying it -- the thought of a full-on grudge fuck appealed to him. She'd always enjoyed his tying her up, whipping her ass and taking her hard. Hell, she'd goaded him into doing it, burrowing deep beneath his calm exterior with precision-tooled taunts to access the volcanic stuff lurking beneath. Maybe she'd be up for that again if she got her way financially. And maybe it'd be adequate consolation for him. It had been a while, after all, since he'd had any kind of action -- by necessity. Except for that one sneaky occasion with his temp...

"Keep it in your trousers," Alan had insisted. "You can't afford to hand her any more ammunition."

Mac paused, his fingers on the door-release. When had a man's failure ever served as aphrodisiac to Miranda? She was playing him again, surely, the one woman in the world who could truly fuck with his head. Had he imagined the sincerity in her phone-voice? Dammit, he could sit in the car all night trying to second-guess her, to no avail. And what would be the point in that?

Okay, let's do this. Departing his vehicle, one of the items she was apparently willing to leave him, he made his guarded way into the pub-restaurant they had once enjoyed together. Or maybe the enjoyment had only been his. Its antique brass trappings and the array of rustic implements dangling from its rafters failed to charm anymore. Dread was burning like acid in the pit of his stomach.

He glanced around and spotted her, seated serenely in what had been their 'usual corner'. The sight made him shudder like he was revisiting the ghost of his past. This was the first time he had seen her since the legalities had kicked in properly -- a full ten months of blood-sports-by-proxy, with Mac doing most of the bleeding.

She looked as striking as on the evening he'd first met her, and lust was the first emotion that surged through his body, resentment hard on its heels. Her thick crimson locks had been wrangled into a ponytail and her silk blouse only suggested the cleavage of her formidably gorgeous breasts. He knew what was packaged away beneath her casual-formal attire, and the degree to which he still desired her provoked his irritation further. She appeared unaware of his presence as he approached the table, her gaze fixed on the screen of her mobile phone and her finger tapping its surface. He had to cough to gain her attention.

Miranda paused her texting, and there was a flicker of emotion in her expression. Not guilt, exactly -- Miranda had probably never been troubled by that emotion in all her life -- more like that of a woman alarmed at having being caught. The expression transformed immediately, however, replaced by a warmer smile than he remembered since the early months of their marriage. "Mac," she said, beckoning him to the table with red-lacquered talons. "Please, join me."

He drew out the chair opposite her and sat down like he was about to dine with the Devil. She put their greeting on pause to complete her text message and then set the phone into her handbag. It was a cheap device, he noticed briefly, and he was sure he could see her regular cell, the dusted-silver iPhone, lurking elsewhere in the bag. Were there signed divorce papers in there as well? She hijacked his attention again, before he could think on any of it further. "It's good to see you, truly," she said. "Thanks for agreeing to this. I wasn't sure that you'd show up."

"I wasn't sure myself," he admitted, "right up to the moment I set foot in here."

"Well I'm glad you did. You're looking well."

Liar. He had no doubt how easily she could read the stress that the past months had written into his face. But there was an unfamiliar kindness in her eyes and he went with the moment, holding to his lawyer's advice. "Thank you. So are you. Seems like you're thriving."

"If you mean on what's been going on between us, you're wrong," she said. "It doesn't give me the pleasure you probably think it does. But, I'm a woman who believes in getting her due. Put it down to a deprived childhood."

Getting your due indeed... and deprived childhood my arse. Was this going to be an evening of quiet goading? It took all of Mac's self-control to let the remarks roll over him without rising to their bait. "And do you feel you've got your due?" he asked with consummate calm.

"I invited you out to dinner," she replied simply. "I'm trying, here. You know, making an effort." There was a buzz from her phone -- the second, cheaper device -- and she lifted it, irritation creasing her smooth brow as she looked at the message. "My minions," she said by way of explanation. "Sometimes I wonder if they have anything in the way of initiative."

"Maybe if you hired them on the basis of their ability rather than how they look..." Mac remarked, as lightly as he could manage. Miranda did like to be surrounded by a coterie of pretty young things, most of them female, and now that she ran the entire Vanguard clothing company, she made sure all branches were run by such types.

"Now Mackenzie," she said, her smile an arch one, "I do try to strike a balance between professional acumen and aesthetic appeal. For the most part. Okay," she admitted, "I can think of one or two who are substantially more pretty than they are smart, but even those girls have their uses... as I'm sure you appreciate."

"I certainly do." Mac well knew the kinds of games Miranda liked to play with her sexy employees of an evening. He was privy to so many of this woman's secrets, but there had been no proving the truth behind the darkest ones, as Alan Sinclair had all too painfully pointed out. All it had taken was for him to slip up once, however, to become this woman's punch-bag.

Miranda completed her text while she chatted, flinging the phone casually this time back into its resting place. "Now -- enough business during leisure time. What do you say we order?"

"I think that would be a good idea." Anything to distract from the evening's fundamental awkwardness. Not that Miranda gave the appearance of feeling awkward in the least...

They ordered a bottle of Chablis, and Mac sipped from his glass with caution, while she drank freely, saying blithely that she'd take a taxi home. He wanted to take the edge off his nerves and at least fake relaxation, but it never paid to lose one's focus when dealing with Miranda French. His appetite was shot, and excellent as they were, he had to force his way through the Horseshoe and Castle's lamb-kebab starter and poached salmon main. His wife -- how bizarre did that word seem now? -- was the warm, inviting, animated version of herself, the one that he had briefly thought he loved. All chilly professionalism was gone, as she recounted moments from the early days of their time together, like no hostilities had occurred in the intervening time.

"The Paris weekend was glorious," she said, and he knew she was alluding to the first one, a mere couple of weeks into their scorching sexual union. "Everything so alive and intense. You were so passionate about everything, I remember -- the art, the architecture, the wine -- and you took me so hard every night." There was a warm tremor in her voice that ran to the core of him and set his cock alive, despite every reservation he still had about this meeting.

"I figured you didn't think about those times anymore," he said, eyeing her as coolly as he could manage over his wine glass. "Or think of me remotely that way."

She looked something verging on penitent. "I said some... unkind things to you, Mac. Things I regret."

Things like 'Maybe you're not the man I thought you were', he recalled, the disappointment and near-contempt more memorable to him than the words. Disappointment because he'd struggled to keep the staff employed in one subsidiary business rather than cut them loose when the recession hit, at considerable cost. Contempt because he'd not been quite cut-throat enough to secure the Glendale contract, losing out to bloody Rainbow Software. How swiftly had her feelings cooled towards him after that conversation. There was no sweeping it away with a few words, not after everything that had followed. Miranda, nonetheless, was intent on trying.

"Honestly," she said, responding to the doubtfulness in his expression, "I didn't acknowledge that we were simply different kinds of people. That just because you're a... a good man, it doesn't make you any less of one." God, it sounded like she was wrestling with concepts utterly foreign to her. But she did remember the fatal conversation. That at least meant something. It mattered to him that she was trying to act like a human, however taxing the performance.

"That hasn't stopped you trying to take me for everything you could," he observed, sipping again at his wine.

"True." She had the decency to look slightly abashed. "But then that's my nature. A woman has to be true to that." She reached out and stroked the back of his hand. The hairs on it prickled. "You know, whatever happened between us," she said, her pupils of her dark eyes dilating, "however... incompatible we turned out to be, you're still one of the most physically impressive men I've ever met."

"Stop that, Miranda." Even the use of her name had his erection inflating against the inside leg of his trousers. This was beyond unwise. He needed to see the signed papers before he could even contemplate such a development.

"Stop what? I can still say I find you attractive, can't I?" Her fingertips lingered. "So broad, so tall, it's not many men who tower over me physically. Not many men with the capacity to take control of me the way you did -- when you wanted to. When your confounded niceness didn't get in the way."

"You make 'niceness' sound like a regrettable quality."

"It wouldn't be for some women, I know," she said with a hint of sadness. "There are a lot who would find your... your sweeter aspects, along with that spectacular cock of yours, an irresistible combination. So tell me -- has your gorgeous length been getting any satisfaction recently? Has it been delving into any interesting places? I know, I know... you can't tell me."

"Hardly," he said, blood pumping the cock in question harder even as alarms sounded in his head. "I slipped up once and it was my undoing."

"With your comely secretary."

"We both know that whole sorry tale and so do our lawyers."

"Indeed."

There she was, goading again. It had been comfort sex, in the full knowledge that Miranda was out on her own, partying with God knew who. And she'd put a private detective on his tail. Christ, he had been made to pay for one indiscretion -- just like his darling wife had planned. He wondered whether his wife knew that the curvy temp had sneaked to his new apartment for that follow-up night of passion. Hell, the conniving cow probably did. Anger reasserted itself within him, but his lust made no concession. Hardly likely, with Miranda's perfumed breath flooding his face.

"Look at you," she said, staring deep into his eyes. "Anger burning away inside you. You know something, Mac?"

"What?"

"The only times you ever fucked me like I knew you could, were the ones when I'd pissed you off. I mean really pissed you off." She was leaning across the table, red hair trailing in that loose ponytail over her shoulder, the fissure between those wonderful tits on fuller display. "So tell me. How angry are you with me right now?"

He could hear his own breath. That and the sound of Miranda's voice were the only two sounds in the universe right then. "Try 'very'."

"'Very'?"

"You know how angry I am and you know why."

"I suppose I do. Well what if you could do something about it?"

"I..."

"What if after a delicious dessert we were to go back to my place and sort this business out once and for all?"

"You mean..."

"I mean what if the papers are signed and waiting back there to be handed over? What if once you'd driven me there and had them in your possession, Mac, you were to get some fucking payback? You know, do what it takes for us to part on good terms. How do you like the sound of that?"

"I..." He liked it a lot and he knew that she could see it, but he eased back nonetheless. "I think we should have that dessert first, while I consider it."

She took his hand and pressed her full, exquisite lips to his fingers. "That reserve ever in place," she said. "You need to lose it. You need to act more on what we both know is underneath."

"Dessert," he insisted, however rock-solid and straining his cock.

The moment lengthened, but was finally interrupted by a buzz from that confounded phone. "How the minions irritate," she said, her tongue wetting her lip, before she went to check the text.

Mac observed her closely, a vague suspicion from earlier resurfacing from his mind's depths. Is she up to something here? Please no... Her face remained impassive as she responded to the communication and casually tossed her phone into her bag. The device lay balanced on the zipper and he felt an uncanny urge to check who she'd been texting. Miranda smiled again, her expression and her entire bearing one sly sexual taunt. "Now -- dessert," she said. Mac's erection reasserted itself against the tight fabric of his boxers.

They selected the dessert platter and shared it -- the profiteroles, the tiramisu and the sweet pastries -- like a symbol of their united intent. Mac's appetite for food had returned so fiercely it surprised him, and with it grew that other carnal appetite. God, I want to have you like I've never had you before. Once those signed documents are in my hands... He ate slowly, sublimating all signs of his mounting passion, or attempting to. Then he savoured the coffee and sucked slowly, deliciously, on the provided breath-mints. Not a word needed to pass between them; the occasional loaded glance sufficed.

"I think it's time," he said when they both were utterly finished, adopting the kind of tone he might have used at the end of a meal on their Parisian honeymoon.

"Indeed it is," she said, and in that instant her smile transformed from lascivious warmth to icy calculation -- the look he had come to associate so closely with her. His animated vital signs iced up in reaction. "Time for me, my dear, to send you off into the night with your big throbbing hard-on and nowhere to put it. It's okay -- I suggested the evening, so I'll pick up the bill. You can go."

"I... Sorry? I can go?" Mac stared into her calmly mocking face, mind racing to process the development. She was dismissing him? What the fuck... "Exactly why did we come here?" he inquired, enforcing a state of calm on himself. "What's the point of all this?"

"Oh darling," she said, "simply so I could remind myself of how easy you are to play. You didn't really think I was going to leave it where it was, did you?"

"You've got..." Mac's mind spun and eddied as he groped for words. "How can you possibly expect to get a better deal than the one I offered you? It's more than generous. You fucking know it is." The last part came out as a gravelly hiss. "Besides," he added, "you've no cards left to play."

"You'd think not, wouldn't you?" She looked like the ace was tucked inside her sleeve, ready to play. "Look, Mac, this has been a very pleasant interlude, but quite frankly I've got business to attend to. The meal's already covered, so if you were to make yourself scarce by the time I've come back from the ladies' room, that'd probably be best for both of us." She lifted up her bag as she said it, and then shot him a final smile before departing. Mac stared after her, his addled mind still churning, and then he saw it. The mobile phone had slid from her bag as she took hold of it, the device on which she'd been so busily at work landing on the table unnoticed.

Who the fuck was she talking to?

Mac picked up the phone, checking to see whether she was already coming back for it. She had vanished, however, and he seized the opportunity; when someone as thorough as Miranda made a slip-up, you had to claim that moment. The device had not even been locked -- now there was a result -- all its communications begging to be revealed. Not waiting for his estranged wife to realise her faux pas, he left table and restaurant, planning on delving into the phone's secrets once he had driven out of the pub's carpark.

In the rear-view mirror he could see her walking briskly from the venue's main door, looking around for him with a frantic air. Got you! Damn, you think you're clever. Well not this time. Jaw set in determination, he spun the BMW's wheel in the gravel and roared away from the venue.

He pulled over into a layby a mile down the road and began to search the phone's contents. It had clearly been purchased for tonight's devious purpose, for there was only one conversation thread to be found, with someone monikered 'Black-Ops 1'. Clearly Miranda's little joke, this name boded nothing good. He scrolled back the beginning of the exchange and read through it, incredulity building within him.

IN POSITION?

YES. WAITING FOR UR INSTRUCTION

TARGET ARRIVED. I'LL KEEP HIM OCCUPIED AS LONG AS YOU NEED.

OK

LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU'RE INSIDE.

INSIDE NOW. OPERATION UNDERWAY

TEXT ME WHEN YOU'VE COVERED THE STUDY. USE THE CODE WORD.

DONE.

GOOD. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. HE WON'T CATCH YOU, MUCH AS HE'D ENJOY THAT.

Mac set the phone on the dash and took a moment to force his breathing under control. 'Study' -- his study? Was this what he thought it was? "Christ -- she's having my place burgled." He sat in wonder for a moment at his own voiced realisation and then repeated the phrase, bitter, astonished laughter erupting from his mouth. "Unbelievable. You think you're a fucking criminal mastermind now, along with everything else." Distracting the target, while someone else did her dirty work for her... even by Miranda's standards this was low.

Her minions. They all 'have their uses', she'd told him. She was paying one of her hangers-on to break into his apartment! Maybe that smirking pretty-boy she had managing Vanguard's Piccadilly outlet, the one she'd more or less let him know she was fucking. The wretched woman had possessed enough gall to allude to her own plot during their conversation. God, the bitch must have been enjoying herself. "Well your enjoyment ends here, my dear."