Fuck.
He'd left Manhattan in a crappy mood, and the mood still lingered as he pulled into the drive of the perfectly restored nineteenth-century Westchester County mansion. He stalked to the door, realizing he probably should have called first, and rang the bell.
He expected Adele. But it was Colin who answered the door. "Well, Dallas. So good to see you, son." He stepped back so Dallas could enter, then clapped him on the back. "I've been thinking we should make plans to meet and catch up."
"I'd like that." Before the kidnapping, Colin had fallen off the family radar. Not surprising since the court had terminated his parental rights, and Eli had adopted Jane.
But when Jane begged to be closer to her birth father after the ordeal, Colin had slid back into the Sykes's orbit. He was still mostly estranged from Eli and Lisa, but both Jane and Dallas made it a point to see the man.
Originally, Dallas had simply wanted a conduit into Jane's life during those early years when she'd been too raw to see or talk to him. Over time, though, he and Colin had developed a genuine friendship, and Dallas was grateful that Colin had never become aware of the strange, yet undeniable, sexual tension between him and Adele.
Now, he followed Colin into his ex-wife's sitting room, professionally decorated in hues of ivory and beige.
"Adele didn't mention you were coming."
"She didn't know," Dallas admitted. "You heard about Ortega?"
"The suicide?" Colin shook his head sadly. "Jane told me."
"It's been weighing on me," Dallas said, which was true. "I thought I'd talk to Adele," he added, which was not. Talk, in fact, was the last thing on his mind.
"Well, your timing is perfect. I was just on my way out."
He knew that out of politeness he should urge Colin to stay a bit longer. He didn't. Right then, he wasn't in the mood to be polite.
"Colin?" Adele's voice drifted in from the back of the house followed a moment later by the woman herself. She wore a silk robe tied around her waist and, from the way the material clung to her breasts and hips, not a thing on underneath it. "I thought you'd gone. Did you--Oh. Dallas! What a lovely surprise."
She came closer, then pressed a palm to his arm as she air-kissed him.
"I'm on my way out now," Colin said. "I'll see you next week." A flicker of a smile touched his lips as he skimmed his eyes over her.
When the door was shut and locked behind him, Dallas raised his brow.
"What?" she asked innocently. "I told you we still sleep together sometimes. Just because we couldn't survive marriage doesn't mean the sex was bad."
"I didn't come to talk about you and your ex," he said. "I came because--"
"Of Ortega. Yes, I overheard." She crossed the room to the sofa and sat, then indicated that he should join her. He did, sitting slightly sideways so he could look at her directly.
She did the same, and as she turned, her robe shifted, revealing one creamy thigh. And almost revealing more. Though in her fifties now, Adele had stayed in incredible shape. He sometimes wondered how much of it was real and how much was surgical. She once told him that she'd been in a car accident in her twenties and had done several rounds of plastic surgery. For all he knew, she'd kept it up over the years.
"But it's not really Ortega that's bothering you." She looked straight at him, as if daring him to argue. "It's Jane."
He didn't deny it. He didn't say anything.
Adele tilted her head to the side as she studied his face. "I'm right." She scooted closer to him, making the robe ride up just a bit more, so that when he glanced down he could see the shadow at the apex of her thighs. "She's why you're here. Why you're with me."
He lifted his chin so he could meet her eyes and saw the hint of a smile.
"Did you sleep with her?" she asked.
"Christ, Adele."
She pressed her hand lightly on his knee. He felt the weight of it through his slacks. The heat of it.
And right then, he absolutely hated himself.
The fucked-up reality was that he had come for this. Not to talk about Ortega. Not to rely on her professional expertise to help him with Jane. But for this. Because he'd wanted the release. Because she was the one woman he'd had in his bed who knew what he really wanted. Who he really wanted.