The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,38
about me in French.”
“Believe it or not,” she said, “we weren’t talking about you at all. Kingsley asked how our Viking was. I said he was okay. Then I asked King how well he slept last night. Kingsley said he slept very well. I said I didn’t sleep much. He flipped me off.”
“That part I got. He mad you got some and he didn’t?”
“I don’t blame him,” she said. “And trust me, if King has something to say about you, he’ll say it in English.”
They returned to her car. “Where to?” she asked.
“St. Valentine’s,” Cyrus said, and gave her directions.
“You know, we might never figure out how he got my card. We had hundreds printed.”
“We?” Cyrus said. “You investigating this case now?”
“Wouldn’t you be a little curious if someone you didn’t know called you two minutes before shooting themselves in the head?”
“Probably. But this is my job. It’s not yours.”
“If Father Ike was kinky, he was one of us,” she said, pointing at herself. “Somehow we failed him if he thought the only way out was suicide.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Cyrus said. “People make their own choices.”
“True. But I want to help if I can.”
“You’re kind of friendly for a dominatrix,” Cyrus said. “Where’s the whip and chains?”
“You wanna see ’em?” She glanced at him over the top of her sunglasses.
He pointed at her. “You’re trouble.”
“Yeah, sorry.” She pushed her sunglasses back on and faced forward, eyes on the road. “Old habits die hard.”
“I hear that,” he said, wincing.
“Oh…there’s a story there.” She laughed. “Spill it.”
“Not telling it.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“You already told me yours,” he said.
“Not all of it.”
Cyrus laughed. He liked her. That was a fact. Whether he should like her…well, that he didn’t know.
“I’ll tell you something,” Cyrus said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said. “Tell me anything you want.”
“I’ve had…ah…issues in the past. With women.”
“Issues?”
“Honesty issues,” he said. “I’m seeing someone for all that. And it’s helping. One of the things I’m supposed to work on is being truthful with the women in my life. No false pretenses, no lies. Not even white lies. So, you know, don’t ask me something if you don’t want an honest answer.”
“Are you lying to me about something?”
“No, no, not that. Just…I’m supposed to have a female friend. A woman in my life who I’m not related to who I can confide in and be friendly with. Paulina said today you might be a good candidate for the job.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Throw me in the deep end, I guess.”
“And I’m the deep end?”
“You are definitely not the kiddie pool, lady.”
They’d turned into construction traffic and slowed to a crawl. The sun was high and hot, so Nora hit the button to raise the convertible top. Once latched into place, she turned the A/C on. Suddenly it was cooler, darker, and much more intimate in the car.
“This is coming from a therapist, right?” Nora asked. “Sounds like it. What do they call it? Exposure therapy. Spiders freak you out, so they have you make friends with a spider. Women freak you out, so they have you make friends with a woman?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Therapy was Paulina’s idea. And when I say ‘idea,’ I mean ‘order.’”
Nora grinned again. “So you used to play around a lot, then you met your dream girl, and now you’re behaving yourself?”
“I did not play around,” he said. “There was no playing. I made girls my second full-time job.”
“Nice work if you can get it. I guess you got it.”
“I got it,” he said. Cyrus didn’t say anything and neither did Nora. She seemed to be waiting for him to go on. “I was not a great guy back then.”
“No judgment here. I’ve been the bad guy, too,” she said. “And trust me, you’ve got nothing on King. Even after he met Juliette, it took him a long time to settle down. Céleste finally did the trick. That man is lucky to be alive. In his heyday, it was a different girl—or guy—every day almost.” She didn’t sound like she was joking.
“That’s almost better than what I was doing,” Cyrus said. “A new girl every day and nobody really gets hurt because nobody expects anything. Me? I’d play the girls, play with their minds, their hearts, make them crazy about me, make them think we had something real. Then I’d get bored, pick a new girl, start all over. Run down my list…” he said, miming an imaginary list of women’s names.