by Piper Lawson
I head down the hallway, intent on finding Harrison.
His voice reaches my ears at the same time as the music far away. I can’t make out the words, but I spot him in a corner, speaking to a stunning blonde. She’s statuesque, like an old movie star with perfect hair and perfect curves.
It’s her voice I make out first. “It’s not the same without you.”
When she reaches for him, laying a hand on his face—that coolly untouchable face—every thought evaporates.
I watch them for a minute, my chest aching in protest as he murmurs a response too low to hear.
Another minute, to force myself to digest the truth of this situation.
For a moment, on his arm, I felt as if this world was mine too. To borrow, if not to own.
But seeing Harrison in a moment of obvious intimacy with the woman I assume is his ex reminds me I’m an outsider.
I don’t know this man. I can’t, and I shouldn’t want to. Just because he’s capable of being close with someone doesn’t mean I should expect him to do anything other than hurt me or disappoint me.
I take off the uncomfortable shoes and leave them in a corner behind a potted plant. As I start down the hall, I run into Ash.
“You should’ve come with me, American Girl,” he tosses.
“I shouldn’t have come at all.”
His grin fades as I grab a drink off a passing tray.
“Tell him I’m heading out,” I say. “If he notices I’m gone.”
Harrison
I told myself I wouldn’t feel a thing the next time I saw her.
I was wrong.
“Do you remember how we used to lie out all day sunbathing in Monaco?” Eva asks.
It’s not as if I still care for her, but the echoes of it fill my chest when I thought I’d burnt them out and remind me of something important.
I’m capable of caring.
“Where is your date this evening?” I interrupt.
“Singapore. Or maybe Tokyo.” She waves a dismissive hand as if his absence makes him unworthy of discussion.
I glance past her. “If this is your attempt to keep me from speaking with Christian—”
“Of course not! I hoped I’d see you tonight.”
Her soft pout used to get to me, but now, in the hall where she’s cornered me, I see only the manipulation beneath.
“Well, now you have. Give my regards to your new diversion for me.”
I brush past her down the hall, determined to find Christian.
Though my primary purpose tonight is to pin down our host, I can’t stop thinking about the woman who excused herself from my side twenty minutes ago and hasn’t returned since.
As I pass impeccably dressed guests in tuxes and dresses in every color of the rainbow, my mind flashes back to my reluctant date handling herself in the den of rich vipers.
I’d half expected the seething sullenness she’d graced me with more than once, but in this exclusive crowd, she was both gracious and assertive.
It pleased me.
Everything about her tonight pleased me from the second she stepped out of her room in that dress looking even more stunning than I’d expected.
After spending my mother’s birthday with Rae, I did avoid her for the better part of the week.
Not because she’d done something wrong—on the contrary, I was thinking about her too damned much.
But when I learned my brother planned to bring her tonight as his date, something inside me broke.
The same part of me that purred with satisfaction when I drew her against my side, caressed her back with my hand like it was my right.
None of it means anything. Not compared to the reason I’m here.
I force her from my mind as I reach the doors of the library, spotting my quarry inside surrounded by a circle of men.
“How good to see you, Harrison.” Christian’s gaze lands on me, and everyone parts to let me in.
I extend a hand, which he takes. That’s their cue to leave, and they depart.
“Let me guess,” Christian says, accepting a fresh drink from a waiter once the other guests have pulled the library doors closed behind them. “You’re here to talk about football?”
“I’ll leave that to my brother. No, I’m here to remind you that you’re going to sell me La Mer.”
He sighs. “Harrison… I’ve known you for two decades. Ambition has always been a strength. But as an old man, I’m telling you to find other things in your life. My children are my joy now. Did you meet my Sylvie?”
I mentally scan the faces from the party, vaguely recalling a pretty young woman who greeted us near the door. “Yes. Lovely.”
“She is. My other children are settled, but I worry for her.”
“The young have a way of surprising you. She’ll find her way.”
I glance out the window and spot the glowing orange dress, Rae’s dark hair in waves around her shoulders.
It’s refreshing to see her without a costume beyond the dress I chose for her.
But as she trips down the steps, alarm has my abs clenching.
Christian follows my gaze, making a sound of muffled surprise. “Perhaps we should finish this conversation another time.”
No. We should finish it now.
But as Rae reaches the curved driveway, my feet won’t cooperate.
“One moment.”
I head out to the hall, pushing through the crowds and ignoring anyone who tries to stop me.
Ash steps in front of me before I reach the front doors. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell my date she should stay until the end of the party?”
“She said she wished she hadn’t come.”
A sharpened spear sneaks under my ribs.
I shouldn’t fucking care what she thinks, but I’m angry. She said she’d come with me, and she’s turning her back on me at the first opportunity.
I shove past Ash and take the steps two at a time.
“Raegan.”
She turns, and I soak her in. This time it’s not the way she looks in that dress, though she’s stunning. It’s the expression on her face—hurt and disappointment.
Words always come easily, but now I’m reaching for them. “What happened to your shoes?”
She blinks up at me, ignoring the question. “The woman inside. Your ex, right?” Surprise slams into me, but she continues. “You could’ve brought her. It looked as if she would’ve been more than happy to come with you. Or leave with you.”
My mind races to process her frosty tone, settling on something as fascinating as it is improbable.
Is she jealous?
Raegan Madani? The woman who ruined her career to score a few points on me?
The possibility fucks me up.
We had a truce, but this is something new.
I could tell her it wasn’t what it looked like. That all night I was thinking of having her at my side, not Eva.
“I get that the only reason you hired me was to play your club and make back what I cost you,” she goes on, and her dark eyes are big enough to swallow me whole. “But you do not get to dress me up and drag me here and use me like this.”
She points at her bare feet, and the red welts have me wincing.
“Dammit. You should’ve told me the shoes didn’t fit.”
She shoves me, hard enough that I stagger. “I shouldn’t have worn them at all! Your stupid favor didn’t involve footwear. I came because I said I would, and I thought maybe you wanted me to come with you. Which is crazy. This is your world. These are your rich, entitled people. Enjoy them.”
I didn’t know I had the ability to hurt this woman. Even Eva, whom I thought I loved, proved to have an icy heart I could never penetrate. But this woman—this girl—who’s so extraordinary on a stage and is so stubborn off it…
It makes me wonder what other good things she hides beneath her tough exterior, pretending she cares for nothing and no one.
“I didn’t kn
ow she’d be here,” I say at last. “She left me for Mischa Ivanov. My rival, the man I hate.”
Her eyes widen with disbelief. “Your fiancée left you for the man who killed your parents?”
I nod. “She wanted a different kind of power than I could offer. But I don’t regret her leaving.”
The light from the torches dances along the curved driveway, reflecting in her dark eyes. Emotions collide on her face.
Compassion.
Hurt.
I wish we were alone instead of here at this party.
Fuck it.
I close the distance between us, take her face in my hands.
I invited her tonight because I needed a date, but now it’s not enough. I want more. The surge of adrenaline when I touched her, when we locked gazes, is real.
The pull between us is real.
There’s only one woman I wanted on my arm tonight. And since she left it, she’s been missed.
I have no business saying it because that’s not how we are. How this is.
But I need to…
A familiar car pulls up the drive, pulling into her peripheral vision, and Rae steps back.
She reaches for the door, but I slam it shut with a hand.
“Don’t go. I’m fucking sorry.”
I need her to understand how hard I’ve worked to get what I have, to keep it. That letting a person come between me and my revenge nearly cost me everything once already.
She pries my fingers off the door one at a time.
“Don’t be sorry, Harrison. Be better.”
As the car pulls away with her inside, I’m left feeling empty and frustrated in a way that has nothing to do with Christian and the deal.
11
Rae
The next morning, there’s a message on my social profile asking for an interview.
I message back:
If this is about what happened in the spring, I don’t do interviews.
There’s a reply almost instantly.
I want to talk about your new gig in Ibiza. You’re causing a lot of buzz. When can we meet?
I’ve never done face-to-face interviews, which are outside my comfort zone because it’s harder to control the conversation, so I tuck the phone away without responding.
I shift out of bed and trip over to the door, catching sight of my still-sprayed hair in the mirror. The makeup that didn’t quite come off my face last night after the party.
The party.
It all rushes back. Playing Cinderella. Pretending to be part of that world.
And the feeling of seeing Harrison with his ex.
As I step out into the hall, I expect to hear him, but there’s nothing.
His office door is closed, and so is his bedroom.
“Looking for Mr. Moody?” Ash calls from the dining area downstairs.
I lean over the railing. “Maybe. What’re you doing here?”
“Got back last night to find our club’s villa trashed. Tripped over bottles and naked tourists to come over.”
I pad downstairs and eye the green smoothie Ash is drinking. “That looks disgusting.”
“So do you.” He ruffles my hair. “But last night, you were stunning. Everyone noticed.” He pauses. “He left for business this morning.”
“Oh.” I try not to feel disappointed he didn’t tell me. “For how long?”
“Who knows?” His eyes narrow. “But there’s something in the kitchen for you.”
I look where he’s pointing to see a huge stainless-steel espresso maker.
“Shit. Does it do laundry too?” Up close, it’s even more impressive, and I run a hand over the levers and dials before reaching for the instruction manual next to it. “He must have decided he likes good coffee,” I say as I thumb through the pages.
Ash’s snort has me looking up. “Yeah. He bought it for himself,” he says dryly.
I set the instructions on top of the machine, spotting a Post-it note stuck to the stainless steel.
There’s a number scrawled on it.
Eleven hundred thirteen.
It’s the door from Thursday’s show—up from eight hundred when we started. Two thousand is capacity, so while it’s trending in the right direction, we’re nowhere near selling out.
“Maybe he bought it for when he returns?” I wonder aloud.
“If that’s what you think, you’re daft.” Ash is watching me with a grin and folded arms. “There’s something going on between you and my brother.”
I match his posture. “It’s called a grudge.”
“That might be how you both started, but it’s not why you were upset last night.”
“A month off from soccer and you’re a shrink?”
He plows on, unmoved. “I was twelve when our parents died. Harry showed up at the door of my boarding school. You know the first thing he said to me?”
I shake my head.
“‘No matter what anyone says about them, they loved you. That’s all you need to know.’
“That day, everything fell to him, legally and practically. He kept me out of the investigation into their deaths. Dealt with their business interests dissolving. It didn’t make him crumble; it made him more resolved. You can call him lots of things, but when he commits to something—someone—he’ll see it through or die trying.”
My chest aches as I think of Harrison, younger than Ash and I are now, being ripped from his education and confronting not only his parents’ deaths but the fallout.
“I still hate him half the time,” I admit.
“It’s the other half that’s interesting.” He pauses. “While they were engaged, Eva tried to get Harry to step back from his business, supposedly because she wanted time together. Turns out it was so Mischa could get a toehold in markets where his business was strong.
“La Mer would be the final nail in his coffin. It’s the biggest venue in the world, the most prestigious. Harry gets it, Mischa loses. It won’t bring our parents back, but he thinks it’s something.” Ash rubs a hand over his jaw. “Most people want to be near my brother for his money or his reputation. You see the man he could be, like I do.”
The invitation hangs between us.
It’s impossible to forget that amidst Harrison’s compulsive desire to empire-build is a genuine protectiveness for his family, a desire to do right by the people he loves.
Because he does love, in his way.
He put his brother first in a time when he himself was grieving and broken. He buys cars for Toro that the old man adores. Hired Leni as his right-hand woman and allows her to be her quirky self.
Judging by the champagne bucket of waters that arrives when I start to lose myself in a set, he even intervenes on my behalf.
“And if he succeeds in growing his business and buying La Mer, you think he’ll be that man?” I ask.
“I think he can let go of his grief and have a chance at it.”
I stare at the coffee machine, the encouragement implied by it. “Eleven hundred thirteen isn’t enough.”
“Enough for what?” Ash demands.
“It’s nowhere near,” I say, ignoring the question as I grab the note and crumpling it up before tossing it in the trash.
I pull up my social and message the reporter back to say I’ll meet her.
Harrison
“This is everything.” It’s a question, but it comes out like a statement as I stare at the manager of BLUE, my LA club.
“Every incident report filed against the club in the past three years,” he says.
The stack must be fifty pages thick.
I flip through and skim dates, names, looking for patterns. The only pattern is that there is none, except perhaps for the bare-bones information.
These aren’t “reports.” They’re bookmarks with handwriting on them.
Judging from the paperwork in front of me, the staff here sees their primary job as making things go away.
“I asked for this information a month ago,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Mr. King. Staffing is tight.” He presses his lips together. “There’ve been budget cuts the last two years—”
“Fine.” I’d told my managers to tighten up on existing properties to allow us to expand new operations.
Don’t be sorry. Be better.
Rae’s words echo in my head.
Traveling on business has never felt strange or lonely, but this week feels like both. I’ve gotten used to having her around my house and around me.
The gala was days ago, and I can still feel Rae’s presence. I swear I catch her scent on the air when I step out of a car or off a plane.
Which is fucking crazy.
Rae’s not here, and there’s no reason she should be. She’s doing what she’s supposed to be doing—making me money.
So, why would I give a wardrobe full of designer suits for a glimpse of her across a lobby?
“Mr. King?”
I glance up at the manager’s voice, realizing I was staring off into space. “Hire more people. Whatever you need to ensure this issue is properly addressed.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. Would you like me to send you any new reports?”
I consider it. “Only if you can’t manage them yourself. But if I have to make another request for information like this one, they had better be robust fucking accounts. If a patron so much as gets a drink spilled on them—”
“We’ll take care of it.” He nods as I shift out of the seat and start for the door. “Your car is waiting outside. It’s too bad you’re leaving LA so soon and can’t stay for this evening’s show.”
I cut a look over my shoulder. “I’ll be in Miami tonight.”
“Enjoying your venue?”
I smile tightly.
“Doing the same damn thing we did here,” I mutter under my breath on my way out.
12
Rae
I’d never believed that a house could feel different without its occupants, but since Harrison King left almost a week ago for work, nothing feels the same.
Leni texted me a bunch of links to posts from excited tourists touting their recent visits to Debajo, plus an article listing it as one of their top hidden gems for the summer.