by Shen, L. J.
“That’s correct.”
“How about this, we shack up for the next two weeks and see how things go? It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other a little better. And we can fuck up a storm.” Best Christmas gift I could ever ask for, really.
He ponders this option for a few long moments while playing with my fingers. “I suppose that’s reasonable.”
“Great,” I say cheerfully. “ Do you want to check out my apartment before we decide whose place we’re going to spend the next two weeks boning in?”
Horace arches a brow. “Does your bed have a headboard?”
“It’s a futon.”
“I’ll pick you up from the café this afternoon and we can stop by your flat and get what you need.”
“Okay, works for me.”
“As much as I’d love to spend the day shagging you, the stock market is in the shitter and I have hedge funds to liquidate and clients to talk off cliffs.” He kisses the end of my nose. “I programmed my number into your phone this morning, so feel free to send me naked selfies at any point during the day.”
“How’d you figure out my password?”
“One-one-one-one is the most common password in the universe.” He tweaks my nipple and grabs his suit jacket, shrugging into it. “I’ll see you tonight, love.” He winks and strides out of the bedroom.
Another minute passes before I hear the click of the door. I lie in his massive king-sized bed for a while, staring at the ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling. This is going to be my view every morning for the next two weeks. I’m ninety-nine-point-nine-to-infinity percent sure we’re both certifiable.
Eventually, I get out of bed and go in search of my clothes. At some point, Horace must have put them in the wash since I find them sitting on the arm of the living room couch. I pick up my shirt and frown. Clearly, he dried it on an extra hot setting since it now looks like it would fit a five year old better than it would fit me, but since I don’t have additional clothing options, it’s going to have to do.
Once I’m dressed, I decide my best plan is to do some Horace recon—otherwise known as snooping. I go through his dresser drawers, appalled by how perfectly everything is folded. I’m sure it will be quite obvious that I’ve rummaged around in there. I move on to his closet, filled with suits, suits, and more suits. And two pairs of jeans, three casual polos, and two pairs of trainers.
I move from room to room, opening drawers, looking for . . . I don’t know? A box filled with nail clippings? A severed finger? A mason jar full of the extracted teeth of his previous sexual conquests whom he went on to murder savagely? A hidden fetish room? Apart from the space being lavish, and ridiculously dust-free, it’s also very . . . normal.
There’s a small, fake Christmas tree set up in the corner of his living room, decorated in white twinkle lights, red bows, and gold balls, but otherwise, his penthouse lacks additional festive adornments.
I do happen to run across his vintage CD collection. He has every single Cure album ever recorded, including the B-sides.
When my stomach growls, I give up trying to convince myself that he’s some kind of psycho and go in search of food.
A covered silver platter and a carafe of coffee await me on the terrace, along with a note from Horace that I should ensure I’m well-hydrated and fed today, as tonight he has elaborate plans for me.
A squirrel sits on the wrought iron railing, gnawing on a walnut, eyeing me suspiciously.
I drop into one of the chairs, rocking back until the front legs leave the ground and tip my chin up, letting the sun bathe my face and the crisp morning air ruffle my hair. “Hope we didn’t keep you up last night,” I mutter.
“I took my hearing aids out when the screaming started.”
I nearly topple backwards. “What the fuck?” I glance at the squirrel, who drops the nut and bounces across the railing, hopping onto the terrace belonging to the penthouse next door.
I’m both relieved and mortified that there’s an elderly man sitting on the terrace, cigarette poised between his fingers, newspaper in hand. Relieved because it means that the squirrel didn’t speak and I haven’t lost my mind, mortified, because clearly I was that loud last night.
In my defense, it’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh. Also, Horace is incredibly skilled at the sexing.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive and well. I was a little worried, if I’m going to be honest. I’m quite fond of Horace, but he’s a bit of an odd duck and I feared the worst. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell him that, though. He’s quite a sensitive lad and I wouldn’t want to offend him.” The man lowers his paper so I can see more than his greying, thinning hair and his bespectacled eyes.
Eyes the color of a blue crayon, peppered with flecks of gold. As I take in his face, I can feel the color drain from mine. It’s like I’ve used that aging app combined with the one on Snapchat that turns you into a man.
“Dad?”
6
Horace
The important thing to remember is that nobody murdered her.
There is a perfectly logical explanation as to why Reggie hasn’t shown up to her shift today without calling in sick and is currently not picking up the phone.
An obvious, one-day-we’ll-laugh-about-it-out-loud good reason.
Maybe she decided to try to max out my Chase Sapphire Reserve shopping in designer boutiques she got kicked out of previously, a-la Pretty Woman.
Maybe she is helping a friend in trouble.
Maybe she is catching up on laundry because she gets peed on by dogs all the time.
Maybe she is announcing our—sort of?—quick engagement to her family on the phone.
Maybe someone in her family had a heart attack as a result.
Jesus, that’s not a good beginning to a relationship.
I find myself springing back to my flat by foot, my phone pressed against my ear. The fact that I haven’t spoken to her all day is making me slowly lose my mind, and I make a mental list of the people I could ask about her.
Aussie lass.
Rude French chef at the coffee shop she works for, who looks like a walking, talking, sexual harassment case.
But that’s it.
I reach my building in record time and take the stairs three at a time. There is a zero percent chance I am waiting for anything, let alone the elevator. My heart is pounding against my ribcage, and again, I find myself inwardly giving myself a slap on the wrist and a punch to the bullocks for getting attached quite so soon.
I push the door to my flat open—it’s not locked, I notice, with a mixture of further horror and relief—and stop dead in my tracks.
I can see them sitting on the patio. The living room bleeds into the outdoor area, and the glass door is open wide, so you can’t miss them.
Reggie is sitting on the wooden floor with her legs curled under her, blinking up to my neighbor, Pierre Caron, the one with Parkinson’s whom I help during the weekends. Basically, I make the pottery while he shouts directives. He’s sitting on one of the chairs in my patio, holding his walking cane with a trembling hand that’s wrapped with layers of gauze, and I wonder if he fell and hurt himself again.
I say nothing.
I don’t make myself known.
It’s not a calculated decision. I’m just mesmerized by the way they talk to each other, so quietly, yet you can see the air sizzling between them with something that’s almost tangible. It’s like if I reach between them, the air itself will slice me with the tension and warmth.
“I still can’t believe it,” Reggie murmurs, wiping a lone tear from under her eye. Her back is ramrod straight and her voice is hoarse and croaky. I feel this incredible sense of pride, even though I don’t even know exactly what it is she is doing right now. Why they are talking like this, so close, so intimate, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. “What are the odds? And like this? Right now? It is almost... I don’t know. It is almost like a dream
.”
“I wanted to send you a letter. To approach you. Many times,” Pierre admits solemnly, rubbing at his chin with his free hand. “I dreamt about meeting you. About you spending the summers in Paris with me. About us talking into the night. All the time. I love you and your mother so much, Regina. I still do. But that’s exactly why I stayed away, even when I suspected I could reconnect with you.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have left.”
“If I’d stayed, your mother and you would have been saddled with a life of shame and embarrassment. I’d be in prison—which I deserved, of course, for what I did—and you’d be penniless and known as the daughter of the bastard who conned hundreds of people. I left because I didn’t want this stain on your name. In your lives. And sure enough, your mother moved on—with a doctor, no less—and you grew up to be one of the most wonderful young women I’ve come to meet.”
“Then why didn’t you reconnect with us? With me?” Reggie frowns, her voice marred with bitterness. It’s the first time I hear a trace of that emotion in her tone. I can’t even blame her.
Pierre is her father.
Pierre is Ruben LaPenus.
Pierre is the man who turned his back on her and left her and her mother when she was a kid.
He lowers his head, that’s shaking, too, along with the rest of his trembling body.
“I wrote you a letter. I can show you. The week I wrote it, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It was really bad, and they said it will only get worse. They weren’t wrong. I can barely function. That same week, I bought envelopes and stamps. But when it came down to sending you the letter, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t throw this at you. My disease. My issues. My deteriorating state. How convenient for me, a family-less man with no one in the world, to reach out to his daughter just when he finds out that he cannot function like a normal human being? I didn’t want you to feel guilty, or worried, or upset. I didn’t want my problem to turn into your problem. I didn’t want you to be tempted to visit me, or worse—take care of me in one way or the other—and I didn’t want you to pity me, either. It was best if you just remembered me as the healthy bastard who left you. Being that healthy bastard then, and a sad, rotting old man who can’t even dial a phone number before trying seven times, was too much to take. I did it for you, Regina. I promise you. I stayed away for you.”
It’s a backward logic, but it makes some kind of sick sense, what Pierre is saying. Really, though, I’m just happy Reggie is alive and probably got lost in talking to her father, as opposed to being kidnapped, raped and dismembered, and scattered in the Mediterranean Sea.
Reggie shakes her head to herself at the same time Pierre notices my silhouette from his periphery and angles his face toward me.
“Reggie,” I manage to say. I don’t care about Pierre right now. Only about her mental state. Her head darts up and she catches my gaze, smiling a sad smile.
“The fortune teller failed to add this into her prediction,” she says quietly.
I shake my head. “Shall I sue her?” As I ask her, I realize that I will, if it’d make Reggie happy.
She laughs throatily. “I think I’m fine.”
“Sad? Happy?” I coax.
“A bit of both.” She bites the side of her lip again.
I turn my attention back to Pierre. “So this is…”
“Oh.” He pushes himself up into a standing position, putting most of his weight on his cane while shaking his head frantically. “Don’t you dare, Horace.”
“Don’t I dare what?” I blink, confused.
“You touched my daughter. I heard you going at it all night. Prepare to die.”
Epilogue
Horace
Two years later
“Smells like burnt cheese in here.” Reggie sniffs the air on a frown, looking left and right as we pour out of the train from London to Paris. It does not, in fact, smell like burnt cheese, but I came to know my fiancée well enough to never argue with her when it comes to her memories about Paris. The whole experience in the French capital was a drama-filled blur to her.
“How about breathe through your mouth?” I knot my fingers through hers as I take her hand and we breeze toward the taxi.
“You have such an oral fixation,” Reggie notes with amusement. “You think the solution to ninety-nine percent of the Western World’s problems is my mouth.”
“Because it is.” I pat my junk in a less than classy manner when we slip into the cab. I give the driver the address to the facility where Pierre is staying these days. We try to visit him often, which he is very grateful for.
Reggie clutches my hands in hers in a death grip when the taxi merges into the traffic and we get closer to the facility.
“What if he doesn’t want to be seen by my whole family?” she asks. It was her idea to have the wedding in Paris so he can attend. She thinks the rest of her family will be joining us tomorrow and the ceremony will be this weekend. It was also Reggie’s idea to wait for two years—making it a long-arse engagement in which we learned everything there was to learn about each other—while she completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing in London. At least we got to live together the entire time and tie each other to every single piece of furniture in my Knightsbridge flat.
“He will be fine.” I pat her hand reassuringly.
“How do you know?”
“Because seeing you getting married is more important to him than what people think about him,” I say without missing a beat. I may have lived next to Pierre only for a year, but I came to know him quite well in that time. We spent a substantial amount of time together.
We talk about it some more, until I’m completely sure I diffused any worry in Reggie’s mind about what the weekend is going to look like.
When the driver drops us off at the nursing home, I grab my fiancée’s hand again and squeeze it hard.
“Promise me one thing?”
“Okay, but I reserve the right to kill you if you stray.”
I flash her a puzzled look. Why would I stray when we have sex six times a week? Not that it would matter if we’d have none, but how much can a man take?
“Don’t kill me,” I say.
“What?” She laughs. “Why would I—”
“Surprise!” People pop up from behind couches and furniture in the lobby. There’s a huge sign above our head that reads:
“SHE SAID YES (TWO YEARS AGO, BUT WHO IS COUNTING?)”
Reggie’s mother, stepfather, sister and my sister, Eugie, are here. Pierre, Aussie Lass—Elodie, apparently—my friends and colleagues, some of Reggie’s friends from uni, and more. Everybody is here, wearing huge smiles, celebrating our love.
Our very unexpected love.
Reggie is laughing and crying at the same time now, cupping her mouth in her hand and running toward her mother. Her mother catches her in her arms, and her stepfather is patting her back. Soon, Pierre joins them and clasps his fragile arms around all three of them.
Then Eugie joins.
Then Elodie.
Then Reggie’s sister, Stella.
Then me.
Soon, we become one ball of happiness, standing in a nursing home, in a massive hug-fest.
When we finally break the hug, Reggie turns to look at me and I know that I did the right thing by asking her to marry me less than twenty-four hours into our relationship.
“Thank you for giving me everything I’ve ever wanted, even without meaning to.”
She doesn’t mean my money or prestige, I know. But reconnecting with her father, among other things. I smile, pressing a kiss to that sweet mouth of hers and whispering, “Thank you for accepting, and for being sent by a Thai fortune teller to give me my happy ending.”
“You’re thinking about a massage with a hand job now,” she mumbles, raising an eyebrow.
I laugh, saying the words I’ll be saying in two days in front of four hundred guests.
“I do.”
About the Authors<
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ABOUT L.J. SHEN
L.J. Shen is a USA Today, Washington Post and Amazon #1 Best-selling author of contemporary, New Adult and YA romance. Her books have been translated into twenty different languages around the globe.
She lives in California with her husband, son, cat and eccentric fashion choices, and enjoys good wine, bad reality TV shows and catching sunrays with her lazy cat.
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ABOUT HELENA HUNTING
NYT and USA Today bestselling author, Helena Hunting lives on the outskirts of Toronto with her incredibly tolerant family and two moderately intolerant cats. She writes contemporary romance ranging from new adult angst to romantic sports comedy.
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Other Titles by L.J. Shen
Sinners of Saint Series
Defy
Vicious
Ruckus
Scandalous
Bane
All Saints High Series
Pretty Reckless
Broken Knight
Angry God
Standalones
Sparrow
Tyed
Blood to Dust
Midnight Blue
The End Zone
Dirty Headlines
The Kiss Thief
In the Unlikely Event
Other Titles By Helena Hunting
PUCKED SERIES
Pucked (Pucked #1)
Pucked Up (Pucked #2)
Pucked Over (Pucked #3)