Asher (The Casanova Club Book 10)

by Ali Parker

  “The end of the month?” my mother asked incredulously. She rose to her feet as well and ran her hands down her black blouse and the pleats in her flowing pants. “You can’t be serious, Ash. We have obligations. The masquerade is at the end of the month and—”

  “Well lucky for you, Piper will be wearing a mask, so nobody needs to see the American on her,” I grated out.

  “Don’t be so abrasive, Ash,” my mother scolded. “We’re only looking out for you because you’re not willing to do it for yourself. You’re thirty-one years old. When is this nonsense going to stop? You spend half your time out on the streets like a commoner, and now you’re bringing home a foreigner to court. Are you trying to rip this family apart?”

  I stared blankly at her. “If this is all it took to rip our family apart, we have more problems than I realized.”

  “Problems?” she asked sharply.

  “I’m not indulging in this any longer.”

  “Asher,” she barked after me as I made for the door. “We’re not finished with this conversation.”

  “I know, Mother. But if I hang around, you’ll beat this into the ground, and there’s no sense in it. I’m not changing my mind. I’m not sending Piper home. You two are just going to have to deal with the fact that I’m not a teenager anymore. Haven’t been for over a decade. And you no longer hold any power over me. I’m sorry you feel so strongly about this, but that’s not going to change things. I’m sick of being bulldozed.”

  “We’re not bulldozing you,” my father said as he got to his feet and rested a hand on my mother’s shoulder, a sign of solidarity. “Like your mother said, we’re only watching out for you. The media likes to run with these kinds of things. Does Piper know what she’s in for with you this month? Is she aware of the attention she might—”

  “Yes,” I said. “She is. Feel free to speak amongst yourselves over this non-issue. I’m bowing out of this conversation.”

  They let me leave.

  My footsteps echoed down the long corridors as I made my way up to the third floor and my quarters. The voices of my mother and father bickering faded away to nothing as I slipped through my door and stepped into my suite.

  It was like stepping into another world.

  I’d done away with the stone floors, covering them in hardwood and lush carpets to dull the echo. A fireplace against the north wall faced two plush sofas, and my bed was against the opposite wall. I went to the liquor cabinet beside the fireplace and poured myself a glass of whiskey as I wondered what Piper was up to back at her hotel room.

  Chapter 8

  Piper

  The toes of my ankle boots were lined up with the edge of the sidewalk as I leaned forward to peer both ways down the busy street outside my hotel.

  I was expecting Asher. We’d made plans for him to pick me up here at nine o’clock in the morning sharp, but he was ten minutes late. I told myself it was nothing serious and that some of his duties probably got in the way this morning and delayed him.

  I felt a little self-conscious about my very casual outfit. He’d called me last night and told me not to dress up, that dressing up would be a mistake actually. He advised I dress comfortably in something I could easily move in, so I opted for a pair of black leggings, my boots, a dark gray T-shirt, and a loose oatmeal-colored cardigan that I had tightly wrapped around myself as I waited.

  There was a chill in the September London air. The leaves were turning crispy and brown on the trees lining the street, and the faint, sweet scent of their decay colored the air. I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it. Autumn was my favorite season for many reasons, one of which being the changing color of the leaves, the other part being the option to now dress in cozy, less revealing clothes.

  A deep rumbling reached my ears. I stretched to the tips of my toes to see farther down the street over the roofs of other cars.

  A midnight-blue sports car coming down the street, pulled a sharp U-turn, and then came up along the curb and stopped right in front of me. The windows, including the front ones, were tinted so dark I couldn’t see in, but I knew Asher would be behind the wheel.

  I was still adjusting to the left-side driving and reversed steering wheels.

  The window rolled down, and Asher grinned at me. “You getting in or what?”

  I moved around the hood of the car as he opened the passenger door for me. It lifted upward, batwing style, and I ducked underneath it. As I buckled myself in, the door closed of its own volition.

  “Nice car,” I said.

  “Thanks. Quant E. Fully electric.” Asher pulled away from the curb and out into the street. He shifted gears smoothly, accelerated up to the roundabout, and took the first exit. “How was your evening?”

  Lonely.

  “Good.” I smiled. “I’m getting spoiled with that room service. The hotel restaurant has such good food.”

  “Do you need anything else to make your stay more comfortable?”

  Did he mean on top of the king-sized four-poster luxury bed, all you can eat room service, full spa services, open bar, and twenty-four-hour rooftop pool?

  “No, I think all my bases are covered. Thank you, though.”

  Asher nodded. “Just let me know if that changes.”

  “I will.” I peered down the road as Asher rerouted us once more. Within a few minutes, we were creeping away from the Kensington area—a part of London where the wealth was obvious—and toward a more congested, slightly rundown part of the city. “What are we doing today?”

  “You’ll see.” Asher flashed me a secretive smile. “I try to get out here at least once a week. Sometimes more if I can swing it without my mother or father catching on. But you know how they are. It gets harder and harder to slip out from under them.”

  “Can they really stop you from going out?”

  Asher frowned. “No, they can’t. But they can make my time in the house an absolute nightmare with their endless nagging and hovering.”

  “Helicopter parents.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Helicopter parents,” I said again, like he should understand what I was talking about.

  “I don’t think I’ve heard that term before.”

  I smiled. “Well, I think you’ll appreciate it then. It’s basically saying that certain kinds of parents—a lot of them in North America, I might add—have a tendency to hover around their children like helicopters, micromanaging their time. There are also studies that show this kind of parenting style can lead to extreme rebellion during the teenage years.”

  “Helicopter parents,” Asher mused. “I like it. It’s fitting. Is that what yours were like?”

  I shrugged. “Yes and no. They trusted me not to make mistakes and manage what free time I had. It just wasn’t that much because I was expected to help with the family business.”

  We took a right-hand turn, followed shortly by a left. Asher’s brows drew together. “So the two of us are caught up in family obligations then?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Although yours are significantly more important than mine. Running a restaurant seems like child’s play compared to the kind of work you’re expected to do. Not to mention the lifestyle that goes with it.”

  Asher was quiet as we took a last right-hand turn.

  The car drew quietly down an ever-narrowing alleyway until he came to a stop near a back door that read “Employees Only”. I frowned as he took off his seatbelt and killed the ignition. “Is this where we’re supposed to go?”

  “Yep. Trust me.”

  “That’s exactly what the scary serial killer says to the girl in the alley before he stuffs her in his trunk and drives off with her.”

  The gullwing doors opened, and we both stepped out. Asher wore a sheepish smile. “It’s a good thing this car doesn’t have a trunk then.”

  He held out his hand, and I threaded my fingers through his. Then we approached the door, and he shouldered it open. I followed him over the threshold and into a narrow hallway with shi
ny linoleum floors and fluorescent lights in the ceiling. One of them flickered unreliably as we passed under it, and I was instantly reminded of every horror movie I’d ever seen.

  I practically stepped on Asher’s heels as I pressed myself as close to him as I could get without standing on his shoulders.

  “Right through here,” he said as we approached a doorframe blocked off with a black curtain.

  I swallowed.

  Asher tugged it aside.

  On the other side was an expansive kitchen with aluminum trays and counters and tables on wheels. Pots and pans hung from baker’s racks mounted to the ceiling, and an entire wall of spices took up the right side of the room, save for a wide aluminum door for a walk-in freezer.

  I knew the signs of a restaurant kitchen better than anyone.

  “What is this place?” I asked as we passed through. I had so many more questions than just that one, but it was the one that burned brightest inside me. I wondered where the staff was or if there even was any staff. The place was so clean, a restaurant girl like me made assumptions that it wasn’t even operational.

  “Not much cooking gets done in this kitchen on weekdays,” Asher said. We crossed the kitchen and made for another door on the far side. When we pushed through it, the sound of voices and cutlery banging against metal bowls reached my ears. “But it’s fully rocking on weekends. I thought today would be a good way to ease you into it. A little calmer.”

  “Ease me into what?”

  Asher and I emerged through a final set of doors.

  I looked around at the expansive room. It was a cafeteria. Tables were pressed up against each other, edge to edge, and people lined the benches shoulder to shoulder. It smelled good, homey, and the air was full of chatter and laughter.

  “Do you have soup kitchens in America?” Asher asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we do.”

  “Have you ever volunteered at one?”

  I wished I could have said yes, but I shook my head. “No.”

  He grinned and clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Because I’m going to make you work for your meal tonight, Piper. Follow me. We’ll get a hairnet on those curls of yours, put on some gloves, and then we’ll start the fun part.”

  I hop-stepped to keep up with him. “The fun part?”

  He grinned over his shoulder. “Talking with the people, of course.”

  It took roughly fifteen minutes for the employees of the soup kitchen and Asher to “scrub me in”. That was what they called it around here. It was like they were prepping for surgery as they assumed their positions behind big vats of hot soup or along the cafeteria line where they served a variety of things like steamed vegetables, rice, lentils and beans, salad, and chicken. The selection was more than I expected, and the people who joined the line with their trays in hand were also a surprise.

  There were people from all walks of life approaching. Asher and I worked the soup station. As soon as we’d come up to relieve the others, all the staff had parted for him and let Asher and I go right to the big bowls of soup. Apparently, he was well known in these parts, and he got first dibs on whatever station he wanted to work.

  There were three soup options: split pea, ham and potato, and vegetable medley.

  A young woman with a boy I assumed was her son stepped forward.

  The boy, a narrow-shouldered eight-year-old with a crooked smile and missing teeth, beamed up at Asher. “Hi, Ash,” he said, stepping forward.

  “Rudy.” Asher nodded in greeting. His eyes flicked to the boy’s mother. “Helena. Nice to see you two out and about. Let me guess. Two split peas, right?”

  Both of them nodded.

  Asher chuckled and spooned soup into two bowls. While he did that, I took their saucers, topped them off with a spoon, two soda crackers, and salt and pepper packets, and then held them out to him to place the bowls on. I passed the saucers with the bowl of soup on them over the counter to Helena and Rudy.

  “Thank you.” Helena gave me a tight-lipped smile.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Rudy waved at Asher and broke away from the line to find a seat with his mother. More patrons stepped forward, and it didn’t take long for me to realize Asher was on a first-name basis with at least eighty percent of them.

  “Have you been doing this a long time?” I asked, finding a good rhythm.

  Asher ladled soup. “Four years?”

  “What got you into this?”

  Asher shrugged. There was a break in the line, and I looked up at him as his cool gray-blue stare slid across the room. “I don’t know, to be honest. I’d had a long day. I was cooped up in the house and had an argument with my family. You see, I’m old enough to have an opinion of how I think the family should spend our money, but I don’t have any real power. A guy can only get shit on for his ideas so many times before he decides to take matters into his own hands.”

  “So that’s what this was? Taking matters into your own hands?”

  Asher nodded. “Yes. I wanted to help the community. My parents had other ideas of how they wanted to spend their surplus. So I left and stumbled upon this place by happenstance. Now I make a point of trying to be here at least once a week. And I’ve made friends here. This place makes me feel like I’m worth something, you know?”

  I blinked up at the man with royal blood. With influence and wealth and power and reputation. With a car in the back alley worth more than anything I could ever imagine. With good looks, charm, self-awareness, and kindness.

  And he didn’t think he was worth something.

  I stirred the vat of soup. “You’re a good person, Asher. I hope you know that.”

  Chapter 9

  Asher

  Piper rummaged through her purse once we took our seats in the local pub not far down the street from the soup kitchen. It was called Chances, and it had an old-school English sort of vibe, with cherry oak plank walls, dark floors and even darker window coverings, and ceiling fans turning lazily in the ceiling pushing air in circles that smelled like beer and gravy.

  I watched as Piper pulled a hair tie out of the depths of her bag and proceeded to gather up her mane of dark hair from her shoulders. A couple of twists and a flick of her wrist and she had it done up in a ponytail.

  Then she tucked her chair closer to the table and picked up her menu. “I could really go for a beer.”

  I grinned. “Did I make you work too hard?”

  She eyed me over her menu. “Not at all. You should see me back home at my day job. Well,” she shook her head as she turned her attention to the beer list, “you should have seen me.”

  “Past tense?”

  “I work at my family’s restaurant. The business isn’t doing very well. In fact, it’s been a long, tiresome decline for many years now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be,” Piper said stiffly. “The economy is tough right now. My family knew full well things were going south, and they had the chance to sell and start fresh. To get out while they could. But stubbornness and pride are two traits all members of my family suffer from, and unfortunately, the business is still theirs, and it’s costing them thousands of dollars a month to keep it open.” Piper closed her menu and smiled at me. “Now, about that beer.”

  Chuckling to myself, I flagged down a waitress, who took our drink orders and assured us she’d be back to take our food requests shortly. While we waited, I turned my sights back to the pretty girl across from me. “How has it been, being away from work all year?”

  “Rocky.”

  “How so?”

  Piper chewed the inside of her cheek. “My parents didn’t know I was doing this. The Casanova Club. They thought I went abroad for school.”

  “And why would they think such a thing?”

  Piper winced. “I might have lied and told them that’s what I was doing.”

  I laughed. “Oh man, that’s a deep dark hole to climb your way out of. Talk about dashed e
xpectations. They thought you were out furthering your education, and really, you were out with the likes of me, dining in fancy hotels and drinking cocktails in lavish bars.”

  “You’re making me feel worse,” Piper said.

  “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. But damn, Piper. That was cold.”

  She nodded and ran her fingers along the edge of the wooden table. For a moment, I thought I might have pushed things too far. We’d hardly known each other for a week now, and I hadn’t spent nearly as much time with her in that week as I’d hoped, and there was a good chance I’d crossed a boundary by openly criticizing her choice to lie to her folks.

  Then again, she didn’t strike me as the sort of girl who’d really care.

  Piper crossed her arms and rested them on the table. “You’re right. It was.”

  “Have they forgiven you?”

  Piper looked down.

  I knew immediately that they had not.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No. Really, I am. It can be hard navigating these kinds of things with family. Sometimes, they confuse what they want with what you want. And then it just gets really fucking messy.”

  Piper sniffled. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  Her eyes were glassy. I felt bad for bringing up a sore spot and considered switching gears. But that would be playing it safe.

  “Tell me about them,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your parents. Tell me about them. What are they like?”

  Piper hesitated. But only for a second. “My mom is quiet. And proper. She loves baking, and she’s been getting up at the crack of dawn to work in the kitchen at the restaurant for as long as I can remember. My dad… How do I sum up my dad?” A smile touched her lips as she thought about her family. “Well, he’s more like me than my mom is, I guess. Or I’m more like him. He’s stubborn. A bit moody. Headstrong. He likes what he likes and hates what he hates and that’s that. And then there’s my brother.”