Shameless Kiss: A Billionaire Possession Novel

by Amelia Wilde

  “No. Whoever’s got you daydreaming like you’re in some Disney movie.” I give Peter a coy glance. He looks back, his hands working beneath the counter. “Is it a secret?”

  “I have no secret.”

  He nods sagely. “It’s a member, isn’t it? You naughty minx.”

  I roll my eyes. “Even if I was seeing someone, I wouldn’t tell you. We’re not on that level.”

  He presses a hand to his chest, pretending to be hurt. “How could you say that to me? I never tell anyone about all the free drinks you have.”

  “One Diet Coke in three months is hardly national news.”

  “I’d give you more if you told me who your suitor is.”

  I laugh, making sure to keep my voice low. I don’t need to draw the attention of everyone at the club. “I don’t have a suitor.” It’s not technically a lie. I’m not sure what we are, Weston and me, but I know what we have is nothing like your typical relationship, not least of all because Weston Grant is who he is, and I’m Juliet James, law student and cocktail waitress. “I swear to you, there’s nothing to tell.”

  I grab a tray as Peter slides the cocktail across the bar toward me, and I’m about to move away, giving him the kiss-off over my shoulder, when a group of men walk in to the club.

  And at the very front of the pack is Weston, wearing something lightweight and pinstriped and tailored to fit his perfect body like a choir of angels swooped down and fitted the fabric to every single one of his muscles. Close behind him is another man with dark hair and an impish grin on his face. On his arm is a redhead who turns at least half the heads in the room, her hair styled in a twist behind her head that leaves most of the shining waves spilling down her back.

  The hostess is leading them straight to one of my tables, and my heart drops right into my shoes.

  We haven’t discussed what might happen if Weston came to the club while I was working.

  Behind me, Peter whistles, the sound low. “Weston Grant. Juliet, you were holding out on me.”

  I shoot him a glare. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He purses his lips and turns away, moving toward the other end of the bar.

  I straighten my back. I lift my chin.

  I’m going to get through this.

  I take the drink back to Table Nine, careful to arrange my face in a professional mask. I’m not going to let anything show. Then I move toward Table Seven, the cool expression firmly in place. Halfway to their table, I remember the smile. The smile that makes most of the members here look twice.

  As soon as he catches my movement from the corner of his eye, Weston’s are fixated on me, and he turns his body toward me—away from his two companions—and smiles. It sends a wave of heat shooting from my neck to the base of my spine. The cold twist of anxiety in my gut loosens.

  I approach the table with the tray tucked under my arm, using it like it’s an accessory. “Good evening to all of you,” I say, making eye contact with each of them, especially the redhead. She turns a little pink in the face and looks back at her man, who puts his arm easily around the back of her seat. “Are you looking for food tonight? Drinks? Both?”

  Weston looks up at me. “First things first. Juliet, I’d like you to meet my friends, Gideon and Kennedy Hawke.” I dip my chin at them as they murmur hellos, and lock my gaze on Weston’s, telling him without words—at least I hope he’s getting the message—that this is a dangerous game he’s playing, that he needs to stay cool, that I will stop at nothing to be professional. His eyes are on mine for a long moment, surging with heat, and then he opens his mouth, taking in a breath, and my heart pounds harder, harder, harder.

  Chapter 28

  Weston

  I feel like a complete asshole, showing up at the Rose like this without warning Juliet, but Gideon wanted to come here. He decided at the last moment, which is classic Gideon, and once he’s made up his mind on a whim, it’s nearly impossible to talk him out of it. I know, because I’ve tried to talk him out of jumping from more than one plane just for the thrill of it. The man is unstoppable.

  I sent Juliet a few texts, but she keeps her phone in the back room when she’s working, and by the look in her eyes, she received none of them.

  It’s almost as impossible to tear my eyes away from her, and the moment lingers a heartbeat too long. I open my mouth to order some bottles of wine for the table, and the manager appears at Juliet’s elbow.

  “I’m so sorry for the interruption,” he says in a low tone. “But I need to borrow Juliet for a moment. She has an urgent call to take.”

  Juliet’s brow wrinkles in concern, but just as quickly, the expression disappears, replaced by the unflappable expression she always wears at the Rose. “Thank you, Greg.” Then she steps away and moves toward the back. Greg replaces her without missing a beat, but my mind follows after her. Urgent call? That can only mean one thing—at least, one thing that I know about. I stay in my seat, but it takes every ounce of effort in my body.

  I order the drinks. I can feel Gideon’s eyes on me, and when Greg steps away, he leans closer, eyes lit up with what they’ve both just witnessed.

  “You’re a shit liar, Wes,” he says, and I raise my eyebrows at him. “Don’t try to pretend she’s still just the waitress.”

  I keep a stone-faced expression on my face for as long as I can, and then I turn to Kennedy. “Where are you two headed next?”

  She narrows her eyes at me, twirling the stem of her wine glass in her fingers. “Southeast Asia. Where are you headed?”

  “I’m staying right here.”

  “Because of your friend Juliet?” Kennedy gives me a searching look, leaning in, her eyes wide like she’d be so flattered to hear my secrets.

  “What has this man done to you?” I give her the same look, then shake my head, feigning disapproval. “It’s like he’s recruited you to harass me when we’re out for a nice dinner and drinks. This is the last time I agree to come out with you if I’m just going to get the third degree.”

  Both of them laugh, Kennedy leaning in toward Gideon, and the way she looks at him—her eyes filled with love—makes my heart twist in my chest. I want to be able to look into Juliet’s eyes like this, even if we are at the Rose.

  At this moment, I’m most concerned about whatever this urgent call is. I’m dying to go after her.

  Greg reappears with the wine, pouring out the three glasses at the same time he’s introducing us to another waitress. This one is wearing a black dress similar to Juliet’s, her face expertly enhanced with makeup, but this one is a redhead like Kennedy and has a bubbly personality. “Kimberly will be taking care of you for the rest of your evening,” Greg says, and maybe I imagine it, but his eyes linger on me for just a second too long. Then he’s gone, without any further explanation.

  The look on my face must give me away, even though I’m doing my damn best to keep it under control, because the moment Kimberly steps away to place Gideon’s order for a cheese plate to start, he looks at me with none of his characteristic playfulness. “Are you going to go after her or what?”

  “I don’t know—”

  He snaps his fingers together a foot from my face. “Shut your mouth, Wes, and go see what’s wrong. I’d be curious as hell, too, if the roles were reversed.

  “Keep your mouth shut.” He gives me a nod like he knows what I mean, but Gideon’s not the kind of man to strike up gossip with the new waitress. Not for as long as I’ve known him, anyway. He covered for me with professors more than once when I couldn’t bounce back from one of his wild adventures at the local bars.

  I stand up and move toward the entrance at a leisurely pace, like I’m just heading for the restrooms in the lobby, except that my heart is hammering in my chest.

  Juliet is almost to the door, her bag slung over her shoulder, and she’s moving fast.

  “Juliet.”

  It’s all I can do not to shout after her, and she turns at the sound of her name, irritation
flashing in her eyes. Then her expression softens, conveying a mix of concern and cold determination. Her eyes flick back over my shoulder, and then she steps out the door, cocking her head to the side like I wasn’t going to follow her.

  Out on the sidewalk, she looks up and down the street for a cab. “I can’t talk right now.”

  This isn’t the Juliet of the past few days, and I step to her side, putting my hand against the small of her back. “I don’t think that’s an option, angel.”

  She leans into me, just an inch, and then turns under my hand. “I have to get to Overbrook, and I have to go alone.”

  I pull out my phone from my pocket and send a single text, which will have Dave pulling the car around in a matter of moments. “All right.” Her eyes go wide. “Dave will be pulling up to the curb in two minutes. He’ll take you there and bring you back.”

  “You—” Juliet shakes her head a little bit, like she can’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  I put my fingers under her chin and raise her face to mine, looking into those violet eyes like they’re the most gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen. They’re certainly tied with a few other parts of her flawless body. “You belong to me, Juliet James. For another eleven days. This comes with the package.”

  She laughs a little, worry still clouding her face. “I’d have thought you’d insist on coming.”

  “And leave my guests behind?” Her lips press into a thin line. “Angel, I’d leave in an instant if you asked me to come with you, but I know you’ll come home as soon as you’re done. I know you will, because you’re mine.”

  A relieved expression washes over her face. Dave pulls the town car up to the curb and gets out, rushing around to open the door for Juliet. She leans in and presses her lips against mine, a fleeting kiss that sends hot waves of lust coiling through my gut. Damn, I wish I could take her away right now. Her lips drop open like she’s going to say something, but then she must decide that words wouldn’t be enough because she turns and steps into the car.

  “Tell me how he is, angel.”

  She nods, just once, and then Dave closes the door behind her. He meets my eyes, a little grin on his face. “I’ll keep in touch.”

  “Do that.”

  Then they’re both gone, the car speeding off into the night.

  Chapter 29

  Juliet

  “Juliet Lauren, I didn’t raise you like that.”

  My dad’s voice thunders over me, drawing out an instinctive flinch before I can stop it. He’s shouting, his voice trembling with rage, and I take an involuntary step backward toward the door of his suite. I got here in thirty-five minutes. It was the fastest trip to Forest Hills I’ve ever taken, my heart working overtime every single minute we were on the road. I couldn’t answer Dave’s soft questions about my dad, about Overbrook. The man did his best to distract me, but my mind whirled with all the possibilities of what I might find when I got here.

  Rachael, the night manager, had been tense and clipped on the phone. “He’s beside himself, Juliet, and demanding to see you.” She’d hesitated. “I don’t want to resort to any drastic measures. I don’t think that would improve the situation. But I do think it would be best if you came here as quickly as possible.”

  So I’d come. I’d come with my mind stuffed with the worst possibilities—a tantrum on an apocalyptic level that would end the arrangement with Overbrook, a sudden loss of memory that would be the start of a faster deterioration, that he’d somehow harmed himself or one of the staff. Those are all things Rachael could have told me over the phone, but it made my heart sink, over and over again, to think of how she didn’t. Maybe it’s only news that can be delivered in person. I’d swung wildly between despair and anger, and stepped into my father’s room bracing for the worst.

  It never occurred to me that I was the problem.

  I take in a deep breath. He’s in his bathrobe, perched on the edge of his bed, his hands balled up into fists in his lap. He’s practically vibrating with fury, and his eyes are red, like he’s been up for far too long. It’s past midnight. Of course he has. “Dad, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” I keep my voice as even and steady as possible, but there’s a shake that I can’t quite force out of it.

  “I didn’t raise you to be some kind of leech.” He grits his teeth so hard that they grind together. “I didn’t raise you to be a…a gold-digger.”

  A stab of pain bolts through my heart from his acid tone. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”

  He sneers at me. It’s the first time I can ever remember him directing this kind of expression at me or anyone else. “Oh, you don’t?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know how you suddenly got the money to hire that bitch?”

  He’s out of control, and that means I can’t be. Rachael is waiting outside the door with one of the staff members in case he gets violent, but right now, all I can do is stand in the middle of the raging storm. I take another deep breath, willing myself to keep my chin up. “Are you talking about your new aide?” Her name escapes me right now, but Darla assured me that she was a lovely woman, skilled with dementia patients, and had experience with the aftermath of head trauma. When she called two days ago, everything seemed to be going fine.

  “I hate her,” my dad snarls, his gray hair sticking up in every direction. “I hate her, and I know you could never have afforded to hire her to harass me all fucking day.”

  My heart drops right to the floor. I don’t recognize this man—this man who stood next to me on the carousel when I was too young to ride by myself, this man who taught me to fish with his hands covering mine. Someone must have said something to him about Weston. I don’t know who, and I don’t know what, but that has to be what this is about. My entire chest throbs. The truth. I have to tell him the truth. That’s all there is to tell, all that I can think of. “No, Dad, I couldn’t. I was working out a plan with Darla, though, and we were—”

  He narrows his eyes, his glare sending a shiver down my spine. “And then you brought in that man to take care of everything. How’d you get him to do that, Juliet? Is he some kind of client from that club you’ve been working at? Is that what kind of club it is?”

  I hold up both hands. “You know that’s not what the Rose is. I really—” My voice is trembling. “I see that you’re angry, Dad, and I get it—”

  He rolls his eyes. “Nice. Nice, Juliet. That’s nice.” I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. “You didn’t learn? How could you not have learned?”

  It comes back to me then, a hazy memory from when I was in elementary school—a friend of my father’s. Some kind of investment scheme. Their retirement funds, gone and never quite recovered, to the extent that my mother’s hospital bills and his emptied all the accounts until there was nothing left. “This isn’t like—this isn’t like what happened with your friend.”

  He slams one fist against his other open palm, and it takes everything I have to stand my ground. I don’t want to have to call out to Darla, but I’ve never seen my dad this irate before. Not once. “You don’t know the first thing about what Martin Keller did to me. You obviously don’t know a single damn thing, because if you did, you wouldn’t be whoring yourself out to the first man in a nice suit who comes by the club.”

  I shake my head again, but the movement just makes him more enraged, his face turning purple. “Dad—”

  “You shut the hell up, Juliet.” My chin is quivering and I can’t stop it. I can’t do anything to stop it. “Martin Keller—” He practically spits the name onto the tile floor and grinds his shoe in it. “That bastard. I hate the taste of his name in my mouth. I hate it, Juliet. And it’s because we had a deal. He took your mother’s retirement savings and mine right out of my hands, and then, oh, come to find out, we ended up paying him back for it. For years. Years!” He holds his hands up in front of him, his trembling hands. They look like an old man’s hands,
not my dad’s. “I worked hundreds of extra hours at the plant to pay him back, and now look at me.”

  I step toward him, just one step, but he can’t contain himself.

  “Look at me!”

  The anguished howl coming from his mouth is what brings Darla in, along with Michael, a staff member with wiry muscles and enough strength in them to stand in the way of anyone, including my father. Michael goes right to his bedside, and Darla is at my side, her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Juliet,” she says. “This was a mistake, and it’s my fault.” I’m rooted to the spot, watching Michael give my father some kind of sedative, talking soothingly into his ear, my chin still trembling. “You should go, honey. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t dare approach him. I don’t dare do anything except turn on my heel and head toward the door.

  I’m almost through it when my father’s voice cuts through the air again. He’s not yelling, but the acid tone is another body blow.

  “Your mother would be so disappointed, Juliet. She would be crushed.”

  Chapter 30

  Weston

  Juliet turns the key in the lock, and I stand up from the sofa.

  I’ve been waiting in her apartment. Dave texted me twenty minutes ago to tell me she’d asked him to take her home, and he’d assumed, from the look on her face, that she meant to her place and not mine.

  I’m glad for the spare key. She slipped it to me in my bedroom on that very first day, after she sucked me until I exploded in her mouth, and after we’d come after each other in a heated frenzy of lust and need and something like falling in love. “You probably won’t need this,” she’d whispered, sliding it across the surface of my bedside table.

  Her mouth drops open at the sight of me. “Weston—”

  I hold my hands up. “I’m sorry for breaking and entering. But you did give me a key.”