by L.J. Shen
But when they saw it was Troy Brennan who approached the shiny GranTurismo, they swiftly tucked their heads back into their cars and rolled their windows up. I actually heard the clicks of the closest doors locking in unison.
Embarrassed beyond words and horrified by my other half’s arrogance, I shook off his touch and picked up my pace to his car. He carried an unopened umbrella, but didn’t increase his speed or spare me a second glance as I rushed to avoid getting wet. I still couldn’t believe it was so rainy and cold in June. It was like the whole world had conspired against Sparrow Raynes. It was bad enough to deal with this guy without nature deciding to taunt me with constant clouds.
“Did you have to block all those people?” I asked as I fastened my seatbelt.
“No.” He met my gaze, unblinking, as he climbed behind the wheel. “Just didn’t care enough not to.”
I stared out the window with pursed lips and thunder in my eyes as the car rolled into Boston’s unforgiving Friday-night traffic, trying to let the chilly leather seat cool my temper. The radio station played “Heavy Is The Head” by the Zac Brown Band and Chris Cornell. Pretty ironic, I thought bitterly.
“You can wipe that satisfied grin off your face,” I said after a steadying breath. I could see his amusement from my peripheral vision. “Rudeness doesn’t impress me. I’ve never seen the appeal of the whole angry-asshole façade, and I’d definitely never fall for someone like you.”
"Troy Brennan. Nice to meet you. There’s always a first time for everything.”
“Maybe this…” I waved my finger between us. “Will be the first time you realize that not all women are the gold-digging, cookie-cutter, cardboard stereotype you’ve been dating so far.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t burn all your bridges to my good graces.” His smirk somehow broke into an even wider smile. “You have something you want from me tonight, Red.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He flashed me a quick glance before training his amused gaze back on the road. “Because you agreed to have dinner with me.”
I blew some air out of my lungs, rubbing my bare arms. He noticed and turned on the heater. Sadly, it was the nicest thing he’d ever done for me.
“Okay, you’re right. I have a suggestion I need to run by you.” My voice was thick.
“Later,” Brennan said, and I decided not to push for now.
As the silence stretched. I adjusted my dress, pried at the high heels that felt too tight.
“How’s your foot tonight?” he suddenly asked.
“Better,” I answered automatically, then bit my inner cheek once I realized what I’d done. Shit.
I was collecting shit-moments by the second this evening.
His lips pressed together in a thin line. “I’m a lot of bad things, but an idiot is not one of them. I figured you cut yourself on our wedding night to avoid consummating our marriage. You wearing my socks, and the blood I found on my razor was a big fucking clue. I’m not a rapist, Sparrow.”
Feeling my cheeks heat, I rubbed my forehead. “With all due respect, Brennan, with your track record, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry.”
“My track record?” He hissed out a breath. “Please educate me on what the fuck you’re talking about? And quit calling me Brennan. I’m your husband, not your boss.”
I needed to backpedal my last remark. What was I supposed to answer? Everyone knows you killed Billy Crupti? People say you break bones for a living? You make my knees weak with fear?
“My point is,” I said, “intimidating a woman with sex is disgusting. I didn’t want you to touch me.” I folded my arms over my chest, trying to catch my breath again.
That was my constant physical state around this man. I could run for hours on end and sing simultaneously without missing a note, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, talk to him for a few seconds without feeling like I needed an inhaler.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Red. But if I recall, on our wedding night you creamed my boxers like they were a fucking birthday cake.”
This man was so disgusting sometimes the need to hurt him overwhelmed me.
“Thanks for the poetic analogy. And still, I don’t want to have sex with you.”
“Yes, you do.” His lips curved seductively, his eyes still narrowed on the car in front of us. “Your eyes wander to my morning wood. You grind yourself against me when given the opportunity. Your nipples were so hard when I sucked on your blood, they almost cut through your shirt.” His right hand traveled from the gearbox, hovering over my thigh, but never touching. “And you kissed me last night and moaned my name. You.”
Damn, it was hot. I could feel the warmth of his skin, even through the dress’s fabric.
“You’re ripe, Red. And you want to have sex. It’s just a shame you want to have it with a man you hate.”
I shook my head. “Unbelievable.”
He shrugged, holding the steering wheel in one hand and drumming on the gearbox with the other, moving away from my thigh. “Love and hate are similar in a lot of ways.”
“Is there a way to love you away from me?” I snapped.
“No, but you could hate-fuck me all you want.”
I flushed lobster red, a jolt of warmth finding its way to my groin. Troy Brennan was perfectly content with talking dirty, whereas I was embarrassed at simply thinking about sex. Yet again, he had the upper hand.
I stretched, straightening my spine, wishing we weren’t in the middle of the traffic jam from hell. I had a feeling we weren’t going to make it to the restaurant even if he made reservations for nine o’clock.
I changed the subject. “We’re going to miss our reservation with this traffic. Maybe we should just forget dinner.” The less time together, the better.
“I don’t need reservations. I own the place. They’ll serve us at four in the morning if that’s what I feel like.”
Just like that, a gap opened up in the traffic. He sped through a light, and my heart picked up speed, along with the car. We were going to visit Rouge Bis, the restaurant I so desperately wanted to work at. This brought new possibilities and hence new hopefulness to my mood. I perked up in my seat, trying to keep my smile to myself.
Back to plan A.
Back to playing nice.
Back to building bridges.
I decided calling him by his first name would be a good start.
“Can you tell me a little more about why you chose to marry me, Troy?” I stared straight ahead to avoid the sting if he decided to award me with another snarky comment.
He was navigating the streets like a fire-spitting monster was on our heels, violating every driving law known to man, and inspiring some new laws in the process.
“When you were nine and I was nineteen…” He paused, letting the gravity of our age difference sink in. “There was a wedding. Paddy and Shona Rowan, remember them? She was his third wife, I think.”
I swallowed hard, nodding. One of the only mobster weddings Pops was ever invited to, and, boy, was he proud. The groom was a man who dabbled in real estate and drug smuggling after the FBI threw his friends in jail. He didn’t mind socializing with peasants like my dad.
And on his wedding day, I found out why.
Paddy Rowan was high on my shit list, one of the first two people up there, along with the man who sat right next to me. The only difference was that I hated Troy and wanted him out of my life, but Paddy? I wanted Paddy dead.
“I remember,” I said, pain already tickling the pit of my stomach. “‘Saving All My Love For You.’”
“Excuse me?” he said, sounding amused.
“The name of the song we…you know.” My face was on fire. I was embarrassed to admit that I remembered. “We danced to it. “Saving All My Love For You” by Whitney Houston.”
“Yeah, sure.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Anyway, my family shared a table with yours, much to everyone’s surprise.”
Just in case I’d forgotten jus
t how low-class I was.
“But,” he continued, “Paddy was always a clueless prick. Anyway, you sat across from me. I didn’t pay much attention to you, because you were nine, and that was too fucked up even by my standards.” He shook his head, almost cringing. “I remember you were the cutest, politest little thing. You asked my mother tons of questions. At one point you asked her if her teeth were real. Then you tried to convince me to dance with you.”
“You agreed.” Memories slammed into me. I dug my fingernails into my palms, pressing my fists on my thighs, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I tried to focus on the part of the day he was talking about, the sweet memory of my dance with the much older boy, a memory I’d somehow completely erased until now.
“Yeah.” He raised one eyebrow. “You were hell-bent on dancing a slow dance.” He suppressed a chuckle. “Even then, Red, I was your first.”
My fists tightened and I continued to stare out the window. It wasn’t embarrassment that he was my first slow dance that shook me to the core. It was what happened after that dance that made it one of the worst days in my life. So bad, in fact, that it made my mother leaving me seem like child’s play.
I cleared my throat, suddenly realizing how exposed I felt. “The line to the valet is two-blocks long. Pull over and I’ll let someone know we’re here.”
“I own the place.” Brennan—no, make that Troy—laughed, delighted by my unintended joke. “Watch.”
He slammed the Maserati into park in the middle of the busy street, slid out and threw his keys to a uniformed valet who was leaning against a wall in the alley and smoking a cigarette. The valet, who was about my age, caught the keys in his palm and nodded furiously at Troy, dropping the cigarette like it was a ticking bomb and jogging to the Maserati’s driver-side door.
As another traffic jam formed behind my husband’s vehicle, I began to suspect he was the sole reason for bad traffic in Boston. It was entirely possible that if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t need the T.
“Smoke again during your shift and you’re fired. Scratch my car and you’re dead, get it?” Troy barked at the guy with his keys.
He sauntered over to my side of the car and opened the door. I stepped out, accepting his hand and allowing him to guide me by the waist as he ushered me into the glitzy restaurant. Two other restaurant staff already held the door open for us. Faint elevator music wafted through the doors, along with the smell of mouth-watering food and pale, sandy light.
“You’re not nine anymore,” he said gruffly as we waltzed in.
“And thank God for that,” I muttered, my thoughts traveling back to Paddy Rowan.
Block it, I ordered myself, just like I always did. Just like I blocked everything else.
TROY
CATALINA SENT HER dress and heels so Red could wear them tonight to fuck with my head. It worked. Because when Red wore Cat’s dress, unlike my mistress, she didn’t look like a wrapped candy waiting to be unfolded. She looked like a sweet fucking princess who is about to lose her innocence at the hands of the big bad wolf.
I fed my personal little Red Riding Hood more sweet memories to keep her happy, my words like music to her unsuspecting ears.
Guilt was a thief. It would steal your mind, mess with your priorities and would eventually steer you from your original plan. I couldn’t allow it any room in the life, so I pushed it aside, convincing myself that on some level, these moments we shared weren’t lies. Just half-truths.
We did slow dance at the wedding.
But I never thought she was endearing in any way.
In fact, at nineteen, I already knew that she was destined to be my wife. When I danced with nine-year-old Sparrow, all I’d felt was anger. Mostly for me, a little bit for her.
All that mattered now was that Sparrow bought it, and she was beginning to crack. Rays of light streamed through her walls of defense. Even though I liked their warmth, I was careful not to give her too much hope. We weren’t a real couple, and this wasn’t a love story.
A waiter showed us to the best table in the restaurant. My wife took in the room wide-eyed, and I knew why. Before me, she could hardly afford a Happy Meal. Now, she was gaping at the waterwall dividing the brass bar from the bronze concrete tables. Hell, the lighting here alone cost more than her father’s annual salary.
People swiveled their heads in our directions, gossiping in hushed tones over their overpriced meals, probably wondering how I, of all people, had settled down—and with an average Catholic girl, no less. They were swallowing her whole with their gazes, following her wobbly steps, like there was a secret hiding behind those innocent green eyes and that crimson hair.
I straightened to my full height, towering almost a foot over my wife, my hand guiding her narrow waist as I led her to our seats.
“Everybody’s watching us. People are talking about us,” she said, her voice small.
“Do you care?”
She hesitated, looking down at the high heels she swayed in, before lifting her face up, her expression resolute. “No.”
“Good, because opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one, and they usually stink.”
“Well, that’s just your opinion.” She chewed on a smile, and the cleverness of her comment didn’t escape me.
I bit back a grin, feeling a tad less annoyed with being seen with her. She wasn’t supermodel material, but fuck it, her mouth was good for more than licking and sucking, and that was refreshing, I supposed.
Red spilled the beans about what she wanted from me while we were sipping Kir Royale. I had a feeling if she knew a single cocktail was $125, she wouldn’t have polished off three in a row just to get the liquid courage to ask me if she could work at Rouge Bis.
A part of me liked that about her. She wasn’t particularly interested or impressed by my money, even though she had none. That showed character. Or endless stupidity. I was leaning toward the former, though.
I clenched my drink and pretended ignorance, like I hadn't already done the math the night before, when I went through her texts. I inspected the room while she rambled on, trying to sell herself as a valuable employee.
She sat across from me, tapping her foot beneath the table and watching me for a reaction. She was so caught up in trying to see what I was thinking she paid little attention to the way people were still staring at us. Sparrow was an observant little thing most of the time, but as opposed to my so-called “string of cookie-cutters,” she seemed to rarely give a damn about what people thought.
It was a liberating quality in a woman.
“So you want to work here?” I folded my arms behind my neck and leaned back when she finally stopped talking to take a quick breath. I didn’t hate the idea. Maybe if she worked here, she wouldn’t be grating on my fucking nerves whenever we were both under the same roof. Getting her out of my hair was an idea I was warming up to.
She nodded. “I’ll do anything. I don’t mind starting from the bottom.” She cleared her throat nervously, but I spared her the sexual innuendo. “I worked at a diner as a cook. It may not sound like much, but I can also wash dishes or work as a waitress or…”
She was rambling again. Lifting one hand, I cut off the stream of words. “Time to be blunt. What the fuck makes you think you’re good enough for the best place in Boston?”
Her face fell. For a second, I almost felt sorry for her for marrying a bastard like me, but then I remembered she was a fucking headache I inherited from my old man, and I stiffened my back in my chair.
She squared her shoulders back, taking a deep breath. “I’m a great cook, Troy. Try me,” she challenged, calling me by my first name. She only did it when she tried to be nice, which wasn’t very often. Her eyes were almost pleading, but her tone let me know she wasn’t going to beg.
I let my mouth curve into a slow smile. That hint of fight gleamed behind her eyes again, dancing like flames. I stood up, offering her my hand.
“What are you doing?” She looked a little confus
ed, but took my hand and followed suit, her chair screeching behind her.
“I’m going to see if you’re as good as your word, Mrs. Brennan.”
I led her to the back of the restaurant, barging through the swinging double-doors in a confident stride. The minute I stepped into the hectic kitchen, the hustle and bustle stopped. Everyone paused shouting over the dishes. Staff who ran from one station to the other halted, staring at me. Mouths fell open, dishes crashed against the floor and eyes widened. Hell, you’d think I walked in there with a loaded Uzi and not a frightened chick.
Guess my staff was surprised to see me. After all, I was notorious for being a short-tempered, snippy asshole. And the fact that I’d never bothered to meet any of my employees didn’t exactly push me up the list as Boss of The Year. They were waiting to see what I’d do. I was a case study. I was the psychopath. That’s the legend I fed, and that’s the legend I had to live up to, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
The place was as hot as a furnace, and I grunted my disapproval, wiping off my forehead. Sparrow was standing behind me, clutching my hand in a death grip. She was scared shitless, and I kind of liked it.
“Who’s the head chef around here?” I asked, and watched as people flinched. No one spoke. No one breathed. No one fucking moved. Their terror echoed and bounced on the walls.
After a few seconds, a large man with a dark porno moustache and stained, white chef’s coat stepped forward, wiping his hands with a kitchen towel before tossing it on a chopping board and offering me his sausage-thick fingers for a handshake.
“That’d be me, sir. Name’s Pierre.”
I didn’t even look at his hand, let alone shake it. “Don’t really care. Now, this girl right here…” I turned around, pointing at Sparrow, whose eyes grew wider by the second. “She wants a job working in this kitchen.”
“We don’t need any new employees, but she can leave her contact number and—”
“I don’t remember assigning you as my HR manager,” I snapped. “Test. Her. Now.”
Hushed gasps filled the room. Some girl shrieked in the far corner of the kitchen. All eyes were on Sparrow, desperately trying to figure out why I wanted to help Plain Jane get a job at one of Boston’s finest. Guess they didn’t get the memo about the wedding of the month. The sound of something sizzling on a frying pan was the only thing audible in the crowded kitchen. Something other than my short fuse was burning.