I count to three in my head, then speak. “Move.”
And less than a second later she’s finally out of my face.
I can’t make heads or tails of Lexy Dean, and that fact doesn’t sit well with me. Not at all. I’m a people reader. It’s what I do. And it’s saved my ass more than once, I promise. So when I encounter someone I have a hard time reading, it bothers me. But usually not for long, because I eventually do get them figured out.
Not this time, though. Not with Ms. Lexy Dean.
Not on our first encounter, or our extended second. And I tried. I did—I tried reading her. Both from afar and from up close. At least when Liam wasn’t around.
And nothing. I got nada from her.
She’s so unlike anything I’ve ever known. Anything I’ve ever seen. She’s fucking beautiful, but that’s not it. Beautiful women are a dime a dozen, especially in our circles. Wealth equals beauty, or at least enough camouflage to conceal the fuck outta ugly. She’s more than just beauty. She’s smart and quick. And she’s funny. As hell. It took everything in me not to fall out laughing at her reaction when she face planted with my dick.
And she’s cute as a button, but she’s feisty too. I sense she’s like a still lake whose waters run deep. Very deep, but she also keeps herself so damn closed off that as soon as I start getting a feeling from her, it shuts off when she shuts down.
And the crazy part is, it almost seems like she’s fighting with herself. As if she wants me to know something, but she doesn’t know if she can trust me.
Seems I’m not the only one with trust issues.
The thought crosses my mind as I step into the swanky hotel suite that Trav set me up in either last night or this morning. When I called him last night after having half a drink with Liam and informed him that I expedited my tasks and was going to be available for his brand of rehab back into the stockbroker’s life much sooner than I’d anticipated, he shouted then laughed before finally explaining, “Good. I’ve been needing a guy like you. I have a whole world to introduce you to, brother, you truly have no idea.”
Whatever that means.
From what I could gather, though, I can only assume there will be more expensive suits, new cars, houses, and women involved…and even more money. Because with Travis, there always is. He’s always lived in excess. Always.
He seeks the best of the best. Then he keeps the best of the best. And because he has no qualms with playing with other’s lives, whatever is needed for him to maintain in total control, over all aspects of his life, is fair game.
Those were his words, exactly, to me the night before I left for Pittsburg to care for my dying mother.
His words.
And now, I can only remember those words and move forward. I can’t focus on the past. The past is for the dead. And I’m still alive—at least for now.
I don’t bother unpacking, or even attempt to settle in. Hell I don’t even remember to slip my shoes off before I begin stalking a twenty foot path back and forth across the plush carpet of the hotel room. I toss my satchel on a small decorative love seat on the first pass-by and pull my phone from the breast pocket of my suit jacket before thumbing through and finding Trav’s contact.
I replay the conversation I overheard between Liam and Lexy at baggage claims. Something about their house flooding or plumbing issues. And something about a Manhattan penthouse Liam wants to stay in until the damage is fixed.
And for reasons completely unknown, none of those plans sit well with me.
I want his Manhattan penthouse.
And I want his estate during the day while he’s at work.
But if the truth be told, and between me, you, and the fencepost, what I really want is more time with Lexy. I’ve wanted more time with Lexy, alone with Lexy, if the real truth be fucking told.
I pull the phone to my ear and hear it ring twice before Trav picks up. “Hey, man. How was the flight?” he asks.
“Fuck the flight. It was a flight, man. How’d you expect it to go? I’m here, ain’t I?” I quip before cutting to the chase. “What I want to know is, what’s up with your boy? Your little fuck boy, what’s his name? Liam?” I chuckle, sparking the first flicker of fire to the fire storm I plan to come.
“Fuck boy?” He laughs, but continues, “He’s not that bad, man. He’s just strung a little tight, that’s all.”
But I stay on track. Because you must with Travis. He has the attention span of a squirrel, and he can very easily distract his cohort in conversation. “I don’t give a fuck what he’s strung. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.” I leave the silence alone when that’s all I’m met with.
If that’s how he wants to play, then two can play that game.
I wait him out.
And he breaks after only thirty-seven seconds, “Okay, Rhett. What is it you want?” He’s still on the same track as me. Good.
“I want you to give me the job of fixing his house. Pull some strings, do whatever it is you do, make it happen. And don’t ask why—I’ll play stockbroker for you every other day of the week, but on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I want to be behind the walls of his estate and have readily access to his personal space—at least until I find out what it is about this guy that creeps me out. That, and also…I want his penthouse. I know he didn’t build a fortress and then turn around and spend another hundred million on a Manhattan penthouse, that whole place probably reeks of black mail and Old man Jackson. But I don’t give a fuck. A prick like him shouldn’t get to stay in a place like that every night when he has a fortress with a wife at home. Not while I’m shoved up in a hotel. I want the conveniences of home. I’ve been without them for too long, brother. You can understand that, surely.”
I let out a sigh for extra effect, but it isn’t needed.
He replies almost immediately. “Of course, that’s understandable, bro. I get where you’re coming from. And yeah, I’ll set it up. I told you already, anything man. We’ll get you back on your feet. For your forgiveness, your friendship, and for you forgetting what happened with Scar, I’ll do anything you need me to, brother. You know that.”
And I also know that I’ll hold you to that, motherfucker.
“Thanks, Trav. I appreciate it, brother. More than you know.”
But before I hang up, I ask him to send me a text with Liam Dean’s Manhattan penthouse address and the time I can expect him to be cleared out. I also tell him to let his boy know that it’ll probably take a good three to six months before his house is ready, but that was just a rough guess-timate.
A man needs to give himself enough room to plan and maneuver—You know what I mean.
I’m not surprised when I walk into Liam Dean’s apartment and see nothing but perfect opulence. It instantly confirms my every suspicion about this cocky, self-righteous bastard. I don’t care what anyone says, when a man lives with this much excess it spoils him.
It blurs the lines between greed and need.
It really does, and I’m not just saying that ‘cause my Ma did, either.
But to be honest, I think the gold flecks and spindled spider webs snaking through the black marble floors and pillars throughout the place are a bit much. I do, however, appreciate the stark white plush carpet throughout the first visible floor and the thick red drapes covering the floor to ceiling windows on the back wall.
If I was a schmuck who didn’t know how to take care of his fine as fuck wife back in our estated grounds, I would possibly go for something with just primary colors—that’s what I’m trying to say.
And the more I see as I walk through my residence for the next half year, the more I want to sigh in frustration. Not because of how pompous this Liam dude is, and not because of his extravagant tastes.
But because of Lex.
I keep thinking back to her. And the more I see of this place, the more I wonder…about her.
I wonder if she’s been here. If she’s slept here. With him.
I shake my head and make m
y way out of the ridiculous master suite before stepping out onto the balcony off the main sitting area to clear my thoughts.
She wouldn’t have come here. He wouldn’t have allowed it. This is, no—this was, his and Summer’s place. I know it.
And I know it, because it fucking reeks of Jackson, and more specifically, Summer Jackson. Well that, and I saw the texts that interrupted Liam from finishing his drink in New Orlean’s were from her.
If there was ever a woman who could blur need and greed, it’d be her. She’s always wanted more. No, not more, she’s always wanted everything. And then, more.
I stare out over the Manhattan skyline, but I don’t see a single building. All I see is Lex and all that damn strawberry blond hair spilling down and around her naked back and shoulders. Goddamn. And those emerald greens blinking up at me. Like she didn’t know whether she wanted to eat me, or haul ass running from me.
And thank God she didn’t run.
Thank God she fell.
Holy Christ, when my arms circled her I had to talk myself down—I really did. My cock was already a good ninety percenter, so as soon as her body crushed against mine, and all that strawberry blonde silk was in my face and all I could smell was her—just her, fucking everywhere—I went from a ninety to possessing the ability to cut glass or drive nails.
Or more pleasurably, drive into miss Lexy. Deep…into miss Sexy Lexy.
Fuck, I have another ninety.
I grunt, shoving myself away from the balcony rails and start pacing back forth between two Adirondack chairs. And when something I haven’t felt stir around in my chest in as long as I can remember begins stirring, it falters my steps briefly.
Huh…well hello, hopelessness. Depression.
What with the rage and revenge that’s been fueling me, I haven’t had room to notice you.
The hopelessness I feel isn’t mine, though. It doesn’t belong to me. Nor does the depression.
It belongs to the green-eyed angel I met this morning sitting atop a cloud of white down comforter and pillows.
My eyes scan the lavish penthouse and I can’t stop my heart from contracting in my chest when I think of her back at home oblivious to what’s happening here in this space, right where I’m standing, when he’s here without her.
And I can’t help the next thought from bombarding into my frontal lobes. I want to. I want to stop this shit—hell, I need to stop this shit. She’s freaking married.
But that’s just the thing, isn’t it?
Why?
Fuck that, how?
There’s gotta be something I’m missing. About her.
Something.
Just because she was as fresh faced on the plane and during our travels today as she was this morning while I watched her sleep, doesn’t mean she’s innocent. She can’t be.
I look back across Liam’s preposterous fucking apartment.
No, she’s just as blurred eyed when it comes to greed and need as the rest of them, I’m sure.
And I think that maybe Liam was correct. I think I do need more time to figure out just who it is I’m dealing with…only not where he’s concerned.
But where his wife is.
It seems the more my disapproving behaviors increase, the more privileges I lose. Like I said, or so it seems. I’ve been home over an hour, sifting through the remains of whatever Charles, Mary’s husband, and Mr. Smith, our contractor were able to salvage of mine from my side of the house—which wasn’t much, when a knock sounds at the front door a spilt second before the doorbell chimes.
I look back at one of the monitors in an armoire off to the side of the main room, and though I don’t recognize the car immediately, no flags raise in my mind. I can think of any number of reasons as to why an unknown car would be here, my house and the state it’s in being at the top, but what I’m not prepared for is what I get. What I’m not prepared for is a twenty something blond, with a short skirt and an even lower neck line with a nametag pinned to it reading: Candi, who has been sent to start packing away some of my husband’s ‘files and things.’ .
Honestly, I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth when her pouty lips barely separated to speak the words, ‘husband’s files and things.’
I shudder again and only consider politely covering it up when she walks into the main sitting room, talking around three cardboard boxes she’s obviously packed from my husband’s main room and the adjoining office. “He was so vague, yet insistent. I hope I got everything—“ But whatever internal dialogue I may have accidentally overheard is shut off when she realizes I’m present. “I must have interfered, how rude of me—in my own home, the nerve.”
She looks at me like she’s just tasted something bitter, and I have to fight the urge to slap the bitch right off her face. “I’ll let your husband know, sorry for any inconvenience.” When I clamp down to bite my tongue, I smile around it and nod before turning around and walking first from her field of vision, then the room.
Let Candi see herself out.
I huff and roll my eyes upward, before sitting down on the overstuffed down couch, all while attempting to ward the tears away. But to no avail, because they fall, then they seem to never stop.
How did I get to where I am? How?
How did I find myself in the shittiest marriage possible? How did, I find myself married to a monster? How goddammit?
Did everything start changing when we moved? Was that it? Or was it when we lost the baby?
I swear things seemed already off before the baby, but was it really?
Good God, I’m questioning my own fucking sanity. What the hell is wrong with me?
But before I can scratch past the surface of that question, I hear my phone ringing in my purse by the front door.
I blow a breath through my bangs and swipe the tears away quickly before hopping from the couch and running towards the foyer to answer my phone in time, but it goes to voicemail just as I grab it.
“Shit,,” I mutter at the same time my eyes land on a box by the front door and I stop dead in my tracks. Glancing between the box and front door, it takes me a few minutes to conclude that if one were to be standing outside, with the door open and looking into the foyer and main room of the house, the box would be hidden in its current shoved off to the side position.
I glance back at my phone and see I missed a call from my mother, then I open the front door and peek outside.
Yep, my little unwelcome guest is indeed long gone.
When I glance back at the little box of my husband’s files and things, I barely recall my earlier thoughts and the internal chastising I suffered because of my declining attitude after losing the baby.
The only thing running through my head is a question and that question is this, Do I want to know?
I feel myself pull away from the box, and everything it represents to me in this moment. And I swear, a pin could drop on the fourth floor of my side of the house and you could still hear it, the house is so silent. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until the back of my legs brush against the foyer table. I quickly rake in a breath as I blink down at the box and only then do I allow the repercussions of what’ll happen to sink in if I open it.
And all I hear is that same question, Do I want to know?
Do I?
Well, hell yes, I do.
And before I can second guess myself, I’m carrying the box towards the library at the back of the house.
After I have a good size fire blazing in the hearth to chase away the chill that insists on staying with me, I collect the box and situate it on an end table before curling up on the chair beside it. Then armed with nothing more than a glass of wine, I forge into uncharted territory.
An hour and a half later, I haven’t found a single thing. I huff a sigh out, blowing my bangs out of my face before tapping the papers into a stack, but on the way to setting them back into the box a yellow piece of legal writing paper falls out and lands on the floor.
M
y brow furrows, and I’m just about to throw the piece of paper in the fireplace when I spot handwriting on the other side.
I glance down at it to read it, but I’m only half way through the letter when I hear the front door opening and it scares the living hell out of me. I fumble with the box and the papers and I’ve barely set the box down on the chair when Liam comes in seven shades of pissed and spitting profanities.
I slip the piece of paper under some investment book setting on top of the table beside my chair because my dress, as tailored to my petite build as it is, doesn’t come with pockets, and I mutter my own profanity.
Shit.
I just wanted a peek at it.
“Liam, you scared me. I didn’t expect you home so soon. Your assistant, Candi, just left with some files.”
“Fuck Candi. And my files! You won’t believe what that Bennett bastard has done, Lexy. I don’t know what he has over Travis, but he’s playing him.” After my husband’s stalked from one side of the library to the other, he stops as if he’s said too much. Then after another beat of time, he turns, narrowing his eyes on the box at my side.
“What’s that?” he demands.
Without hesitation, I answer, “I just found it. By the door.” Inside my head, my alter-ego face plants her palm before asking, “Why? Why did you give specifics? Jesus, you’d think you were an amateur.”
“I didn’t open it. I just found it. What did who do? Bennett?” I ask before looking back over my shoulder and picking up the box. “You want this by the front door?”
I figure if I keep peppering him with questions, at some point he’ll start answering.
And thankfully, I figure right and he does. “Sure. That’s fine.”
When I come back into the library, I go back to the chair I was sitting in when he came in and position myself as close to the investment book as I subconsciously can.
Liam’s still standing facing the bookcase with hands in his pockets, head hung in exhaustion, and my silly heart twinges for him.
His dark voice reverberates through the room, “Don’t worry yourself with my issues or with Bennett. I’ll deal with it. All you need to know is that there’s a possibility I won’t be staying at the penthouse while the house is under construction. It seems our traveling partner doesn’t fancy hotels—apparently it has something to do with him spending seven years in the slammer.” He shrugs before turning towards me and his sinister smile is so wicked it causes chills to raise on my forearms.
Mind F*ck Page 11