by Laura Carter
I leave him there, holding his stomach and spluttering blood. I look back once and feel no regret, not even an ounce. Just wonderment, that any man would dare to touch a woman like Becky. Never again, for so long as I live.
“All set?” I ask Becky, slipping my hand into hers, trying not to wince when she interlaces her fingers with mine.
“I’m ready to go home.”
I stroke her hair behind her ear. “How would you like to meet my brother for lunch, then spend the night running up a tab courtesy of Edmond? Then we’ll fly home tomorrow.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Chapter 26
Becky
I stand in front of the dress bag hanging on my wardrobe door, my hair curled and loosely pinned up, my makeup complete. My nerves have stayed at bay so far, but now I’ve gotten to the point of actually putting on the dress, it seems more real. I’m going to be by Drew’s side as his firm celebrates his accession to named partner.
I can honestly say, an evening like this—black tie, champagne—will be the fanciest event I’ve ever attended. I only hope I don’t say anything out of place, and I look like someone he can be proud to have on his arm.
Since the day I met him, I’ve wanted to blow him away, the way he does me. Sure, he’s gorgeous. His body is, well, incredible. But it’s more than that. He has a goodness in him. In his blue eyes. I see it when he looks at his family, when he laughs with his friends, and when he looks at me.
He wants to take care of me, but not like Mike. He wants me to be whoever I want to be. He doesn’t want to trap me or control me.
I’ve never met a man quite like Drew Harrington.
For all his success, for all the cut-throat attitude I’m sure he displays at work, he still has the most tender of touches. The way he looks me in the eye and strokes my face, the way he never wants me to look down, he makes me feel extraordinary. I want to be strong for me, and for him.
I had nine months in New York before I met him. In that time, I started to find myself. I became more than someone’s daughter to be ordered around and put down. I realized I could be free of a husband’s hold and try things, go places, for myself.
I was afraid to lose the strength I’d found. But being with Drew, I don’t lose anything. I gain everything. And I still have my independence. It’s something so precious to me now, I’ll never give it up. The best part is, he doesn’t want me to. And he wants to keep his too.
I unzip the dress bag and lift out the gray silk gown, letting the train fall to the floor. We bickered over the dress, in the way we do, a kind of playful way where we always know which one of us will win—and that changes each time. Yesterday, we bickered because I wanted to buy my own dress for the dinner tonight. Drew said he was the reason we were going and he should pay.
I was always going to win this one. I had to buy the dress myself. I wanted him to know that he doesn’t have to fend for me. I needed him to know that I’m so proud of him, I want to look special for him.
Now, nervous as I am, I’m pleased I am standing in front of the most extravagant purchase I have ever made.
I draw the zipper down the back and step into the dress, lifting the silk and crystal woven straps up to my shoulders. Once I’ve fumbled with the zipper, I take my new silver shoes—the second most extravagant purchase of my life—from their box and sit on the edge of my bed to strap them around my ankle.
When I’m done, I can’t stop the smile that pulls on my lips. I move in front of the floor-length mirror. My reflection seems to waver as I bite my lip, my stomach in knots, my heart beating fast.
When my eyes clear, I see what I knew I would see. I am finally Cinderella.
“You’re breathtaking.”
I spin quickly to see Drew in the doorway of my bedroom. “I let myself in.”
His dark blond hair is intentionally messed with product, reminding me how much I love pulling my fingers through it. His dinner suit hugs that perfectly toned body just enough to tease me with the thought of what lies beneath. His shirt is buttoned up and a bow tie in place.
My mouth is suddenly dry. He’s like something out of a movie. “This can’t be real.”
I don’t realize I’ve said that aloud until he strolls, casual and so bloody sexy, toward me. He raises his hand to my cheek and looks at me like I am the most special person in the world. “Sometimes I don’t think you’re real either, baby. How did I ever find you?”
I run a hand over his shirt beneath his jacket, unable to resist. “I believe it went something like, you were being an arrogant arse and couldn’t wait for me to order my bagel.”
His lips part into his devastating smile. It shows his perfect white teeth—Manhattan teeth—and lights up his irises. “You’re beautiful, Becky.”
My cheeks heat. I’m a little overwhelmed and a whole lot giddy to spend the night with this man. “I feel like I’m Cinderella and you’re my prince.”
He moves slowly and presses his lips to mine. My body melts against his. His touch. His hold. His taste. The assault of his scent on my senses. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to say what I’ve thought since I watched him sleep in my kitchen just days after I met him. It hasn’t come yet. We both had things to sort out. I needed to close the door on my old life and start the life I used to lie in bed at night and cry for.
This life.
I pull back from his kiss and open my eyes to his. “I love you, Drew.”
He presses his forehead to mine and pins my body to his. “God, I love you too, Becky. So much.”
My eyes fill and I giggle. “I don’t think I’ve ever understood happy tears.”
“They’re the only kind I’ll ever make you cry, baby. I promise.”
I kiss him again, pouring into the touch every single thing I feel for him. It’s so much I could burst when I’m around him.
“Shall we go, Cinderella?”
I nod and slip my hand into his.
“Oh, before we do…” He reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a black velvet box. “I conceded on the dress.”
I take the box from him and open the lid, gasping when I see a fine chain with one large, gleaming stone. “Is that a…?” My words get lost in my tight throat.
“Diamond. Yes.” He turns me to face the mirror and fastens the chain around my neck. The diamond falls perfectly into the sweetheart neckline of my dress.
I look at him through the mirror. “No one has ever…” I shake my head quickly and force away my tears.
He kisses my neck. “They’re happy tears, right? I don’t want to break my promise right after I’ve made it.”
I chuckle and sniff. “Yes. They’re happy tears.”
“Good. Come on. I want to show you off.”
He leads me out of the bedroom. As I reach back to flick off the light switch, he asks, “You won’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight, will you?”
“Have you even seen Cinderella?”
“I could answer that honestly, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“That’s a yes.”
“Of course I haven’t seen Cinderella. It’s for girls. Little girls.”
“So was *NSYNC, Drew, and that didn’t stop you.”
He tugs me against his side as we both laugh.
About the Author
Laura Carter is the bestselling author of the Vengeful Love series. She writes from her beach home in the Caribbean where she lives with her husband and (gorgeous) dog. She loves all things romance, including paper hearts, flowers, chocolates and champagne (not necessarily in that order). If she isn’t writing or hanging around on social media, you can probably find her watching a romcom with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. Please visit her at www.lauracarterauthor.com.
Please read on for an excerpt from Playing to Win, the next novel in the Brits in Manhattan Series!
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Chapter 1
Brooks
“Harder! Faster! That’s it. Just like that. Hit me!” As I fire the words, sweat beads form on my temples.
“Fuck, Brooks. You’re riding me like a bitch!” Kit is barely comprehensible through his panting breaths.
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t waited all your goddamn life to start coming to my gym, it wouldn’t feel like you’re dying right now, Kit.”
“Christ, you sound like Madge.”
I laugh; Kit’s wife and I have been telling him he’s been piling on the pounds for months. Correction: years.
Our good buddy, Drew, is leaning on the ropes of the boxing ring, watching me put Kit through his paces in the center. I hear his deep chuckle from across my shoulder. “Just pretend Brooks is six feet four inches of pizza, Kit. Tear into him like you would a meat supreme.”
“Shut the fuck up, Drew. You know, I’d probably exercise more if I wasn’t still scarred from last time.”
Drew holds up his hands. “Hey, it wasn’t me who shot a puck in your nose, buddy. Blame the man you’re sparring with.”
Kit turns back to me, sweat teeming down his face and arms, his black hair stuck to his forehead, his training top saturated. His eyes narrow.
“You want to hate me over that game of hockey, that’s fine,” I tell him. “Put it behind your punch.” I raise the training pads that are strapped to my hands. “Come at me. Give me three more. Left, right, left.”
When he’s done, Kit accepts a bottle of water from Drew and slips out of the ring. I switch the training pads for boxing gloves and stand in the center of the ring, waiting for Drew to come and give me a real workout.
“You did good, Kit,” I say as I fasten Velcro around my wrists. “A few sessions with me in the ring, and a couple sessions in the gym each week, and you’ll be shifting pounds and fitter than ever.”
I’ve been a fitness trainer and gym owner long enough to know that some people need praise. Others need to be pushed harder. Kit is definitely the kind of guy who needs a little ego massage.
“I could murder a pizza,” he says after downing a bottle of water. “That’s your fault, Drew. All I can think about now is an extra-large meat supreme.”
I shake my head and bounce on the spot, warming up for Drew. “I don’t remember seeing pizza in your nutrition plan, Kit. I should know. I wrote it.”
He growls. “You and Madge are going to have me wasting away. I’ll look like the skinny assholes on the front cover of Men’s Health and Fitness or whatever those magazines are that you all read.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, huh, buddy?”
With that, Kit storms out of the boxing room and into the main fitness suite, leaving Drew and I smirking at his back.
“I think I’m going to enjoy training Kit,” I tell Drew. “All right, loosen up those shoulders, man.” Drew follows me, rolling his shoulders up and back, limbering up his arms, rotating his torso to stretch out his lower back. The dark, tired eyes I see too often on my best bud aren’t showing tonight. “You look relaxed, man. Being promoted to named partner of your own law firm obviously suits you.”
One side of his mouth kicks up. It’s a facial expression that makes me smile inside. We were always told to smile properly for cameras when we were kids. We both had this half-smile thing going on at school. I vaguely remember we thought it was cool back then. I guess old habits die hard.
“It’s not just the promotion, Brooks,” he says. “I feel like I’ve got everything I’ve always wanted. I got my name on the door at the firm, and I’ve got the best girl I never knew I needed. Everything feels too good to be true.”
I tap a gloved fist against his shoulder. “I’m happy for you, man. If anyone deserves it…”
“Yeah, I should say the same to you. I’d like nothing more than to see you happy, Brooks.”
Happiness. There’s a concept. One that died for me a long time ago, and one I’m definitely not in the mood to talk about. Contentment. That’s a goal I might achieve, one day. That’s something to strive for.
“All right, fists up. Show me what you’ve got, Drew. I’ve been waiting for this workout all day.”
* * * *
I’m standing in front of a mirror in the gym changing rooms, running a small amount of product through my towel-dried hair. Kit approaches from behind, his reflection appearing next to mine.
“I’ll catch you tomorrow, Brooks. I’ve got to get back to Madge and the kids. I say the kids. Hopefully, the horrors are in bed.”
Turning, I knock my fist against the one he holds out. “You don’t mean that.”
He shrugs. “God knows I must have sinned in a past life. But you’re right; I wouldn’t be without them. I might be thankful when they’re self-sufficient though.”
“Ha. Be careful what you wish for,” I tell him. “They just find different reasons to make you want to tear your hair out when they’re teenagers.”
“Can’t wait. Catch you tomorrow, same time? Thanks for tonight.”
“Anytime, buddy.”
I move to the large locker I keep permanently stocked with clothes and take out a t-shirt. When my head pops through the neck, I see Drew sitting on a bench in front of me, pulling on a pair of shoes. “Is Cady acting out?” he asks.
Bending to straighten my dark jeans over my boots, I tell him, “Imagine a female version of us at eighteen years old.”
“Fuck.”
“My sentiments exactly. I’m thirty-five, man, and my daughter has a better love life than me.”
“Jesus. As long as she doesn’t have the same type of love life you have.”
I get his point. One-night stands a couple times a month is my type of love life. That’s definitely not what I want for my Cady. I shudder at the thought. “I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Probably for the best. OK, I’m ready, I’ll meet you in the bistro.”
“I won’t be long. I just need to speak to a couple of the staff about closing up. Order whatever you want from the kitchen—it’s on the house—then we can go grab a beer.”
After checking my list of clients for personal training sessions tomorrow, and making sure the class schedule has no last-minute changes, I speak to my night team and head into the bistro.
The café bistro is a large open space with modern glass tables. We have a small menu, offering proteins, veggies and healthy carbs. We also have a salad and smoothie bar. I eat here often. It’s one of the perks of owning the gym.
The bistro is a relatively new addition to the site. Drew helped me out with it by having his firm deal with the legals around the construction work.
As I walk past the busy tables—some people eating meals, some having smoothies, some just drinking coffee and chatting—I can’t help but think it’s a far cry from where I started out.
The first gym I ever worked out in was an clapped-out old warehouse on the edge of New York Bay—the Staten Island side, where I grew up. I was seventeen. I’ve always been a tall, broad guy, but back then I was just a kid who liked to play the guitar in my high school band. The difference between me and the rest of the guys in high school was that I had knocked up my childhood sweetheart, Alice. And I was ready to marry her.
The kicker was, Alice loved me but her parents didn’t. They thought I was a punk. Well, I knocked up their daughter when she was sixteen—of course they thought I was no good. By comparison to Alice’s private education and her family’s weekend home in the Hamptons, I had nothing. I came from nothing. My mother was a bartender, and my father was a Jack of all trades, master of none, as the saying goes.
But I was damned if I wasn’t going to prove everyone wrong. I was willing to do everything and anything I could to convince Alice’s parents to let me marry her. She was the mother of my child and the girl I was crazy in love with
.
So, while I finished high school, I started working as a mechanic to earn some cash, and I joined the gym. I wanted to work like a man. Prove that I could provide for my family like a man. And I wanted to build muscle, to start looking like a man.
That first gym I went to was owned by a guy we all knew as Crazy Joe. You don’t have to remember his name, but I’ll never forget it. He really was crazy. He served in Vietnam and, by his own admission, smoked too many joints and took too much LSD in the seventies. He was covered in tats, ready to beat men to a pulp “for exercise.” He was half-cut on whisky most of the time. But he’s where it all started for me.
His sanity aside, Crazy Joe was all right. He’d have these moments of tenderness and enlightenment. Who knows, maybe that was just the LSD talking, but he sort of took me under his wing. He got me into boxing every day, running with him on the streets, and lifting weights. Hell, Crazy Joe gave me my first tattoo. Though my arms and chest are covered in ink now, I still have that first tat on my bicep.
What I didn’t realize then was that I’d never be good enough for Alice’s parents. No matter how much gym time I put in. Whether or not I worked as a mechanic and still went to school. Despite the fact I went to their house every night to see Alice and Cady, not out of a sense of obligation but because I was desperate to see my girls. None of it mattered to them. They still saw me as nothing but a drag on their daughter, pulling her down. I didn’t want to be a weight, but I did want to be an anchor. For her. For our family.
My fight to prove myself and to win Alice started when I was seventeen. It has never ended.
“How’s the steak?” I ask, taking a seat on a stool next to Drew.
“It was great. I swear it gets better every time,” he says, winking at Angie, my best chef and an old family friend.
“Such a charmer,” she says, shaking her head and wafting a hand.
“Has everything been okay tonight, Angie?” I ask.