by Aubrey Dark
“The red velvet sheet cake. I didn’t know how it could possibly have gone missing. Now I do.”
“Oh, no,” I echoed.
I turned to look at Otis again. His face was definitely curling up into a grimace. And I knew what that meant.
“Otis…” Steph and I both stepped forward to get him out of the living room, but it was too late.
Otis retched, spewing red velvet cake vomit all over the pristine white carpet. If it had been chocolate cake, it couldn’t have looked worse. The living room now had a huge splotch of red like highway roadkill.
Steph’s face, on the other hand, had turned from bright red to completely pale. She looked like she was going to throw up herself. I looked around the room at a bunch of ladies in elegant gowns holding glasses of wine and cupcakes. All of them were frozen in shock.
And my mom was definitely surprised.
Chapter Nine
Steph
Lucas had already declared his love for me, but I was sure that he was going to rescind that statement once Otis puked up cake all over his living room.
Lucas’s mom stared at the pile of red velvet vomit on the floor.
“Oh my god,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll clean it up. I’ll… I’ll call a vet.”
Lucas stepped forward in front of the group of women.
“Ladies, let’s move into the den for evening cocktails, shall we?”
Lucas ushered the women into the other room. Some of them looked like they were about to be sick as well, and I didn’t want any more red velvet disasters on the white carpet. I stood in front of Otis’s mess, tugging down the hem of my stupid club dress. I couldn’t believe I’d pulled out the wrong little black dress from my closet.
The ladies trickled out of the room, and I was left alone with Otis.
“I bet you feel a lot better after ralphing up that sheet cake, don’t you?” I asked Otis. He yelped, then burped.
“Well, serves you right for stealing my cake.” I patted him on the head and he looked up at me with an expression of guilt. I knew the feeling. Eating too much cake gives anyone a stomach ache and a guilty conscience.
Then I raised my head.
“Is that—”
Otis barked.
“Oh shit,” I said, as I watched the tendrils of smoke curl out from the kitchen door.
“I thought I’d turned the oven off!” Andy said. “Oh Jesus, Steph, I’m sorry.” He was standing in front of the smoking oven, looking completely aghast. His hands were pressed against his temples like he could shut out the fire if he thought about it hard enough.
“What is even burning?! Otis ate the sheet cake!”
“I put in a spare pan of cupcakes,” Andy said. “Because the sheet cake went missing.”
I pulled the tray out of the oven. Billows of smoke rose up from the oven. I kicked the door shut and dumped the tray of blackened lumps into the sink. The water hissed as it hit the burning pan.
Otis ran in, wagging his tail and barking. He’d recovered quickly from the red velvet mishap, thank God.
“This is a disaster.”
“The oven had a weird timer dial,” Andy explained, his hands still raised to his head.
“Let me guess, it was in Swedish.”
“Oh, Steph, I’m so fucking stupid—”
“You’re not stupid,” I said. “Get the dishtowels over there.”
I opened the back door.
“Let’s try and fan the smoke away from the party, okay?” I waved the dishtowel over my head. Otis jumped up and snagged the dishtowel in his jaws. I tried to pull it away from him, but he thought we were playing tug of war. I pulled and he pulled back, and I was the one wearing heels. I went down on the kitchen floor with a thud. I heard the hem of my dress split.
“Fuck!”
I let Otis have the dishtowel, but he didn’t want it anymore. He jumped on top of me, licking my cheek and slobbering all over me.
“Ahhh! Get off! Otis! Off! Down!”
Andy tugged Otis’s collar and he sat down happily, wagging his tail. Gone was the guilty dog who had ralphed up my sheet cake. I pulled out my ponytail and tried to wipe the drool out of my hair with a paper towel.
“It’s fine,” Andy said. “Everything is fine.”
“Fine!?” I said. “You think this is fine?!”
“I turned off the smoke detectors before they could go off,” he said. “And the cupcakes were great, weren’t they?”
What was I going to tell Lucas? My heart twisted in my chest. On the one hand, he’d told me that he loved me. On the other hand, I was singlehandedly destroying his apartment with smoke and dog vomit.
While I was pondering the best way to throw myself off of a bridge, Lucas stuck his head in the door.
“Hello?” He sniffed at the air. “Is everything alright in here?”
“Fine!” Andy said, one octave too high. “Ahem. Everything is fine. Just cleaning up.”
“Okay,” Lucas said. He seemed way too distracted to notice exactly how much smoke Andy had created while cleaning up. He waved enthusiastically to me.
“What is it?” I asked, coming over to him.
“Come to the library,” he said. “I’m making another toast.”
“Lucas, do I really need to be there? I have so much to clean—”
“I’ll get my servants to clean it up,” Lucas said. I frowned, but he pulled at my arm.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Andy—”
“What do you want me to do?”
My brother stood in the middle of the kitchen, his eyes wide.
“Just… just don’t set anything on fire. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, giving me a thumbs up. “Got it.”
“Was something on fire?” Lucas asked.
“No. What? Fire?” I asked, steering him away from the kitchen. “Everything is great.”
“Great,” Lucas said. “Great. I need you to be there for my speech.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said. “Just let me wash up in the bathroom.”
“One minute,” he drawled. “I’m counting.”
Chapter Ten
Lucas
I refilled the ladies’ wine glasses as well as my own. Things were going fine. Otis seemed to be feeling better, and Alex would have everything cleaned up before anyone had to walk through the living room to leave.
And I had another speech to make for my mom. A more serious speech. I’d never understood the expression “having butterflies in your stomach,” but as I thought about what I was going to say, I felt a little fluttering that might have been a butterfly or two inside of me.
I took another gulp of wine to wash the butterflies away.
The three girls sauntered over to me. I could see the competition in their faces.
“So. I hear your last project was in Paris,” the brunette said.
“That’s right.”
“I love Paris,” the blonde girl interjected. “I always thought it would be wonderful to do a photo shoot in France.”
“So you’re a model?” I asked, my attention half on her, half on my mother. She’d had three glasses of wine already, and was working on her second cupcake. I wanted to make sure she didn’t pull an Otis.
“Actually, I’m a model too,” the redhead said. She twirled a strand of hair in her fingers. “I absolutely love your work.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Such an artistic visionary.”
“Didn’t you win the catwalk photographer award last year?” the brunette said, trying to claw her way back into the conversation.
“Uh, maybe.” I vaguely remembered going to an awards dinner for something like that.
The blonde was stroking my shoulder.
“Is this a custom Versace suit?” she said.
“Y—yeah.” My eyes flickered to the back. Steph was coming in through the door. She stayed at the back of the library, close to the wall. When her eyes met mine, they narrowed.
“The material is so
high-quality.”
The other girls were touching my other shoulder, their fingers sliding along my sleeve.
“Uh, excuse me. I have to do something,” I said, extricating myself from their grasp. I hurried to the back of the library where Steph was waiting.
“Hey!” I said. “I’ll get you something to drink. Do you want something to drink?”
“I’m good, really.”
“You sure?”
I looked at Steph. She’d never looked so cute. Her dress was lightly smudged with flour and her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. I pushed a strand of hair away from her face and she smiled a tight smile. Was she nervous?
Soon enough, she wouldn’t have any reason to be nervous.
“Wait right here,” I told Steph.
She raised her eyebrows at me and nodded. I couldn’t wait. This was perfect. Everything was absolutely perfect. I went up to my mother and put an arm around her.
“Mom,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “I had something else I wanted to say.”
“Of course, sweetheart,” she said. She leaned close to me and eyed the trio of girls in the corner of the library. “Did you pick the one you liked?”
“Actually, that was a surprise that I wanted to share with you.”
My mom’s eyes lit up, and I knew that I was doing the right thing. I raised my hand and called out across the room.
“Steph? Steph, come here.”
Steph’s face turned pink as the conversation quieted down. She shuffled around the edge of the crowd to get to my side, her hands behind her back. I noticed then that her dress had torn and she was holding the hem together in the back. So that’s why she was nervous. Well, nobody would notice. I put my arm around her shoulder and turned to the crowd of ladies. The modeling trio looked miffed.
“Stephanie Hart is the woman who made all of the lovely cupcakes for us today. But she’s more than just a wonderful baker. She’s a wonderful person, as well.”
Steph leaned toward me, a smile on her face.
“How much have you been drinking?” she whispered.
“Not hardly anything at all. Ladies and…uh, ladies, I want you all to know that I’m going to be investing in Steph’s cupcake company to help her expand.”
“What?” Steph’s face was white. Her lips parted, but no other words came out. I smiled comfortingly at her. Maybe she knew what was coming. I was nervous, too.
“And,” I said, addressing the room. “It’s my mother’s birthday. That’s why I want to make tonight extra special.”
I got down on one knee and pulled out the ring that Alex had picked up from the downtown jeweler’s. I thought it looked pretty darn perfect, all sparkling in the light.
“What are you doing?” Steph said.
“Stephanie Hart, I love you. Marry me.”
A second passed. Stephanie’s smile melted off of her face. I frowned. Why wasn’t she saying yes? A few more seconds passed. One of my mom’s friends coughed nervously.
Oh God. I hadn’t even thought about what I would do if she said—
“No.”
Although she spoke it quietly, the word reverberated through my ears. My heart might have stopped. I wasn’t sure. All I could do was look up into her face, her beautiful face that was turning bright red.
“Steph—”
“Lucas… no. No.”
That was all she stammered out before she turned and ran out of the room.
___
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Table of Contents
A BILLIONAIRE EROTIC ROMANCE PART TWO
Book Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
&n
bsp; Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten