by CM Deveraux
“Mandi!”
“Mandi, what?” she retorted. “Calm down, Gideon. Forgive me for wanting to pop in, leave my things, and be done with it so I could enjoy the rest of my weekend like you’re enjoying yours. I never expected to find you here. Have to say though, you’re still full of surprises. What number is she since we broke up—twenty, twenty-five?”
“Why don’t you leave your stuff and get out?” I said.
While I wasn’t always adept at handling men, women were another story.
Before Mandi could respond, a man appeared behind her, his tropical shirt unbuttoned halfway, showing off a bushy mound of grey chest hair. He looked like he was about fifteen years her senior and, judging by the blingie man-jewelry dripping from his neck, he was very, very rich. In his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a partially-chugged bottle of champagne, he half-waved at Gideon and said, “Hey, man. How’s it goin’?”
Mandi whipped around, addressed Sugar Daddy. “Babe, why don’t you wait for me in the other room? I’ll just be a minute.”
I used the diversion to remove myself from Gideon’s lap in the most ladylike way possible, even though I lost my balance and almost toppled in the process. My head was back where it belonged again. I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Gideon clasped my hand in his, not letting me go. “Stay, please.”
“Let go of me,” I said.
I hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but after living with a monster for several years, no man would ever restrain me again, unless, of course, we were in the throes of pleasure and I asked for it.
He raised both hands in the air, respecting my wishes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Uh...hello?” Mandi snapped her fingers at Gideon. “Focus, please.”
“Leave everything on the counter.”
He said this without taking his eyes off me.
“Yeah, but what about the paperwork?” she replied. “You said you’d have it ready for me to sign.”
“Again, tomorrow, not today.”
“Can’t you just call the realtor and see if she can swing it by tonight...while I’m here?”
I could see now why they divorced. She was a spoiled brat.
“She can’t bring it by tonight,” I replied. “She has plans. Plans you are interrupting.”
“Hold on a minute.” Mandi’s pointer finger shot out like a dagger. “You’re the realtor, aren’t you?”
Pretty, but oh so stupid. What a shame. I started for the door. Mandi followed me, Gideon followed Mandi.
“Sasha, stay,” he said. “Don’t leave yet.”
I didn’t respond.
“Oh, this is fun,” Mandi said. “Don’t run away because I’m here. Take a few more minutes, get what you came for.”
I pivoted, planning to zing her even better than she’d zinged me, but Gideon spoke first. “Stop it, Mandi. Now.”
Sugar Daddy was slumped over on the couch in a drunken stupor when I passed by him. I didn’t get it. Mandi may have been a vain, self-serving woman, but she was a ten in the looks department. Even I could admit it. Here she was with an old, wrinkly man with skin crispier than fried bacon, when I had no doubt she could be with someone half her age if she wanted. There had to be more to life than getting with a man for his money. At least I thought so until I stepped outside and compared the red Ferrari Enzo in the driveway with my not-so-sweet ride. Still, there wasn’t enough moolah in the world to convince me to tap that ass.
Gideon followed me to my car. If I didn’t say something, finish this, he’d probably follow me out of the driveway too. I turned. “This is a job to me. Nothing more.”
It was starting to feel like a lot more. I wanted to slap him, kiss him, tie him to the top of my car and ravage him.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “What happened between us—you wanted it as much as I did.”
“You don’t have any idea what I want. You made an advance. You put your hands on my...you know what you did. I’ve been through enough. This isn’t a game to me.”
“Or me.”
I jammed my key into the ignition and fired it up. I grabbed the listing folder from the passenger seat and flung it into his hands. Let someone else be his realtor, his plaything.
CHAPTER 13
I plopped down on a round swivel chair at the bar. Jess smirked and slid an attractive blue drink over to me. I say attractive because it was lit up like a glow-stick. I’m not kidding. I could have used it to find my way out of a dark alley. Jess had obviously anticipated how I would react when I saw her and decided a stiff drink was the cure to what ailed me. I propped my elbows up on the bar, fisted my hands under my chin. I realized I was pouting, and I didn’t care. “You set me up, and you lied to me.”
“Oh, come on,” Jess replied. “Don’t you think that’s a little—”
“True?”
“Okay, so maybe I left out a minor detail or two. You know I would never do anything I didn’t think was best for you, right?”
“How is lying what’s best for me?”
“I didn’t think you’d go to Gideon’s house if I told you he asked to see you alone.”
“He did?”
Jess nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
“You know why. He likes you.” She patted me on the shoulder. “And you like him.”
“I don’t like him. He’s my lawyer. We’re not even friends.”
“If what you’re alleging is true, then why have you worked his name into every conversation we’ve had over the last month?”
I could deny it, come up with some excuse, say I only talked about him to update her on what he was doing for me as a client. It wouldn’t work. She could always tell when I was bluffing.
“Are you trying to say putting the two of you together tonight was a bad thing?” she asked.
My head throbbed, and all I could think about was crawling into bed, alone, for the umpteenth time. I crossed my arms, plopped them down on the bar. It was unladylike. I didn’t care about that either. “I’m saying seeing Gideon...alone tonight...it was a disaster.”
She sipped a normal-looking martini and partially closed one eyelid like she wasn’t buying my story—any of it. “So...he didn’t try anything?”
I refused to answer which in and of itself was her answer.
She swiped her thumb across my cheek.
I reeled back. “What are you doing?”
“You have lipstick on your face...in a place lipstick doesn’t belong. Wanna tell me how it got there?”
I shrugged.
“No idea.”
What was it you were saying?” she joked. “Oh...right. How bad was it again?”
“His ex-wife showed up in the middle of...umm...when we were...talking.”
She frowned.
“Ooh, sorry. She wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”
I hissed, exhaling a long, over-the-top breath. “Does everyone know what’s going on but me?”
“Relax. The ex-wife is harmless. Crazy, but harmless.”
“Why are you assuring me? She had every right to be there. It’s her house too—for now. Why did you set me up with him?”
“There are dozens of other girls chomping at his lustrous bit, Sasha, and he likes you, which proves he has good taste. Why not give him a chance?
“I can give you twenty to twenty-five good reasons why.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t follow.”
“According to the ex, Gideon has a revolving door—one girl goes out, another comes in.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Why should I? He didn’t deny it.”
“So, your one-night stands are allowed and his aren’t?”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“Twenty-five?”
“It hasn’t been twenty-five. It hasn’t even been five from what I know. I’ve only seen him out with two women since I met Richard. One wom
an lasted one date, and the other maybe three dates. Otherwise, he’s flown solo. You ask me, Gideon’s right for you.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I’ve known you since we were kids. When Gideon kissed you tonight, you didn’t feel anything for him?”
I didn’t feel anything, I felt everything. Hot. Wet. Sexy. Sexier than any man had ever made me feel before, and he’d barely touched me. I had to erase it, omit it from my mind like it never happened. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t happen again.
“I never said we—”
“You didn’t have to, sweetie. Between the pink stain on your cheek and the bright red scratch mark on your neck, it’s not hard to connect the dots.”
“What—where?!”
I brushed a finger up and down the side of my neck. Over the last hour, I’d felt a tingling sensation, like the side of my neck had been pricked with needles.
Damn him and his five o’clock shadow.
I grabbed the glass in front of me, downed the one-third of liquid it contained, and set the ice-filled glass back on the counter, minus one cube which I pressed to my neck. I jiggled the glass until the bartender raised a brow, looked my direction.
“Would you like another?” he asked.
I nodded, handed him the glass. “Easy on the ice this time, okay? If all I wanted was a glass of ice I could get it from the mini mart, for free. Big drink, big tip. Little drink, no tip. Understand?”
His lips said yes. His eyes said I’d let my inner bitch out tonight. He was right. I had.
“Don’t be mad at me, okay?” Jess said. “I thought a lot about Gideon’s request before I went along with it. I think you’re ready. Not for a commitment, but ready to let love in again, even if it’s a little at a time.”
Jess’s speech was followed by even more prattle about believing in myself and using the confidence I was getting back to finally get what I wanted. She yammered on about some chick named Veronica Fox who’d led her to Richard, a man she felt was born and bred just for her. I had to admit, seeing them together, I believed it.
By the time she finished giving me an infused boost of hyper-confidence, I was on my third drink of the night, each one making me feel better about myself than the last. I thought about taking a taxi back to Gideon’s house, letting him finish what he started, but I hadn’t had enough liquid courage, not yet.
“Hey,” Jess shook my arm. “Are you listening? Your eyes are glazed over. Am I talking to myself here? Because if I am, I’ll stop.”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you before.”
“Don’t be. I may have even deserved it.”
“All those one-night flings I had. Even though I knew it wasn’t right, it also wasn’t hard. Meet a guy one night, have a little fun, they go their way, I go mine. Gideon is different.”
“Of course he is. You like him. Deny it all you want, but if you want to know why you feel this way, that’s why.”
“Why did he get divorced?”
“You met the Queen of Crazy in the flesh, and you still have to ask?”
I nodded.
“About five years ago, Mandi was a pretty big deal around here in her own right,” Jess said. “She booked parties—the adult kind. Mainly bachelor and bachelorette pre-wedding gigs. They’d pay her top dollar to get into exclusive clubs and parties. She made a pile of cash, and a lot of new friends. Problem is—the friends she made were the worst kind of friends you could have.”
“Meaning?”
“They used her. Got her addicted to heroin. Gideon caught her in the bathroom one night shooting up. She’d been hiding it, stashing the syringe in her makeup case. The more she used, the more she needed it, until she didn’t care about keeping it secret anymore.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like for him,” I said.
“He was devastated. They’d been trying to have a baby. Well...he thought they were trying to have a baby. She confessed she’d sabotaged their chances—she’d been on the pill the entire time. He asked her to quit the drugs. She said no. He told her she had to choose—the drugs or the marriage.”
“And she picked the drugs.”
Jess nodded.
“Even after he filed for divorce, he didn’t give up on her. The marriage was over, but he still felt an obligation to get Mandi healthy again. He convinced her to check into a private rehab facility twice. She never made it past the first week. The withdrawals, the fever, chills—she couldn’t kick the habit. She’d check herself out, phone a friend, and return to the lifestyle. He finally realized you can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. She needed to want to get better and she didn’t.”
“Is she clean now?”
“Sometimes she is, sometimes she isn’t.”
“I take it she doesn’t live here anymore?” I asked.
“Nope. When the drugs took over, her career took the kind of misguided dive a person can’t come back from. She made mistakes—too many of them. Booked the wrong party, the wrong night, at the wrong venue. Pissed off the kind of people in this town you don’t want to piss off.”
“Do you think he still want kids?”
A wide grin crossed Jess’s face. “You mean the already-made kind? I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”
Across the room Callie and Kenna shimmied their way over to the bar.
“You two gonna sit there and talk all night or are you going to get your butts out on the dance floor?” Kenna asked. “This is supposed to be girls’ night. As in, all of us, together.”
“Yeah,” Callie added, hands on hips. “Come on.”
CHAPTER 14
Rapture was thumping, packed with clubbers, some shaking what their mothers gave them, others shaking what a wad of cash bought for them. I couldn’t bump more than an inch or two without grinding into someone next to me, but it didn’t matter. Even in tight quarters surrounded by sweaty bodies dowsed in too much body spray, I felt good, I felt alive. Still, I wished I’d put on a pair of panties.
Callie and Kenna were each other’s “safe” dates, which meant since they were married, they watched each other’s back. Jess was in a relationship with Richard. She did what she pleased, and Richard gave her all the space she needed. The freedom and complete trust he had in her made her love him all the more. It didn’t matter how many men flocked to her side. She never noticed.
That left me—single and no longer interested in a one-night mingle. Those days were over for me, but they weren’t over for the spiked-up, greasy-haired short stack to my right. He was about my height and strutted around the dance floor like a rooster on steroids. When our eyes met, a sheer accident on my part, he zoned in. Without breaking eye contact he outstretched both hands in front him, pulling back on the air like he was reeling me in with invisible rope.
This fish didn’t bite. She gripped her lifeline, sending out a girlfriend SOS.
Jess laughed when she caught an eyeful of him. “Aww, he’s so cute. And so tiny. It’s like you could fold him up and stick him in your pocket.”
“Just get me away from him please.”
She took my hand and tilted her head toward Kenna and Callie. It was a move all too familiar, one that didn’t require words. Several seconds later, I was whisked away, grooving on a different side of the dance floor. Problem solved...or at least I thought it was, until I caught him making a beeline for me.
“It’s the dress,” Kenna joked. “Almost every guy in this place has had their eyes glued to your backside all night.”
Good thing I hadn’t flashed a nipple or lifted the bottom of my dress. Going commando spelled easy five-minute quickie in the ladies’ room, clearly not the kind of impression I was trying to make.
I groaned. “The one person I don’t want to dance with is the only one brave enough to ask.”
Before anyone could reply, I felt the one thing every guy thinks is cool and every girl despises: the unsanctioned ass grab.
I whipped around,
faced Short Stack. His hips were gyrating, thrusting forward and back like he was trying to involve me in some kind of psychotic mating ritual.
“Hey baby,” he slurred. “What’s yer name?”
Eww.
“Hey, buddy,” Jess thumbed in the opposite direction. “Move along.”
He guided his pointer finger around our group, stopping when it reached Jess. “Wasn’t talking to you, sweet thang, but no worries, there’s plenty of Stevie D to go around.”
Double eww.
As if the single butt squeeze wasn’t enough, Short Stack followed it up with a double ass-smack I was sure left handprints on my backside. It was then he realized there was nothing between me and my...well...nothing. He leaned over to me, his rancid breath steaming my ear. “Wanna get out of here, baby?”
“I don’t. And if you touch me one more—”
“Come on, gurlll. Stevie D knows what you like.”
A large, manly hand reached in front of me, launching Stevie D about five feet into the crowd. I turned, staring into Gideon’s sapphire sparklers for the second time tonight.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Looking for you.”
Obviously.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
Before I could reply in the affirmative, Short Stack returned for thirds, except this time he was no longer the jovial kid who groped me moments before—and he was no longer alone. A second Short Stack joined him, both amped up for a fight.
Short Stack One, the one who started all the trouble, spoke first. “Hey man, you shouldn’a dun that.”
“Yeah,” Short Stack Two added. “We’s gonna hafta jack you up now.”
Gideon wasn’t listening. A man hiding in the shadows across the room stepped into the light, looked Gideon in the eye. He was dressed in all black. He looked familiar. I’d seen him somewhere before. I was sure of it. The man in black worked his way through the crowd, his sights set on Gideon.
“You hear what I’m sayin’ to you, man?” Short Stack One asked. “Outside. Let’s go.”
“I’ll give you boys one chance to walk away.” Gideon held up a single digit. “One.”