by Lacey Black
Sidney
10 years later
The first thing I notice when my alarm goes off is how empty the place feels. It’s amazing how alive a house can be one minute and then bathed in solitude the next. There’s no noise, no laughter, no smaller feet doing sprints from one end of the penthouse to the other. Nothing but emptiness.
Much like my life.
But now isn’t the time to stroll down memory lane. Lord knows that path is filled with enough could-have-beens, should-have-beens, and what-ifs to occupy the minds of a small country. Definitely too many for one singular woman. Especially one who’s only twenty-seven.
As soon as my feet touch the cold hardwood, I instantly want to climb back in bed. Bed makes me think of dreams. Dreams of deep green eyes and a boyish, carefree smile dominate my nights nowadays. Especially after spending time with Jacobi. A little boy who coincidentally resembles a figment of my imagination.
Your subconscious can be a cruel bitch sometimes.
I wrap my satin robe tightly around my body and step into the adjoining bathroom. My hair is slightly askew, but the rest of me is well put together. Always show no weakness. Never let them see your pain.
I step into the hallway and my eyes instantly search out the empty bedroom. It’s always empty on Mondays.
Slipping into the kitchen, I pour my first cup of coffee. God bless the person who invented the coffee pot with timer. It’s the only thing that picks me up and keeps me going on days that end in Y.
I grab the toaster and set out to warm my whole-wheat bagel. Oh, don’t let my breakfast choice fool you. I’m about to slather the honey and almond cream cheese half an inch thick. It’s these little indulges that keep my sanity in a crazy world. Well, that and coffee. And rum. Rum definitely helps.
After eating breakfast, I head back to my bedroom to shower and get ready for the day. At quarter after six, I revel in this part of the day. The time where Vegas is starting to wake. The bright, flashing lights are replaced with sunlight and the costumes are replaced with work suits and dresses. Well, depending on which part of town you’re in.
I take an extra long shower, scrubbing and shaving every part of my body using bath products that cost more than most people’s shoes. The result is nothing short of silken, succulent flesh. Too bad there isn’t anyone to enjoy the divine fruits of my labor.
Dressing quickly in a navy Gucci shift dress, I spend extra time applying my makeup. Not because I want to. Because it’s expected of me. A hotel heiress is always expected to look better than every other woman in the room, no matter where you are or what the occasion. It’s something my daddy beat into me with words every day of my life growing up.
It takes me a little longer to tame my wayward red hair into a simple twist updo, but the results are the same: classic. I finish off my outfit with a pair of tan Manolo Blahnik’s that I found on sale. Take that, Daddy. I bought something on sale.
With one final glance in the mirror, I head towards the front door.
The elevator quickly takes me from the penthouse to the ground floor where Harvey, the doorman, greets me. “Good morning, Ms. Rogen.”
“Good morning, Harv. Did you see the big race this weekend?”
“Sure did, Ms. Rogen. Junior almost had it won.”
“I’m sure he’ll take the checkered flag soon. He’s going to have an amazing year,” I say with a smile and a nod.
I’ll never admit it out loud, but I’m a huge closet race fan. Jacobi loves to watch it on the weekends, and even though I pretend to scoff when the race starts, I secretly love it. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I took Jacobi to the Las Vegas Sprint Cup race last spring and played it off as a birthday gift. The adrenaline, the gasoline, the bumping and swapping paint on the track, it’s all in my blood. Deep.
Stepping out into the early March morning, I enjoy several deep breaths of warm air as I make my way towards my car. My sleek black Audi is in the parking garage adjacent to my building. Each tenant receives their own designated spaces, but with the penthouse, I am awarded with four spots. Since the Audi is my only mode of transportation, the other three spaces remain empty.
The drive to The Diamond is slow as everyone and their brother apparently decides to get an early start to work today. My normal fifteen-minute ride takes close to forty minutes as I bob and weave my way through traffic. I use it as an opportunity to crank up Alanis Morrisette and prep myself for the day ahead. A meeting with a designer who is going to give the gazebo a facelift, a meeting with our head chef, Armando, to discuss the menus for the rest of the month, and a series of bridal sit-downs to discuss upcoming nuptials. My day is filled with brides, flowers, wedding cakes, and tiny details. It’s the life of the event planner.
And it’s not the life I chose.
But there’s no time to get into more tissue wiping boohooing. Right now I need to steel myself for the conversation I’m sure to have with Penny, my father’s former assistant. The one he left my mother for. The one he married less than twenty-four hours after the divorce was final. The one who holds all of the cards and is the reason I’m stuck as the event planner at The Diamond.
The reason I’m back in Vegas at all.
* * *
I give a slight wave to Tina, Penny’s assistant, before I head towards the corner office that used to belong to my father. With a gentle rap at the door, I step inside with as much gumption as I can muster. I have no clue why these meetings get me so flustered, but they always do. It never fails that I’m a nervous ball of tension as I wait to hear whatever cockamamie idea the woman has cooked up this time. Penny’s filled with big ideas and no clue how to fit them into any semblance of a budget.
That’s where Mick Richards comes in. He’s the numbers guy. The one who calms her down when hysterics set in because she can’t add a massive aquarium on top of the hotel. The one who reels her in when she thinks we need flamingos and elephants roaming the gardens out back. Yes, because nothing says wedding romance like a grazing elephant near the orchids.
Heaven knows I’m not the person to deal with her brand of crazy. I get plenty of doses in small increments throughout the day, thank you very much.
Then there’s the fact that I’m dealing with Penny. The homewrecker. The woman who is barely five years older than my own twenty-seven years. And less we forget that I get to work with her day in and day out.
Good times.
“Oh, Sidney, darling, I’m so glad you’re finally here. I thought you were going to miss the meeting today,” she says in her newly acquired French accent. She took an extended vacation a month ago and came back talking as if she were born and raised there.
Glancing down at my watch, I notice that I’m seven minutes early for our scheduled ten o’clock meeting. “No, I barely made it, but I’m here.” It’s a struggle to keep my smile polite and the urge to snicker at bay, but I somehow manage.
“Good, good. I take it there were no issues with Renaldo and Jacobi last evening?”
My throat tightens and my chest constricts painfully. My lungs seem to be failing at that one simple task of moving oxygen in and out. Freaking fabulous. I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen and the evil stepmother will surely think I need to go on a diet and sign me up for Weight Watchers. Or maybe she’ll sign me up for flying lessons. Things just don’t connect properly with her. She’s so scatterbrained and bounces from one thing to the other that you get whiplash just talking to her. It’s a wonder my father was able to function as CEO of The Diamond with her as his assistant.
But if memory serves correctly, I don’t think there was much assisting going on. Unless it was with the removal of his pants.
“No issues last night,” I say through gritted teeth. I despise when she starts our meetings off with something on Jacobi and Renaldo. As if she fucking cares.
“Excellent. I want to talk about the Garrison wedding next month. They wanted a butterfly release, correct?” she asks, dark
brown eyes twinkling with something that makes me a tad bit queasy.
“Yes,” I reply, dread filling my gut instantly.
“I had a brilliant idea last night!” she exclaims, standing up from her chair behind the massive cherry desk that used to belong to my father. “What if instead of butterflies, they release rainbow fish!”
I blink multiple times, my mouth opening and closing repeatedly when words seem to fail me.
“I can tell you love it. Can you feel it?” she asks, excitement brimming from her skinny six-foot tall body.
“Oh, I definitely feel something,” I mumble.
“It’s a magnificent idea, right?”
“It’s definitely a keeper, Penny. But here’s the thing: how are you going to release fish into the sky? Fish swim.” I pause for an extra dramatic effect before I deliver my last two words. “In water.”
She blinks at me once, twice, and then about a dozen more times. “Well, Sidney, it’s not my job to make the ideas work. That’s your job and I won’t do it for you. I come up with the ideas and you make them happen. That’s why we make such an incredible team.”
“That’s true, Penny. I’ll see what I can do to find rainbow fish that will fly through the air when released at the Garrison wedding. I’m sure they’ll love it, with them both being school teachers and all.”
“Oh! Like a school! School of fish. School of teachers. Get it?! It’s brilliant. I’m a genius, really.”
I swear to God my IQ just dropped twenty points with this conversation. “Okay, well, I’m going to head down to my office and get started on this gem of an idea,” I say while slowly backing towards the door.
“You’ll make sure you tell them that it was my suggestion, right? We can’t have you poaching my ideas to our clients and getting all the credit.” Penny gives me a stern look before resuming her seat at the helm of my family’s company. Before I can even reply, her nail file is already out as she works to smooth out an imaginary mark on her pristine manicure.
“Don’t you worry about that, Penny. I would never take credit for this idea. This brilliant one has your name and flare written all over it.”
“It does have a certain sparkle about it, doesn’t it? I can’t wait to tell Mick.”
When she attacks a nail with her emery board, I’m essentially excused from her office. I glance at my watch and notice it’s not even five after ten. That must be a new record. Usually I’m stuck listening to her debate the differences between N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys and why BB is clearly the far superior boy band.
Plus, with my early departure from the boss’s office, I didn’t have to run into wormy Mick. Just the thought of seeing him right now makes my stomach recoil. Mick Richards is a good-looking guy with a horrible personality. Of course, he keeps that part hidden beneath charm and flattery until he’s latched his claws into you. Narcissist. Mick is always looking to get ahead, willing to put a spin on everything to gain him the most exposure and attention. Don’t let that wicked smile, those kiss me lips, or those gorgeous light blue eyes fool ya. He’s trouble through and through, and I’ll be the first to admit that I fell for his routine once a long time ago.
I leave the executive suites with a little extra swing in my step from having dodged a Mick-sighting bullet. My next appointment isn’t until eleven, and it’s with a bride who has changed her mind about everything. We have a standing monthly appointment, and they’re all the same. I tell her how we can accommodate all of the previous meeting’s modifications, and she tells me how all that work was for nothing because she’s changed her mind again. There isn’t enough Rum in the Caribbean to deal with this shit.
Welcome to my Monday.
Chapter Two
– Too Much Sharing
Luke
Rarely am I summoned to my brother’s office in the middle of the day. We meet for a management update every morning at eight, which brings all site managers, Blake, and myself together to discuss the status of each security job.
When Blake decided to step away from being an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, I realized that my heart was only in it because of my connection to him. I was the brain, he was the brawn. At least, that’s my story.
After reuniting with my sister-in-law, Carly, and discovering he was a father, Blake reconsidered his entire life plan. He was anxious to forgo the long nights, unpredictable jobs that took him to different parts of the country for random periods of time, and chain of command. He wanted control and a home life.
Sure we could have transferred to a different department within the Bureau, but it had all lost its appeal. The last job, which ultimately took my brother away from me for two long years when he was undercover, burned me out. I was done. I wanted a taste of something normal, something real.
After lying to my parents and having only minutes’ worth of contact with Blake while he was undercover, I realized that my entire life wasn’t my own. I was a slave to the job. At first, I thrived on it. It kept the demons at bay. But when Blake was shot, I realized something valuable: I wanted ordinary.
When Blake told me his plan to leave the Bureau and strike out on his own with a small security agency, I was in. I threw all of my chips on the center of the table and decided to let the cards fall where they may.
Sure, security isn’t exactly a nine-to-five job, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than our previous employment. Reid Hunter, one of our biggest clients, hired Thomas Securities to oversee four of his large properties in Vegas. Those first few months were busy hiring and training the right guys. You’d be surprised by the amount of ex-military or police that look to find something a bit less strenuous or dangerous. We hired enough guys to properly staff the operations of Reid’s four buildings, and before long, we had enough business coming in to double our operation.
Hiring site managers was the most logical choice for us. Blake and I quickly discovered that we were unable to manage the staff at ten large properties spread throughout Las Vegas. A site manager is responsible for overseeing their building’s adequacy and compliance to uphold the strict Thomas Securities policies set forth for maintaining and providing the best security to all clients, legally and ethically, which includes overseeing employees. Sounds like something out of the employee handbook, right? Wrote that shit myself.
Translation: They follow our rules or their ass is fired.
It has been a year since we started the company in a small third-floor office space no bigger than a large supply closet in one of Reid’s out-of-the-way buildings. Now, our offices are located in the large glass building that is home to Hunter Enterprises. We occupy the entire ninth floor. We’ve come a long way from eight hundred square feet to eight thousand in just under a year.
Carly steps out of Blake’s office just as I approach the closed door. Her smile is big, her face glowing, and it has nothing to do with the small swell of her belly beneath a loose-fitting shirt.
“Hi, Luke,” she says brightly as I step forward and place a kiss on her cheek.
“Hey, Carly. What are you doing here?”
“I brought your brother lunch,” she states, but there’s no mistaking the hint of a blush on those striking, olive cheeks. Clearly, my brother got more than a roast beef sandwich for lunch today.
“Huh. You must have forgotten my sandwich,” I tease.
“Next time,” she replies before stepping towards the elevator. “I have to go get Nat from my mom’s.”
“See you later.”
Without knocking, I throw open the closed door to my brother’s office and walk in like I own the place. Technically, I guess I do.
“Come on in,” Blake throws at me sarcastically without even looking up from the papers on his desk.
Taking the empty chair in front of him, I grab the small stack of duplicate pages sitting before me. “Dude, it smells like cheese and sex in here.”
Blake finally looks up from glaring at whatever papers h
ave his feathers ruffled and gives me that cocky grin. I know that grin well. I have the same one. “Have you even been with a pregnant woman?”
“No. Thank God.”
“Aww, don’t knock it ‘til you try it, brother. I hadn’t either before Carly, but damn. She’s…insatiable.” The smile practically splits his face in half. Fucker.
“TMI.”
Ignoring my statement completely, Blake says, “She started the second trimester a few weeks ago and it was like flipping a switch. Her nausea is finally gone and she has all this crazy energy again. Plus, she horny. Like all the time. She mauls me in the laundry room the minute I walk through the door. I have permanent rug burns on my knees from taking her on the stairs because we can’t even make it to the bedroom. Shit, I can’t even shower by myself without her joining me and fulfilling every dirty fantasy I’ve ever had about showering with a woman. But I’m fucking chafed, man. Even cotton boxers are torture on an overused dick,” he comments, showing slight discomfort as he adjusts himself in his pants.
Blake and Carly were married a year ago in a small ceremony in their backyard. That was also the moment we received our first client in the form of Carly’s former well-known millionaire boss, Reid Hunter. Word traveled fast in the small security services world and before we knew it, our business took off like a racehorse out of the gate. Of course, having a stellar referral like Reid doesn’t hurt matters much either.
Before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate, my brother was talking about more kids. After missing Carly’s pregnancy and the first year of his daughter’s life, he was hell-bent on making up for lost time and adding to their growing family. If it wasn’t so sickening sweet, I’d almost be a little jealous of the asshole. But I would never begrudge my brother any happiness. He’s waited a long time to feel this settled and happy, and no one deserves it more than him. As for me? Well, marriage and kids just aren’t in my cards. Not now. Not ever.