by Lila Monroe
Cal holds his hands up. “Don’t freak out, okay?” he says, smiling. “There’s nothing to worry about. I used to do this all the time.”
“First of all, don’t tell me what to do,” I shoot back.
Cal grins. “I thought you liked that.” He gives me a sexy look, and I gulp, but this really isn’t the time. “And second of all, you didn’t used to have two kids to look out for. Two kids whose parents died in a car accident,” I add, furious.
“Okay. Come with me.” Cal takes my arm and leads me outside the suite to a long, carpeted hallway, where the only person to overhear us is a bald, beefy security guard. “Look,” he says, in this overly reasonable tone I find completely infuriating. “I hear that you’re worried about me. And I can appreciate that maybe there are some . . . angles I didn’t think about when it comes to the kids. But it’s going to be fine.”
“How do you know that?” I demand. “How can you possibly even pretend to know that when you’re about to hop into a tiny death trap and race around a track like some kind of dumb teenage—”
“Because I know it,” Cal interrupts stubbornly. “Also, not for nothing, but the Nitro is hardly a death trap.” He sighs. “In any case, even if I agreed with you, which I don’t, it’s too late to back out now.”
“Why?”
“Because I already agreed to do it,” he says. “Because it’s for charity—a charity I happen to care about, by the way—and me racing is part of the draw here. People are counting on me—”
“Lottie and Ezra are counting on you,” I counter. And so am I, I think and don’t say. I blow out a frustrated breath.
“Lottie loves cars,” he points out, changing tactics.
“So what, exactly?” I laugh. “You think that means she wants to watch you whiz around in one at 250 miles an hour?” I shake my head. “You know nothing about women, do you get that?”
“Hold on a second.” Cal’s eyes narrow, like he thinks he’s caught me in something. “Is this about the kids, or is it about you?”
“It’s about all of us,” I blurt, flustered. “And you going out there and racing just shows—”
“You’re racing?”
Both of us turn and stare. There’s Lottie in her corduroy skirt and chambray button down, book in her hand just like always. Her eyes are like two twin flames.
Cal swallows. “I am, kiddo, yeah,” he says. “I know I probably should have talked to you about it first, but—”
“Why would you?” Lottie snaps, cutting him off. “Nobody cares what I think about anything.”
Cal looks like she’s slapped him. “Lottie, sweetheart—” he starts, but she’s already turned and stomped back into the suite, all teenager, a swish of her furious red hair behind her. The door slams shut and he sighs. “I should—”
“Don’t bother,” I interrupt. “I’ll handle her, since you clearly don’t—”
“Don’t you dare say I don’t give a crap about those kids.” Cal’s eyes go dark. For a moment, we just stare at each other, both completely unwilling to back down. Finally, he sighs, glancing down at his watch. “Race is going to start in a few minutes,” he tells me quietly. “I have to get down to the pit.”
“Fine,” I say with a belligerent shrug. “Go. We’ll see you later, I guess.”
If you don’t die in a fiery crash, I think melodramatically, then cross my fingers it never happens.
I head back into the suite and shove a fancy cheese puff into my mouth. I spy Ezra with his face pressed against the window, watching as the pit crew readies the brightly-colored cars down below. I’m expecting Lottie to be sulking beside him, but she’s not. “Hey, Ez?” I ask softly, crouching down beside him. “Where’s your sister?”
Ezra shrugs.
“Really?” I ask, peering around. “You haven’t seen her?”
“A little while ago,” Ezra reports, without peeling his eyes from the track. “She was mad. Like always.”
Perfect. I close my eyes briefly. I could ask Diana for help, but I don’t want to freak everyone out. Instead, I straighten up again. “Stay right here in the suite, will you?” I ask, squeezing his skinny little shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
16
Jules
It takes ten minutes of frantic searching to find Lottie hiding out in the emergency stairwell with her arms wrapped around her knees, Wonder Women splayed forgotten on the steps beside her. “Hey,” I say, nudging her gently with one ankle. “Can I sit here?”
Lottie shrugs without looking at me. “If you want.”
“Well, with an invitation like that,” I tease, easing myself down onto the concrete. We sit side by side for a while in a silence that, while not exactly companionable, isn’t hostile, either. “You seem pretty pissed about Cal and the race?” I finally ask.
Lottie’s eyebrows twitch. “Yeah,” she says, still staring down at her boots. “I’m pretty pissed,” she echoes.
“I know,” I tell her. “Me too, if you want to know the truth. But that’s part of being in a family, I think—sometimes people you love do stuff you don’t agree with.”
“He’s so stupid,” she rages, shaking her head. “Everyone is so stupid.”
I almost laugh. “I mean, you’re not wrong. But I think you will find, unfortunately, that that’s not something that gets better as you get older.” I reach down and take her hand, cautious. She lets me hold it. “He’s going to be fine,” I promise her. “He’s an old pro at this. And today is a big day for him, and for all the kids who are going to be able to get the help they need, so you want to maybe head back up there and get some more snacks and cheer him on?”
Lottie sighs. “Fine,” she says. “I guess.”
I’ll take it. We head back up to the suite, where the scrum has thickened around Ezra at the window, and even more of the crowd has moved out onto the balcony, milling around waiting for the race to begin. The cars look like so many toys from up here, all of them lined up at the starting line. An announcer’s voice booms over the loudspeaker, introducing each of the drivers in turn.
I’m squinting over some old lady’s shoulder, realizing suddenly that I don’t know which car Cal is supposed to be in, when a hand lands on my shoulder. “Hey dudes,” he says, warm breath sending a shock down my spine. “How’s the race?”
I startle, whirling to face him. “What are you doing here?”
“You were right,” he says with a shrug. “It wasn’t worth it.”
A million emotions flood through me then, but Cal looks at Lottie before I can react. “I owe you an apology,” he tells her seriously. “I wasn’t using my head out there. I should have thought about how something like this would make you guys feel before I said I would do it.”
Lottie shrugs. “It’s okay.”
“Will you give me another chance?” he asks, and she nods.
“Jules!” I turn around again and there’s Ez, his plate piled high with pigs in blankets. “You were right,” he says, the pride of a job well done written all over his face. “I asked nicely.”
“You want to share some of those with your sister, please?” Cal asks, barely swallowing down a laugh. The kids set about divvying up their spoils while he leads me over to a quiet corner near the bar. “You want to keep fighting?” he murmurs. “Or you want to kiss and make up?”
I swallow back my emotion. “I don’t think I was wrong,” I tell him slowly. “But I do think it’s possible I was hard on you. And I’m sorry for that.”
Cal smiles. “Nobody’s ever hard on me,” he says, taking a step closer. I can feel the body heat radiating off him, and smell his familiar cologne. “It’s not the worst thing in the world.”
I raise my eyebrows. “It’s not?”
“I kind of liked it,” he admits.
“Shut up,” I laugh. “You did not.”
“I did,” he says, curling a hand around my waist. “In fact, maybe we could get back into it, and you could be hard on me in some other contexts.”<
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“Cal!” I start to say, but by then he’s already kissing me, our smiles bumping together. “Thank you for not doing that,” I say against his mouth. “For them and for me.”
We watch the race and mill around in the suite for a while longer, the kids picking over the dessert buffet as the late-afternoon sun starts to sink in the western sky. Gavin turns up again—he won and the flush of victory is all around him, his smile wide as he swings a friendly arm around Cal’s neck. “Pussied out, huh?”
I’m expecting it to annoy him, but Cal just grins. “You got me, Jenks,” he says wryly. “I did indeed pussy out.”
“Typical,” Gavin chides, but it’s friendly. “You going to be at the gala tonight?”
“Can’t.” Cal tilts his head toward Ezra and Lottie, who are sitting side by side on the sofa tucking into ice cream sundaes. “Got big plans for make-your-own pizzas and an encore viewing of Frozen.”
“I can take them tonight,” Diana says, coming up behind us and laying a hand on Cal’s arm. “You take Jules and go.”
I raise my eyebrows, surprised.
“Are you sure?” Cal asks his mom. Off her nod, he looks at me, eyebrows arching. “You want to go to a party?”
Which is how I wind up in the ballroom of a fancy hotel in a floor-length Oscar de la Renta the color of red wine, borrowed diamonds glittering at my ears and wrists and throat. “You clean up nice,” Cal murmurs as he leads me through the hotel lobby, eyes flicking up and down my body in open appreciation.
“You don’t look so bad yourself.” It’s an understatement: he’s wearing an honest-to-God tuxedo, freshly shaven with his dark hair combed back.
He looks amazing.
“Thanks.” Cal smiles. “I always feel like I’m going to the prom when I put one of these dumb things on.”
“Prom, huh?” I grin. “Well, who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky at the end of the night.”
“So it will be nothing like my actual prom, then.”
It’s not every day a person gets invited to a white-tie charity ball. I used to get excited about the free Starbucks K-Cups in the Harper Wells break room, but it’s starting to occur to me that there are better fringe benefits out there. The ballroom glitters with candlelight, the tables festooned with tall vases full of pale roses mixed with herbs and winter branches, and a twelve-piece jazz band plays standards at the far end of the room. I’d be happy to stand around and gawk for a while, but Cal leads me directly to the bar and orders a couple of strong vodka cocktails. “Drink up,” he advises quietly, downing his own in two long gulps. “This is about to be really boring before it gets fun.”
He’s not wrong. I spend the next hour tagging along while he makes the rounds saying hello to an endless parade of business associates, asking after this executive’s kids at Andover and that mogul’s trip to Cannes. I smile at about a hundred different plucked, Botoxed women whose names I have no hope of ever remembering after tonight. “She’s having a torrid affair with the Lieutenant Governor,” Cal murmurs as an immaculately made-up lady saunters away after a few minutes of small talk.
My eyes widen. “Really?” I ask, and Cal grins.
“I mean, maybe.”
“Oh, I see how it is.” I glance around the room, my gaze landing on an older man in an ill-fitting suit, the overhead lights gleaming off his balding head. “What about that dude?”
“Almost couldn’t make it tonight,” Cal deadpans immediately. “Complications from hair plug implantation. Very unpleasant.”
“Sounds like it.” I nod at a geriatric couple sitting boredly at a table in the corner. “Those two have been embezzling from his accounting clients for years,” I say, getting into it, “to support her tragic addiction . . . to the Home Shopping Network.”
“It’s the small appliances,” Cal agrees sadly. “She can’t help herself.”
We go back and forth like that for a while, coming up with one absurd backstory after another, and suddenly this event doesn’t feel so stuffy after all.
Finally I excuse myself and slip off to the ladies room to powder my nose—that is, to make sure my boobs aren’t popping out the top of this dress, Las Vegas-style. I scan the crowd for Cal when I get back to the ballroom. He’s standing near the silent auction table chatting up a striking brunette in a long, emerald-green dress.
I pause. She’s got her arm on his elbow, grinning, and his face is tilted attentively to hers. She’s not plucked nor Botoxed—in fact, there’s a kind of effortless elegance about her, the kind of moneyed sophistication you can’t fake. She probably goes to events like this every day, because she’s an actual heiress and not an unemployed junior law associate. Suddenly I feel like I’m playing dress-up, which I am, in my borrowed outfit, here under false pretenses.
I hesitate, shifting my weight in my sky-high heels. I know I’m being insecure, but there’s a part of me that wants to bail out like Lottie did at the race today, to find a stairwell to sit in and spend the rest of the night with my shoes off, playing Candy Crush on my phone. I’m seriously considering it, but just then Cal catches sight of me through the crowd, and his grin spreads wide as he motions for me to come over.
“There you are,” he says, planting a hand against my bare back. “I thought you fell in. This is Candice Martin, the kids’ godmother. She was Mel’s college roommate. But no stories,” he warns Candice, laughing.
“What?” she laughs back. “You mean, not even that night over Spring Break in Cabo with the tequila and—”
“Especially not that,” Cal cuts her off, grinning. They chat more, trading old stories, until finally she gives me a smile.
“It was good to meet you, Jules,” she says finally. “Cal, I’m sure our paths will cross again soon. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you with Vivian.”
Once she’s gone I let out a breath. Despite all our games, I’m beginning to see what Cal meant about boring and stuffy. “Maybe I should head back,” I say awkwardly. “I don’t want to cramp your style.” He looks blank. “You know. If you and Candice want to get, like . . . reacquainted.”
He snorts over his champagne. “Are you serious?” Then he looks at me more closely. “You are jealous! You know, I was teasing you about those moms at Ezra’s school the other day, but you kind of have a green-eyed monster thing going on, don’t you?” He runs a finger along the strap of my dress, teasing. “It’s kind of working for me, I won’t lie to you.”
“It has nothing to do with being jealous!” I insist, although I’m totally busted. “But, you know, this is a business arrangement, and so if it ever gets to a point where it doesn’t make sense—”
“You keep saying that,” Cal interrupts me, frowning. “Does this feel like a business arrangement to you?”
I look at him. Of course it doesn’t, and it hasn’t for a while now. But I don’t know how to untangle what’s real from what’s just the two of us playing house for the sake of the court.
“Listen,” Cal says quietly, reaching down and lacing his fingers through mine, “I told my mom we’d pick the kids up in the morning. There’s a room upstairs with our names on it, if you’re interested in bailing out of this excruciatingly dull party and finding out just how much I don’t want to get reacquainted with Candice—who, by the way, is married.” He raises his eyebrows. “To a woman.”
“I—oh.” Oh God, I am such an idiot. “Cal—”
“Come on, Jules,” he says, leaning close, his warm breath sending goosebumps up and down the length of my backbone. “Come to bed with me.”
I force myself to think for a minute, waiting for my lawyer brain to kick in and separate fact from fiction. But the reality is I’m tired of trying to figure out what’s real and what’s just for show. I want to be alone with him and see for myself.
“Okay,” I finally say, “I’ll go with you, but it’s going to be hard to top the penthouse suite at Caesar’s Palace.”
For a moment Cal just looks at me, and I shiver at the n
aked intent in his expression. Then he grins. “Let me try.”
We duck out of the ballroom and take the elevator to the top floor of the hotel, where Cal keys us into a lushly-outfitted suite, all thickly piled carpets and a four-poster bed. I wander over toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the view of the Public Garden spread out like a dark quilt below.
“I really love this city,” he admits, coming up behind me and gazing out over my shoulder. “It’s not cool. It’s not flashy. Our sports teams only just got good in the last fifteen years. But it’s just . . .”
“Home?” I supply, and I feel the curve of his grin against my cheek.
“Exactly.”
We stand like that for a long minute, looking out at the treetops and Beacon Hill beyond, the lights in the narrow windows of the brownstones glowing warmly against the blue-black sky. I lean back against him, teasing, and Cal hums quietly in my ear. “Something on your mind?” he asks, curling his hands around my waist.
I shrug inside his grip and rock against him with a little more purpose, the silky fabric of the dress slipping against the front of his suit pants. “Possibly,” I admit.
I feel his smile more than I see it. “Want to elaborate?” he asks, palms sliding up my body to cup my breasts.
“Later,” I tell him, reaching up and carding my fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, tugging a little. “Use your imagination.”
Cal’s hands drop back down to my hips, tugging me closer so that I can feel his cock hard and insistent against me. For a second I imagine letting him fuck me right here, dress rucked up around my hips and my hands planted flat on the glass, my head thrown back in pleasure. I arch back, letting out a soft moan of anticipation.
“Fuck,” Cal growls, spinning me around to face him. I’m expecting to get kissed but instead he just gazes at me, his expression hungry. “You’re beautiful.”
“A four-thousand-dollar dress will do a lot for a girl,” I say, teasing, but he shakes his head.