“Hey, enough,” Brendan warned the guy in English.
Fully expecting him to dispute his fellow guest’s housekeeping priority—this was just the kind of thing rich guys like to fight about in one form or another—she was surprised at what Beckett said, again in English, so obviously not just for the maid’s benefit.
“Watch your mouth.”
The jerk laughed. “She can’t speak English.”
“That’s no excuse to be rude.”
“Wait a minute. Aren’t you Brendan Beckett?” Without waiting for the response he added, with a laugh, looking at her as he said it, “I heard you’d fuck anything with a pussy, but I thought that was an exaggeration.”
Brendan instructed her in Spanish to go back into the room and not worry about anything. Head down, she obeyed, rolling the cart in with her as Brendan closed the door behind her. Presumably, now would come the male, rich guy bonding at her expense. Not really anxious to hear that conversation, she nonetheless put her ear to the door, startled when she felt a slam against it and then what sounded like a companion slam against the wall opposite. She should have stepped away from the door—that would be the safest thing to do—but instead she put her eye up to the peephole.
Brendan Beckett had the other guy up against the wall, his forearm to his throat. Probably suggesting he would sleep with a dog like her, or like she was pretending to be, was an insult the notorious playboy took personally.
“Look, I don’t know who you are,” Beckett said calmly, “but I know you’re an asshole. Just think twice about acting so much like one next time.”
He let him go.
“I was just kidding about you sleeping with her. That cow—“
The arm hold was back. “You’re not getting this. Don’t insult a woman who’s done nothing to you. Is that clear enough?”
The guy nodded, clearly confused. He wasn’t the only one.
“Try to show a little courtesy next time, okay? And if I hear you caused any trouble for that woman, I’ll have your balls and I don’t care who the fuck you are. Understand?”
The other guy nodded again, and Brendan let him go again. “Get out of here. Go on.” Brendan turned back to the door and Sophia stumbled back.
He smiled as he opened the door, switching to Spanish again. “You can leave this open. That idiot is gone. I’m sorry about that. You shouldn’t have to put up with that. You let me know if that jerk causes any other trouble for you, won’t you?”
“Sí. Gracias.”
She kept her face carefully blank as he left her. In reality, she couldn’t have been any more puzzled than if she really had not spoken English. A rich playboy who was nice to downtrodden overweight nobodies? Who was this guy? When she left the room the second time, she brought his journal with her.
Sophia came back to herself as Brendan handed the bride to her intended and stepped slightly back. The priest or reverend or whatever he was—Sophia didn’t have much experience with religion—welcomed them all here to join the “dearly beloved.” Or something. She wasn’t really listening, but the point was everybody else was. This was the easiest time to slip into a wedding uninvited, when everyone was absorbed with observing the actual vows being exchanged. Later, when the reception got underway, the guests would people-watch—especially at a wedding like this—and inevitably be more observant about folks slipping in or out, even if they didn’t mean to be. But when Sophia took an empty chair on an outer aisle during the ceremony, the woman next to her just smiled and went back to looking at the bride and groom.
The wedding couple was rather something to look at. The bride, Brendan’s sister, was radiant, tall and blonde and beautiful in her elegant white silk gown, the lace veil folded back on her upswept hair. Her groom was dark-haired and devilishly handsome in his tuxedo, smiling at his soon-to-be wife.
Brendan’s siblings were easy to pick out among the attendants and in the first row. Two twin bridesmaids in gray silk with lavender trimming were Becketts without question, with their blonde hair and perfect skin. Matching older versions, one in black oddly, sat in the front row, both smiling, assorted children in ages ranging from middle school to high school surrounding them. Those must be the older sisters and nieces and nephews.
The groom’s attendants consisted of Brendan and a bookish man with curly brown hair and perpetually slipping glasses, who kept whispering to Brendan like a naughty school boy in class until the groom scowled over at him and he stopped.
Where the groom’s family was, Sophia didn’t know. She supposed the gray-haired older woman on the other side of the aisle belonged to him. The rest of the crowd could be anybody. Since this was a wedding of business titans, as the press had dubbed it, they were probably all colleagues or customers or whatever business titans had. Maybe they were all just minions.
Before Sophia knew it, the couple was being pronounced man and wife and walking down the aisle arm and arm, smiling so genuinely it was kind of sickening to watch.
Well, never mind. Now was the time for the action to begin.
Chapter Two
Brendan was happy for Virginia. He really was. She was beaming as she danced with her new husband. She hadn’t even asked him what the latest projections were, a relief since they happened to be lousy.
“Are you having another?”
He glanced sideways at his older sister, Nora. Choosing to wear black to a wedding could be considered chic, but since Nora’s husband had just been incarcerated for trying to kill the bride, it was probably more than a fashion statement. More like a comment on the institution of marriage as a whole.
Brendan downed his champagne in one gulp. “Yep.”
Nora frowned. She had been a heavy drinker once herself, but her husband’s descent into drug-induced crime seemed to have scared her sober. He exchanged his empty glass for a full one care of a passing waiter and downed that too.
“No date, Brendan?”
“No. You know I think it’s a bad idea to bring a girl to a family wedding. Gives her dangerous ideas about Beckett money and the happily-ever-afters that go with it.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
The crack in his sister’s voice made him feel like a shit. “I’m sorry, Nora. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right. I can’t go through the rest of my life with everybody tip-toeing around me. Just take my advice, little brother, and never marry a pretty face without finding out what’s underneath.”
“No worry on that score. I don’t intend to get married.”
“Even better,” Nora muttered.
“What are you two looking so down about?” Mindy popped up at his elbow, a glass of champagne casually in hand. He divested her of it, as was their usual practice.
“You’re not twenty-one yet, squirt.”
His pretty little sister huffed. “Why don’t you relax your big brother act for one night, Brendan? It’s Virginia’s wedding, for heaven’s sake. What do you think, Nora?”
Nora smiled wistfully at their sister, not much older than her oldest child, who Brendan couldn’t help but notice didn’t appear to be speaking to his mother. The little snot. He’d give his nephew a good talking-to if he didn’t know the poor kid was going through hell now. Even a no-good father was better than a no-good father behind bars.
Nora was chatting with Mindy now, an arm around her shoulder casually. He might have thought that the twins would annoy Nora at this juncture in her life, with their carefree failure to recognize the enormity of what had just happened. To the twins, somebody trying to kill their one sister and the husband of their other sister ending up behind bars were just blips in a life full of college and socializing.
But if anything, Nora seemed to cherish the normalcy in her relationship with the twins.
Mason Lockbridge, a friend of his and Virginia’s from college, approached them and nudged Brendan off to the side.
“Hey, who is that?”
Brendan followed the direction of Mason’s gaze
and saw her. “Wow,” he agreed. The woman was in an electric blue dress, as if she needed to call any more attention to herself. A halter top kept in the most attention-getting breasts he had seen in quite some time, the short skirt of the dress wafting over long, long legs, with a tiny waist in between. Now that was a beautiful body. The face was just as lovely, with wide, generous lips, and huge doe-like eyes, though he was too far away to tell their color. Her hair was a mass of silky dark curls to her waist.
Brendan put his champagne glass down on a nearby table.
“She’s got to be a friend of the groom’s,” Mason commented. “She looks like she could be one of Winston’s old flames. You better make sure your sister doesn’t see her.”
Brendan scoffed. “Virginia wouldn’t care if she did see her.”
“I thought they were in love.”
“Believe me. They are. Winston can’t take his eyes off her and Virginia even stops thinking about business for a half a second when she’s with him. No old flame is going to get in the way of that.” If there was one thing Brendan believed in, it was that it was possible for some people to have a happy marriage. His parents had had one. Allie and her husband Pat had one. Virginia and Aaron were going to have one. But not him. Never him.
“You couldn’t possibly be serious, Brendan.”
“I am, Sarah. Why not?”
“Why not? How about I’m a waitress and you’re a Beckett. How’s that for a reason?”
He laughed, kissing the tip of her freckled nose and palming one of her milky white breasts. She slipped one of her long, bare legs between his and nudged her thigh against his cock, already hardening though they had just gotten done making love. A hard cock was a pretty perpetual state for him at his age, but the thought of satiating it with Sarah’s sweet body for the rest of his life filled him with excitement. Her objections to marrying him were silly and he planned to make short work of them.
“That’s a lousy reason, baby. What does that even matter?”
“Your parents—”
“Want me to be happy. You make me happy.” He tasted her strawberry-flavored lips, care of that light lip gloss she always wore since she needed no other makeup. Even at this relatively young point in his life, he’d slept around quite a lot. And already, he was tired of it. Tired of one easy lay after another, tired of college, tired of the constant socializing. He wanted to settle down with Sarah. He wanted to be half of a happy couple, like his parents, like Allie and Pat, even like Nora and Brian when they weren’t bickering with each other.
“I would never live up to being the wife of a CEO, Brendan.”
“I don’t want to be CEO. I told you that. That’s for Virginia, not me. She likes all that stuff.”
“And what do you like, Brendan?” She said it so softly, he almost didn’t hear it.
“You.” He kissed her, flipping her over onto her back, and reaching for another condom. He slid his fully erect cock into her tight vagina. “I like you.” Murmuring those same words as he fucked her, somewhere along the way he switched to “I love you,” but she never responded, her eyes closed, her welcoming legs open to him.
When he shuddered and slid off her again, kissing her cheek, he felt wetness against his lips. He reared back. “Are you crying?”
She swiped one hand against her cheek. “I have to go. My shift starts in ten minutes. I have to get into my uniform.”
“Look, Sarah, I want us to live together. I want to marry you, not just fuck you in the backseat of my car.”
“I have to go.”
And then she was. Gone. That very same night. Just disappeared, leaving him a note that said it all.
She had been put in his path by one of his “pals”, who was long on heritage but short on funds. The idea was for Sarah—who his friend had fed with all his likes and dislikes, right down to not a lot of makeup—to hook up with him and eventually assume a role as full-fledged mistress, with car and apartment and credit line all in her name. The friend would benefit of course. Sarah would benefit. Even Brendan would benefit, she had said in her note since she’d be sleeping with him just as much as she’d be sleeping with his friend and whoever else she happened to take a fancy to on her own time.
But he was so “sweet” and so “innocent” despite his skill in bed that she just couldn’t find it in her to dupe him. And then when he started talking marriage, the friend had pushed her to accept, obviously an even better set-up. But she couldn’t. So she left.
And the biggest favor dear little Sarah had ever done him was to leave him that note. Whatever innocence he had left in him was long gone after that.
“You better go find out who she is, just in case, pal.”
“Yeah,” Brendan agreed with a laugh. “It’s kind of my duty seeing as how I’m brother of the bride.”
“I’d try, but if you got your eye on her, I got no chance.”
“You got to work on your confidence, buddy.”
“Just stating a fact.”
The mystery woman was wandering to the edge of the patio, as if mysteriously being corralled off for his benefit. Perfect.
“See you later.” Brendan approached the woman, who turned in his direction at the last minute. Blue. Her eyes were a deep blue-green, slanted up a little at the ends, which gave her an exotic look. Her skin was golden, not with a tan, but suggesting a drop or two of Mediterranean blood in her background.
“Hi.” Always a good way to start. She gazed back at him without returning the greeting, so he added, “You looked a little lost there so I thought I’d volunteer my services.”
“To do what?”
Her voice was low and smoky. But oddly familiar.
“Show you around. Are you a friend of the bride’s or the groom’s?”
“Neither,” she said, without further explanation.
“Maybe friend isn’t quite the right word.”
“If you want to know who I am, Mr. Beckett, just ask me.”
“Ah, so you know me.”
“Who doesn’t know the handsome Brendan Beckett?”
“I’m flattered.”
“You flatter easily.”
He was taken up short. Not that he never got the brush-off from women, it was just…well, no, it was that. He never got the brush-off from women. At least not in recent memory since he’d passed puberty anyway.
“Ouch,” he said with a laugh.
“You wound easily too.”
If this was the brush-off—and he was starting to feel as if it might be—at least she wasn’t moving away. On the contrary, the girl seemed rooted to the spot, just on the edge of the patio, staring only at him as people passed by.
“Any chance I can change your bad opinion of me?” he asked.
“Who said I had a bad opinion of you?”
“You like easily flattered, easily wounded guys?”
“Ones that look like you, I guess.”
Now that was more like it. He moved a little closer, leaning his head down toward her. She had a fresh, lemony scent about her. “The feeling’s mutual. Think of what beautiful children we’d have.”
Okay, he admitted it. That was corny. But since he always carefully used a condom in any encounter, it wasn’t as if he actually meant it. And most girls seemed to like it.
Not this one, though. “Does that line actually work?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. I usually only use it when I’ve had too much champagne and only—and this is the important part—only at a wedding.” Without being too obvious his eyes dipped slightly to take in her cleavage. He swallowed, hard. When he looked back at her face, the smirk said she had noticed his detour. Hell, he was only human. “Sometimes I don’t need a line at all.”
“No? So what do you do? Just ask a girl to go to bed with you?”
He said nothing, smiling. She really was gorgeous, but her flirting technique was a little odd.
“Why don’t you try that with me?”
“I’m sensing a trap here.”<
br />
“Easily flattered, easily wounded and easily cowed,” she concluded.
“You’re killing me.”
Just then, the bride brushed past giving them an absent smile, her train flowing over one arm, as she apparently tried to keep it off the ground. “Brendan, can you do me a favor and find Allie? Send her up to my room. I need some help with my dress.”
When she was gone, Brendan said, “I guess I have my marching orders. Stay right here until I get back?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to see if I obey orders as well as you seem to.”
A passing waiter leaned in to offer Sophia a glass of champagne from his tray. She took one as he softly said, monotone, “You’re supposed to be flirting with him, not driving him away.”
“He’ll be back,” she murmured and Arthur moved on.
He was. Two minutes later.
“Did you find your sister?”
“What?”
“Wasn’t that what you went off to do?”
“Oh yeah. No, better than that, I found the groom. He doesn’t like to let Virginia out of his sight for more than a minute, so he was happy to go up to her. He’ll take care of whatever she needs.”
“Some men are like that.” She sipped her champagne. “Others, not so much.”
“I could give you what you need.”
Give her what she needed? Why didn’t he just whip out his penis and get it over with?
She stared at him without responding, deadpan. Not that she was trying to play hard to get here. Or at least she wasn’t supposed to be. It’s just that she had expected a little more from the man she’d met in the hallway of that Four Seasons hotel. The one who had spoken in Spanish to a nobody maid. The one who wrote the kind of thoughts—the kind of poetry, really—she had read in his journal.
“I’m sensing here that my charm isn’t winning you over,” he said mildly, reading her accurately, which in itself was frightening. She better put her game face on, and pretty soon too. “Okay, I’ll let up. How do you know who I am, by the way?”
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