by Bella Forro
“No, no,” he said, pulling open the door. “I am happy to do it. And if you ever need me to take you anywhere, you just give me a call and let me know. My driving contract extends to you as well.”
One more thing Mark had covered under my year-long contract to him, I suppose. Free transportation to wherever I wanted to go.
He sure knew how to pile on the incentives.
I slid into the car, wishing it were just a little bit darker, that the car ride would offer me the smallest amount of protection from his eyes. Somehow, even though it had seemed like just the right thing to be wearing a few minutes ago when I’d been upstairs in Cassie’s room, I was feeling nervous now that I was in the car with Mark.
“Thanks for clearing your schedule,” Mark said, and I appreciated that, for once, he wasn’t complimenting me.
“No problem at all,” I said, fiddling with the hem of my skirt. “What’s on the agenda tonight?”
“Dad’s hosting a party in his Tribeca flat. You’ve already seen the Long Island chateau, so this will be the next shiny thing he can dangle in front of you.”
It didn’t take a genius to know he was ticked about the plans tonight, even if I wasn’t.
People were oozing out of the apartment’s pores. If you could call it an apartment. It was a multi-level, beautiful condo with more bedrooms than apartments in my building and a rooftop pool hosting a bevy of beautiful women in bikinis I couldn’t imagine wearing in public.
This was definitely not my kind of scene. In so very many ways.
“Ah, Mark. Victoria,” his father said in greeting. “So glad you could make it on such short notice. You know how the family does love to see you,” he said pointedly toward Mark.
As if on cue an older woman dressed head to toe in cream with blinding jewels glittering on her ears and an unnaturally unlined face let out a cry of joy and leaned in to press a kiss to both sides of Mark’s face.
“Mark, my boy,” she said, her voice clipped with the specific sound that comes from the Hampton side of the island. “It’s been much, much too long.” She clasped his hands in hers, her eyes shining, like she hadn’t thought she would have the opportunity to stand with him again like this.
“Aunt Alice, you can’t get rid of me that easily.”
There was that edge of roguishness to him once again, and I have to say, that was the part of him I couldn’t seem to stay away from. It just kept drawing me back to him.
“Well,” she said, leaning in close to him. “I’ve been hearing about all this drama between you and your father and that Amy child. I can’t say I agree with the approach, but of course, I do agree with the sentiment.” She gave him a saucy wink. “After all, I have been through four husbands for a reason.”
She turned toward me. “Now tell me about this beautiful thing you have here.”
Her eyes were sharp, but not cold. Just like she was filing every bit of information about everything away for later, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Aunt Alice, this is Victoria. My girlfriend.”
He said the word easily, and his hand was slipping around my waist as he did, pulling me close and pushing me forward, so I could reach out and shake her hand.
“Lovely, lovely, my dear,” she was saying. “I hope you’re taking good care of our boy Mark, here. He deserves it.”
There was something in the way she said it that left me blushing, and he seemed to pick up on it, gently guiding me away from her.
“Your family doesn’t seem that bad,” I said through a smile, not sure who might be watching. “I mean, you made the whole thing seem…unsavory.”
“Trust me,” he said darkly. “You haven’t seen the half of it yet.”
Something seemed to distract him. I saw it happen. One minute his hand was wrapped around my arm, his eyes locked on mine and his voice was teasing and light.
And in the next moment he was focused on something across the room, his shoulders stiff, his face hard.
I followed his gaze.
And there she was, beautiful and coiffed. The kind of woman who could walk in a room and have every eye on her in a moment. She’d made an entire career out of it.
Mark’s ex girlfriend. The whole reason I was here in the first place.
Also here with me, at the family party.
Totally not awkward. Not at all.
Chapter 10
Mark
Incredible. I should have known my father had an ulterior motive in inviting us to this party. Something other than just to see Victoria squirm in an atmosphere she had no experience in.
Asshole.
I felt Victoria’s hand pressing into my upper arm. Even through the layers of clothing I was wearing, the heat was searing.
“Hey,” she said, and I looked down at her, where she was looking up at me, her eyes a vibrant blue against the darkness of her eye makeup. “She’s just a girl.” She gave a little shrug, like it was no big deal at all. “We all have our pasts.”
She slipped her arm through mine and steered me in another direction.
I heard a little murmur of conversation as we passed a cluster of family and their guests, and I knew they were talking about Amy and Victoria. From the tilt of her chin I suspect she knew it as well.
But if I hadn’t already thought she was pretty amazing, this would have done it for me.
I heard a titter of laughter from someone, but didn’t spare them a glance. If Victoria could go on walking, then so would I.
We wound our way through the room, and I wasn’t sure where she was heading, or if she knew where she was going at all, but in the end we were tucked in the corner of the piano room in front of a wall-spanning window, looking out over the gorgeous city.
Or, that’s what she was doing. And what I should have been doing, but instead I was watching her.
“Don’t let them get to you, Victoria. These people think they have so much more to offer than they actually do.”
I couldn’t stop myself. My hand was moving up over the soft skin of her arm, turning her body toward mine, so I could look down into her face, lit from the soft glow of the lights behind me and the city night from outside.
One hand was moving over the slope of her shoulder, sliding up behind the mass of blonde hair, the other was drawing a thumb over her full bottom lip.
And then I was leaning down to her, kissing her.
It was gentle at first. Tentative. Like I was half-expecting her to push me away and remind me — again — that this wasn’t that kind of business arrangement.
I guess I sort of was expecting that.
But she didn’t do either of those things. Instead, her hands were creeping up along the line of my jacket, her fingers slipping under the lapels, a little sigh of contentment escaping her as she pressed in closer to me, let me deepen the kiss.
I was thinking of all the things I could do to her. How I would slide that top off over her shoulders, run my fingers up under the hem of that distracting skirt.
When I pulled away from her, we were both breathless.
“Very convincing,” she managed. “Though there is no one here to see us.”
I grinned at her. She was so adamant; it was downright cute. “That might mean a little more to me if your fingers weren’t still wrapped in my jacket.”
She blushed prettily and let her hands fall from my body and I missed them immediately. So much so, I almost wished I hadn’t said anything at all.
“Besides,” I said, stepping in close to her again, dropping my lips until they were a whisper away from her ear. “That wasn’t part of the arrangement. It was just something I wanted to do. Taste you.”
I let my teeth brush against her earlobe, and even though I’d done it for her benefit, it had me right back to where I’d been just a few moments before, imagining the endless things I could do with her if we were alone.
If there wasn’t that stupid arrangement.
If she were actually in
terested in what I had to offer.
I was still trying to derail my thoughts when she slipped her hand into mine and took a step back toward the party.
At least one of us had some sense.
We were trying to integrate ourselves back into the party. Really trying. But it was hard for me to do because I kept thinking about how soft her body had been under my hands, how warm and willing her mouth had been against mine.
It made for a pretty significant distraction.
I caught sight of Amy a few times, and I knew she was strategically placing herself around the room to catch my eye.
It wasn’t working. I mean, really not working. I couldn’t be less interested in her if I tried.
Victoria excused herself to go to the bathroom and I was alone for the briefest minute before I saw my father gesturing to me from across the room.
He was hiding it well, still. His illness. Charles Pierce would go out the same way he had lived. Untouchable. An enigma. The kind of man other men envied and wanted to be. He wasn’t going to let anything put a damper on that for him — not even death.
I moved toward him. Dying or not, manipulative or not, he was the only father I would ever know, and it made it impossible for me to refuse him.
He had freshly poured scotch in his glass, and it didn’t escape my notice that he had nothing to offer me. I would always be his lesser — never a man in my own right.
“I see you are really clinging to this Victoria business,” he said without preamble.
“What do you mean?” I didn’t really want to engage him in the conversation, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of options for me. Until Victoria made her reappearance, I was at my father’s whim.
“I’m just acknowledging what we both know. Mark, I wasn’t born yesterday. It seems incredibly convenient that this woman I’ve never heard you mention before, not even in passing, should so suddenly consume you the way she does. Again, so conveniently after everything has happened with Amy.”
“I can understand how you might feel that way,” I said stiffly. “And I understand how convenient it is for you to be able to control me through Amy, through the business, through Victoria. I’m just one more pawn in your set of pawns.”
“That’s not how it is at all, son.” I noticed the way he stressed the word, like he was reminding me of exactly what position I had, and that it was, most definitely, beneath his.
“Please. This is just another variation of what happened with mother. You let her suffer in a marriage with you while you entertained yourself with other women. She died alone and feeling like a failure. And now you have the incredible audacity to tell me I should stick out a relationship with a woman I’m not married to, whom I’m certain is interested in me only because I have access to what we’ve built with the corporation, and because it doesn’t hurt her career? Even you must admit there is no silver lining to that, Dad.”
“Maybe she’s not the best choice out there, Mark. But I have to believe she’d be better than Victoria. Victoria’s sweet enough. She’s pretty enough. But she’s a fish out of water with these people and they will eat her alive. She won’t be able to pull her weight as a corporate wife, as a tabloid partner.”
I felt the anger sear through me. “If by corporate wife you mean trophy wife, I’m not interested in that. If I were, I could easily find some celebutante to fill the role. I’m not. That’s why I’m with Victoria in the first place.”
“I’d like to believe you when you say that, Mark —” my father was saying, but I turned on my heel and walked away from him, his words empty, hanging in the air behind me.
Chapter 11
Victoria
I had finally managed to find the bathroom, and I tried not to let it get me down that it was easily the size of my apartment bedroom.
I didn’t even want to think about the cost of this mini mansion. The Pierces’ had more money than I could ever imagine having.
And I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. So far, I wasn’t really loving what I was seeing of the whole scene.
I just needed a breather. A few minutes to get myself together after that moment by the window.
But things went from bad to worse when I stepped outside of the bathroom and into a hallway where Amy was waiting for me.
She eyed me up and down, and it was impossible not to feel like the smallest human being in the world when she did that.
“Look,” she said, stepping toward me, one manicured finger jabbing at me. “I don’t know exactly what you think is going on between you and Mark, or what you think you have with him, but I’m here to tell you, it’s nothing. He’ll forget about you just as quickly as he swept you up off your feet. You think this isn’t his first indiscretion? It’s only a matter of time. He’ll come back to me. He always does.”
She didn’t wait for a response, just turned away in a flurry of silk and perfume and was stalking away from me.
I didn’t want to believe those things, of course. I wanted to believe I was different and special and it wasn’t going to be that way for me.
But did I want to believe that because I thought it was true, or because I wanted it to be true?
I just wasn’t sure. And I didn’t even know how to begin sorting through it.
I was still mulling it over when Mark’s Aunt Alice reappeared at my elbow. From where we were I could see Mark in the crowd, and I actually felt a little surge of relief that he wasn’t tucked away in some corner with Amy, since that was apparently the kind of thing he did.
“They aren’t too bad, the family,” she said, like she could see the wheels spinning in my head. “Just too wealthy for their own good. You know how that makes people a little crazy.”
I nodded. I didn’t know. I had no idea. I wasn’t one of those wealthy people. And I had none to claim as my own.
“Not me, of course. I mean, I have the money and I like Louis Vuitton and Louboutin shoes as much as the next person, but I’m still your average over-botoxed woman fighting an onslaught of sagging skin.”
I couldn’t help but grin. If nothing else, Aunt Alice was certainly entertaining.
Mark seemed to be caught in a conversation with another young man, and when Alice drifted away, his father appeared in front of me.
“My son is certainly besotted with you,” Charles said, and I could tell from the way he was eyeing me that it wasn’t a fact he was happy about. “And I hear I will just love you if I get to know you. How do you feel about the shooting range tomorrow morning?”
I was certain I didn’t want to go, but even if I did, I had to get to work and make sure everything was happening as it should be happening, and not as Paul seemed to feel was best.
“Well, I do have work in the morning. I’m not sure how my boss would feel if I just skipped it to go to the range.”
Mark’s father gave a cold laugh. “I’ll write you a note. After all, at the end of the day, I’m everyone’s boss, and if they want to go on having the job they do, they’ll give me what I want.”
If that wasn’t conceited, I didn’t know what was. But I suppose there was some truth to it, so I left my smile plastered on my face.
“I’ll expect you at 9 a.m.,” he said, before turning and disappearing back into the room, leaving me, at last, to myself.
It couldn’t have come at a better time. I needed to get out of this place before everything caught up to me.
God knew what I would do when it did.
Chapter 12
Mark
I could tell from the expression on her face I was going to be in trouble.
Big trouble.
But the storm in her eyes didn’t make her any less attractive. And if I were being honest, I was finding the set of her mouth way more provocative than any model’s pout in a lingerie catalog.
And I did have some experience with that.
“Mark.”
The way she said my name shouldn’t have made me want to smile.
But it did.
“Yes?”
She slipped her arm through mine, but I could tell by the way her fingers were clamping down into my skin that it was for the audience around us, and in no way a reflection of anything positive.
“I just had a conversation with your father. He all but demanded I go to the shooting range with him tomorrow. When I mentioned that I have to work, he straight up told me he would write me a note to excuse me. Like I was a child skipping class. And I would like to know how he even knew that I know how to shoot a gun in the first place.”
I had the sneaking suspicion, that if we’d been alone, she’d have had her hands on her hips and would have been tapping her foot in impatience.
I gave a little shrug. “Sorry about that. It came up in our phone call. When he tried to say he didn’t believe we actually played squash and then I just sort of told him that we went to the range together, too. I thought he’d like that. He was pretty disappointed when I stopped going.”
“I haven’t held a gun in a decade. In fact, I feel a lot differently about them now than I used to. And skeet, Jesus,” she grumbled. “I’m going to be rusty!”
“It’ll be fine,” I murmured, patting the hand that was still clinging to me.
In response she turned and glared at me, and I figured I was running out of opportunities to appease her.
“What do you say we get out of here. We can head back to my place and spend some time reviewing the finer points of skeet shooting. I did mention the tournaments you’ve won…”
“Are you kidding me? I am never going to make it through tomorrow without embarrassing myself.”
“I’m sure you’ll do just great,” I said as I adjusted my tie.
I was starting to think I was never going to hear the end of it, one way or another.
Chapter 13
Victoria
We were in the backseat of his car, and I was thinking of all the reasons I should be going straight to my own apartment, not the least of which was everything Amy had thrown at me in that moment alone.
“I forgot to mention to you that Amy cornered me outside of the bathroom. You know, before I received my ‘invitation’ to go shooting.”