My mother gave a rapturous gasp. “Oh, Gemma! What do you think? We could start wedding planning and see all of New York! I haven’t been to see the Statue of Liberty since I was a girl!”
I’d never been to see the Statue of Liberty because if I wasn’t at work, I wasn’t earning money. That had been one of my fibs to my mother, though, to assure her that I was having a smashing good time in the city. I hadn’t seen any of the major attractions the Big Apple had to offer since I’d been here.
“I think that’s too generous,” I told Peter. “We’re awfully busy at work. I don’t know if I could take the time off.”
“I insist,” Peter said. “Really. A wedding is something to be celebrated, and you should really reconnect with your mother.”
I stamped on his toe under the table. “Aren’t you going to need me to be at work? A whole week seems excessive.” If my mother was going to be in the city for an entire week and I wasn’t able to be at work, I’d not only lose out on a whole week of wages and not be able to afford rent, but I’d be forced to entertain my mother, including but not limited to showing her my apartment, which was definitely not as high quality as I’d led her to believe. I could imagine her shriek of horror at the shared bathroom. It was a horror we would share. I’d practically trained my body to only have to go while I was at one of my two jobs.
Peter smiled placidly at me, as if I hadn’t just crushed his toes. He used my distraction to slip his hand back in between my legs.
“I think a week would be perfect,” he said. “We’ll work out all the details. Don’t you worry.”
“I just think that’s fantastic,” my mother said.
“You should stay right here, in this hotel,” Peter suggested. “Dad, would you like to take Lydia inside to make the arrangements? I’ll order us some dessert.”
“Good idea,” Frank said, standing and offering my mother his arm. I knew where Peter had learned his chivalry from. He’d made the same gesture toward me when we left the bar last night.
As soon as our parents were out of sight, I launched into my attack.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, whirling to face Peter full on.
“Like your mother said, my dear,” he said, grinning and shaking his head. “It’s an awfully small world, don’t you think?”
“I don’t even understand what’s going on,” I moaned, gripping my scalp with both of my hands. The small world he was talking about had turned upside down for me.
“Well, when two people love each other very much, they get married,” Peter offered wryly. “It seems to me that, somehow, our parents have fallen in love. And now they’re getting married.”
“How in the hell did we find each other last night?” I demanded. “Out of a city of millions of people? Why was the sex so good?”
Peter guffawed. “Why are you so accusatory about the good sex? Most women would just say thank you.”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m saying,” I mumbled, burying my face in my hands.
“The sex was good, then?”
“The best I’ve ever had,” I said, still unsure of why I was so painfully honest with him. None of it made sense. Not my compulsion for the truth with Peter. Not the fact that he was sitting here beside me right now, our parents getting married. And certainly not the fact that he’d helped me fabricate the reality I’d been feeding my mother for most of my time in the Big Apple.
“I told you I lied to my mother about what I did for a living,” I said, poking him in the shoulder with an angry finger.
“Yes, you did.”
“But I didn’t tell you details,” I said. “At least I don’t remember saying anything about that last night.”
“You said many memorable things about everything under the sun last night,” Peter said, grinning as he captured my angry finger and kissed the tip of it.
“Stop it!” I whispered, jerking my hand away. “What if our parents saw?”
“Ooh, a secret love affair,” he said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “It is a lot of fun when they’re secret.”
“If by secret you mean non-existent.” I looked nervously at the entrance of the hotel, but neither Frank nor my mother emerged. “Whatever we had before…whatever could’ve been…it can’t be now. We can’t do this anymore, if there was going to be a ‘this.’ An us.”
He cocked his pretty blond head at me. “Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“I most certainly do not.”
“We’ll be related,” I said, rolling my eyes extravagantly at him. “Step-siblings.”
He all but howled with laughter. “You really believe that makes sex wrong?” he whooped. People were looking at us. “Gemma, my dear girl, it’s only a piece of paper, marriage. It doesn’t change anything between you and me.”
“That’s beside the point,” I said, my face hot with shame and anger. “How did you know all of those details about what I’d been telling my mother? I wouldn’t have told something like that to you.”
Peter looked chagrined for the first time in this entire debacle. “Ah, yes. That. Your purse spilled its contents on the carpeting when we arrived at the hotel early this morning, and a journal fell out.”
I paled. “You actually read it?”
“It opened when it fell out.”
“That’s not a good reason to read it. That was private. Not for anyone to read but me.”
Peter cleared his throat, loosened his tie a little bit. “I understand that, and I apologize. I recognize now that it was private, but I was fascinated.”
“Curiosity still isn’t a good reason to read it.” I was fuming, but it was tempered with horrified shame, which seemed to be the feeling of choice of the evening. I’d written that journal to keep track of my lies, and it wasn’t something I was proud of, or that I thought should be broadcast to everyone I knew.
“Gemma, I’m sorry. I just… I wanted to know more about you. You captured my… Well, more of me than I expected you to.”
“What are you saying?” I peered at him, suspicious. He knew so much more about me than I did him. He had that much more power in this situation because of it. I was at his mercy, and I hated the idea of it. One word from Peter and the world I’d built to satisfy my mother would all come crashing down.
“I mean that I went out that night for one reason and one reason only, and you seemed to have given me more reasons than I probably deserve to be happy. Excited. Thrilled that we’ll be closer than ever, now.”
“What?”
“Well, our parents are getting married, for one,” he reminded me, laughing. “And now you’re going to have to come and work for me.”
“I don’t have to do anything for you,” I informed him, feeling cornered and not liking it one bit. “I don’t owe you anything. You’re the one who owes me. You meddled in something that you don’t understand. Don’t you see? If my mother spends an entire week in the city, she’s going to want to know where I live.”
“Ah, the shoebox,” Peter mused, and I hated myself, hated my strange need to be upfront with him about each and every little detail of my life.
“Yes, the shoebox,” I snapped. “And if I don’t work at all this week, I won’t be able to afford to even live in that rat hole.”
“Gemma, I want to make it up to you,” he said, spreading his hands in front of me, looking helplessly handsome. “I’m sorry for imposing on you, for taking a peek into your journal.”
“You did more than peek at it,” I muttered. “You recited whole pages.”
“I have a very good memory. Anyway, you can still make the best of this situation if you just let me do a few things for you.” He captured my hand in his, and I shuddered as I remembered sucking on his fingers just a handful of hours ago.
“What kinds of things?” I asked, suspicious.
“Let me break the lease on your shoebox,” he said. “Quit your jobs. Come work for me, at my office. I actually have a s
ecretary position open at the moment. It’s quite perfect timing, if you think about it. Maybe even fate showing you the best way forward.”
I shook my head. “Where would I live? And how would I live with myself knowing that I owe everything to you?”
“I’d set you up in the hotel — I still have that room we stayed in last night,” Peter reasoned. “Did you enjoy yourself in it?”
I blinked at him. “I can’t live in a hotel.”
“Why not?”
“It’s…it’s too expensive, for one,” I spluttered. “And I won’t be your kept woman.”
Peter laughed at my indignation. “You’re nobody’s kept woman,” he agreed. “But what I’m telling you, and what I understand might be hard for you to understand, is that I have more than enough money to do everything that I want to do. I am a very successful businessman. And what I want to do right now is to make some things right for you.”
“I don’t understand.” I really didn’t. Peter wasn’t some fairy godmother who had dropped out of the sky to address my suffering. We’d met, by chance, at a bar, and it just so happened that we’d made a connection. Was that all it was? Pure, dumb luck?
“You’re working hard,” Peter said. “And you’ve been working hard. I want to make it so your hard work pays off. I want to give you the job — and the life — that you want for yourself. Because don’t you want it to be true, Gemma, the story you’ve been telling your mother? Don’t you want to be successful?”
“Of course I want to be successful,” I sighed. “But I don’t want to be beholden to anyone. I don’t want to have to owe anyone anything.” I couldn’t be indebted to Peter. That wasn’t how I operated.
“You won’t owe me anything,” he said. “Tell me the truth, now, Gemma.”
“I haven’t told you anything but the truth since we’ve met,” I admitted, giving a laugh. “It’s the damnedest thing.”
“Then would you say that we had a connection?” He held my gaze for several long moments. “As in, a real connection? Not one just forged on a drunken night at a couple of bars? Something real? Something worth pursuing?”
I swallowed hard. “I can’t see into the future, and I can’t predict how it might work out, but I’d have to say yes. That we did — we do have a real connection. Physical and otherwise. I don’t know what it is about you, but I can’t lie. I don’t want to lie to you. And for me, that’s kind of a big deal.”
“Then why can’t we give this a chance?” he asked. “What’s holding you back from letting all of your struggles go and letting me help you?”
“Because they’re my struggles,” I said, my voice falling to a whisper. Peter had to lean in to even hear me. “It’s the life I’ve struggled to create. It’s my survival. If I give it up, if I turn my back on it to let you help me, then what does that make me?”
“Savvy,” he offered. “Realistic. A dreamer who knows which one to follow when it presents itself to her.”
“Is this it, then?” I asked him. “Is this my dream to follow? How do I know that this is the one?”
“Just close your eyes and fall,” he said, smiling at me, his eyes tracing the shape of my mouth. “I’m there to catch you.”
My eyes fluttered closed, and he kissed me, softly, unexpectedly, then pulled away.
“Mom and Dad are coming back,” he said, laughter in his voice. “We’d better be good.”
My eyes opened, and I smiled. “You’d better be good — and keep your hands to yourself.”
“What?” he asked, his blue eyes wide but in no way, shape, or form innocent. “I thought it would help you relax.”
“You have a lot to learn,” I said, smiling as Frank and my mother sat down at the table, both of them beaming with excitement. I knew just how they felt.
Chapter 6
I walked into one of the tall, glittering buildings that I had admired since I’d moved to New York City, feeling, for the first time in a long time, hopeful about the future. There was still a lot to figure out, and still a lot of things that I wasn’t sure about, but at least I wasn’t plucking dog turds from the grass at Central Park with only a plastic bag to protect my hand.
It had been hugely validating to close the door on my shoebox apartment for the last time. Peter had sent his car to help me transport everything across town, which was helpful. I hadn’t accumulated much, and I was more than happy to sell or ditch what furniture I had scraped together. I might’ve worked hard for them, but they were only things. I was going on to greater things, now, and there was no place in my very nice hotel room for my battered futon or the coffee table that doubled as a kitchen table. They would only hold me back.
When I got to the hotel, a bellhop was waiting with a rolling caddy for my things. I laughed at him.
“I don’t have that much,” I said, the driver popping the trunk to the car. “This is all there is.”
“That’s fine,” he said, loading my two pathetic suitcases I’d taken when I first got here, as well as a couple of trash bags I’d packed my remaining belongings into, and loading them onto the caddy. I felt more than a little self-conscious as other guests arrived around me, their personal items secured in designer luggage and handbags. I felt better accompanying the bellhop inside and into the relative privacy of an elevator. He pushed the highest number on the bank, and the doors rumbled shut.
“Um, if my memory serves me correctly, the room I’m staying in is on the fifth floor,” I said slowly. “Okay, maybe the fourth floor. But it definitely wasn’t at the top.”
“Mr. Bly has instructed us to upgrade you to our penthouse suite,” the bellhop said, keeping his eyes upon the quickly advancing floor numbers on the display above the elevator doors.
My mouth dropped open. “The what?”
“Penthouse suite. It’s much more spacious than our other rooms. And a better view, too.”
The bellhop deposited my bags on a rack just inside a closet in the entryway of the penthouse while I gasped, agog at the splendor I was apparently living in now. Opulence didn’t describe it properly. It was the epitome of elegance, all warm colors and large windows with creamy curtains I could draw — if I ever saw a need to. I had a wonderful view of all the glittering buildings I’d been in love with ever since I moved to the city. I didn’t even understand why anyone would want to draw the curtains.
There was a full kitchen with all the latest appliances, as well as a sitting room with couches low to the carpeting. The bedroom was its own room, with a king size bed dwarfed in its spacious surroundings. The closet for the bedroom was as big as my old shoebox apartment had been, and once I hung my clothes up, they looked sad and lonely, not even taking up a quarter of the space available.
I walked back out to find that the bellhop had already slipped out, leaving me alone in this massive and intimidating space.
I noticed a sealed envelope that had been easy to overlook before, when I was aghast at all the finery, resting on one of the tables in the sitting room.
“Gemma,” it read, “please make yourself at home. I’ve enclosed a credit card that you will employ for all of your expenses. These expenses will include any food you’d like to purchase — the refrigerator in the kitchen, as well as the pantry, is fully stocked at this time — as well as clothes appropriate for the office. Dress code is very smart business casual. There is no limit on the credit card, nor should you limit yourself with it. It is yours, as are the funds available on it. The car is at your disposal anytime. Use it to commute to and from the office, as well as for any other errands you might run. This might take some getting used to, but I hope you will enjoy yourself. Call with any questions. Peter.”
Was I a terrible person for taking that credit card directly to Top Shop for some long overdue retail therapy? I was like a kid in a candy store, ripping clothes off the racks, trying on different combinations of everything I found, buying everything I liked instead of restricting myself to a budget.
Maybe I should’ve sho
wn more restraint, but Peter’s letter had told me to, more or less, go hog wild with the card. It was as if I was making up for a whole year of frugality. I bought satiny shirts and silk tunics and all manner of leggings — even a leather pair — as well as cardigans, sweaters, jackets, blazers, whole matching business suits and skirts that I had always imagined I would be wearing. It was like a dream come true — I was finally dressing for the job I wanted, even if I wasn’t sure exactly what being a secretary with Peter’s company entailed.
I called him as the same bellhop, hiding a smile behind his gloved hand, unloaded shopping bag after shopping bag onto the rolling caddy to get all of my purchases back up into the penthouse. It was more than I’d arrived with. I’d more than doubled my wardrobe, and added shoes and accessories and purses to it, as well.
“Don’t say it’s too much,” Peter said in lieu of a simple greeting. “I won’t argue about it.”
“It is too much,” I said, laughing, “but we won’t argue about it. I love the penthouse. I love the fact that I can see all the buildings. And I just did enough damage on that credit card that I think you should seriously consider imposing a monthly limit.”
Peter laughed, delighted, the sound unexpectedly boyish. “I’m so glad you’re having a good time. How was visiting with your mother and my father? Did everything go well?”
The week was finally over, but it hadn’t been nearly as painful as I thought it was going to be. I’d actually enjoyed spending time with my mother, and we’d even spent a few afternoons dress shopping for her wedding. She and Frank had decided that it should be held in the fall.
“Why wait?” my mother reasoned, modeling a ridiculously fluffy white dress in front of three mirrors just for fun as I laughed at her girlishness. “Frank and I have been waiting our whole lives for this. We don’t need a long engagement.”
“The visit was surprisingly good,” I said. “I think they’re really in love.”
“I should hope so,” Peter said. “They shouldn’t get married if it was anything less.”
LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) Page 52