But I hadn’t been able to answer his calls, and there was a lot more to this than his mother’s agenda, and at the heart of it all was a story of a simple girl, and the man who lived in the world’s spotlight. And Kylie Weatherby was not a girl who ever planned on being the center of attention.
I had to decide what was more important to me: my potential future with Reade, and everything that entailed. Or my privacy.
It wasn’t a decision I could make without more wine, and then Jazz came home and joined us, prompting me to start the story all over again and gain a new perspective, Jazz’s advice pretty much boiling down to, “Fuck it. You do you.” Which wasn’t really any kind of advice at all, and by the end of the day, with all the wine gone, all I had succeeded in doing was numbing my emotions altogether.
Chapter Ten
Reade
It didn’t take long for me to figure out what my mother had done—Georgia had a helpful habit of spilling secrets if you pressed her enough, and I knew just the right buttons to push. After a couple of threats to expose her social group backstabbing, I’d gotten her to open up, lay it all out in ugly detail. Ten thousand dollars, Georgia had said. A huge sum of money for someone who struggled to pay the rent each month. It wasn’t the first time.
Kylie didn’t take it. At least, I was pretty sure she didn’t. The way Georgia told it, Kylie had squared up to my mom and shot her down, and didn’t even lay a finger on the cash. But my mother had left some of the money there, and Kylie wasn’t answering her phone. It was fucking killing me. This had never happened to me—a girl not answering my calls.
But I did know how to handle my mother, to make her back off and leave Kylie alone. Go after the one thing she held closer to her heart above all else—money. Because my dad was wealthy, but I was just as rich, and I’d been topping up my mother’s bank account for a long time. She’d become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, one I could kill with a single phone call to my money guy. All I had to do was remind her of that, and she gave up the fight so quickly, it was fucking embarrassing.
My father, well—that was always going to be a simple one. I’d had that card up my sleeve for years, waiting for when I needed it the most. For when my father threatened something so important in my life, I would be left with little choice but to use it. And he’d threatened my relationship with Kylie, so I didn’t hesitate. I wrote him a simple email, letting him know I was aware of—and had proof of—his three-year past affair with an eighteen-year-old daughter of his oldest friend. Who was seventeen when they started dating. It didn’t take long, after that email, for me to receive word that Vernon Lennox had ceased all communication with the press.
I had won those battles, but none of it really mattered, not when I still had no contact with Kylie. The weight of it was slowly pissing me off, desperation making me turn to the bottle, to long nights spent lying awake, cold and alone.
“You’re looking rough, man,” Breck said, back from his honeymoon and now caught up on the whole sad-as-fuck story.
“Thanks.” I took a sip of my whiskey and tipped my head back against the armchair cushion, sighing deeply. “You got any advice?”
Breck didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his tone was thick with memory. “You once told me that if it was right, I shouldn’t give up on it.”
“She won’t answer my calls,” I said, and my strained voice surprised me. “I’ve been by her place and there’s no one home. I don’t want to be the guy she couldn’t get rid of, but neither do I want to just disappear without her knowing…”
“Knowing what?”
I didn’t have to say it. Breck studied me a moment and then nodded, blew out a long breath.
“Well, then you’ve got one option, my friend.” At my raised eyebrow, he waved a hand in the air and said, “The grand fucking gesture.”
“The grand fucking gesture.”
What kind of grand gesture could I do, when she refused to open her door or answer her phone? A gesture was only worth something when the intended recipient was aware of it, and right now, I didn’t even know if she even remembered I fucking existed. And even if she did, I had no way of getting hold of her, not unless I pestered April or Breck to pass on a message, and I wasn’t that much of a loser.
Unless…
No. I couldn’t do that, could I?
Well, yes, I fucking could. I had the influence. But whether she would be annoyed with me for it…
Shit, I had to risk it. I’d reached the end of the line, and it was time for desperate measures. And if I was lucky, if fate was on my side just this once, I might be able to get through to Kylie, have enough time to explain my side of the events.
I reached for my phone.
Chapter Eleven
Kylie
I was going for my first day of work with a hangover. Great. My life choices these days were astounding, and I was starting to think I needed to hire someone to follow me around and issue instructions, like don’t drink the night before starting a new job and don’t buy the expensive toothpaste, it’s no different, and call Reade back, you idiot, you know you want to.
No one answered my knock on the rear entrance door of the restaurant (since I didn’t have the key yet), and when I tried the handle, it opened for me. Swallowing down the first-day nerves—mixed with a little bit of hangover queasiness—I slipped inside and shut the door behind me, then turned to find…a completely empty restaurant kitchen.
What the…
“Hello?”
No answer. I checked the time on my phone, making sure I hadn’t somehow shown up at four in the morning rather than the afternoon, and then frowned at the empty room before me. Someone had cooked some food—it lay on the hot plates, steaming and covered with transparent lids, but there were no other signs that this kitchen was currently in operation, preparing to feed a full restaurant.
Seriously, what the hell?
The email had said to arrive at four in the afternoon, in work clothes, ready to learn the ropes from the head chef during a dinner service. At the time I’d had a little worry about how they were throwing me in at the deep end, but now I was mildly concerned I’d dreamt the whole interview and job offer process altogether, that they hadn’t been expecting me at all. That, for some reason, the restaurant was closed today, and I was trespassing.
This was ridiculous. This was my new job, and there should’ve been someone here. An entire kitchen full of people, in fact, working hard to prepare for dinner service.
I could leave, or I could investigate, and considering how long I’d wanted a job like this, there was no way in hell I was leaving.
Poking my head into the store rooms and fridge areas, I crossed through the kitchen and headed for the main dining room. Surely there would be someone out there with an explanation—the manager I’d spoken to, or a waiter of some kind. The back door had been open, which meant someone had had to unlock it, and that someone must’ve been here somewhere.
I didn’t find the manager or any waiters in the dining room. I found Reade, dressed in a gorgeous suit, standing beside a table set for dinner.
“What the—” Then I noticed the rack of dresses behind him, and my shock spiraled into complete confusion. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged, looking adorably flustered, and said, “I got you the night off.”
I couldn’t believe he was here. After all these days pining for him but not knowing what to do, here he stood, right in front of me, looking like a damn angel in black Armani. Then his words registered with me, and panic twisted my gut. “Reade, for God’s sake—” Because if he’d fucked up this opportunity for me…
“You start tomorrow, okay?” he said, cutting me off. “You still have the job. But they didn’t need you tonight, because there won’t be anyone eating here. Just us.”
I allowed myself a moment of relief, before taking a good look at the scene before me. Two wine glasses, two table settings, a rack of a dozen dresses, the silver Jimmy Choo s
hoes I left at his place. And Reade’s eyes shining with what appeared to be hope.
I swallowed thickly.
“What the hell is this?”
“I want a second chance,” he said without hesitation. “I know I was an asshole to you that morning, and I’m not going to make any excuses.” He raised his hands, a pleading gesture, and added, “Nothing like that will ever happen again. Promise.”
It wasn’t what I needed to hear. I didn’t care about how he’d spoken to me that morning, his attitude in the face of his company’s crisis. Well, I did, but that wasn’t the point. I’d gotten over that within minutes, and had the whole thing erased from my mind entirely by the time I’d made it home and found myself confronted with the less pleasant members of the Lennox family. “You’re not the problem, Reade,” I said on a heavy sigh, and with my heart picking up speed, I reached into my purse and retrieved the money. Five thousand dollars. I only had it in there because Jazz had come home that fateful morning and startled me into hiding it in the first place I thought of, and I hadn’t yet removed it. At no point did I expect the next time I saw it would be when throwing it on a table in front of Reade, confronting him with the truth of it.
“Do you know anything about this?” His expression said it all—clouding over as he stared at the money, making my breath catch. “You do.”
“My mother,” he said, nodding. His tone was angry, so he took a few deep, measured breaths and added, “She did it once before while I was in college. I didn’t think she’d ever stoop that low again.”
“What happened to that girl?”
“She took the money and ran.”
He didn’t say anything else, but I could hear the undertone there—challenging me to do the same, if I wanted. That he was prepared to hear the worst.
“I don’t want this money,” I said, and watched his throat roll with a heavy swallow, his eyes brightening.
“I’ve dealt with her,” he said. “She’s gonna back off, I swear.”
As if it was that simple. If my only concern was his mother, I would’ve rushed forward into his arms the moment I saw him. I would’ve answered his calls. What I wouldn’t have done was sit at home in my pit of misery, despairing over the end of something I’d wanted so badly, but didn’t think I could have.
“It’s not just that,” I said, and drew in a deep breath of fortitude, gathering the courage to express my thoughts to him, lay my heart at his feet. “You and me—we can’t be casual. I have to face your family, the press, so many people judging me, just so I can have the honor of calling myself your girlfriend. I can’t put myself through that if this is just a fling. Because this my life,” I said, voice going tight with the strain of keeping my emotions at bay. “It’s not a game to me.”
He licked his bottom lip, took a step forward, as if subconsciously wanting to get closer, drawn in by my words and needing to feel the realness of me. I understood, because I felt the same.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. Something in his tone of voice made me believe that he’d do anything to make it work.
I squared my shoulders, made the effort to meet his eye and hold it. “I want you to tell me what this is to you,” I said, and he sagged a little as if I’d filled him with some kind of relief.
“Tell you what you are to me? You’re it, Kylie,” he said immediately. He came around the table and walked towards me as he spoke, footsteps confident and eyes shining. “I knew it from the moment I first met you, and this has never happened to me before. I’ve had plenty of women before you, as you probably know, and never has any of them made me feel like this. I look at you now and I see my wife,” he added quietly, making my breath catch in my chest, my heart thud wildly against my ribs, “the woman I want to get pregnant with my baby, and the one I will love until the day I die. I’m so in love with you, Kylie.” He smiled, stopped in front of me. Took my hands and brought them up to press them flat against his chest, where his heart beat hard enough to match mine. “I know it’s quick, and you don’t have to say it back, but I need you to know that I’m fighting for something real here. You’re my life now. Fuck, I even want to be better for you. Stop flying off the handle so much. Stop solving my problems with my fists. You did that to me, do you know that?”
I could barely speak, let alone process everything he said. All I could do was give in to it, at last—give in to the expanding bubble of emotion in my chest, the warmth of love in his eyes. Blink back my tears and say, “But I’m from such a different background. My family has no money, never had.”
He coughed a wet sounding laugh. “I’ve got that covered a thousand times over.”
“My life’s a mess.”
“So I’ll help you clean it up.”
“My dad’s in prison,” I said, sobering a little. His smile was still soft, full of compassion.
“I know. Did you think it would make a difference to me?”
I kissed him. There was nothing else I could do. I kissed him, and I poured every ounce of feeling into it, everything I couldn’t say.
Kissed him until I felt fused with him, until he pushed me back and I met a wall. Kissed him until I was drunk on it, head spinning, and he pulled back and breathed, “God, I’ve wanted you so bad this whole time.” But I didn’t want him to speak anymore. Now was not the time for words—I wanted to act, because I’d craved his touch for days, since I’d had a taste of it at his house, not nearly enough.
And maybe I was still a little bit drunk, but this was an empty restaurant, and I had the whole night free, no demands on my time and nowhere I needed to be. And he wanted me, so very much. His movements were so possessive, hungry, as he touched me, as he kissed me, and I could tell he was trying to keep things vaguely respectful yet he could barely manage, with his hands never straying from the small of my back, but I was way past that point. I wanted him, all of him, and I was going to take everything I needed.
“Sit down,” I mumbled against his mouth, before pushing him towards the nearest chair. He fell into it, expression glazed, a groan hitching in his chest when I nudged his muscled legs apart and kneeled between them.
I never had a taste of him that night, too caught up in the many ways he brought me to the blissful heights of climax, but I had him at my mercy now, and he was fisting his hands in my hair as if he could barely handle it.
I wasted no time undoing his fly and freeing him, too desperate to draw this out—maybe later, in a bed, I could take the time to learn the shape of him, everything that made him tick. But for now, I just wanted to make him fall apart in the quickest, most satisfying way possible, so I took him in my hand, stroked along the hard length of him, then brought him to my lips.
He hissed at the first touch of my tongue across the damp, glistening head, his hand raking in my hair—not trying to control my movements, but just holding on.
The taste of him exploded across my taste buds, made me whine low in my throat, shuffle in closer on my knees and feed the length of him into my mouth, sucking eagerly, bringing my other hand down and through the opening of his pants, palming his balls, feeling the smooth heaviness of them.
It didn’t take him long to lose his semi-polite hold on my hair—he gripped me tighter and started rolling his hips up to match my rhythm, thrusting into my mouth, gagging me almost, going deeper and harder the more I took it, and I let him know I wanted it, wanted more of it, moaning around him and squeezing his balls and fisting the base of his cock, dragging my tongue along the underside and sucking hard.
His hips started jolting in sporadic, uncoordinated movements, knocking the head of his member against the back of my throat, making my eyes water with exquisite pressure, and I knew he was close, could feel it in the shake of his hand in my hair, his lack of control.
I pulled off, wiping a hand over my mouth obscenely, looked up at him through my lashes and asked throatily, “You got anything?”
He was dazed, strung out on pleasure, but he gathered himself enough to
mumble, “Yeah, lemme just—” and lifted his hips, reaching into his back pocket to retrieve his wallet.
He sort of just threw it at me and collapsed back in the chair, scrubbing hands over his face as I rooted around for a condom before discarding the wallet and getting to my feet, thankful for the sensible, plain skirt I’d chosen to wear today as I hiked it up to my hips and straddled his thighs.
He chose that moment to come back to his senses, gripped my ass with one hand and brought the other between my legs, tugged my underwear aside and sank two fingers deep into me, holding my gaze as his mouth slackened, eyes dark and glinting with filth as he thrust those fingers in and out of me, up to my clit, rubbing against it and making me stutter out a moan.
Refusing to be distracted, I gathered control of myself and opened the condom wrapper, rolled the rubber over his cock and lifted myself up, knocking his hand away between my legs and poising my body over him.
Then I got my spare hand in his hair and yanked his head back, plundered his mouth with a dirty kiss and lowered myself down onto his cock, all the way to the hilt.
He grunted into my mouth, got both hands on my ass and used his grip to immediately start bouncing me up and down, his mouth open and loose against mine, tongues tangling with messy abandon and the both of us moaning shamelessly.
It didn’t take long for either of us—the combination of going without him for so many days and the taste of him still lingering in my throat worked to increase my pleasure as he plowed up into me, as I thrust down on him almost brutally, as my clit dragged against him and he gripped my ass hard, and then I was crying out, ecstasy building in my gut and spilling through my body, biting at his lips and digging nails into his jacket and fucking down onto his cock so hard I knew I’d be left with bruises—
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