Then he saw Cassidy on a love seat with Isaiah Sharif, both of them talking to two other males seated in individual chairs. A table with a long, slender base sat between them. At the moment, she faced Isaiah, so she couldn’t see Antonio.
He took a step forward, but had his path blocked when a beefy hand hit him in the chest.
“You need a pass to get up in here,” a deep voice said. The man in front of him, one of two bouncers, had the height and width of a large boulder. He wore a pair of sunglasses so dark Antonio couldn’t see his eyes.
He whipped out his wallet and showed the pass Isaiah had given him last week. After examining it, the man lifted the rope to allow Antonio in.
No one paid him much attention as he started across the room, his eyes homing in on Cassidy’s crossed legs in the itsy-bitsy dress she wore. It was one of his favorites, one he’d half jokingly, half seriously told her she could only wear when she was with him.
The black material had a habit of cupping her backside like a pair of hands, and despite her short height, the black and gold stilettos she wore showed off her legs in such a way they made it look like they went on for miles.
Possessive anger swelled inside him as he watched Isaiah smiling down at his wife as they talked. Whatever he said was pretty damn funny because Cassidy lifted her fingers to cover her mouth and laughed. His eyes swung to the other two men. One was a teammate of Isaiah’s, the other he didn’t recognize—probably one of many hangers-on. He openly watched Cassidy’s legs like a hungry dog with a pork chop set on a platter before him.
Janice saw him first, and when she did, her eyes widened and her dancing slowed to jerky, uncoordinated movements. She glanced over her shoulder and opened her mouth to shout a warning to Cassidy that never materialized when she realized Cassidy couldn’t hear her from that distance.
He brushed past her, focused, intent on his target.
“Glad you made it.” Isaiah stood up and held out his hand in greeting, but Antonio didn’t even see it, oblivious to everyone and everything but his wife.
Cassidy looked up then and took a silent breath.
Her mouth opened to speak, but before she could, he bit out one question. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Chapter Eleven
“Whoa, Antonio, what the hell?” Isaiah said.
When Cassidy’s gaze met her husband’s, her heart jolted and almost came up through her throat. Red color was slashed into his cheeks, and the hard set to his jaw made him look so intimidating she almost bolted.
“What are you doing here?” was the only thing she could think of to say.
“The real question is, what are you doing here? We’re going home.” He lowered his head to speak into her ear. “You have one second to get your narrow little ass up off that couch before I drag you out of here.”
“You wouldn’t,” Cassidy responded, unsure.
Stark anger filled the eyes that met hers. “Try me.”
One of the men she’d been talking to stood up to Antonio’s right. “Who do you think you are, man?” He spoke with slurred speech, a clear indication he wasn’t thinking clearly, because anyone could see antagonizing Antonio was a bad idea. “Maybe she’s having a good time and don’t want to leave with you.”
His displeasure palpable, Antonio straightened with a slow, fluid movement. A muscle in his jaw tightened. While keeping his eyes on Cassidy, he addressed the meddler. “I suggest you mind your own business.”
Cassidy stood on shaky feet, her eyes pinned to his face. His gaze flicked down to the hem of her dress, which she tried in vain to tug lower. His disapproving eyes followed the movement and made her wish she hadn’t made the poor decision to put on the same dress she’d planned to wear out with him.
“Wait a minute. What’s going on?” Confusion filled Isaiah’s voice. Almost immediately, a moment of clarity hit him. “Is this your husband?”
“Is this the ‘honey’ you planned to hook up with tonight?” Antonio asked.
“No disrespect. I didn’t know.”
“Man, if she wants to stay, let her stay. You go home,” the other guy said with drunken belligerence.
“Why don’t you be quiet?” Isaiah said to his friend.
Antonio’s fists clenched at his side. “Let’s go, Cass.” He was itching for a fight, but remained calm. Typical Antonio.
“Bye, Brick,” she mumbled with downcast eyes.
Antonio stepped aside so she could walk in front of him.
“Man, why these bitches always come up in the VIP with their drama?”
Oh no.
“Did you just call my wife a bitch?”
Before she even turned around, Cassidy knew the outcome by the incredulous tone of her husband’s voice. The question was really rhetorical, because the next thing she knew, from the corner of her eye, she saw him land a blow to the guy’s mouth. He fell backward on top of the small table, knocking it to the floor and spilling its contents of food and champagne.
He landed on his back with a groan and grimace, and Antonio followed. “Say it again. Say it,” he urged, unleashing a vicious pounding on his face. The man struggled, but Antonio’s reach was longer, and he easily avoided his flailing arms, his punches landing as he held him down.
Cassidy screamed for him to stop, but he didn’t let up until Isaiah, one of the bouncers, and two players wrestled him off and shoved him into another table, sending him and everything on it crashing to the floor.
Holding high their drinks, guests scattered out of the way. Cassidy, not knowing what to do, threw herself onto Antonio to protect him. Even though she knew he could hold his own against anyone, he was outnumbered. She couldn’t let them hurt her baby.
“Cassidy, get off of me,” Antonio growled, struggling to sit up once he got his bearings.
“No.” Her arms tightened around his neck as Isaiah and the others circled around them. “Brick, please.”
The assaulted man had a busted lip and clutched the side of his face. A slew of profanities came out of his mouth as he jabbed his finger at Antonio and threatened to do all manner of bodily harm to him.
Antonio struggled to get to his feet with Cassidy still attached to him. His shirt was wet and stained in spots from the food and beverages smeared all over him during his fall. She wrapped her hands around the trunk of his body, knowing no one would dare take a swing at him with her between them.
“Cassidy, get off of me. I’m serious.” He reached around to pry away her arms.
She tightened her hold. “Stop it, Antonio. Please.” Beseechingly, she looked up into his face, clutching his shirt. Surely he could see how scared she was. She was trembling as she clung to him, afraid they’d start fighting again. “Please.”
“Get out of here, Antonio,” Isaiah said.
Isaiah’s friend looked at him in shock. “What? You gon’ let him leave after he attacked me?”
“We could take it outside if you want,” Antonio said coolly.
“You heard him,” Isaiah said to his friend. “You want a piece of him, take it outside. We came here to party, not fight. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about insulting a man’s wife.”
She felt the tension in Antonio’s body ease somewhat. Gratefully, Cassidy mouthed a thank-you to Isaiah. He didn’t reply, only looked at her with a hint of regret in his eyes.
Without another word, Antonio pressed his hand to the base of her spine and propelled her toward the velvet rope with the bouncer following close behind as if he thought Antonio might double back and attack the guy again. The other guests shuffled out of the way, and Cassidy only spared a quick glance at Janice on the way out.
Antonio moved quickly. Cassidy tripped once on the stairs, but that didn’t slow him down. His fingers bit into the soft flesh above her elbow as he unceremoniously hauled her behind him, cutting a path through the crowd when they reached the first floor. As if they recognized his anger, people moved out of the way so they could get by.
She didn’t even have time to be humiliated. She had to concentrate on keeping up with him. “Antonio, please slow down.”
He ignored her, not uttering a word or looking back to acknowledge she’d spoken. Outside, he pressed the button on his remote car opener and yanked open the door. “Get in the car.”
She hesitated for a moment, resentful of his tone. Her initial reaction was to tell him where he could go, but then she thought better of it. In his current mood, he was liable to stuff her in the trunk.
When he slid in beside her, he didn’t say a word. He gripped the steering wheel and stared out the windshield for a long time. Cassidy looked down at her clasped hands.
The silence stretched between them, and when she almost couldn’t stand it anymore, he finally demanded, “Do you feel good now that you’ve gotten your revenge?”
“I wasn’t getting revenge.”
“Yeah, you were, because there’s absolutely no reason why my wife should be up in the VIP with a bunch of professional athletes. You’re mad at me, so you put on your little fuck-him dress and went clubbing.”
Cassidy turned to stare out the window. “I refuse to talk to you when you use that kind of language with me.”
“You refuse to talk to me?” He laughed, a rough, angry sound. “Good. I’d love the peace and quiet for a change.”
He started the car and took off with a squeal of tires, the scent of burnt rubber filling the car. Neither spoke on the ride home, and when they entered the house, Cassidy marched up the stairs ahead of him. Steps behind her, Antonio shut the bedroom door hard.
Cassidy whirled on him. “Are you ready to have a polite conversation now, because I don’t like it when my husband speaks to me like he’s hanging out with the guys.”
Antonio’s jaw clenched, and he looked ready to strangle her. “I don’t like it when my wife hangs out in the VIP with a bunch of horny athletes—especially one who’s made it clear he wants to fuck her.”
“I’m serious, Antonio. I’m not talking to you if you use that kind of language with me.” She crossed her arms and stared defiantly at him. He muttered an expletive in Spanish. “Spanish counts, too. And what are you talking about, anyway?”
“I signed your buddy Isaiah to my agency last week, and he basically told me he wanted to fu—sleep with you. At the time, I didn’t know he was talking about you, and he didn’t know we were married. So I became a little upset when I saw you sitting up under him, giggling like he’s Richard Pryor reincarnated.”
“For the record, I wasn’t sitting up under him. But at least now you know what I feel like when you’re off networking at parties with all those loose women.”
“How is that the same thing?”
“How is it different?”
“I go to those events for business. You were socializing with a man you have history with, and he wants to have sex with you. Another difference between you and me is that you don’t trust me, but I trust you. It’s him I don’t trust.”
“Well, I didn’t plan to be there. I didn’t go there to meet Brick—or Isaiah, as you know him. Janice came to get me because I was upset, and that’s how we ended up at Toxic.”
“You were upset because you thought you’d caught me doing something wrong, and even though I explained about Valentina and Emilio, you didn’t believe me.”
“Your explanation was very convenient.”
He threw up his hands. “No matter what I do and what I say, you won’t stop. It’s as if you’re determined to sabotage our marriage.”
Cassidy laughed bitterly. “The only one sabotaging our marriage is you.”
Antonio fell silent, watching her in disbelief. “Do you really believe I had an affair and had a child with another woman?”
“It’s not that unbelievable. It happens all the time—Jesse Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dan Marino, my father. If what you’re saying is true, then Ernesto certainly did.”
“That’s right, not me, my brother, and as you well know, he and his wife are getting a divorce.”
“And that makes it okay? It’s not okay to run around having babies with women who you’re not married to. It’s not okay to sneak around and ask people to keep secrets. How could you be a part of that?”
“What choice did I have? He’s my brother, Cass. I wasn’t going to betray him.”
“Then you’re a liar just like he is.”
He looked at her like he thought a foreign entity had taken over her body. “What the hell is the matter with you? My brother’s a good person. The situation is complicated. It’s not black-and-white. I don’t condone what he did, but I happen to know he loves Valentina. Sometimes people make the wrong choice, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay the consequences for the rest of their lives.”
“Sometimes the consequences of lying and keeping secrets last a lifetime,” Cassidy countered.
His brows knitted together. “What are we talking about?”
“We’re talking about the importance of trust and truth—especially in a marriage.”
Antonio shook his head, dropping his head back to look up at the ceiling. When he made eye contact with her again, his eyes were bleak. “You’ve never trusted me. Never.” He crossed the room to her. “Tell me something. Why’d you marry me?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I thought about it on the way here, and I can’t figure it out. You agreed to marry me, but only after I asked you three times.” He held up his fingers. “Maybe I didn’t want to see it before, but you didn’t want to marry me, did you?”
“Of course I wanted to marry you. It-It was a difficult decision to make.”
“Why? Because you think I’m such a low-life piece of scum?”
“I don’t think you’re scum.”
“Because I’m such a piece of shit that I can’t control myself, and every woman who smiles at me or propositions me I have to nail?”
“Stop it,” Cassidy whispered.
“What’s the matter? You don’t want to hear the truth about the man you married? Why deny it anymore? I’m no good, Cass. I’m sleeping with my staff publicist, Ronetta. She bribed me with brownies, and I couldn’t resist. Oh, and Lucinda, too. She’s as efficient in the sack as she is in the office.”
“You’re being a jerk.”
“I’m telling you what you want to hear. It’s no big deal because you’ve known all along, right? Your gut is always right. In Miami, I had a woman staying in the hotel with me. Man, she gives great blow jobs.”
“I’m not listening to you anymore.” Cassidy moved past him, but he took her arm and forced her around to face him.
“You’re going to listen to everything I have to say.” He glowered down at her. “The reason I didn’t tell you about my brother is because it was none of your business. The reason I helped him is because he’s my brother, and I won’t apologize for it.”
“Now that you’ve made your point, let go of me.” She jerked her arm, but he only tightened his hold on her.
“He should have married Valentina in the first place, but he didn’t. He married a woman who threw herself at him constantly, and his judgment became clouded, but he didn’t love her. What he did was wrong, but he’s been unhappy for a long time. He married the wrong woman, and when the marriage went sour, he turned to Valentina—as a friend only, but they became lovers. It wasn’t planned, but it happened. She broke off the affair and told him she couldn’t see him anymore unless he was free. She cut all contact with him. The affair was short, but it made Ernesto realize that he wanted her, and he eventually filed for divorce.
“In the meantime, Valentina finds out she’s pregnant but doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t know he’s filed for divorce. You know how he found out he has a son? I ran into her while I was in New York and saw her with Emilio. She tried to deny it at first, but as soon as I saw him, I knew he was Ernesto’s. He looks exactly like my brother—like all of us. Especially around the eyes.”
&n
bsp; Cassidy had noted the same thing. All the Vega children had their father’s brown eyes and thick, long lashes.
“She begged me not to say anything, and I told her I couldn’t do that to my brother,” Antonio continued. “That was his son, my nephew, my parents’ first grandchild. How could I walk away and pretend like I’d never seen them? Of course I told him, and they started communicating again. I was the go-between, and I’d do it again. A week before the divorce was supposed to be final, I flew them down and set them up at the hotel, but the proceedings didn’t go according to plan. We didn’t anticipate how vindictive Ernesto’s wife would be.
“There have been delays after delays because of her demands. She’s not happy about giving up her lifestyle and the prestige of being the wife of a professional athlete. Their divorce should have been final months ago, and Valentina’s been waiting while Ernesto gives his wife just about everything she asks for but his kidney so he can be free to be with his son and the woman he loves. Nobody knows about Valentina and Emilio—not my parents, not my brother in California, not Lorena—no one. We’ve been extremely careful.
“We didn’t plan on having to keep the secret this long, but we couldn’t risk the word getting out while he’s in the middle of a divorce. He knows his squeaky-clean image will take a hit once the divorce is final and the press finds out about Emilio, but at least by then, he’ll be a free man and able to raise his child with the woman he loves.
“Now you know everything, Cassidy. Are you happy? Does it make you feel better that I had to betray my brother’s trust to gain yours?”
He dropped her arm and wheeled away, disgust etched in his features. She’d never seen him like this before, and it landed a devastating blow to her spirit.
Absentmindedly, she rubbed the spot on her arm he’d held on to so tightly. “I’m sorry,” she said meekly.
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