King's Passion

by Adrianne Byrd

  Before either of them had a chance to respond, a familiar voice spoke from behind her.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Look who has decided to return to New York.”

  Victoria didn’t bother to turn around. She just rolled her eyes and mentally counted to ten. “Hello, Lolita. Fancy meeting you here today.”

  Lolita reached the table and smiled snidely at her. “Well, they say it’s a small world, after all.” She circled the table with her fake green-contact-lens eyes, and gave Grace and Iris the same wintry smile. “Hello, ladies.”

  The twins just nodded and folded their arms.

  “My, my, my. Clearly money can’t buy you class—or manners.”

  “But you keep trying, don’t you?” Victoria asked.

  The twins snickered.

  Lolita’s jaw twitched as her evil gaze focused on Victoria. “Cute. I’m just glad that your pimp in Las Vegas finally gave you time off to come and visit your family and friends. Clearly he’s quite the slave-driver since it’s been six months since anyone has seen hide nor hair of you in polite society.”

  “How would you know? Have you been listening under the bathroom stalls again when you should’ve been cleaning the toilets?”

  “Damn,” Grace said. “It looks like the old Victoria is still in there after all.”

  Lolita opened her mouth to unleash another attack, but Victoria held up a single finger to cut her off.

  “Let me stop you right now before you write a check your ass can’t cash. Don’t think that just because we’re up in the Four Seasons that I won’t snatch that horsehair off your head. I will. And you might as well stop rocking your neck at me because you’re looking like a bobble-head to me right now.

  “Listen up because I’m going to say this one time. We are family, but we sure as hell are not friends. So I’m about to make you a deal. You stay the hell out of my life and I’ll stay out of yours. I don’t care if you see me walking down the street, walk on by and keep my name out of your mouth. Anything other than that, then we are going to have a problem. You got that?” Victoria’s heated gaze melted Lolita’s frosty one. “Good. Have a nice life.”

  Lolita stood there for a half a second, looking like she wanted to say something, but clearly wasn’t sure whether Victoria would make good on her threat.

  “Don’t make me count to two,” Victoria said.

  “Whatever.” Lolita tossed her head back and stormed away.

  “Well,” Iris said, reaching for her champagne again, “You still got it.”

  Victoria shrugged the incident off. “Only for special cases, and Lolita is definitely a special head case.”

  “Still,” Grace hedged. “She’s not the only one who’s been talking.”

  “Please. And I don’t care what people are saying anymore. I truly don’t. I’ve made the decision to live my life the way I want to live it. I can’t begin to tell you how liberating it is to finally not care about what other people think.” She stopped for a brief moment to draw in a deep breath while she searched for the right words. “You know, I never told you girls this before, but do you remember my ninth birthday party? My mother put together this huge, over-the-top circus.”

  Iris nodded. “Yeah. I believe so.”

  “Remember around about halfway through it I went to my room and refused to come back out?”

  Grace nodded. “Yes. It was a real diva moment. You wouldn’t even come out to open up your presents.”

  “I wasn’t being a diva,” Victoria said. “I was upstairs in my room crying my eyes out.”

  “Why?”

  Victoria sucked in another breath. “I’d gone to use the bathroom, but I stumbled on Tracy Hickman and her mother having a little argument. Tracy was whining and complaining that she wanted to go home because she didn’t want to be there and she didn’t like me.”

  “I never really liked Tracy Hickman,” Iris said. “She is really a bitch.”

  “Amen,” Grace agreed. “Not to mention that she’s been married four times already. I mean, damn. I’m starting to think that she just does it just to have a wedding.”

  Victoria had thought the same thing. “Anyway, I would have been fine with it being just her. But it was her mother’s response that really shook me to the core.”

  “What did she say?” Iris asked.

  “She knelt down to Tracy’s eye level and told her firmly that nobody liked me and that the only reason everyone came was because my father had a lot of money.”

  The twins gasped. “That bitch!”

  Victoria nodded. “I was crushed. There I was thinking that all these kids came because they were my friends and it turned out that it was all a lie. It didn’t help that I was a chubby kid and already had a complex because Tracy was calling me fat all the time. And then there was David Benson.”

  “Humph!” Iris frowned. “Never liked him, either.”

  “My first boyfriend in high school. We got into some silly argument that I don’t even remember what it was about, and in a fit of rage, he shouted that if it wasn’t for my father that nobody would even have anything to do with me. It hurt like hell mainly because for a long time I thought it was true. It was the confirmation that I needed to build up my defenses, protect myself—and my heart the best way I could. I started keeping people at a distance. I became very good at deciphering who was around me because they were truly my friend or who was there because they were trying to climb New York’s social ladder. I’d rather have no friends than fake friends. I went overboard trying to control everything, including who on paper would make a good husband. Marcus didn’t turn too many heads in the looks department, which I foolishly thought meant there was little chance of him running off with another woman.” She rolled her eyes. “But we were never in love. At least, I wasn’t.”

  The twins reached across the table and covered her hand with theirs.

  “We are your friends…as well as your family.”

  “Yes. You are. And I cherish you more than you’ll ever know. Look, I realize that I have been fortunate to be born into a lifestyle of privilege. I’m just saying that money doesn’t buy you friends, and it certainly doesn’t buy you love.”

  “And that’s what you have with Eamon?” Grace asked.

  A smile finally returned to Victoria’s face. “Yes. I believe so. You told me that I should let loose and take chances. For the first time in my life I’ve done just that. I’ve jumped off a cliff with my eyes closed. And for the moment, it just feels like I’m flying. It’s not just because he’s handsome, or that he’s financially secure in his own right or even that he really knows how to turn me on in bed.”

  The twins squealed with delight and Victoria jumped out of her seat to slap a hand over their mouths. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop them from clapping their hands and stomping their feet under the table. When they finally calmed down, she removed her hand.

  “I swear I can’t tell you two anything.” But she tossed them a wink while her face heated with embarrassment.

  “Please, please say you’re going to kiss and tell,” Iris said breathlessly.

  Victoria glanced around. “Now, you know I don’t normally do this,” she whispered. “But let’s just say that he really knows how to get my body to feel things that it has never ever felt before.”

  The twins started to squeal again, but at Victoria’s narrowed gaze they slapped a hand over their own mouths.

  When Grace removed her hand, she pointed. “Are you blushing?” Then her eyes lit up. “Oh, my God, you are! What on earth has this man done to you?”

  “Let’s just say that he has made me a woman,” Victoria confessed. “Totally and completely, in every way that a man can.”

  “Geez. We just thought that he would make a good booty call.”

  Victoria shook her head because she thought that she wasn’t getting through to them. “It’s not just the sex. We laugh together. I mean I really laugh. And he’s smart… and romantic. He’s teaching me how to c
ook. I’ve learned how to sew.”

  “Oh, my God. He has turned you into his maid,” Grace gasped.

  “Don’t be silly.” Victoria waved her off. “I wanted to learn how to do these things. In fact, I was a little embarrassed that I didn’t know how already. It’s really sweet to see him eat my food even though I know it tastes awful and he praises me when I sew buttons on his shirt and they’re far from being straight. But the most important part is that I don’t think he gives a damn about my money or who my parents are. He just loves me.”

  Iris cocked her head while she continued to smile with big moon eyes. “Aww. That sounds so romantic. Is that what he told you?”

  Victoria shrugged. “Well, not in so many words.” She lowered her head.

  The twins looked at each other.

  “C’mon. Don’t do that. He loves me.”

  “But he hasn’t said the words?”

  “He doesn’t have to.”

  The twins picked up their forks simultaneously and started picking over their meal.

  Victoria watched them, wanting to continue to argue her point. But for the first time, doubt pricked her armor of confidence. So she shut up and ate her lunch.

  By the time Victoria and the twins parted ways and she was headed out to her parents’ estate, her mind churned with questions. She had only been in the city for a couple of hours and she could already feel herself reverting to her old ways. Outside the window of the cab, she watched the world’s largest melting pot flit around like they were late in responding to a three-alarm fire. She might have missed a lot of things about New York, but its hectic pace wasn’t one of them.

  She missed Las Vegas’s easy and laid-back atmosphere and she missed Eamon.

  “Oh, there you are,” her mother, Ceyla, sang, opening her arms. She quickly pulled her daughter in for a tight hug and then rained kisses across the side of her face. “I can’t tell you how much we’ve missed you. Your father is going to be so happy to see you.” She closed the door behind her. “I think if you stayed away another day your father and I were going to be on the next thing smoking to Las Vegas.”

  Victoria laughed as she peeled out of her jacket.

  “I’m not joking. Your father had mapped out an entire plan as to how to kidnap you.”

  “Yes. I sensed that talking to him over the phone yesterday.”

  Her mother pulled back and stared at her. “Oh, my. I hate to say it, but Las Vegas agrees with you.”

  “I keep hearing that.

  “Well, you look different.” Ceyla captured Victoria’s face in her hands so that she could study her. “There’s a certain glow about you. It couldn’t be that you’re in love, could it?”

  Victoria blushed all over again, but this time she decided to be more cautious in bragging about the virtues of love and happiness, especially now that she had a few more questions. “Maybe it’s because I’m getting a bit more sun.”

  “Is that what you young people are calling it these days?” Her mother winked. “I don’t know who this Eamon King is, but he already has my vote if he’s making you this happy.”

  Victoria hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear that until the words flowed out of her mother’s mouth. It instantly cleared up a lot of the damage her doubting had caused. “Thanks, Mom.” She delivered a quick peck on her cheek.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Mondell Gregory thundered, strolling out of his study. “Well, I’ll be damned. That woman right there looks like my little girl.” He stopped and cocked his head. “Yeah. I believe that’s her, but it’s been so long I’m not sure.”

  “Hello, Daddy.”

  “Come here, little girl.” He threw open his arms and gave her an old-fashioned bear hug. “Oh, sweetheart. Don’t you ever stay away that long again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “That better be a promise.” He planted a kiss on the top of her head and then released her. “So. Where is this Eamon King? I have a bone to pick with him for keeping my daughter away for so long.”

  Victoria frowned. “Uh. There must be some misunderstanding. Eamon didn’t come with me.”

  Mondell’s brows dipped. “And why the hell not? Is he afraid to meet me like a man or something?”

  “Actually, I didn’t think to invite him,” she admitted.

  “Then maybe you’re the one who doesn’t want me to meet this gentleman.”

  “Is that true, Victoria?” her mother asked.

  “No. I just didn’t think that you guys wanted to meet him.” Well, it wasn’t exactly true. It was more like she didn’t want to scare Eamon by suggesting that she’d like for him to meet her parents. That sort of thing tended to freak men out, especially since they technically hadn’t established that they were an item.

  Her parents exchanged looks much like the way the twins did during their telepathic messaging thing.

  Mondell slid his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Now, that doesn’t make a lick of sense, baby girl. Why wouldn’t we want to meet the man that you’ve been shacking up with for the last six months?”

  Victoria tried to smooth things over by smiling wider and leaning against his side. “Dad. This isn’t the sixties. They don’t call it shacking up anymore.”

  “I don’t care if it’s the year three-thousand. You know how I feel about all that sexual liberation talk.”

  “Now, Mondell. Remember your blood pressure.”

  “I’m fine. I took my medicine this morning,” he said to Ceyla. “I’m trying to make a point here. A man and a woman should not live together without getting married. Excuse me if I’m old-fashioned. But what is the incentive for a man to buy a ring when he’s getting all the benefits without it?”

  Victoria sucked in a deep breath. This looked like it was going to be a long afternoon.

  “I guess it’s too much to ask whether you two are sleeping in separate rooms?”

  Her mother gasped. “Mondell!”

  “What?”

  “I’m not about to let you stand there and interrogate her about her love life.”

  “She shouldn’t be doing anything that she can’t talk about. She keeps reminding me that she’s grown.”

  “Daddy, can I at least come in and sit down before you give me the third degree?”

  Despite him looking like he wanted to argue his point some more, her father stepped back with his lips pressed together.

  “Don’t pay your father any attention. We lived together a year before we were married.”

  “Ceyla!”

  “What? It’s true.” She wrapped her arms around Victoria’s waist and led her out toward the back patio.

  “You’re supposed to have my back. I’m trying to make a point here.”

  Victoria and her mother snickered as they walked away arm in arm. They convened out on the patio. Her parents’ butler, Aaron, smiled and welcomed her back home before serving them tall glasses of lemonade.

  However, it just took ten minutes before her father was ready to dive back in. “So when will we get a chance to meet this young man? Mind you that my patience is wearing thin.”

  Ceyla opened her mouth, but her father cut her off.

  “And don’t tell me that I’m being unreasonable. You’ve been pacing around here, wondering the same thing yourself.”

  Her mother snapped her mouth shut and then looked over at Victoria guiltily.

  With her one remaining wall of defense crumbling, Victoria had to come up with some real answers. “You’ll meet him, Dad. I promise.”

  “When?” he pressed.

  “Soon” was all she could come up with. “You’ll meet him when the time is right…and we’re comfortable and clear where we stand with each other.”

  Mondell frowned while her mother reached for her hand again.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. We’re still just in the getting-to-know-you stage. Meeting the parents comes later when we know exactly where we’r
e headed. That’s all.”

  Her father shook and grumbled under his breath. “Well, I was going to tell you this later, but I might as well go ahead and put it out there.”

  “Mondell—” Ceyla warned and shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” he said, ignoring her warning.

  Victoria frowned at the awkward pivot in conversation.

  “You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day,” he said with a sudden false cheerfulness in his voice.

  Since it could be a million different people, Victoria shrugged.

  “Marcus,” he boasted, thrusting out his chest.

  At first the name didn’t render a reaction. She couldn’t imagine her father bringing up that Marcus.

  “Marcus who?”

  He eased on a wobbly smile. “Don’t tell me that you forgot him already? Marcus Henderson.”

  Did I just step into the Twilight Zone? “And exactly why should I care that you ran into him?”

  Mondell drew in a deep breath and leaned closer to her to take her other hand. Is this an intervention?

  Her father met her steady gaze. “I know that you still may be hurt…and even angry with Marcus. You know that I was, too, for a long time. But, you know, time can heal a lot, and I sat down and heard his side of the story. Did you know that he had his marriage annulled, like, days after that whole fiasco happened?”

  “Good for him.”

  “Well…I think that you know by now how things can get a little crazy in a place like Las Vegas. I mean with you living there and all. And when you’re in that small bubble, things have a tendency to get out of hand. You do things that you don’t normally do.”

  Victoria eased her hand back. She didn’t like where this was going. “Dad—”

  “Wait. Hear me out. I was just as angry as you were for what happened. I felt that I was as much to blame for what happened.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. I told you—”

  “I don’t like it when my little girl is hurt. And I wanted to do all I could to make it right. I wanted to find his scrawny butt and wring his neck with my bare hands. But—like I said, I heard him out and—”