“I’ll give you the condo in New York,” Gabe said as I turned to walk back to my room. My heart lurched at the mention of my beloved condo. I stopped walking and turned around.
“Just like that?”
“I’ve fucked up, Nic. I know I have, but with all of my . . . partying and other things, my image is looking really bad right now and I have two movies coming out in the span of four months. I need to fix it,” he said, blue eyes pleading as he stood and put his hands as if he was about to say a prayer. “Please. You’re the only one who can help me. I swear I’ll stop making things difficult for you.”
I let that sink in for a moment as I looked into his apologetic blue eyes, eyes that could very well be lying to me. Eyes that had lied to me so many times in the past. He ran his hands down his newly shaven face and looked at me again. He was so damn handsome. Handsome, charming, great in bed, and he’d once been mine. Sadly, in this moment as I looked at him, trying to figure out whether or not he was just putting on an act, I couldn’t even remember the good moments.
“I want this on paper,” I said finally. “On paper and I want both of your signatures on it.”
“I’ll have Phil draw up a contract right now,” Darryl said.
“Fuck Phil. I’ll have my dad do it.”
“Thank you, Nic. So much. I know I have no right—”
I put my hand up. “Shut up. If I’m doing this, you need to just shut up. I’ll play along because for whatever stupid fucked-up reason I still care about you, but I can’t promise anything more, and if during our mediation in a couple of weeks you say one negative thing, I’ll do something crazy. Don’t tempt me.”
My dad was outraged. I knew he would be.
“What does Victor say about this?” he asked.
“I’m not telling him about this. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking of telling him. I just need a simple paper stating my demands.”
“These are things you need to discuss with your lawyer, Nicole. Why do you think I appointed you one?”
I could tell he was at his wit’s end, and even though I was on the phone with him and I wasn’t a six-year-old climbing kitchen cabinets, I felt the crack of the belt.
“Papi,” I whispered. “Por favor.”
He sighed loudly on the other end of the line, and I closed my eyes, letting out a breath.
“Fine, but you’ll have to come to the Newport house to get it.”
My mouth popped open. “Why? Just email it to me.”
“No. We haven’t seen you, you’ve been here a handful of times in the past year, and I’m having a barbeque. Tomorrow. Come early. Bring clothes,” he said, his voice leaving no room for discussion. Leave it up to my dad to make a day at the beach house sound like punishment.
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
WHEN WILL CALLED me last night and invited me to his beach house, I’d been tempted to come up with an excuse as to why I wouldn’t make it, but then I remembered the isolated private beach and the silence, and I agreed. I’d stayed in the seven-bedroom house in the past and had a good time, so why not now? I hadn’t expected his first words over brunch to be, “We need to talk about Nicole.” And I hadn’t expected the way my heart launched into my throat at the sound of those words. Immediately, I thought of Friday night when I’d seen her at the nightclub. The kiss we shared, the way I asked to speak to her in private and spent the entire time trying not to lock the door, push her against the door and hike up her dress. I made an effort to keep my features as blank as I could.
“What about Nicole?” I asked, smiling as Meire, Will’s wife, walked in with a tray and set cups of coffee on the table for us.
“Where’s Maya?” Will asked her.
“I sent her to buy some groceries. We didn’t have anything in the fridge, but I think I’ll tell her to go home early if it’s only going to be us,” she replied as she walked off with the tray again.
“You’re not going to join us?” Will called out.
“I want to make sure Maya prepared the room for Victor,” she called out from the kitchen.
Will shook his head as he took a sip of coffee, and as much as I didn’t mind delaying the Nicole conversation about whatever it was he wanted to discuss, I was on edge.
“So, Nicole?” I prompted.
“Right,” he said, putting the cup down. “Let’s start from the beginning,” he said, and I groaned inwardly.
Will loved to make lengthy stories out of things he could have said in under two minutes. At least we weren’t at the office and I didn’t have a million files to get through. As long as my ass was sitting in his swanky twelve-seat dining room in his huge beach house, I had to suck up the story.
“When she told me she was getting married I was shocked,” he said. You and me both, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “Not because I didn’t think she wanted to get married. I think between her and her mother her wedding had been planned since she was six. They love that stuff.” Definitely a surprise to me. “An aunt of hers gave her a Bride Barbie when she was small and two days later Nicole wanted a Barbie Dream House to go with it. Anyway, I was shocked because she’d known the guy for two seconds before she agreed to marriage.”
I nodded, lifting the cup of coffee to my mouth and taking a sip.
“I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen, and now she’s getting a divorce and I can’t help but feel responsible,” he sighed. “My little girl deserves better.”
“I agree,” I said.
“She deserves somebody who gives her more than she gives,” he added. I nodded in agreement again, not that I knew shit about what that meant. “She passed up jobs for Gabriel just so she could travel to where he was on set. Can you believe he turned her away one day when she showed up?”
I felt my mouth drop. Will nodded, eyebrows raised. “She flew to Canada to see him and he never made an effort to see her. His manager told her to leave.”
“What an asshole,” I said, feeling my blood start to boil. How could anybody do that to her? To his own wife?
“Complete asshole. And now he’s trying to get her to—” Will stopped talking when the doorbell rang loudly, his eyes widened. “We’ll talk about this later.”
I wanted to press the matter, but then I heard Meire say hi to somebody and footsteps coming up behind me and saw the grin on Will’s face. Before I saw her, I smelled her, the sweet floral scent I knew covered her entirely. When I looked over and she smiled at me, I felt the air squeeze out of me. She was wearing a long orange dress that fit her loosely, her dark hair was down and wet from a recent shower, her blue eyes vibrant as she looked at me. I smiled back and my eyes made their way down her body and zoned in on the overnight bag in her hand.
Oh no.
Oh shit.
Were we both staying here tonight?
“Hi, Victor,” Nicole said, her voice soft, her cheeks pink as she dropped her gaze from mine.
I frowned. A shy Nicole was a first for me. Maybe it was because we were in front of her dad and stepmom. Maybe it was because she was remembering what happened between us the other night. I needed to keep reminding her not to do that. I needed to keep distancing myself in that way. She was too tempting. I had to keep thinking: forbidden fruit equals death. It would have helped if I would have actually paid attention during Bible study when I was a kid.
“Nicole,” I said in greeting.
“Join us. We were just talking about you,” Will said.
“I’ll take your bag upstairs. I was going to put towels in there anyway,” Meire said, taking the bag in Nicole’s hand and excusing herself again.
“What were you talking about?” Nicole asked, taking a seat next to me.
Why next to me? It could’ve been because that was her regular seat, and as creatures of habit we were forced to always pick the same seat at the dinner table. It could’ve been because there was a setting on the table. It could’ve been because it was closest to the pancakes. It could’ve been
many things, but the only one I wanted it to be was that she wanted to be near me. Beside me. And the thought that it mattered to me, because I wanted her to be as affected by me as I was by her, was fucked up. I’d ended things the first time and this time I couldn’t afford to entertain the things circulating my thoughts half the time when she was around. I just couldn’t. She was off limits. But then she was next to me, and her scent made me want to lean in closer, and I just didn’t care. She infiltrated my thoughts in that moment, and I just didn’t care. In that moment, if her father wasn’t sitting across from us, I would have said something I wasn’t supposed to.
“I was about to tell Victor about the contract you want me to draft.”
I blinked, the pull of her presence replaced by curiosity. “What kind of contract?”
“It’s simple,” she said, keeping her voice quiet, in an almost whisper. “I agree to go with Gabe to some events, have some pictures taken, say good things about him and our marriage possibly working out to the media and he gives me the condo in New York. In addition, he will retract the lies he told the production companies I wanted to work with, stating he had been in a bad place.”
I pivoted in my seat to look at her. She wasn’t looking at me. Her face was cast down, her attention on her hands, but I knew she could feel my gaze. I knew because her cheeks were filling with a deep shade of pink, and I could tell I was making her uncomfortable. Making her feel that way wasn’t my intention, but I was indescribably uncomfortable with that request. So uncomfortable that I wanted to yank her out of her chair and take her away from the attentive eyes of her father. I swallowed back my annoyance and the arguments that lay on the tip of my tongue.
“And you’re okay with that?” I asked.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, her head turned and her eyes met mine. She nodded. “I am.”
Our gazes stayed locked for a beat, or two, enough time for me to lose my train of thought as I looked into her deep-blue eyes. Enough time for me to recount the way her lips felt on mine, and the way she’d offered herself up to me. Will huffed from the other side of the table and both our heads whipped toward him. Spell broken.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Will said, looking at Nicole. “I think if you give in to these demands, you’re going to find that spending time with him may make you re-think the divorce.”
That thought alone made my heart squeeze in my chest. What the hell did I care? Why the hell did I care? I didn’t have an answer to that, but it was clear I didn’t want her going back and forth with a guy that treated her poorly.
“There’s nothing to think about, Dad. I wouldn’t have signed the papers if I even had an ounce of hope that this marriage would work,” she said.
I stayed quiet until Will addressed me and told me to draft up the agreement for her, then I excused myself from the table, took my plate to the kitchen, and went upstairs to the room Meire had put me in. It was a damn big room, with a king-sized bed and a balcony that overlooked the pool and the ocean. I stood there, thinking about the wording I would use. I’d drafted agreements for celebrities left and right without second thought. This one was going to make me lose my mind. I was startled when I heard a sniffle beside me. My head turned in the direction of the sound, but I didn’t see anybody. When I heard it again, I frowned, leaning forward in the balcony I was standing in and looking over to the one beside me. Nicole was sitting in one of the chairs with her legs propped up, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head tucked down. Was she crying?
I pushed off from where I was standing. I didn’t want to intrude on her private moment. I didn’t know how to handle her private moment. I could jump over and hug her, but that would be weird. I could knock on her door and ask her if she was okay . . . but that would be weird. I could just pretend I hadn’t heard her, but something about that option made me feel like shit. I cracked my neck, shook my arms and measured how close the balconies were. They were made so close to each other that my body wouldn’t fit in between them so I didn’t have to worry about a fall. I just had to worry about where Will and Meire were and whether or not they would see me jumping over. Fuck. What a thought. It was almost enough to stop me from doing it. Almost.
Nicole shrieked when I landed beside her, her head snapping up, her hands wiping her bewildered, tear-stricken eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I looked at her for a beat before stepping in front of her. “I’m telling you up front. I don’t know how to deal with emotional women, and if you don’t want me here, tell me, and I’ll jump back over to my corner and pretend I never saw you.”
She opened her mouth to say something, and closed it again, a slight frown on her face. “I don’t.”
Okay. Easy enough. I turned back around and just as I was about to climb on the balcony, she held my hand to stop me. I closed my eyes at the jolt. I felt her touch everywhere. What was up with that? Had it always been that way? It’d been so long, and I’d been so young and stupid, I couldn’t even remember.
“Don’t leave,” she whispered. I opened my eyes and turned around, my hand still in hers as our eyes met.
“You said you didn’t want me here,” I whispered back, stepping closer. What I wanted was to scoop her up and put her on my lap. I wouldn’t, though. Couldn’t.
“Stay anyway,” she said. “You could have broken your neck trying to get over here. I don’t want your efforts to be in vain.”
I chuckled, dropping my hand from hers as I walked to the chair beside her, taking a seat there. “You wanna talk about it?”
She sighed. “Not really. It’s bad enough you saw me crying, and really, it’s nothing. It’s stupid.”
I resisted the urge to reach over and cover her hand with mine in an attempt to comfort her. Instead, I scooted my chair closer to hers, so we were both facing the ocean.
“It’s not stupid if you’re emotional over it,” I said, my eyes on the ocean, on the waves that splashed and disappeared out in the far distance, on the sailboats beyond them. I didn’t do well with comforting emotional women, but having Estelle for a sister had taught me enough on how to deal with them, and I knew it wasn’t wise to dismiss her current state.
“I don’t want to talk to the media at all,” she said after a few long beats. I looked over at her; she was looking out into the distance, so I had a chance to study her soft features, her small nose, and the apples of her cheeks.
“So don’t.”
She sighed. “It’s not that simple. They ask. They always ask. This morning I got a call from a magazine that wants to run a story. I’m sure they got my number from Gabe’s manager since he was the one who suggested it, but the thing is, there is no story here.”
“They always find a story.”
She shook her head, turning it to meet my gaze. “I would never give them a juicy one. I would never sell him out like that.”
Her words shouldn’t have made me feel anything, but I felt pride in her and annoyance in myself—in my old self—the one who’d thought she would have been responsible for us getting caught. The one who thought she’d throw me under the bus if the day ever came where she had to pick between the two of us, and my career would go out the window.
“You’re a good person, Nic,” I said. “And Gabriel is an idiot.”
“Men usually are,” she said, her lips curling into a small smile.
I looked at her mouth for a moment, desperate to lean into her. I’d had her lips on mine a few days ago, and I wanted them there again, but I couldn’t do it, and I definitely wouldn’t be the one making the move. Maybe it was unfair of me to want something this badly and not be willing to work for it. But I knew if I did work for it—if I did go after her—I’d go all the way, and I couldn’t afford to do that.
“We are,” I replied. “We’re complete idiots. You should remember that.”
“My eyes are wide open, Victor. I know you think they’re not, but they always have been. This thing
between us,” she shook her head, exhaling, “it was good, and I know why you ended it when you did. I get it, but I don’t think either one of us used the other. I think we were what we needed to be for each other at the time, and it’s okay.”
“Even if you did want it to be more, which I’m assuming you did,” I said, hoping she understood I was referring to her marriage.
I didn’t want to bring that up and tie it to me in any way, but I really wanted to fucking know why she jumped into such a serious relationship so quickly. I needed to know if I pushed her to it. She laughed.
“I guess we’ll never know,” she said, her eyes twinkling as she said the words. I scowled and she laughed again, but that was cut short by a loud knock on her door, and we both looked at each other, wide-eyed. “Stay here,” she whispered.
I stood up and hid behind the French door, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t walk inside. I felt sixteen again, my heart thumping in my chest as I listened to her talk with who I assumed was Meire. Instead of waiting around, I jumped back over to my balcony and sat in one of the chairs, my heart still pounding. Nicole walked back out onto her balcony shortly after, her head whipping over to me. She smiled.
“Got scared?”
“Fuck, yeah,” I said honestly. She rolled her eyes, walking over to the part closest to me. I did the same, meeting her there. We both put our elbows on the balconies.
“You used to fuck me in your office, but you can’t be caught in my room,” she said, raising an eyebrow. My heart jumped at the mention of that. My dick was already halfway to hard at the mere mention of us fucking. I closed my eyes, tried not to picture it, but ended up with a mental image of Nicole’s face between my legs, her eyes looking into mine as she sucked my cock. I groaned.
“Happy thoughts?” she said, her voice flirty. My eyes popped open.
“I was an idiot.”
Elastic Hearts (Hearts #3) Page 7