by S. Ann Cole
A grin splits her face. “Nope. You love me. You hate the truth. Now, go in there and apologize to Gloriel.”
Grumbling under my breath, I head in the direction Gloriel had gone. Her house has this majestic feel to it. Gold-plated banisters; velvet tufted settees; heavy, gold-accented draperies; and elaborate chandeliers. It’s the definition of opulence and a tad intimidating to be honest.
As I’m about to climb the stairs to the second floor, Gloriel comes skipping down with her handbag dangling off her wrist, her face bursting with happiness. “I heard. No need to apologize. My driver is outside waiting.” She reaches me at the bottom of the stairs and cups my face in her hands. “I would never try to make you feel bad about what happened. It wasn’t your fault. And I don’t see you as a charity case. I just have all this money and nothing to do with it. My husband’s gone, and my son doesn’t need me anymore. He gives me cash every month as if I need it on top of all I already have. I just want to have some expensive fun with you girls. That is all. I promise.”
“Does Noah, um, Nate know this is what you wanted me for?”
She makes a face. “Oh, God no.” Then she laughs. “He would have never let you come.”
Why not? “Why not?”
Gloriel moves by me, beckoning me to follow. “Because he doesn’t want me stealing his thunder. He would want to do this for you himself.”
Kiera darts off to get her handbag as we shuffle toward the front door. “Steal his thunder? I’m his housemaid.” How many times do I have to reiterate this to these people?
Hand on the doorknob, Gloriel pauses and twists a slight fraction to face me. “No, you’re not just his ‘housemaid’. You’re Charlotte Cooley, the catalyst to the man he is today. He’s never forgotten you. He took you in for a reason, Charlotte, but trust me when I tell you, being his ‘housemaid’ is not it.”
Easily the best day I’ve had in years. I forgot how the thrill of shopping could make my blood sing, could turn any frown upside down. The pampering, the sucking up, the expensive champagne as clerks bustle and fuss about us. I forgot the giddiness of trying things on with a best friend, both of us crammed in one dressing stall, grappling over the best one-of-a-kind pieces and giggling hysterically over the pieces that were meant to look smashing only on the mannequins.
All expenses on Mrs. Van Der Wells, Kiera and I shopped until our soles began to ache and we knew it was spa time.
And the spa? Bliss. Sheer bliss. Full-body Swedish massages, hot stones, manicures and pedicures, haircuts and highlights…Heaven.
My day had been heaven.
By the time we left the spa, it was dark-out and chilly, headlights from passing cars sliding over us as they cruised by, high-rises towering around us, shades of light spilling from square windows, store fronts even more inviting with the absence of the sun.
I tip my freshly scrubbed, deeply moisturized face to the starless sky; my blown-out, layer-clipped, platinum-blonde-highlighted hair feeling light and lush as it cascades down my back with the movement. A thousand times lighter, I feel. From my burdens, that is. From the repressed grief of Mom’s death. From the fear of my ex. From the uncertainty of my future. One moment, I take just one moment to tune out Kiera and Gloriel’s prattling, inhaling peace and optimism, and exhaling fear and the poisonous toxins of pessimism.
I just want to feel normal again, if only for that one moment.
The honk of a car horn interrupts my moment, and I open my eyes to find Gloriel’s limo pulled up at the curb for us.
Kiera had already ducked in, surrounded by shopping bags, but Gloriel was watching me closely, a strange expression on her near-perfect middle-aged features.
“How do you feel?” she asks
Closing my eyes, I’d inhale another steady breath and reply, “Undead.”
We head back to Gloriel’s and stuff ourselves with her home-baked pastries. It isn’t until minutes to ten that Kiera leaves and Muscles comes to get me.
Now we’re halfway home, the air charged. I’m not sure what’s going on between us. Don’t know if it’s him who likes me or me who likes him more, but something is definitely there. Nonetheless, I can’t give that much energy right now. My lady bits need to learn to chill the hell out and refrain from focusing on sex all the time.
‘She’s talking about you, Reckless,’ Rational Lotty mumbles, filing her fingernails.
‘I’m a horn bag and I’m proud of it,’ Reckless Lotty says without shame. ‘Muscles is yummy, but Noah is yummier. I’m more riled up for Noah. So if we have to choose, let’s choose him.’
‘Muscles is big and strong and badass,’ Rational Lotty argues. ‘He’s better at keeping her safe.’
‘Muscles is paid muscle,” Reckless Lotty rejoins. ‘He’s only keeping her safe because our billionaire is paying him to.’
Why do they continue to bicker? Did they not hear Noah this morning? It’s not going to happen. And regardless of the sparks between Muscles and me, the truth is, I really should not be thinking about hooking up with other men when I’m currently on the run from one who’s made the last year of my life a living hell. Have I learned nothing?
“I need your help with something,” I say to the windshield. “Well two things, actually.”
“My…help?” Muscles echoes in that deep, gruff voice of his. “What do you call this?”
Rolling my eyes, I make myself look his way. “Not paid help. Like, you have a good and caring heart kind of help.”
His chuckle is ephemeral, humorless. “Nothing good about my heart, Miss Cooley.”
Oh, so we’re back to ‘Miss Cooley’ now. “Well, you will help me because…if you don’t, and something terrible happens to me, you’ll blame yourself. And you’ll never, ever forgive yourself for not letting me put my lips on you again. And for years to come, your cheek will ache with the memory of the soft press of my lips. The scent of my wild-berry lip-gloss left—”
“What do you want?” he growls out, sounding inconveniently annoyed, much the same way Noah sounds whenever I flirt with him.
Taking a brave breath, I tell him, “I need to buy a gun.”
Muscles’ sharp eyes flit from the street to me, brief but assessing, and then back to the road. “What do you need a gun for?”
“To protect myself.”
“I’m not doing a good enough job?”
“You are. But you won’t always be there.”
He’s silent for a moment. His careful stoicism blocking me out. His voice is as soft as it can get with its dark deepness, when he presses, “And what do you need protection from, Cooley?”
“You can call me Lotty,” I say, stalling.
He waits for my answer, hand firm on the steering wheel.
“I’m…” I trail off and rub my eyes. “It’s personal. And embarrassing. It’s not something I want to talk about.”
“How can I help you if I don’t know what’s going on with you?”
“You don’t need to know,” I return, growing frustrated. “All I want is a gun and some self-defense lessons. No need to get all up in it.”
His exhale is audible. “Until I know what kind of trouble you’re in, the gun is out of the question. I can, however, teach you how to fight. Is that help enough?”
“Men were so much more malleable when I was fifteen,” I grouse. “Now you’re all just insufferably bossy. Or maybe I’m losing my touch.”
Back when I was fifteen, sixteen, I could get men, not boys, but grown men to do whatever I wanted. As an uber-early bloomer, a push-up bra and a little show of skin was all it took to get men to bend to my will. These days, everyone’s an alpha. Everyone’s an asshole. Everyone’s a bastard.
“And you’re how old now?” Muscles inquires.
“Old enough to take you to the hilt,” I reply in my best Marilyn Monroe voice. Eyes glued to the side of his face, I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs.
He utters nothing more. Not for the rest of the ride.
Reckles
s Lotty and Rational Lotty smirk at each other, and then do a high-five. ‘We still got it.’
Adams, the concierge, has to help me up with the scads of shopping bags on a luggage cart because Muscles, as I struggled to get all the bags out of the back, had straight-up told me, “You’re on your own with those, Cooley,” leaning back against the Jaguar, watching me make multiple trips in and out of the building.
Like I said, men today are bastards.
We ding into the penthouse and Adams transfers the shopping bags from the cart to the floor, backing up into the elevator in a jiffy, looking strangely uncomfortable, as if wanting to be out of there as fast as possible, leaving me curious.
As the doors close him in, I hear a familiar obnoxious cackle, and the reason for Adams’ discomfort instantly becomes clear.
My head whips in the direction of the stairs at the echoes of two sets of footsteps descending. One low and controlled, the other loud and overconfident.
In the ten seconds it takes them to descend the stairs, my good mood and high from the day is completely shot to hell.
Sienna Sullivan.
No less herself, she oozes class with undertones of sex and seduction in her all-black outfit of leggings, a tight scoop-neck blouse, and red heels that possibly cost thrice what I’m currently worth.
Noah trails down behind her in his suit pants and diamond-patterned socks, his white shirt wrinkled, unbuttoned, and hanging out of his pants, revealing that damned irritatingly sexy chest.
His fingers are combing back through his hair as he checks his watch, a deep trench between his eyebrows. He’s distracted, not in the moment of whatever Sienna is prattling on about.
I stand frozen for some reason, in the middle of the room, surrounded by shopping bags, staring at them both.
As Sienna finally notices me, she pauses for half a second, a displeased pout to her lips, before it’s quickly superseded by her mean cat grin.
Noah trips up behind her, his gaze traveling over Sienna’s head and landing on me. Head to toe, he scans me. Swiftly at first. And then a slow, perusing laze.
To his eyes, I look nothing like I did this morning. Now, I have a light tan. Bouncy, highlighted hair clipped a few inches shorter. Plucked eyebrows and smoothly waxed skin. Manicured and pedicured nails. Body clothed in a mocha-colored, off-the-shoulder, cowl-neck sweater; white skinny jeans; and leather wedges.
“Well, well,” Sienna drags out as she strides up to me, “whose charity case were you today?”
My tongue itches to fire back a nasty retort, but Noah is standing right behind her, and after our…whatever that was this morning, I don’t care to push my luck, so I bite my tongue and bend to gather some of the shopping bags on my wrists.
Noah’s cellphone rings, and he withdraws it from his pocket to answer, giving his back to us, drifting over to the staircase he’d just come from.
My teeth dig deeper into my tongue, because, really? Doesn’t he know better than to leave me and Sienna together?
When I straighten with the bags on my wrists, Sienna is right there, her vicious stone glare ferreting out my sloppily concealed hatred.
Instead of returning the glare, I aim to appear as innocent and harmless as no part of me could ever be. For the sake of keeping my job just a bit longer.
“I must say, he got over you a lot quicker than I expected. But what I want to know is…” Her glower intensifies to a threatening squint. “Why are you still here?”
My response comes easily this time as I realize she’s actually unnerved by my continued presence here. Am I the longest lasting housemaid Noah has ever had? Her reaction, her constant antagonizing, makes it seem so. Who would’ve thought the big, bad bombshell, Sienna Sullivan, would feel threatened by little old me?
“I’m afraid you will have to seek the reason for my continued presence from Mr. Van Der Wells himself, Miss Sullivan.” I emphasize her surname to remind her she isn’t Mrs. Van Der Wells anymore.
A finger, pretty, slender, and delicate, flickers at the shopping bags. “He gave you his card to play with? Bought you a makeover?”
“What can I say,” I smile and shrug, “I give fantastic head.”
Before I can see her expression or get embroiled in another verbal war and lose my job, I spin on my heels and head for my room. With more force than necessary, I dump the bags on the bed and then pace the length of my room in a fit of pique, buying time before going to get the rest of my bags. Hoping Sienna will be gone by the time I get back out there.
Why the hell is my blood even boiling? Noah made it clear this morning he doesn’t want me, so why does it bother me so much that he was here screwing her while I was out? It shouldn’t bother me, it should not, but, dear God, it does. On an intense level. Why does he keep going back to her? The new him can have any woman he wants, a good woman, someone worthy. Yet he’s still hung up on that icy slut!
Grabbing a pillow from the bed, I press it to my face and scream, letting all the rage out, then calmly place it back beside its companions, gently fluffing and smoothing it out.
Irritation and jealously in check, I start out of the room to go get the rest of my stuff, but crash right into a warm, solid wall of male. Unable to help myself, I sniff him.
Huh. No trace of ex-marital sex. Maybe it was a little skirt-hike, panties-to-the-side quickie?
Stepping back, I turn my face up at him. While he looks down his perfect Roman nose at me, one eyebrow tugged up.
He jerks his hands, and the rustling of shopping bags brings to my attention the reason he’s outside my door. He’s brought the rest of my stuff for me.
“This is what you and Mom have been doing all day?”
Taking the bags from him, I pad into the room and dump the stuff on the bed. “Nate, um…Noah, please know I’m not taking advantage of your mother or anything like that. I tried to refuse, but then she got upset, and Kiki made me feel bad about it. She planned it. She just didn’t tell you her plan.”
He studies me for three heartbeats. “You think…” He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. “I know my mother. You don’t have to defend yourself.” He pauses. “How was she today? Was she happy?”
A little caught off guard by the question, it takes me some time to answer with a bit of a stutter. “I-she—she seemed so. I think, doing this for me made her happy. Yes. Why do you ask? Has she not been?”
Emitting a wearied sigh, he slips his hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorjamb. “She puts on a front. But, like I said, I know my mother. She hasn’t been Gloriel since Dad died. I know she feels useless. Thinks no one needs her. I worry a lot about her. Loneliness is not a feeling, and it’s not an emotion. It’s an insidious and parasitic pain that feeds on what little contentment you have until you’re empty, so deathly silent, that you don’t even know you’re a victim until you realize your heart doesn’t remember what it feels like to beat. The last thing I want is to find my mother cold and lifeless with a half-empty bottle of anti-depressants in her grip.”
The back of my knees hit the bed, and I slowly sit. “I had no idea, Noah. If I can help in anyway at all, just say the word and I will.”
He stares over my head in thought, chomping his bottom lip like a youngster. “You remember how she used to enjoy cooking big on Sundays?”
With a smile, I nod. Gloriel might be a classy billionaire momma, but she loves the kitchen. She used to go big in the kitchen every other Sunday, rotated invitees. Dad and I got invited a handful of Sundays, but not as much as the Sullivans and the Noels. All that ended after Mr. Van Der Wells had his first heart-attack scare. She blamed herself for not having made healthier food choices for her family. The second time Mr. Van Der Wells had a heart attack, he succumbed.
“Well,” Noah continues, “I was thinking we could have her come over on Sundays and host dinner. Invite Kiera and Q, close friends, nothing too big like she used to do it. But, you know, something for her to look forward to each week. What do you think?”
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br /> My response is delayed as I’m still stuck on his use of the pronoun “we,” as if there isn’t an employer/employee dynamic here. “We,” as if we’re a couple, on a normal Monday night, making this decision together.
He’s my boss, owner of the residence. He should be telling me that this is what will be happening on Sundays from now on, and I should prepare for it.
I wonder if he realizes the error he’s just made.
He’s staring at me, expectant, waiting for my take. Apparently not. “Yeah,” I finally agree. “I think that’s a terrific idea.”
He nods, and his eyes fall to the floor as pensiveness cloaks him again.
Pushing to my feet, I begin emptying the shopping bags and gathering hangers from the closet. Kiera pushed a lot of stuff on me today, and Gloriel was no better, often encouraging me to get two of the same thing in different colors. I now have brand new, brand name handbags, shoes, dresses, jeans, sweaters, underwear, sleepwear, tons of accessories…
The outfit I’d left the house in this morning along with the safety-pinned handbag? In a trashcan outside the first store we’d gone into. Kiera saw to it.
Can’t lie though, it does feel good to have nice things again. Yet it doesn’t make me feel like any less of a charity case.
“She wasn’t here for the reason you think she was,” comes Noah’s voice from my doorway, surprising me.
Is that assurance I detect? Why does he think he needs to assure me? Why does he think he even owes me an explanation for her presence? His place, his dick, his business.
“In spite of everything,” he trundles on, “she’s smart and intelligent and has damn near perfect business sense. I never lose whenever I do what she suggests, business-wise. She’s been my business consultant from day one. Yeah, we got a divorce, but she’s the best at what she does, so she remained my consultant.”
‘Wah wah wah,’ Reckless Lotty mocks with a roll of her eyes. ‘Sienna is oh so, oh so perfect. Boo!’
‘What I wanna know is: why did they need to ‘consult’ in his bedroom, with his shirt undone?’ Rational Lotty poses. ‘Doesn’t he have an office? Does he not have working hours that he adheres by? Why consult at this hour in the evening?”