by Nikky Kaye
I hadn’t realized I’d dozed off until the sound of the door opening woke me.
Silas Warner, temperamental celebrity chef and compulsive gambler, sunk into the leather seat beside me. He was the one who’d started our little Billionaire Book Club, but these days I suspected his ex-wife, Maggie, was currently sitting on more cash.
Case in point: I just drove across New Jersey to pick him up at a casino because he was tapped out.
“Hey, man.” For such a tall man, he looked surprisingly small and sheepish.
My already dark mood soured more when I smelt the smoke clinging to his sweater and jeans.
I glared at him. “The fuck? You smoking again?” I’d never understood how so many chefs smoked—you’d think they’d have more professional respect for their own palates.
His snort smelled more like scotch than cigarettes. “Nah, it’s from the casino.”
My hand clenched into a fist as I threw the car into gear. I was going to have to get my car detailed after this. At least he wasn’t puking in it or something, though. I’d made the mistake of taking him home after one wine-filled book club meeting... a long evening, submarined by the way he watched his ex-wife manage the restaurant that he gave her in the settlement.
“Roll down the window,” I told him.
He looked at me. “It’s cold.”
“You want to take the bus back to the city?”
His sigh was unnecessarily dramatic. “Fine, drop me at the station.”
“You’re gonna have to spot me for the ticket, though.”
“Are you telling me that you don’t even have twenty bucks?”
“I don’t even have my wallet, Marcus. Why the fuck do you think I called you?”
I pulled over again, my patience stretched to the limit. It had been a long, long day. Breakfast with Serena felt like a week ago, instead of less than twenty-four hours.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Warner? Where is your wallet?”
“I hocked it. I didn’t care about that fancy designer crap anyhow.”
Sigh. “Let me get this straight. You lost all your money at the tables, hocked your wallet in order to lose more money, but you still have your phone. Why didn’t you just pawn that, too?”
He looked at me with horror. “My phone? What would I do without my phone?”
Well, he wouldn’t have been able to call me, for one. He would have had to rescue himself. When I grumbled as much to him, he looked affronted.
“Damn, Marcus. Did I take you away from your monthly hooker?”
“She’s not a—” I bit my lip. “At least I can afford a hooker, asshole.”
“Whatever.”
Not responding, I began driving again—heading for the turnpike instead of the bus station. I wasn’t actually going to make him take the bus. I might be a hard-ass sometimes, but I didn’t let friends down.
Besides, Silas was down enough, already.
As I drove, the concrete whirred under the tires. The wiper blades swept across my vision like a metronome. I blinked. Goddamn. “You’re going to have to talk to me,” I told him, “or I’m going to fall asleep.”
“So who is she?”
“You know, I think I’d rather fall asleep.”
“You can tell me if it’s a hooker. I won’t judge. Because you smell like sex.”
My head whipped around. “What?”
He looked out the front windshield, a smirk playing with his lips. “I’ve got a keen sense of smell. Part of being a chef. And unless you’ve been jerking off in your car, I’d say you got some pussy this evening.”
There was nowhere for me to pull over. Nowhere for me to throw him out of my car. Nowhere for me to back up over him. I seethed, my fingers tightening like claws around the steering wheel.
“You’re disgusting.”
“But honest.” I saw him shrug in my peripheral vision. His smugness infuriated me.
“Honestly, Silas, you are fucked up. You won’t judge? That’s because you live in a glass fucking house. You’ve got a problem, and you know it. You lost your wife over it. You almost lost your business over it. Shit, you lost your wallet over it. Now you want to lose friends over it, too?”
He was silent.
“Do you ever think about how your actions affect other people?”
“This coming from Mister ‘use or be used?’ How’s that working out for you, Marcus? You’re more alone than I am.”
My teeth ground together until my jaw ached. Within a few tense minutes I passed a toll plaza, and I pulled over in the merge lane at the far right and stopped the car. Ignoring the angry bleats of other drivers leaning on their horns, I ripped off my seatbelt and stormed out of the car. I needed some air, even if it was New Jersey air.
It was full on raining now, beading on my leather jacket and trickling down my neck. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch something, somebody. Trucks rumbled past in the EZ Pass lane, throwing muck up in their wake. The rain did nothing to freshen the air and the choking smell of exhaust.
Suddenly, Serena’s face swam before my eyes. “It’s for you,” she’d said about the mercy of forgiveness. Maybe I was seeking it from the wrong person.
The passenger door opened and Silas stood to face me. “I’m sorry, man.” His rangy height meant that he could lean across and rest his elbows on the wet roof of the car. “I’m an asshole.”
“Ungrateful asshole.”
“I’m an ungrateful asshole,” he repeated. His toothy grin only flashed for a moment, like a brake light on a crowded freeway. He ran a hand over the bristle of his close-cut hair. “Thanks for coming to get me. I, uh, didn’t want to call Maggie.”
Fair enough—she may not even have shown up.
They’d been high school sweethearts. She’d supported him through culinary school, manned the front of house of his first restaurant; helped him with his first cookbook and TV show. He must have done something really heinous for her to leave him. I’d never asked, and I wasn’t about to now. But I was curious about something.
“Did you take Maggie to prom?”
His forehead creased and rain darkened his eyelashes as he blinked at me. “That was random.”
I waited.
“Yeah, we went together.” He looked off into the distance. “Shit, that was almost twenty years and I still remember what she wore. What I took off of her in a hotel room afterwards. We were a cliché, doing the deed on prom night.” His chuckle sounded anything but amused. “Why’re you asking me about that?”
“The woman.”
He looked at me blankly.
“The not-a-hooker.”
“Ah.”
“She was my prom date. That was probably the worst night of my life.”
“What, she didn’t put out?” Another toothy grin.
“No, she did.” I shuddered as rain sluiced inside the collar of my jacket.
His smile faded. “But it was the worst night of your life.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “And you fucked her again. Recently. Sounds like there’s a story there. You saving it for the hot seat?”
At our “billionaire’s book club,” we passed around a giant bottle of hot sauce like a talking stick. Silas called it “the hot seat.” I didn’t usually take a turn unless I had something important to say, which wasn’t often.
Despite making a living out of doling out advice, I preferred to be an observer of most human foibles. Yeah, I’d made good money at a young age by having important things to say—but only to strangers. Probably because they didn’t really matter, I figured. With “friends,” however, I turned to stone.
“Getting wet,” Silas pointed out when I didn’t respond. He slapped the roof before folding himself back into the car.
So much time I’d spent in my life telling people to help themselves. Nobody else could live your life for you, I’d lectured. But I’d shut myself off by taking that accountability too far.
After we got going again, Silas was uncharacteristically sil
ent. The only sound was the swish of the wipers and the rain whooshing through the wheel wells with every rotation of the tires. Maybe he wasn’t doing it on purpose, but his quiet patience was what compelled me to speak.
“I had such a crush on her,” I began, my gaze firmly on the road ahead. “Had a couple of classes with her. My mom was our English teacher.”
He made a surprised noise. “Your mom’s a teacher? So was my dad.”
Huh. “Was. She’s… retired.” That wasn’t part of this story, in my opinion. “Anyway, we got to be friends. Good friends.”
“Naked friends?”
“Sort of. Sometimes. She was a cheerleader, though.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
His serious tone brought a sharp bark of laughter out of me. “Yeah, well… I can’t remember how it happened, exactly, but we planned to go to prom together.”
He patiently waited for me to continue—for about thirty seconds. “And? Don’t leave me hanging, man.”
I pretended to focus on the road as we wound our way through the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. “It was special.” I snorted. “A teenage movie come to life, losing it to the popular girl.”
My stomach twisted at the memory of the acute pleasure I’d experienced that night. It wasn’t the sex—though, at seventeen, any sex was good sex. It was like pizza. Even when it was bad, it was still pizza.
“And then what? She ignored you the next day?”
If only. I decided to just spit it out. “Her friends posted a video of us to Facebook.”
Silas made a choking sound, like he was shocked but also trying not to laugh at me. Fucker. “You mean a… video?”
The lights of the tunnel whipped across the dashboard like a strobe light. Maybe he could see my nod, but he didn’t really need to. He was a smart guy, if not a smart gambler.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
“Yep.”
“And you hooked up with her again, now? What, for revenge?”
I nearly swerved into a cab. “Fuck!” Revenge? Was that was it was? I shook my head.
“That’s cold, Marcus. But it sounds like she deserves it.”
Did she? “Where am I dropping you?” I asked, changing the subject.
He gave me a mercifully close address in the West Village. Silence filled the car again. Or, as much silence as driving in the city allowed, even in the middle of the night.
“You still like her,” he finally said as I pulled up to the curb on his block.
I ignored him. My mind was reeling. I was done talking about this. And I was done with Atlantic City rescues. “Can you get inside?”
Silas dug in his pants for his keys. “Yeah.”
“Then get out.” It was the closest I was going to come to telling him to fuck off. I shouldn’t have opened up to him. All it did was confuse me more. Make me doubt myself.
“Okay, okay, I’m going. Thanks for the ride.” He opened the door, careful not to let it scrape against the old, bumpy sidewalk.
“Yeah,” I grunted.
“Revenge is rarely worth it, Marcus. Trust me, I know. But if you like her—really like this chick—don’t hold a grudge.”
My hand flexed around the gearshift, but before I could escape he leaned down into the open door for a parting shot.
“Unless you think she’s playing you again. Then go ahead and fuck her. Fuck her up, fuck her over.” With that advice, he shut the door.
Chapter Six
Serena
I didn’t have Marcus’s cell phone number. Not being able to get in touch with him now was even more frustrating than after graduation. After an hour (and a therapeutic shower), I called work. Mrs. Blake was fine, so all I could do was fall into bed with questions and a body that still vibrated from his visit.
What had taken him away? Maybe it was nothing, and he just used the opportunity to run. It was that possibility that kept me tossing and turning most of the night.
When I woke up, it was with an aching body, itchy eyes, and a rash of questions. Maybe I was allergic to Marcus Blake.
I didn’t know what hotel he stayed at—if he even did. I didn’t have his phone number. Hell, the best I would be able to do right now would be to use the contact form on his book’s website, and my pride had some limits. I wasn’t a stalker, for god’s sakes.
My questions would have to wait. Everything would have to wait.
So I did. I tried to go back to sleep, but I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for an hour before giving up.
Part of the problem was that my body was still humming from Marcus’s ministrations. My nipples were sensitive and swollen against my sleep tank, and there was a deep awareness of recent activity pulsating between my thighs. I wasn’t sore down there, exactly, just… wet with the memory, and I knew that if I tried touching myself, I would feel twinges from where he’d ruthlessly fingered me.
It was so… intense. Just like Marcus himself. He’d always been like that—dark, brooding, passionate. That much hadn’t changed in the years. If anything, he’d lost his vulnerability. A knife twisted in my chest at the thought that I was partly responsible for that.
I busied myself for the rest of the weekend with housework. Cleaning my parents’ house took longer than the rented condo I lived in before, but not long enough to fully distract me. Sunday afternoon I decided to get lost in a novel on my “to be read” pile. At one point I put down the cozy mystery to have a nap on the couch, and the sun streaming through the window lulled me to sleep like a cat. It was dark when I woke, and I felt a little more refreshed.
No word from Marcus. But what had I expected? As far as I knew, he didn’t have my phone number either. I was annoyed with myself for being disappointed by not hearing from him. When the irritation faded, it left insecurity and paranoia in its place.
Maybe he’d just gone home, wherever home was. Maybe I’d never hear from him. Maybe I’d never meet him again. Maybe he regretted ever seeing me, touching me. Maybe he was somewhere, bragging to his friends about how he got back at the bitchy cheerleader…
Oh god. You can take the girl out of high school, but you can’t take the high school out of the girl.
By the time I got to work on Monday, I’d almost managed to put Marcus out of my mind—until I saw him after lunch, in the hallway by the nurse’s station.
He was leaning against the wall, his dark head bent over his phone. He was wearing a navy V-neck sweater over a white t-shirt, and some dark jeans and sneakers that made him look more like a Brooklyn hipster than a wealthy professional life coach—or whatever the hell he considered his occupation to be.
I hovered at the desk twenty feet away, wanting him to notice me. Silently begging him to notice me. Terrified that he would notice me.
He didn’t.
I walked—no, I slunk down the opposite hallway, my orthopedic shoes nearly soundless on the linoleum.
“Serena!”
My shoes squeaked as I rocked to a halt at the charge nurse calling my name. Shit. So much for my stealth getaway.
When I turned around, my eyes went first not to my boss, but to Marcus. He stood at the end of the hall, his back straight and his stormy gaze on me. Even from thirty feet away, I felt the pressure of his stare like the ridge of a thundercloud from an approaching storm.
My colleague cleared her throat noisily, and I hustled back to the desk. I nodded and made the right comments as she briefed on a couple of patients. Chances were, I’d have to ask her to repeat it all later. When she answered the ringing phone, effectively dismissing me, I had the chance to turn back to Marcus.
I didn’t.
I told myself that I was just giving him the chance to come to me, but the truth was that I chickened out. I couldn’t bear to see disdain or—worse—indifference on his face.
“Serena.”
I froze again, my heart thumping in my chest at his voice. When I got up the guts to turn around, his lips were curved in a small, secret smile. I swear the cushioned rubber
soles of my shoes were the only things that stopped me from melting into the floor.
He walked to me. Good thing, because I was suddenly so boneless with relief that I doubted the integrity of my spine.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” I returned his smile, but I probably looked a lot dopier than he did.
What was the protocol for this kind of thing? Was I supposed to try to hug him? He stood far enough from me that if I tried something like that, I would look ridiculous if rejected. I wasn’t willing to risk that.
“I—”
“Where—”
We spoke over each other, then fell silent again as we waited for the other to continue.
“You’re back,” I said. Face palm.
His lips twitched. “Looks like.”
“Your mom’s doing pretty well today.” She wasn’t on my rotation, but I still stopped in a few times during my shift to see how she was. Every time I’d done so today, she’d remembered me.
I’d gotten more recognition from Mrs. Blake in the last twenty-four hours than I had from her son.
From the way that Marcus’s eyes darkened and he rubbed his chin, though, his recent memories of me were still pretty… clear. Heat rose in my cheeks.
“When do you get off?” he asked.
My lips parted. Yeah, my mind went there. “Uh…”
He chuckled. “Off work.”
“F-four. But then I have a meeting. A committee meeting for the Homecoming reunion thing,” I explained.
“I see. Will you be done by dinner time?”
“I should be.”
Silence. Part of me felt like I should make him work for it, whatever “it” was. The other part of me was afraid to assume anything, which was a smart defensive strategy when it came to Marcus Blake.
He sighed. “Will you have dinner with me, then?”
“Okay. Um, if you give me your number, then I can text you when I’m done at the school.”
His forehead creased, then his eyes widened. “I didn’t give it to you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Serena.” I sucked in a surprised breath as he stepped into me and leaned down to brush my cheek with his lips. “For that, I’m sorry.”