by Mia Malone
I was a nanosecond from slapping her face but pasted a smirk on my face and rubbed my shoulder briefly against Lay’s to let her know that I’d have her back.
“Hello, Jackie,” I said. “We haven’t met in a while.”
“Nina,” Jackie said and nodded.
Our gazes held, and I wondered what the hell she was thinking, walking up to Layla and insulting her. Surely, she knew who Layla was married to? Teddy was charming and amicable, but he was also a man with a ruthless streak and loads of connections to just about anyone.
Jackie had been an unpleasant, condescending girl many years ago, and it looked like she hadn’t changed much, so when the silence became tense, and it looked like she’d say something I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like, I let my smirk grow into a wide, toothy grin and raised a brow.
“I’m not so sure it’s wise to bring up college, Jaqueline,” I murmured. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want people to know that we all called you Jackie-the-jackal.”
***
Matthias
The food had been excellent as expected, and the mood at their table even better, which surprised him. These kinds of events were usually all about the power play and making the right connections, but they were joined by Teddy’s cousin and his wife, and since Teddy’s cousin turned out to also be Nina’s cousin, the mood had been light and more like a family dinner.
“I didn’t realize you and Theodore are related,” he murmured to Nina while the waitress poured another round of Bollinger.
“Barely,” she said. “My late aunt on my father’s side married his uncle, so Archie is our cousin, but we’re not genetically related, Theodore the third and I.” She pursed her mouth, and added, “Although, considering how small the world my parents grew up in is, we might be.”
It took a second for him to realize what she was saying, and then he burst out laughing.
“You’re saying the old money circles are inbred?”
“Could be,” she retorted with a cheeky grin. “I don’t hang with that crowd much, but some of them are quite foolish, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”
He barked out a short laugh again, and Layla nudged him with her elbow.
“Share the joke?”
“Absolutely not,” he stated and noticed to his relief how people were getting up from the tables. “I’m going to excuse myself and let Nina share whatever parts she finds appropriate.”
“Dirty talk at social events is not done, you know,” Layla murmured with a wink.
He grinned at her and wondered if Theodore Winthorpe III perhaps was a little bit beyond bat-shit crazy.
Nina was gorgeous in a way that really did a number on him. He loved her thick, pale brown hair, her long-limbed, slim body, and how she used a very light hand with her make-up. This didn’t mean he was blind to the fact that Layla Winthorpe was absolutely stunning, even at the age of fifty-two. She was curvy and soft, and her pale, white-blonde hair curled softly around a beautiful face that looked a lot younger than her years.
Surely Teddy the third took every available opportunity to talk dirty to his wife?
Since he didn’t have any intentions to discuss this topic with Layla, he nodded and walked away. He stopped to talk to a group of acquaintances, and it took a while to make his way back to the table.
Then he saw who Nina was talking to and increased his pace, so he reached them just in time to hear Nina call his ex-wife Jackie-the-jackal.
The look on Jackie’s face was one he knew well, and a temper tantrum appeared to be imminent. Nina seemed calm, but he recognized the stubborn way she’d raised her chin.
This was not good.
“Jaqueline,” he said calmly. She turned to him and opened her mouth, so he took a small step forward. “Our kids are here, for Christ’s sake, Jackie. Don’t start something you will regret. Smile at everyone and walk away.”
“She said –”
“And what did you say?” he cut her off, knowing that Nina would not have started this.
“Matty is right,” Nina said quietly. “I’m sorry, Jackie. That was unnecessary of me.”
She smiled a polite and very fake smile. Jackie returned it with an equally fake smile of her own that she kept firmly pasted on her face as she nodded to the others.
There was a brief silence while they watched her back disappear, and then Matthias turned toward Nina.
“Jackie-the-jackal?” he murmured.
“You heard?”
A small blush made her cheeks rosy, which looked good on her in a way that made his anger melt away.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I heard.”
“She should have known better than to go after Lay,” she said.
“She does know better,” Layla cut in. “She knew you’d retaliate, and she wanted you to make a fool of yourself, just once.” Nina turned, but Layla put a hand on her arm. “She was so jealous of you, Nina. It was never about me. Not really.”
“Crap,” Nina said. “And here we are, Lay. You’re married to the guy she wanted to catch, and I’m with the guy who divorced her.” She sighed and added, “It was unnecessary of me to hit her with the jackal.”
“She was unpleasant first,” Layla said.
“True,” Nina conceded. “But to be fair to her, we did wear secondhand clothes a lot.”
If he got it right, this whole debacle had started because his ex-wife had said something unfavorably about the way Layla had dressed in college. Which was thirty-something years in their rearview mirrors, so he couldn’t hold a snort of laughter back.
“What?” two women snapped, and he laughed even harder.
“It sounds like we’re still in high school,” he said teasingly. “But luckily, we aren’t, so let’s go to the bar for refills and then find the others.”
There were two dancefloors, and to his surprise, they found Teddy to the side of the one aimed at the younger generation. He was with his cousin and Len, who had been seated at another table for dinner, and they were laughing at someone who was prancing around, making slightly drunkenly Michael Jackson moves.
“Jesus,” Len said and raised his glass in a silent toast. “We did better back when we were known as the kings of the dancefloor.”
“Yeah,” Matthias agreed.
“You were known as the kings of the dancefloor?” Layla echoed.
“I was good,” Len said with a smirk and tilted his head toward Matthias. “He was better. Learned a lot of moves from his step-mom.”
“Really?” Layla squeaked. “Kings of the dancefloor.”
“So?”
“Nina was known as the party-queen.”
“Babe?” Matthias said with a grin.
“I was a bona fide disco-babe,” Nina shared proudly.
“I would have outdanced you,” Matthias said.
“Ah, shit,” Len muttered. “Here we go again. The two of you are –”
“Would not,” Nina said, and Matthias couldn’t hold a laugh back when he saw how she raised her chin.
“You up to showing the kids how it’s done?” he asked and took a couple of deep swigs of his drink just in case she took him up on the challenge.
Which she did.
“Lead the way,” she said and raised a brow.
The song shifted to something he hadn’t heard before in his life, but it was a good one, so he shrugged out of his jacket. Then he took her hand and pulled her up on the dancefloor, hoping that he hadn’t forgotten.
Which he hadn’t.
The people around them cheered, which increased when Len and Layla joined them, and then a couple of the others.
The DJ must have noticed the unexpected age group in the crowd because the music shifted, and MC Hammer was suddenly sharing that they couldn’t touch this. The crowd cheered again, and after MC Hammer, Tom Jones belted out that he wanted a kiss.
When they finally moved off the dancefloor, they were sweaty and happy. Matthias looked at Nina, and they grinned at each other.
&n
bsp; Yeah, he thought.
Love her.
It might be too soon to share this with her, but he did love her, so he should find a way to tell her. He’d managed to finagle them into dating and then sleeping together and now living together, so he’d find a way to declare his feelings without making her run for the hills.
Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, ignoring the fact that they were on what usually was a pretty elegant and high-brow event.
“Let’s go to the bar, babe,” he said and put an arm around her shoulders. “I think we should try drunk sex when we get home.”
“Yeah,” she said on an exhale and with a broad, happy smile. “I used to love drunk sex.”
Chapter Sixteen
Old man dancing
Matthias
Matthias walked into the office and was greeted by his grinning assistant, which made him frown. Dane looked like he wanted to laugh, and he was usually a pretty cheerful guy, but this was different. He was also not the first one who had seemed uncommonly happy this Monday morning.
“You look like you’ve had a good weekend,” he said.
“Absolutely,” Dane said. “Probably not as good as yours, though.”
Matthias stared at the young man who had been his assistant for four years. The young man was suddenly laughing happily.
“What?” Matthias asked.
Dane shrugged, and said casually, “It looked like you had fun.”
“Where?”
“At the party.”
“You were at the same party as me?” Matthias asked. “Why didn’t you stop by to say hi?”
Dane had been in the process of gathering up some papers but stopped moving and turned slowly.
“You don’t know?”
“It feels as if we’re talking about different things here,” Matthias said. “What is it that I don’t know?”
“Matthias, you do have Facebook, right?”
“Sure,” Matthias said because he did.
He didn’t use it, but Jackie had created an account for him years ago.
“So, you’ve seen what Si posted?”
“Si?”
“Your son.”
“I know who Simon is, Dane,” Matthias said patiently. “What did he do?”
“I take it you’re not using your Facebook account very often.”
“That take would be accurate.”
Dane sighed and reached for his phone.
“When I show you this, please remember that I am just the messenger.” He moved his finger over the screen, paused, and added, “Simon worked here last summer, and we are friends on Facebook.”
“Okay.”
What the hell had his son done?
“He posted this late Saturday night,” Dane said and held the phone out.
Right. Simon had apparently posted something from the party, which seemed to be a video, and he’d added a short text.
“Saw my dad dancing for the first time in my life, and it kills me to admit it, but he has way cooler moves than me.”
Beneath it, the damned boy had added, #oldmandancing
“Fuck,” Matthias muttered, and clicked on the white triangle to show what he was pretty sure would be...
Yes.
It was a video of when he and Nina joined the crowd on the dancefloor, and he heard Simon call out to Suzie, ”Suze, holy fuck, look at dad!”
He winced when the wobbly video showed him and Nina, and he heard how his daughter squealed. After a few seconds, he let out a breath in relief, and couldn’t hold back a small lip-twitch.
They didn’t look half-bad, actually.
“If that isn’t what my future husband and I will look like, I’m divorcing him right now!” someone shouted in the background. Simon called out that he was available, someone else chimed in, and then the camera was abruptly turned around to show a fake-shocked Simon.
And then it went black.
Matthias raised his head slowly and looked at his assistant.
“Jesus,” he said with emphasis.
“What?” Len said from the door, looked at Dane, and then the phone. “Ah. You’ve seen the video?”
“Have you?”
“Sure,” Len said. “I’m friends with Simon on Facebook.”
“I’ll just...” Dane murmured and moved toward the door. “There’s coffee if you want some.”
Matthias was about to express his gratitude, but the door was closed firmly, and he turned to look at Len.
“Huh,” he said.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Len said. “People like seeing you like that.” He raised the coffee pot and his brows. “You looked happy.”
“People?” Matthias asked and waved his hand, hoping that Len would understand that this meant he wanted black coffee. Lots and lots of it.
“Simon likes social media.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
This probably meant that Dane and Len weren’t the only ones who had seen the video, which would explain the happiness he’d been blasted with that morning.
“Shit.”
“Matty,” Len said and handed him a cup. “I liked seeing it too. Looked at it and thought... Yeah. I know that guy.” He smiled crookedly, and went on, “I grew up with that guy. Haven’t seen him in a while, but I know him.”
“Did I change that much?” Matthias asked, knowing the answer but still needing to hear it.
“Yeah, you did,” Len said. “I changed too, and it happened so slowly I didn’t really think about it. Not until you started changing back again.”
Matthias pulled a hand through his hair and grinned wryly.
“I’m not the same as back then, but I’m figuring it out,” he said. “I think I mostly forgot how to have fun.”
Len snorted out a short chuckle and tilted his head slightly to the side.
“Matty, bud, I’m sure Jackie has a lot of qualities that I’m unaware of...” he drawled. “Don’t think fun is one of them.”
This was true, but what had happened wasn’t all due to his ex-wife’s lack of humor.
“I know,” Matthias said. “But you know how it was when I met her. The company was doing well, but it took ten years each from Dad and me to get us to where we are right now. I was young and so damned ambitious. Wanted to make it so fucking much, and she fit in with my image of who I was.” He shrugged and added, “Or who I thought I wanted to be, perhaps. It wasn’t all on her that we split up.”
“You’re okay with it now, though?”
“Hell, yeah,” Matthias said with emphasis. “I didn’t want the divorce, but it wasn’t because I still loved her. It was...” He paused and thought about how to explain. “You know me, Len. I fix things, and I don’t fail, so when Jackie said she wanted a divorce, I kept saying we’d fix it. I would fix it. Then she moved out, and I still thought we’d... I don’t know. Fix it somehow.”
“If you really wanted to sort shit out, then you would have,” Len said, and the absolute confidence in him felt good.
“Maybe,” he said. “Dad sat me down and yelled some at me, and that cleared my head. So, yeah, we could perhaps have tried to save our marriage, but I didn’t want to anymore.”
“Jacob is pretty awesome.”
“Yeah,” Matthias agreed because his dad was the best, unlike Len’s father, who was someone they both had done their best to avoid the past forty years.
“Jackie wants you back, though.”
What?
Fuck no.
“She left me, remember.”
“I saw how she watched you and Nina this Saturday. She’ll come asking, so you need to figure out what to say.”
“No.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“You don’t get it, Len. I don’t need to figure anything out when that’s all I have to say. No.”
“Good,” Len said calmly. “I like Nina.”
“I like Nina too,” Matthias said.
“You really are happy, right?”
What
a bland way to describe how he felt after he’d spent a fantastic night with their friends, and then gone home to peel off Nina’s dress and take her from behind until she was moaning and shaking beneath him. Once their respective hangovers had been cured with pizza and lots of fluids, they’d gone back to bed and started an old movie, which turned into making slow love, and that had been good too.
“Yeah,” he said. “I really am.”
“Good.”
“You?”
“Sucks.”
Matthias blinked a few times and wondered what could have happened.
“Are you seeing someone?”
Len winced and shook his head slowly.
“I was dumb enough to fall for a woman who doesn’t want me.”
“Who?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“She might change her mind,” Matthias suggested.
“She bats for her own team.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other in silence for a while, but then Len grinned his usual happy smile.
“So, it sucks a bit to be me, but I’ll get over it,” he said with a shrug. “Not dating right now, but I will eventually.”
“Okay,” Matthias said. “You’ll let me know if I can help?”
“Of course.”
“Tony is a serial dater and doesn’t want to settle, and you’re pining for a gay woman,” Matthias muttered. “What about Luke? Nina and Lay are forever giggling about how he looks, so he can’t be single because of a lack of options. What’s the deal with him?”
“He also fell for a woman he can’t have.”
“What?”
“Went down like a fucking rock.”
“Really?” Matthias said. “Who?”
“Matty...” Len said and looked calmly at him. “Think about it, and you know.”
Matthias thought about the tall man, and how he behaved when they were at bars, at dinners, and how they had –
“Fuck it,” he wheezed out. “I do know.”
“Yeah.”
“This is not good.”
“I know. Don’t worry, he won’t act on it.”
A knock on the door made them both jump, and then Dane popped his head inside.
“You will be late for your phone meeting with the regional veeps,” he said and pointed at Matthias. “And you,” he turned to Len, “Have a meeting with your management team.”