by Hayes, Piper
As we make our way to the car, I decide I need to tell him something about what Ben said to me earlier in the day. “Is everything alright?” I ask.
Blake gives me a puzzled stare. “Everything is great. Don’t worry, I promise you’re going to enjoy tonight more than you can imagine.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“We’re going to the hottest restaurant in town, and I have a surprise planned for you there.”
“I need to talk to you about something serious,” I say as we get into the car. “I think you could be in trouble.”
“I’m always in trouble,” Blake says as he shuts the door and we head off. “Whatever it is, don’t worry about it. Wait until tomorrow, and if it’s still gnawing at you, I’ll look into it.”
“I don’t know if it can wait.”
“Just give me tonight. We can go over whatever you want in the morning.”
“Assuming I’ll stay the night?”
He laughs. “If the past several days are any indication, yeah. But seriously, as much as I think you’ll enjoy tonight, I need you to know that this is very important to me, and that I’m showing you something that I haven’t shown anyone in a long time.”
“Do you have a tattoo I haven’t noticed?” I ask.
“Something like that,” he replies with a laugh. The car pulls up in front of Afton. Blake has high end taste. This place has barely been open for six months, but I’ve heard of it. I didn’t have a chance to go before the world fell apart on me, but I remember it being a serious topic of conversation at one of the last parties I attended before my father had the bad manners to go broke.
“Here?” I ask. I don’t know where the question comes from, really. It’s not like Blake doesn’t have taste, and it’s not like I don’t want to eat here, (I do) but it’s something else. From what I’ve gotten to know about Blake over the past few weeks, it doesn’t seem very him. “I thought I was learning more about you tonight. This seems more for me.”
Blake grins. “You’re catching on. This is our first stop. I have word from a contact of mine that it’s nearly impossible to get a seat at this place.”
“There’s nothing nearly about it. Even I couldn’t get in, and I used to be able to get in anywhere.”
“Did you know there’s a special chef’s tasting, a private table in the back so exclusive that it’s only available once a month?”
“Shut up.”
Blake takes my hand and helps me out of the car. He picks my bag up off the seat after I forget it.
“When are you going to tell me what that’s for?” I say.
“As soon as we’ve had some fun.” An anemic looking model opens the door for us. The restaurant is brighter than I expected, open and modern. It’s buzzing with conversation. Blake hands a card to the host. “Hey, isn’t that…” he snaps his fingers “Percy… Patrick… Prentiss… Isn’t that your ex?”
“What did you do?” I catch a glimpse of Prentiss, his fiancée and Felicity. “You did this,” I whisper.
“Yup,” Blake says. He’s grinning, and he’s waving to them.
“Please tell me we’re not eating with them.”
“We’re not eating here at all.” He hands the bag to the host and we head across the restaurant. “What a small world,” Blake says. He holds out a hand to Felicity. “We haven’t met, but I’m a friend of your father’s. Cat and I were just heading back to meet with the chef. If we run into each other again, remind us to show you the private tasting room in back. It’s to die for. Come on, honey, we don’t want to leave Eduardo waiting.” He kisses my cheek, wraps his arm around me and leads me through the doors into the kitchen.
“What was that?” I ask. We’re standing in the middle of a chaotic kitchen, and I’m fairly sure there’s no tasting room back here.
“You just showed them up in the hottest restaurant in town. How do you feel?”
“Honestly, I don’t feel anything. I don’t know why I cared so much about what they thought. I don’t know how to describe the way I feel now.”
“It’s called personal growth,” Blake says. “I’m proud of you for realizing that people who don’t care about you aren’t worth a damn.”
“Is that why we came here tonight?”
“No,” Blake says, “we came here because I needed a place to dodge our tail, and because the chef really is a personal friend.” He looks up. “Ed, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. Ed, Cat. Cat, Ed. Do you have the stuff I sent over?”
“Of course, in the back office.” Ed says.
Blake slaps Ed on the back and heads off. “Watch out for this one Ed, she’ll take you for all you’re worth.” Blake disappears and Ed introduces himself. “Eduardo Vega,” he says. His eyes are dark brown, and his black hair sweeps back behind his ears. He’s got tattoos up and down his arms. “When Blake told me he needed a favor, I dropped everything. You’re a lucky woman. He’s a good man. Best busboy I ever had.”
“Blake was a busboy?” I say in disbelief.
Eduardo nods. In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he just looked at you.
I blush. I can’t help it. I know what he means. The way Blake looks at me makes me feel like he looking into me the way no one has before, like he understands the real me, the part of me that has nothing to do with money or status or any of that. I manage to nod in acknowledgement. Then Blake steps out of the office wearing a sweatshirt and a torn pair of jeans. He tosses the leather bag into my arms.
“Let me show you the real city for a night.”
“The real city?” I ask.
“The one you’ve never seen. Or are you afraid it won’t meet your standards?”
I look down at the clothes I had tossed in that morning and say, “I’ll let Eduardo be the judge of whether or not it’s good enough.” Eduardo shrugs. Blake laughs. It must be a hundred and ten degrees in the kitchen, and I’m starting to sweat. Eduardo’s brow is beaded with sweat. Blake looks like he’s cool as can be.
“Come on, Ed,” he says. “We’re on a schedule here.”
Eduardo steps beside me, crosses his arms and scowls at Blake. He’s clearing enjoying the hell out of himself.
“Ok. I’m taking her to meet Alex.”
“Woah,” Eduardo says. “He’s not playing around.”
“Who’s Alex?” I ask.
“The worst bartender in New York,” Eduardo says with a smile.
“I’m going to tell her you said that.”
“Fat chance in Hell.”
“Did you call the cab?” Blake asks.
Eduardo nods.
This has been a set up from the start. I look down at the leather bag. “I guess I’m changing then. What do I do with the dress?”
“Leave it.”
In the back office, I slip out of the heels and out of the dress. I pull on the jeans and flats. When I come back out, Blake’s waiting by the back door. In the alley behind the building, a cab waits with an open door. I look at Blake to see if he’s serious and then I follow him. It’s my second cab ride this week. My second cab ride in years. This one is better than the first. With Blake’s arm around me, I lean back and breath in the night air. The moon is rising on the other side of the river, and I have a feeling that this night will be unlike any I’ve ever experienced.
“Why all the trouble of going to the restaurant?” I ask.
“You have a tail,” Blake says. “While your father doesn’t command nearly the fortune or power he once did, he’s far from broke. He has money squirreled away all across the globe where the government and his investors can’t touch it, and I’m fairly sure he’s having someone follow you.”
“And you never thought to mention it to me?”
“I’m telling you now,” Blake says. “The same guy has been outside my building more than once on days you were over. The doorman took note. I referred the whole thing to Damien. He said
it all checks out but that you and I should be careful. This is me taking care.”
“I know that man,” I say. “He was a friend of mine.”
“Then I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Blake says. After a long pause, he adds, “So you seemed to like the beer we had last night.
“I liked everything about last night,” I tell him.
The cab speeds over the Williamsburg Bridge, and soon we’re far from any part of the city I’ve ever been to. Blake pulls out a wad of cash, hands it to the driver and tells him to pull over at the next corner. “We’re here,” he says. We walk a block and he brings me up to what looks like an abandoned building. Or it would if the windows weren’t lit up and four or five guys in caps weren’t leaning against the brick exterior. I can hear music from inside, but I can’t tell what kind.
“Get ready,” he says. The doorman nods to him and opens the door and soon we’re headed down a long hallway, it’s half dark and I can hear clapping and stomping and what sounds like fiddle music. Irish music. We’re at an Irish bar, and from the looks of it, most of the clientele are actually from Ireland. A small band is playing on a corner stage, and the crowd is hooting and hollering along with them. Blake leads me through the dense thicket of patrons.
A beautiful woman with dirty blonde hair and freckles looks at us from behind the bar. She puts down the pint she’s pouring and stares with ice-blue eyes. She’s beautiful. “Alex,” Blake calls.
“That’s Alex?” I ask.
“Come on, Cat. I’d like you to meet my sister.”
CHAPTER 13
CATHERINE
As Blake and I wind our way through the bar, I can’t help but feel the humidity of hundreds of bodies packed into a tight space. He leads me to a back room. It’s quieter, but still relatively full. The ceilings are lower in here, and it’s cozy in a hole-in-the-wall bar kind of way. It’s the type of place that I’d never have stepped foot inside before I met Blake. The smell of stale beer wafts up from the floor, and the tables are crooked with mismatched chairs. There’s a dartboard in one corner, and the wall around it is pocked with a thousand holes from drunken misses. The bar is dim and loud and perfect in every way.“Your sister is a bartender?” I ask
“Yup,” Blake says.
“You’re worth how much and your sister is a bartender?”
“I’ve told her she can do whatever she wants. She likes bartending. She worked at this place when I was in school. I bought it for her a year and a half ago. I offered her a job at my company, offered to pay her way through any school she wants to go to, but you know how it is. She won’t listen to me. She’s going to do what she’s going to do.”
Alex meets us a few minutes later. She comes over carrying three pints of dark beer. She has a half grin that I’ve seen on Blake’s face more than once. “My little brother hasn’t brought a date here since he became all fancy.”
“That’s the same thing Eduardo said,” I tell her.
“You brought her to see Ed first?” Alex says. She puts the drinks down on the bar top and picks one up for herself.
“A necessary precaution. I had to make sure no one was following us. You know how it is these days.”
“God forbid they find out who you really are,” Alex says. “I think I liked it better when you were broke.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Blake says. He turns his attention to me. “Do you play darts?”
“It’s been a long time,” I say. “I think I’d rather share embarrassing stories about you with your sister.”
“We’ll multitask,” he says. He heads over to the board to get the darts.
I’m alone with Alex for a minute, and she looks me over. She’s beautiful, but she’s got the edge of someone who doesn’t take shit and doesn’t sugarcoat anything either. I can practically hear her wondering what the hell Blake is doing bringing a girl like me here. “So how did the two of you meet?” she asks.
“We both crashed the same party,” I tell her. “Blake never mentioned that he had a sister.”
“Big surprise there,” she says. “He thinks he’s protecting me. From who, I don’t know. I think it just makes it easier for him to hide his past.”
“Why would he do that?”
Before Alex can answer, Blake is back.
“I have to run back to the bar,” Alex says. “It looks like the two of you have a few things to talk about.”
Blake raises a brow. “What’s she saying about me now?”
“She said you were hiding your past.”
He places the darts down on the table. “I’ll tell you what, hit the dartboard, and I’ll tell you something about myself that you don’t know.”
I pick up a dart and step over to the line. I chop my arm forward twice as I line up a shot. Then I let fly. The dart hits the board just above the bullseye.
“Beginners luck,” he says. “But a deal’s a deal.” He’s smiling, like he had this planned. “My favorite color is blue.”
“That’s the secret?” I say in disbelief.
“I never said it was a secret. I just said it was something you didn’t know.”
“Doesn’t count. Tell me something real.”
“I moved to New York when I was seventeen. Alex was twenty three and she had gotten a job in Brooklyn after her boyfriend moved to the city. I had finished high school early, and took college courses in Manhattan. Alex forced me to go full time after the first semester. I owe everything to her.” Blake picks up a dart and steps to the line next to me. “My turn,” he says. He hits the board just above my dart. “Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know. None of that society crap either. Like you said, tell me something real.”
“I’m really good at darts,” I say. I can’t hold back the smile.
“Bullshit. Am I being hustled?”
I grab another dart off the table and focus intently on the board. I hit the outer ring of the bullseye. “My parents had a vacation home in Maine when I was a kid. It was a big old mansion on an island. There were other houses and an inn on the island, but whenever we were there, it seemed like the house was a resort of its own. My dad had a full bar in the basement. It was a recreation of a British pub. The adults loved it because they could drink all night without being bothered, and the kids loved it because we could hide down there during the day and play darts. When we got a little older, we’d sneak drinks while we were down there, but we used to play darts for hours and hours.”
“I assumed you rich kids never left Manhattan except to go to your estates in Fairfield County.”
“You forgot college in Cambridge.”
“Right,” he says.
“If I hit the bullseye, will you tell me something else about yourself?”
“I’ll tell you either way.”
“You know, that basement was one of the few places where I’ve ever felt normal.” I throw a dart and barely hit the board.
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like being a teenager is all about hiding away from your parents, testing boundaries, getting in small amounts of trouble. I can still remember the smell of the place, the way the salt air and the occasional spilled beer mixed with the damp earthy smell all basements seem to have.”
“I like that,” Blake says. “You’re a much more interesting person than you give yourself credit for.”
I scoff. “Am I supposed to take that as a compliment or an insult?”
Blake brushes my hair back behind my ear and leans in. “It’s the truth. You’re smart and you’re beautiful. And I wish you could understand how beautiful you are right now just being yourself.” He kisses me, sliding a hand across the small of my back and pulling me tight. It’s a deep kiss, a full kiss, but it’s also more tender than before. It says things he could never express in words. He doesn’t just want me, he needs me. How can I doubt him? How can I believe in any way that he’s holding back from me, lying?
I pull back from the kiss. “You’r
e not getting out of the game that easily.”
Blake flashes that smile and says he knows a hustle when he sees one and challenges me to a full game. “Loser pays for the drinks.”
“Your sister said the drinks are covered,” I reply.
“Loser finds some other way to make it up.” I know what he’s thinking.
We play, and I barely win. Blake’s good, but I’m just a little bit better. “Double or nothing,” he says, walking back up to the board and erasing the scores.
“You sure you want that?” I ask.
He nods. And then he smokes me. The second game is over with lightning speed. “You were holding back on me!” I say.
“You seemed so proud of yourself. I didn’t want to burst your bubble. Now let’s go and I’ll think of ways you can pay your debt.”
I stop him. “There’s something I need to tell you before we go back. I think you’re in trouble.”
“Is this good trouble or bad trouble?” he asks.
“It’s serious.” I place my hand on his chest. “I can’t let the night go on without telling you.”
“Who talked to you?”
“An old friend. He works for the FBI.”
“Ben?” Blake says.
I feel like my blood has turned to sand and my heart has stopped. “You know?” I ask.
“A lot of people are trying to get to me in a lot of ways. Your friend is just one of the many means they’re trying to use. I’ve had Damien approach him to open a dialogue. I have nothing to hide from the government and nothing to hide from you. Can we talk about this tomorrow? I feel like things were going well. I felt like we were really starting to get somewhere.”
“He said you weren’t who you say you are.”
“This is who I am, Cat. So is the apartment in Manhattan. I fought my way through school, and I fought my way into a job at Carlisle Capital, and then I set out on my own. I’ve worked honestly for every dollar I’ve ever earned. There are things in my past that I’ve tried to keep in the past, but you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that I’ve only ever tried to do the right thing.”