“I’ve told you to address me properly in front of guests, Poppy,” she snaps. “This girl says she’s Hayes’s guest along with all of those people. I know nothing of it, so I’m exercising my right to stand my ground,” Eliza explains as if it makes perfect sense.
“Do you pull guns on every unexpected guest in your home, Mrs. Rivers?” This comes from Cass’s father who hasn’t said a word since they arrived.
“No. Only the ones who very clearly don’t belong,” she returns.
“El—Mrs. Rivers,” Poppy interjects and rushes past me to stand in front of her on the stairs. “You knew Ms. Ryan was visiting. I informed you that Mr. Rivers was bringing back guests to stay for the night because of the flooding,” she says. She stands right in front of the gun and puts a hand on it.
“Poppy, be careful,” I call to her.
“It isn’t loaded,” she calls back to me without turning around.
“What? Are you kidding me?” I yell and start for the stairs, too.
“Why did you tell her that? You idiot!” Eliza shouts. Poppy’s yelp of pain is a beat behind the crack of Eliza’s palm against her cheek. The room’s incredible acoustics meld the two sounds together in sickening rhythm.
I skid to a stop right at the foot of the stairs.
What the actual hell is going on here? Did she just slap another grown woman?
“We’re leaving,” Mr. Gold says and I finally turn around to look at the poor people who have escaped one nightmare only to find themselves in the middle of another. And I’m sure they’re thinking they’d rather take their chances with mother nature than deal with this insane woman.
He’s standing guard in front of everyone else. I catch a glimpse of Cass’s face and she looks green. I can’t believe this is happening. “I’m sorry. Your rooms are ready. Please, let’s just get you dry—”
“We’ll get a room at the Ivy for the night. Confidence, you’re welcome to come with us,” he says gravely, his dark gray eyebrows drawn in extreme concern as he surveys the scene unfolding in from of him. “In fact, I would like to insist that you do,” he says. I’ve only met him once before at our law school graduation, and I was struck by how gentle and quiet he had been. He’s a small man—so much like my father, I’d thought. But without the sadistic spirit that inhabited him. What must he think of me right now? And of Hayes?
Hayes. I’d forgotten all about him.
“Where in the world is Hayes?” I ask when all other words fail me. I pat my pocket and curse my decision to leave my phone upstairs when I rushed downstairs.
“Confidence, we’re leaving. I just ordered an Uber and he’s only two minutes away,” Mr. Gold says again, and this time, his voice is firm and commanding. “Tell Mr. Rivers thank you for rescuing us. We owe him a huge debt, but we don’t want to impose, and clearly, it’s not a good time.” He nods pointedly at the insane woman standing on the stairs watching the chaos she just created with a pleased, smug smile on her face. Poppy has disappeared in the five seconds since I looked away.
“An Uber?” I exclaim. “Bu-But, I have your rooms ready. I didn’t even give you the towels,” I say, completely dejected and helpless to stop the situation from spiraling. I point to a stack of towels and a thermos of coffee that Hayes’s housekeeper, Matilda, gave me to bring down with me.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Hayes asks, and I look over to see him standing in a doorway that I hadn’t noticed beneath the stairs. The rain has had its way with him. But unlike the rest of the soaking wet people in the room, he looks more like a sea god than he does a drowned rat. His hair clings to his forehead in dark wet waves and water runs down from one of them, through his dark gray T-shirt, and it’s plastered to his body like a second skin. His jeans, the same. His eyes sweep the room, moving from each one of us to the next when he doesn’t see whatever he’s looking for on our faces.
“Mr. Rivers, I was just saying that we’re so grateful for your kindness. You were heroic today. But we’ve decided to head into Rivers Wilde for the night,” Mr. Gold, clearly the group’s designated speaker, says. “We have Carly’s insulin, and little Micah has his inhaler. So all we need is a dry, warm place to lay our heads,” he says.
“And I told you, you could do that here,” Hayes says quietly and walks over to me. “What happened?” he asks.
No one says a word.
“Eliza, what happened?” He squares his gaze on her, and even though I’m not looking at her, I see the moment he gets to the gun. His face turns white and then blood suffuses his cheeks and looks like the top of his head might pop off.
“Did you point your fucking gun at my woman?” he asks, and his voice ricochets off the walls of the house’s cavernous space in a terrifying echo. The little girls starts to cry again, and my stomach cramps into a knot. This is beyond disastrous. I can’t imagine how Hayes lives with people like this.
Eliza’s face never loses its smugness, but she starts backing up the stairs.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Hayes Rivers. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot her,” she says, and then like the rat she is, she turns and runs up the stairs.
“I’m so sorry. Perhaps it would be best for you to stay somewhere else tonight. But I have a suite of rooms at the St. Regis. The road between here and there is clear, and I’ll have our driver take you over,” he says to the crowd, but he doesn’t look at me. “I’ll go make arrangements.” And then without another word, he turns and leaves the room.
NEED
HAYES
“I’m sorry about last night,” I say as soon as I walk into my bedroom. Confidence is halfway out of bed and stills mid-motion. She wraps the sheet around her bare body and sits back down, her profile to me as she stares ahead for a beat and then turns to face me.
Her eyes are flat and cold, and I could kick my own ass for the way I behaved.
“For what? For not warning me that your stepmother had no clue I was coming? Or for not warning me that she’s a lunatic who’s fucking packing heat?”
I groan silently, guilt gnawing at my gut. “Tesoro—”
“Or,” she cuts in, her voice hard as nails, “is it because after she pulled a gun on me, my best friend, her family, and small children, you promptly disappeared and haven’t been heard from since?” she asks.
“I’m sorry. I needed to clear my head. I went for a drive. Yesterday was intense, and I meant to come back, but I passed out in my car and just woke up,” I tell her. I don’t tell her that I drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels and then threw it all up before I passed out. She looks like she’s ready to murder me.
“This is not what I expected when I came to visit, Hayes,” she says, and my stomach sinks. That goddamn Eliza and her crazy ass antics yesterday.
“I know. The storm threw everything off. Going out to get your friends …” She drops her head into her hands and falls back onto the pillows. Her sheet falls, revealing her perfect, spilling-out-of-my-hands, marshmallow-soft, pink-nippled breasts. And like an addict whose poison is being served up to him on a silver platter, I start walking.
“Thank you for that,” she groans. “Good Lord. What the hell? This trip …” She sighs just as I get to her side of the bed.
I stare down at the goddess in my bed. This nymph who has me under her control. She’s like nothing else I’ve ever known. Brave, kind, honest, funny, sexy, and so fucking brilliant. She’s the catch of the century, and she’s mine.
For now.
I close my eyes at the stab of pain in my chest that accompanies that thought.
There’s something that happens when I see things through Confidence’s eyes. She reveals my blind spots, and while I’m glad to know the places where I was failing in the basic human decency department, what will that mirror reveal when she holds it up to my family. So far, it’s revealed dysfunction and division. I’m afraid that when she leaves here in a couple of days, she’ll think less of me, and I’ll think less of me, too. I want to sanitize everything.
To hide the ugly. But I’m going to be asking a lot of her. She needs to see exactly what she’s getting into. I just have to hope that when it’s over, she’ll still want me and all of the baggage I come with. And if she does, I hope it’s not because she thinks my money will make up for it.
I feel guilty for having that last thought. She’s nothing like that, and I know if I end up sleeping under the 610 Freeway, she’d be sleeping with me. I love her. She loves me. I want to show her that I can take care of her more than just financially.
“King,” she calls softly. Her hand comes up to grab mine, and I finally look at her face. She’s the most radiant woman. She’s got this peace about her that’s there even when she loses her cool.
“Yes?” I ask and trace one of her pretty nipples with the pad of my thumb. She sighs and smiles. Her eyes fall to half-mast as her nipple stiffens under my touch.
“Yesterday was crazy. Everyone was on edge because of the weather. But, I wish we could press the reset button on all of this.” She sighs. I push aside the thought that the weather had nothing to do with Eliza’s behavior.
“Come on, I need a shower; I need to eat you. I need to fuck you. Let’s do all three right now,” I say.
She smiles and lets me pull her up to sitting. Then she unbuckles my jeans, unzips them, and pulls them down at the same time as my boxers. My dick is hard and her mouth is hot when she wraps her lips around it and sucks the head at the same time her tongue flicks the slit. I pull my shirt over my head and fist my hands in her hair while she works her magic with her talented tongue. When I can’t wait for her anymore, I let go of her head and slide out of her mouth.
“Get up here,” I gesture for her to wrap her legs around my waist and she laughs her deep, throaty laugh before she does what I say. I put my hands on the curve of her waist where it flairs into her hips and lower her down onto my hard-as-a-rock dick. I walk us like that into the bathroom, and I step into the shower, press her against the wall and start to fuck her. Her hands fly up above her head and use the wall at her back and my dick to hold her up. I turn on the water and hiss when the cold spray hits my back and starts beating down on us. “Hayes.” She moans my name and I fuck her harder.
“I’m going to make you come,” I say and throw my head back into the spray of water before I lift her off my dick and put her on her feet.
I drop down on my haunches, spread her cheeks and flick my tongue over her tight puckered asshole. I keep it there, push in a little and trap the now warm shower water on my tongue and then slide down to her pussy and put her clit in my mouth with the water around it and bite it.
Her knees buckle, but the shower muffles her scream. I find that I don’t like that at all. I reach up, turn the water off and press my hand into her back to bend her in half. She braces on the wall and I slip my cock between the warm, wet lips of her pussy and drag it back and forth.
I slide up and into her in one smooth, easy stroke. She gasps and slaps a hand on the wall. I grip her hips, slide one hand to her clit and rub.
I dive into her.
Pull out.
Thrust up.
Drill hard.
Fuck her fast.
Then, I slow down and make love to my woman until she comes.
She screams my name and creams all over my dick, bucking her hips and clenching her trembling thighs so that when I start to come, my hips are trapped in the cradle her body has made for mine.
“You’re going to end me,” I groan.
“No baby, this is where you begin,” she pants, and when I pull out next, she hops down, whips around and falls on her knees.
She cups my balls with her hand and fists my pulsing dick with the other and puts me into her mouth and sucks me so hard her lips hollow.
I push her hair back off her face, and she looks up at me. Her eyes water when my dick hits the back of her throat, but she doesn’t quit. I love you, I mouth down and she winks before she closes her eyes and hollows her cheeks.
When I come, she catches what she can on her tongue. I pull her up, turn the water on and rinse her clean.
By the time we get out of the shower, we’re right again. I’m hoping that tonight’s dinner won’t be a disaster. I mean, it’s just food and a few friends. What could go wrong?
LET THEM EAT CAKE
CONFIDENCE
“I’m so glad he didn’t cancel.” The woman next to me looks down the table to where Hayes is sitting. “These flood watches are so tedious,” she says to me like she expects me to agree with him.
I force the sincerest smile I can muster. I’m sure it looks more like I’m suffering from a bout of constipation. And the churning of my stomach says that if I’d been able to put anything in it since this morning, I might actually be unable to evacuate it from my body.
Tedious is the very last word I would use to describe this dinner or this day. I can’t believe that, on my first visit to Houston, the weather has taken such a huge turn for the worse. Hurricane Harvey has dumped historic levels of water on the city of Houston. The flooding has been catastrophic for a lot of the city. And yet, here we sit.
The dining room has a glass dome in the center and the clatter of the driving rain against it reminds me of the way it beats down on the corrugated metal roof of our mobile home.
I push the food around my plate as my appetite refuses to cooperate. I’ve never heard of, much less eaten, some of the things they’ve served today. I’ve always been an equal opportunity eater. But today, not even my mother’s chicken fried steak could tempt me.
“Where did you say you were from?” The woman who hasn’t bothered to introduce herself demands.
“I didn’t,” I say and smile. I refuse to accommodate this woman’s snobbery. If she wants to know, she’ll have to introduce herself like a normal person would.
“Oh. Well.” She smiles coldly. “I’m Davina Bain. Our families have dined together for almost twenty years,” she informs me and then glances around the table with distaste.
“Though, I have to say that the quality of the attendees has been diluted since Hayes got back. He was raised in Italy. And in the countryside or something dreadful.” She frowns disapprovingly. “I heard he’s taken up with some nobody he met in Europe.” She says it like it’s a total scandal. “Anyway, you’re such a pretty thing. Who are your people? A girl that looks like you is exactly what he needs to soften up his image,” she says and look at her like she’s an alien.
“Did you really say that?” I ask and she must mistake my anger for something else because she pats my hand.
“Don’t mind all the talk about him hurting that girl,” she says, her smile thin and empty. “He’s richer than Croesus. It’ll make a couple of black eyes a year worth it.”
It takes Herculean strength to keep my hand in my lap when all I want to do is slap her. I’m reminded of something I learned from the sharp bite of my father’s rage. There are devils walking around in skin that makes them look like normal human beings.
“Who are your people?” she asks, her eyes scanning the table while she sips her soup.
“I’m Confidence Ryan,” I tell her. “I’m from Arkansas. I’m the nobody he met in Europe,” I inform her with a smile. And I enjoy the momentary flash of panic in her eyes as she realizes who she’s been talking to. It’s gone as quickly as it came and in its place is a smug, disdainful frown.
Her eyes, once friendly and bright, dim. She sniffs as if something distasteful wafted into her nose.
“Well,” her eyes flick over me as if she’s trying to find what she missed in her initial assessment. “At least you look the part,” she says before she turns away. Dismissing me in a way that feels eerily familiar. It’s reminiscent of the way Hayes looked at me that night in Italy. Like I’m beneath her. That memory still makes me queasy. Being with Hayes’s family and friends tonight has made me queasy. I look around the huge table. Almost everyone is engaged in a one-on-one conversation. Except Hayes, who’s watching me with a scow
l. His stepmother made the seating chart—who has a seating chart for regular dinner?—and when Hayes took his place at the head of the table, I was unceremoniously asked to vacate the seat next to him for Mr. Jones and shown to a seat all the way at the other end. Hayes didn’t say a word. Between that and the rain, I feel stressed out on a level that has me wishing I could go for a run. And I hate running. With a passion.
“You understand, don’t you? It’s protocol,” his stepmother said as she led me to my seat. I didn’t answer because I knew she didn’t really care if I understood. She’d made her feelings about me plain when I saw her right before dinner. She leaned in, pretending to hug me and whispered in my ear, “Don’t get too comfortable. I’ll be damned if the next Mrs. Rivers is another nobody from nowhere.” Then she’d pulled away and smiled brightly and said, “We’re thrilled to have you, dear,” loudly enough for everyone to hear.
I don’t know if I’m going to tell Hayes any of this. What would be the point? He can’t do anything about it, and I can see that he’s trying hard to continue the tradition of his family. Even if they are dumb and useless ones.
We haven’t had a moment alone since we came down for dinner. And now, I’ve been dismissed as lacking by a woman who spent the first forty-five minutes of dinner telling me all about the piping for her new window treatments.
“Most of them are fine,” the woman next to me murmurs in my ear.
“Excuse me?” I turn to look at her. She’s a pretty woman in her late sixties with skin the color of hazelnuts, eyes the color of coffee, and a warm smile.
“But some of them are a bunch of stuck-up assholes.” Her whispered words are colored with humor. “We’re only invited because the previous Mr. Rivers and my husband were friends. It’s only since Hayes got back that we decided to come at all. Trust me, honey, you’ll be glad they don’t talk to you,” she says with a wink.
The Rivals Page 15