Gilded Lily

by Hart, Staci

  Tomorrow. It seemed like a lifetime until tomorrow.

  Up the building’s stairs I floated like a loose balloon, and through the front door I went, smiling like I’d just learned how.

  At my entrance, Ivy and Dean froze in the kitchen, dumbstruck as they looked me over.

  “Hello,” I chirped, setting my bag on a dining chair.

  Dinner sizzled in a pan, neglected by Dean, whose dark forehead furrowed, spoon midair, head cocked like a bird. Ivy blinked, dishes in hand and blue eyes narrowed in confusion, red hair piled on her head and belly so comically large, she was a marvel of physics. I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t about to tump over.

  Her gaze combed over me, head to foot. “What happened to you? You’re filthy.”

  I cleared my throat to stifle a giggle. “I got caught in the rain on my way to Longbourne.”

  “And?” she prompted, rolling her hand to get me to continue.

  “And Tess wasn’t there. Kash was.”

  My face must have said it all because Ivy gasped, hands flying to her open, smiling mouth and auburn brows brushing her hairline.

  “Oh my God!” she squealed behind her fingers. “No! You didn’t!”

  Dean still looked confounded. “Didn’t what?”

  “Sleep with Kash Bennet,” I said archly.

  Ivy broke into a stretch of giggles, doing the Flashdance toward me, and I giggled right back, the two of us like a couple of teenagers who’d finally gotten kissed by Billy Mendez.

  She stopped, holding her belly and laughing, her cheeks high and flushed. With her free hand, she snagged one of mine and dragged me in the direction of her bedroom.

  “You’re gonna tell me everything, unabridged.”

  “Congratulations?” Dean said as we passed, holding up his gigantic hand, which I slapped hard enough to sting in salute of the highest of fives.

  “Thanks!” I kicked off my shoes with a thunk, trotting behind my sister, who moved much faster than someone in her state should be able to.

  Once in her room, she whipped me like a derby girl toward her bed and closed the door.

  “Kash Fucking Bennet!” she squealed, and we broke into giggles again.

  I flopped on her bed with a sigh, staring at the ceiling with a stupid grin on my face. “You were right. I needed a rebound.”

  She climbed onto the bed with an oof. “I like being right. God, you know—Luke was historically the easiest of the Bennets to talk to, to get with. But Kash? I think Kash is hotter. Don’t tell Luke I said so.”

  “I think it’s that he seems unattainable. Luke is easy, but Kash has another layer to him, you know? What you see with Luke is what you get. But Kash plays it closer to the vest. He’s more…I dunno. Mysterious.”

  Ivy snorted a laugh. “Yeah, Kash is a real international man of mystery with his pun T-shirts and dirty jeans.”

  I tittered. “Oh my God, seriously, what is wrong with me? I cannot stop giggling.”

  “You got nailed by a Bennet brother. This is a common side effect.”

  I rolled onto my side, propping my head on my hand, still fucking giggling. “He’s just so …” I sighed, glancing at the ceiling, my cheeks warming at the memory of his hands on me. “Let’s just say, I’m no longer upset that you told him about Brock Bancroft and the Case of the Missing Orgasms. Kash used that information to his advantage.”

  “He would. He’s resourceful like that. Tell me what happened!”

  So I did, starting with my shitty day and getting hosed by the gutter to the promise he’d fulfilled of being a great distraction. A perfect distraction. Damn near perfect in general.

  “He always was the most easygoing of the Bennets besides Jett, though Jett was too old for me,” Ivy said.

  I gave her a look. “He’s like thirty, Ivy.”

  She held up her palms in defense. “Thirty-one, and I’m just saying—he had already graduated when I was a freshman. He might as well have been thirty then.”

  “God, I didn’t expect Kash to kiss me like that,” I mused, brushing my fingertips to my lips, the ghost of his kiss still there.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I knew the second his lips touched mine that he was about to ruin me. Ruined. I’m going to be ruined for life.”

  “So … you’re not dating?”

  “If by dating you mean doing, then yes.”

  She gave me a look.

  “First of all, Kash doesn’t date. He does. And secondly, I don’t even have an actual bed to sleep in, never mind being stable enough to get into a relationship.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t date because he hasn’t found the right girl.”

  “Every woman’s excuse to date every player ever.”

  “Kash isn’t a player,” she insisted, but before I could ask her to tell me why, she said, “And … I don’t know. I’m curious. Could you ever see yourself with someone like him?”

  I blinked, opening my mouth before I realized I didn’t know how to answer. I liked Kash, genuinely and deeply, which I suspected was what’d made our romp so utterly perfect. He made me laugh just as easily as he made me orgasm, which was saying something. Kash made me laugh a lot.

  But date in a permanent way? I hadn’t considered it. He was the polar opposite of Brock—happy to be in the background, comfortable in a T-shirt and jeans, deferential and respectful. And for all those reasons, I wanted to say yes.

  Of course, I didn’t know him, not really. Not yet. And I wasn’t ready to date, not with Brock barely behind me. Really, he was still in front of me and would be for a little while yet.

  And so, rather than commit to either, I said, “I need easy and fun, and Kash has offered his services to the cause. Past that? Well, I can’t even see past that. All I know is that was the most fun I’ve had in ages, and I feel like I just won a beauty pageant.”

  “Which is funny because you look like shit.”

  I pinched her arm with a laugh. “Hey. Kash said I was beautiful.”

  She yelped and rubbed the spot. “Well, he was blinded by the afterglow. You look like a high-class hobo. That’s not Armani, is it?”

  I sighed, not wanting to think about how I’d defiled my clothes. Worth it. “Barney’s. Definitely could have been worse.” I brushed a hand down my scuffed-up thigh. “My dry cleaner is going to make his rent on me now that I’m sleeping with a gardener.”

  Ivy laughed but watched me—I got the sense to see if I was being snobbish.

  “I don’t mind it,” I clarified, “not even a little. There’s something about a man who works with his hands, you know?”

  “Oh, I do.”

  “I’m so used to these … I don’t know. Soft, mushy men who have never done a hard day’s work in their life. I mean, Brock gets weekly mani-pedis, for God’s sake. How many manicures do you think Kash has gotten?”

  “Laney’s given him at least three, I’m sure. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with guys getting manicures.”

  “I’m not saying there is. I’m just saying, Brock doesn’t even have workout calluses. He specifically uses machines that don’t muck up his pretty hands. He sleeps in spa gloves, Ivy. Why didn’t I think that was weird?”

  “Because he was rich and ambitious and connected, and that made him seem powerful.”

  I shook my head. “Powerful is watching Kash Bennet shovel dirt with no shirt on.”

  “Testify.” She held up one hand in praise.

  “Kash is masculine in ways Brock could never achieve, not with all the muscle implants and all the money and all the power in the world.”

  “And hair plugs. Don’t forget the hair plugs.”

  I groaned, flopping back on the bed. “I mean, they looked real.”

  “It’s not his fault he got the bald gene,” she said, stretching out beside me.

  “Or the small-butt gene.”

  “He really did luck out in the jawline gene though.”

  “And the smile gene.”

  “Orthodonti
cs.”

  I chuckled. “But the shape of his mouth was nice. And he was a good kisser.”

  “And he loved you once,” she added quietly.

  “He did,” I admitted at an equal decibel.

  “But he’s a jerk.”

  “Such a jerk!” I said on a laugh. “And Kash isn’t a jerk. Kash is goddamn money.”

  Ivy chanted, Kash money! over and over, swiping her hand at her palm like she was making it rain invisible Benjamins.

  “So money,” I agreed.

  “When are you seeing him again?”

  “Tomorrow. He’s delivering the flowers for the Cabot wedding, and I’m getting us a room.”

  “Aww, no more greenhouse banging? Those are the best.”

  “I want to see what he can do with the comfort of a mattress. The back of my head still hurts from the concrete.”

  “Next time, just pony up.”

  “I would have this time, if he’d let me. He was on a mission. I wasn’t allowed to do anything but take what he gave me. I’ve never been so happy to just lie there until it was over. I never wanted it to end.”

  “Well, you were thirsty. You’d been crawling through the Sahara for years.”

  “Felt like an eternity. And I made it to the oasis.”

  She lifted a hand for a high five, singing “Wonderwall.”

  I slapped it and sighed happily. “Thank you. For putting the idea into my head. For talking to Kash. I don’t think it would have occurred to me without you teasing me about him.”

  “As your little sister, it is my joy and pleasure to tease you at leisure.”

  Dean called us in from the kitchen for dinner, and I hurried to the baby’s room to change. I only owned a couple of T-shirts and was thankful for the foresight to have grabbed one, slipping it on with a pair of soft black sleep shorts. My hair I twisted into a messy knot, taking a moment in front of the antique mirror on the wall. I looked relaxed, casual, and not at all like myself. I didn’t bother cleaning up my lids or brushing my hair. Not yet. A shower would wash it all away, put me back to myself.

  But for now, I wanted to be that happy girl in the mirror. And with a sigh, I trotted out of the room, feeling fresher than I should have for being so filthy.

  13

  Blamo

  LILA

  “Are you listening?”

  Addison’s voice was a cloud in front of the sun, a darkening of my mood, which had, for the past five days, been impossibly happy. Five days capped off by three nights in Kash Bennet’s arms, a place where I’d discovered things like time and worries didn’t exist.

  We’d so far stuck to the rules, but I couldn’t pretend like it was easy. It was hard to watch him leave, disheveled and dead on his feet at two in the morning. It was painful not to see him on our days off, and I mean that—it was physically painful to subdue my libido after the drought I’d experienced with Brock. So painful that last night Kash and I spent half the night sexting. Which didn’t count.

  But the moment I’d stepped out of that elevator and into my office, my mood had dampened with no hope of sunshine until I walked out again.

  Addison always had that effect on me.

  “Of course I was listening,” I lied, recalling the last sentence she’d said easily despite that I’d been daydreaming about Kash. “The Bayard wedding caterer double-booked, and you need me to take care of it.”

  Which meant money. Money was always the way to take care of these problems.

  She watched me with jackal eyes. “Tomorrow at four-thirty, I need you to meet with the caterer for the Lennox wedding. I’ve got an important lunch date that I expect to run over.”

  A four-hour lunch was excessive, even for her.

  But I smiled my best fake smile and said, “No problem.”

  Never mind that I had an entire day packed with my own event meetings. Never mind that I had less than twenty-four-hours’ notice. Never mind that she would run me ragged so she could get day drunk with her important lunch date. God help me if that lunch date was with Caroline.

  “Anything else?” I asked, desperate to get out of her office and on with my day, which was currently ticking by at an annoying rate from the clock on the shelf behind her.

  “Oh, one other thing.” She smiled, leaning back in her chair. “St. Patrick’s found out about Angelika and Jordan and the confession booth and withdrew their invitation.”

  My temperature dropped, my skin cold as ice with nothing more than a heartbeat and that sentence. “What?”

  “St. Patrick’s is off the table for the Felix wedding. You’re going to have to find another venue.”

  My thoughts raced with obstacles and chaos and a string of colorful expletives before landing on a solution. “Skylight. It’s already booked for the reception, and they have space.”

  “You’ll have to convince Angelika. You know how she had her heart set on St. Patrick’s.”

  “Then she shouldn’t have fucked her fiancé in the confession booth,” I snapped. “Are they still airing the footage?”

  “Yes. They kept the money in exchange for that indignity.” She watched me shrewdly. Today, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so sleek and severe, she could have whipped you with it and drawn blood. “Oh, come on—you had to know it wasn’t going to be that easy.”

  “I suppose I did,” was all I could concede, too busy with the explosion that had just detonated inside my plans.

  “I heard about Natasha.”

  Even the blood in my veins stilled. I didn’t dare speak.

  “It’s a shame about Brock. What a catch.”

  The shot hit its mark. A bloom of pain spread in my chest. “She’s welcome to him,” I said with a wooden smile. “I caught a bigger fish.”

  Rule number one: never give Addison Lane any personal information, lest she use it to pike your head later.

  “Is that so?” she asked with a knife smile.

  It was shock and petulance that’d made me admit it. It was fear and regret of the admittance that had me reeling my words back in.

  “It is, and thanks so much for asking after me,” I said smartly, standing to let myself out. “Let me know if anything else comes up, would you?”

  “I will.”

  And then I got the fuck out of her office like my Choos were on fire.

  My brain was a flurry of questions and suppositions as I snagged my bag and laptop and headed out of the building for the bakery.

  Plans ticked into place for the wedding, the shift not as catastrophic as it could have been. I’d have a thousand calls to make, not to mention the convincing of the Felix women that Skylight would be the right move for the wedding. At this stage in the game, it was the only move. I fired off a text to Sorina, asking for a meeting after the tasting, anxious to fix all that had come unraveled.

  If they tried to tell me they wanted the Plaza, I swore I’d pitch myself out of a moving cab.

  But Addison niggled at my mind. She knew. She knew about Brock and Natasha, and I wanted to know how. The only people who knew on my end were family and Kash. Of course, if one Bennet knew something, they all knew. But it wasn’t like Addison hung around the Longbourne water cooler for the latest gossip. And I had no friends at our office, just a host of acquaintances.

  It bothered me in the elevator, then in the cab. I hadn’t seen Brock since I’d gone to pack a suitcase—when I went to really move my things out, he was gone, as requested. So how did Addison know? Had she seen some of my messages? Had I left something out that would have clued her in? I’d never ask, not willing to give her any more ammunition than she already had. Not willing to admit weakness to the one person I knew would exploit it without a second thought.

  But I’d wonder.

  In fact, I made it a point to obsess about it until the second I pulled open the door to the bakery and stepped inside.

  The Femmes weren’t there yet, thankfully and as planned. I shook hands with the owner and the producer of the show, who showed
me to the table they’d set up. Beautiful china sat delicately on raw wood, each plate set with slices of cake and little signs noted with each flavor. Tess had sent over small arrangements of peach cabbage roses—I knew them on sight now, thanks to Kash—and they sat on the table in small cut-glass vases, scattered around the creamy, lush cakes.

  We barely had time to exchange the minimum before the Felix entourage arrived like a fleet of swans, beautiful and tall and squawking. Instantly, the shop was too small. The crew alone would have filled the bakery. Add in the rest, and there was barely room to turn around, but Jennifer Lawrence had used this bakery for her wedding, and so must Angelika, whether there was space to film a TV show or not.

  Four Felix sisters, their matriarch, and Jesus Jordan made their way to me where we greeted each other politely and professionally, air-kissing cheeks. Except Natasha. She barely looked up from her phone, which was just as well.

  My gaze caught on her screen, noting she was on Instagram. And that was when it hit me.

  Natasha. Addison knew because Natasha was probably posting all about him. I’d immediately unfollowed him everywhere the night I caught them together. I didn’t follow Natasha because I had enough sense of self-worth not to torture myself. But I swear to God, I wanted to snatch her phone on the fucking spot and find out if I was right.

  Of course, I valued my mental health more, and my job most. And so, I silently stewed with a saccharine smile on my face, ushering them to the table.

  Cameras rolled, one to our side, one on the other side of the table. The Femmes were dressed fashionably in pink from the palest shade—Angelika—to the deepest fuchsia—Natasha, of course, ever the attention whore.

  Things began without incident, the girls oohing and aahing over the beautiful cakes as the baker walked them through the samples. For a brief, wistful moment, I was dumb enough to let myself imagine they’d behave themselves for once.

  Irreverently and in the middle of the baker’s spiel, Natasha stuck her middle finger in one of the cakes, opening her artificially plump, perfectly lined lips. Her tongue extended just enough to provide a landing for that offensive digit covered in lemon creme, making eye contact with me as she sucked her finger off with a moan.