by Score, Lucy
Embarrassed that I’d been caught, I offered her a polite smile. “Welcome to the VIP section. I’m Emily Stanton.”
“Franchesca Baranski,” she answered, shaking my hand enthusiastically. She pointed over her shoulder with a thumb toward a man whose beauty rivaled Derek’s. “That tall drink of water over there is my husband, Aiden Kilbourn. He’s probably negotiating the price of a small country.”
“He’s very handsome,” I said.
Franchesca lifted a shoulder, her thick dark curls spilling over it. “Yeah, he’s okay,” she said fondly. “Who belongs to you?”
I liked that she didn’t ask who I belonged to. I spied Derek across the room schmoozing with a diplomat and her artist husband. “That gentleman over there who is quite possibly picking pockets.”
She nodded approvingly. “Nice. He’s so pretty it kinda hurts my eyes.”
“He has that effect,” I agreed. “Are you hiding from anyone in particular?”
“Eh, these things aren’t my jam. I’m more of a pajama pants and bunny slippers Friday night kind of gal. But apparently just writing checks for causes is frowned upon. You have to be seen writing the check. Price of privilege and all that. So, here I am sneaking some PB and J because I know these bozos aren’t serving up a twenty-grand-worthy veal parm. You want?”
She pulled half a sandwich out of her clutch. I liked her immensely.
I shook my head. “No, thank you. I’m holding out for a milkshake afterward.”
She bit and chewed. “Good call. Love the hair by the way. Very badass babe.”
I patted the back of my head. “Thanks. Courtesy of the very pretty man.”
“He looks like that, and he does hair? Oh, honey, you grab him with both hands and hang on for dear life.”
We laughed a little too sincerely, drawing curious glances.
“Looks like your guy is looking for you,” Franchesca observed.
Derek was indeed scanning the crowd. And when he spotted me, I felt a frisson of energy shimmer over me. He didn’t look delighted. He looked… hungry. As hungry as I felt. Was there anything sexier than those long looks across a crowded room where everyone else just melted into the wallpaper?
“Yowsa,” Franchesca mused behind me.
I wanted him. Even if it didn’t make sense. Even if it was a bad decision. I wanted Derek Price in my bed.
“Son of a bitch!”
Breaking Derek’s gaze, I turned back to Franchesca, who was dabbing at a glob of jelly on her cleavage.
I grinned. “Do you need a napkin?”
“Nah. Aide’ll get it later,” she said with a wicked wiggle of her eyebrow.
“I’d better get back out there,” I said, feeling a pang of regret.
“Go get ’em, tiger,” she said, taking another bite of peanut butter and jelly. “I’ll hold down the fort here for any other escapees.”
“It was nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said, her mouth full.
I met Derek in the center of the ballroom. The heavy wooden beams of the ceiling spoked outward above our heads. He ran his hands down my bare arms from bicep to wrist. An intimate, friendly gesture. I’d seen the man naked, but physically we’d remained squarely in our own space except for that kiss. We’d shared secrets. He’d styled my hair and bought me a dress that fit me like skin, yet I didn’t know his birthday or favorite baseball team or what he’d gone to college for.
It was an odd kind of intimacy.
“How’s the schmoozing?” I asked.
“Not quite as delightful as your company,” he told me, bringing my hand to his lips.
“So smooth,” I commented. “Have you lightened anyone’s pockets yet?”
The quirk of his lips quickened my pulse. “I’ve heeded your request and kept my hands to myself.”
Things in my core were heating up. Switches thrown. Buttons pushed. I felt good old-fashioned desire rev to life. He was picking up on it. I could tell by the spark in those unfairly blue eyes.
“Say the word, love, and my hands will roam wherever you let them.”
That pretty picture had a volcano erupting between my legs. What was it about this man that made me feel things?
“Derek?”
He leaned forward until my breasts brushed the crisp elegance of his jacket. My nipples tightened instinctively.
“Yes, Emily?”
“How do you feel about milkshakes?” I asked.
Those blue eyes cranked up the icy fire a degree or two. “Love them.”
“Would you like one after…”
“After what?” Derek asked. The question was practically a whisper. A quiet breath usually reserved for silky sheets and moonlight.
The hum of pleasure was a full-blown jet engine in my ears. It was simple biology. I had been bred to find a man in a tuxedo beddable. But tastefully so. With candles, a non-disclosure agreement, and a hotel suite. Not the kind of panty-ripping, half-clothed, dark alley fuck I was envisioning starring Derek Price.
“What goes on in that head?” he asked, cupping my chin.
“Surprise!”
My brother’s voice had never been more unwelcome in my life. That included the time he’d drunkenly fallen through the window into my bedroom when I’d been entertaining my prom date.
26
Emily
“Trey?” It was too hard to shift gears between being unreasonably turned on and being blindsided by an unexpected brother. That’s when I remembered that my brother dearest’s absence was the reason I’d been forced to attend tonight’s event. “What are you doing here? I thought you were putting together some music festival?”
“Musicians are fickle bitches. It’s a cluster. Have you met Theolonia? She’s famous on the ’gram.” Trey pushed a large breasted beauty at me. She was chewing gum and texting. Mom would love her.
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” I said.
“’Sup?” Theolonia said with a surprising baby-soft squeak. She hadn’t looked up from her phone yet. Though, to be fair, her phone case was an eye-catching glittery pink disco ball design with frolicking unicorns.
Behind me, Derek covered a soft laugh with a cough.
“Trey, this is Derek Price,” I said, dragging him up to face off against the cleavage that was considering an explosive escape from Theolonia’s candy pink gown.
“Ah, right. The fixer. This is probably an easy job for you since Em’s so squeaky clean,” my brother said, flashing his not-found-in-nature white teeth.
“Your sister is proving to be a fascinating challenge,” Derek said, eyeing me.
Trey threw his arm around his date’s shoulders. “Yeah, right,” he laughed.
My lifestyle of working hard, working out, and then going home and working some more was as abhorrent to Trey as his lifestyle was to me. We were baffled by each other.
Even now, both dressed to the nines, our differences were as pronounced as ever. He was cabana boy tan. His bow tie was unknotted and hanging loosely against the open collar of his shirt. His hair, a sun-kissed dirty blond, was long at the collar. He had our father’s jaw and our mother’s obsession with image. As far as I knew, he had never held down a job. His paycheck came in the form of regular payouts from the trust fund that he’d already “accidentally” drained twice. He was wearing the Rolex I’d given him for his twenty-fifth birthday.
Instead of the thank you I’d expected, he’d winced. “This isn’t the one I wanted.” Every time I saw that watch on his wrist, I wanted to punch something.
“Has Mom seen you yet?” I asked.
“Nope. Surprising all of you just like those soldier homecoming vids,” he chirped. My brother really did believe him popping into the country, a big-breasted social media model on his arm, was exactly the same.
Sometimes I wondered why I loved him.
But again, I supposed it was something that had been bred into me. Trying to fight it was futile.
I made a mental note to be in the l
adies room when Trey surprised my parents.
“Hey, listen, do you have a sec?” Trey asked, suddenly serious.
I knew exactly what was coming. “Sure,” I sighed. “I’ll be back shortly,” I told Derek.
“I’ll get you a drink,” he said, eyes skimming to the still-full champagne flute in my hand. “Perhaps something stronger?”
The man was good. Intuitive. Sneaky. Smart. Sexy. Would it be the worst thing in the world to let the “for the cameras” flirtation transition to behind closed doors?
Trey led me out of the ballroom and into a hallway. Here the floors were covered in thick, luxurious rugs. The paintings were hung on gold, textured walls and highlighted under brass lamps.
“I need to talk to you about a job.” The man’s resilient hope, his ability to ignore reality in favor of the pretty picture he painted himself, reminded me of a golden retriever who expected his food dish to be magically refilled every hour on the hour.
“You’re getting a job?” I asked, feigning enthusiasm.
“I want to work with you,” he said, shooting me that Instagram-worthy smile. “I’m ready to settle down and join the family business.”
I set my glass down with a hard clink on the marble sideboard under a painting of a bare-breasted woman being wooed by a man with a harp.
“The family business,” I repeated, hoping I’d misheard him.
“Yeah. Flawless. I wasn’t ready before. But I am now. I want to work with you and Dad.”
My throat burned with the need to let loose a battle cry. But I tamped it down. Like I always did.
“Trey, Flawless is mine. It’s not a family business.”
“Yeah, but Dad—”
“Is on the board of directors. Yes. But I own the company. Flawless is mine, and no family connections will guarantee anyone a job there.” I still needed to scream.
Trey smirked. “Bet Lita wouldn’t like to hear you say that.”
The thing about brothers is they always knew exactly which buttons to push.
“This isn’t about Lita. This is about you.”
“It’s about us, Ems,” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulder. He pointed off down the hallway at some far-off vision only he could see. “Come on, the two Stanton brats working together. Making the world more beautiful one wrinkled-ass face at a time.”
Trey was buying what he was selling.
“And that right there is exactly why I’m not giving you a job,” I said, shrugging out from under his arm. “You have no idea what I do. What my company does. Go work for Dad if you’re so ready and willing to be gainfully employed.”
“Oh, come on, Ems,” he groaned. He kicked at the leg of the side table, nicking the wood with his velour loafer. “I can’t work for Dad.”
“Why not?” I had an idea exactly why not.
“Because I asked him already, and he said no. Then he got all high and mighty about earning my way and blah blah blah. What good is having a family fortune and a billionaire sister and not being able to get in on the action?”
I wanted to grab him by his too-long hair and bounce his forehead off the wall. Wouldn’t the cameras and the glittery people inside love that? Instead, I defaulted to my trademark frost.
“Oh, don’t go all ‘Lady Stanton’ on me.” He smirked.
I was going to need to squeeze in another kickboxing class this weekend or find some other way to blow off steam.
I thought of Derek, naked and hard. My sheets tangled around his legs. Whoops.
“Look, Trey,” I said, shifting gears. The man was my brother, after all. We were destined to spend Thanksgivings together forever. That didn’t entitle him to a job, but it did avail him of my vast business knowledge. “I’m not giving you a job. But if you’re serious, I’ll help you find something that suits you. If you’re serious,” I repeated.
“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe.” He gave a jerky shrug. A gesture I knew meant he was already over the conversation. He wasn’t serious. He never was. And I’d just given him the one thing he couldn’t stand: the word “no.”
“Are you out of money?” I asked.
“Not everything’s about money,” he said scornfully. “Anyway, whatever. I’m going to go talk to Mom.”
He left me standing there next to an artful arrangement of pink roses dripping with crystals and mossy greenery. I still felt like screaming.
Back in the ballroom, I avoided the family table and made a beeline for Derek. Somehow, in a ballroom of a few hundred of the glitziest people Miami had to offer, he still managed to stand out.
“How was your conversation?” Derek asked, handing me a martini.
“Riveting. Life-altering,” I muttered. “Where did our curvy friend go?”
“I babysat her until she said, and I quote, ‘Hashtag do you even ’gram?’” Derek said, in a spot-on impression of the breathy Theolonia. “And then I had to leave before I slapped the phone out of her hand and taught her how to make eye contact with people.”
We laughed until I had to grip his arm to stay upright.
“God, that felt good,” I said, swiping at the corners of my eyes.
“Allow me.” He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and gently dabbed around my eye makeup. We were close again. Surrounded by people yet somehow all alone in the center of everything.
I felt light. Esther’s text. Meeting a jelly-swilling kindred spirit. Sticking to my guns against my brother. And now watching Derek Price laugh.
The orchestra played a little trill announcing the beginning of the dinner service, and—with a hint of reluctance—we returned to the family table. My mother was swooning over Trey’s surprise appearance. My father was having trouble looking away from Theolonia’s chest. Fortunately, she had yet to raise her eyes from her phone and hadn’t noticed.
“You’re so terrible! Surprising your mother like this,” Mom crooned. Two more chairs were produced. Because of course Trey had neglected to RSVP. I wondered who would cough up the $40,000 for his and his date’s dinners. We all squeezed in together. It would have been cozy had it been any other family than our own. We were seated with the hospital dean of medicine and her wife as well as Bethenny and her boyfriend, Ed, a country music producer who wore cowboy boots with his tux.
My mother wiggled a finger at a passing waiter and pointed at her empty glass.
My knee was pressed up against Derek’s under the table, and damn if it didn’t feel like an anchor.
“You would not believe what those ridiculous society blogs are saying now,” Mom announced breathily. “Our Emily is quite the news item,” she explained in an aside to the dean.
“Yeah, so popular with her most recent arrest,” Trey said. He tapped his shot glass to Theolonia’s. “Cheers, babe.”
“Wait! Let me boomerang it,” Theolonia whined.
Derek leaned back in his chair and caught the arm of one of the waitstaff. “We’re going to need a very large bottle of tequila and several glasses,” he whispered. “It’s an emergency.”
The waiter glanced over Derek in the direction of where Trey and his date were making out while taking selfies. “Right away,” he promised.
“We’re not getting shit-faced,” I hissed at Derek.
“It’s not for us,” he said. “It’s for the rest of the table.”
“As I was saying, it seems the reporters think our Emily and Derek are scandalously dating,” my mother piped up, disappointed that attention had waned. “Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?”
Derek’s hand moved from the table to the back of my chair. Possessively, as if a challenge had been issued.
“What’s so ridiculous about it?” still-pissed Trey asked. “She had to pay off the cops to get out of a drug bust. You think nailing the help is beneath her?”
“Dean Winters,” Derek said, addressing the dean of medicine. “What will the funds raised tonight be used for?”
Dean Winters, a statuesque woman in a glittery blue pantsuit,
looked relieved. Her wife twisted in the seat to block out the rest of the table.
The waiter returned with a bottle of tequila on a silver platter and a ring of glasses.
While the polite conversation was taken care of, I leaned in. “Both of your opinions are unwelcome and entirely unnecessary,” I said. My tone was so cold I swore the flowers in the centerpiece wilted at the edges.
“Oh, darling. Don’t be so dramatic,” my mother said, waving her hand dismissively. “I was only saying that these tabloids are just desperate to link you to anyone at all.”
That was not at all what she’d been saying.
“Why you refuse to find a respectable man and settle down is simply beyond me.” My mother was airing dirty family laundry in front of Bethenny while what was definitely not her second vodka tonic arrived.
Oh, she would have many, many regrets tomorrow.
“Venice, she’s running an empire. You can’t be serious that you want Emily to just shift her focus to finding a man,” Bethenny scoffed.
I could always count on my father’s ex-wife to get me in a way that my own mother couldn’t.
The first course arrived and was ignored by everyone.
“Why can’t she do both?” Mom demanded, accepting the refilled shot glass that Derek slid in her direction. “Weigh in here, dear.” She elbowed my father in the gut. He dropped his phone on the table and tucked his reading glasses back in his pocket.
“What are we talking about?” he grumbled.
“The new pediatric ICU wing,” Derek said.
“Your daughter getting married and starting a family,” Mom insisted with an inelegant snort. She was used to Dad not listening to her.
“Why the hell would she do that?” he harrumphed. “She’s got billions on the line, and you want her to what? Start internet dating?”
The barely touched salads were cleared efficiently and replaced with bowls of clear broth.
“Exactly,” Bethenny said, grinning at me. “Emily has more important things to do.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom tittered. “What’s more important than love?”