The rest of dinner at Monarch passed without incident, but that was the last time I saw Kai for another week.
He didn’t show up for his usual Thursday night drink at the bar, and I told myself I didn’t care. There’d been a time when I would’ve taken Kai’s aloofness as a challenge and dove headfirst into a forbidden fling, but I wasn’t that girl anymore.
No, the new Isabella was responsible. Focused. She had direction, and she would prove her oldest, know-it-all brother wrong if it killed her.
“Stop ignoring his calls, Isa.” Felix walked past with an armful of fuzzy red tubes. “You know he won’t stop until you answer.”
My phone vibrated with another insistent buzz, underscoring his point.
I ignored it, as I had all morning. I’d learned my lesson after picking up Gabriel’s last call and getting saddled with a ridiculous deadline for my book.
I bet my favorite black leather boots he was calling to check on my progress. Unlike normal people, Gabriel texted for emergencies and called for bullshit, so I wasn’t worried about a health scare for Mom or an earthquake destroying our family home in California.
“That’s precisely why I’m not answering,” I told Felix. “I like to imagine his face getting all red and sweaty like that time I shrunk his favorite dress shirt when he came home from college.”
My second-oldest brother laughed and shook his head.
Of all my siblings, he was the one I was closest to. Not in terms of age (that would be Romero) or temperament (that would be Miguel), but in terms of sheer compatibility. Unlike anal-retentive Gabriel, Felix was so laid-back no one would believe he was a renowned artist.
He lived in L.A.’s hip Silver Lake neighborhood most of the year, but he kept a small art studio/apartment in New York since he had so many shows here. He’d landed yesterday and was busy putting the final touches on his sculpture for some big art show next month.
Since I hated working in silence, I’d crashed his studio time with my laptop, a bag of Sour Patch Kids, and a ruthless determination to finish chapter ten before my shift. I was finally making progress on my book, and I wanted to wring out every bit of momentum before it inevitably fizzled out on me.
“Be nice, Isa. It’s probably nothing.” Felix twisted two of the red tubes into a double helix shape. He’d tried to explain the sculpture’s symbolism earlier, and I’d nearly passed out from boredom. As much as I loved him, I wasn’t built for that type of art appreciation. “I bet he wants to know what you’re buying Mom for her birthday so we don’t accidentally double up.”
I hadn’t told him about the manuscript ultimatum, and I’m guessing Gabriel hadn’t either.
“We won’t. The day we come to an agreement on anything, including gifts, is the day hell experiences an Arctic freeze.” I switched topics before Felix could probe further. He was the peacemaker of the family, so he was always trying to wrangle us into some semblance of harmony. “Speaking of Mom’s birthday, are you bringing your new girlfriend?”
“Maybe,” Felix said noncommittally. He went through girlfriends like candy, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he had a new one by the time February rolled around. “What about you? Mom’s been banging on about your love life since…”
Him.
The unspoken word hung between us like a guillotine poised to drop. It dug into my bones, excavating memories long buried beneath piles of guilt and shame while a thick lump clinched my throat.
The clink of ice against glass. The gleam of a signet ring beneath the lights. The echoes of a deep voice whispering all the words I’d wanted to hear.
I love you. I miss you. We’ll go away, just the two of us.
A fantasy that ended in tears, blood, and betrayal. Two years later, I was still grappling with the fallout from my younger self’s stupid decisions.
The lump expanded, pressing against my nose and the backs of my eyes until the studio blurred.
I blinked away my tears and typed a random word just so I had something to do. “No. I don’t bring guys home anymore.”
For a brief, unbidden moment, dark eyes and a crisp British accent flashed through my mind before I batted them away.
Kai and I weren’t lovers. We weren’t even friends. He had no business invading my thoughts like that.
When I looked up again, Felix was watching me with his signature knowing stare. “It’s been two years,” he said gently. “You can’t let that asshole ruin your trust in relationships forever.”
I shook my head. “That’s not it.” He’d shared similar sentiments before, and my lies tasted less bitter every time I uttered them. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust relationships as a concept; it was more that I didn’t trust myself. But he didn’t need to know that. “I’ve been busy. You know, with work and the book.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me, but in true Felix fashion, he didn’t press the issue. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I have single friends.”
That pulled a genuine smile out of me. “You’re the only brother I know who would willingly set up their sister with a friend. Also thanks, but no thanks. I would rather die.”
I shuddered at the thought of sleeping with anyone who was associated with a family member in any way. I was a firm believer in the separation of church (the sanctity of my sex life) and state (surveillance from my mother and overprotective brothers).
“I’m an excellent judge of character,” Felix said, unfazed by my disgust. “I wouldn’t set you up with someone you wouldn’t like.”
“I’m not worried about that because you’re not setting me up with anyone.” I glanced at the top corner of my screen and cursed when I saw the time. “Shit! I have to go. I’m going to be late for work!”
So much for finishing chapter ten.
I scrambled off the couch, shoved my laptop into my bag, and rushed to the exit. Felix’s studio was downtown; Valhalla was uptown. It’d take me at least forty-five minutes to get there via subway, barring any delays or disruptions.
“You’re coming to my exhibition, right?” Felix called after me. “They’re finalizing the guest list today.”
I waved a hand over my shoulder. “I’ll be there!”
By the time I swiped my card at the nearest subway station, I was out of breath and drenched with sweat beneath my coat. Parker was laid-back about most things, but she was a tyrant when it came to punctuality. She’d fired my predecessor for showing up ten minutes late after a train fire.
Luckily, the transportation gods were on my side, and I made it to Valhalla Club with minutes to spare.
My relief was short-lived, however, because when I stepped behind the counter, I immediately caught Tessa’s worried expression. She widened her eyes at me and flicked them toward the bar.
I followed her gaze, down…down…all the way to the man seated with a smug smile and eyes fixed on me like a predator spotting prey.
Oh, fuck.
“Isabella.” The cold, oily voice sent a thousand invisible insects skittering over my skin. “You’re looking lovely tonight.”
“Thank you.” My smile was tight enough to double as a Victorian-era corset. “What can I get for you, Mr. Black?”
Victor Black assessed me with those flat dark eyes. He was the CEO of Black & Co., a media company whose tabloids made the National Enquirer look like Pulitzer material. He technically belonged to Valhalla’s D.C. chapter, but he visited New York often. Unfortunately.
“Sex on the Beach.” A grin snaked across his face. The army of insects bred and multiplied. “My favorite.”
“Coming right up.” I ignored the obvious double entendre and went to work making the drink. The sooner I finished, the sooner I could get away from him.
Late thirties, slicked-back hair, flashy clothes. Victor was objectively decent-looking, but something about him always gave me the creeps. Maybe it was the way he looked at me like he was envisioning the dirtiest things he could get away with doing to me, or maybe it was the relentless come-ons despite my obvious disinterest.
Tessa sent me a sympathetic look from down the bar. She knew how much I disliked him, but he always insisted on having me serve him when he was here, so there was nothing she could do.
“What are your plans for this weekend?” Victor asked. “I’m in town until Monday, and I know of a few interesting events coming up.”
I’m sure you do. I bet they involved little to no clothes and high hopes for his overeager dick.
“I’m working,” I said, which was the truth. I got the best tips on the weekends, so I always said yes to Fridays and Saturdays.
“I’m sure you could take a night or two off.”
My smile could’ve frozen the inside of a volcano as I handed him his drink. “Unfortunately, I have bills to pay, so no, I can’t.” It was as rude as I allowed myself to be toward a club member. Most of them were petty and egotistical enough to get someone fired because of a “bad attitude,” including Victor.
“There are other ways to pay your bills.” Victor deliberately brushed my hand when he took the glass from me. A shiver of disgust ran down my spine. “For example, I can be quite generous in certain situations.”
His meaning was clear.
Waves of nausea tossed in my stomach like a ship during a storm. I would rather fucking die than ever let Victor Black put his hands on me.
“Thank you for the thought, but as I’m sure you know, fraternization between members and employees is a flagrant violation of Valhalla’s rules.” My frosty reply contrasted with the anger simmering in my veins. I wished I could toss the nearest drink in his face or, better yet, slap him so hard it knocked the slimy thoughts right out of his head, but like I said, I had bills to pay and a job to keep. “Now, if that’s all, I have other customers who require my attention.”
I only made it two steps when his hand latched around my wrist.
The nausea intensified, coupled with a surge of adrenaline that pounded in my ears. It took every ounce of willpower not to deck him in the face with my free hand.
“Rules don’t apply to me,” Victor said casually, as if he weren’t holding me hostage in a room full of witnesses. Arrogance gleamed bright and cold in his eyes. “I can—”
“Let her go, Victor.” A familiar smooth, aristocratic voice sliced through my tension like a freshly honed blade through silk. “It’s unbecoming to manhandle someone, even for you.”
Victor’s face darkened, but he wasn’t stupid enough to cause a scene with another member. He dropped my hand and turned.
Kai stood behind him, tie pin-straight, handkerchief crisply folded in his jacket pocket, and eyes diamond-hard as they pinned the other man against his seat.
Warmth rushed to the pit of my stomach, erasing some of my disgust at Victor’s touch.
“It’s nice to see you taking advantage of our intraclub network,” Kai said, his voice deceptively pleasant despite the quiet fury rolling off him in waves. “But I would be remiss not to remind you of our no-harassment policy. Violate it, and your network access will be terminated. Violate it with the wrong person, and you’ll be permanently banned from Valhalla.” A polite smile, colder than the northernmost reaches of the Arctic. “You know what happens to excommunicated members, don’t you?”
Victor’s lips thinned. I didn’t know what happened to ex-communicated members, but the threat was enough to quiet him despite the murderous resentment brimming in his eyes.
“Perhaps you should take a breather elsewhere in the club.” Kai smoothed a hand over his tie. “There’s a lovely jazz performance happening in the music lounge.”
I didn’t relax until Victor disappeared through the exit, leaving a trail of choked bitterness in his wake.
Kai took his vacated seat. A buzz sparked in the air, and my heart twisted into a position that would’ve made my old yoga teacher proud.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Most people would take the rich, powerful person’s side even if they were in the wrong. Others would simply turn a blind eye, especially for something as “small” as a wrist grab. I was female, a minority, and an employee. I held the least amount of power in situations like the one with Victor, and while what Kai did was the bare minimum in some respects, the sad truth was that a majority couldn’t even do that.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kai said, his tone mild. “I simply reminded him of the club rules, per my duty as a member of the managing committee.”
A smile edged onto my lips. “Taxing work.”
“Positively grueling. But I try my best.”
“So grueling you missed your standing appointment here last Thursday?” The words fell out of their own accord. I wished I could snatch them back the instant they left my mouth, but it was too late.
The remnants of Kai’s stony expression melted, revealing a flicker of warm pleasure that had my toes curling in my boots.
“Keeping tabs on me again, Isabella?”
The velvety way he said my name was almost indecent, conjuring images of lazy afternoons and silken sheets. Of hands sliding up my thighs and kisses trailing down my neck, his mouth doing wicked things to my body while he thrust inside me. Over and over, until—
Fuck.
Heat ignited between my thighs. My fingers curled around the counter, but I shrugged off his question and forced myself not to break his knowing stare. “Only so I can avoid you. Anyone who translates classics into Latin for fun terrifies me.”
A laugh crinkled the corners of his eyes, and my pulse jumped in response. It was turning into a Pavlovian situation at this point. Anytime Kai did something, my traitorous body reacted like it’d been struck by lightning.
“I’m happy to report there’ll be no translations today, but if it makes you feel better, I work on genre fiction too. I translated a Nora Roberts novel once. It was a refreshing change of pace.”
“It doesn’t, but thank you for that detail. Come back to me when you’ve translated dinosaur erotica.”
Kai blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Never mind.” I didn’t want to push him too far, too fast. The poor man would probably have a heart attack if he discovered some of the books floating outside his literary bubble. “You know, you never told me why you came in on a Monday the other week.”
It’d been nagging at me since it happened. I had more important things to worry about, but not knowing the reason bothered the hell out of me, like trying and failing to remember the name of a song that sat on the tip of my tongue.
Kai recovered admirably fast from my dinosaur erotica quip. “Does it matter?”
“Maybe not in the grand scheme of things, but I’m a bartender, which means I’m also a good sounding board and therapist.” I poured his scotch and slid the glass across the counter. “A few days ago, I consoled a ramen noodle heiress because she couldn’t find her driver in the rain and had to use her hundred-thousand-dollar handbag as a makeshift umbrella. The worst part was…” I lowered my voice. “The bag was a super special limited edition, and the designer refused to make her another one.”
“Ah, the classic handbag dilemma,” Kai said sympathetically. “What a tragedy.”
“The gravest kind. We should alert the Red Cross.”
“You call, I’ll email. We should cover all the bases for a case of this magnitude.”
My smile blossomed into a full-fledged grin. I hated to admit it, but Kai was tolerable when he wasn’t being an uptight stick in the mud. More than tolerable, in fact.
“I’ll answer your question, but I have to warn you, my secrets aren’t as interesting as you presume.” He took a sip of his drink. “I learned my company’s CEO vote is happening earlier than I’d expected.” His words sparked a hazy memory of a Wall Street Journal article I’d read a few weeks ago. I usually skipped straight to the style section, but Kai’s photo had been front and center on the website. I couldn’t resist a peek, which I soon regretted. The article had been boring as hell.
“How much earlier?” I asked.
“Years. I hadn’t expected to take over until I was forty.”
Kai was only thirty-two.
“Well, that’s a good thing, right?” I reasoned. “It’s like an early promotion.”
Provided he won the vote, which he likely would. I had a feeling Kai Young never lost at anything.
A corner of his mouth tipped up. “That’s one way of looking at it, but if you knew my mother, you’d know she would never give up power this early. She says everything is fine, but…”
His eyes clouded, and my breath stilled when I pieced together the rest of his sentence. “You’re worried she’s sick.”
A pause, then a slight dip of his chin.
“She won’t tell me if she is,” he said. “Not until she can’t hide it anymore. She hates being pitied more than anything in the world.”
A deep, unsettling ache unfurled behind my ribs at the strain in his voice.
There was nothing more gut-wrenching than losing a parent. I wasn’t sure what was worse—the long, drawn-out wait for the inevitable, as with terminal diseases and illnesses, or the sudden rupture of a family, as with accidents and cruel strokes of fate.
Sometimes, I wished my father had been sick. At least then, we would’ve been prepared instead of having him yanked from us without warning.
One minute, he was there, his face filled with loving indulgence as I begged him to take me to Disneyland for my birthday. The next, he was gone. His hopes, his fears, his dreams and memories all reduced to a hollow shell of a body lying among twisted heaps of rubber and metal.
Maybe it was selfish of me. I wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer, but I also never got to say goodbye…
I swallowed the knot of emotion in my throat and forced a smile. I could wallow in the past later, when there wasn’t someone else who had more pressing concerns sitting in front of me.
“There could be dozens of other reasons why she’s stepping down early,” I said in an attempt to make Kai feel better. “For instance, she could be getting blackmailed. Or maybe she met a hot young stud on vacation and wants to spend the rest of her days cavorting with him in the Bahamas instead of listening to boring sales reports.” I paused, my brow furrowing. “Your parents are divorced, right?” I remembered reading something to that effect online. “If they aren’t, forget what I just said and stick with the blackmail.”
“They’re separated, but close enough.” A ray of amusement peeked through the cloud in Kai’s eyes. “It’s odd that I’m hoping for blackmail, isn’t it?”
“Nope. It’s the most easily solvable out of the options, and I’m guessing you don’t want to think about your mom’s sex life.”
Kai blanched.
“Right. Well, if it does end up being blackmail, let me know after you’ve dealt with it. I need some good ideas for my book.”
Those knowing dark eyes sharpened. “What book?”
Shit. I hadn’t meant to let that slip, but it was too late to take it back.
“I’m writing an erotic thriller.” I tucked my hair behind my ear with a self-conscious hand. I didn’t like talking about it with anyone except Sloane and Vivian. They wouldn’t judge me, but some people got so uppity about genre fiction. Either that, or they would ask me a million questions about my agent, publisher, and release date, none of which I had. “I’ve been working on it for a while, but I’m stuck.”
I’d made decent headway since Gabriel’s call. It was more than what I’d written in the past two months, but it wasn’t enough. Not if I wanted to finish before my mom’s birthday.
Kai’s eyes fastened on mine. To my surprise, I only saw curiosity and a touch of sympathy. No judgment. “Stuck on which part?”
“Everything.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this, but something about today felt different from our previous interactions. Easier, more comfortable. “The plot, the characters…” What I want to do with my life. “Sometimes it feels like I forgot how to string a few words together, but I’ll figure it out.”
Maybe if I said it enough times, it would come true.
“I’m sure you will.” A faint smile touched Kai’s lips. “You chose well. Of all the genres, erotic thriller suits you best.”
My eyes narrowed. “Was that an insult or a compliment?”
“It’s however you want to take it,” he said in that infuriatingly enigmatic tone. “So why did you choose writing? I must admit, I pictured you in a more…social profession.”
It was a small, stupid thing, but the fact that he called it my profession even though I hadn’t published anything made my heart squeeze a little.
For that alone, I let his earlier ambiguous comment slide. “I wasn’t a big reader growing up, but I was going through a hard time a few years ago and needed something to take my mind off what was happening.” Work stress, the flaming fallout from my last breakup, seeing all my high school friends get engaged and realizing my father would never walk me down the aisle…it hadn’t been a good time. “One of my old coworkers lent me her favorite thriller, and the rest is history.”
Some people escaped into romance, others into fantasy, but I found thrillers oddly comforting. Sure, I was lost in life and scraping by on minimum wage in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but at least I wasn’t trapped in a cabin with a psychopathic husband or on the run from a serial killer who was obsessed with me.
It was all about perspective.
“Now all I have to do is finish my own,” I said. “Then I can quit and kick Victor Black in the balls without worrying about losing my job.”
Kai’s smile notched up another inch, but his eyes remained serious behind his glasses. “You’ll finish it.” He said it with such unflinching certainty that my heart stilled for a split second.
“How do you know?” I hated the note of self-doubt in my voice.
I’d always been the social butterfly, the person who cheered my friends on and pushed them to step outside their comfort zone. But there were nights when I lay awake, stripped of all confidence and pretense, wondering who the hell I was and what I was doing. Had I chosen the wrong path? Was there even a right path for me, or was I destined to drift through life like an aimless ghost? No meaning, no purpose, just day after day of routine and drudgery. A life wasted on bad decisions and short-term highs.
The familiar vise of anxiety clamped around my chest.
“I know,” Kai said, his calm voice pulling me out of my poorly timed existential spiral. “Because you’re too strong not to. You might not think so, but you are. Also…” A glint of mischief cracked his sober expression. “You tell great stories, condom varieties notwithstanding.”
He laughed when I tossed a cocktail napkin at him.
Heat seared my cheeks, but it was nothing compared to the warmth flooding my veins.
I was seeing a different side of Kai, and I liked it. Too much.
More than I should.
