And then the real torture began.
People. Lots and lots of people. And cameras. Flashbulbs were going off everywhere as we walked down the red carpet to whatever fancy venue was hosting Chicago’s elite. People were yelling and shoving, vying for position to get a better shot. And the center of attention? Noah Crawford—and his date. I kept my face hidden behind his wide shoulders or just turned away in general. Noah kept his arm around my waist as he smiled and posed, waved and greeted the hordes of people while still managing to completely ignore the probing question, “Who’s the beautiful woman on your arm tonight, Noah?” until finally we were out of the chaos and inside, where the party was in full swing.
I was relieved, but then Polly took her place by my side and said, “You ready to go inside?”
“I thought we were inside,” I asked, looking around.
“Silly girl. This,” she said as she opened a set of double doors, “is the Scarlet Lotus Ball.”
Wow. The place was huge, not that I was surprised. Everything Noah did was huge. There were red lotus flowers all over: floating in glass bowls filled with water and candles, in bouquets, everywhere. Silky red banners were draped from the ceiling, complementing red tablecloths and red bows; it looked like a beautiful massacre had taken place in the room. Champagne ran in fountains. No, seriously, there were champagne fountains, in addition to two dozen or so servers strategically roaming the open room with trays of flutes filled with liquid gold. Which probably explained why the people were so lively. Too damn lively.
The attendees were gorgeous, all of them dressed in elegant gowns and tuxedos worth more than the monthly household income of most of the residents in my hometown. It even smelled like money in there. The social hierarchy had a way of reminding people of their place when it came right down to it. Noah had never made me feel less than adequate, but then again, he and I had never really been out in plain sight like this before. Until tonight it had only been the two of us going at it like bunnies in the privacy of his gargantuan abode. Now, in the midst of his real-life friends, I saw the score clearly. If I hadn’t felt completely out of Noah’s league before, I most certainly did now.
“Welcome to my world,” Noah whispered into my ear before taking my elbow and leading me through the crowd. “There are some people I want you to meet.”
Jesus. I was going to screw up big-time. I just knew it.
“Noah! I was waiting for you,” this little bouncing brunette screeched as she sidled up to him. She looked like she’d already had one too many drinky-poos, if you asked me. “Oh, you brought a date? I didn’t realize you were seeing anyone.”
“Mandy, just because we’re outside the office, it doesn’t mean I cease to be Mr. Crawford,” Noah told her in a firm voice. Just then, a waiter came by with a tray of champagne. He grabbed one flute and handed it to me, then took another for himself.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Mandy said, chastened. And then the sizing up began. Judging by the way she scrunched up her nose and faked a smile, I’d say she’d seen through the illusion that I belonged on Noah’s arm. “Who’s she?”
“She is none of your business. Now, run along and find another drink, Miss Peters.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
She gave me one last nasty look, and I leaned into Noah with an adoring smile on my face to spite her.
“Oh! There’s Lexi and Brad!” Polly squeaked, pointing toward a stunning couple a mere few feet away. I managed to snag another glass of champagne before she grabbed my wrist and practically yanked my arm out of the socket to make our way over to the world’s most beautiful couple. Noah got stopped by some suits, but Polly, determined little shit that she was, kept chugging along.
“Lexi!” Polly squealed, finally dropping my arm to run up to the leggy redhead and hug her. This chick had to have been the woman they modeled Jessica Rabbit after. She was built like a brick shithouse: flawless skin, huge tits, tiny waist, pouty red lips. I almost expected to hear the Commodores interrupt the uppity snore music that was currently playing.
“Oh, Brad!” the gargantuan guy next to her trilled in a girly voice, mocking Polly as he batted his lashes and waved his wrists in the air. “I’ve missed you so, and you’re my favorite person. Ooh! Let me feel you up, too!”
Polly broke the embrace with the brick shithouse and stared him down while said brick shithouse smacked him in the back of his head. “Don’t be an ass, ass. We have company,” she said, nodding toward me with a curious look.
“Oh, yeah. This is—”
Noah cut her off, suddenly appearing as if out of nowhere. “Delaine. My Delaine.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me into him possessively. “Delaine, this is my favorite cousin, Alexis, and her husband, Brad Mavis.”
“You can just call me the Gentle Giant,” Brad said.
“He’s a starting defensive tackle in the NFL,” Noah clarified.
“Damn straight,” Brad boasted, puffing out his chest.
“Lexi is his fearsome agent,” Noah continued with a nod in her direction. “I think she scares him more than any of those blood-sucking contract negotiators.”
“Someone’s gotta keep him in line. Besides, he likes the rough stuff.” Lexi smirked.
“Nice to meet you,” I said as I offered my hand toward Lexi in greeting. “Noah has told me absolutely nothing about you.” I laughed awkwardly.
“Likewise,” Lexi said, shaking my hand. One might think the whole “likewise” bit was in regard to the pleasantries, but I had a feeling she meant that as an answer on both accounts—Noah hadn’t said anything about me either, which made sense, just not to them.
“So, Patrick, have you seen Mom and Dad?” she asked Noah.
I looked at Noah with my brows raised in question.
He knew right away what the look was for. He rolled his eyes in embarrassment before saying with a shrug, “Everyone in my family has always called me by my middle name. It was just the easiest way to differentiate between me and my father without having to call us Noah senior and Noah junior.”
“Of course,” I said. Details like that were probably something he should’ve shared before introducing me to his family as “my Delaine,” but who was I to say? I sucked back half of the champagne in my glass, my nerves getting the best of me.
“And no, Lexi, I haven’t seen them yet,” Noah continued, looking through the crowd as if trying to rectify that situation.
“Well, they’re around. I’m sure they’ll eventually make their way back over,” she said with a wave of dismissal. “You know how Daddy can be at these functions.”
Brad, Mason, and Noah started up a conversation about some sports team that I was paying absolutely no attention to because Noah was rubbing circles on the small of my back with his thumb while his pinky dipped beneath my dress to rest in the crevice of my ass. Polly and Lexi were chatting it up, a conversation to which I had nothing to contribute because I didn’t have a clue about the gossip in their circle of friends. So I did the only thing I could: I preoccupied myself with a game of Let’s See if I Can Drink All of My Champagne Before the Next Tray Comes Around with More, and I was winning. It was no small feat. There were lots and lots of trays.
Noah leaned down and whispered into my ear. “Pace yourself, kitten.” Which made my head swim. Funny, I’d just had four, maybe five glasses of champagne, and I was fine. But the man called me “kitten,” and I was suddenly unequivocally inebriated.
“I have to pee,” I blurted out. The conversations around me came to a sudden halt and all eyes turned to me. I supposed that what I’d said wasn’t very ladylike, and certainly not the sort of thing a woman dating Noah Crawford would say out loud. Noted.
Lexi laughed. “I have to pee, too. Come on, Polly. Sounds like we need to hit the head.”
“I swear, Lexi,” Polly said with a disapproving scowl, then turned to me. “She may look like a debutante, but don’t let that fool you. She’s a rude, crude dude underneath all that gl
itz and glamour.”
“That’s my girl,” Brad crowed as he smacked her on the ass and sent her on her way.
“Hurry back,” Noah’s husky voice floated across the sensitive skin beneath my ear. “I want you by my side all night.” He pressed his soft lips against my neck inconspicuously, but I definitely felt that kiss and it melted me like butter over a stack of hotcakes.
“Jesus, Patrick. We’re just going to the damn bathroom. I promise not to scare her off,” Lexi said with a roll of her eyes.
He scoffed. “Good luck with that. I think you’ll find Delaine is quite capable of withstanding your witty charm.”
“Fuck you,” Lexi retorted.
“I love you, too, dear cousin.” Noah smiled and then winked at me before he took a sip of his champagne and turned back to the guys.
As we made our way across the crowded hall to the ladies’ room, Lexi stopped short. “Look what the dog dragged in,” she said under her breath as she nodded to our right.
There was a huge mountain of a man with slick black hair, tanning-bed-bronzed skin, mutton chops, and super bright teeth standing in the middle of a crowd of people across the way. Women were fawning all over him, and somehow he managed to pay equal attention to each one. He certainly possessed a great deal of animal magnetism.
“Well, he’s a cutie, if you like the whole Wolverine Ken thing,” I said with a snort. “Who is he?”
“David,” Lexi sneered.
“David who?”
Polly leaned in like she was about to tell me a dirty little secret. “Noah’s former best friend David, that’s who.”
I gasped, and then I got impossibly hot—under the collar, definitely not under the skirt.
“He’s also Patrick’s business partner,” Lexi mumbled, pushing the bathroom door open. “He’s been trying to get Patrick to forfeit his share of Scarlet Lotus since my uncle and aunt died, the cunt fucker.”
And so my love affair with Lexi Mavis began.
“Wait, Noah’s parents died?” I asked before I realized I probably should have known that, too, but I was just so shocked. He’d never spoken of them before.
“Yeah, a car accident six years ago,” Lexi answered. “He never talks about it, so I’m not really surprised you didn’t know.”
Polly’s expression was solemn. “He lost them both at the same time, and it has tortured him ever since, so don’t bring it up to him. When he’s ready, he’ll tell you himself, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” I suddenly missed my own parents.
Lexi opened up a stall door and ushered me inside. “Hurry your ass up. I need to get my drink on. God, I love an open bar.”
I took care of my business while Lexi and Polly got caught up. Having babies was their topic of choice: Polly wanted one, but Mason wasn’t quite ready; Brad wanted one, but Lexi refused to be barefoot and pregnant while putting her career on the line.
“What about you and Noah, Delaine?” Lexi asked when I opened the stall door.
“Um …” I hesitated and walked over to the sinks to wash my hands. How was I supposed to answer that?
“Lanie,” Polly interrupted. “She likes to be called Lanie, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, just Lanie,” I said with an uneasy smile. “And, um, Noah and I haven’t talked about babies. I mean, we’re not really there in our relationship … yet.”
“Mmm-hmm, I see,” Lexi said and then she sighed in dramatic fashion. “Well, let’s go ahead and get this out of the way, shall we?”
I turned the faucet off and dried my hands. “What exactly is this?”
“Look, Lanie. Noah has no mother, no father, and no siblings. So the whole overprotective warning bullshit falls on my shoulders,” she started. “I don’t really know you, but from first impressions, I like you. Regardless, I’ve gotta put you on notice. If you hurt my cousin, I’m going to kick your ass. And when I say I’m going to kick your ass, I mean you’ll need an ass transplant by the time I’m done with you. We clear?”
I really admired her brass ovaries, but as the woman who everyone thought was truly dating Noah, I had to counter or else I’d look disingenuous. I threw my used paper towel in the trash receptacle and put my hands on my hips, facing off with her. Polly took a step back because she was a smart kid.
“Fair enough. But here’s a little memo of my own from me to you and anyone else who wants to be in our business. I love that man more than I ever thought I could love another human being, unconditionally and irrevocably”—which wasn’t a lie at all, I realized—“and if anyone has to worry about getting their heart broken in this deal, it’s me. Having said that, if anything goes down between Noah and me and you feel the need to kick my ass, then you’ve got it to do. I’m not intimidated by you. So if you ever feel froggy … jump.”
Polly sucked in a deep breath and I could actually hear her swallow. I kept my stare intense, never wavering as I faced Lexi down. She was an Amazon of a woman who very likely could’ve annihilated me, but I wasn’t going to back down. That would have been a show of weakness, and although I felt vulnerable as a snail out of its shell when it came to Noah, I most certainly was not a weak person by nature.
Lexi’s scowl broke and one corner of her mouth lifted up into a smile, Noah’s smile. “I swear to God, if I weren’t already married, you and I would be eloping tonight.”
I smiled in turn and Polly let out the breath she was holding. “You two are a match made in heaven.” She shook her head. “If we’re done seeing whose ovaries are bigger than whose, can we get back out there to our men?”
“Absolutely,” Lexi said, linking her arm through mine. “Mine are bigger, by the way.”
“Well, that remains to be seen,” I tossed back as we stepped through the door.
My smile dropped immediately when the sea of people in front of us parted and I caught a glimpse of Noah. He was standing across from an older dark-haired man who was very handsome, and he was smiling and nodding. But what made my stomach churn in knots was the woman hanging on Noah’s arm. Draped like she was part of his wardrobe was a tall, strawberry-blond woman who reminded me a lot of Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. She was movie star material, and she looked like she knew it, too.
“Lexi, please tell me that’s your sister.”
“Ugh, please! That hussy only wishes she shared the same gene pool.”
“Then who is she?”
“That … would be Julie,” Polly answered with disgust in her voice. “Aka the octopussy. Rumor has it she fucked eight guys at once—after she and Noah broke it off, of course. Don’t ask me how she did it.”
“Octopussy, huh? I guess that explains why she’s got her slimy tentacles all over my man,” I said, seeing a whole lot of red and, admittedly, a bit of green. My mind started drumming up all sorts of lethal maneuvers from Mortal Kombat, all of which I knew I could certainly pull off, given as pissed as I was.
“Want me to do the honors? I’ve been itching to cut that bitch for a long-ass time now,” Lexi offered. I really adored Lexi. She was quickly becoming my sister from another mister.
“No, thanks. I’ve got this,” I said as I threw my shoulders back and made my way toward my man.
I heard her laugh from behind me. “Ribbit, ribbit.”
14
the dam breaks
Noah
I fucking hate Julie. As I stood there with my uncle Daniel and aunt Vanessa, there was nothing I could do about Julie’s unwanted and unsolicited attention. Except to drink more, and quickly, so that my body would hopefully be numb to her repulsive touch. I would need to scour with an SOS pad or something as soon as I got home.
Not long after Delaine—who looked delectable in that gown, by the way—disappeared with Lexi and Polly to the bathroom, the traitorous bitch had made a beeline straight to where I stood. As if she thought I was champing at the bit to see her again. On the contrary, it had totally slipped my mind that she might be there, but like I said before, my mind hadn’t been
anywhere near right since Delaine walked into my life.
“Oh, fuck me,” Mason had sighed as something behind me caught his eye.
Of course I had to turn around to see what all the fuss was about, but as soon as I did, I wished I hadn’t.
“Well, as I live and breathe … Noah Crawford,” the familiar sound of my ex’s voice cooed. She was trying way too hard to sound sultry, and it didn’t suit her—at all. She might have looked good, but I wouldn’t know because all I could see was her bent over while her asshole was being plugged from behind repeatedly by David’s cock.
“Well, as I suffocate myself and hope to die … Julie Frost,” I replied in a bored tone.
“Aw, play nice, Noah, and I just might give you a second chance by the time the night is through.” As if I was ever going to go back down that road again.
“Fuck you,” I said simply, and turned my back on her.
“That’s the plan.”
She sounded so sure that shit was going to happen that all I could do was scoff and finish off my champagne. I was going to need something stronger to get through the night. “Who was stupid enough to bring a whore like you to something this classy anyway?”
“Watch your mouth, Crawford. That’s my date you’re insulting,” David approached our little clan and slipped his arms around Julie’s waist from behind. “Told you my date was a real looker.”
I would have wagered my left nut that what he expected to gain from that little donkey punch of a move was one hell of a reaction out of me, one that would be explosive and detrimental to my position in the company. He expected me to lose it in the middle of a room filled with not only employees but clients—both current and prospective—not to mention board members. It was a good plan, but one that didn’t stand a chance of working when a bitch like Julie Frost was involved. No way was I giving him the satisfaction. So I gritted my teeth and forced a smile.
“You’re looking good tonight, David. Where’d you get the tux? Backstabber’s Emporium?” I asked. To their credit, Brad and Mason did their best to cover their laughs.