I should find time to take her out to dinner, I decided with a guilty heart.
At the same time, Tilly declared out loud, “I should tell Garrett to introduce her to one of his younger friends. She said that while she enjoyed working with Garrett, she found the work rather cutthroat and exhausting. I’m not sure she’s cut out for a life in the business world.”
I wasn’t so sure about my stepsister becoming an investment banker either. Leighton really did seem more like the Ladies Who Lunch type, not the Ladies Who Bought Lunch With Their Own Hard-Earned Money.
But some tiny bit of stubbornness kept me from agreeing with Tilly out loud. How many times had I been told by my mother and sister that I should give up running the clinic I’d founded so that I could be the wife and mother Garrett deserved. There was no way I’d start trying to make decisions for my stepsister too.
“So, how are you progressing on the wedding?” Tilly asked, turning fully to face me. “Were you able to meet with the wedding planner I sent your way last summer?”
I grimaced. “This fall has been crazy. The clinic keeps getting more and more popular. I think we’re going to have to bring in another doctor soon, which is great, considering how many more people we’ll be able to help with accessible health care in the future—”
“You’re almost out of your baby-making years, Olivia,” Tilly reminded me, cutting me off. “And I know both you and Garrett want children. When will you prioritize planning this wedding over your work?”
Tilly still beamed for the rest of the party to see, but her tone let me know her teeth were most definitely clenched behind that bright smile.
Or maybe I was projecting since I was smiling and clenching my own teeth as I answered, “Maybe this is a conversation you should be having with Garrett. He could also find the time to meet with a wedding planner.”
Tllly visibly startled as if the idea of her precious youngest son planning his own wedding was on par with a member of the aristocracy being asked to take out the trash.
And that was it for keeping up appearances. Her smile disappeared, and her eyes narrowed on me like a blonde honey badger.
But before she could reply, Gerald said, “Let’s not make a scene, dears.”
The Easton CEO turned to me with a conciliatory look. “My wife is simply excited to get the ball rolling on this wedding before our big acquisition.”
“What big acquisition?” I asked, grateful but confused about the subject change.
Gerald visibly startled at my question. “Easton Whiskey has been in talks to acquire Glendaver Bourbon since Garrett proposed. Did your father not tell you?”
I shook my head—not only because my father hadn’t told me, but also because I could hardly believe it.
Glendaver was one of the few privately held liquor companies left in America, and my father tended to look down his nose at companies that had either been gobbled up by liquor conglomerates like Jack Daniels or gone public, like Easton. Plus, he abhorred their product.
“If you ever think I’m letting that Virginia whiskey past my lips, then you’ve been out there in New York too long,” he’d said after I offered to bring him home a bottle when I dated Garrett the first time around.
But now Dad was discussing selling Glendaver to Easton? I mean, I know our family-owned company had taken a hit during the last recession. People had turned to cheaper options like Bulleit. Also, unlike Bulleit, the Glendaver marketing department, which was pretty much made up of Dad’s University of Kentucky B-school buddies, had failed to grasp the importance of social media and other alternative modes of advertising.
So though bourbon had grown in popularity since I left home, Glendaver had become that slightly too expensive bottle in grocery stores that people might gift but tended to skip over when it came time to pick a bottle to imbibe at home.
Dad had talked about retiring next year and selling the company. But I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d choose Easton Whiskey as a buyer in a million years.
Why hadn’t he told me?
Even more upsetting, why hadn’t Garrett told me?
“Excuse me,” I mumbled. “I have to…go change my usual drink order with Garrett.”
I walked away before Tilly could ask why I didn’t just text him.
Suddenly, I was tired of being accommodating. It was my birthday, and all I’d gotten from my boyfriend was a whole bunch of confusion and unanswered questions.
I went looking for him at the wet bar right off the formal dining room. But he wasn’t there.
And I also couldn’t find him anywhere among all the guests milling around the first floor—a few of whom asked if I was one of the Chrysanthemum cast members who’d apparently performed a song from the show before my arrival. I almost couldn’t blame them for the assumption. I was one of the very few dark-skinned people in attendance who wasn’t in the cast. Yet another reason I’d like to be ringing in my thirty-sixth birthday pretty much anywhere but here tonight.
Maybe Garrett was upstairs. Whenever we visited for dinner, Gerald Easton made sure to take us up to his study to share a finger of the 100-year-old Glendaver I’d gifted him the first time Garrett and I dated.
“When Garrett told me you’d parted, I said to him, ‘Well, I’m keeping the bottle!’” he’d joked the first time we came over for dinner after getting back together—and pretty much every dinner afterward. So the bottle was nearly empty now.
Garrett preferred top-shelf alcohol, so it stood to reason he’d come up here to enjoy the good stuff.
I opened the door to the study to check, and as it turned out, I was both right and wrong.
My whole body went cold with shock and I dropped my clutch onto the study’s plush rug.
Yes, Garrett was in the study. But the only thing that was getting swallowed was his dick—which was in Leighton’s mouth.
He half sat on the edge of his father’s desk, his eyes closed and his mouth gaping open as my sophisticated stepsister bobbed her head frantically, making gagging sounds as if Garrett’s four inches was actually the six he’d claimed.
“Oh, babe, you always do that so well,” he said, fluttering his eyes open to look down at her. “You’re so much better at it than—Olivia!” He yelled out when he saw me standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
And I…
Well, I was learning all sorts of things today about the difference between real life and the movies. Treadmill accidents are just horrific—not funny in real life.
And discovering your fiancé cheating?
There were no recriminations. No demands to know why. Not even a “How dare you?”
I just turned and ran. Ran as fast as I could from what I’d just seen.
“Olivia? Olivia? Where are you going?” I heard his mother call out in the distance.
I couldn’t answer. If I did, I knew I would lose it in front of all these high society people in this world where I didn’t belong no matter what last name had been pinned onto me.
I ran and ran—until I slammed into somebody’s chest.
It was so hard that I bounced off like some law of force from a long-forgotten Physics class.
I was wearing heels, and there was no doubt I would have fallen if the person I’d run into hadn’t wrapped two meaty hands around my upper arms, steadying me before I could tumble.
I blinked, realizing two things at once.
One, I was outside now, standing on the stairs in front of the party.
And two, the person I’d run into…it was Dawn’s friend. The criminal who had threatened Garrett after he refused to wash his money. What had he called him? A Dragon.
A new fear joined all the confusion swirling around inside my chest as I silently asked for the second time in the same day, Why is he here?
I mean, what possible reason could he have for showing up at an opera gala?
As if in answer to my unspoken question, he said, “Come with me. Dawn needs your help.”
&nb
sp; 5
PHANTOM
Phantom had done what he needed to do. Escorted the baby doctor from her uptown party to the hospital to see Dawn after Victor found out his ex had been mugged.
He could have left out after that. He’d already done more than enough for one day—including settling his angry grandma back in her Chinatown apartment, shooting eleven 24Ks in cold blood in retaliation for what their gang had done to the third Silent Triad Dragon, Han, and then fetching the mesmerizing doctor from that swanky AF Upper East Side party.
He’d known as soon as Victor got that call that he’d need somebody he trusted to check over the baby. And Olivia Glendaver was the best baby doctor he knew—granted, she was the only baby doctor he knew. But still, he’d bet his stake in VIP Bai3 that there wasn’t anybody else on staff with a better bedside manner.
So yeah, he’d done his part just by getting her here. He should bounce to the apartment he kept on the Upper West Side and take care of other business until Victor needed him again.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he lingered by the closed door of Dawn’s VIP suite until the doc emerged still wearing her evening gown from the gala—just underneath a white coat some nurse had handed her.
“Oh! You’re still here!” she said when she found Phantom standing there like a mountain who didn’t know what to do with itself.
She didn’t run straight into him this time, but she backed up a few steps as if she had. “Hello again.”
He shifted from wingtip to wingtip, weirded out by all the feelings popping off inside his chest just because she was talking to him. He’d never been shy a day in his life. Or nervous. But Olivia Glendaver had him struggling to get words out.
He finally managed two: “Dawn okay?”
Olivia answered in a reassuring rush, “Yes. I can’t give you any details about the exam, of course. But I will say, don’t worry, both she and the baby are unharmed. Thank goodness…”
Her breath hitched on those last two words, and it sounded suspiciously like she was trying not to cry.
“Anyway, thank you for coming to get me. It was lovely to see Dawn again and just amazing to hear about her chosen career path. I can see now that becoming a doctor wasn’t for her, and it seems like she’s right where she should be.”
Phantom narrowed his eyes. “You okay?”
She gave her head a little shake and plastered on a smile. Phantom wasn’t intuitive or anything close to empathetic, but even he could tell the smile was a terrible patch job. All teeth and it didn’t make it anywhere near her sad eyes.
“It’s been a long day. I’m going to….” The shoddy smile job crumbled off her face. “I’m going to go.”
With that, she turned and got in an elevator like they didn’t have anything left to say.
Which he supposed they didn’t. Their business was done now.
The elevator doors closed, disappearing her—probably forever since Victor would undoubtedly take Dawn with him back to Rhode Island. The NYC doctor’s services would no longer be required, so no need to follow her. No need at all—oh, who was he kidding?
Phantom took his own elevator down to the first floor and heaved his huge body into a jog to chase her out to the street, even though he fucking hated cardio. The need to catch up with her burned inside him that bad.
He still had enough cool left to slow down right before he got outside, though. He made himself act casual as he walked through the hospital’s front doors. Less, I’m chasing you down like a dog. More, hey, look at us just so happening to be on the same street at the same time.
However, that faux casualness blipped out when he saw her walking north. North. Not south. Even though that was the direction of the subway she always took to reach the brownstone she shared in Central Park West with her boyfriend.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded, running to catch up.
She jumped and gasped when he suddenly fell into step beside her. And he added, “Uh, this is the same place where Dawn just got mugged.”
He figured that sounded a little better than, “I know where you live, so I know you’re walking in the wrong direction.”
“Um…um…I’m not sure.” She looked all around, her expression confused, verging on shell shocked.
“I um…forgot my purse back at the party. And I can’t go home, and my friend Bernice lives in Harlem. But um…she only has a one-bedroom and a little child, so not her, I’m thinking now. I can sleep in the clinic. It’s only a few blocks away.”
“Why can’t you go home?”
She didn’t answer, just kept on walking with her head down, like she was running away from something.
So he stopped her, catching her by the shoulders. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me anything. But I’m not letting you sleep in your clinic, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t have security. I’ve got a place on the upper west side. We’ll go there.”
Fear flashed across her eyes, and he liked that. Not her being afraid necessarily, but her having second thoughts about going somewhere with a random guy she didn’t really know.
If it was anybody else but him making this offer, he’d want her to run fast as she could in the other direction. But in this case, he assured her, “It’s a two-bedroom. You don’t have to worry about me. And if that’s not good enough for you, I can drop you off there and head back to Rhode Island—that’s where I’m usually at.”
“No, it’s okay. If it’s a two-bedroom, then there’s no problem.” She appeared to decide at the same time she said, “You were your grandma’s first call. I trust you.”
She trusted him.
Three tiny words. Didn’t even add up to ten letters. There wasn’t any reason they should punch his chest in, but they did.
And he choked a little as he said, “Alright.”
They started walking south. Together.
“It’s a bit of a walk,” he said after a few steps. “Like, fifteen blocks. You might be regretting it soon in those heels. You want me to get my car out of the garage?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather walk if that’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure.”
So that was what they did. Walked in total silence.
His cousin, Victor, couldn’t talk—that was the whole reason they’d name themselves The Silent Triad. And he found most vocal people outside of Han irritating as fuck. So he didn’t mind the quiet.
At least he shouldn’t have minded the quiet.
But for the first time in, like, ever, he found himself wondering what a woman was thinking. Why had she been running out of that party without her purse? Why couldn’t she go home?
He was no good at small talk—hated that shit with the force of a thousand suns. But this awkward silence made him feel like Han’s loud vintage corvette, growling beside a sleek electric car.
“So…you into any sports?” he asked, giving it a try.
Several beats passed by. Then she said, “Today’s my birthday, but my fiancé forgot. Then I found out tonight that he was cheating on me. With my stepsister. That’s where I was going when I slammed into you at the party. I was running. I was running away. And that’s why I can’t go home.”
Phantom blinked at her sudden answer to all the questions he’d decided not to ask out loud.
“Well, shit,” he answered. “Want to go back to his parents’ townhouse and watch while I smash his teeth in? I got time.”
She laughed. Phantom had no idea why since he was one-hundred percent serious.
But instead of answering his offer, she continued talking. “You know, we broke up a couple of months after your visit. The guy in the picture—he was just my boyfriend back then. We drifted apart and had a very adult conversation about exploring our options. But then, one day, he ran into each other again at this Manhattan U. alumni mixer, and we both were cool with dating around the other’s busy schedule. It was so easy to start dating again whenever it was convenient for us. Then eventually move in tog
ether to ‘optimize our budgets and delete his commute’—that was how he put it when he convinced me to let him move into the brownstone my dad bought me as a med school graduation present.”
“Sounds…practical,” Phantom said out loud while deducing that must have been around the first time Garrett asked him for a loan, on top of what he was already getting paid for his money-laundering services.
“We were never the world’s most passionate couple,” she went on with no idea of the bullet she’d dodged. “Not like Luca and Amber. But we made sense. At least on paper….”
Her face took on a bitter cast. “And as it turns out, that’s probably why he asked me to marry him. Because his family wanted to acquire Glendaver—oh, I should add here that I come from this prominent Kentucky Bourbon family. Maybe you’ve heard our slogan? The Best Kentucky Bourbon Courtesy of Scotland.”
“Yeah, I know Glendaver,” he confirmed, leaving it at that.
And the doctor heiress went back to her main point. “I guess everyone knew this was basically a marriage of convenience but forgot to tell me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know why I’m so upset. I mean, what was I expecting? He’s the scion of this old-money family. And the only reason I even walk in the same circles as him is that my mom decided to adopt me from Africa as a Hail Mary to save her marriage—which by the way didn’t work.”
He had another urge he’d never felt before. To reach out and take her hand. To let her know she could expect whatever the fuck she wanted. Because a woman like her—generous, smart, and capable AF with beauty on top? A woman like her deserved nothing less than all her dreams coming true.
But Phantom was about as good at deep conversation as he was at shallow ones. Business. Business was pretty much his sweet spot. Especially the kind that came with high stakes and a side of intimidation. And this wasn’t that.
“Uh…” he scraped a hand over the shaved back of his head. “What part?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said your parents adopted you from Africa. Which country?”
Phantom: Her Ruthless Fiancé: 50 Loving States, Kentucky (Ruthless Triad) Page 4
