Power Play: A Romance Collection

by Lauren Landish

  I smile big and wide, framing my face with my hands dramatically to soften the truth bomb I just dropped on him. “So, dinner at your place?”

  I can see him struggling, wanting to tell me I’m wrong and to mind my own business and on the cusp of refusing my dinner offer. But then he gives in. “This is not a date. I don’t date. Ever.”

  The words are grunted, more caveman than eloquent. But all I hear is him agreeing to let me come over for dinner. And though I’d half-expected my armchair psychology to shut him down, it actually worked, which tells me that maybe he’s not as put off by me as he’d like me to believe. But I’m not pushing him any further, not right now.

  “Nobody asked you out, Grumpy Gus. I just want dinner without a whole hostel of people trying to scrounge my noodles.” I smile, though we both know I’m lying.

  I want to have dinner with him. Not a date. That’s fine by me too because I’m not looking for anything romantic either, but I want to just be with him, peel at his layers and find out what’s buried underneath the stoic façade.

  Because it is a façade. He’s cold, rock-solid and powerful on the outside, but there’s pain, passion, and life below the surface. I know the look, and I want to dig in and test it. Maybe test him and myself too.

  “Fine. Dinner.”

  It feels like a win.

  Kyle

  She crooks a finger at me, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Follow me to the best bread in all of Italy.”

  She sounds like a cheesy tour guide, but her antics tickle at something deep inside me that used to enjoy silliness.

  Of course, that part of me died long ago. Even before Anna. It died when I saw just how bad people can be, like rotten fruit that spreads and feeds on the goodness in the world.

  What’s replaced it is dark and pretty rotten itself. I shouldn’t spoil Carly’s innocent luminance with my foul and unworthy self.

  But I follow her.

  She waves and chats with vendors throughout the market like they’re old friends. Hell, maybe they are, I don’t know, but I don’t think she’s been in Europe all that long. Her accent and word choices are still American.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  She blinks, pausing next to a fruit stand. “In Europe or Italy?” But she doesn’t wait for me to answer, instead launching into a story. “Came after I graduated high school. Guess it’s been a little over a year now.”

  I choke a bit and cover it with a cough, praying I didn’t just wander into trouble. “You’re a fucking teenager?”

  She smirks, amused that I’m bothered by her age. “No, I didn’t come immediately after school, doofus. I’m twenty-two. How old are you, anyway?” She looks me up and down and I wonder what she sees.

  “Thirty.”

  She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug, unconcerned. “Not so much about the numbers. More about the life. I’ve met kids with old souls and elderly folks with young spirits.”

  She stops at a bread stand, picking a loaf and complimenting the dark-haired vendor on his selection today. “I hate that I missed the honey-crusted cornetti though. Maybe save me just one tomorrow? I’ll be by before I head to work, I pinkie promise.”

  Her request is kind, not syrupy, and to my surprise, he nods, telling her he’ll save her one. Italian bakers are not known for their patience.

  As we walk away, I stop.

  She turns back to me, eyes questioning. “How do you do that? Why do you do that?”

  Her brow furrows. “Do what?”

  “Just . . . that.” I point back to the bread vendor who’s watching us with a smile.

  No, not us. Her. Watching her with a smile. I snarl at him, and he jumps, turning away, but I hear Carly’s laughter, tinkling and bright in the evening air.

  “Mostly by not doing that. I just talk to people, smile, and be friendly, you know? I’m alone in a foreign country, have been in one of those cages I told you about for far too long, and now I want to experience . . . everything. So, I talk to people. It’s not rocket science.”

  She smiles and starts walking again. And just like everyone else in the market, like everyone who sees her . . . I can’t help but follow.

  It may not be rocket science, but I think it’s fucking magic. I shouldn’t want to be near her, should be running the other way as fast as my legs can carry me, but she’s magnetic, weaving some witchy magic that I can’t help but respond to.

  Too soon, or not soon enough, I’m not sure, we come to my small apartment without my even realizing I’d led her here, and she calmly invites herself in. It’s stark and empty, more of a pitstop than a home. She makes a cursory glance around and says nothing before heading straight to the kitchenette. Pulling the supplies we’d gathered out of the paper bag, she makes herself at home and gets to work.

  Not knowing what to do with myself, I sit in one of the two chairs at the eat-in kitchen table and watch her for a moment. Her dark hair swishes as she moves, catching the dull light of the bare bulb and turning it into caramel. She’s humming to herself, talking to the food like it’ll respond.

  “Oh, yeah, going to be so good!” she whispers to the pot as she stirs something I can’t see but smells delicious. She moves efficiently, reminding me of her sidewalk performance act, graceful but crisp.

  The space is so small, she barely needs to take even a step, but I’m still entranced, my throat going dry as her hips sway back and forth in a fetching rhythm, powered by some internal beat that makes my own pulse start to keep time with her.

  “Tell me about your cage,” I suddenly blurt out to keep my mind from going places it’s not quite comfortable going yet. It’s a bit out of nowhere, but she doesn’t miss a beat, knowing that I’m returning to our earlier conversation.

  “I grew up with parents who had certain rules and expectations,” she says, her hips not stopping at all and still drawing plenty of my attention. “Lots of them. Do this, don’t do that. Be this, don’t be that. It was kind of like being a Barbie doll they played with. It was a pretty life. It’s not like they were beating me or locking me in closets. And on the surface, I mean . . . I had material things that most kids could only dream about. But I was trapped inside a cage nevertheless, just a golden one. It all came to a head shortly after high school.”

  She disappears into the past, her eyes glazing as she stirs the pasta on the stove.

  “What happened, Carly?” Her name tastes bittersweet on my lips. I don’t like it, but I don’t not like it either. Or more specifically, I don’t like the fact that I want to say it more, to growl it as those hips of hers do things that have my cock stirring in my pants.

  I sit back, crossing my arms over my chest, needing to fortify the wall between us, praying for a little more control.

  Her shrug is heavy, and her voice drops a noticeable amount. “Robert Gunze the Second happened.” She draws out the suffix and says it like the name should mean something to me, but it doesn’t, so I wait her out. “His dad and my dad worked out . . . a deal, I guess you’d call it, to connect our families. All of a sudden, I was engaged to Robert and planning for a wedding with a guy I didn’t even know.”

  “Like an arranged marriage?” I ask, my brows lifting. “Your parents do know this is the twenty-first century, right?”

  She smiles, but it’s sad. “For some of us, and not for others. But it was all I knew, all I’d grown up with, and it didn’t occur to me to say no. So there I was, planning a wedding, and we’re dating. It was all very nice.”

  “I’m guessing there’s a ‘but’ in the story,” I prompt, curiosity growing. I don’t like the idea of her being married to someone—not someone else because that would imply that I want to marry her. And I’m definitely not interested in her that way. Not at all.

  Definitely not interested in matrimony, my traitorous cock says, but other things could be considered.

  Still, it calms down enough to let me listen to what Carly has to say, like it’s somehow important to m
e.

  “But then it wasn’t. Robert was a bit of a douchebag. Monied, entitled, a brat type who’d never had to work for anything. I was too, to some degree, but I wasn’t like him. I had morals, dreams, and plans for life after I got away from my parents. I thought it was going to be better. But Robert had a cage too, although his is like a soulless black hole. And he wanted to force me into it, make me fit the mold of who he wanted me to be. It was ugly and painful. I knew if I married him, I’d be locked away into that life forever.”

  Her words are soft, and I don’t think she realizes that she touched her cheek carefully when she talked about how painful it’d been. She might not have said it, but I can tell a bit of what she went through. It makes me respect the bright, open star she is now even more because I know how hard she worked for it and how easy it would’ve been to let the assholes in her past snuff her out.

  “I’m sorry.” The words are useless and I know it, having had them said to me dozens of times. But I repeat them for the same reason, simply not knowing what else to say.

  She waves her hands, like she’s clearing the air of the moroseness of her past, and I see her will a smile to appear on her Cupid’s bow mouth. “Past is past, and if it hadn’t been that bad, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Here. In my apartment. Cooking me dinner.

  A wave of warning rushes through me, but I try to swallow the panic down.

  Just dinner. Not a date. She’s not Anna.

  She plates the pasta, sliding a piece of the promised bread smeared with olive oil onto each of them before setting them down. “Voila!”

  As she turns around to grab the bottle of wine and the plastic cups that are all I have, I grimace. Plastic cups, like my plastic life. Nothing real, nothing substantial, nothing pretty. Not anymore.

  It’s like a dark cloud over the whole evening.

  She sits down, unaware of my change in mood. “Dig in.”

  I robotically take a bite, chewing though I don’t taste a thing. “It’s good,” I say, more out of habit than manners. Honestly, it could be cardboard and ketchup, the way my mood’s suddenly darkened.

  “Now you. Your turn,” she says, forking an obscenely large mouthful of pasta into her open mouth.

  “What?” I ask, a little awed and a little grossed out.

  “I just told you like, basically my life story, though I left out some of the juicier parts,” she prods, grinning. “Your turn. This is reciprocal here, man. Give me something, anything. A tiny nugget at least. Or you won’t get this bread.”

  She grabs at the slice on my plate playfully. “And trust me, you want this bread.”

  And suddenly, this feels all too domestic. The two of us, her cooking us dinner, the conversation, though that hasn’t exactly been comfortable.

  But I have been. Comfortable with her. Carly.

  Guilt slashes through me painfully as my eyes burn. It should’ve been like this with Anna. Shopping at the market, making dinner, and eating together before retiring to our bed. Anna had never been in this apartment, but I can see her image superimposed over the snapshots in my head of Carly moving about in the kitchen. The two women are nothing alike, but somehow, both draw me to them.

  “Kyle?” Carly asks, her mouth full of another big bite. “Everything okay?”

  I push my chair back, the legs scraping on the floor as I stand. “You need to go.”

  She sputters. “What?” She swallows thickly, trying again. “I was just teasing. Keep the bread, keep your story. What the hell?” She laughs awkwardly.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. You need to leave.” I cross my arms again, rebuilding the wall I hadn’t even realized had been crumbling.

  Confusion mars her face, and I can see her search my face and scan my body, looking for some clue about what the fuck has set me off.

  She doesn’t find the answer, but she must see something in me that she recognizes. “Okay, I got ahead of myself. Too much digging, too fast. I can relate. I’m sorry for prying.”

  She stands carefully, like she’s afraid I’m about to snap. Considering she’s seen me nearly kill Raul, that’s a reasonable concern. She still grabs the bread with a smirk. “But I am taking this.”

  She’s manipulating me, softening the situation because we both know I’m overreacting. But I can’t stop it, can’t change it.

  She picks up her bag from the floor by the door where she’d dropped it when we came in and steps into the hall. She turns back to me, still smiling somehow despite how weird I’ve suddenly gotten.

  “If you need anything, or just want to talk, or want to not talk, I’ll be at Strega’s or the Ponte Vecchio. Or you can call me.” She scribbles her number on a piece of paper from her bag and hands it to me.

  She gives me a sad smile. “Thanks for tonight. Sorry again if I pried too much.”

  I nod once and shut the door, putting my forehead to the wood as I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The words force their way to air, choked and painful. “Her name was Anna. She’s dead.”

  It’s more a reminder to myself than anything. My purpose is set, my plans made, all from one act that changed everything.

  Shame floods my heart as I silently apologize to Anna again for not saving her.

  In the morning, there’s a single slice of bread in the hallway with a huge bite taken out of the corner. Carly.

  Chapter 12

  Nathan

  “So, how was your date with the hostess with the mostest?” Caleb asks, a grin visible even from behind his coffee cup. “She feeling the stupidity of wrong place, wrong time yet?”

  “It wasn’t a date,” I say, though the truth echoes in my head that there was certainly more than a business meeting happening between me and Emma.

  Emma.

  Shit. I’m going to have to tell Caleb more of the details. I don’t keep secrets from him. It’s always been me and him, us having each other’s back even when it was sketchy as fuck.

  His dimpled grin and raised brows make him look like the mischievous kid he always was, and I remember the time he’d been ‘seeing’ the head cheerleader at our private high school.

  Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Cute guy, popular girl. Unfortunately, the cheerleader’s boyfriend hadn’t felt the same way.

  Busting into the near-empty classroom long after the last bell rang, I barely have time to get the words out, knowing all hell’s about to break loose.

  “Goddammit, Caleb. Get it in your fucking pants,” I whisper-yell. Two pairs of eyes flash to mine in shock. His . . . murderous at the interruption. Hers . . . embarrassed. Maddy hops up from her knees, swiping at her puffy lips, her lipstick smeared messily.

  “What the fuck, dude?” Caleb asks, tucking himself away. He’s not embarrassed, just pissed that I’ve interrupted what I think might be his first blowjob. “Can’t you at least knock and give some warning?”

  “Bryce is looking all over the fucking school for you. And her. Seems one of you has a big mouth about your little rendezvous. I can guess who.”

  Caleb looks to Maddy, who flushes bright red. “I only told Jordyn I thought you were hot. She must’ve figured something out.”

  Caleb looks pissed but says nothing. Firmly, I take Maddy’s arm, shoving her toward the desk as I hear a yell down the hall.

  “Get under that desk and keep your fucking mouth shut for a change. If Bryce figures out what’s going on in here, someone’s getting in a fuckton of trouble. Newsflash, it won’t be me and Caleb,” I tell her directly, pointing at myself and then my brother.

  Fire flashes in her eyes for an instant, but then she realizes I’m telling the truth. Caleb and I can lie our way through whatever shit show might ensue and come out the other side with each other as alibis. Worse comes to worse, we have each other’s back in a throwdown as well. And two against one doesn’t bode well for her boyfriend.

  In any scenario, she’ll be left standing in the cold, marked as either a liar or a slut. Bryce would never want a
nything to do with her again either way, and her standing in our school hierarchy would be fucked. Something she cares about but Caleb and I could give a rat’s ass about. Her future is in her hands, or in her ability to keep quiet for a solid sixty seconds.

  Angrily, she drops to her knees again, crawling under the desk and miming locking her lips with a key as she glares. Caleb nods once, his thanks unspoken but heard all the same.

  “Now what?” he asks.

  But the door opens, Bryce barreling in, sweaty from practice and red with anger. Thank fuck Caleb has his dick in his pants already. I take a lesson from Dad’s rulebook and go on the offensive, not letting Bryce get a word in edgewise.

  “Hey, Rogerson! We were just talking about you and the team. I’ve got a hundred bucks on this week’s game. You’re gonna make us all winners, right?”

  My face is a mask of congeniality, like we’re way-back friends. I offer up a high-five, still rambling distractingly. “Saw your practice on Monday. Those throws are laser-precise, man.”

  The confusion is lessening his fury in increments and he mindlessly returns the high-five. “Uh, thanks. I’m looking for Maddy, have you seen her?”

  The question is directed to Caleb, who thankfully has a poker face. “Who? Oh, is that your girlfriend? Cheerleader, yeah?” His act could win a fucking Oscar nomination.

  Bryce nods. “Yeah, I heard she was hooking up with you.” The anger is building in his tone again.

  Caleb laughs like that’s the funniest shit he’s ever heard. “Seriously, man? Hell, thanks for the compliment, I guess.”

  Bryce grunts. “Huh?”

  “So, you think a senior Varsity head cheerleader who’s dating the best quarterback this school has seen in a decade is hanging out with a sophomore?” Caleb explains. “Shiiit. No offense, man, but I wish. Shit like that doesn’t happen outside of movies, you know?”