Still being optimistic, she had the firm plant some dummy tracks on social media via Instagram and Twitter about him partying but waiting with amorous impatience for his wife to get back from a conference in Canada. But according to the follow-up pic Corrie sent, waiting for his wife wasn’t exactly what Owen Van Tyle was up to.
“Okay,” Jade said again, this time with a sigh in her voice.
She really didn’t want to leave Melody. They’d been actually having a real conversation about things that mattered. Things Jade had forgotten.
It was just plain nice to sit with someone she considered family and who didn’t use that label as yet another way to hurt her. “No worries, Corrie. I’ll go reel him in.”
She hung up the phone.
“Gotta go?” Melody asked around another sip of her wine.
“Yes. I’m sorry.” The disappointment rang loud and clear in her voice. “But I want us to do this again. Or at least to do it better next time.”
“You’re on call like a doctor or something, huh?” her cousin asked while Jade pulled thirty dollars from her wallet.
“It’s nothing that meaningful, believe me. People basically pay me a lot of money to babysit other people and tell lies in public forums.”
“The pay must be pretty good.” A hint of a tease sparkled in Melody’s eyes.
“I can’t complain.” Jade stood up. “I’ll buzz you tonight, okay. I...” She pursed her lips and wondered just how honest she should be. Then she shrugged. What the hell? There wasn’t much else for her to lose. “To be honest, I didn’t really want to come meet you. But I’m glad I did. Something happened a couple of days ago that made me realize how important family is.”
Melody’s face lost some of its joyful carelessness, leaving a soft smile in its place. “Yeah... I’m glad. And it’s really cool that you came out even though you had doubts. That means your dad didn’t squeeze all the family-love out of you.”
Jade aimed for a smile but instead felt her lips curl down a little in sadness. Sometimes she did think all the “family-love” in her was gone. Her parents had spent so many years isolating her from her relatives until Jade felt she had no one in the world but them. And then her parents were gone too, leaving her completely alone.
Warmth glowed in Jade’s chest. Maybe she didn’t have to be alone after all.
Swiftly, she leaned down and hugged Melody. “See you soon, Mel.”
Then she left the restaurant feeling lighter than when she’d come in.
Chapter 9
Kingsley’s fiancée was going to kill him. And she might even enjoy every moment of it.
Carter curled up his mouth around the faintly bad taste in it. One of Leo’s cheap cigars. “This is the worst idea you’ve ever had, Leo.”
“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.” Leo knocked back another shot of tequila and watched the show unfold in front of them with far too much pride.
A strangled sound left Carter’s throat and he brought the glass of seltzer water to his mouth to help get rid of the taste of cigars from his tongue. The so-called sexy lighting in the VIP lounge, low and in shades of red and purple, swirled around his brother’s laughing face. Leo looked like mischief on a particularly wicked day.
The Kingsley before he’d met and fallen in love with Adah had been a dog. Just a few notches on the bedpost shy of a man whore. Back in the day—basically last year—he had a trailer load of women parading in and out of his bedroom. But the man who came back from Aruba didn’t see any other women. For Kingsley, Adah was the only woman of his heart, of his bed. Period.
Then he allowed Leo to arrange a bachelor party for him. Maybe he should’ve told Leo Adah was the only woman for his lap too.
Leo was one of the last remaining single brothers, owned a string of successful nightclubs in the city, so it made sense at the time. At least to everyone but Carter. Leo had the devil’s own sense of humor and usually got away with half the stuff he did because he was charming and had the killer Diallo smile. Carter had tried to warn Kingsley not to ask Leo to plan anything. But away from business, no one paid Carter and his warnings any mind. Which was why they were now doing way too much at one of the most exclusive strip clubs in Miami, i.e. watching an Adah look-alike give Kingsley a lap dance.
His brothers, their male friends and Leo’s twin, Lola, who’d insisted on coming to the club with them laughed and encouraged the whole thing.
“I hope this doesn’t come back to bite you all in the ass,” Carter rumbled.
“Come on, who’s going to tell Adah?”
That wasn’t one of Leo’s smartest questions. Adah, even more than any other woman who married into the family, had been completely embraced by everyone. By the other wives of course, but especially by the girls in the family who’d always felt outnumbered by the nine brothers who ran around high on testosterone most of the time.
Usually, his brothers used their power for good. Leo, though...
Carter mentally shrugged. This wasn’t his problem anyway. He was here for the fun, but as usual, part of him was on the lookout for any way this could turn bad, so he could fix it. Sipping his tonic water, he hoped there would be no need for his “magic” tonight, but with his brothers, all he could do was hope.
“Come on, honey. You sure you can’t do that?” Carter’s ear picked up the wheedling voice under the cover of the loud, sensual music the girls danced to.
The VIP lounge was big. Massive, actually. Away from the main part of the club, the high rollers could safely and easily indulge in as many lap dances and private conversations as they could pay for. But they had to do it in a shared room with other big-money customers.
Only floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains—thick and deep purple—separated Kingsley’s bachelor party from the other groups in the large room. Somehow, the club had rigged it so the music from each enclosed area—roughly a hundred square feet—didn’t leak to any of the others. But if you weren’t hearing impaired, you could just about hear every word between the dancers and the people who paid for their attention.
Carter determinedly sipped his glorified water and turned his ear away from what was clearly not his business. Unlike most places where cash could just about buy you anything, this club strongly discouraged sex between the girls and the clients. Not just big and sturdy-looking guys at the doors and hovering nearby, but it had cameras in all the cordoned-off areas too. If they saw something foolish going down, they’d swoop in and take care of it. In theory anyway.
So he ignored the guy throwing money around and trying to get the dancer to use her mouth for more than talking.
In their area, he had enough to worry about with a slightly tipsy Kingsley being set up by their mischievous younger brother.
“Fiancée or no, I would’ve made a play for that dancer a long time ago,” Leo said to Carter.
“That’s because you don’t have a woman you like for more than a couple of weeks at a time and want to keep.”
Leo looked at him with mockery in his eyes. “You talk like you have a woman like that.”
Carter sipped his water and ignored him in favor of turning his sympathetic gaze back to his oldest brother.
Kingsley sat in the chair of honor in the center of the room, a couple of his shirt buttons undone, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The woman rolled her gorgeous body all over Kingsley’s lap. Smiling with her plush and damp burgundy lips, she grabbed his hands and brought them to her waist. Each time, he pulled his hands back and put them on his own thighs. He stayed smiling, a lazy tilt of his lips that with Kingsley could mean anything.
He wasn’t feeling her up, but he wasn’t pushing her away either. Then again, Kingsley was never one to burst anyone’s bubble. Leo and Kingsley’s best friend, Victor, wanted to throw him a bachelor party he wouldn’t forget. This was certainly it.
Starting at ten in the morning, it had been an all-day celebration. A lavish breakfast catered by Victor. Postbreakfast drinks on a boat sailing Biscayne Bay. Parasailing over the brilliant blue water, more food, more drinks, smack-talking and, finally, the strip club.
On the day before the wedding, Carter assumed Adah was having an equally debauched good time with her matron of honor and bridesmaids. Maybe even with male strippers. But it probably didn’t include strippers. Probably. Like the rest of the family, Carter already loved Adah, but he didn’t know her that well.
“This thing isn’t gonna take care of itself, honey.” The coaxing voice from behind the velvet curtain on the other side of the vast room made Carter twitch.
Where the hell were the guys who were supposed to be keeping these girls from being harassed?
A movement nearby caught his eye, and Victor, just about the only other guy who wasn’t eyeballing the stripper or fending off the attentions of the other two girls Leo paid to be in the room, stood up with his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed at the cordoned-off area where the voice was coming from.
So, Carter wasn’t the only one concerned.
Good. Sometimes Carter worried he was hyperaware of things around him. Too concerned about what was going on in the lives around him to pay attention to his own.
He stood up and joined Victor. After exchanging a look, the two of them swept aside their own heavy curtain and headed into the main part of the room.
Just then, the door banged open and stopped them in their tracks.
The noise wasn’t a loud one, but it was enough to draw Carter’s attention.
A woman stalked into the room. Two men big enough to put Carter’s height and muscles to shame walked in alongside her like the hulking wings of an otherwise gorgeous and delicate bird.
Jade?
Yes. Jade.
A current of electricity ran down Carter’s spine and settled like a warm hand in his lap. Since the engagement party, thoughts of her came as easily and frequently as his next breath. The dream that wouldn’t leave him alone for over ten years suddenly disappeared. Instead, he woke every morning aching. The touch of his own hand never satisfied him, so he didn’t even try.
And now, here she was.
“Give me a sec,” he muttered to Victor then signaled a passing waitress for a whiskey.
“You all right, man?” Victor looked at him like he worried for Carter’s sanity.
Oh, yeah. Of course. He never drank when he was on the clock. And over the years, his default behavior was to act as if he was working. Even when he was with his family. And everyone knew that.
“Yeah, I’m good.” He gulped the whiskey as soon as the waitress brought it over.
In the meantime, Jade and her mammoth wings swept around the large room. They took the long way, somehow avoiding the plush lounge where Kingsley was putting his future married life in danger.
Somehow, Carter wasn’t surprised when she pushed aside the curtain shielding the section where the concerning sounds were coming from.
“Good. I’m glad someone is going to handle that asshole.” Lola sauntered up, sipping on something pink and frothy. “I was just about to complain about him to somebody.”
Unlikely.
Carter thought her more likely reaction would’ve been to stomp over there and drag the guy off the stripper. Lola, half of a set of twins with more courage than common sense, did not take crap from anybody. And sometimes got into trouble only her much bigger brothers could get her out of.
“What’s that woman going to do, anyway?” Lola craned her head to see what was going on in the other VIP section. “It’s not like she works here or owns the place.”
She didn’t, but Carter didn’t wonder what she was doing at the strip club. Getting to know this version of Jade—capable, successful, busy—was like meeting a whole new woman. And as a PR pro, he saw for himself how very hands-on she was. The girl he knew before wasn’t the type to burst into a strip club with obvious muscle by her side. But, more and more every day, he was coming to realize that this Jade Tremaine wasn’t the woman, or girl, he knew all those years ago.
The sounds from the other VIP section changed. The voice of the high roller from before growling low with aggression. Jade’s response, though indistinguishable, was steady and calm. Even when High Roller let loose a few curse words.
“You can’t treat me like this! I’m Owen Van Tyle!”
Whatever that meant, it apparently didn’t mean very much to Jade because moments later she walked out, behind the tall men this time. They firmly held a young and moderately attractive guy between them. High Roller, Carter assumed.
The two big guys firmly marched the self-proclaimed Owen Van Tyle out of the curtained-off room and toward the main door of the VIP area. Jade followed them, whipping out her phone as she walked, without once looking for a second in Carter’s direction. Her high heels stabbed the floor with each step.
Seconds later, the curtains of Van Tyle’s VIP area flapped open and a relieved-looking dancer ran out. Followed by another dancer, then yet another.
How many women did that guy have in there with him anyway?
“Isn’t that Jade? Your...whatever?” Lola pinned Carter with a questioning look.
“Yeah!” Leo popped up out of nowhere. “At first, I was thinking the girls here just got hotter—” Carter growled at him but Leo just grinned and kept going “—then I got a better look.” Leo waggled his eyebrows. “So, are you going to finally make your move or what?”
“You can stop right there,” Carter muttered. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the door Jade had disappeared through. Even now, the remembered sway of her hips was making his pants feel just a little bit too tight.
Lola pressed her smiling lips together and shot Leo a look. “You know Carter doesn’t like it when you tease him.”
“Yeah, is that why you do it so much?”
The two of them laughed. At Carter.
Through the slightly parted velvet drapes, Carter saw that Kingsley and the dancer were still doing...whatever it was that lap dancing consisted of and weren’t paying them any attention. Same for everyone else in their area. The other men chatted up strippers and cheered on Kingsley, building up a ruckus it was damn near impossible to hear anything over.
That was all fine by Carter. He stared again at the door Jade had disappeared through.
He turned to Leo. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”
“Good boy.” Leo laughed. “You’ll learn to take care of your own wants and desires yet, brother.” He clapped Carter on the shoulder and headed back to the action.
“What does he mean by that?” Carter frowned.
Lola went up on her tiptoes and landed a kiss on his cheek, and Carter automatically looped a hand around her small waist to briefly hold her close. “You’ll figure it out.” Then she was gone too.
Why were his sisters always telling him that?
He thought he managed to wait an admirably long time—just enough to prove he had some self-control—before rushing out the door after her. Carter found Jade just inside the back door of the strip club, wishing the bouncer a nice night. Carter slowed down to enjoy the sight of her, figure on sleek display in the clinging red dress, the super-high heels that made her legs look even more amazing. The rocking curve of her hips and butt as she walked away from him nearly made him moan out loud.
Damn. She’d gotten even more beautiful, no, sexier, over the years. And the last time they’d been together—at his parents’ house—her dress had been elegant and restrained, the perfect compromise between business and family-friendly. But this red dress. Sweet baby Jesus... It clung to her body and moved against her sensual curves in a way that seemed deliberately designed to make him crazy. She wasn’t a stripper but from her brief walk through the packed club, he’d noticed nea
rly every pair of eyes in the place followed her, obviously mentally stripping her naked and putting her up there on the pole with the other girls.
But her look was beyond stripper sexy. She was elegant and mouthwatering and every step she took made him want to drop to his knees in worship of her stunning body and the tartness inevitably waiting for him on her lips.
Okay. Control yourself, man!
In the hour or so he’d been in the club with his brothers, none of the women had affected him like this. Not a single one.
Shifting himself where he stood, Carter cleared his throat and kept walking despite the sudden rock-hard obstacle in his pants.
Ahead of him, Jade had her phone in her hand and an intent look on her face. When she slipped out the door, he followed. Inside the jacket of his sports coat, his phone rang, but he ignored it.
Her eyes roved around the secluded parking lot like she was expecting someone or something to hop out of the bushes. Paparazzi?
She stood next to the open driver’s side passenger door of a black town car. With her arms crossed over her chest, cell phone held easily in one hand, she said something to the person in the car. Through the open passenger door, he could see the high roller in the back, firmly trapped between the two hulking guys. From the guy’s curses, he wasn’t too happy with how his party ended.
“I already let his wife know everything is under control,” Jade said. “Just get him back to the hotel. She’ll meet him there in less than an hour.”
A low-voiced response came from inside the car. One of the big guys, Carter assumed.
“Yes,” Jade said. “He’ll calm down once the liquor wears off but keep an eye on him anyway. We don’t want this to spin out of control.”
Another inaudible reply came and she nodded. The passenger door of the limo closed and she stepped back to allow the sleek black vehicle to pull away from the curb.
Her Perfect Pleasure Page 13
