SEAL'd Heart

by Alice Ward

  There were a dozen things I could have yelled at him. The bar was loud, though, and we’d already made enough of a scene. Whipping my wallet from my pants, I tossed a bill down on the table and tore out of there.

  The city was too loud, cars honking and people yammering right in my ear. I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked block after block. A heavy ball was forming in my stomach, made out of something akin to lead. It was a familiar one, though in recent years I’d done a pretty good job of keeping it at bay.

  When I was a kid, though, it had been there all the time.

  I didn’t recall much about my parents. The one thing I had to remember them by was the small scar on the back of my head, granted to me thanks to a beer bottle being intentionally thrown there. I don’t even know which one of them did it. They were both in the room, and they were both capable of such an action.

  After them, there was the usual string of foster homes. It was a Lifetime movie waiting to happen. Except the ending. For me, there was no happy sunset, no ideal couple coming to rescue me from Chicago’s inner city and take me home to a house with a garden and a dog just waiting to sleep at the foot of my bed.

  So I’d written my own ending. One built on success. I’d worked my ass off in high school, gotten myself a scholarship to college. The day I turned eighteen, the state turned me out on my ass, but by then, I was ready to take on the world. I’d already learned the basics, number one being don’t trust anyone.

  Apparently, I sometimes forgot that part. I’d let myself trust Nate, let myself believe we were friends.

  I certainly wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  I wove around the block, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk the whole way. First Candace, then Nate… who next? What next?

  I could only take this for so long.

  Pulling out my cell, I called the florist my intern used to send flowers to Candace’s office. Most likely, they were closed for the night, but there was still a chance they would be open. Two orders of a dozen roses each hadn’t been enough. I would send a hundred.

  Nate had snubbed me. Others had snubbed me.

  But a woman who didn’t even know me would not get away with doing the same. There was nothing for her to have against me. Whatever she thought I was, no way in hell did she know how crafty I could be, how good I was at getting my way.

  The florist’s phone rang and rang. With a curse, I hung up. A second plan already brewed, and it was drastic, but so were the times.

  After getting Tesla Catering’s address off the internet, I drove to the spot in Old Town and found parking on the street. The trees on the block Tesla Catering sat on glittered with strings of white lights. A small swinging sign, stuck above a door between a dog salon and a coffee shop, announced the location of the spot I searched for.

  I tried the door but found it locked. Stepping backwards, my eyes drifted up to the second floor. The space between the coffee shop and dog salon was too narrow to host a business, so no doubt it just held a staircase leading up to the second floor.

  Darkness leered at me from the windows above. The place was definitely closed.

  “Shit,” I cursed, raising my hand to bang it against the door. I stopped myself just in time.

  Now what?

  I was riled up, not ready to go home. The whole thing with Nate had been too much. Maybe I would head back to the office and get started on the next day’s work.

  Gritting my teeth, I turned on my heel. It seemed the best option. Again, people had disappointed me. But at least the real long-term goals I’d already committed myself to never did.

  One day soon, I would have the whole city of Chicago under my near monopolistic grip. Getting there took one step at a time, but I didn’t doubt I would make it. Friends failed me, but employees didn’t. Businesses didn’t. Money didn’t.

  The first step was forgetting all about people like Nate and Candace, people who had turned their backs on me. The next step?

  Coffee.

  Coffee and then back to the office.

  I pulled open the door to the little coffee shop next to Tesla Catering. The bell dinged, and a woman at the end of the coffee bar’s line turned to look at me.

  Candace.

  With a pencil skirt, bright red sweater, and pinned back hair, she channeled a working woman of the sixties. Her eyes went a little wide, and her cherry red lips parted.

  Once I got over the initial surprise of seeing her, I smirked. “Well, funny running into you here.”

  Her mouth snapped closed. “It is funny, isn’t it?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from the words. “What a small world we live in.”

  The line moved closer to the bar, and she took a step forward. I followed. “Indeed,” I agreed, ignoring her attitude. I never believed in luck, but maybe it did exist after all, and maybe it was on my side.

  “What were you doing?” she asked, turning away and speaking to me over her shoulder. “Stuffing flower petals under my office’s front door?”

  I bit back a smile. “Would that have won you over?”

  She hesitated. “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She huffed and shifted her weight. My eyes fell down the pencil skirt to her toned calves. “What happened between us?” I asked. “You left that limo like—”

  “Like I knew who you were?” She turned around to face me straight on.

  I felt my eyebrows push together. If it were most any other person talking to me in such a manner, I would have been annoyed enough to leave right then and there. Since it was a woman who’d been driving me mad since the moment I set eyes on her, things were different. I was different. My threshold for taking shit had been raised considerably.

  “And who am I?” I coolly asked, taking a small step toward her.

  Her eyes fell down, and her lashes fluttered. “You’re a man with a very big and very negative reputation.”

  “You don’t know me,” I answered as evenly as I could.

  Candace rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I need to. You seem hell bent on making sure the whole city knows exactly what you’re like. I already told you, Niall Lambert. Your reputation precedes you.”

  She spun back around like that was the final word. I took a second to enjoy her tight ass before stepping right up next to her. “So you’ve heard some rumors. Do you believe every rumor that hits your ears? Come on. You seem smarter than that.”

  Her eye line snaked my way. “I’ve heard enough. From all levels of sources.”

  “So you’ve been reading up on me?”

  Her cheeks turned pink. The older man in front of us grabbed his coffee and left the counter. Candace stepped up. “Small black coffee please,” she ordered.

  I caught the cashier’s eye and signaled that I would pay. Candace tried to hand the scruffy haired kid a bill, but he waved it off.

  “I’ll have the same,” I told the kid, handing him a ten.

  “I don’t need you to buy my coffee,” Candace snapped.

  “How about dinner then?” I volleyed back. “Can I buy you that?”

  “It seems you already wasted all your money on roses.”

  I had millions to waste, which, if she’d really done research on me, she probably already knew.

  Our coffees landed on the counter in front of us. She grabbed hers and stomped away. I followed.

  “One date,” I proposed, catching up to her at the door. Some hipsters pushed their way in, and Candace stepped to the side. I used the opportunity to place myself between her and the exit.

  “Just one night,” I continued. “It doesn’t have to be anything like our time in the limo.”

  Though hopefully it’ll be just that.

  Her lips parted, her eyes darted to the side, then back to mine. She was breaking. I was getting to her.

  I lowered my voice and pushed my face a little closer to hers, just enough so that my breath could reach her cheeks. “Let me show you just who I am.”

  Candace
threw her head back and glanced around the coffee shop, but at this point, I knew she was only playing hard to get. I’d already won her over.

  Her blue eyes suddenly hit me, the intensity coming from them striking me like lightning. I swayed, and for half a second, almost lost my footing.

  “And just who are you?” she whispered in a voice so soft and heavy it gave my own finesse a run for its money.

  “I’m...”

  And then I forgot. I couldn’t remember who I was, where I came from, or where I was heading.

  Anything that didn’t have to do with those blue eyes went right out the window.

  Candace lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “One night. Show me who you really are.”

  She opened her purse and pulled a pen from it before grabbing my hand and writing a phone number down below my knuckles.

  Her eyes still locked on mine, she smirked and then walked around me, opened the door and disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Candace

  I flipped the visor down to check my reflection one last time before leaving the car. I’d picked my new peacock feather earrings to go with the little black dress Stephanie had given me for my birthday several months before. Add the red lips I always felt naked without and a pair of nude pumps, and I was ready to go.

  Almost.

  Because, for some reason, I was having a lot of trouble getting out of the car.

  I’d questioned this date a hundred times over the last three days. I’d picked up my phone at least four times to call the night off.

  But I hadn’t been able to. As much as I knew Niall to be bad news, I also knew him to be just what the doctor ordered when it came to lust filled cravings.

  The way I rationalized it, it was best to just go and see what happened. Well, not just see what happened, but make a decision. Though I’d been the one to scramble out of that limo and leave Niall behind, each hour since leaving him had been plagued by fantasies involving his mouth and hands.

  I’d hoped he wouldn’t try to get in touch with me again. Yet I’d been giddy to receive the flowers and thrilled to find him in the coffee shop. I’d just done what I needed to do and hid my feelings.

  Hiding things till they just eventually dissipated wasn’t usually my style. I confronted things head on. But everything was different with Niall. Things were dangerous. I knew how easily I could fall under his influence, how easily I could become just another girl he used and left in the dust.

  I hated to admit it, but I kind of figured I needed to do just that to him before he did it to me. I needed to beat him at his own game.

  Or maybe things wouldn’t turn out to be so crass. Perhaps after spending a couple hours chatting with him, I would find that we had so little in common that my attraction level to him would actually drop. That had happened before with guys. Or, alternatively, I would go home with him, bang him, and get him out of my system.

  Either one of those roads I could live with. It was getting into the guy that I couldn’t handle. Niall was not the kind of person you wanted to fall for.

  I took another deep breath and yanked the car door open. Time to suck it up and steel myself against whatever was to come.

  Niall had wanted to pick me up, but I insisted on driving and just meeting him at the French restaurant. With my own car nearby, it would be easy to escape if I felt the need to.

  I headed down the block for the red awning that I would know anywhere. The restaurant had opened only six months before and was still one of the hottest in the city. Its reviews had made it into several national magazines, and rumor had it, if you wanted to book a table, the wait was somewhere around a month.

  Which led me to wonder just how Niall had managed to get us in on such short notice.

  Either he was such a player that he kept a table in the restaurant reserved full-time or he had used his connections to pull some strings.

  Whichever it was, the matter wasn’t really one I needed to worry about. For me, getting through the night meant making sure I didn’t fall for Niall.

  If I’d been thinking straight, or if I hadn’t been such a horn dog, I would have steadfastly refused the date. But no. I hadn’t done that. Instead, I’d let my hormones run the show, and there I was, walking into the lion’s den.

  Sleep with him or not, I reminded myself as I walked through the restaurant’s front glass double doors. Just don’t fall for him.

  The small foyer opened into another room which housed the hostess stand and long velvet cushioned benches. There stood Niall, monolithic in a gray suit that matched his eyes. A little shiver went through me at the sight, and I gripped my clutch tighter to my stomach. Flashes of the night in the limo hit me. We’d been so close to going to that forbidden place… suppose I had. Would I still be meeting him for dinner, or would I have gotten my fix and been over him?

  Niall stepped forward. “Good evening.” He swept my hand up in his and lifted it to his lips for a kiss. “You look amazing.”

  I swallowed hard and braced my buckling knees. “So do you.”

  It was funny, going forth with the expected pleasantries when only a few days before I’d been snarling at him in a coffee shop.

  Maybe I would need to apologize for that.

  No, I decided as the hostess led us to a booth table. Niall’s reputation still stood. He deserved every bit of snubbing that he got.

  We settled into our seats, ones so fresh and new they still smelled like leather. Niall immediately ordered a bottle of wine. I picked up the one-page menu and began perusing it. The menu was short, with only six different entrees, but each dish was five-star. I could almost taste the food just by reading the descriptions.

  “I hope this place is up to par for a foodie such as yourself,” Niall said.

  I looked over my menu at him. “Oh, it should do.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched up, and my stomach did a little flip. Setting the menu down, I took a hearty drink of water, as if that somehow might stop the sudden giddy feeling.

  “Have you been here before?” I asked.

  “No. I’ve been waiting for a special occasion.”

  I tried not to laugh, but apparently, he could read the amusement in my face.

  “What?” he pressed.

  “Sorry, that just… it sounds like a line.”

  Niall lifted a shoulder. “Is it a crime to try to impress you?”

  I didn’t say anything, instead opting to let him read my silence any way he chose.

  “I’m not quite sure what’s going to work,” he went on, propping his elbow up on the table. “Roses… dinner at a nice restaurant...”

  “Maybe my respect can’t be bought.” I stared him down.

  He took the challenge and met my gaze. “I bet it can’t.”

  Such a charged bolt of energy went through me that my leg actually jerked. Thank goodness it was under the table, and he couldn’t see it.

  “You are a foodie, aren’t you?” he asked. “Surely I didn’t have that wrong?”

  I inclined my head in acknowledgment. “No, you did not have that wrong. I love to cook elaborate meals and host dinners. I love to go to restaurants. Unfortunately, I don’t get as much time for those activities as I would like. Most nights it’s mac and cheese or fish sticks in my house.”

  I bit my tongue, not wanting to reveal any more.

  Niall grinned. “Every chef has a guilty pleasure.”

  I swallowed hard. “True. What about you? What’s your guilty pleasure when you’re not running a major corporation?”

  “Chasing the best the world has to offer.”

  The waitress arrived and presented the bottle of wine, then poured our first glasses. I waited until she left to speak again.

  “I know you’re lying.”

  Niall’s eyebrow rose.

  “Or you’re leaving something out,” I went on.

  He took a sip of wine and diverted his eyes. “And what makes you so sure of th
at?”

  “I can read your body language… the way you speak. It’s pretty easy to tell when people are just being rhetorical.”

  Niall smirked into his wine glass. “This isn’t quite how I hoped this date would go.”

  That stung for some reason. Perhaps I really was being too hard on him.

  “Everyone is chasing the best,” he murmured, looking out across the dining room. “The best of whatever they think is worth having.”

  This new statement hit home. Now, finally, he was speaking from the heart.

  “So what’s the best for you? What’s the biggest thing worth having?”

  His eyes darted back to mine. “Everything. I want to own it all. The whole world.”

  A long, pregnant moment passed.

  And then I burst out laughing. I chortled so loudly people at the nearest table stopped their conversation to look over at me. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and attempted to push down the giggles.

  Across the table, Niall colored slightly.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “That...” I laughed again. “That doesn’t even make sense. I mean, to own the whole world? What does that even mean? That you want to be, like, who’s that guy from Austin Powers? Dr. Evil?”

  Niall grew even redder.

  “Sorry,” I gasped. “I know I shouldn’t be making fun of you. But really…”

  I clamped my lips shut before I could say anything more. Another long beat passed, and the waitress arrived to take our orders. I avoided looking at Niall, feeling slightly bad about my outburst.

  “What about you?” he demanded, jutting his chin in my direction. “What’s worth having more than anything else?”

  I didn’t have to even think about it. “Now. This very moment is worth chasing more than anything else because it’s all we have. Any second, it can all be over. You and me, we might not even make it home tonight. We could get hit by a bus on our way out of this restaurant.”

  “I parked on this side of the street.” I didn’t so much as crack a smile. Niall cleared his throat, his face growing more serious. “If you’re all about the moment, then how have you managed to create your own business at the ripe young age of—”