House of Payne: Ice

by Stacy Gail

  “Five dollars would make more sense,” Sunny said to the wall-mounted projector screen, a smile playing around the corners of her mouth. Damn. He’s almost forgotten how frigging impossible it was to look away when she smiled. “Demographics show our subscribers—primarily animal lovers who’ve got big hearts to begin with—are also generous when it comes to donating to their community programs. This is a good idea, Ice.”

  “Let’s make catnip kickers out of all that exclusively designed material,” June said, sounding excited. “You could sign each kicker, Ice. I know I’d love getting something like that for my kitties.”

  “Then our clowder would officially be cool cats, with genuine tattoo artwork in their lives.” Franklin suddenly gasped. “That’s what we’ll call them—the Cool Cat Kickers! I’m brilliant. Tell me I’m brilliant.”

  “You’re brilliant, num-nums,” June cooed.

  “What the fuck’s a clowder?” Ice muttered to Sunny, pitching his voice low so only she would hear him. No way in hell was he going to ask what a num-nums was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “You know how you call a gathering of birds a flock, or maybe a murder of crows? A clowder is a bunch of cats living together.”

  “Kinda scary how the term murder is sitting right at the forefront of your brain.” He gave her a side-eye, only to linger on her profile. It was a travesty that sculptors the world over weren’t fighting each other to the death to recreate that unique, tip-tilted nose of hers. “Or am I reading too much into your word choice?”

  “What do you think? We can video the signing of the Cool Cat Kickers for the promo spots,” Sunny went on, raising her voice so the rest of the room could hear her. “We can show Ice being hands-on with the product. This will underscore how much both he and IBKC are engaged in this project, and how much we care about our local shelters this time of year. I’ll put together a shooting schedule for the commercials that will put a spotlight on Ice and his exclusive d—”

  “No.” With an air of finality, Ice closed her laptop and turned the lights back on. This time she got the hell out of his way, sidestepping so widely she again nearly wound up in the potted plant.

  Damn, that was some serious awareness she had going on.

  Very interesting.

  “What do you mean, no?” Acting as if she hadn’t almost put a foot in the plant’s brass holder, Sunny gave him her patented kiss-me-until-I-smile frown, bringing back one helluva lot of memories. “What part are you saying no to, exactly? You’re the one who brought this project to us.”

  “The project, yeah, and I’m more than happy to pay for the full production of it, if IBKC agrees to do the distribution.”

  “Of course—”

  “But my name’s not going to be front and center on this fundraiser, Sunny. I’m just an artist donating designs on behalf of House Of Payne, not myself.”

  Her frown didn’t waver. “So, they’re the ones who are sponsoring this fundraiser?”

  “I’m sure they would if I’d told them about this.” He spared a moment to think about it before he lifted a careless shoulder. “Guess I’d better do that when I head in to work later.”

  “Sorry, I’m not understanding,” Sunny stated the obvious. She was one of the smartest people he’d ever come across, so when she didn’t understand something she got pissy about it. “Is this your project, or isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Then why don’t you want to put your name on it?”

  “Because I’m done with being in the spotlight. I want peace, I want quiet, and I want to take part in making my new home a better place by doing this fundraiser. What I do not want is to see my name and face plastered all over the damn place. I did that once and it made my life a fucking tangle, so I’m not going to let shit go sideways all over again just because you want to put my name and face on this.”

  The infuriated widening of her eyes probably should have scared the crap out of him. A sane man certainly would have known the sensible thing to do was run for the nearest exit. But being sane was overrated, and running from Sunny Fairfax was the one thing he would never do

  “Well.” Franklin Lennig cleared his throat when the silence became toxic. “I’m thrilled to have the backing of the famous House Of Payne on a project such as this, so I’ll just kick this over to legal to make sure we’re doing this up right. Ice, if you’d be so good as to deliver it to your employers, we’ll get this deal done.”

  “Great.” Ice nodded at the other man. At least Franklin wasn’t a hard sell. “I’ll coordinate with Sunny as soon as we get this buttoned up to see how we’ll want to move forward with this project. You want to walk me out?” he added to Sunny, who looked like she would have been more than happy to do so, as long as that walk landed him in front of an oncoming freight train.

  Jaw locked, she nodded and led the way out of the room.

  I’m not going to let shit go sideways all over again just because you want to put my name and face on this.

  The worst rage Sunny had ever experienced had her trembling on the verge of telling Ice to go fuck himself, right there in front of her employers. What the hell was going on? How could he blame her for making Skull and Bones Ink a roaring success? And blame was definitely the right word. There had been no doubt about the accusation burning in those blue eyes he’d turned her way. What was it he thought she’d done?

  “You know where the exit is,” she said as soon as they were out of earshot of the conference room. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

  “Sunny, Sunny, Sunny.” He shook his head, as if he were tolerating a tantrum from an overwrought toddler. “You’re not that upset you can’t put me on display again, are you?”

  “Display? Oh my God, you’re unbelievable.” Her throat tightened with the strength of her fury, and she had to fight for calm so that she wouldn’t actually become that overwrought toddler. “I never wanted to put you on display, Atticus. I wanted to promote your business. I opened every creative vein I had to make sure I did my best when it came to promoting your business. I cared about it becoming a success, because I cared about you. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.”

  “Yet you never once heard me when I told you I didn’t give a fuck about getting my name in lights or my mug on TV.” Then he made an impatient gesture, as if trying to wipe their words out of the air. “But I’m not going to talk about all that shit, because it’s nothing more than water under a bridge that I hope stays burned. All that matters is here and now. With no distractions to get in the way, you’re finally going to understand the man I really am.”

  “I know all about the man you really are,” she gritted out between clenched teeth, but it couldn’t be helped. Try as she might, she couldn’t get her jaw to unclench. “For two years I moved heaven and earth to build a dream with you—Skull and Bones Ink, the greatest tattoo studio west of the Rockies. I was devoted to you and that dream. I thought you were, too. Then out of nowhere, some producer whispered in your ear about a demographic that I didn’t fit, and like that—” she snapped her fingers, “you fired me. That’s when I realized things like devotion and loyalty don’t work when they come from only one person.”

  “You’d be surprised how devoted I am, Sunny day.”

  “Yeah, I would be.”

  “When you think about who pushed for the reality TV bullshit,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, moving to the heavily burdened coat tree to pluck up his navy blue ski jacket, “do me a favor and remember who it was who came over to my house with the contract, pleading with me to sign. Remember how I didn’t want that crazy-ass circus in my life. I don’t hold it against you, though,” he added when she opened her mouth to blast him. He even had the brass balls to look forgiving. “I want you to know that from the bottom of my heart, okay? I swear, I do not hold any of that shit against you.”

  She stared at him like he’d gone mad. “Hold what against me?”

  “Birds gotta
fly, fish gotta swim, and Sunny Fairfax has got to win. It’s your nature to want to achieve the absolute pinnacle of whatever it is that’s got your attention. You come by it naturally, if your parents are any indication. I blame myself for not putting my foot down then and there when you showed up with those television show contracts. Let’s face it, I’ve never been able to say no to you. Instead of throwing those fucking papers in the pool like I wanted to, I signed my life away, all the while knowing it was a move I’d one day regret. And I did.”

  She stared at him while despair ate at her with every word he said. “Let me get this straight. You were that unhappy with…what? Being outrageously successful?”

  “I was unhappy with being put on display. Of having you on display with me.”

  Sunny frowned. What did that have to do with anything? “So, from the moment you signed those contracts, you think of it as the biggest mistake of your life?”

  “I know exactly what the biggest mistake of my life was.” His eyes never left hers as he shrugged into his jacket, and for some reason the weight of that intense gaze squeezed the air out of her lungs. “It was our second date.”

  “What?” Confusion churned inside her as he stared at him. “Ice, we never went on a second date.”

  “Exactly. Biggest fucking mistake I ever made. Luckily some mistakes can be undone if a man’s get the will to do it, which I do.” To her shock, he offered her a wink before turning toward the door. “I’ll be in touch with you once I’ve brought House Of Payne up to speed, so pick up when I call, yeah? Later.”

  Unable to get her tongue unstuck from the roof of her mouth, Sunny could only watch in confused silence as the door swung shut behind him.

  Chapter Three

  “Forget about how touchably perfect his hair is, which is amazing for me to say, by the way. I’ve never gone for blonde men because, generally speaking, they look too soft and pretty-looking for my tastes. The point here is, who cares about all that thick blonde hair when he’s got that jaw line? Before I clapped eyes on him, I never really knew what a square jaw was. Now I know. I’ve seen the textbook definition of it up close and personal. I think that jaw line of his must’ve been cut by the carpenter’s square of the gods. And that chin. Whatever we do, let’s not forget about that chin. Was I seeing things, or is there the faintest dimple right at the edge of it?”

  Sunny tried and failed at tuning out Mary Pat’s running commentary on Ice’s looks. “Thank God tomorrow’s Friday,” she said as she logged off, all the while hoping her heartfelt comment would kill her coworker’s monologue in its tracks. It had been three days since Ice had appeared out of nowhere, and Sunny had yet to find a way to distract the other woman from her latest obsession. “Doing anything exciting this weekend? My mother and I are binge-decorating the house for Christmas, inside and out. We’ve got different tastes, so it’s probably going to wind up being a scary mishmash of traditional Victorian with a dash of nostalgic Rankin-Bass kitschy animatronics.”

  Mary Pat blinked, and it was like watching someone come out of a trance. “Wait. The Fairfaxes do their own decorating?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t we?’

  “I just sort of assumed you hired, like, staff to do all that stuff, and then had House Beautiful or Better Homes and Gardens come in and do a photo shoot to make normal people feel like crap about their pedestrian decorating skills.”

  Sunny stifled a sigh and wondered if everyone thought that about her and her family. “Believe it or not, the Fairfax family is just like everyone else, Mary Pat. And since this will be my first year back home to celebrate Christmas, we’ve decided to pull out all the stops and make a big deal out of it.” Unfortunately.

  “Are you going to invite Ice over for Christmas dinner?” Like a heat-seeking missile, her coworker boomeranged back to her favorite subject. “Have you ever seen him eat? I’ll bet he doesn’t even get things stuck in his teeth when he eats. That’s one of my greatest fears, that I’ll be eating out in public, get a huge piece of spinach or something stuck in my front teeth and then it just sits there for the rest of the night while no one tells me about it even though that’s all anyone can look at.”

  “He’s a normal guy, Mary Pat.” Turning off her desk lamp, Sunny stood and grabbed up her purse. “I know what it’s like to be bowled over by him, but Ice really is just a…” Selfish, super-entitled, self-absorbed prick. “Just a normal guy.”

  “I don’t know if I could ever see him like that.” Stars in her eyes, Mary Pat leaned against the modular wall and sighed dreamily. “How did you two meet? And how did you stop from throwing yourself at him every other minute?”

  “I didn’t, at first.” Though she had every intention of walking out of the conversation and the building, Sunny was baffled to find herself responding. That wasn’t like her. She wasn’t a hang-out-and-chat kind of person. Not that she was stand-offish; far from it. But from the time she’d learned how to talk, her parents had also taught her the priceless lesson of not talking, at least when it came to anything personal. “I met Ice when I was a junior in high school. This was when my father was still mayor of Chicago, and both he and my mother were huge fundraisers for their political party. In fact, we met at the annual Christmas gala that my parents used to throw.” This, of course would be the first year since she’d been alive that Claire and Archibald Fairfax wouldn’t be in charge of the biggest holiday political fundraiser in the city. Instead, the holiday gala had been taken over by Mimi Vance, a woman who’d often tried—and failed—to topple her mother as the queen of Illinois’s political fundraising world. It rankled that Mimi was throwing a Christmas gala fundraiser to fill the void Claire and Archie had left behind, but considering the state of her father’s health, there was nothing to be done about it.

  “A gala,” Mary Pat said, eyes wide behind her glasses. “That sounds so fancy.”

  “I’ve always thought some snooty jerk didn’t want to call their party a party, so they came up with the word gala,” Sunny drawled, rolling her eyes. “Ice’s father is a big deal in the political world—something people would probably call a mega-donor. As the publisher of Inquiring Minds, Damien Eisen pays vast amounts of money to whoever’s in power. I remember my parents were thrilled they’d landed him as their guest.”

  “Wow, you and Ice come from such a different world. The biggest events my parents ever went to were soccer potluck dinners and our church’s annual folk-art bazaar.”

  “I would’ve loved to have gone to something like that instead of all those stuffy events where I had to be on my best behavior. Maybe that’s why I’ve never forgotten the moment I met Ice—he seemed to feel the same way about black-tie affairs.”

  Mary Pat’s breath caught. “Did your eyes meet from across the crowded room before he made a beeline for you, say you were the woman of his dreams, and that if he couldn’t make sweet, sweet love to you in the next five minutes he was going to die?”

  “Um…no.” Though she had to admire the power of Mary Pat’s imagination. “His father was hobnobbing with my dad, and Damien told his son to take me for a spin around the dance floor. Ice liked to dance, and I liked the look of Ice, so off we went. I stepped on his toes twice,” she added with a chuckle. “It was love at first sight for me, though I think he saw me as just a little kid. He was already in college—Stanford, of course. Guess which college I applied to a couple years later?”

  “Stanford,” Mary Pat grinned. “Isn’t that supposed to be Ivy League, West Coast-style?”

  “Stanford does have that reputation, and with good reason. They’ve got high academic standards, so it’s not always about who your parents are, or how much money you’ve got. It’s about whether or not you’ve got the brains to handle it.”

  “I bet it didn’t hurt, though, being the daughter of the mayor of Chicago.”

  “Oddly enough, that didn’t matter in California.” That was one of the reasons why she’d adored her time on the West Coast. In Chicago, everyone
knew she was the daughter of Archibald Fairfax III. That had always made her feel like she was on a stage with every spotlight in the world glaring down on her, so she’d grown up being careful to never say or do anything wrong. But in California, being some Midwest mayor’s daughter was no big deal. “When I finally got to college, Ice was a senior and knew all the right people. The crowd he ran with was nothing short of amazing. His friends were the children of Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley, liberally mingled with European and Asian aristocracy. His best friend, Ethan, was the son of that guy who made all those kickboxing movies about a decade ago. You know, the one who was eventually revealed as a cross-dresser?”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that guy. Doesn’t he do hair re-growth commercials now?”

  “That’s the one. When I showed up at Stanford, Ice and Ethan adopted me into their rarified circle like it was the most natural thing in the world. I don’t think I breathed for six months. I was so afraid they’d wake up one day and realize I didn’t belong.”

  “Your life is like a fairytale, and I want to live every single moment of it.” Mary Pat’s eyes were huge behind her cat’s eye glasses. “Did Ice ever, you know, make a pass?”

  Biggest fucking mistake I ever made.

  Without warning, Ice’s surprising words echoed back to Sunny, and she had to work at stifling a shiver. “We went on a date. One date, to be exact.”

  “Just one?” The look her coworker gave her was priceless—part-fascinated, part-horrified. “That’s usually not a good sign. Where’d he take you?”