by Alisha Rai
“I have no preference.”
“You should have a preference on your name.”
The girl took another sip of her drink. “Whatever’s easier.”
Livvy bet that was Eve’s response to a lot of things. The girl had always been shy, but now, with her downcast eyes and hunched shoulders, she seemed like she was trying to make herself invisible.
“Do you come here often?” Livvy asked, because what else could she ask? Small talk wasn’t her forte at the best of times, and that was when she didn’t have to navigate the landmine of their past.
“Here? Oh. Oh yes.” Eve looked down at her glass.
She was lying. “Probably not what you’re used to.”
“How do you know what I’m used to?”
The hint of a bite in the words surprised Livvy. Okay. Maybe not so timid. “Because I was used to it too. How’s the country club?” Her dad had demanded they join the most elite country club in the area after Brendan did. The snobs there had barely tolerated them, but they hadn’t been able to turn them away. The green of their money had trumped the melanin in their skin.
The club was a safe topic. Livvy had never cared about the place.
“The same. Nothing changes there.”
“I assume you’re chairing a committee or two. Some sort of charity work.”
Eve stared at her for a long moment. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s what this social circle expects of those of us with two X chromosomes who have no interest in the family business.” Tani had done her stint on a few boards. Maria Chandler had cranked it into high gear by establishing her own foundation.
Though, Livvy could admit, her parents had never tried to shove the gender roles of the rich and mildly famous down their children’s throats. They’d figured her desire to be a tattoo artist was a phase, but they’d agreed to art school instead of some fancy degree she wouldn’t use and a lifetime of boring social obligations with people she didn’t like.
“I do always do what’s expected of me,” Eve murmured, half under her breath. “I work for the foundation now.”
Livvy nodded, unsurprised.
A line formed between Eve’s eyebrows. “You don’t have to sit with me.” Eve took another sip of her drink, this one bigger. “I’m okay being alone.”
Good, well, I’ll see you later then. And by later, I mean never, because awkward conversations are rarely fun for either party.
Livvy cast a longing glance at the exit, but since the dude who’d been bothering Eve was still in the bar, she stayed put. “I’d like some company. Looks like Sadia’s got a bachelorette party in, so she’ll be busy for a while, and I don’t know anyone else here.”
“Sadia?”
Eve wouldn’t have hung around Sadia and Paul as much as she had around Livvy and Nicholas. “She was married to my brother. Paul,” Livvy specified, feeling guilty at how she rushed to make it clear she wasn’t talking about Jackson. She knew Jackson was innocent of arson, but she doubted Eve had been raised to believe that.
“Paul, yes.” Her gaze skipped over the table, then away, over to the bar. “I remember her. She looks unhappy to see me.”
“Don’t mind her. She’s protective of me.”
Eve blinked and refocused on Livvy. “Does she think you need protection from me?”
Livvy shrugged. Eve gave a decidedly uncharacteristic snort. “Right. Okay.”
“You don’t think I need protection from you?”
Eve’s smile was grim. She ran her gaze over Livvy. “You don’t look scared.”
“It’s because I’m good at hiding my fear. I’m shaking inside.”
She was being utterly honest, but from the way Eve’s lips twisted, she knew the younger woman didn’t understand that.
Livvy tapped her fingers on the side of her still-full glass. She’d always been shitty at waiting for the other shoe to drop. Livvy ran her hand through her hair, gathering it up in a ponytail before letting it fall back down. “What are you really doing here, Eve?”
“I told you, I come here often.”
“We both know that’s a lie.”
Eve fiddled with the stem of her glass. “Yes,” she said softly. “It’s a lie. I followed you here.”
“Uh. Excuse me?” That, she had not expected.
Eve’s throat worked. “I came to your house,” she confessed. “I mean, your mom’s house. Tonight. I was sitting in my car, working up my nerve to knock.”
Oh, yeesh. She couldn’t predict what her mother’s reaction would have been to opening the door and finding the spitting image of the woman who had died with Robert, but she couldn’t imagine it would be pretty. Since Tani had methodically sequestered herself from her old life and only left the house when Paul or Sadia took her somewhere, Livvy figured the odds were low she’d even seen Eve in the past decade. “Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to talk to you. See you. I saw you leave, and at the time . . . it seemed like a good idea to, um . . .”
“Stalk me?” At the very least, Eve was a better lurker than her brother. Not by much, in her weird getup, but it had taken Livvy a while to notice her.
“I wasn’t stalking you,” she added quickly. “I was . . .”
“You were . . . what?”
Eve shifted in her seat, picked up her glass, and drained it, her throat working. She set it down with a clink. Her words, when she spoke, were precise. Tiny, perfect bombs. “I wanted to see the woman whose father murdered my mother.”
Livvy sat back in her seat, the words digging into her flesh and burying in her heart. She almost leaned over to check the floor. Surely blood had formed a puddle under her chair. “Wow,” she managed.
You don’t want to be seen with the daughter of the man who was responsible for your mother’s death.
Similar to what she’d hurled at Nicholas, but not the same.
Eve’s face was so serene, almost peaceful, Livvy could almost doubt that the vicious words had come from her mouth. But they had.
Not timid at all.
Since she wasn’t sure what else to do, Livvy finished off her own drink, barely tasting the liquid that ran a trail of fire down her throat. “You think my dad—” Murdered.
The girl’s eyes were cold. “I read the reports. He was driving.”
“Yes,” Livvy said expressionlessly. She felt oddly numb, and she wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the conversation.
No, she knew. It wasn’t the alcohol.
“Above the speed limit.”
Yeah. Her father had always been a careful, cautious driver. Why he’d been speeding when the roads were so icy, she had no idea. “Correct.”
Eve’s knuckles had turned white on her empty glass. “He was going eighty when he crashed into that tree.”
“I’ve read the reports too, Eve. Evangeline.”
“I want you to say it.” Her voice rose on the last words, and she pressed her fingers against her lips, like she was trying to silence herself. A hint of moisture gleamed in her eyes.
Compassion bloomed beneath the shock that held Livvy in the seat, but she couldn’t give Eve whatever she was looking for. “Say what? That he killed her?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t.” The only people who knew exactly what had happened on that stretch of road were Robert Kane and Maria Chandler. Robert had died on impact. Maria had passed away en route to the hospital, never regaining consciousness. “He wasn’t drunk or impaired in any way, and he definitely didn’t run his car into that tree deliberately.”
Eve paled, her light pink lip gloss garish on her lips “He might have. If my mother threatened to end their affair.”
Livvy jerked back from the table. “What?”
Eve’s lip curled, and Livvy totally reversed her original impression of the girl. There was a core of steel in Evangeline. If Livvy didn’t feel utterly sucker punched right now, she might be proud of her.
“You didn’t know,” Eve said,
each word a little pinprick. “That that’s what people said? That the two of them were sleeping together?”
“No.” Livvy clenched her jaw. Every second from the moment the police had come to their door had been filled with grief and panic and anger. She hadn’t had a second to listen to gossip. Since she’d left, she’d only stayed in contact with friends, and they certainly weren’t about to spread lies.
Sure, no one fully knew why Robert and Maria had been together that Friday night. Maria had been in Manhattan on foundation business, and Robert had been scoping out a new site in Pennsylvania. They hadn’t been expected home until the following Monday.
But plans changed and the weather had been bad. In the aftermath, Maile had speculated perhaps Robert had picked up Maria as a favor to drive her home. It made sense.
So why had they died on the road to the Chandlers’ lake house, thirty miles in the opposite direction?
Livvy shook her head. Sometimes all the pieces in an explanation didn’t fit perfectly, but that didn’t make the explanation completely wrong.
Her father had loved her mother. They hadn’t been an overly demonstrative couple, but Robert had never failed to touch Tani’s back or her hand when they passed each other. Livvy had grown up hearing bedtime stories about the first time Robert had seen Tani, when he’d been a kid working at his parents’ café. I thought she was a princess, Robert had told her and her brothers, a fond smile on his broad face.
Her mother’s feelings for Robert had never been in doubt either. Tani’s keening screams when she’d learned he was dead were burned into Livvy’s heart. It was one of the few times Livvy had seen a display of emotion from her mother.
“This is bullshit. And I don’t want you ever, ever, approaching my mom with these lies.”
“She’s heard it.” Eve’s tone was flat, her gaze hard. “I assure you.”
“Not from you. You don’t go near her.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed, calculation glimmering. “I won’t. So long as you don’t go near my brother.”
Livvy ran her hand over her face. She wouldn’t ask how Eve knew she’d seen Nicholas. The girl had learned she was in town from someone.
When Livvy didn’t agree immediately, Eve squared her shoulders. “I’m prepared to make it worth your while.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. This was turning into a soap opera. Or a Shakespearean tragedy. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Like . . . money?”
“Yes, like money,” Eve said impatiently.
An odd, completely inappropriate urge to laugh bubbled up inside her. She’d never been bought off before. “Uh, what’s the going rate?”
“How much do you want?” Eve countered.
Livvy might not have been groomed to be a CEO, but she had Oka and Kane blood running through her veins. Businesspeople, the lot of them. You never wanted to be the one who opened negotiations. “A billion dollars.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Oh, you’re being serious. Okay, then. A million dollars.”
Eve swallowed. “I don’t have a million dollars in liquid assets.”
“What have you got? Or I suppose I should ask what’s your brother worth to you? Ten thousand? Forty thousand? A hundred thousand?”
“I don’t put a value on my brother.”
“That’s what you’re asking me to do. If you can’t put a value on the man you love, why should I?”
Eve lowered her voice, though Livvy wasn’t sure why. No one could hear them in the rapidly growing crowd. “You don’t love him. Don’t pretend you do. You don’t even know him anymore.”
Ouch. “You’re right. I don’t.” She didn’t. She’d stopped loving him on a cold afternoon near a small pond in the woods surrounding his grandfather’s house, and she’d never looked back.
That was the story, anyway.
“Okay, so why don’t we do this, to be fair.” Livvy tapped the table. “You can give me the difference between what your father paid for my mother’s share in C&O and current market value. Is that too much? Fine. The difference between what he paid and the market value at the time of the sale. You know, when he stole the place from a grieving widow.” She paused. “That’s still probably more than what you have in liquid assets though.”
Eve drew back like she’d been slapped. “He—you—”
“What’s that?” Livvy cupped her ear. “Oh. Does it hurt to have your father accused of something shady?”
Eve’s lower lip quivered, and she shoved back from the table with a jerky move. “This was a mistake.”
“Yeah, it was.” Livvy wasn’t sure whether she was talking about coming to this bar or coming to this state. It didn’t really matter.
“Stay away from my brother.” The younger woman stalked toward the door.
“Yikes. That didn’t look good,” Sadia murmured.
Livvy was only surprised it had taken Sadia this long to rush over. She pressed her lips together, some of her rage melting instantly away at her friend’s presence. “Kid’s mad.”
“She’s not a kid, she’s a grown-ass woman. What’s she mad about?”
“The accident.”
Sadia snorted. “Then she should know who to take her mad out on, and it’s not you.”
Livvy rubbed the spot between her eyes, feeling the tension headache that had been looming earlier turning into a full-blown headache. “She has no one she can take that mad out on. That’s the problem.” That had been the problem for everyone, right? Even she’d had no one to yell and rail at, with her beloved, bright, laughing daddy dead.
Livvy’s eyes narrowed as Eve sidestepped a bunch of frat boys walking into the bar. There was a stumble in the other woman’s gait. “How much alcohol is in those pink fruity drinks she was downing?”
Sadia picked up Eve’s empty glasses. “A deceptively large amount. Especially for a little thing like her.”
Eve stumbled again, catching her balance on the door. They glanced at each other. Sadia sighed. “Go on. Call me if you need help.”
“Thanks.” Livvy shoved back from the table and draped her jacket around her shoulders.
She found Eve walking rapidly into the parking lot. Livvy zipped up her jacket, the autumn wind biting through her tights. The air smelled like apples and . . . home.
Not home. Old home. Temporary home. “Hey,” she called out to Eve’s back.
“What do you want?” Eve asked coldly, not turning around.
“Making sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
Livvy followed the girl. “Do you need me to call a cab or anything?”
“No.”
Livvy sighed. “Look, kid—”
Eve spun around. Her cheeks were flushed. Whether it was from the alcohol or her emotions, Livvy wasn’t sure. “Stop calling me that. I’m not thirteen anymore.”
Livvy stuffed her hands in her pockets. “If you don’t want to be treated like a child, you might want to stop lashing out like one.”
“I never lash out. I—”
“You hate me for who my father was. If that’s not lashing out, I don’t know what is.”
“I—I don’t hate you. I just . . . I was just—”
“Just what?”
Eve straightened. “I don’t know.”
“Look . . .” Livvy ran her fingers through her hair. “You shouldn’t drive home if you’re drunk.”
Eve gave Livvy an icy, withering look. “I’m not drunk.”
“You sure about that?”
Eve opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I might be a bit tipsy.”
It would be so easy to wash her hands of this by calling a ride for the girl, but something made Livvy hesitate. Maybe it was how young Eve suddenly appeared, too much like the child she’d once loved. Paul and Jackson had mostly ignored the youngest Chandler—a decade and seven years, respectively, was a large age gap to overcome. But Livvy, starved for girl companionship in her houseful of me
n, had been entranced with Eve since she’d come home from the hospital.
Plus, at one point, she’d assumed Eve would be her sister-in-law, occupying the same circle of family as Sadia. Another relationship that had been a casualty to the feud.
“I’ll drive you home.” She’d taken a cab here, and had planned on either driving home with Sadia or getting a ride. It would make no difference if she called for a car at Eve’s place or here.
“I don’t need you to do that.”
“I have no doubt you’re over the legal limit. Do you want to risk it?” She made her tone firm, expecting Eve to argue. The girl’s chin lifted, and she looked away, her nostrils flaring. Then she held out her keys.
Livvy took them with a fatalistic air. Quietly, deep in her soul, she gave fate the middle finger. She couldn’t avoid the Chandlers even when she tried.
Chapter 6
NICHOLAS TRACED the tattoo on her shoulder with his tongue, following the curve of the vine, the prickled point of each leaf, the round delicate flowers. She shivered under his mouth, her biceps contracting as he followed the ink and scraped his teeth over her arm.
His fingers wandered over her soft stomach, dipping into her belly button for a second before drifting lower, into the wet heat between her thighs. Her legs shifted, making room for him without his needing to ask.
One finger, two . . . he pressed them inside her, widening them gently, getting her ready for his cock. His thumb rubbed over the bud of her clitoris, and he was rewarded with a low moan.
The moan grew deeper when he captured her nipple in his mouth, worrying the flesh with his teeth before moving to the other and giving it the same treatment. He wanted to devour her completely, but this wasn’t about gorging. This was about savoring, enjoying every second of her. He never got to savor her.
He sucked her for long moments, loving how she squirmed beneath him. It was his turn to groan when her hand found his cock. She gave him the long, slow pulls he loved, milking him from root to tip. He pressed three fingers inside her, filling her up. Her hand faltered on him, but then she caught the rhythm again, rubbing faster and harder. He tried to match her motions, her slick pussy making those wet sounds he loved to hear, but he was far too distracted by her grip on him. He arched his back and let her have her way, her hand speeding up, twisting with every upstroke.
