One day that would be me.
One day.
Four
Graham
I couldn’t believe how fucking beautiful Libby was. When I saw her standing at the entrance to the Stan Mansion, it took me only a second to realize what was going on. She was in this pale pink dress that draped over an incredible set of curves. The fluttering fabric of the dress well to her knees, which gave me a wonderful sight of her flexed calves in the heels she was wearing. The dress was sleeveless, baring to me her soft skin that glistened in the setting Chicago sun. The lace that draped over the bodice of the dress gave an innocence to her deep blue eyes. But it was the pale pink’s contrast to her raven black hair that tumbled effortlessly down her back.
There wasn’t a part of her my fingertips didn’t throb for. But I could see the distress on her face and something inside of me leapt straight into action.
I walked up the steps towards her, listening to two voices throwing a barrage of questions at her. I guessed those were her parents, and I was ready to put them in their place. I was ready to shut their mouths by telling them to back the hell off their damn daughter, but I knew I had to keep my wits about the situation. This wasn’t something I could fight with my money or my words. I had to fight this with decorum and respect.
But when I slipped my arm around her waist and felt my fingers brush against her skin, I felt my pelvis pulse with want.
She was truly beautiful. Really, a sight to behold. Her makeup was light and she came in this petite little package. Her head just barely fell against my chest, and when she craned her neck up to look at me her deep blue eyes turned into an innocent doe stare. I wanted to run my fingers through her hair. I wanted to wrap my fist within it and pull her lips to mine. I’d met plenty of women to share my evenings with, but I hadn’t met one of them that wanted me to do something like this.
All this woman wanted was for me to help get her parents off her back for a night.
All throughout the wedding, I kept an eye on her. The raw emotion in her eyes throughout the entire wedding told the story of her and Logan. How close they had been at one point. How worried she was about the woman he was marrying. I saw the thumbs up he’d given Libby and I saw the beautiful flush that crept across her delicate skin. I was strength and she was serenity, and there was a calmness about her body even as her eyes raged with emotion.
Unadulterated, unfiltered emotion.
I didn’t see that a lot in my line of work. Being the owner and CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the country didn’t afford me a lot of time to sift through my own emotions. Being a shrewd businessman meant keeping my emotions in check. Holding all the cards close to my chest and being able to read a room full of people doing the same damn thing. I never got to be in the presence of people who were unashamed of what they were feeling. I never got to indulge in people who cried whenever they were happy.
Hell, I never saw people cry when they were sad.
But when Libby turned her face to watch Logan l carry Marianne with that tear trickling down her face, something within me popped. Her small little smile accompanied by that snicker of hers followed before she dropped her gaze to her feet. With each action I witnessed, it told me more about her. About who she was and the life she was living and how lonely she really was as a woman.
I could make her not feel so alone.
But only if that was something she wanted.
The wedding ended and I found her in the crowd, threading our hands together again. I wanted us to beat the crowd to the reception so she didn’t get so caught up in it. I led her along, listening as her small feet clicked behind me in her heels. I knew my way around the Stan Mansion very well. I’d hosted many company parties here and even had a few one-night stands in the decadent suites that lined the second floor.
Libby didn’t need to know that, however. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was here only for sex.
We found her name tag at one of the tables in the middle of the room and I could see her cringing. She was looking around, her head bobbing as she counted how many people would be surrounding her. There was a ‘plus one’ name tag sitting next to her, which I assumed was for the date she was supposed to have. I had another spot at a table with Jake and the blonde he brought from work. But for now, I’d happily be her plus one.
I grew tired of watching her count the chairs. She was obviously uncomfortable and I wasn’t having it. So, I plucked our name tags from the table as her eyes fluttered up to mine.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Follow me,” I said.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Take my hand. Come on.”
She slipped her hand into mine and I wove us around the tables. I found one in the back that was partially covered by the shadows of the room. I removed two of the name tags and replaced them with ours, then sat her down in her seat before I kissed the top of her head.
“Be right back,” I said.
“But, we can’t do th-”
I strode away from her and set the two name tags down on the other table in the middle of the room. The last thing I was going to do was watch Libby be uncomfortable all night.
“There,” I said as I sat beside Libby. “Much better.”
“Logan and his wife aren’t gonna be happy,” she said.
“Then I’ll pay them for their heartache,” I said. “Logan is super low key. He won’t care.”
“I think they sat us there because my parents are sitting at that table.”
“Then they can move their name tags as well if they want.”
I cast a glance over at her and watched her relax into her seat. I buried the smirk crawling across my cheeks as we watched everyone file in. People were finding their seats and I could see her parents making their way over to the table. Their eyes were searching the room for Libby before the crowd became too much, and it forced them to sit down at the table instead of move to where we were.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Libby said with a whisper. “Do you have to go to do the processional? As a groomsman?”
“Nope, it’s just Logan and Marianne. And maybe their parents?”
“My aunt and uncle, yeah I’m sure they’re in it.”
I closed my eyes and rolled my shoulders back. My bones popped and clicked, causing me to sigh with relief. Libby shot me a glance, her eyes roaming over my body before she turned back to watch her cousin and his new wife walk in.
I got an incredible view of her ass when she shot up from her chair and started clapping.
It took all I had not to reach out and grab her. I wanted to pull her into my lap and crash my lips right onto hers. She had this rosy pink lip gloss on that called to me. It was practically begging me to capture her lips with mine. And the thing about it was she had no idea how beautiful she was. How much my body ached to take her in all the ways that would make her beg for mercy.
It angered me, the kinds of men that had pawed at her body. Not knowing what to do with all the curves she boasted of.
The music started up and I rolled my eyes. Of course there was dancing at a thing like this. And I had to sit there and watch all of the family members dance with one another before we could even do anything. Moms with their sons and dads with their daughters. The happy couple dancing around and trying not to make a mess of things. I didn’t understand the point of these big weddings. I didn’t understand it when I was planning mine and I didn’t understand it now.
“Don’t they look beautiful?” Libby asked.
“I think she’s stepped on his toes a couple times,” I said.
“With the death traps on her feet, I don’t doubt it. But he does look happy,” she said.
“Men always are in the beginning.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“All I mean is I hope he knows what he’s getting into with her. She strikes me as the kind of person who will always want and demand more than any one pers
on can give.”
“So you see that, too?”
I looked down at Libby and could see the worry building back up in her eyes.
“Logan is happy,” I said. “Maybe behind closed doors she’s not like this. Or maybe he really and truly enjoys a woman like that. They exist. There are men out there that enjoy the upkeep up a high-maintenance woman. Also I have the tendency to be protective of my friends.”
“But why? I don’t get it.”
“Makes them feel like a man, knowing they can provide for even the toughest of women.”
“I don’t get it on the woman’s side, though.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“All the makeup and the clothes. I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I hardly know how to do makeup as it is.”
“I think you look spectacular.”
“You know you don’t have to keep complimenting me,” she said with a grin.
“I only say it if I mean it. No use in telling false tales in order to get to a perceived outcome.”
“What in the world does that mean?” she asked.
“Men compliment women because they’re looking for only one thing. They don’t care what they say so long as they get what they came for. For some men, it’s sex. For other men, it’s money.”
“Men compliment women for money?”
“Rich women, sure. Men can gold dig as much as women can.”
“Well, aren’t you just a shining ball of positivity.”
I grinned down at her as she giggled and shook her head.
“Care to dance?” I asked.
“I don’t think the families are done dancing yet,” Libby said.
“I didn’t mean on the dance floor.”
“Then where in the world are we going to dance?”
I offered my hand to her and she looked at it quizzically. I wiggled my fingers as I stood from my chair, prompting her to take my hand. I helped her up from her seat and spun her into me, her soft body plodding recklessly into mine.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m kind of a clutz in heels.”
“Don’t wear them often?” I asked as I held her hand in the air.
“Not really. The only pairs of heels I own are the ones I’ve bought for weddings like this.”
“How many weddings have you been to?” I asked.
“Eighteen.”
“You’ve been to eighteen weddings?!?”
“In the past three years, yeah,” she said.
“Sounds like someone’s more popular than she leads on,” I said as I slipped my arm around her waist.
“That’s usually people’s reaction. Only three of them have been actual friends. One from work and two from high school. The rest are family functions like this.”
“Ah, obligatory invitations. I get those sometimes.”
“For weddings?” she asked.
“Weddings. Parties. Charity balls.”
“Nope. No parties, and certainly no charity balls. Just weddings for me.”
“Don’t worry. You're not missing anything. It’s only more dressing up, putting on a smile, and pretending you want to be there,” I said.
“You’re a cheery old soul, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I dwell in the land of reality, yes.”
The two of us swayed against one another, her head descending to my chest. I rose my hand up her back, allowing my fingertips to graze over her soft black tresses. Fuck, everything about this woman was soft. Soft and innocent, and playful in a way women around me weren’t. She came from a completely different lifestyle and saw the world in a completely different way. She was nothing like the women I sank my teeth into, and I was quickly building an appetite for her.
We danced through a few songs before plates of food started being brought out. I pulled out her chair and sat her back down, and the smile she gave me was truly grateful. Most of the women I dated expected those kinds of actions from me. But she didn’t. All she wanted was for me to pose as her date. What I did with my time while I was there was inconsequential to her so long as I kept up the charade for her parents.
No woman had ever set so low of a standard for me, and no woman had ever been so grateful for me simply pulling out her chair.
“So,” I said. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a part-time secretary at a law firm and I fill my spare time with tutoring,” Libby said.
“Did you go to college?”
“I did.”
“What did you major in?” I asked.
“Psychology. But no one told me I had to get a Master’s to really do anything with it. I’m trying to pay off my student loans I have right now so I can go back to school for my Master’s.”
“What would you do with it?” I asked.
“Social work.”
“That’s in high demand in many parts of Chicago. I’m sure you’d find a very good job in the field.”
“I don’t care about the job. Just the children in those kinds of situations.”
I felt my gut tense. There was something unnerving about what she’d said. Something raw and vulnerable in her voice. Knowing there were women as kind as her out there that wanted to work with children in terrible parental situations made my heart melt a bit.
“What made you want to pursue something like that?” I asked.
“I had a friend of mine in high school who was in a really bad situation. But the offices were so inundated with other children that it took them forever to come around to her. By the time they did, the damage had already been done and there was nothing they could do for her. I just… thought that was so wrong.”
I could see tears welling in her eyes again and I smoothed my hand over her knee. I started caressing her skin through the fabric of her dress while she collected herself. I’d never encountered anyone like her before. So quick to get emotional and so unapologetic for it. She dabbed at her eyes with her napkin before she threw me a kind smile, then sniffled and continued on with the conversation.
Like nothing had happened.
“What made you want to start your own company?” she asked.
“Nothing. I was sort of thrown into what I’m doing now by accident,” I said.
“How is starting your own company an accident?” she asked.
“Drink?”
A waiter bent a tray down between us and I casted him a stern glance. If I had my say in things I would’ve chastised him for not waiting until a more appropriate point in our conversation. I plucked a couple glasses of wine for us from the tray, then stared the man down as he scurried away.
“Drink?” I asked.
“Thanks,” Libby said.
“Anyway, the accident. It all started with a challenge from Google. They do this thing every once in a while where they’ll pay someone a certain amount of money to find a hole in their software.”
“A hole?” she asked.
“A bug. A way around things. Anything that makes their system vulnerable. I reached out while I was in college and tried it, found a couple different holes, collected my money, and that was that. But soon after that, they contacted me”
“Google contacted you,” she said.
“They did. They wanted to know if I wanted to try it again, only this time with the patch they’d created for it. Found a way around the patch easily and while I was doing it, I started suggesting some ways to fix it. They hired me while I was a junior in college to help them develop something to make their systems more secure, and it launched me into what I do now.”
“What do you do now?” she asked.
“I have a team of people that help companies of all shapes and sizes secure everything as best as they can when it comes to the technological side of their business.”
“So you do something like I.T. security?”
“Something like that,” I said with a grin.
The two of us continued to drink wine and get to know one another. The more she loosened up the more giggly she became. Her c
heeks flushed with this healthy glow and her body turned into me deeper while we talked. She became bolder and wanted to go dance on the dance floor, and she even allowed herself to watch the happy couple cut into the cake. She clapped and whistled for them, her personality taking a complete turn as more alcohol flooded her veins.
I enjoyed watching her let loose. I could tell she didn’t do it often.
“I should probably check in on Logan,” I admitted.
“You do have groomsman duties right?”
“Not like bridesmaids do. Our stuff was all before the wedding. Bachelor party and whatever. I’m kind of off the hook I guess. And then I can also avoid talking to him about our little situation.”
“You mean our date? The fact that you saved me from being alone?”
“Yes, that. Though I think you saved me a little bit as well.”
She blushed.
“So how much longer would you like to stay?”
She cocked her head at me. I must have made her think I wasn’t enjoying her company.
“The reason I’m asking if because I wanted to know how far we were taking this tonight,” I said.
My comment stopped her dead in her tracks.
“I should phrase that differently. If I’m posing as your date, then it doesn’t look good on you or myself if I leave without you. So if I go, it makes more sense if you come with me,” I said.
“Oh. Oh, yes. That… make sense,” Libby said.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate anything else.”
“It’s fine. Even if you were, you’d be the only guy that waited until this point before bringing it up.”
“Men can be that way sometimes,” I said.
“It has a time and place.”
It was the way she said it that shot fire through my veins. A time and place? With any other woman, that would’ve been a cue for me to pick up on. But with Libby being so different from all those other women, there was a good chance she was simply being truthful.
“I think I would enjoy getting out of here,” she said.
Her hand slipped quickly into mine as she threaded our fingers together.
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