“Nothing is bothering me. I’m getting old, tired.”
“You’re barely twenty-eight.” He flicks my shoulder, and I flip him off discreetly.
Holden shows up then. “Already? We haven’t even gotten to the main course.” He walks behind us, grapples both our shoulders before sitting on the other side of me.
“Evan here is just shrinking again.” I sigh. “Where is Carson?”
“Don’t know. Emily is by the Paris trip, though, with that girl. Who is she again?” Holden asks.
“Her friend from college,” I answer.
I first met Forbes in the winter of my senior year and the freshman year of Carson and Emily. At first, I thought she wasn’t a people person when we were all out by the firepit and talking because she didn’t say much. That much was fine. It was completely different the next time I saw her a few years later when they graduated, and the look she gave me could sink ships. I only met her once and didn’t care enough about her to figure out why because I didn’t know her, and I still don’t.
“Oh. She’s hot.” Holden chuckles. Evan does too. I raise my brow and don’t give them the satisfaction.
But she is.
Emily starts walking over with her as Carson shows up. Everyone has to sit for the Master of Ceremony speech and dinner. They talk with each other, and my eyes stay trained on this Forbes girl. Maybe she is so mean because she’s so pretty. Not just ‘pretty,’ I mean…
Her striking golden hair isn’t dramatic, it’s natural because her eyebrows match them, full and spread long over her sizable green eyes. Her features are dramatic, unnaturally sharp yet feminine, and the red lipstick she has on makes her lips look even fuller—kissable as hell. Then her dress—red and long—fitted at the waist but open through the deep ‘V,’ a silver chain is latched to her chest disappearing into her dress.
When she catches me staring at her, I keep staring. She sits down and glares at me like she wasn’t dressed for staring. I glare right back at her. It would be easy to ignore whatever her issue is with me if she weren’t so damned beautiful.
“When is the real food getting here?” Carson asks, and I tune back into the conversation. Tearing my eyes from Forbes, I see him sitting next to Emily, his arm around her back holding her close. It’s odd seeing them like this even after a year.
It serves well that they don’t work together anymore. It isn’t because of the company policy we have, but if I were Carson, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands or eyes off of her either. As brothers, we automatically turn our eyes off to the women we bring around, but in hindsight, Emily is really pretty.
“When you stop asking about it,” Evan retorts. They go back and forth, and I tune out again.
If Mom were here, they wouldn’t be arguing so much. She used to come to all of these functions, but she hasn’t been able to since Dad died. Mom is probably the only one who knows the truth about Dad’s death. It’s also the reason why she is the only one in the family who hasn’t been down my neck about my changes since he passed.
There haven’t been many, though.
Besides the beard, I work out more and have put on a lot of muscle mass. The distraction is beneficial and keeps me from drinking too much when I want to. I read more, so I see how they would be inclined to irritate me about that.
At work, I’m not as nice or easygoing as they would like me to be, but I only worked there for a year before Dad passed. Holden had been training under him for a while to take over his work. He planned to retire anyway—soon.
Me aside, we’re lucky Holden was the only one remotely interested in taking over this empire and not screwing it up. So far so good.
“Finally.” Carson acts like a kid when the food comes.
The music plays over dinner. People thoughtlessly interrupt our dinner to talk to Holden or Carson—their stuff goes hand in hand. No one cares about finances, so I’m not bothered much being the CFO unless it’s payday. And technology is gone to everyone, so Evan—well, they probably don’t even know who he is.
When I’ve had my fair share of overpriced chicken, I finish my drink and notice that Forbes is gone. I find her over by the silent auction, not hard to do with her golden hair shining. Maybe I’ve had too much to drink or am looking to keep myself busy, but I decide to go over and talk to her thinking maybe I can get something out of her.
I corner her by the cruise trip, but it seems like she is staring at the table arrangement for it. My eyes rove over her bare shoulders, squared off and broad, yet feminine. It gives the allusion her waist is smaller. It dips in, and I follow the line down to her hips, the curve peeking out of her frilly gown, so long it covers her feet and sweeps the ground. She shifts on her feet, the motion making her hair sway down her back. Her hand comes up and swipes her hair over to one side exposing more of her shoulder and back. The chain of her necklace dangles between her shoulder blades. Her skin is barely pale, but it isn’t too tan either—like she doesn’t have to do anything to make her flesh so smooth and even. The more she moves, the more it feels like she knows I’m here.
Someone behind me bumps my shoulder by accident.
“Excuse me.” I fake a smile. It announces my presence too.
“How long will you just stand there and stare at me?” Forbes turns on her heel, her icy gaze peeled on me.
I stare back, my mouth open waiting for a response to fly out. But it doesn’t. She purses her lips at me, hoists her hand on her hip and waits. Her left brow raises, just the one.
“I’m not. Why do you give me that look?” I walk forward, not stopping until I get close enough her perfume stings my nose but not in a bad way in the slightest. Her stare makes me feel like someone poured ice water down my neck while her scent makes me want to put her back in a spring meadow where she belongs.
“I give you no look.” She clears her throat and turns back around.
I gape, mouth open in shock as I process her turning her back to me in the middle of a conversation. I walk up to her, my arm brushing hers when I stare down at her. She must have heels on because her head stops under my chin.
“Forbes? That’s your name, right?”
“You’ve known my name for years, why are you playing dumb?” She turns and looks up at me, her artic gaze back on full effect.
“Okay. What’s your deal?”
She laughs, it sounds close to an evil laugh if my imagination were wild enough. And I wait for whatever she is thinking to come up with. When she turns back to the table, I don’t think it will, and I don’t know why I am still standing here.
“No deal. I’ve got no deal.”
2
Forbes
Dylan Wilde smells like cold cinnamon and warm cologne, and his rugged yet refined look is equally easy on the eyes.
I hate that he’s so damned perfect, and I hate him. Not because he is an obscenely rich heir, pompous and privileged, but because—
“It seems like it. I don’t think anyone here has as cold a shoulder as you.” His deep voice is piercing and grungy inside and wrapped with velvet on the outside.
I have half a mind to ignore him.
When you ignore things, they usually go away. So, I wait for an entire song led by the saxophone. And he is still here. I’m not even reading the bullet-point list of this amazing cruise. I don’t even have the actual bid amount in my checking account. The only thing I’ll probably bid on is the spa day or brewery tour.
“I don’t want to talk to you.” I clear my throat, pressing my lips together, so my lipstick doesn’t over dry, but I already feel like it’s caked on.
This is all Emily’s fault anyway.
We were having a nice day at work. I don’t usually cross paths with her unless we have lunch together which is almost every day. The two of us work at Arnold together, the knock-off, second-hand, or any other word, company to Wilde Enterprises. We both matched there at a career fair in college, and it was the first time I told her of how I feel about the Wildes.
It used to be all of them as a whole, then the ones who work for the company, but once I got all the information, it progressed to Dylan—the reason for every tragedy I’ve had in the past few years, the only one besides my mother dying when I was too young to remember.
I thought I could come here and maybe not run into him at all, but when Carson and Emily got me into the third-wheel category, I ventured out on my own. Now I’ve been cornered, proving that Dylan is as regular a man as everyone else wanting what obviously doesn’t want him.
“Why?” He leans in closer. I inhale on instinct, and his sharp scent billows through me. I want to lean closer in response as much as I want to lean away.
“Because,” I huff like an impatient teacher annoyed by pestering students.
Dylan doesn’t budge. He chuckles under his breath and shifts on his feet.
I grow bored of holding my tongue and walk away instead of exploding on him. That wouldn’t be tasteful for a party like this. Charity functions are my least favorite—the suits, all the fanciness. The only reason I agreed to come was I needed a place to wear this dress. And Emily would never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t.
We spend more time together because we work together, but also since she got together with Carson and can’t exactly gush relationship drama to the guy she is in a relationship with. But they don’t even have real drama. They might be the only perfect couple there is, and it’s probably because they’re best friends first. I suppose that’s why Emily won’t leave this whole thing alone. She wants to be my friend, and it makes it hard to do that when I won’t go anywhere that involves Carson’s brothers who are also her family.
This charity event is one of many I’ve endured dodging Dylan and succeeding until tonight.
He follows me to the table with a Disney Resort four-day trip. I should go on vacation, then maybe I won’t be so uptight.
“Are you playing hard to get? I haven’t even asked you out yet.”
I pause mid-breath staring up at him with my brows raised in shock and mouth in a tight scowl. He stares right back down to me, the curve of his lips peeking out from his beard. It’s perfectly trimmed and not overly full but enough to frame his jaw from his chin and over his upper lip. It matches his dark brown hair pushed back on his head, full like a pillowtop. The deep ridge of his brows juts out, framing his eyes—dark pools of a cagey gray that darken the longer I look at them.
“What?” he pries, when I’m silent for a while.
Mostly shocked by his forwardness and irritated by his arrogance, the Wilde brothers all exude the same energy, but Dylan is the only one who screams hard arrogance and soft egotism with a little bit of self-absorption.
“You’re so out of line,” I scoff. My head shakes with disgust, my gut cracks with it.
“I mean, I could ask you out. I’m not opposed to it.” His tongue darts over his lips, and my eyes train there before I find his eyes which aren’t any better as they start to glint.
“You’re an asshole.” I walk away from him faking a smile at the people around us so it isn’t obvious we’re acting like clueless adults. I’m being as aware as I possibly can.
I always have been since I graduated college, and my entire life changed. And then last year when I discovered the root of that problem was Dylan himself. He’s too young to be causing this kind of pain in other people, and I’m too young to feel it.
I have been as big a person as I can doing everything but stating outright that he ruined my life and to leave me alone. Emily is the only friend I have. I’m annoying enough with my natural not-a-people-person attitude. It’s worse with their family, but I like doing things with Emily, so I suck it up for the off-chance Dylan will notice me. He usually doesn’t, and if he does, it’s no more than staring.
This is the first time in all the years of staring that he has tried to talk to me. A flutter in my gut tells me I probably wished he would say something because under all the anger and blame I feel for him, I am still a woman, and he still rings all the bells.
“Why, because I won’t ask you out?” He meets me again at the next section where I thought I could get away from him at the spa day table.
I write in a higher bid than the last one written on the sheet and then drop it in the black box.
“No, Dylan. Why don’t you go bother some other woman?” I turn to him, my toes pinching in my heels. I tighten my jaw at him, my lips pursing. I think they’re always pursed, and I don’t do it on purpose. But he makes my entire face grimace because looking at him makes my blood boil, and I don’t want to look away because he is so strikingly handsome I can’t take it.
“Because I’m not interested in them. I’m interested in you.”
“Why? Because I won’t give you the time of day?”
He steps closer barely towering over me, but tall enough my eyelids flutter as I stare at him.
“No, because you’re the most beautiful woman in this room. Your attitude needs work, though.” He smirks, and I fight the urge to pull it from his face.
“My attitude?” I gape, looking around to make sure no one is drawn to our heated conversation. I stand down and lower my voice, so it doesn’t seem like it. People watch those four like hawks especially at events like this. So, standing next to him makes me feel like all eyes are on me.
“Yeah, your attitude. You’ve been shooting me daggers with your pretty little eyes all night like I did something to you.”
“Like you… you know what, I’m not doing this.” I hiss and brush past him, my shoulder hits his arm and almost makes me stumble on my heels.
I weave through the huge crowd to try to escape him. It doesn’t do much for me since I feel him tight on my heels.
The nerve of him.
I should know by now that his moral compass is way off after what he did. Perhaps I hoped for the best. My heels clank the marble dance floor as I walk past it, and I cross by Emily at the bar. I stop, glancing over my shoulder and exhaling with relief when I don’t see Dylan behind me.
“Hey, where did you go?” Emily smiles. She’s all chipper looking like an actual faerie in her cloudy blue evening gown, strapless and form-fitting.
“Um… looking for the bathroom.” I swallow as my chest pounds with my erratic heart. I hadn’t realized the whole time I was talking to Dylan that I was throwing skipped heartbeats and getting lightheaded.
“Oh, it’s… you okay?” Emily touches my elbow as I feel my face go pale. She probably sees it too, and that’s why she gets concerned.
“I’m fine,” I lie. I need to sit down. The pace of my heartbeat only slows down a little, but I feel like my knees are locked.
“Okay, well, let’s go to the bathroom.” She talks over her shoulder to Carson whom I hadn’t noticed before and then ushers us to the bathroom down a hall.
The women’s bathroom is more of a luxury hotel—couches, marble countertops, gold fixtures. I don’t even want to pee in here and ruin it or something. But I need to check my makeup and rest for a second. Emily finishes using the bathroom and comes out.
“This dress is impossible,” she says to me, looking in the mirror at me sitting on the gold button couch in front of the sinks.
“It looks like it.” I sigh. I absently pick at my nails painted to match my dress.
Emily dries her hands and sits next to me.
“What’s up? The chicken hit you wrong?”
I giggle. “No. I’m just tired.”
We lean on each other since there is no back to the chair.
“Yeah, that meeting this morning was so early and went on forever,” she scoffs, referring to the divisional meeting at seven this morning. Even on a Friday, Mr. Arnold is out to get us. He vaguely mentioned an allocation of funds, but that has nothing to do with Emily or me and the work we do, so we played cup pong on our phones.
“They always do. So how much longer do we have to stay?” I yawn, not able to hold it back. Emily laughs at me and leans around the front to look
at me.
“I don’t know, Carson has to make appearances. And we shared a car.”
I roll my eyes. I almost forgot about that. I’m going to start driving to these things when I know Dylan will be there. I didn’t expect him to talk to me at all, but he did. And now I can’t stop thinking about his voice, his scent, his irrefutable gray eyes boring into mine. Gray and green make a good mix, but mine are dull and sad. His are pointed and ardent.
“Did you take your medicine? Is that why you aren’t feeling well?” Emily asks.
“I’m fine, and I did take it. I just… ran into Dylan.”
“Oh.” She makes a dramatic noise. “How did that go?”
“Splendid. I’ll sit at the bar until you’re ready.” I stand and shift my dress.
She does the same. “Actually, I’ll ask Carson if we can go. I’ll promise him good sex, and he’ll do anything I want. Let’s go.”
I half smile. I’m glad she can be so convincing.
“No, we don’t have to make him leave. It’s fine. I still want to see my bid on the spa day.”
“Okay.” She shrugs. “Whatever you want.”
We link arms and venture back to the party. The music is a little more upbeat, but I assume it will die down.
After the silent auction, it does, and I didn’t get the spa day. Which is fine, I have a spa membership I can use anyway. I think I only wrote something down to have something to do with my hands other than punch Dylan with them. I don’t see him around for the remainder of the night.
Finally, Emily tells me we can go, and I’m about to escape the wonderfully upsetting night until I realize I left my purse at our table.
I circle back as they wait for me spotting my bright red clutch on my seat and sighing with relief before I identify the body standing behind the chair—Dylan.
Wilde About Carson: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Three Page 20
