by Pauline West
Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance
by Pauline West
Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance © 2015 Pauline West Any credits.
Copyright © 2015 by Pauline West
All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America.
Cover Image by Vanessa Mendozzi.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a review; please contact author/publisher first at [email protected]. This is a work of fiction: all contents are a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
I fell for you
like a moth for a flame
“I’ve never seen you blush before, Lily!”
“Quit, don’t laugh at me!” I said, cracking up.
“Come on, live a little. You can’t hide back here all night,” Beren giggled again, his dark eyes dancing.
Even though all the waitstaff had to wear black button ups with black pants, somehow my new best friend always managed to look stylish. The event didn’t start for hours, but glamorous people had already started filtering onto the mansion’s lawn. I felt self-conscious and a little sweaty in my uniform, but as usual, Beren looked right at home.
“Check out the butt on that one,” he said, tipping his handsome head towards a cluster of guests.
I grinned, nervously twisting the Alex and Ani bracelet my dad had given me before I moved to Charleston.
“Someone has to set up the drinks station,” I said, fitting a final water bottle into its place.
“You didn’t even look!” Beren said.
“I did! He looks like a gymnast. Go bump into him and say hi.”
“What should I say after that?” Beren said.
“Ha! You’re asking me? How should I know? I’ve been single for like, always.”
“I know, I know, you’re a freakin’ nun. I can’t believe you’ve never had even one boyfriend, Lily.”
I shrugged, smiling.
“Listen, girlfriend, don’t worry about tonight,” Beren said, cupping my wrist. “You’re going to do awesome. Weddings are easy, I promise. Chef will be so busy he won’t have time to get angry at anyone, and in two hours all these fancy pants will be so tipsy it won’t matter what happens!”
But my heart was still hammering in my chest. Not only had Chef blown up at Hazel yesterday for flubbing a steak order, this event was the fanciest one I’d ever seen.
Was it so obvious to everyone that I was nervous?
All my life, I’ve wanted to end up in Charleston. And I’ve always pictured my life here just like this:
Glamorous garden parties on shade-dappled lawns. Awesome friends, cobblestone streets and historic houses. Sunsets, beaches…
Charleston was nothing like the working class neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina where I grew up, shuttling from one foster home to the next.
But in a million years of dreaming, I never imagined how nervous I’d feel here, among all these perfectly polished people.
Every one of them looked like they could have walked out of the pages of Garden & Gun. They practically glittered in the sunlight. Holding their elegant flutes of champagne, laughing without a care in the world. Suppose I did something dumb, and they laughed at me?
I felt like a piece of spinach stuck in the center of a perfect smile.
And then something even worse occurred to me.
Suppose I made a mistake and got fired? I needed this job to pay for school.
“Someday,” I said, “someday I’m gonna have a place just like this, but for foster kids. A summer camp where they can really feel at home. And nobody with a stick up their ass can come within a mile near it! Oops... did I say that out loud?”
“You sure did, sassy pants, but first things first. We are needed in the kitchen for pre-shift!”
We went together towards the “kitchen,” which was really just a corner of the mansion’s lower level that my catering company had turned into a makeshift headquarters.
The rooms were bustling with staff. Everybody had their hands full. This was the most important event Divine Catering had ever taken on, and not only did we want to make a great impression… we were desperately understaffed.
Our manager, Vanessa, was right at the center of the storm, shouting out directions with a smile. Vanessa loves to coordinate people. She was in her element.
She always insisted on working in the trenches right alongside us, too. When Vanessa was running the shift, you always felt like part of a team. It was a great feeling, even though sometimes the kitchen could get tense.
Our head chef made me nervous. You never knew if he’d flirt with you or scream at you. Maybe he was a genius, like people said, but I’d quickly learned he was also an asshole. I did my best to avoid him.
“What you got there on your wrist, baby?” a kitchen worker said, grabbing my wrist as Beren and I pressed up to the table. “It’s bee-yoo-tiful!”
I smiled back at him. “It’s a Buddhist symbol for trust.”
“Aw. C’mere, baby, I love Buddhists!” Before I could protest that I wasn’t a Buddhist, exactly, the guy popped a wet kiss on my forehead. “There you go!”
Then he nudged me into another guy I didn’t know, who plopped a tray full of cocktails in my hands. They glittered and swayed dangerously.
“Oh, but they said I was supposed to be on canapes-” I said, feeling the full weight of the tray.
“Not now you aren’t, babe,” he said. “Now you’re on Vodka-Sodas. You got it?”
“Uh huh…”
Vanessa clapped her hands. “Everybody ready?”
“Ready!” we chorused.
“All right- drinks and treats for two hours, then they sit down. After the toast, we start serving salads, then the main course, and then dessert. Everybody got it?”
“Got it!”
“Ready, set- go!”
Outside, the jazz band was playing softly under the spreading oak trees. The candles, flowers and linens everywhere made the lawn look like heaven on earth.
Beren caught my eye as we swirled out into the glittering party. “You got it?” he teased.
“No problem,” I said, smiling. Years ago a therapist had taught me a trick to help me calm down when I started to feel nervous. “Just pay attention to how your feet feel. That will help you to feel rooted,” she’d said. Even though it sounded silly, it really did work.
It was a gorgeous afternoon. And right now, in spite of everything, my feet felt like dancing.
I held out my tray, smiling brightly. I made eye contact with an elderly woman with chic grey hair and a champagne colored wrap that matched her elegant eye shadow.
“Vodka soda?” I said.
“What lovely eyes you have, dear,” she said, accepting a glass.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“So exotic. Where are your parents from?” She took a small, approving sip of her drink, waiting politely for my response.
I paused. Even when you’ve had to do it all your life, it’s still hard to tell people that your mom was a junkie and your daddy an addict; that neither had been deemed fit to keep you. Sometimes people even take a step back. As if my own bad luck might be contagious.
And yet, somehow I still hadn't quite mastered the art of lying.
“My mother was Japanese,” I said.
The woman’s face softened kindly at the 'was.' She touched my arm sympathetically as another perfectly polished young woman joined us.
“Vodka sodas?” I said to her, brightly.
“No, thanks.”
Then it happened
fast. Just as I turned to go, a second blonde joined the group. Her manicured hand cut through a row of the cocktail glasses, knocking them off my tray, and throwing me off balance.
The whole tray, filled with sparkling cocktails, went up in the air- and down. Suddenly the small, horrified knot of Charleston royalty was dripping with vodka. And I was still falling.
“Oh…!”
Shards of glass sparkled up from the perfectly manicured lawn. I was about to get a faceful of glass. Just then, I felt a large, warm hand at the small of my back steadying me. A man caught my left arm, bringing me against him as the rest of the tray smashed down into the grass. And I didn’t fall.
I smashed into his chest instead.
When I looked up, I saw a man so gorgeous my heart stopped like a dropped clock.
He was tanned and chiseled, with full, sensuous lips that came as a surprise against his masculine jaw. His eyebrows were thick and deliciously scruffy above big blue eyes.
And he was laughing at me.
I jerked back, humiliated, still with the trace memory of the warmth of his chest on my hand. My fingers had fitted so perfectly against his sculpted chest muscles; he was gorgeously cut under that dress shirt.
Not that it was hard to see that now. He was soaked in vodka, and his shirt was drenched tightly against his chest, outlining every erotic detail of his torso. He was long, lean and ripped solid. The mischievous look on his chiseled, sexy face was in delicious contrast to the ultra clean-cut image his Brooks Brothers outfit and short ash-blonde hair projected.
“Hey, whoa, take it easy sweetheart,” he said, amused. As if I’d been dropped to Earth just to entertain him. “Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine!” I said, angrily. Anger was a familiar friend. I felt it flooding through me like electricity charging up the air before a storm. I took another step back, unsure of what to do next. I couldn’t just leave all this glass, but these guests were drenched. I must have looked bewildered.
“Yeah, uh huh, you look fine. Come with me,” he said, firmly.
“I have to-”
“Not another word.” He tucked my tray under his arm and pulled me by the hand away from the cluster of women, who still stood spluttering in their wet couture like drenched chickens.
I felt awful about soaking the nice old lady. I remembered how I’d felt as a kid, having to survive yet another first day of school in stained hand-me-downs, and my heart went out to her. I’d never wish that bad feeling on anybody. I called back to her as we disappeared around the corner.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyebrows coming together sympathetically. I saw one of the girls open and close her mouth silently. As she stared after us, a look of rage passed over her delicate features before she collected herself again.
“Oh my,” I heard her say.
“Never you mind, Madison” the sweet old lady said to her. “Let’s get you cleaned up; if I know Nan she’s got a whole wardrobe of back-up dresses just as lovely as this one.” She took Madison’s arm and moved her in the opposite direction.
Oh my god… I was definitely fired. You couldn’t just smash a bunch of glass over people’s heads and get away with it. I dug my heels down into the grass.
“Wait, wait, stop. I can’t just disappear like this.”
The guy paused so suddenly I almost ran into him again. He turned his heart-stopping gaze on me.
“But you’re hurt,” he said.
For a moment both his warm hands fitted around my wrist. His thumbs traced over my skin for the space of a heartbeat. Could he feel how fast my heart was racing?
Then one of his hands moved slowly up my arm, and I glanced down.
Sure enough, there was blood all over my arm. Not only was I soaked with the spilled drinks, I had cuts on my arms too. I hadn’t noticed until now, but they burned with the vodka.
I looked up, my eyes drifting to his. I saw that sneaky grin of his again, tugging at the corner of his handsome mouth. Why was he smiling at me like that? I had the strangest impulse to kiss that smirk right off his face.
But blood was spreading on his chest.
“You’re hurt, too,” I said, stopping just short of touching him again.
He ran his hand carelessly through his hair, grinning at me. “We make quite a team,” he said.
Then Beren appeared suddenly beside us, cool as a cucumber. As if we weren’t walking through a black-tie wedding party drenched in blood and vodka! Beren looked from one of us to the other, his smile reaching his eyes.
“How can I help?” he said, making his voice richer and deeper than usual.
My would-be rescuer put a hand on Beren’s shoulder and nodded in the direction of the shattered grass on the lawn. “Set up a drinks station on top of all that,” he said.
The easy command in his voice made me tighten, and I couldn’t help turning my head to look at him. The guy had an arrogant grace that was as arousing as it was maddening. It drew something in me to him. As if we were magnets.
“Yes, sir.” Beren said, nodding. He glanced at me. “Babygirl, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m-”
“Yeah, I got her,” the handsome stranger said. I glanced at him again, surprised. The men looked at each other for a beat, evaluating one another.
It was Beren who broke the stare. “See you in a minute?” he said to me, a little protectively, glancing back over his shoulder as he hurried off.
I nodded.
And there I was. All alone with tall, dark and dangerously handsome. “You should get back to the party,” I said. “I’m fine, really.”
“I will,” the stranger said, easily, taking my hand again. “But I can hardly leave you to fend for yourself like this, can I? My grandmother would roll in her grave if she thought I’d abandoned a lady in distress.”
I reddened. “I’ve been fending for myself for quite a while now,” I said, trying to be nonchalant as we swung into the private entrance of the house. A curtain of heavy, air-conditioned silence instantly drew over us. I lowered my voice in spite of myself, taking in all the fancy antiques, the deep plush of the rugs.
Then I realized his hand still rested lightly at the small of my back. Possessively. Awareness of his touch burned through me like a torch.
“Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you looked like you could use a little help, pretty,” he said. He got that playful look in his eyes again. “You think vodka absorbs through the skin? I feel a little buzzed.”
“That’s the adrenaline,” I said.
“My heart is beating pretty fast,” he said, grinning at me as he held open the door to the bathroom. I slipped in and he stood in the doorway, still holding the door.
Still watching me.
I was about to ask him his name when I caught sight of myself in the mirror.
Even in the forgivingly rich dim of the elegant bathroom, I looked disheveled and flushed. My long, shiny black hair had escaped from my once tidy bun into a frazzled mess, and my pale eyes looked bright and starstruck.
Suddenly I realized what I looked like to him. Like an anonymous peasant girl. An easy roll in the hay.
Well, if that’s what he thought, he was dead wrong.
“Well, thanks. You should get back to the party now,” I said, snapping back to my senses. I ducked my head and turned on the tap, rinsing my cuts clean. Threads of blood ran over the sides of my arm and disappeared down the drain.
Focus, Lily.
“You don’t like it when people help you, do you?” he said.
“Not particularly,” I said.
Then he was behind me, so close I could feel the heat of his body through my clothes. He smelled like lemons and cedar, and something else I couldn’t name. Something old, something powerful. Sex.
I felt nerves all over my body sharpen and dance to the surface. I went blurry with desire.
I wanted him away from me, now. This was crazy!
He was a complete stranger- and anybody could see we
were impossibly different. I mean, here I was, this loner foster kid who’d basically never been kissed, and there he is: rich, gorgeous, impossibly cut.
But I wanted him. Specifically, I wanted him to fuck me. Some secret, traitorous part of me wanted it, desperately needed it, and I couldn’t get the bad thoughts out of my head.
What would it feel like to have him press against me? His full length, the sensuous hardness of him. And his gorgeously full, sullen mouth in the mirror- I could see it just above my shoulder- how would that taste?
I ached for his body, his weight.
The wanting went deep. I wanted him inside me. Every inch…
I flushed.
I’d never had these kinds of thoughts before. The masterpiece of my life was having learned how to glass myself inward, burying my heart so deep that I didn’t even know where it was buried.
This guy was tripping off all my alarms and yet I couldn’t even begin to run away! What the hell was wrong with me?
“Easy,” the maddening stranger said. As if I were some wild horse.
Gently, he took my hand in his again. He was darkly tanned, every line of his body perfectly sculpted. My familiar tea-colored skin, usually so dark next to the pale Southern Belles I’d grown up with, looked delicate beside his own.
Somehow, that turned me on even more. How different he was. How sun-dark and rock-hard...
He turned down the faucet to a trickle, and ran his thumbnail up the edge of my cut.
“Ouch!” I cried, as he carefully lifted out a splinter of glass. It hurt more coming out than it had coming in, and I felt a ribbon of fire sail briefly under my skin. “I didn’t know that was still in there.”
Behind us, the bathroom door fell closed with a heavy, expensive click like a limousine’s door. He held the splinter of glass up between us so I could see it, his hips so close that if I swayed even slightly we would have touched. I couldn’t help smiling up at him.
“See, you need me after all,” he said.
I flipped my hair out of my face irritably. “I don’t need anybody,” I said, rolling my eyes, moving away.
“Wait,” he said, his hand near my waist. He reached down to the cabinet beneath the sink. “I think they’ve got bandages down here.”
