Forbidden Nights

by Lauren Blakely

  They both turned their gaze to the bride as the music shifted, and the quartet began playing Ode to Joy by Beethoven. Casey had asked Michelle why she’d chosen this piece and she’d responded that the music made her happy. That seemed reason enough, and Casey understood why. The piece lived up to its name, matching the expression on Michelle’s face as she walked to the canopy. When they reached the wedding party, Davis let go of her arm, planted a kiss on her cheek and stepped aside to join his wife.

  Jack gazed at Michelle with such happiness, such certainty, that she wanted to jump up and down, and dance in circles. She was so damn happy for him.

  The officiant began the ceremony. An older man with graying hair and kind eyes, he seemed well suited for his role. “We’re here today to celebrate the relationship of Jack and Michelle. Together, they have gathered the most important people in their lives,” he said, stopping to gesture to the guests, “to share in their love and their joy.”

  As the officiant continued his introduction, Casey locked eyes with Nate. She couldn’t have wiped the grin off her face if she’d tried, nor could he, as a warm breeze rustled the canopy. She had never expected to be at her brother’s wedding having fallen in love herself. But it had happened, hook, line and sinker, and here she was, deep in the throes.

  Soon it was time for the vows.

  “Michelle and Jack are here to marry each other and begin this next path in their lifelong journey,” the officiant said, his deep voice carrying across the coconut-scented tropical air. “Their words, their intentions, their vision, and that love and faith in each other will define and shape their marriage and all their days together. There will be times of conflict and times of joy, and amidst all those times I ask them to remember always that love is a gift, that marriage is a lifelong commitment, and that together they can face any hurdles with a love this strong. I call on them now to give their promise to each other before their friends and family. These are the pledges that will bind them together.”

  The gray-haired man looked from Michelle to Jack and back. “Please join hands and look into each other’s eyes.”

  Michelle handed Sutton her bouquet of pink roses, then focused on Jack as he clasped hands with her.

  “Jack, with this understanding, do you take Michelle to be your wedded wife and to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others and to be faithful only to her, so long as you both shall live?”

  Jack nodded. “I do,” he said, his voice full of confidence and hope.

  “Michelle, with this understanding, do you take Jack to be your wedded husband, and to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others and to be faithful only to him, so long as you both shall live?”

  Michelle beamed as she answered, “I do.”

  The officiant turned to Nate. “May I have the rings, please.”

  Nate dipped his hand in his pocket, and presented two platinum bands.

  “These rings are a symbol of your unending love and a sign of your commitment to each other. A ring is unbroken. May your marriage always be unbroken, too. Now, as you place these rings on each other, you may share your vows,” the officiant said, gesturing to the couple.

  Jack slid the ring on Michelle’s finger, his eyes on her the whole time as he spoke. “This ring is a gift for you and symbolizes my desire and my love for you that grows every day, and will continue to for as long as we both shall live.”

  Michelle took his hand, placed the ring on him, and repeated the same vow. Then the officiant delivered the words that sealed off the ceremony: “You may kiss the bride.”

  As her brother kissed his wife before their friends and family, Casey let her tears of happiness fall, and soon the guests were clapping and cheering, and the quartet was playing again.

  She felt a hand on hers, then fingers threading through hers, then a voice in the ear. “What if the best man wants to kiss the bridesmaid?”

  “She’d say yes.”

  They kissed too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  New York, two weeks later . . .

  Nate tugged at his tie, wishing he could yank the damn thing off, and shed the whole jacket and suit too, just wear shorts and a T-shirt to his board meeting.

  He headed up Lexington as the sticky July heat pelted the sidewalks and the city sweltered under the weight of the sun’s punishment. He pushed his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and walked quickly around a group of teenagers sucking on iced drinks. Glancing at his watch, he ran a quick review of the day’s agenda in his head. In a word: packed. He’d just gotten off the phone with Jack, thanking him for making the necessary European intros that Nate had asked for at the rehearsal dinner. He’d need to make some final calls on that front next. Then, he had a board meeting all day, a Skype call scheduled with his Las Vegas property manager, and finally he’d get to see Casey. That was his reward, and what he longed for most. He’d just returned late last night from a four-day trip to New Zealand, and couldn’t wait to have her in his arms again.

  But first, he’d promised Ethan he’d grab a cup of coffee. The man had called him that morning and said he desperately needed to run an idea past him. He’d sounded worn thin. Ethan said he was catching up on emails at a diner so Nate had told him he’d stop by for a few minutes. It was on the way to the meeting, and he figured it was the least he could do for the guy. Ethan had been busting his ass. He’d always been a hard worker.

  Pushing open the door to Sunnyside Diner, he scanned quickly for Ethan, spotting him in a booth at the back. He had his laptop open, and papers spread across the table.

  As Nate slid into the orange upholstered booth on the other side, Ethan did a quick sweep of the papers, grabbing everything as best he could and piling it on top of his computer. “Sorry. I’ve been working here all morning. I kind of took over the space.”

  “No worries. You setting up a new office?” he joked.

  Ethan scoffed, then shot him a sad smile. “You never know, right?”

  Odd response. Nate was about to ask what was up, but the waitress stopped by. “What can I get for you?”

  “Just a coffee. Black, please,” he said, and she nodded crisply and left. “So what’s the story? How can I help?”

  Ethan shook his head, and blew out a long stream of air as he shoved a hand through his hair. Damn, this man was the very definition of frayed. “Fucking boss,” he muttered. “The guy is relentless and is constantly on me to come up with new ideas, then he shoots them all down. And everything I’ve brought to him has fallen apart too. Like this deal I had with Joy Delivered. It was all signed and ready to go, and then wham,” Ethan said, miming an explosion. Nate narrowed his eyes, trying to process what Ethan had just said. How on earth would Ethan have a deal with Casey’s company? “She pulled it out from under me to go to the Pierson,” he added, mentioning the name of another hotel chain.

  Nate furrowed his brow. The details didn’t quite add up. The Luxe had a deal with Joy Delivered. They were ready to roll out the marketing for the LolaRing. The product had been kept under wraps, along with the specifics of the partnership. The exclusive partnership.

  “What do you mean?” Nate asked carefully as his spine pricked with an oddly familiar feeling. He almost couldn’t put his finger on it. It had been a while since he’d experienced this, but the déjà vu running through his mind was intense.

  “She came to me last month to roll out some new product. Said the other hotel chain she’d planned to work with wasn’t going to cut it. Not classy enough, she said. But then she yanked it from me a few days ago to go with the Pierson. Hasn’t told anyone yet,” Ethan said, shaking his head.

  Nate clenched his fists under the table, and swallowed dryly. He tried to tell himself not to jump to conclusions. Not to as
sume the worst. The waitress appeared with a mug and a pot of coffee and poured a cup for Nate. She turned to Ethan. “More for you?”

  “That’d be great,” he said, pushing his white ceramic mug closer to the waitress, and knocking some papers around in the process. “Look at me. I’m a fucking mess,” he said to Nate with a self-deprecating chuckle as he grabbed some of the papers and tried to organize them, then stopped. “Screw it. I just need more coffee.”

  Nate blinked and tried to clear his head as Ethan took a long drink from his mug. He pursed his lips, keeping his mouth shut, as he worked hard to ignore the rapid-fire fear and anger that stirred in his blood. It was only a business deal; this wasn’t the same situation as Joanna, and besides, Casey wouldn’t do something this sneaky. She wouldn’t lie or play these kinds of games.

  But then he’d once believed all of Joanna’s lies.

  Every single one of them.

  Ethan set down his cup. “Can’t get too upset about it, I suppose. Even though she promised me the deal. Hell, it was my idea. I brought it to her way back before she gave it away to the Pierson,” he said, stabbing his finger against a piece of paper in his stack. Nate’s eyes followed Ethan’s moves, and he flinched when he saw the words in black blaring at him. An email from Casey to Ethan from nearly a month ago, with only a line or two visible since the paper was partially covered up by the computer.

  Love the concept! Looking forward to exploring possibilities with you!

  It was like being shot back in time. Discovering an email he wasn’t meant to see, full of words that subverted him, words that revealed how he’d been played like a fool again.

  He swallowed back his anger, and spoke slowly, trying not to show he was reeling inside. “She was doing this deal with you first? It was your idea?”

  Ethan nodded. “Yup. She yanked it out from under me though. And hey, I guess I can’t blame the Pierson for taking it, right? I hear this toy is supposed to be pretty intense. She told me it feels like being licked and fucked at the same time.”

  Nate gripped the edge of the table. Blood pounded in his ears as those words echoed loudly, like a cruel mockery of all that was supposed to be private.

  * * *

  Casey peered at the address on her phone one last time, then glanced up at the street sign. She didn’t spend much time in Chinatown, and the streets had names instead of numbers. Baxter Street. This was the one. She turned right, hunting for her destination.

  The stores along the block were tiny, wedged next to each other, and addresses on the front of the buildings could be hard to spot. She readjusted her ponytail, so it was high on her head, keeping her hair off her neck. She tugged at her silky, short-sleeved blouse, wishing for the thousandth time that New York and hot summers played nicely together. But they didn’t and never would. She still loved this city though, loved the hustle and bustle, and loved the fact that she could track down anything she wanted in mere hours, as she’d done today. That was the reason she found herself walking past Chinese grocery stores peddling odd fruit, then dim sum dealers, then sardine-sized shops that specialized in embroidered robes and dresses. She checked the numbers of all of them, and soon she found the X that marked the spot.

  The Fortune Cookie Factory. With a name like that, she’d half expected a Willie Wonka-style establishment, with gears and cogs and conveyor belts that produced the little cookie creations. Instead, she’d arrived at a small storefront, stuffed from floor to ceiling with boxes. The door was open, and the interior was dimly lit. She walked in. No one manned the front counter. She tapped the bell lightly.

  Soon, a heavyset woman with short black hair and tired eyes waddled to the counter.

  “I’m picking up an order,” Casey said.

  The woman nodded. “What is your name?”

  Casey gave her the name and a minute later the woman handed her a small Chinese food carton with fortune cookies in it. She returned to the blanket of heat in the New York mid-morning, ready to jet back to her office and focus on work before she could give this small little gift to Nate tonight. She hadn’t seen him in four days, and was so ready to let him know how much she’d missed him.

  When she reached Canal, she raised her hand to hail a cab, but two minutes later she was still standing there, peering down the long stretch of street at occupied cab after occupied cab. She sighed heavily, shrugged, and hoofed it to the nearby subway. As she walked down the steps to the uptown platform her phone rang. Nate’s name flashed across the screen.

  * * *

  Something dark and nasty gnawed at Ethan’s gut. It was that thing—that creature inside of him—that told him to keep going. Somewhere inside, he knew he was pushing things too far. But that voice of reason wasn’t speaking loudly enough for him to hear.

  Maybe it was because of his boss. Maybe it was because he wanted things that he didn’t have. Or maybe it was just because he was still pissed. He didn’t usually resort to these sorts of tactics to get what he wanted, but he was backed into a corner at work, and if he could convince Harper that Casey had fucked them both, perhaps he could swoop in and steal the deal back that was his in the first place. Be the knight in shining armor for her. She’d have no choice but to work with him, as she should have in the first place.

  A long shot, but it was the only shot he had. He wouldn’t have operated like this a few years ago, but a few years ago he was still on the rise. Now he was on the downhill, and men on the downhill had to fight dirty to climb their way up the summit again.

  “Look,” he said, “I was totally shocked. I never expected she’d pull the deal out from under me like that.”

  Nate knit his brow together and stared at Ethan as if he were speaking a foreign language. The silence worried him so he kept talking.

  “She’s got a good rep,” Ethan said, words spilling out quickly.

  “She does,” he grumbled, finally saying something.

  “That’s why I was so surprised. That’s why I went looking for other opportunities. I didn’t think she’d screw me over like that. But you know what they say about women in business,” he said, with a scoff.

  Nate stared at him, narrowing his eyes. He shook his head. “No. What do they say about women in business?”

  Ethan gulped. A tinge of red splashed across his cheeks. Then, he sucked down his embarrassment and kept piling on. Truth and lies began to blend. Everything he said felt true because it sure as hell seemed to him that Casey Sullivan had stolen his idea. “I just mean she’s kind of a ball breaker. She’s tough. She’s cutthroat. She goes after exactly what she wants, no matter what.”

  Nate pushed his fingers against his temple and rubbed. Closing his eyes, he lowered his head, and let out a frustrated sigh. Then he looked up. “Hey man, I need to go. I have a board meeting. Was there something particular you wanted to talk about? I thought you wanted advice on something.”

  Ethan waved a hand in the air. “We’ll talk another time.”

  Nate rose, tossed a few bills on the table, and turned to go.

  Ethan called after him, plastering a smile on his face. “Your money is no good here. I’ll take care of the coffee.”

  “Leave it for the waitress then,” he said, then grabbed his phone. Ethan gathered up his papers and exited a few minutes later.

  * * *

  When Nate left the diner he was seeing red. Dark clouds billowed from behind his eyes. Anger lashed his body, fueled by a latent shame. Fine, he understood on a rational level—though that level was much harder for him to access right now—that this situation was not the same as Joanna sleeping with her professor.

  And yet, somehow it had the makings to be precisely the same. Because Casey knew how important trust was to him. She knew that it was the cornerstone of their friendship and the foundation of their love.

  He breathed out hard, huffing through his nostrils. He fumbled at his phone as he marched along the crowded avenue, late morning foot traffic clogging the sidewalk. He slid his thumb across
the screen to unlock it but the heat beat down, and he missed, his fingers slippery with sweat.

  He cursed, and was damn near ready to slam his fist into a streetlamp again as he replayed the conversation with Ethan. Though something felt off about Ethan’s take on the events, that email seemed to reveal the Casey had been up to something.

  Cutthroat.

  Was she truly that cutthroat in business? He flashed back to what Scott had said about her. Good at business, bad at relationships.

  No, his heart screamed. But his head warned him that he’d been fucked with before, and not to let it happen again. He’d learned his lesson, hadn’t he?

  His chest felt heavy, and his pulse beat with fury as he pushed his way around crowds of New Yorkers. He jostled past a group of hipsters, barely caring that he nearly knocked into one of them. Tension coiled in his muscles as his brain went wild, racing through the possibility that Casey had subverted their deal. Because of one sentence. One line. One phrase from Ethan.

  “It’s like being licked and fucked at the same time.”

  Casey had said that to him the night in London. Said it in the throes of passion the time she came undone courtesy of that toy. That’s what rankled him the most. She’d made such a big deal about never using those words outside of the bedroom, but somehow that private description had made its way back to Ethan. The kernel of doubt inside of him ballooned as he turned the corner, heading towards the high-rise building. All rational thought fled his brain, and he was reduced to raw, exposed nerves, and the fear that he’d chosen the wrong person to love yet again.

  He reached for his phone once more, ready to call her, to confront her, to ask her what the hell was up, but as he started to dial her number, his phone beeped.

  The guy Jack had put him in touch was calling. Crap. Nate answered, not wanting to deal with it, but knowing he had to. He gave the guy the necessary details for the delivery, then hung up. Was he really going to stick to the plan to give this gift to Casey tonight after what Ethan had shared?