Suspicious, it took some convincing for him to get me to agree, but of course I eventually gave in. Tyler always gets what he wants. Besides, I’ve always loved surprises.
Anxious, I popped open my eyes. It was an empty building. “What is this, and why are we here?” I asked, confused.
“It’s yours. You’re standing in your new startup location,” Tyler said. “Sure, it needs some work, but we’ll have it whipped up in no time.”
“Oh my God,” I said, tears pooling in my eyes. “It’s amazing!” I managed before frowning. “But I had the impression you weren’t serious about this.”
Tyler waved me off. “Nonsense. I admit, I did suggest it a little too quickly before, but I’ve consulted with a few experts, and we’re going to make this work.” He grinned at me.
Tears came to my eyes and I felt weak in my knees. “I can’t believe this,” I said, noticing that little smirk he had on his face. “What? You have that and that’s not all look going on right now.”
“It’s the best part. Christine Finnerman has agreed to send over her two best lieutenants to work alongside you.”
“April and Gabe,” I breathed, feeling dizzy. This had to be some sort of dream.
“I-I-I-” I stuttered, unable to find the words.
“Love me?” Tyler finished.
“Yes, of course that, but . . . what if this business fails? What if I fail? And do I even want to know what it took to get Christine to agree to that?”
“Then it fails and at least you tried. This is your dream, and it’s right in front of you. It’s time for you to go out and seize it. But I know you three aren’t going to fail,” Tyler said firmly. “All that slaving for Christine is going to pay off, trust me.”
“You didn’t answer my last question.”
“Details, details. Does it really matter?” Tyler said with a grin.
I don’t think I loved Tyler more than I did in that moment. I stood on my tiptoes and gave him a deep kiss.
“Damn, I should give you surprises like this more often,” Tyler breathed when I finally pulled back away from him, breathless.
I giggled. “Oh shut it.”
“Seriously, I want more of where that came from.”
I playfully poked him in the stomach. “Later.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.
Tyler stared at me wearily. “All right. I’m going to hold you to that.”
I smiled, then sighed a second later.
“What’s the matter now?” Tyler asked.
“I just don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you for all of this.”
Suddenly, Tyler’s face brightened. “I know exactly how you can repay me.”
I stared at him warily. “What is it?”
“You can be my date to Brad’s wedding tomorrow.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I don’t know. I don’t really have anything to wear.”
Tyler pulled me in close, the smell of his cologne that I so loved tickling my nose. “You’re in fashion. I’m sure you can find something. And it’s not a request,” he added. “It’s an order.”
Epilogue
Tyler
There’s a saying that you get what you pay for, and I got exactly that with Brad’s wedding. The event was a lavish affair, being held at the Promade. It was a small fortune to rent it for the day, but it was worth it.
All the wedding guests were dressed in the high-end attire designed by Christine. I’d supplied the money for top-notch catering, a band, and best of all, relieved my best friend of tremendous stress.
Not to say that he wasn’t still stressed. Even with everything I’d done to help, Brad still couldn’t help being nervous. It was his wedding, after all.
“Calm down, man,” I whispered to him as we waited. We were both dressed in almost identical tuxes, black and white, our shoes freshly shined and our hair nicely styled.
“You’re going to stroke out before Katie even makes her way down the aisle.”
“I just want everything perfect for her,” Brad replied, and I could understand.
All the guests were waiting. The music was about to start and I was about to walk with Brad out to the altar.
“Get ahold of yourself,” I growled. I felt like Brad was being ridiculous.
Before he could reply, a tiny dog, a Yorkshire Terrier dressed in a tuxedo, came running to me.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded with a ridiculous laugh when the dog reached me, wondering what the hell a dog was doing here.
Brad eyed the dog and groaned. “That’s Katie’s little baby, Hercules. Fitting name for a five-pound dog, huh? She doesn’t go anywhere without him. I told you she’s an animal lover. Anyway, she insisted he be a part of the wedding. Sorry I didn’t tell you, but don’t worry, he’s well-behaved.”
I shook my head. “You’ll never learn to put your foot down.”
Brad grimaced. “That’s not all. He’s supposed to walk in with us.”
I turned on him and rolled my eyes. “Hey, whatever floats your boat. It’s your wedding.”
“Let’s go,” I ordered. “It’s time.”
Brad pulled himself together, and when Katie reached the altar, he looked in total control of himself. I was proud of him.
The priest began, and I found my thoughts drifting to Victoria and what the future might hold for us. I could see her with the guests, and she looked absolutely stunning.
“And now you may kiss the bride!” The priest cried exultantly at the end.
With a smile on his face, Brad locked lips with Katie, and the crowd went wild, confetti flying everywhere. Hercules even got in on the excitement, running from person to person, looking for attention.
Victoria smiled at me while clapping, and I made my way over to her, grabbing her hand. “I’ve never seen a best dog at a wedding before,” she said as we made our way to the punch bowl.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s cute, but don’t even get me started on that one.”
“I think I might want one just like him.”
“That’s going to take some serious convincing,” I said with a grin.
Victoria laughed, her eyes sparkling. “I was just kidding. Kind of.”
It was time for my speech. At first I was nervous as I got up onto the stage, not sure what I was going to say. I’d originally prepared a speech, but then I decided against it because I was usually good at talking off the top of my head. The words seemed to flow right through me and I found myself enjoying it, making light-hearted jokes about Brad and causing the audience to laugh.
“To Brad,” I said as I came to the conclusion of my speech, raising my wine glass to toast the audience, “and his new wife.”
The crowd went wild.
“That was a great speech,” Victoria complimented, coming up and wrapping her arm around my waist. She smiled up at me, and my heart jumped in my chest at the sight of her. She looked so beautiful and so happy. I was proud that she was mine.
“Wasn’t it?” I asked.
Victoria’s eyes sparkled as she looked up at me. “So, um, I think I have a little surprise of my own.”
I arched an eyebrow curiously. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
Victoria bit her lower lip in a teasing manner. “Well, you remember that deposit you made?”
I frowned in confusion. “Huh? What deposit?”
“The one you made after pounding me into submission,” Victoria replied with a mischievous grin that I daresay rivaled one of my own.
“Oh,” I said. “That.” I thought for a second before I grasped her meaning. “You mean I’m going to be . . .”
“A daddy,” Victoria said in excitement.
She ran her fingers up my shoulders coyly. “Are you ready?”
Sweat beaded my forehead, and I actually felt dizzy for the first time that evening—and I hadn’t even started drinking yet. Not from nervousness, but from the whirlwind of emotion now hitting me all at once.
“I
am,” I said, smiling, picking Victoria up into an almost bear hug and planting a deep, passionate kiss on her.
PREVIEW: Relentless - A Bad Boy Romance
By Lauren Landish
Relentless will be Book 1 in the Bertoli Crime Family series. It will release approximately mid to late April, and there will be 3 books in this series. The first two chapters are included here as a preview!
Chapter 1
Adriana
“Hey honey, you wanna party with an APE?”
I rolled my eyes, looking at the idiot standing in front of me, a young guy who looked like he was maybe nineteen and wearing a fraternity t-shirt. He was obviously approaching me as part of some sort of frat thing, although at least he had some taste. After all, he did have his choice of women to choose from — I don't go to a tiny school. “Are you doing this as a rush or something?”
The idiot's eyes wavered for a moment. He'd probably seen my paint-streaked clothes and mussed hair and correctly pegged me for an art student. Sadly enough, art students at my school have a bit of a reputation for being an easy lay, and I guess he'd picked me out as an easy target. It took him a moment before he reassumed his false bravado. “Come on baby, you know APE's got the best parties and the best time for your weekend! Besides, you look like you could use a real APE, if you know what I mean.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him, raising an eyebrow. This idiot certainly didn't know who I was, nor what I'd been through the past six months. Still, his grin didn't waiver, and I pulled out an old nugget I'd picked up somewhere when I first came to campus. “You do realize that the average male gorilla has a penis size of only one and a half inches, right? Trust me, if I needed some dick, an APE's the last place I'd go looking. Run along, monkey boy.”
The frat pledge, looking defeated, turned and walked away, quickly reassuming his cocky persona to hit on the next girl that came by and caught his eye. Laughing a much needed laugh under my breath, I readjusted my bag over my shoulder and kept walking, leaving the campus library and heading toward my apartment. As I walked, I kept my eyes open for Vincent, hoping he'd gotten the message. After months of harassment which had left me frazzled and at the end of my wits, I'd taken out a restraining order against him the week prior. I hoped it would end the creepiness I'd been through for most of the past five months, even if my family thought otherwise. While Uncle Carlo wanted to send a message his way, I'd convinced him to let the legal authorities take care of my former sculpture teacher.
Uncle Carlo is old school Italian. Sicilian in fact, and yes, that means exactly what you think it means. Carlo was in the family business, the Mafia, and worked his way up the ladder to becoming the Godfather of the Seattle-Tacoma area for the past fifteen years. After taking over for his murdered brother, my father, he'd quickly consolidated power, crushing his opposition ruthlessly and enacting revenge for his fallen sibling. Bloodthirsty, and certainly not a man to be trifled with. That was Uncle Carlo
At the same time though, he was a kind and generous family man, who'd taken my mother and me into his house as soon as he could, caring for us like we were his own wife and daughter. Cancer had taken his wife when I was in sixth grade, so for most of my life, Uncle Carlo had been the male authority figure, and his sons had been practically like my brothers. He and Mom were in no way romantic, in fact, she filled an important role in his organization as one of his prime lieutenants.
Still, if anyone could talk Uncle Carlo out of a course of action, it was me, and he let me try it my way at first.
I went to the cops after Vincent started harassing me, getting a restraining order and having it delivered to the school as well, who removed me from the class next door to his in order to conduct an 'internal investigation.' That hadn't stopped his communication issues though, and I'd gotten tired of his constant text messages, e-mails, and phone calls. Unfortunately he knew my campus e-mail, and that was one address I couldn't get changed.
To say it was a bit disheartening was an understatement. You would think that a restraining order and evidence of sexual harassment would have done something more than just a change of classrooms and an 'internal investigation.'
I was wondering what to do about it all when I got back to my off campus apartment that I shared with Angela. Angela, never Angie, had been roomies with me for two years, after she'd passed Uncle Carlo's discreet but thorough background check. Short, alternatively perky and serious, and Asian, she was the total opposite of me as a math major. However, for some reason the two of us gelled, and for two years we'd been the best of roommates.
The first threads of worry started to work their way through me when I saw the open window to our apartment. Angela had terrible allergies, and insisted on keeping the windows of our apartment shut, even in the dead of summer. With ionic air filters and other anti-allergen devices running almost constantly, we racked up quite an electricity bill on a monthly basis, but thankfully Uncle Carlo had no problems with footing that cost, and the nearly sterile air did mean that when I painted at the apartment, I never had to worry about some stray cat hair or something screwing up a canvas. But for Angela to leave the window open was just not possible.
Hurrying to our door, I unlocked the deadbolt quickly, pushing the door open. “Angela? You home?”
Leaden, oppressive silence greeted my words, and I waved my hand in front of my face. The apartment was hot, and a sour, metallic smell was coming from Angela's bedroom. Setting my bag down, I walked carefully toward the room, calling out the whole time. “Angela? Hey, Anj? You here? You would have laughed your ass off — I ran into a pledge from Alpha Rho . . .”
The words dried up in my throat as I entered Angela's bedroom and saw the carnage in front of me. Angela, dressed in her normal early semester apartment wear of a tank top and a pair of Seahawks shorts, was lying face down on her bed, the back of her shirt ripped and torn, her shorts pulled down to expose her ass to the air. More important to me though was the spreading red pool underneath her, and the drip of the blood from her bed off of her out flung arm. The wall next to her was splattered, red raindrops against the eggshell white drywall.
I don't remember much of the next hour or so, everything was a bit of a haze. I must have screamed, or perhaps I'd maintained enough presence of mind to call 9-1-1. I do know that there were bright lights, and eventually a cop who led me into the living room, handing me tissue after tissue as I cried my eyes out. Later on, the same cop I think led me to an ambulance, but I wasn't sure why, except that they wanted me to go to the hospital.
It wasn't until I was at the hospital and I got an injection from the doctor that I started to calm down, but in that detached, sort of loopy way that comes with some really decent drugs. I didn't really start to come to until it was nighttime, and I noticed that I was now in a room in the hospital. Everything was painted that sort of vomit inducing color that looks like baby blue and mint green were mixed, and I was laying on one of those reclining beds. “Wha . . . What happened?”
“It's okay Bella,” Uncle Carlo said from my left, his voice soft and concerned. Bella was a nickname he often called me. I looked at him and took a deep breath. Carlo was wearing his dark blue suit, one of his suits that I associated with him and work. He must have come straight from the office, where he worked in his day job as owner of Bertoli's Pizza, the largest independent pizza delivery company in the state of Washington. Carlo had even once gotten on television with Guy Fieri, if you can dig that. He had other businesses, including Bertoli Trucking, Sicily Dry Cleaning, and a few others he was a minority investor in, but his day job was at the pizza company.
“Uncle . . . oh, it was so horrible!” I said, my voice still sounding slightly separated from my body. I felt like a little girl again, telling him about the monster under my bed or something. “There was so much blood!”
“I know,” he replied, taking my hand in his. “I seen a little of the crime scene, the police didn’t tell me they had brought you here until af
ter I arrived. Tell me exactly what you saw.”
I recounted my memory, starting with the APE and ending with my seeing Angela's body. It didn't take long, after all until seeing the open window, everything had been a boring yet normal late summer day. I had just taken the last of my first sessions for the semester, and had been looking forward to a good year. The only dark mark was Vincent Drake in the background, but I hadn't seen or heard from him at all that day.
I finished my recollection, waiting while Uncle Carlo sat back, nodding to himself. It’s one of the things that makes him good at what he does, in my opinion. Regardless of how much of a storm he might be feeling emotionally, when it came time to make a decision, he forced himself to step back, setting his feelings aside for the moment. “There were things you didn’t see,” he finally said, sitting forward. “The police haven’t told me much, only what I was able to see quickly when I came to take you to the hospital, but I did overhear some things. Those fools never could keep their damn mouths shut.”
“What did I miss?” I asked, starting to tremble. “Was it bad?”
He nodded. “The killer, it’s most likely Vincent Drake. Tell me what you know about him.”
I sighed, regretting limiting my actions to just a restraining order. Uncle Carlo had been right the first time. “I took Drake's class last fall semester, he was teaching Conceptual Sculpting. He always wore these cheap suits, the kind that you'd get at a Goodwill or something, and they always looked like they were about ten years out of date on his frame. I swear he bought himself a six pack of discount suits when he was thirty, and twenty years later he was still working his way through them, waiting for the seams to give out or something.”
Uncle Carlo chuckled at my description. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Adriana. You always have been a born artist, with such great descriptions of people and things. Tell me about your relationship with him.”
Razor: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance Page 35
