The Lady of Royale Street

by Thea de Salle

  The swan looked perfect.

  “Excellent. Phenomenal, even!” Nash was beaming so much that Alex couldn’t maintain his lousy mood. Enthusiasm was contagious, apparently, and for the first time since he’d driven to New Orleans, he was somewhat looking forward to the wedding and all the hoopla associated with it. Maybe this time, Sol had gotten it right. Maybe this time, it was the match he was supposed to have under God.

  They drove back to the hotel making idle chatter. Nash had recently come back from a tour of Portugal and had thoughts about adding Portuguese cuisine to his hotel, The Needle. That was one of Nash’s strong suits; he went everywhere, entrenching himself in other cultures, and he brought some of the best of those things back to Chicago. He’d installed a first-class sushi bar in The Needle complete with a first-class sushi chef, whom he’d gotten friendly with in Kyoto. There was the bar that he’d bought from a closing pub in England, paying through the nose to transport the two-hundred-year-old wood overseas, but it had proven wildly popular. There was a small gallery of local artists on the second floor, and now . . .

  “Pastel de nata is fantastic,” he said, referring to the popular Portuguese egg tart pastries. “I’m thinking of adding a small dessert counter, perhaps, or a miniature bakery with good coffees for quick breakfast fare. Starbucks approached us about putting in a location, but I think this would be more intimate. Portuguese cuisine is fantastic. These tarts are just the beginning.”

  “I should have you come eyeball The Diamond,” Alex said. “I’ve been thinking about turning the second ballroom into another restaurant. We closed it for renovations two years ago and I haven’t gotten around to touching it. Subletting it out to a restaurateur might take care of the problem.”

  “Oh yes, of course. I’d love to help. I like to. Help, that is.” Nash adjusted his glasses on his nose, his fingertip sweeping back and forth in time to the classical music playing on the radio, like he’d become a conductor in their short time in the truck.

  Alex would ask about it, but he was pretty sure he’d just be given a dissertation on baroque music or some other inane thing, so he changed the subject instead.

  “What you said earlier, about Theresa. About politics.”

  Nash smiled. “Mmm?”

  “I want to apologize to her. I have before, already, for being abrupt. I broke her camera—long story—so I want to do something special.” Alex drummed on the steering wheel. “Actions speak louder than words. Things have been off between us. Awkward.”

  He cleared his throat before adding, “It’s made me an asshole.”

  “Ah. Well.” Nash paused thoughtfully. “Do you know what she likes?”

  “No.”

  “Then the old standards,” Nash said.

  “What old standards?”

  “Flowers. Roses, unless you know what she likes specifically. Chocolate.”

  Yes. Yeah. Good idea.

  Wait.

  “Do you actually know anything about women?” Alex demanded. “You have literally never once mentioned a girlfriend to me. Maybe I should ask Sol, God help me.”

  “Hardly! I’m quite the ladies’ man, though I’ve had a dry spell lately, admittedly.”

  “How long is a dry spell?”

  “Three weeks? No, two and a half. It’ll be three on Sunday.”

  I haven’t had a date in almost a decade.

  “Oh.”

  Nash’s fingers toyed with the trim on his cardigan. “Monica was part of my book club. Lovely girl, very smart, and she had fascinating views on Tolstoy—that was her thesis topic—but we got debating Nabokov and his best works and things got spirited. C’est la vie.”

  “Spirited.” Alex blinked. “About Nabokov. You broke up over Nabokov?”

  “Of course we did. There are few hills I’ll die upon, Alex, but this is one of them. Diminishing Lolita because of its commercial nature is ridiculous, considering the cultural effect it had on its audience. We’re still talking about Humbert Humbert to this day! Nabokov himself wrote the book as a source of income, and it’s interesting to note that it released only one year earlier than Peyton Place—”

  Why did I ask? No, seriously, why did I ask?

  “It’s two things taken care of,” Sol said, sounding weary. “It looked good?”

  Alex nodded. “Excellent, actually. That man knows his chain saw.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Have you ever dumped someone over Nabokov?”

  “Pardon me?”

  Alex stood next to Sol, the brothers watching as a pair of burly kitchen staff relocated the swan from the back of the truck to the restaurant freezer. Sol wasn’t thrilled to discover that the Porsche had been left in the parking lot of the truck rental in exchange, but that wasn’t Alex’s problem. It was, once again, Cylan’s. He and The Seaside’s resident chauffeur, Lorelai, were readying themselves to take the fridge truck back so they could pick up Sol’s car. Cylan was apparently over his earlier annoyance.

  “Nabokov. Have you ever dumped someone over Nabokov?” Alex repeated.

  “No, but I did break up with someone over pudding once.” Sol smirked. “I take it you were talking to Nash. Where is he, by the way?”

  “Checking on Mother. I’ll go see her later. She lives with me, so I’m less interesting than you two.” There was a heartbeat of a pause before he added, “Pudding? Really?”

  “It was more that she was fucking someone that wasn’t me in the pudding,” Sol said. Alex’s face screwed up in distaste, Sol tittered, and the dynamic of DuMont to DuMont was once again restored.

  “Why?” Sol asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you asking about breakups, of all things?”

  “I have to apologize. To Theresa.” Admitting it was another hard crack to his pride, but Alex wasn’t going to lie about it, and he had broached the subject in a roundabout way.

  “Again? Did you break another camera?”

  “No. I insulted her. Made her think I didn’t want her coming to get the swan with me. That’s not the case—I did—she’s lovely, but I put my foot in my mouth and swallowed, which seems to be all I’m good at when I’m with her.”

  Well, not all I’m good at. She made some lovely noises when I had her pinned to that desk . . .

  Stop it, brain. Stop reminding me of how she felt.

  And smelled. And tasted.

  Every muscle in his body furled because that was what Theresa did to him—she quickened his body and saturated his thoughts, which were both intoxicating, irritating things. He wanted better control. He wanted . . . something. Anything. A vestige of the old Alex, whose resolve was granite.

  Instead he got sweaty palms and a racing heart.

  Sol cast him a sideways glance, likely loading up a pithy one-liner that would make Alex want to throw him into the pool, but at the last second, he seemed to change his mind. “It’s hardly a breakup when you’ve known someone, what, two days? Three? Apologize, tell her this is what you do with that mouth of yours, and if she can’t stand you after the wedding, oh well. You don’t plan to see her again, do you? Any path crossing would be incidental to her visiting kitten.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Which is disappointing.

  Alex grimaced. Sol was obviously waiting for him to say something more, but when Alex couldn’t manufacture a single sensible thought, Sol let it go. Instead, he reached into his suit jacket pocket to produce his wallet, rifling through a stack of business cards and plucking out a white one with delicate silver script. “Here. Ask for Delores. Tell her you want the ‘I fucked up big’ DuMont bouquet. I’ve needed a few of those myself lately. Wedding stress has not put my best foot forward, and kitten’s not brooking any shit.”

  Alex accepted it, peering down at the good cardstock. “Thank you.”

  “Yo
u’re welcome. And Alex—” Alex looked up at his brother, bracing for whatever bullshit thing Sol would needle him about, but Sol just smiled and patted his shoulder. “You’ll be fine. You’re genuine. It’s better to get it all out on the table now so there aren’t any surprises later, mmm? It lets her know what she’s getting into.”

  “What does that mean?” he demanded, but Sol slipped from his side and headed for his office, a spring in his step, a trill of a whistle echoing down the hall behind him.

  FOURTEEN

  RAIN PASSED OUT an hour later, practically midconversation. Theresa extricated herself from the warm, sweet-smelling girl sprawled across her body and snuck past the sleeping corgis. Out the door she went, taking the elevator down a floor and padding to her room. Rain was appeased for the time being, and any other disasters Theresa could and would handle to try to give her friend some much-deserved peace.

  That is, if Alex let her help.

  Wanker.

  She had some busywork she had to catch up on—emails, wrapping Rain’s wedding present, texting one of her editors—but afterward, she planned to tour the hotel with her camera and capture some nice shots for the wedding album. Busy hands would keep her from stewing too long about Alex, their tryst, and his ultimate rejection.

  She sat down at her desk, laptop open before her, her hair in a sloppy bun on top of her head and held in place by a plastic clip. She wore a baby blue tank top that didn’t quite contain her white bra straps and a pair of navy blue cotton pants that weren’t sweatpants, but they weren’t not-sweatpants, either. They were some hellbeast amalgam therein, completely unfashionable, and yet so comfortable she’d wear them around The Seaside anyway, to hell with the fashion police. When a knock on the door sounded, she pushed herself up from her desk chair and paused by her purse to grab a few bucks so she could thank housekeeping for their efforts but ultimately decline turndown service.

  She pulled open the door only to offer her stack of bills to a bouquet as wide as the doorway. Lilies. Roses. Irises. There was baby’s breath and carnations and tulips and sprays of ferns for decorative greenery. It was a thing of beauty, and she stared at it in awe awhile before her brain computed that there was a person behind said flora and that person was also as wide as the door.

  Her bewildered smile turned to a frown.

  “I’m sorry,” he said from behind a hyacinth.

  She said nothing as she swiveled away from him, not inviting him in, but not disinviting him, either. His foot shot out to catch the door before it closed so he could follow her inside, putting the enormous bouquet down on a bureau. He fluffed the flowers, patting at the sides a few times before stepping back and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his khakis.

  “I didn’t mean to imply I didn’t want you with me earlier,” he said quietly. “It came out all wrong. It often does with me. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t want to hear his apology any more than she’d wanted to hear the one before that. “I suppose we can just assume you’ll be apologizing to me at least once a day until the wedding’s over? At what point do you mean it?” she shot back. “There’s diminishing returns, you know. The first one’s the most genuine and it all goes downhill after that. I learned that when my ex-fiancé apologized for his first affair, then his second, and then his third. I’m not so keen on them anymore.”

  Alex looked at his feet. “Well, your ex-fiancé was a fool, but with all due respect, I’m not him. You . . . around you. I get . . .” He sucked in a breath and shrugged, a faint flush staining his cheeks when he lifted his eyes to look at her from beneath his brows. “I’ll keep my distance. I’m sure we can get through the next few days without squabbling. I hope, anyway. For Rain and my brother’s sakes. I am sorry, Theresa.”

  “Yes. Fine. Do that. Stay away from me. Thanks for the flowers but I don’t want them.” She was so very angry with him, in part because he’d rejected her after they slept together, and in part because she honestly thought the bastard meant the apology and she wanted to accept it. The question was, at what point was she excusing inexcusable behavior because she wanted to believe the best, not because he was actually decent?

  Scott taught me this, didn’t he?

  My attraction to Alex is scrambling my brain.

  “I’ll go,” he said quietly, turning on his heel.

  “No!” She snarled it as she grabbed the vase of flowers and shoved them at him. “I don’t want these and I don’t want you. There, are you happy? Your conscience is clear. I don’t want you just as much as you don’t want me. Now you don’t have to feel guilty. About fucking me in the first place or anything that happened afterward. We’re mutually resolved to be done with each other. Go away, stay away.”

  He took the flowers because he had to, but the furrows in his brow appeared. “Wait a minute . . .”

  She stared at him, he stared back. He scowled at her between two tulips, but he must have realized how ridiculous that looked, because he put the flowers aside, back onto the bureau. She was half tempted to grab them and shove them at him again and insist he leave, but she contained herself, balling her fists by her sides and lifting her chin.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I don’t . . . please,” he said. “The sex complicates things because of my faith, I’ll admit, but that’s not why I’m this way around you. You’re smart, funny. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” He shook his head, frustrated. “The problem is how much I want you, not that I don’t want you at all.”

  “You want me so much you keep rejecting me?”

  Her decibel level was far, far too loud for the enclosed space, her voice bouncing off the walls and the refined clutter surrounding her. Alex winced, and she stepped in close, jabbing her finger into his chest so he winced a second time. “That’s nice, but your guilt was the reason you gave me first, at the hotel, and it’s left me feeling like a walking, talking mistake ever since. I’m going to draw certain conclusions when you proceed to disinvite me to plans we had.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be a disinvite, and you’re not a mistake,” he said quietly, reaching for her wrist and squeezing it gently, probably so she wouldn’t bore a hole through his rib cage with her poking.

  “You treat me like one, though. You treat me like—”

  “You’re not a mistake.” His voice was louder this time, rising to meet hers. “Stop saying it.”

  “Then stop treating me like one!”

  “Fine.”

  She didn’t have time to escape. He hauled her close, his arm looping around her waist, fingers skimming over the elastic band of her terribly ugly pants before his mouth found hers. She growled at him, but when his free hand went up into her hair, plunging into the silky nest and cradling the back of her skull, she knew on some level it was all over, just like it had been over on the desk in Lake Charles. She gasped into his kiss, and he took advantage of that brief parting of her lips, his tongue sliding in to sweep over hers, not sweet and gentle, but fierce and possessive and carnal. Her body tingled, pleasure rippling down her spine as he twirled her around and shoved her against the wall, his hand still on the back of her head so he could protect her from the impact.

  She gripped his biceps, her fingernails biting into the thin fabric of his polo shirt. He lewdly squeezed her ass, groping the springy flesh beneath the thin cotton. There was a quick, hard spank that made her squeak before he reached for her wrists again, grabbing them and wrenching them up, above her head. He held her pinned to the wall as he kissed her, pressing that big, hot, warm body into hers until there was no space between them at all. He rolled his hips at her, once, twice, thrice, humping her, their clothing an irritating divide between his skin and hers.

  “I want you,” he said, tearing his mouth away. “All day.” He shoved against her again. “All night. I want you. I. Want. You.”

  He followed the proclamatio
n with a bite to the side of her neck. It was hard enough she flinched, but the ensuing lewd suck turned that momentary pain into lasting pleasure. Still he ground against her, and she shuddered before him, straining against his grip and enjoying that he didn’t let go, that he kept her still, in his thrall.

  Dear God. Is this what I wanted all along?

  Yes.

  Yes, yes, yes.

  Alex stopped sucking on her throat and lifted his head. His eyes were big, intent. He still wore a flush, but it wasn’t the shame of before, but heat. His nose touched hers, nudging. Teasing. “Say yes,” he rasped.

  Was it that simple? Say yes to him again? Start it all over and hope for no shame spiral this time?

  I guess so.

  I’m either stupid or an optimist.

  “Yes,” she warbled, breathy and hot all over. He groaned and kissed her again, gathering her wrists together, her two hands clasped by his one. Now free to roam her body, his fingers glided down her bare arm and over the curve of her breast. He paused there, cupping her through her shirt before pinching her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. It was the perfect touch—not too hard, not too soft—and her gaze locked on his. He smiled at her, a feral thing of too much teeth, as his hand abandoned her chest to wander down, over the softness of her stomach and to her cotton pants.

  One tug. Two. He grabbed pants and panties together and forced them down over her hips, right side first, then left. Gravity sent them plummeting to her knees, and he lifted his foot to step on the crotch of the panties, forcing both articles of clothing the rest of the way to the floor. She wriggled free and he kicked everything aside, exposing her from the waist down, her bare ass pressed to the cold wall.

  And I couldn’t be happier about it.

  Fuck, I want him.

  He dipped his head to kiss her again, sucking on her bottom lip before delivering a thorough mouth-fucking that left her burning. She was practically purring by the time he reached for the meat of her thigh to hike up her leg. She had to shift her balance, but she wasn’t afraid of falling. No, he was there, holding her up with all that broad muscle, and when he positioned his knee beneath her leg, she knew enough to wrap it around him, clinging in the only way he’d let her because he still held her wrists above her head.