One Night to Risk It All

by Katherine Garbera

  “Yeah, and then?”

  “Then one thing led to another, and I spent the night with him,” she said.

  Siobahn wasn’t fishing for lurid sex details. But there was no way to explain the thing without mentioning that.

  “Then this morning he invited me to breakfast with his family, and I knew Scar would be there, so I was, like, sure,” Marielle said. Then she walked in and saw Jose’s wife staring at her like she was the most loathsome woman on the face of the planet... Maybe she’d skip mentioning that bit to Siobahn. “And...”

  “I know. You don’t have to say it. I’m in Manhattan. Come to my place. We can eat ice cream or drink wine or do whatever you need. Don’t go to your place alone,” Siobahn said. “You need someone to remind you that you aren’t that woman anymore.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She had changed a lot from who she’d been at twenty-one, and it had been a long hard road with lots of pitfalls. But she had changed. She hadn’t made peace with all of her past, but one thing she had made were good friends like Siobahn. She’d been the one who’d introduced her to Scarlet and had started her on this path.

  “I’ll text you when I’m close.”

  “I’ll be here. I’m eating leftover ham, which isn’t healthy, but I’m a bit hungover,” Siobahn said.

  Marielle had to laugh. She didn’t drink like that anymore but remembered those days. She hung up with her friend, realizing that Bianca might never forgive her, but Marielle had to find a way to forgive herself. She couldn’t keep beating herself up for old sins.

  Not saying it would be easy, but she was going to definitely make that one of her resolutions.

  Four

  The weather this first week of January reflected Marielle’s mood as she left her building on the Upper West Side. It was bitterly cold with a messy sleet and rain falling. The doorman held an umbrella over her head as she dashed to her waiting car. Her driver held the door open as she slid onto the leather seat and the welcome heat. She thanked them.

  Scarlet had been true to her word and helped her out despite the fact that it must have caused friction with her new in-laws. But then again Scar knew what it was like to be the center of negative attention. They’d grown up in similar worlds, Marielle thought.

  But even career pluses couldn’t take away the ache inside when she thought of that encounter with Bianca. It wasn’t that she’d really considered Inigo to be a guy she wanted in her life. For all she knew, they might not even be compatible. He might be one of those guys who drank beer out of a bottle and didn’t use a coaster...or something like that. But the fact that she didn’t get to let it fall apart the way her relationships always did...that bugged her. That had to be what was bothering her.

  But she couldn’t miss a guy whom she’d slept with one night and that was it.

  She wouldn’t let herself.

  She wasn’t that girl.

  She had never needed a man after Jose. He’d changed that dream of hers. The one where she met a guy and he swept her off her feet and they lived some sort of fantasy life providing her a Disney Channel–perfect family, not the messed-up one that was hers. But she’d learned that she was better on her own.

  Men were fun.

  Inigo had been fun.

  Until...

  But that was in the past and she was moving on. She had an interview with a lifestyle brand that wanted to work with her. She had a manager who had worked hard to get the appointment for her, and she was glad for it. She’d even gone all in and dressed like Blair from Gossip Girl. She wanted to look the part of what they wanted. On every influencer account she’d checked out, the look was a mix between Jackie O and The Official Preppy Handbook.

  The heels she wore were designer, but her manager said if she wanted the work, she needed to make a decision to either flaunt her family name or hide it. She couldn’t use it when she wanted to and then drop it when she didn’t.

  So she’d decided to use her middle name instead of her last name and pretend she wasn’t part of one of America’s richest families. She didn’t want to rely on the name. She’d seen what it had done to her brother Darian. Holding an unlit cigarette in the garage and looking like a trapped animal. But her brother believed in the family mission statement and would do whatever Carlton instructed.

  Marielle and Carlton had never gotten along. As her father’s trusted right-hand man, he’d been the one to step in and divert the media attention from her after the affair with Jose had been made public. He’d quieted things down and done his magic to keep her out of the spotlight. But she still didn’t like him. He always wanted Marielle and her brothers to present this perfect Kennedy-esque image of family.

  They were more like the behind-the-scenes Kennedys. The ones who’d been real and human and made mistakes.

  “Excuse me,” she said, bumping into a man who had stepped out of a building while talking to the man behind him.

  She stumbled, he caught her and she smiled her thanks. He smiled back and then she heard someone clear his throat behind him. She glanced over the man’s shoulder and straight into the dark chocolate eyes of Inigo Velasquez.

  “Inigo!”

  She turned on her heel, but she was already a bit off balance and stumbled for one step before straightening her spine and continuing along the sidewalk.

  “Have a good one, Marielle,” he called after her.

  She lifted one hand and gave him the bird as she kept walking. She knew he didn’t deserve that from her, but she was just ticked off about him and the situation.

  She’d almost gotten him out of her head, and of course she’d see him again. It was kind of like the Marielle law. If she never wanted to see a man again, they’d run into each other. That included her father, Carlton and former lovers.

  She finally got to the ad agency for her appointment and stepped into the lobby, moving off to the side to compose herself for a moment.

  Was it just her, or did Inigo look even cuter than she remembered? His lips had almost lifted in a smile before tightening. She thought for one second he might have remembered the fun they had before he recalled who she really was.

  She took a deep breath. None of that mattered now. She pulled her iPhone from her bag and opened the voice memo that Siobahn had recorded for her. She had made up a song for her to remind Marielle of her new path.

  Marielle rules the world,

  A badass who makes things happen,

  Leaving only smiles in her wake.

  She smiled and listened to it two more times. Now the song was in her head. Siobahn had used notes that were designed to stick in the listener’s mind. And as she tucked her phone away after checking her lipstick, makeup and hair, she heard the song playing in her mind.

  She smiled at the security guard and gave him her ID. He raised one eyebrow at her last name, but it wasn’t uncommon, so she just kept smiling as he asked her to put her bag on the scanner and then cleared her to go into the building.

  Inigo Velasquez was a memory. A happy memory that she had left behind.

  Yeah, right.

  * * *

  Dante Peterson punched Inigo on the arm as Marielle walked away. Both of them were unable to tear their eyes off her. How was it possible she had gotten even more beautiful since he’d last seen her?

  She gave him the finger, and he almost smiled before he caught himself. She was his family’s enemy. He had to remember that.

  “Dude...she doesn’t like you,” Dante said.

  “That’s not true. She liked me just fine. I’m the one who doesn’t like her,” Inigo said.

  “Sure you are,” he said.

  “Screw you, Dante,” Inigo said. “She’s the other woman. The one Jose was cheating with.”

  “Well, damn. That really sucks.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So how do you know her?” he
asked as the Moretti Motors driver pulled up and got out to hold the door to the Vallerio sedan. The car was classy, powerful and the hallmark of the vehicles that Moretti Motors made.

  “Where to, Mr. Velasquez?” the driver asked.

  “We need to go to the Four Seasons,” he informed the driver, sliding into the car first with Dante following behind him.

  He really didn’t have time to think about Marielle. There were some suspicious things going on with the racing team at Moretti Motors, and Inigo had just left a meeting with the team boss. It was believed that someone on one of the teams was sabotaging his car to ensure that Esteban Acola, the top driver on the Moretti Racing team, would win.

  They needed someone with entrée into the high-stakes sports betting world who could infiltrate the operation and do some betting to see if their suspicions were correct. And Inigo was now related through marriage to just such a person. Malcolm Ferris was engaged to Inigo’s new sister-in-law’s sister, Helena Everton. Malcolm had offered to help out if needed and had arrived in New York last night to meet with Inigo today.

  Inigo had brought that information to the meeting.

  “I really hope that this turns out to be a false lead. I don’t want to think of someone on our team betraying us like that,” Inigo said.

  “Me either. If it is someone, I’m going to beat the crap out of them,” Dante said.

  “No, you’re not. Marco might, but you’re not.”

  Dante laughed. “You’re right. So, about the girl.”

  “The woman. What about her?”

  “I know there’s more to it than that she was with Jose,” he said.

  “We hooked up on New Year’s, and then the next morning I found out. Bianca confronted her, and she left. That’s it. I didn’t talk to her again,” he said. “I’m kind of pissed at her. I don’t believe that she didn’t know who we were. She even played all innocent like she was shocked.”

  “To be fair, she might not have realized who you were. You and Bianca do have different coloring.”

  “How many brothers-in-law of Jose are drivers? I mean, there’s pretty much just me,” Inigo reminded his friend.

  “Fair enough. So what are you going to do about it?” Dante asked.

  What was he going to do about it?

  He had no idea. The way she gave him the finger, sort of thumbing her nose at him, had made him want to laugh, but at the same time he remembered the look on Bianca’s face New Year’s morning. That pain and devastation at seeing the other woman. Sure, his sister was happier now married to Derek Caruthers than she’d ever been with Jose. But that wound was still there.

  Was there something he could do to even the score? To help Bianca heal and maybe get back a bit of his pride? Because a part of him still wasn’t sure Marielle hadn’t known who he was when she’d slept with him.

  “I don’t know. It would be sort of fitting if I dated her and then dumped her publicly. She’s some sort of social media influencer or something like that. Scarlet mentioned that Marielle was trying to follow in her footsteps.”

  “Could you do that?” he asked. “I mean, I know hooking up is fine because you know it’s just fun and just one night, but dude, you haven’t been in a serious relationship since...have you ever been in one?”

  Inigo punched his friend on the shoulder. “No. But that’s because I never allow anything to interfere with driving. I don’t think she’d be any different.”

  Dante shrugged. “I don’t know. I saw the way you watched her.”

  “Yeah, right. You were too busy staring at her to even notice me,” Inigo said. That was another thing about Marielle: she drew attention the way an engine needed fuel. She seemed to enjoy it too. She dressed to impress. He understood from Scarlet and Bianca that clothing, hair and makeup were all tools in the viral social world. He got that. But there was a part of him that couldn’t help feeling that she wanted that online life and didn’t care what happened off the web.

  “True. She’s hot,” Dante said.

  “She is,” he said, as the car drew to a stop. They got out and went into Malcolm’s hotel. Inigo tucked his idea of revenge away while he waited for Malcolm to answer the door of his suite. But he liked it.

  It would give him a chance to get some closure for Bianca and for himself. Because until that moment that they’d seen Bianca and he’d realized who Marielle was, he’d felt...well, that didn’t matter. He wasn’t a man who got emotionally involved, as Dante had just pointed out. Soon it would be time for him to focus on the upcoming season, and revenge might help him to get Marielle out of his system for good and keep a clear focus going forward.

  Malcolm opened the door and invited them in, but there was worry on his face. Inigo wondered if Malcolm was going to be able to do what they were asking of him. He was just getting over his gambling addiction, and asking him to return to that world was a big favor.

  * * *

  Malcolm wanted to impress his fiancée and prove that the past was truly behind him. Facing his demons head-on was one way to prove it. But when Inigo and his friend from Moretti Motors arrived at the hotel suite, he had doubts.

  Helena had gone out to have coffee with a college friend, so he’d been waiting for the men alone. Like all addictions, his sort of flourished when he was by himself. He knew that he could reach out to Mauricio, Inigo’s older brother and his best friend, for help, but at the same time he wanted to prove to himself and to his friends and family that he had this. He wasn’t going to keep failing.

  “Hey, Inigo, great to see you.”

  “Great to see you too,” Inigo said. “This is Dante Peterson, one of the engineers who works on my team. He’s going to be monitoring the input to see if there is any tampering.”

  Malcolm shook hands with both men and led them to the sitting area of the suite, which overlooked Central Park. The room that Moretti Motors had provided for him was impressive and spoke to the money the company had invested in their Formula One racing program, which didn’t surprise him. When men were wagering the kind of money that had been talked about, the stakes had to be high.

  “So...what is it that they want me to do?” Malcolm asked after he’d offered both men a drink and they’d declined.

  “Place some bets. My teammate and I are going to be using the new state-of-the-art indoor racing simulator in secret today. They want to establish a base time before the public practice to confirm their suspicions about sabotage,” Inigo said. “If anyone decides to look into your finances, we are going to funnel the money into an account through Hadley to Helena and then you can use it.”

  “That’s fine. I have my own resources, if that would be better,” Malcolm said.

  “Let me talk to the Moretti Racing team and I’ll let you know,” Inigo said.

  “Fair enough. Should we be meeting and talking like this?” Malcolm asked.

  He had wondered about the same thing, but because they were related by marriage, no one thought that it would arise suspicion. “For now, I think it’s okay. When you go to place the bet tomorrow, you should say that we are related by marriage and that I was bragging about being really fast this year. Like you sort of have the inside track,” Inigo said.

  “Are you a braggart?” Malcolm asked.

  “He does think the world revolves around him,” Dante said.

  “Ha. Not really. I mean, I am a good driver, and I’m not going to pretend that winning isn’t my focus. And we have put together a plan that is bound to deliver.”

  “That’s all I need. Should we have dinner in public so that the saboteur can see us socializing?” Malcolm asked. He wanted Helena by his side through this process as much as she could be. She was the one who was keeping him strong, and he didn’t want to let her down.

  “I’ll let you know later,” Inigo said. “I’ll text you.”

  The two men left a few m
inutes later, and Malcolm walked around the empty suite. This was why he’d started gambling in the first place, to give Helena the luxe life. He made good money as a Realtor in Cole’s Hill, but he wanted her to have this kind of life. And he hadn’t wanted to have to wait until they’d been married five or ten years. He wanted to give it to her from the beginning.

  Instead he’d lost their savings and almost lost her. He walked to the windows to stare out at the skyline, but all he really saw was himself sleeping in his car and avoiding the love of his life because he had fallen so far down. He hadn’t been able to find a way out of it until she’d stepped in and demanded to know what was going on.

  He’d told her reluctantly. It had been difficult to lie to Helena. He’d been in love with her since the moment he’d seen her that first day of high school. Sure, he’d known her before that, but when she’d walked into AP US history, he’d really seen her for the first time.

  Everyone had said that high school crushes don’t last, but there had always been a bond between the two of them. They’d dated and gotten engaged believing the future that they wanted would be easy to achieve. But Helena’s family was seriously wealthy—a ranching family that had been in Cole’s Hill for a long time. And Malcolm had always known that he was going to have to work extra hard to give her the life—

  “I’m back,” Helena said, walking into the suite and interrupting his thoughts.

  He turned and smiled at her. She wore one of those knitted hats with a faux fur pom-pom on top. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. She was so beautiful his breath caught in his chest.

  She was his. The doubts that had plagued him weren’t quieted, but they sort of subsided for a moment. He couldn’t lose her. He’d do whatever he had to in order to be the man she needed him to be.

  Not an addict who gambled away all of their money, but a man she could be proud to call her own.