by Monroe, Max
“Just trust me, you little tequila lover. There’s a six-step system, and once you complete it, you’ll be well on your way to recovery.”
“Bloody hell, you’ve ordered me an AA sponsor?”
I laugh. “That’s twelve steps, honey.”
By the time Pippa scrapes herself off the floor enough to slither her way to the couch like that dead girl in The Ring, room service is knocking on the door.
I jump up to answer it with an agility that makes Pippa give me the finger and open it to a nice gentleman who wheels a cart over to one end of the sofa. I’m signing the receipt and adding some tip information when Pippa gets a good look at the contents.
“What in the hell is a Bloody Mary doing on this cart?” she asks, hiding her mascara-smeared eyes behind her hands. “Make it go away! Dear God, make it go away!”
“Relax,” I say, making an apologetic face to the waiter as he scuttles out the door, horrified. Door closed, I crush some red ginseng, dust it into the drink in question, and hold it out to my suffering friend. “Just keep your eyes closed, hold your nose, and drink this sucker down like you’re bonging a beer.”
“I’ve never bonged a beer, Lena!” she shrieks, shaking her blond hair with faux rage and then grabbing the sides of her head in regret.
I hide my smile behind my hand until I can get it under control.
“Okay, then, suck it down like you were sucking down tequila last night.”
She groans. “Never say that word again.”
“What word? Tequila? Surely, you don’t mean tequila.”
“Lena,” she cries.
“Fine. Fine,” I say and bite my lip to hold back my laughter. “I won’t say that word again, but I’m not going to leave you alone until you down this Bloody Mary, drink the orange juice, take the ibuprofen, and eat at least one pancake and two slices of bacon.”
“God save the chuffing Queen. Why are there so many things to do right now?”
“Because it’s the only way to prevent you from spending the day on the sofa.”
“That plan doesn’t sound bad.”
I plop down on the couch and nudge her with my elbow. “We’re on vacation, Pip! There’s no way I’m going to let you spend it holed up in the hotel room with a raging hangover.”
“God, I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You just think you do. But after you do this, you’re going to love me forever and ever, amen. I promise.”
She groans. Sighs. Groans again.
And then she opens her eyes, a fighting light making them glow like freaky blue orbs, downs the Bloody Mary like a champ, and digs into the breakfast accoutrement like Diamond Jim Brady.
“Thattagirl,” I say, chancing the safety of my fingers by reaching in front of her to grab a pancake and a piece of bacon for my plate. “I’m so proud of you.”
She glares. “If I puke this back up, I’m going to make sure I spray it around the room like a firehose to ensure your suffering.”
“You won’t. Promise.”
We both move to the sofa with our pancakes and bacon to finish eating, and it isn’t until we’re almost done that Pippa’s previously blacked-out memories start to trickle in.
“Why do I feel like I need to go to confessional?”
“Probably because you’ve taken up a life of petty crime.”
“What?”
I count off her loot on my fingers. “The DJ’s microphone. Bar glasses. Freaking hand soap. Someone’s hat. You stole a bunch of stuff last night, and I honestly have no idea why.”
“Bollocks,” she mutters and searches my eyes for a long moment. “What in the hell could I have possibly wanted with someone’s hat?”
I shrug. “You did sing a few lines from ‘Do You Want to Build A Snowman?’ Could be related.”
“That’s my go-to when I’m drunk? Frozen?”
I nod.
“Sounds like I had a bloody twisted childhood, doesn’t it…” She gasps and snaps her fingers suddenly. “Wait…why do I remember seeing you with a guy?”
Oh shit. Avoid, avoid…
I shrug off her question and put a glass of orange juice to my lips. “Sometimes, drunken memories don’t make any sense.”
“Lena,” she says my name, more suspicious now. “I remember a man. I remember you with a man. Stunning showing of genetic inheritance, too. Rugged jaw, toned arse, and a holy huge wanker.”
I nearly choke on my juice and have to wipe it from my chin with the back of my hand. “You did not see his wanker!”
She smiles. “Ah, so there was a man, then.”
“Okay, okay,” I admit with a beleaguered sigh. “There was a man, but there’s not much of a story. You were a bit of a cockblock last night.”
She cracks up. “I was?”
I nod, and I can’t hide my smile. “You were going for some sort of performance award, I swear.”
“Oh hell, sorry about that.”
I wave her off, squashing down any lingering vestiges of disappointment with a third piece of bacon. “It’s no big deal. I shouldn’t even have been in that situation anyway.”
“Why the hell not?” she argues. “It’s okay to have fun with someone, Lena. It doesn’t mean you’re going to throw your whole bloody life away.”
“He was… I don’t know… There was something about him that made me feel…”
She widens her eyes when I don’t finish the thought. “Made you feel what? Horny? Nauseous? I mean, at least give me a direction here.”
“Invested,” I supply. “He was too damn tempting.”
“And where is this guy now?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
She stares at me.
I throw up my hands. “Well, I know he’s staying at this resort and I know his first name, but that’s pretty much all I know. He left after he got us back here safely last night.”
“What’s his name?”
“Theo,” I remark. An unexpected butterfly takes flight in my belly as I say it.
“Theo.” She tests his name on her tongue like she’s sampling a fancy wine. “Yeah, I think you should try to track his sexy ass down and finish what you started.”
“How about you worry about finishing your breakfast so we can head down to the pool?” I say, trying like hell to change the subject. “Sophie already texted and said she and Frederick are heading down there early.”
Pippa snorts. “Yeah, okay. I’ll let this conversation slide for now, but don’t think I’m going to forget about it.”
“Just eat your fucking pancake.”
Pippa’s responding smile is the size of her Mary Poppins bag of theft.
And just like that, I’m thinking of him again.
Fucking hell. I need to get it together.
Sun, sangria, and friends—that’s what I need to focus on for the rest of the day.
Theo
I wake up to the awful sound of my phone ringing.
Son of a bitch. I reach out to slam my hand against the resort nightstand to find it, and I have to squint my eyes just to make out the name on the screen.
Incoming Call Wes.
Something must be wrong for Wes to be calling me this early. He’s level-headed and mature and totally capable of managing shit on his own, and there’s no way he’d call me just to bullshit at this hour.
I scramble to get the call answered by the third ring.
“Fuck, it’s early,” I mutter into the receiver and shut my eyes quickly.
“Theo?” Wes asks with a good-natured chuckle. “You okay, dude?”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “I just…had a late night last night.”
“You must have. If my math is right, it’s gotta be like ten a.m. your time.”
“What?” I ask, panic making me jerk to sitting so I can get a good look at the clock.
Yep. Ten after ten. Shit.
I never sleep in this late. Hell, most days, no matter if I’m jet-lagged or not, I’m up before the damn
sun. And I sure as fuck don’t sleep in when I have a new club to get up and running smoothly in an almost impossible ten-day timeline.
“Theo?” Wes’s voice pulls my attention back to the call. “You there, bud?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I scrub my hands down over my face in an attempt to wake myself up quickly. “What’s up?”
“Jesus, what’s the bastard mute or something?” I hear Cap ask in the background. “Why do you keep asking if he’s there?”
“Shut up,” Wes says to Cap, which prompts Thatch’s rolling laugh.
“Why’s everyone there with you?” I ask and then take a drink from the bottle of water on my nightstand to soothe the scratch in my throat.
I’m used to being up late, but apparently, the thrill of last night was a little too much for my body to handle. Between Lena and her friend, the intense negotiation with the Italian police, and the resulting selective patron clearout, I didn’t slide into bed until well after five this morning.
I expect a lot of myself, all the time, but evidently, waking up before ten to conquer the day is a little more than my body was prepared to cooperate with.
“Just Cap and Thatch, and I promise, I wouldn’t have them here if they weren’t pertinent to the conversation.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Thatch complains.
“Are you trying to say something negative about us?” Cap inserts.
“Because I have to tell you, you’re lucky to be in our company, Whitney,” Thatch adds.
“I believe you,” I say quickly, hoping we can get this over with in some reasonable amount of time. With my unintentional delay in wake-up, I’m sure there’s all sorts of shit to sort out with Carey about my schedule for today. “What’s up?”
Wes, thank God, dives right into the meat of the call. “You remember that complaint we got from the apartments across the street?”
I ruffle a hand through my hair and stand to pace as I try to remember the details. For some reason, I always think better standing up. “Right, right. Late-night disturbance. They lodged a formal complaint with the city, hoping to change or reduce our hours.”
“Yes. Well, their lawyer has been chomping at the bit to take this thing all the way to a permit revocation, with the reasoning that we somehow didn’t disclose the full agenda of the establishment at the town meeting with sixty-days’ notice so the neighborhood could veto it ahead of time.”
“Don’t I remember us doing that?”
“Forty-five days,” Cap says dryly. “We did it forty-five days prior to construction starting. Technically, the sixty days is mandated as prior to opening, but the language in the whole bill is shit.”
“Well, fuck,” I mutter. “Not exactly great news to wake up to.”
“Ah, but that’s where I come in,” Thatch sings in a sweet—torturous—melody.
“Thatch knows an investor,” Wes translates. “Someone willing to buy out the apartments within thirty days. Apparently, if the building changes hands, they have to file a whole new case, and they have to do it with the approval of the owner.”
“Aren’t politics grand sometimes?” Cap crows in the background. “I looked into it, and it’s true. They’d have to drop the case, and with Thatch’s inside man as the owner, they’d be sealed up tight against a new filing. No blowback on you.”
I laugh sardonically as I head to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. Even though I’m fully engaged in the conversation, my brain is still foggy, and I hate that.
“Well, that’s great from a legal perspective,” I confirm. “But what about the residents? The last thing we want is for this place to be a thorn in the neighborhood’s side, right?”
“Definitely,” Wes confirms. “I have a few ideas for incentives and outreach, though. I think they’ll go a long way toward neighborhood approval.”
“Great.”
“I’ll email over the specifics so you can take a look,” Wes says.
“Sounds good. But don’t feel like you have to wait to start implementation. I trust your judgment on this,” I reply.
“How come Theo never tells me he trusts my judgment, Thatch?” Cap asks in the background, and I roll my eyes.
“You know, he never says that to me either,” Thatch adds with a laugh.
Wes and I both ignore them, but that doesn’t stop Cap from taking the phone from Wes—physically, if the sounds of a scuffle are anything to go by—and commandeering the conversation.
“Did you get the email I sent you?”
“Considering I’m just waking up, it’s safe to say, no, I did not.”
“Fucking hell, Theo,” he mutters. “I sent you the list for book club.”
I furrow my brow. “The what?”
“The list of books you need to read while you’re in Positano swinging your dick around and sleeping in until fucking noon. I mean, you act like you’re there on business, but it sure as fuck doesn’t sound like it to me.”
“Pretty sure I’m here opening a club, but okay.”
“You better fucking read the books on that list, or I will ban you from book club myself.”
I cross my fingers. “Promise?”
“Please!” Wes says loudly. “Ban me too!”
“That’s cute,” Cap retorts. “You know you’d both be crying like fucking babies if I gave you the boot.”
“I’ll make a mental note about the email, Cap,” I say in an effort to move this along and get him off my back. “But I really have a lot to get done this morning, so can we wrap this up, you think?”
“All right, fine. But you have to at least tell us why you were up so late last night.” I can literally hear the smile in his voice. “A sexy woman, perhaps?”
No way I’m telling this guy even an inkling of information about the sexy woman from last night. He’d spread that shit around like chlamydia, and nobody likes chlamydia.
“It was just a late night at the club.”
He laughs. “Sure, it was.”
“I know you’re tied down to one woman and spend your nights reading romance novels and watching rom-coms on Netflix these days, but nightclubs haven’t changed. They’re still open late.”
“Now I really know you’re full of shit,” he guffaws. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, sweetheart. Deflection is the first sign of a liar.”
“You’re right, Cap,” I say sweetly. “But do you know what the first sign of the end of a conversation is?”
“What?”
I hang up the phone without another word, and immediately, I receive a text message from him.
Cap: You’ll pay for that, Theodore. That’s a promise.
I don’t bother to respond. Caplin Hawkins is a vortex, and I don’t have time to get sucked in any more than I already have.
I toss my phone onto the bathroom counter and brush my teeth, and then I turn on the shower. I hop in while the water’s still cold and make quick work of cleaning up, and by the time I finish getting dressed, I have Carey on speakerphone, rattling off today’s schedule and rearranging anything I’ve already missed.
“Your one o’clock is at the nightclub with a vodka supplier. Your three o’clock is back at the resort with two investors, and your five o’clock meeting is back at the nightclub with Carlos. I’ve already moved the ten-thirty you were supposed to have with Hugo Spavelle to tomorrow, but he’s going to be on his yacht on his way to Corsica by then, so you’ll take yours out and meet him.”
“Are these—”
He cuts me off before I can finish. “Yes, Bossman. Everything is logged in your calendar, and you’ll get notifications. Also, I truly hate how terrible your life is for you.”
I think someone is still a little pissed I made him stay back in New York and man the office, instead of coming to Italy to help ensure Club Indigo’s opening week goes smoothly.
I laugh again, but I don’t take the bait. “Anything else, Carey?”
“Enjoy the rest of your day…in Italy. Without
me there to keep everything organized for you. You know you never would have overslept if I’d been there.”
“Aw, Care. You know you would have been way too distracted by the Italian fashion to worry about my schedule if you were here.”
“I’m totally not flipping you off right now.”
“And wouldn’t Bill have missed you if you were gone for ten days?”
Bill is Carey’s husband, and he wouldn’t have minded if I’d have brought Carey with me at all. He’s the kind of supportive partner Carey—and quite frankly, everyone—should have.
“That’s what FaceTime is for.”
I laugh at the grumbly grit in his voice.
“Next trip, I promise you can come along.”
“Pfft. Whatever. You’ll probably choose somewhere boring and cold.”
“I’ll make sure it’s worth your while,” I assure him.
“You’d better. I expect a private villa with a butler, a shopping budget, and sex. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you’re going to fulfill the last one or if it means buying an extra ticket for Bill.”
I laugh at Carey’s requests and make a mental note to buy two tickets when the time comes.
“Goodbye, Carey.”
I look at my watch to check the time. Since it’s only a little after eleven, I have time for some quick breakfast on my balcony before I have to make my way over to Indigo for my one o’clock meeting.
I call down to room service to place my order and then step outside to survey the hotel. I scan the rooms below, the restaurant on the second level, and then move my gaze to the pool just two floors down.
It’s lively this morning, already crowded for a weekday, and service seems to be running as it should.
I turn to head back inside until my breakfast arrives when I spot an all-too-familiar face.
An all-too-familiar curvy body.
Right there, in a bright-pink bikini and spread out gorgeously on a sun chair, is the woman who has been on my mind since I left her last night.
Lena.
My heart jumps in my chest and my dick stirs in my pants and, on impulse, I grab a piece of paper and scribble across it in what I’m hoping is legible scrawl.
And then with one quick call down to the lobby for another favor from Lorenzo, I make a move.
