by Angel Payne
I sighed and gripped his neck. “Because Margaux wants you for herself, okay?”
Killian echoed my sigh, though his was angrier. “Oh. That.”
“Yeah. That. From day one, she issued a warning to the rest of the team, right in front of her mother, laying dibs for herself.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Dibs?”
“She’s into you, Killian. If she finds out that we are…whatever we are…learning that I’ve knowingly outdibbed her—”
His growl was sharp and instant. “Neither of us planned this, damn it. It just…is.”
“A woman like her doesn’t understand that. She’s been brought up to think of relationships like everything else in her life, as controllable commodities. She won’t be above taking retribution, and she’ll bring back all the dirt about Nick and the drugs to do so. And it doesn’t just affect me now. It affects my dad—and now you too. Do you get it now?”
“Claire. Look at me.” His words were firm yet warm. He pulled me closer. “I’m not afraid of bullies like Margaux Asher,” he asserted. “Do you understand that?” The certainty in his beautiful eyes and the steadiness in his grip, now beneath my chin, restarted the sting behind my eyes. My chin wobbled all over again. “I eat pushy bitches like her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. She’s not going to stand in my way. In our way.” He leaned and kissed the tears off my cheeks as he continued. “I will find a way to deal with her and keep you safe as well. I will not let her come between us. Now do you understand?”
I swallowed, struggling for the nod he demanded but unable to deliver. “She’s worse than she looks, Killian. Under all that makeup and hair product is a woman who covers her issues with ruthlessness, power plays, and bartering other people’s confidences.”
“Pfffttt. Trust me, baby, she’s an amateur in the secret-keeping world. A wobbling lamb.” His voice was lethally soft on the declaration. I watched an odd darkness move through his eyes, reflected by the storm clouds outside the windows. Unbelievably, the effect made me shiver, even in his embrace. The second I did, he blinked and moved away, offering to put more wood on the fire.
I observed him with adoring eyes—and, for the first time in three years, with hope in my heart. Maybe I’d met someone who really did have the power to stand up to Margaux, to deliver me from the dark cloud she held…and would hold, no matter where I went on the planet. The icing on that big, amazing cake? If that knight of salvation was also the man who’d captured my heart…the prince I’d fallen completely in love with. Killian Jamison Stone.
Chapter Seventeen
Killian
“So in conclusion, Mr. Stone, we are—how do you say it in America?—kicking ass.”
I leaned forward at my home-office desk, giving an obligatory chuckle in response to the Chinese man whose image filled one of the two other boxes on the video call. Cheng guffawed like he’d just performed the hottest stand-up comedy act in Vegas.
“I think we can all agree that my Beijing visit yielded optimal results,” I stated. “We’re glad to know your production orders are back up so soon, Mr. Cheng.”
“Up, up, and away!” The man flashed a double thumbs-up.
I could practically see my own relief mirrored back from my monitor when Cheng turned solemn again. “Well said, Mr. Stone. And I apologize for the judgments we all made about your family’s character. Clearly, your success has come at a price, including those who improperly attack you. How do you say it in America? ‘Those in glass houses should not throw stones’?”
I didn’t dare inform the guy that the expression originated from a source higher than all of us combined, though I gave another confident smile. “I appreciate the support, Mr. Cheng.”
“You always have it. The character of your family has prevailed through this crisis. It is clear to many of us that your enemies should focus less on flinging their sludge at you and more on cleaning their own pigsties.”
As I exchanged pleasantries with one of our biggest allies in Asia, my cell phone detonated with vibrations. I rapidly wrapped up the call with Cheng, and as soon as he disconnected, I scrabbled for the phone, now at the edge of my desk.
What the fuck?
My nerves tightened and my gut clenched. A string of texts lit up my screen, and despite Cheng’s effusive prelude, I braced for the worst.
What the hell have you done this time, Trey?
My stare narrowed in shock as I punched the incoming texts to life, giving first priority to Claire’s note.
Sometimes, the stars simply align. Let’s celebrate. I’m on my way over.
While her concluding sentence spiked my heartbeat, I still frowned with confusion. Maybe Trey’s message would shed some light on the mystery.
This means I can get the fuck out of Keystone, right?
I promise I’ll be good this time, boss.
“What the hell?” I mumbled it while bypassing messages from a few close business colleagues as well as some of the guys from the polo team, though I noticed that all of them contained phrases like Congratulations and Thank God.
With mounting curiosity, I skipped to Andrea Asher’s message, which wasn’t a message at all. She cut to the chase with a forwarded message straight off CNN’s Breaking News feed. The time stamp was from thirty minutes ago.
Just in—The Beverly Hills Police Department now confirms that their raid of a house party at the mansion of Rayze McCloud, lead singer for the heavy metal band Bro-Hoof, led to the discovery of the singer in his bed with four females, among them Amanda Berne, daughter of Senator Edward Berne, and Emily Wooten, daughter of Senator Gerard Wooten. The two girls, aged seventeen and eighteen respectively, stated they’d been invited to the party as VIPs after McCloud made substantial campaign contributions to both Berne and Wooten and were “only watching” the activities in the bedroom. Claims of a hidden camera in the room, apparently on at the time of the party, may prove otherwise. Ms. Berne and Ms. Wooten were also allegedly involved in an incident with billionaire hunk Trey Stone in February, though the evidence in that case was declared inadmissible due to Ms. Wooten’s age at the time.
I exhaled heavily while setting down my phone. No fewer than a thousand thoughts bombarded my mind. Liberation. Relief. Happiness.
Agony. Heaviness. Emptiness.
“It’s over.”
The world had finally found a hotter mess than the Stones’ to ogle. I’d have staked my left nut that half the press were already booked on flights to California. And within a few days, after post-program reports were filed, Andrea and her team would be too.
Including Claire.
A sense of loss crashed over me like a sudden storm off the lake. I angrily fought the fucker. Fought myself.
Why was I suddenly so miserable? I’d endured shit like this before. I’d been six years old when it happened the first time. Unlike the moment Da told me Mam had left, I’d expected this moment. Prepared for its inevitability.
Hadn’t I?
The answer struck like a second storm front—filled with lashing ice.
I thought there would be more time.
Damn it, we need more time!
Claire would be here in a few minutes, and I had no idea what to say to her. How to pull her into my arms and battle the yearning to never let go. How to give her some reason to leave her job, her father, and her life behind in California and stay here with me on the simple offering that she’d be my VIP. She’d sure as hell lack for nothing the title implied—a car, a credit card, the right to redecorate this whole place if she wanted—but how long would all that satisfy a woman like her? A creature I called fairy because she was as rare and amazing as one?
She’d never go for it. She needed so much more. She was worth so much better. A ring on her finger. A real home, even a family, with a man who wasn’t living his life as someone else. A man who wasn’t constantly staring at the walls, waiting for them to crumble in, exposing his fairy-tale life for the sham that it was.
Th
at didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
I could make her happy, even if only for a little while. And goddamn, would she make me happy.
I rested my chin on a thumb and slowly swiveled my chair toward the window. The city skyline twinkled beyond the glass, shimmering in double time because of the night wind. To the left, on the vast darkness of the lake, distant lights beamed from a few ships. How many nights had I stared out at those dots on the water, relating so fully to those vessels? So close to home but bound by a course that had been preset for me by people who assumed they knew where all the rocks were—the biological parents who could do nothing for me and the masquerade parents who could do everything for me.
We’d all only been kids when everything changed. Trey had been eight when the doctors had leveled the news that the combination of syndromes he’d been born with would render him sterile for life. And Lance, though only seven, had shown his true colors even then about how likely he’d be to produce a Stone heir. While Willa would have loved both her sons had they been born albinos with three eyes, Josiah was from some of the oldest money on the globe. Producing an heir was still interpreted in the most traditional sense of the word, and his inability to produce one was like declaring he didn’t have a dick, much less sons who respected it.
I’d respected Josiah. But oddly enough, unlike Trey and Lance, that respect was never accompanied by fear. Even as a boy of five, I’d looked at the big man as an anomaly, perhaps a challenge—a mountain to be conquered. I did that every chance I got, rushing him like Mowgli on crack, trying to scramble my wiry body up and over his. Trey and Lance would applaud and encourage my games. I’d had no idea they were laughing at me behind closed doors—until after the day Da and Josiah came to me asking if I wanted to be their brother in truth, not just a front we put on to the rest of the world. I had no idea I was just as much Josiah’s savior as he was mine, a thread of hope for the Stone name carrying on “as it should.” I’d moved into a bedroom at Keystone that instantly made me feel like Aladdin, the penniless urchin ushered to the palace. All my dreams had come true.
The reverie had lasted for about an hour.
Turned out Trey and Lance enjoyed me better as their entertainment, not their brother. Their scorn had been instant and transparent—and I’d vowed to one day overthrow it. To earn their love, one excruciating day at a time.
Took me a little longer to realize that fantasy wasn’t coming true either.
And here I was, still the damn ship out to sea. Steadfast on my course…but sailing alone.
Wondering how I could convince my lighthouse to stay so I wouldn’t have to do it in the dark.
My landline buzzed.
I punched the line to connect it after recognizing the caller ID as the doorman’s desk downstairs. Alfred was gone, indulging his passion for the Bulls in the season seats I’d given him for Christmas, so I was greeter boy tonight. But I was only expecting one visitor, and the doormen already knew to let Claire come up without question. Maybe the guy on the desk tonight was new.
“Mr. Stone? It’s Aaron from the door, sir.”
Not new. One of the regulars but not sounding like himself. Confusion edged his smooth tenor voice.
“Hey, Aaron. What’s up?”
“Young lady here to see you, sir. She says to tell you she’s from the Asher team.”
I lowered a hard frown. Harder than the one I’d already been wearing, at least. “All right.” Both words were drawn out by my own puzzlement. When Aaron didn’t respond, irritation took a bite of my patience. “Well, send her up.”
The man cleared his throat. “Ermm, sir—”
“This isn’t a multiple-choice test. Just let her up.” Against my efforts at restraint, the order came out in gritted syllables.
“As you wish, sir.”
I turned off my desk lamp and left the office, tugging on my loose shirt tails like a nervous teen waiting on his crush to emerge from pom-pom practice. Trouble was, I wasn’t the football captain. Not really. Nothing like tearing open a few scabs from the past to remind me of that fact too.
I paced to the wine cooler in the kitchen and took out one of the new bottles I’d ordered from Temecula Valley. The Ruby Cuvee from South Coast Winery seemed a perfect choice for the occasion, despite my uncelebratory mood. I popped the cork just as the front door opened and closed. “Your timing couldn’t be more perfect,” I called out.
“Is that so?”
The slow, sultry answer came from the woman who rounded the corner into the kitchen on her insanely high, really red, boots.
Margaux Asher.
I wore away a layer of tooth enamel as I gritted my jaw. Then sloshed the red bubbles down my hand from the force of slamming the bottle to the counter. “Remarkably, I’m going to greet you by thanking you, Miss Asher.”
“Mmmm,” Margaux purred. “How so?”
“Just learned a valuable lesson,” I explained. “The next time one of my doormen sounds like he’s seen a reject from The Bachelor auditions, I’ll listen closer.”
She actually giggled at that. “Oh, Killian. You admire my pluck, and we both know it.” As she advanced past the refrigerator in a form-fitting ivory sweater and matching wool leggings, she made weird circular steps in a pace she apparently thought enticing. The effect was more like a blind giraffe who’d already been nipping at the Cuvee, though a firm look at Margaux’s face revealed she was still stone-cold sober. “You are, after all, the prince of ingenuity.”
“I’m also expecting someone else.” I fought the craving to shift backward as she approached, not from fear but repulsion. Memories from two nights ago bloomed like blood stains in my mind. I saw Claire curled against me, weeping from fear she’d be sent to jail because of the evidence this Lizzy Borden dangled over her like a sharpened ax. Her terror of shattering her father’s heart, of towing me into the shadows of her secret. My sweet fairy queen. She had no idea how completely I knew of shadows or what people did in them.
Neither did Margaux.
A clueless smile slid over the woman’s features as she continued her approach. “Of course you’re expecting someone else. Why wouldn’t you be?” She glanced at the Cuvee. “Some unique bubbly to go with your amazing view…” Her stare descended over my chest. “And oh yeah, that city skyline is pretty good as well.”
When she followed the trajectory of her gaze with a seductive slide of two fingers, I pulled off the polite-boy gloves. Clutching her wrist with one hand, I squeezed with unmistakable force. “This is my nice way of asking you to leave, Miss Asher. Whatever you came here to discuss can wait until tomorrow. At the office.”
She laughed as if I’d just spewed a great party joke. “The hell it can.” Her twist from my grip continued into a sweep through her luggage-sized handbag, from which she pulled a bottle of cabernet. “Big victories deserve to be celebrated right away, and now that Treygate is over, we will toast.”
“Tomorrow,” I countered, sliding the bottle back into her purse.
“Tonight.” She pulled two wide-bowled glasses down from the overhead rack. “Oh, don’t be such a Debbie Downer. One glass, Killian, and I’ll be on my way. We won’t touch the stuff you have saved for your special friend, though you should know that some ‘friends’ are little redheaded lightweights and not a lot of fun as drinking buddies.”
Wrath clawed through my senses as she made a move for the wine again, though I didn’t stop her this time. I didn’t trust myself with touching her. As angry as I was, I didn’t want to hurt her. “And some ‘friends’ don’t understand that real relationships aren’t commodities to be controlled by information flow.”
She tossed her head on another laugh, spilling her long blonde hair and showcasing her four inches of makeup beneath the kitchen’s bright lights. Incredible. Every bit of the woman was an orchestration, a realization that actually made me pity her for a second. Margaux had told as many lies to the world as I had.
With one glaring difference. Hers
had all been by choice.
“Do you believe that crap?” she retorted then, adding on a sneer. “Information flow just saved your family’s ass, Killian.”
I pivoted as if to square off with her. “There’s a difference, Margaux. Manipulating the mass-media stream is one thing. Manipulating people for your own agenda, using mistakes they made out of loyalty and love, is another.”
I’d officially outed her, and she knew it. Her gaze skittered to the floor, searching the polished wood in what looked like a mix of desperation and disbelief. Even the consideration that Claire had told me about their deal was clearly a mindblower for her. Poor misguided Margaux, dancing through life on the assumption that her own shit would never stink or be flung back at her. Yet, here she was, dangling over a river of it. I debated whether to drop her in or let her wiggle on the hook a while longer.
I had to give her points for aplomb. The woman recovered herself enough to uncork the wine and begin a couple of pours as she replied, “The truth is sometimes simply the truth, Mr. Stone, no matter how it’s exposed.” She extended a glass to me. “And wouldn’t you agree that honesty is the best policy?”
I let the drink dangle untouched from her fingers. “Indeed. Especially when it’s been decommissioned as a weapon.”
The dark green of her eyes deepened to rainforest seduction. “I agree.” She lifted her glass, slowly moistening her perfectly painted lips after finishing the sampling. “Let’s use our…guns…for better purposes, Killian. And share our deepest truths.” The last of it was a thick whisper, joining the full-court press she started with her body. After setting aside her glass, she molded her hips to mine, flowed her hands over my chest and abs and then around to my ass.
“Margaux.” I stopped just short of growling it as I pushed her hand away. “I’m sorry. That may be your truth, but it isn’t mine.”
