If she was listening, she’d know I do, but her face gives nothing away.
“Yes.”
“Have a good night then.” She smiles and resumes her trek.
Jealousy consumes me until I’m nearly blind, my vision cloudy. Who is she having dinner with when she’s dressed so sexy?
I keep pace with her since the elevator is in this direction. “Is this the date you mentioned?”
A breathy laugh floats from those luscious lips. She says nothing until she passes the penthouse elevator, aware that I have no reason to follow beyond it. Then she spins and walks backward. “Well, I don’t think marriage will be suggested tonight, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Still bitter about that, I see.
She turns back around, and as if she wants to fucking taunt me with both her delicious ass in those leather pants and her duplicitous reasons for being here, she sings, “Enjoy your family dinner, Papa Axe.”
ZARA
I’m perched at a high-top table in a bar with the wrong Noire.
He isn’t bad company. He seems to enjoy mine, though I’m guessing he enjoys any woman. He’s attractive. Smart. Funny. Somewhat magical and impressively dexterous with the way he mindlessly handles a deck of cards. A bit too cocky for my liking—in an I-know-you-want-to-fuck-me, get-in-line kind of way. Though it’s also oddly mesmerizing.
I’d like to study him in the wild. Maybe watch him fall for a woman who wasn’t easily wooed by his arrogance.
When Axel struts around here—or even in the city for that matter—people instinctually give him a wide berth. Everyone views him as an intimidating king. They gawk, like someone would when ogling royalty.
Ten minutes with Cash, and it’s evident that he gets gawked at plenty, but it’s more due to his impish haughtiness. He has a bravado that convinces people he’s all they should want, but not something they could have. Still, there’s a glimmer of possibility lurking around him, and they seem to clutch that hope. It mustspeak to the preoccupation that most have with an underdog story.
Sipping my marasca fizz with extra cherries, I soak in the rustic atmosphere that is becoming a place of comfort for me. “Is there a reason you asked me to go to dinner and then escorted me twenty yards to the Underground bar?”
“Yes.” He smiles and takes a pull of his Westvleteren 12 beer.
A laugh bursts out of me. “I might be feeling slighted. I didn’t even warrant a trip upstairs to one of the resort restaurants?”
He shuffles his cards with one hand, sliding them between his fingers as if they were connected by an invisible string, while his baby blues are set on me. “Not tonight.”
I hum, waving my hand over his card trick, his flawlessly messy blond hair, his extremely rare beer, and his sexy smirk. “Is this your routine?”
He arches a brow, leaning forward, like he didn’t quite hear me. “My routine?”
“Yeah.” I nod, sip my drink, and relish the hint of curiosity creasing his eyes. “Guys like you always have their thing that works—a line, a look, a place that never fails.”
“Guys like me? You must be confused or”—he snaps his attention to an incoming text on his phone, his eyes flashing with mischief before returning to me—“having a stroke. I’m one of a kind.”
As if to prove that, he pulls a cherry out of the mouth of his beer. Even I have to admit, that’s astounding. I had three left in my drink, and now there are two. But I never saw him take it, and he never stopped his shuffling trick.
I shake my head, watching more employees pour into the bar, the gambling corner, and an area that seems to be set up for dancing. “That’s one of a kind all right.”
He takes another pull of his beer, amused. “And none of this works for you?”
In truth, if I were attracted to him, even the simple gesture of him moving closer to me so I got a whiff of his cologne would have been gold, but alas …
“Not to do the whole it’s-not-you, it’s-me thing before we even get appetizers, but no. I’m … particular.”
“Particular?” he muses, swiping out a quick response to the text. “Is that code for snooty?”
It’s code for: completely entranced by your brother, who smells of snow and strength and spiked apple cider. Who handles me with authority and tenderness at once. Who wants to see the best in me, even though I’m deceiving him and he’s justified to assume the worst.
There are a million reasons to stay away from Axel, but only one is a glaring red flag. The desire to explore anything beyond a passing infatuation is clearly one-sided since he wants to marry me off to a mobster. The thought of him with someone else fills my stomach with bile, so we’re definitely not on the same page. I almost forgot I’m hating him. I should make a note somewhere.
