Excerpt of Devastatingly Desirable

Chapter 1

ASTON

 

 

 

“Come on, man! You can’t leave me alone in my hour of need!”

I drag my eyes away from the screen of my laptop and I stop typing. I look up at my best friend and sure enough I meet his clear blue eyes trying to wear —without much success— the puppy dog expression that seems to work on everyone but me.

He knows it, I know it; yet here he is, trying to pull it off.

I sigh. “For Heaven’s sake, Charles, it’s only a bloody stupid lingerie shop. You make it sound like it’s a blasted war zone or something!”

“Well, for me it is! Say you will come with me! It will be too embarrassing to even speak in there, if I’m alone. Please, Ast.”

I roll my eyes at him. It has to be a joke. “And how it is that the thought of two grown, straight men going in a lingerie store to shop for knickers together is less awkward in your eyes?”

Charles stands up and starts to pace in front of me. “We will not be shopping together and you won’t even need to advise me or anything if you don’t want to…”

I shake my head, my lips twitching slightly. “Then why on Earth do you want me to go with you if you don’t even need me to speak, Chuck?”

My friend gives me one of his patented cheeky smiles. “Well, for moral support of course.”

I laugh. “Of course. For moral support. I see,” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

Maybe I should just go. He has been trying to convince me for over an hour now to go with him and buy a present for his snotty girlfriend and I’m too tired and too jet-lagged to keep arguing about it.

I’ve been in New York for less than two hours after a red-eye straight from Heathrow, I shouldn’t be dealing with this kind of inanity.

I should be getting some sleep and then start planning for our meetings on Monday —including the one with our friend, Sterling, who is currently probably in a coma in his hotel suite; jet lag hits him pretty hard every time he travels long-distance— and instead it looks like I’m about to go lingerie shopping for a bitchy girlfriend that is not even my own and on a late Friday afternoon no less.

The lack of sleep must be really starting to warp my judgment if I’m actually considering this; but I knew already I would cave eventually if he insisted: he has been my friend for twenty of my thirty-two years: there’s nothing I won’t do for him and I know he feels the same towards me.

We are more like brothers than friends, it has always been like this.

Charles shrugs back into his leather jacket. “Come on, I’m sure it won’t be so bad after all!”

I close my notebook and stand up reaching for my black woolen overcoat. “Really? Isn’t your own expectation of it being just about as dreadful as tea with your great-aunt Margaret, the whole point of my coming with you for moral support?”

My friend slaps me on the back with a half grin. “Do you always have to be so… coherent about things?”

I smile a bit. “I’m afraid so.”

He just laughs. “Let’s go…”

We make our way outside of my penthouse and go straight for my private elevator.

I take my mobile out of my pocket and call for my driver. “I don’t feel like taking on the traffic myself as tired as I am…”

Charles suddenly looks concerned. “How thoughtless of me! I’m sorry, Aston, I’m being a total ass. It’s just that Lulu is driving me fucking crazy! She makes me forget myself.”

I feel my eyebrows rising without my giving them the go-ahead. “Chuck, if she is so…” I cast about for a word, trying to come up with something accurate yet not offensive to describe Louise. Lunatic Cow comes to mind, but I hardly think my friend will approve of that particular definition.

I clear my throat. “She’s so… demanding and, forgive me for pointing this out, she seems a little—”

“Crass? Manipulative? Annoying? Frigid? A pain in the ass? Thank you, I’m well aware of that.”

Well, apparently he knows already how to best define her without my help.

I take a long look at him. “To be honest, old chap, I could have not said it any better, or… worse, to be more to the point, but then why the hell are you dragging me lingerie shopping for her, instead of breaking-up with her?”

Charles frowns a bit and looks down.

I knew he was unhappy in the barely three-month-old relationship, but I hadn’t thought it was as bad as that.

“Well, you know me. I always try to give people a chance. Sometimes even two…”

I smirk. “And how many have you given to crass-manipulative-annoying-frigid-pain-in-the-arse-Lulu to discover such a list of oh-so wonderful qualities about her, Charlie?”

“I’d rather not give you a number, Aston…”

The doors of the elevator open with a ding and we step in the well-lit, elegant marble hall of my building, the concierge straightens up and stands alert before me. “Good afternoon, Mr. Henley. Mr. Spade— your driver is outside.”

I nod curtly with a tight-lipped smile and thank him, trying to put the man at ease. I have known him for the past five years, since I bought my flat to have a place to crash when managing in person the local headquarters of Henley and Spade, our venture capital firm, and still I have not been able to make him chill out —as Charles would say— in my presence, but I’m used to it: people rarely are at ease in the presence of money and power and I have both. The fact that I’m six feet seven tall is usually not a help either.

As we both slide in the back seat of the sleek, black Lexus, I ask again.

“I don’t mean to be an arsehole, Charles, but why are you not breaking-up with her instead of buying her expensive gifts that, considering the fact that frigid is part of your description of her, you are not going to enjoy?”

Charles gives a scornful laugh. “Man, when is that you started making jokes?”

I smile. “It’s the jet lag, my friend, I will go back to my usual grim self in no time, but Chuck, really: why?”

He shrugs his shoulders and tilt his head a little. “I’ve made my mind: I am ending things with her, but tomorrow it’s her birthday…”

I nod. “I see”

“I refuse to be the bastard who leaves his girlfriend on the eve of her birthday, no matter the fact that she is a bitch. Plus, if I did such a thing, Cora would never let me live it down.”

I laugh. “What are you talking about? Your sister hates her guts. She calls her Cruella!”

Charles shrugs. “Well yes, but she would still berate me on principle.”

I completely understand where he’s going with this and he is absolutely right about his baby sister: even though Cora loathes Louise, Chuck would never hear the end of it if he behaved in such an ungentlemanly way…

I nod, smiling a little. “I totally get it, but why lingerie?”

My friend chuckles. “Well, she not only gave me a price range for her gift, but she insisted on the what and the where: it has to be a bra and panty lace-number and it has to come from this very expensive designer lingerie’s place…”

I shake my head. “How thoughtful of her… and what’s the name of the fortunate knickers shop that is going to bankrupt you?”

Charles taps on the darkened glass divisor with a smile and Lucas, my driver, pulls it down. “Where are you headed this fine evening, Mr. Henley?”

I look at my best friend, one eyebrow raised in question and let him speak, since I still have no idea of where we are going.

He smiles. “Intimate Delights.”