EMERSON
By the time Lucas had folded the last of his tighty-whities and taken off, I’d congratulated myself on two major victories.
First, he’d barely made actual eye contact during the entire time we’d been talking. If my goal had been to dazzle him with wordplay, I probably would have been insulted. But that hadn’t been the point at all.
I’d meant to distract him.
In his defense, maybe he suspected there was a microphone buried somewhere between my boobs and that was why he’d been so focused on speaking directly to them . . . instead of, you know, to my face. More likely though, I’d done a fantastic job putting my breasts on display and making it impossible for Lucas to concentrate. Any better, and he might have actually drooled.
And second, I’d landed a spot on the planning committee for this fundraising gala he mentioned. What kind of gala was it? Who the heck knew? I also didn’t know what my duties involved or who else was on this committee of his. For all I knew, he’d made the whole thing up to spend more time with me.
In fact, I hoped he’d made the whole thing up to spend more with me.
All I knew for certain was that I’d volunteered to help. And real or not, it guaranteed keeping Lucas within arm’s reach and visual range.
I couldn’t risk letting him forget what he was missing out on.
As I unloaded my laundry, I settled into a nice little daydream that involved Lucas getting down on his knees and begging me to come back to his bed. I hoped that when it did happen, he wouldn’t be too hard on me for provoking him.
Well, that was a lie. I hoped he’d make it extremely hard on me.
My phone buzzed then—an incoming text from Lucas.
Meeting tonight at 7. Hope you can make it.
How convenient, there just happened to be a meeting tonight? How gullible did he think I was?
I smirked at the message as I typed my response. If this was the approach he wanted to take, I could definitely play along.
Wouldn’t miss it. Carpool?
His response came almost immediately.
Be ready at 6:15.
I’d be ready, all right. I just hoped he was.
Eventually I would run out of slutty outfit choices . . .
Was a sentence I would probably never say.
The beachside rental Lauren had found us for the summer might be small, but I’d still somehow managed to cram my tiny closet to the gills with a rainbow of dresses, most of which were meant to attract the male species.
I was like the female version of a colorful peacock. Or one of those poisonous tree frogs. My goal was to draw them in with the one-two punch of spangles and a whole lotta skin.
My dazzling personality was only a bonus.
By the time I stepped out from the cool AC of my little cottage and into the late afternoon sun, Lucas was already outside, waiting for me. He looked serious. And by serious, I meant he was dressed like Professor Business, in another of his impeccable suits. That was when I realized just how committed he was to this whole “planning committee” thing.
“Rea—” He choked halfway through his word, his eyes going dark as the devil’s riding boots. “—dy?” he finished.
His reaction almost had me questioning whether I’d miscalculated my wardrobe selection, and my fingers itched to tug at the hem of my midriff-baring sequined crop top. But then Lucas’s gaze fell to my navel and butterflies exploded inside of me.
Nope. I’d calculated exactly right. Short top, ripped skinnies, and heeled boots—a little something I called Planning Committee Chic.
“Ready if you are,” I told him cheerfully, forcing my way in front of him so he had no choice but to follow.
Behind me, I heard him clear his throat.
He’d just gotten a glimpse of the best part of my ensemble. The sparkly fabric of my top tied just behind my neck with satin strings, but then it parted again, leaving the entire length of my spine exposed.
Between the warm air and Lucas’s blistering gaze, those butterflies dissolved into something warm and sticky deep inside me.
Game.
Set.
Match.
If I kept playing like this, Lucas would be warm and sticky, and deep inside me in no time, too.
Driving in LA was perilous. The highways were packed and the drivers were road rage-y. But Lucas handled his car, and the congestion, like a seasoned pro, gliding in and out of the lanes and finding open spots I was convinced didn’t exist.
His maneuvering made my stomach lurch more than once. “You drive like my brother,” I told him, when he slipped his car out of the way of some guy who didn’t look before merging lanes and almost hit us. The guy laid on his horn like it was Lucas’s fault. Lucas just ignored him and grinned at me. “It’s not a compliment,” I told him.
He flashed me a crooked smile. “Sorry. I forget you’re from the suburbs. I’ll do my best to be a good chaperone and not get us shot.”
My shoulders relaxed. “Much appreciated.”
His gaze roamed over me, and I wondered if he was appreciating some things too. When his phone rang, we both glanced to where it lay, face up, in the center console.
It was impossible not to miss who was calling. Aster’s giant face filled the screen.
He reached for the phone and flipped it over, the grin fading from his lips.
I raised my brows at him. “What if it’s important?”
“It’s not,” he answered, a little too quickly.
“You don’t know that. What if she was in a horrible accident and she’s bleeding out somewhere? What if she needs a blood transfusion or a kidney . . . and you’re her last hope?”
He gave me a don’t be ridiculous look. “She wasn’t in an accident. And if she needs help, she should call 911.”
“Want me to tell her that?” I went for the phone, but he slapped my hand away. “Fine,” I told him. “But if her ghost comes back to haunt you, I’ll probably say ‘I told you so.’”
He rolled his eyes, but the hint of his grin was back. I liked that, knowing I could still make him smile. I wanted to know what else I could still make him do.
“I don’t think I ever realized how annoying you are,” he said. “Maybe I was premature with this whole friends thing.”
“Too late.” I settled back in the seat. “A deal’s a deal. No take backs. And you might’ve realized I was annoying if you hadn’t been so busy trying to get in my pants all the time. Also, I’m not annoying. I’m charming as fuck.”
“Charming, hmm?” He gave me the once over, his dark eyes searing my skin. “We’ll see about that. And for the record, I never had to try to get in your pants, I was in them. All the time.”
Damn. I hated the way he could make me squirm so easily, with the mere reminder of the things we’d done . . . the things we’d been doing, just days earlier.
With those memories still fresh in my mind, I hardly noticed when he’d pulled off the freeway. When I did look up, the scenery had improved dramatically. The streets we were on now were nothing like the cluttered beachside town where we lived. We were driving up into the hills now. The roads grew wider, and the houses larger and set farther apart, with large, sprawling lawns. Even in the drought, the lawns here were all green and lush. Definitely well-watered.
When he turned again, we pulled into a neighborhood where the styles ranged from contemporary and sleek to art deco to Colonial to Spanish. But all of them, each and every one were mansions. And all were jaw-droppingly stunning.
“Where are we?” I asked, starting to worry I’d misjudged more than just my wardrobe as I took in the individual gated driveways and opulent cars and sweeping views of the valley below.
“This is it. This is where we’re meeting.”
No wonder Lucas was all gussied up.
This time I did tug at the front of my top, trying my best to pull it down, which was useless since there wasn’t much to my top to begin with. It was more like wearing a handkerchief plastered with glitter.
Crap.
Then Lucas pulled his car down one of the long driveways with its gates already propped open. Awaiting our arrival, I presumed. The circular driveway had a fountain at its very center. And standing in front of the fountain, there she was . . .
Fucking Aster. Without the slightest trace of injury and definitely not looking in need of a spare kidney.
Too bad.
“God,” I whispered to Lucas, even though it was just the two of us inside the car. “Please don’t tell me this is her place.”
Lucas reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s not her place,” he assured, and I had to remind myself to breathe, because the moment his skin fused with mine, I forgot we were pretending to be friends. His touch sent a shiver straight through me.
He must’ve felt it too because he didn’t let go. He didn’t move either. We just sat there like that, his hand covering mine. Hot coals against hot coals.
But this wasn’t the time or place to figure out what we were doing, not with Aster out there. Reluctantly, I pulled my hand to my lap and kept my eyes away from him. I didn’t want him to see the effect he had on me.
“So why is she here?” But I already knew. Not just about the place, but the truth about the planning committee—it was real. This hadn’t been some made-up ploy to get me alone. “Aww, damn. She’s part of this, isn’t she? She’s on the committee.” And just saying the word “committee” was tough because it validated it.
“She is.” He was suddenly way too civil, nothing like the Lucas who’d once bent me over and used tanning oil as lube. My Lucas was beach casual. He considered “shirtless” a dress code.
This was some Stepford version of the guy I’d known. He jumped out of the car and ran around so he could open the passenger door for me.
This Lucas was creeping me the hell out.
“Lucas!” Aster’s voice gushed from behind him. “I’ve been trying to call you!”
But as I climbed out of the car, her eyes landed on me and I recognized the instant she figured out why Lucas was opening the passenger side door—or rather who he was opening it for. Her mouth fell open. The only satisfaction I could take in the fact she hadn’t died in some horrific accident was that she had definitely gone ghost white at my presence.
When she didn’t say anything, for, like, forever, I thought maybe she’d had some sort of stroke, or one of those seizures that happens inside your own brain—the kind no one realizes was happening.
Then she blinked. She snapped back to her old self, as if she’d never gone catatonic at all. She was Lucas’s matching Stepford Aster again . . . perfect and bland and . . . finking perfect.
I hated her.
I caught her giving Lucas a questioning look before I heard, “Oh look. It’s . . . you.” She stated her words with absolute flatness. “And you’re wearing . . .” That was all she said to me. She didn’t even finish her sentence. Her words just dangled in the air like deflated balloons.
I took in her head-to-toe white linen and wondered if that was all she owned, crisp and immaculate linen.
“Tom Ford,” I filled in the blank for her when my cheeks started to get hot under her mental examination.
She blinked again, that dumb, stupid blink of hers. “Beg pardon?”
“I’m wearing Tom Ford.” I dropped the designer’s name and then stepped around her, making my way up the stairs that led to the front door, which I assumed was where we were headed. “I thought we were playing Red Carpet and you were asking which designer I was wearing.”
“Oh,” I heard her say from behind me, and a bubble of pride filled my chest that I’d maybe shut her up, even if it was only temporary.
That’s right, I thought bitchily. Just because I don’t drip class the way you do, doesn’t mean I don’t have taste . . . or my very own Platinum Card.
By the time I reached the top of the marble steps, the enormous gold doors were being drawn open. An older woman appeared on the other side, her silver hair pulled back severely, framing an even tighter face. She didn’t say a word as she considered me coolly. But it wasn’t just me she assessed. Her gaze flitted past me, to assess Lucas and Aster who came up behind me.
I could tell from one glance, she was the kind of person Grann would have called highfalutin—Grann’s polite way of saying the stick up this lady’s ass went as high, or higher, than the one Aster was impaled on.
“Hello,” the woman said, her welcome about as warm as a man-eating tiger inviting us into her lair. She reminded me of the evil queens in the princess movies I’d watched obsessively as a kid, the cold-hearted bitches that cast sleeping spells and stole voices from mermaids and locked little girls away in towers.
So when Lucas answered with, “Hello, Mother,” I nearly choked on my own gasp of surprise. Maybe I’d misjudged. Maybe the woman was the kind of person who just gave a bad first impression, but was actually warm and fuzzy once you got past her crunchy exterior.
Except . . . nope.
Lucas played the gentleman by introducing me to his mother, explaining that I would be joining their planning committee. And that was as much as it took for me to realize I’d been spot-on in my initial assessment of her. The lady was a witch with a capital B.
Maybe it was my outfit, or maybe it was just my presence in general—hard to tell for sure. But she’d taken one look at me and made an effort to raise her frozen eyebrows in what I could only assume was distaste. She made it clear that, designer duds or not, I was less than welcome.
Without reciprocating the introducing, she shot Lucas a barbed look. “We may as well get down to business.” She brushed past all three of us and led us to a large, impersonal dining room, where she took the head of the table—of course—and we waited while a woman in an old fashioned black-and-white maid’s uniform—because, of course again—came in carrying a tray loaded with tea and cookies and dainty little chocolates. I felt like we’d landed in 1910, and suddenly my sparkly top seemed an even more unfortunate choice. “The sooner we get matters settled, the sooner we can all get back to our lives.”
I kept glancing nervously at Lucas, who seemed unfazed by his mother’s condescending tone. I was determined to keep an open mind. Maybe she’d been roped into this committee the same way I had . . . under false pretenses.
“Agreed.” His voice was calm as he pulled out a chair several seats down from his mother. I was still trying to make sense of where I fit into all of this when his eyes locked meaningfully on mine and I realized he was holding out the chair for me.
Okay, yeah. Sitting is good. As I settled down, Lucas’s hands skimmed over my bare shoulders as he pushed the chair in. It was brief, but it made my breath snag.
Lucas took the spot next to mine, forming a human buffer between me and his mother, and even though I’d never been one to be intimidated by people who considered themselves superior to others, like Lady MacBitch here, I couldn’t help being grateful for his instinct to shield me.
Where Lucas managed to stay cool and collected, stoically shooting looks my way, as if checking to see how I was holding up, Aster took a different approach. Under the older woman’s unblinking scrutiny, Aster seemed to shift into chatty overdrive. She reached into her Louis Vuitton bag and dredged out stack after stack of papers and reports, presumably all gala related. She started spreading the papers in front of us as she launched into a crawling string of statistics, citing how many people had already RSVP’d—impressive numbers, I had to admit—and the deposits that were still owed to the caterers—the figures were staggering—and showing us timelines and table layouts and her proposals for seating charts, all of which looked as complex as blueprints for the Space Shuttle.
Just when I was starting to zone out, daydreaming about stripping Lucas out of that stuffy suit of his, Aster dropped the name of the DJ they had on retainer for the gala, and I literally gasped out loud.
All eyes turned to me, and I pretended to clear my throat. “Sorry,” I said, feeling super awkward for even reminding them I was still there. “Got a little frog in my throat.” I reached for the delicate teacup and took a sip, wishing it were filled to the brim with tequila instead of boring Earl Gray.
Aster scowled at me and went on with her little speech, and this time when she mentioned the DJ, I realized no one was trying to pull a fast one on me. This guy wasn’t some wedding DJ who had a day job doing taxes and spinning records on the side. He was the real deal. One of the most well-known, well-connected artists in the industry. His fee alone must’ve set them back an arm and a leg.
Lady MacBitch just stared at Aster’s papers vacantly. It was impossible to tell whether she was unimpressed by the reports or if she’d mastered the art of sleeping with her eyes open.
It was also impossible to imagine how this seemingly detached matriarch had raised the hot-blooded man I’d spent the past two months tangled in the sheets with. I felt bad for Lucas, for what his childhood must’ve been like. How on earth had he become such a warm and fun-loving man after living in the icy shadow of this woman?
Aster paused to take a breath and Lucas leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked far too relaxed. “Looks to me like all our bases are covered.” His eyes cut pointedly to Lady MacBitch. “I told you, Aster’s doing a great job.” I hated the sting of hearing Lucas praise his sort-of fiancée. “So, I guess you really didn’t need me here after all.”
Lady MacBitch’s nostrils flared, but only slightly, and it was the first real sign of emotion I’d seen from her—that is, if you could classify “nostril flare” as an emotion. Then she answered Lucas. “I said it before and I’ll say it again, the gala is a family matter. Inviting outsiders will ruin everything.” The everything was wired with tension, and I was suddenly certain the outsider in question wasn’t Aster . . . but rather, me.
Something passed between them that reminded me of the warning looks my mother used to give us kids when we were out in public. Somehow, even without saying so, she’d let us know we’d crossed the line. That if we didn’t settle down at that very moment, there’d be hell to pay when we got home.
That was the unspoken conversation occurring now. Lucas’s mother was warning him to settle down. I didn’t know what it was about, exactly. What invisible line he’d butted up against. But it was part of whatever “family matter” she’d mentioned. One that didn’t involve me.
But Lucas seemed to have an ironclad skin when it came to his mother. “You’re being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
Her lips twitched. “I’m never melodramatic.” Somehow, I doubted there was a person in this world who would buy that statement.
Fragile? Of course not.
Tender-hearted? Not on your life.
But melodramatic . . . I was pretty sure that was par for the course with Lady MacBitch.
Lucas’s bitter laugh made me itch to leave. This was more than just a conversation about venues and galas, this was an age-old feud between a mother and her son.
“Maybe I should wait in the car,” I said to no one in particular, getting up from the table.
But Lucas reached over and pushed me back down. The perverse fact that his grip on me, even while he was practically seething with anger toward his mother, sent white-hot waves of desire coursing through me, wasn’t lost on me. “Stay,” he insisted. And the determination in his voice made me settle back into my seat.
I glanced at Aster, thinking maybe we’d finally found our common ground, that somehow we’d wandered into this uncomfortable minefield together. But Aster was taking an every-woman-for-herself approach as she aggressively avoided eye contact with me.
I was on my own.
Lucas’s ironclad skin was starting to show signs of wear as he uncrossed his arms and leaned his knuckles on the table. “The fact is, Mother, you’re only on this committee as a courtesy. Aster and I are in charge.” There was a pause, and the awkwardness factor in the room soared through the roof. Then Lucas made it worse, when he threw a live grenade into the mix. “If you have a problem with that, you can always quit.”
Her already chilly eyes turned to frozen ice chips. If this had been one of my childhood movies, this would be the part where Lady MacBitch unleashed her fury on the townspeople and burned the kingdom to the ground. The vein in her neck pulsed as she answered, “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of quitting. But I also won’t let you ruin this. It’s far too important.” She reached for her tiny china teacup before adding, “If you insist on bringing in outsiders . . .” She cut a sideways look at me, and my mouth went dry. I didn’t know why Aster wasn’t an outsider too, since there didn’t seem to be any love lost between the two women. But it was definitely me she objected to. “I will be forced to call the credit card company and cancel the deposit on the final payment to the venue.”
“You wouldn’t!” It was Aster who’d given up on composure and shrieked from the other side of the table. She bolted up so fast her chair almost toppled over behind her.
Lady MacBitch smiled. As much as an ice queen could smile. “I would,” she said, finally taking a taste of her tea. “In fact, I’d be doing you a favor, really. The place is entirely wrong. The mood is . . .” She considered her son over the top of her delicate cup before finishing, “Adam would have hated it.”
“Adam?” Lucas ground out, as his steel facade finally slipped. His jaw went rigid and his fist clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. I got the sense that if Aster and I weren’t sitting here—and more likely, if this weren’t his mother—he would have enjoyed smashing her face in.
But she was. His mother, I mean. And somehow, with an effort that I might not have found, Lucas managed to collect himself.
After several really, really long seconds, he finally managed, in a low voice, “This has fuck all to do with Adam, and we both know it. You didn’t give a shit then. And you couldn’t give a shit now. Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t more about punishing me because I’m not him.”
She didn’t recoil. In fact, she didn’t even change positions. But the flinch was visible—a tightening at the corners of her eyes. She focused all her energy on Lucas. “You have no idea what I give a shit about.” And somehow, hearing this woman say “shit” meant a million times more than it would have to hear Aster say it.
Lucas looked stunned too, obviously as surprised to hear the word cross her lips as I had been.
But Aster was oblivious. “Where would we find another venue to accommodate five hundred people, with only a month to go?”
Lady MacBitch turned to Aster. “I guess that’s your problem, isn’t it?”