EMERSON
Planning a gala was no picnic.
I spent my days in my cubicle, crunching numbers for the rec center and filling out applications for grant money, and just generally social media-ing the shit out of every available platform to gain as much exposure as possible for the nonprofit.
But that was the easy part.
After I clocked out each night, the real work began.
Aster, it turned out, wasn’t half bad as an accomplice. Now that we weren’t locked in a bitter rivalry over Lucas, I could see glimpses of her potential. Occasionally, I might even (reluctantly) admit that I liked her.
Occasionally.
Mostly though, she was a hard worker. As much as I’d once believed she was in this whole gala thing just to stay close to Lucas, I was starting to suspect we had more in common than I first realized. Much like the rec center for me, the gala seemed to have given Aster purpose. From the moment I’d met Aster, I guessed she came from money, but after working with her, I realized “money” didn’t begin to describe her upbringing.
Aster’s family was richer’n Croesus—another Grann-ism. Apparently her family had their fingers in just about every pie, from oil to real estate to technologies. And because she’d grown up with every advantage, with nannies and chauffeurs and private tutors, even personal hairstylists, no one had ever expected anything from Aster except to shop and be pretty. Not exactly life goals for a girl with a decent head on her shoulders.
Once Lucas had enlisted her help, Aster discovered she had a knack for this. Not just a knack, but that she enjoyed the feeling it gave her.
Dare I say it? Giving back may have given Aster the warm fuzzies the way it had me.
I asked Aster once, when we were three beers in again, why, if she was so loaded, she didn’t just put the deposits for the gala on her own credit cards. But apparently I’d hit a nerve.
“My allowance isn’t meant to cover such expenditures,” she answered through tight lips.
She didn’t elaborate, and the pinched expression on her face told me not to press it.
The way I figured, her allowance could be spent on shoes and purses that cost as much as my new car, but not on charity fundraisers. Nice. Her parents struck me as being about as cuddly as Lady MacBitch.
Theoretically, the plan we’d come up with was relatively simple. Logistically, however, it would require some world-class juggling skills.
Thanks to some new connections I’d made, I had the food and the venue in the bag. And Aster, it turned out, was something of a savant when it came to securing the necessary permits and licenses. We’d had to come up with our own waitstaff, but that too turned out to be a nonissue. I offered to handle that one.
The DJ was still on board, since, as I learned, Raphael Donestro was Lucas’s cousin. The Raphael Donestro. When I asked Aster why Lucas hadn’t bothered to mention the fact he was related to Raphael Donestro before, she said it was complicated.
Made sense—with Lucas, everything was complicated.
She explained that Lucas, Adam, and their cousin, Raphael had been thick as thieves . . . right up until Adam died. Lucas had shut everyone out, even his closest friends, Raph included.
Raph called bull doody—Aster’s term, not his—and refused to be ignored. He knew Lucas would come around eventually. So when Aster had asked him to DJ the gala, he’d jumped at the chance.
That left us with just booze, flowers, and the matter of our silent auction.
An open bar would have been perfect, if money were no object. But since money was a huge object, we scrapped that idea right off the bat. A cash bar it was. Thankfully, we happened to know someone who worked at a bar, and Zane scored us a meeting with the owners of The Dunes.
Flowers were another matter completely. Who knew flowers were so finking expensive? Florists, that’s who. Because florists, at least in LA, were making a killing. Maybe they watered their flowers with diamond dust or the blood of virgins. Either way, Aster and I had practically given ourselves arthritis dialing every number in town, hoping to find one single shop willing to cut their rates for a worthy cause.
But so far we’d come up empty handed. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
That was okay, though. We’d just have to get creative. We could do this. Aster and I were smart, independent women. If anyone could pull this off, we could.
That, or someone had just slipped some Ecstasy in my drink.
“Where are we with auction items?” Aster asked, tapping the end of her pen against her lips after she crossed yet another name off her list.
The event was a ticketed affair. In fact, they’d already sold out of the nearly five hundred tickets they’d been planning for. But the bulk of the money would really be raised from the silent auction. So far, we’d been able to reach most of the people who’d already agreed to contribute. But clearly Lady MacBitch had also been calling around, because at least half the donors had backed out.
“Let me handle that,” I said, not entirely stoked about the favor I would have to call in, but I’d do it for the sake of the gala. For Lucas and for the memory of his brother.
And to prove I could handle this.
I braced myself, downing the last of my drink as I snatched up my phone and got up from the table. I found a quiet corner so I could swallow my pride away from Aster’s inquisitive ears.
She had her demons and I had mine.
The good thing about working so many long hours was that there was no time left in my days to think about Lucas Harper.
Not one spare minute to dwell on the fact he was right next door. Doing things like stripping out of his clothes. Showering. Lying in his bed.
Lucas, who I never had a single moment to think about.
Who almost never made his way into my thoughts.
Except every once in a while . . . like when I changed my clothes. Or showered. Or was lying all alone in my bed.
Or, you know, when I breathed.
It was ridiculous how he managed to find his way into every spare recess of my brain. How he filled every split second of free time I had.
Aster had already admitted she’d only been at his house that night on an errand, and that was what I’d witnessed when I’d come home from Dallas. Maybe the problem had never been Lucas at all. Maybe I’d been looking for excuses the whole time. Reasons things could never, would never, work out between us so that when I left I wouldn’t have to feel . . . anything. No sadness. No guilt. I wouldn’t have to worry I’d made the wrong decision.
But the truth was, this whole thing had to end sometime. I guess the real misunderstanding was over what we were—what we could ever be—to each other. Aster showing up on his doorstep that night had just forced me to rip off the Band-Aid sooner rather than later.
Still . . . living next door to him these past weeks and not being able to do anything to scratch my ever-increasing itch for him was killing me.
As I lay in bed, trying to shut my brain down for the night, the shrill screeches of laughter pierced the darkness. I waited for them to fade to nothing again, as they inevitably would.
But not this time. This time, a girl’s voice cried out, “Lucas!” and I flinched, a cold tingling spreading through my chest.
I was off the bed like a shot.
There was nothing creepy about going to investigate a strange sound coming from outside your bedroom window, right? I was a single girl who lived by herself, there was no such thing as being too cautious. I had to make sure there was no funny business going on out there.
But I was wrong, there was funny business, all right.
Lucas and Zane were easy enough to spot—even their shadows had muscles. But it was the two girls with them who really caught my attention, one for each of them if I did the math right, and those were pretty hard numbers to screw up.
I wanted to stab my eyes out.
It was easy to see which lucky lady Zane had called dibs on because, as Grann would say, she was clinging to him like shit on a shovel. That is, if shit wore glitter hairspray and a leather mini skirt. Zane didn’t seem to mind, though. He had his tongue buried so far in the girl’s ear it looked like he was trying to taste her brain. For her part, the girl was squealing and begging for more.
I couldn’t give a shit about Zane. It was Lucas I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. Lucas, who might not be quite at the brain-eating stage yet, but who wasn’t exactly an unwilling participant in this party for four.
The other girl had definitely laid her claim on Lucas, and she was pulling out all the stops to keep his attention on her.
She stumbled dramatically, a girl trick designed to convey that she was either too tipsy or too klutzy to walk without the aid of a big strong man. I rolled my eyes, wondering what dusty dating manual she’d pulled that one from.
But Lucas fell for it, hook, line, and sinker, and offered his arm to support his teetering lady friend.
Then the girl leaned super close and whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was, it was either really good—or really, really bad—because a wicked smile broke out over Lucas’s face. He said something back to her that made her laugh again and she fake batted her hand at him. She wasn’t fooling me with her coy act, though. She didn’t want him to leave her alone; she was exactly where she wanted to be.
The possibility of me losing my lunch became very real.
I couldn’t watch this, whatever weird mating ritual was unfolding in front of me. It was bad enough I couldn’t have him. I didn’t want to torture myself by watching someone else throw herself at him.
I was about to turn away when Lucas glanced my way. His dark gaze fastened on mine and I stayed there, finding it hard to breath under his scrutiny. Then, almost methodically, he leaned down to the girl, and he kissed her.
The kiss was long and deep and passionate.
It was exactly the way I remember being kissed by Lucas.
Drop the curtain . . . drop the curtain . . .
Drop the everlovin’ curtain!
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not until Lucas broke off the kiss and stared back at me again.
He said something else to the girl beside him and she laughed again, but all I could think was that Zane was unlocking the door. They were taking their party inside, to the place where Lucas and I had always done our partying.
Finally, I let the curtain fall on the train wreck happening in my own front yard, so I wouldn’t have to watch anymore.
Lucas was taking that girl home. To his bedroom probably.
It shouldn’t matter because there was no Lucas and me. We weren’t now—and really had never been—a “we.” He was free to entertain whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
But it did matter.
A whole lot more than it should have.