CHAPTER THREE
Niall
“Tesla Catering,” I told the intern. “Are you sure you got it right?”
The girl nodded, her whole face pale. I sighed and sat up straighter in my desk chair. “Send another dozen red roses and make sure my personal number is on the card.”
“Yes, sir,” she squeaked before turning and hurrying away.
Left alone in my office, I sighed and stared out the window. Three days had passed since Candace practically fled my limo, and I still couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.
I should have done more when she tried to leave. I should have cajoled, coddled, threatened even… I should have done whatever it took to make her stay.
Day three, and I had blue balls. I didn’t even want to call up another woman. None of them would do it for me. I wanted Candace. I needed Candace. After that little taste of her tongue, that quick feel of her soft curves, nothing else but the woman occupied my mind.
Things had been going so well. We were almost to my penthouse. A few more minutes and she would have been mine… so what caused her cold feet?
Grabbing a discarded report from the desk, I balled it up and threw it at the wall. The sky was growing gray, and most of the office had left for the day. With my nerves so thoroughly shot, getting more work done would be impossible.
And since random women didn’t seem to be doing it for me, there was only one option left. I texted Nate on my way to the elevator, telling him I’d be at the sports bar down the block.
The small place was packed to the brim, each chipped wooden table holding fans watching an ultimate fighting game. I grabbed a small spot for two by the window and watched the two men on screen beat the shit out of each other for a few minutes. The crowd whooped and hollered when one of them went down.
I’d never found the sport appealing before, but something about getting rejected for no reason at all made me warm up to it. Beating the shit out of someone just for the hell of it didn’t seem to be such a bad idea.
I caught sight of a familiar figure in the crowd and raised my arm in acknowledgment. Nate swerved around people and deposited himself on the stool across from me.
“Long time no see,” he commented, running his hand through his red hair.
“Not that long.”
He gave me a stink eye. At first, it seemed he was trying to be funny, but then it became clear he was genuinely annoyed. “Four months. At least.”
“No.”
Nate chuckled dryly. “Yes.”
The bartender arrived with the pints I’d already ordered. I didn’t touch mine. Instead of taking my mind off my problems, Nate’s arrival had put me in an even sourer mood.
“I never hear from you, man,” Nate said.
“I’ve been busy.”
He nodded. “I know. I read all about it.” He crossed his arms and looked at one of the screens on the wall behind me. I finally took a drink of my beer. It did nothing to soothe me. I was a bundle of sensitive nerves, and everything and everyone grated me. What was wrong with people? Just like Candace had no reason to flee from my limo, Nate had no reason to be in possession of such a dour attitude.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” I icily began, “I have a corporation to run. One that’s doing rather well. Something like that can take up a lot of time.”
And what have you been doing that’s so great? I thought about asking, but saved that remark for a future retaliation.
“So you’re busy,” Nate replied, his eyes still on the TV. “But not too busy to fuck people over.” He looked back at me, his gaze hard.
I propped my elbow on the table, my fingers curling into my palm. “That’s an awfully harsh response just because I’ve been unavailable the past few months.”
“I’m not talking about me, Niall. I’m talking about Aimee.”
Aimee?
The name went right over my head. Who the hell was Aimee?
And then… Oh. Right.
Nate’s cousin. He’d introduced us seven or eight months ago at a wedding, and we exchanged numbers. I’d called her up about a week later and taken her out. She’d seemed receptive to my advances, but then turned on a dime when I tried to get her to go home with me. I took her out one more time after that, and we finally got naked. She’d been one of the least exciting lays of my life.
It went without saying that I never returned her calls. Even if she had been amazing in bed, I still would have only seen her a couple more times. Engaging with any woman more than that would have been breaking my unwritten rules. The lines I had drawn were good ones, set in place to make sure I didn’t get into positions that would distract me from the things that really mattered.
I cleared my throat and lowered my voice, making it clear to Nate that I wasn’t fazed in the slightest. “What about Aimee, exactly?”
His lips pursed. “I know what you’re like, Niall. We’ve known each other for years. I just didn’t expect you to pull your signature moves on my cousin.”
“She asked for my number.”
“And you gave it to her.”
“She’s a grown woman, Nate. She doesn’t need you to be her babysitter.”
“That’s not the point!” He slammed his palm down on the table. A few people from the bar looked at us over their shoulders. Nate’s face contorted as he worked to rein his anger in. “I thought you were my friend,” he said in a lower voice.
My chest pinched in a painful way and my fingers curled around the mug’s handle. I didn’t have a lot of time for personal relationships and had never cared to. People were unpredictable. They always let you down in one way or another. Nate and I had known each other for years though. As far as friends went, sure, the man was the closest thing I had to a real friend.
Or so I thought. With this new show of anger, my theory about people was only strengthened. Everyone existed only to make themselves happy. If they ever got the chance to dick you over they were going to. Nate’s reaction to my “using” his cousin was his form of that.
“She called you,” Nate said. “I know she did.”
My back straightened. “And I didn’t call back. What do you want to hear, Nate? Whatever it is, I’m quite sure I’m not going to say it.”
Nate flinched the slightest bit. “You could say you’re sorry for once.”
“I’m not. Aimee—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Aimee is an adult. She can handle it.” He shook his head, his eyes boring into mine. “Most people are decent, Niall. You know that? They don’t lie and lead others on. So decency is what people come to expect. You take advantage of that. You let people think you’re just a normal guy who actually has a shred of empathy, and then you slip in and take whatever you can. You can talk as much as you want about people being able to take what you dish out, but the truth is that you’re using them. You’re a bad egg that no one sees coming. And that’s what makes you scum.”
Heat filled my face. My fingers curled even tighter, my nails threatening to break skin. I opened my mouth to retaliate, but Nate was already leaving. He stood and pushed through the crowd, disappearing in the same direction he had come in.
There were a dozen things I could have yelled at him. The bar was loud, though, and we’d already made enough of a scene. Whipping my wallet from my pants, I tossed a bill down on the table and tore out of there.
The city was too loud, cars honking and people yammering right in my ear. I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked block after block. A heavy ball was forming in my stomach, made out of something akin to lead. It was a familiar one, though in recent years I’d done a pretty good job of keeping it at bay.
When I was a kid, though, it had been there all the time.
I didn’t recall much about my parents. The one thing I had to remember them by was the small scar on the back of my head, granted to me thanks to a beer bottle being intentionally thrown there. I don’t even know which one of them did it. They were both in the room, and they were both capable of such an action.
After them, there was the usual string of foster homes. It was a Lifetime movie waiting to happen. Except the ending. For me, there was no happy sunset, no ideal couple coming to rescue me from Chicago’s inner city and take me home to a house with a garden and a dog just waiting to sleep at the foot of my bed.
So I’d written my own ending. One built on success. I’d worked my ass off in high school, gotten myself a scholarship to college. The day I turned eighteen, the state turned me out on my ass, but by then, I was ready to take on the world. I’d already learned the basics, number one being don’t trust anyone.
Apparently, I sometimes forgot that part. I’d let myself trust Nate, let myself believe we were friends.
I certainly wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
I wove around the block, staring at the cracks in the sidewalk the whole way. First Candace, then Nate… who next? What next?
I could only take this for so long.
Pulling out my cell, I called the florist my intern used to send flowers to Candace’s office. Most likely, they were closed for the night, but there was still a chance they would be open. Two orders of a dozen roses each hadn’t been enough. I would send a hundred.
Nate had snubbed me. Others had snubbed me.
But a woman who didn’t even know me would not get away with doing the same. There was nothing for her to have against me. Whatever she thought I was, no way in hell did she know how crafty I could be, how good I was at getting my way.
The florist’s phone rang and rang. With a curse, I hung up. A second plan already brewed, and it was drastic, but so were the times.
After getting Tesla Catering’s address off the internet, I drove to the spot in Old Town and found parking on the street. The trees on the block Tesla Catering sat on glittered with strings of white lights. A small swinging sign, stuck above a door between a dog salon and a coffee shop, announced the location of the spot I searched for.
I tried the door but found it locked. Stepping backwards, my eyes drifted up to the second floor. The space between the coffee shop and dog salon was too narrow to host a business, so no doubt it just held a staircase leading up to the second floor.
Darkness leered at me from the windows above. The place was definitely closed.
“Shit,” I cursed, raising my hand to bang it against the door. I stopped myself just in time.
Now what?
I was riled up, not ready to go home. The whole thing with Nate had been too much. Maybe I would head back to the office and get started on the next day’s work.
Gritting my teeth, I turned on my heel. It seemed the best option. Again, people had disappointed me. But at least the real long-term goals I’d already committed myself to never did.
One day soon, I would have the whole city of Chicago under my near monopolistic grip. Getting there took one step at a time, but I didn’t doubt I would make it. Friends failed me, but employees didn’t. Businesses didn’t. Money didn’t.
The first step was forgetting all about people like Nate and Candace, people who had turned their backs on me. The next step?
Coffee.
Coffee and then back to the office.
I pulled open the door to the little coffee shop next to Tesla Catering. The bell dinged, and a woman at the end of the coffee bar’s line turned to look at me.
Candace.
With a pencil skirt, bright red sweater, and pinned back hair, she channeled a working woman of the sixties. Her eyes went a little wide, and her cherry red lips parted.
Once I got over the initial surprise of seeing her, I smirked. “Well, funny running into you here.”
Her mouth snapped closed. “It is funny, isn’t it?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from the words. “What a small world we live in.”
The line moved closer to the bar, and she took a step forward. I followed. “Indeed,” I agreed, ignoring her attitude. I never believed in luck, but maybe it did exist after all, and maybe it was on my side.
“What were you doing?” she asked, turning away and speaking to me over her shoulder. “Stuffing flower petals under my office’s front door?”
I bit back a smile. “Would that have won you over?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She huffed and shifted her weight. My eyes fell down the pencil skirt to her toned calves. “What happened between us?” I asked. “You left that limo like—”
“Like I knew who you were?” She turned around to face me straight on.
I felt my eyebrows push together. If it were most any other person talking to me in such a manner, I would have been annoyed enough to leave right then and there. Since it was a woman who’d been driving me mad since the moment I set eyes on her, things were different. I was different. My threshold for taking shit had been raised considerably.
“And who am I?” I coolly asked, taking a small step toward her.
Her eyes fell down, and her lashes fluttered. “You’re a man with a very big and very negative reputation.”
“You don’t know me,” I answered as evenly as I could.
Candace rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I need to. You seem hell bent on making sure the whole city knows exactly what you’re like. I already told you, Niall Lambert. Your reputation precedes you.”
She spun back around like that was the final word. I took a second to enjoy her tight ass before stepping right up next to her. “So you’ve heard some rumors. Do you believe every rumor that hits your ears? Come on. You seem smarter than that.”
Her eye line snaked my way. “I’ve heard enough. From all levels of sources.”
“So you’ve been reading up on me?”
Her cheeks turned pink. The older man in front of us grabbed his coffee and left the counter. Candace stepped up. “Small black coffee please,” she ordered.
I caught the cashier’s eye and signaled that I would pay. Candace tried to hand the scruffy haired kid a bill, but he waved it off.
“I’ll have the same,” I told the kid, handing him a ten.
“I don’t need you to buy my coffee,” Candace snapped.
“How about dinner then?” I volleyed back. “Can I buy you that?”
“It seems you already wasted all your money on roses.”
I had millions to waste, which, if she’d really done research on me, she probably already knew.
Our coffees landed on the counter in front of us. She grabbed hers and stomped away. I followed.
“One date,” I proposed, catching up to her at the door. Some hipsters pushed their way in, and Candace stepped to the side. I used the opportunity to place myself between her and the exit.
“Just one night,” I continued. “It doesn’t have to be anything like our time in the limo.”
Though hopefully it’ll be just that.
Her lips parted, her eyes darted to the side, then back to mine. She was breaking. I was getting to her.
I lowered my voice and pushed my face a little closer to hers, just enough so that my breath could reach her cheeks. “Let me show you just who I am.”
Candace threw her head back and glanced around the coffee shop, but at this point, I knew she was only playing hard to get. I’d already won her over.
Her blue eyes suddenly hit me, the intensity coming from them striking me like lightning. I swayed, and for half a second, almost lost my footing.
“And just who are you?” she whispered in a voice so soft and heavy it gave my own finesse a run for its money.
“I’m...”
And then I forgot. I couldn’t remember who I was, where I came from, or where I was heading.
Anything that didn’t have to do with those blue eyes went right out the window.
Candace lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “One night. Show me who you really are.”
She opened her purse and pulled a pen from it before grabbing my hand and writing a phone number down below my knuckles.
Her eyes still locked on mine, she smirked and then walked around me, opened the door and disappeared into the night.