Chapter Five
Gabrielle
The two men stared back at me expectantly, but I was officially speechless. I was completely stunned by the offer that they had just extended to me. When they first said that they were throwing a Valentine's Day party, I assumed that they meant a small gathering of friends, possibly something for the clients that they had referenced before. The longer that I listened to them and the more detail that they gave me, however, I realized that this was not what they were talking about. Then Lucas confirmed that this party was actually an extravagant gala at the most exclusive Club in the area and that the dinners that they had talked about were not just a few guests gathered around the table in their dining room, but lavish multi-course meals thrown for more than a hundred of the wealthiest, best and most distinguished people in society. Conceptually it was a cocktail party, featuring my chocolate mint, and all of those people would be focused entirely on my creation, and that the success of this event would balance on what I could provide. This could be an incredible opportunity for me, but it didn't escape me that I only had a week before the event to not only come up with all of the ideas for the chocolates and desserts that they wanted but to make them as well.
"Thank you so much for thinking about me," I said, "but I don't think that I can do it."
Jackson looked disappointed and shook his head slightly.
"Why not?"
"I just don't think there's enough time," I said. "Except for my sister Skylar, who comes in occasionally, I'm the only person who works here. I wouldn't have any help to make everything for you."
Jackson and Lucas exchanged glances and Jackson reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, withdrawing a piece of paper. He rested it on the counter between us and slid it toward me with his palm. I suddenly felt like I was doing business with the mafia and he was asking me to do a hit with poisoned truffles.
"This is what we're willing to pay you," he said. "This doesn't include your expenses and the cost of supplies, and if this isn't enough, we are perfectly happy to cover the cost of any lost sales that might happen as a result of you not being able to run the shop while you're working on this."
I cautiously turned the piece of paper over and had to grip the edge of the counter to make sure that my knees didn't buckle under me at the sheer size of the figure written on it. I lifted my eyes to the men. They must have noticed the shocked expression on my face because Lucas looked at me with concern.
"What's wrong? Is that not enough?"
"Enough?" I asked, feeling like I could barely get that word out of my mouth. "You want to know if this is enough? I haven't been getting anywhere near the business that I was hoping to get when I opened and my savings are running out. I thought that I might have to close within the next couple of months. This would keep me from having to close even if I didn't do any business at all."
"So you'll do it?" Jackson asked.
I looked at the paper again, sure that I was seeing the number wrong. Sure that I had somehow added a few zeros to the figure. But there it was. An amount of money that I could barely even fathom, just to cater a Valentine's Day party for men who waited too long to plan. If this is what happened every time that a man procrastinated about planning for Valentine's Day there wouldn't be a florist or a chocolatier in existence who worried about the future of their business. The vast majority of them probably wouldn't even open except for the week before Valentine's Day. My mind was feeling clouded as I tried to really process what was happening. I had been much happier to see them than I would have wanted to admit. My attraction to Jackson had been immediate and intense, and adding Lucas to it only filled me with more desire. Having these two gorgeous men so close to me was taking my mind in so many different directions I was having trouble concentrating. I was extremely aware of the proximity of their bodies to mine and the warm, velvety sound of their voices. Trying to focus myself, I nodded.
"I'll do it," I said.
"Perfect," Jackson said.
I looked up and noticed his bright blue eyes tracing my body as it had the other times that he had been in the shop. It made me feel at once vulnerable and desirable, and I didn't know what to do with the feelings.
"Do you have any ideas in particular?" I asked, trying to divert myself again.
The brother exchanged glances and I felt an inexplicable shiver ripple through me.
"Do you have somewhere where we can talk?" Jackson asked.
"Um, yeah, actually," I said, gesturing toward the corner of the lobby at the small table I had put there. I led them over to it. "I put this here when I first opened the shop. I meant for it to be where I could talk to people about catering for parties and showers and weddings and stuff. I haven't had a chance to use it."
I sighed, but Jackson walked around me and sat in one of the chairs at the round iron table.
"Well, now you do," he said.
Lucas and I joined him and I took my phone out of my pocket, opening the notes.
"So what did you have in mind?" I asked.
"Sex," Jackson said.
My finger slipped on the screen and I felt my heart leap into my throat. My breath caught in my throat with a choking sound I hoped wasn't audible. I looked up at him.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Sex," he repeated.
Yep. That's what I thought I heard.
"Um…."
"We were thinking that nothing could be sexier than chocolates and desserts that guests could eat with their fingers. Or feed to each other," Lucas said.
Thank you for the clarification. I think.
"We don't want the guests all sitting around eating like they have at all of the other banquets. I mean, there was always tasteful dancing and sometimes games or other activities, but we want this year to be totally different. We want the guests involved from the first moment."
"Did you have a theme in mind?" I asked through a still-tight throat.
"We had considered the Seven Deadly Sins," Jackson said. "But there are several of those that take away from the sexiness that we are going for. So we would rather just focus on bringing lust and decadence front and center."
"So take the roses and love songs out of Valentine's Day?" I asked.
"Plenty of roses and love songs," Lucas said. "We just want our guests to think of the petals on their skin and the songs as a soundtrack. We want it to be very visceral, very sensory. Rather than just a basic, simple celebration, we want it to be an experience."
I felt the shiver again and my fingers trembled slightly as I tried to add the notes into my phone, though I didn't really think that I was going to need much help remembering what they had said. I had hoped that focusing in on talking about the details of the party would help to distract me, but it had only turned me on even more. I felt a desire like I had never experienced, and yet I had no context. My virginity was heavily on my mind, both in a good way and a bad way. These gorgeous brothers were awakening thoughts and feelings in me that I had never experienced or explored, and I wanted to venture into them, discovering all that I had been missing and indulging my craving for them. At the same time, I didn't know if I would be able to keep up with them or if they would even be interested in me because I had no experience and could bring nothing new or thrilling to the table. I decided to capture those feelings, to use them to inspire me and my creativity and fuel my creation of the desserts and chocolates for the gala.
"I will get to work on this and I will get in touch with you soon to tell you about the ideas that I come up with," I said.
The brothers smiled at me as they stood. Lucas reached into his pocket and pulled out his billfold. He handed me several bills and a card with their numbers.
"As a retainer," he said. "Use it to cover the lost business for the next few days and to buy supplies. I look forward to hearing what you come up with."
I walked them to the door and held it as they stepped out. Trying to appear as casual as possible, I leaned forward just enough to feel the cool air from outside wash over me, drawing the heat from my face. When I glanced down the sidewalk I noticed Jackson looking back over his shoulder at me, a mischievous smile on his face. I gave a quick wave and closed the door, pressing my back against it and drawing in a deep breath to try to quiet the pounding of my heart. When I felt calm again, I locked the door, made sure that the sign still said that we were closed, and rushed to the back. I pulled my phone back out of my apron pocket as I went, speed dialing Skylar.
"Hey, Gabrielle," my sister said.
I could hear the little ones playing in the background and the strain in her voice told me that she was either experiencing pregnancy tiredness or needed a break for a little bit. I was banking on the latter.
"Can you come up to the shop? I need some help."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"You automatically assume that something's wrong?" I asked, feeling somewhat offended. "Couldn't it be that I had a sudden spike in business and need someone to help me ring up all of these orders and keep the display full?"
She sighed.
"Did you have a sudden spike in business and need someone to help you ring up all of those orders and keep the display full?" she asked.
I hesitated for a beat.
"No."
"Then what's wrong?"
"I just need help with a project. Can you come up here? It won't be for long."
"Yeah," she said. "I'll have the hubs watch the babes."
I withheld the shudder that threatened me. I hated when Skylar slipped into talking like a social media post caption.
"OK, great. I'll see you soon."
I hung up and started scouring the shelves of the storeroom for ingredients, mentally making notes of what I would need to buy. With only a week ahead of me until I needed to have everything done, I didn't have even a minute to waste. I was going to have to come up with the perfect menu, compile my ingredients list, go shopping, and order what I couldn't source locally by the end of the weekend so that I had as much time as possible to put everything together. It was still going to be a push, but with an incentive like the one that they had written down on that piece of paper, and the one that I thought I saw sparkling in Jackson's eyes, I had plenty of motivation to keep me going.
Half an hour later I heard something jangling frantically near the backdoor and then it burst open, bringing a gust of cold wind and my sister along with it. She slammed the door and locked it, leaning back against it with her eyes closed for a few seconds. When they opened, they locked on me and narrowed.
"The front door is locked," she said angrily.
I nodded.
"I know. I closed the shop for the day."
"I couldn't get in and you wouldn't answer when I was pounding on it."
"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry. I didn't even hear you. I've been back here. Why didn't you just use your key?"
"I didn't bring it with me. I figured that you would already have the door unlocked since it's the middle of the day and you told me that it wasn't going to take long."
"So how did you get in the backdoor?"
"It wasn't locked."
I glanced at the door.
"Oh. I thought that I locked it this morning."
"You thought you locked it this morning? You've been here this whole time and just anyone could have run in here?"
"Like you?"
"A crazy person could have been chasing me!"
"Was a crazy person chasing you?" I asked, mimicking the bored tone that she had used with me on the phone.
"No. But that's not the point."
"It kind of is. Why are you so out of breath?"
"I had to park three blocks away and run all the way down the alley."
"Why did you have to run all the way down the alley?"
She stared at me as if she couldn't believe I would ask such a question.
"Because of the crazy person."
"I thought that we just established that there was no crazy person."
"But there could have been."
I shook my head, waving my hand in front of me like I was trying to brush the increasingly nonsensical conversation out of the air between us.
"Alright. Whatever. You're in here now. The door is locked. No crazy people followed you. Now, I need help."
I told her about the gala and the offer from the brothers. When I was finished, she was staring at me.
"That man who was in here last week?" she asked.
I nodded.
"I told you that he came back in," I said.
"Yes," she said, following me as I crossed the kitchen to the small freezer. "But you failed to mention that he brought his brother with him and threw a ton of money at you."
"Well, he didn't exactly throw it, and yes, I did tell you that he overpaid me."
"That one time. But three times? That's...wow...Wait."
"Wait?"
I looked at her and she appeared to be thinking, her eyes rolled up slightly as she seemed to explore information in her mind. Suddenly her eyes snapped back to me.
"You said they were brothers? And they're planning the Valentine's Day Gala for the Westchester Club?"
"Yes."
"Did they mention having other brothers?"
"They did mention one other one. It was his birthday a few days ago."
She nodded.
"The Griffins," she said.
"Who?"
"The Griffins. The Griffin brothers. There are actually four of them. And they don't just belong to the Westchester Club. Their family helped establish it."
"Wow," I said.
"Yeah, wow is right," Skylar said. "You can officially stop feeling even the littlest bit bad for how much money they've been paying you. That's basically pocket change to them."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"Do you remember a few years back when I helped out that friend of mine who needed an extra waitress to fill in for a party?"
"Yes," I said.
"Guess where that party was held?"
"The Westchester Club."
"Yep. And guess who I heard all the gossip about?"
"The Griffin Brothers?"
"Those would be them. All I heard all night was the women whispering about them. It seems that they have a pretty friendly reputation."
"What's that supposed to mean? "
"It means that the women in the room who hadn't already been with them either wanted to be with them or were afraid that their daughters were going to be with them. They're not known for their romance and meaningful relationships."
She was saying it in that way that parents do when there are young children in the room and they are trying to cover up the lascivious meaning of what they're saying with a code that they hope the other adult will understand. I knew exactly what she was saying and could tell that my big sister was worried about me. Instead of being put off by what she said, however, I found myself even more intrigued.
"This is all about business," I reassured her. "They just put off planning the party for too long and so they came to me because they knew that I could pull it off for him. That's it."
"Are you sure? I saw the way that you were looking at him the first day that he came in. And he was looking right back at you in the exact same way."
So is his brother.
"Just business," I said again.
"OK, good." She said, seemingly satisfied. "So what kinds of ideas do you have for this?"
"Well, they said that they wanted it to be a sensory experience. So I was thinking that all of the chocolates and desserts should be focused on different senses. Of course, they'll be delicious, so that takes care of the taste, but I thought it might be fun to try to include the other ones as well. Maybe we can have some that are hot and cold or that have different types of textures."
Skylar nodded.
"That's a good idea. "
I let out a breath.
"I just hope that I can do it," I said. "This could be really amazing for me."
"You'll be fine," she said. "If there's anybody who could handle all of this, it's you."
Aiden
"I'm telling you, it's perfect."
Lucas was looking at me like he wasn't convinced, but I didn't back down.
"What's perfect?" Talon came into the room carrying the mail and tossed it onto the table in front of us.
Several thick envelopes with elaborate handwriting across the front marked wedding and event invitations, which appeared at our house in a fairly constant flow.
"Our brother thinks he came up with a solution to our little issue."
Talon looked at us.
"I thought that we agreed that we weren't going to talk about it for a while."
"That's what I thought," Lucas said.
"I know, I know," I said. "I know that there isn't any rush or anything, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and I think that I finally figured out why."
"And why is that?"
"Because we've been thinking about it all wrong."
"I'm not following you."
"We've been freaking out because the lawyer told us that we have to have an heir to get the rest of the estate, but that's not actually what he said."
"That's exactly what he said," Jackson said as he came into the room.
"Perfect. You're here. Now we can all talk about it. No, that's not exactly what he said. Think about it." They all continued to stare at me and I let out a frustrated sigh, looking at my oldest brother. "Talon. Think about it. What did he actually say?"
I looked up to Talon even more than I did my other brothers. He had been there for me the most when our father died and there were times when I knew that I only got through it and the turmoil that followed because he refused to let me spiral out of control.
"He said that there had to be an heir."
"Exactly."
"Isn't that just what you said that he didn't say?" Jackson argued.
"No. Look. We've all been thinking about this as if each of us has to have and raise a child, but even Dandridge said that the will doesn't say that we all have to have children or even which one of us has to have one. As soon as there is an heir, we get the rest of the estate. Do any of you want to have a child and raise it on your own?" They all shook their heads. "I don't know about any of you, but I don't think that passing along our inheritance to children is the first step of dividing up the legacy. I think that would start just by having the kid. I, for one, want to continue running the empire together."
"That's what I want, too," Talon said.
The other two made agreeing sounds, nodding.
"Then think about it this way: we don't each have to be a father to a child. We just need a child of our lineage. So why don't we handle this the same way that we handle everything else? We do it together."
"Together?" Jackson asked.
I nodded, looking to Lucas.
"I was telling Lucas that it doesn't make sense to have multiple children or even for just one of us to have a child and raise it. That would do nothing but create competition and animosity. So let's all raise a child together."
Jackson stared at me blankly and Lucas pointed at him.
"See? That was my reaction, too. It's ridiculous."
"Actually…" Talon said.
Lucas looked at him.
"Did you just say 'actually'?"
"Yeah," he said, nodding, looking at me as if he was surprised that I had come up with that idea. "Actually, it's brilliant."
"See?" I said.
"Are you serious?" Jackson said.
Talon nodded again.
"Yeah. I'm completely serious. Think about it. There has to be an heir. That means that there has to be a child of our bloodline. That doesn't mean that that child has to have a specific father. If we raise it together there isn't any competition, any argument, any anything. We all get to contribute and influence the child, and we can all pass everything on to that child. From there, it can have children and pass on the legacy the way that it wants to, but we'll have done what we thought was right."
"How are we supposed to do that?" Lucas asked.
I smiled at him.
"That's the best part," I said. "We do it the old-fashioned way. We've shared women before. But that's always been just for fun. So this time we find one who's willing not just for us to share her, but to have our baby."
"We wouldn't know which of us was the biological father?" Jackson asked.
"No," Talon said. "It wouldn't matter. We'd all raise it together. We would all be its father."
"And the woman?" Lucas asked.
"She would be its mother," I said. "She would help us take care of the baby and then as it got older, she could be as involved as she wanted to be. We'd make sure that she was well taken care of as well."
"We have to make sure that we find the perfect woman," Jackson said. "It's not just about finding one who is willing to have all of us. Think about the women any of us have shared before. We've never had one who's had all four of us, but even the ones who have had two or three...would you really want any of them to be the mother of our child?"
I thought about this and realized that he was absolutely right. While we had had women who made enthusiastic and entertaining playmates for various combinations of us brothers, I couldn't think of one whom I would want contributing to the DNA or the raising of my child.
"Well, what do we want? What kind of woman would be perfect?" I asked.
"She would have to have good genes, obviously," Talon said. "We want our child to be healthy, smart, and attractive. She'll need to be healthy and strong, too, to handle the pregnancy and childbirth well."
"She can't be greedy," Jackson added. "We'll offer her a set payment and then a monthly stipend. She needs to know that is what she's getting and she's not going to go after more."
"We also want to make sure that she will emotionally be able to handle all of this," Lucas said. "She needs to understand that we'll all be involved in the pregnancy and raising the child, but that this is about the baby, not about some kind of relationship. We need to choose someone who we like spending time with but who isn't going to suddenly fall in love with one of us and completely freak out."
"No problem," Talon said with a sigh. "I'm sure we can go scoop up five or six of those women off the street right now."
I knew that it would be a major undertaking, but it could work. It had to.