TWENTY-SEVEN
ELLE
The tension is palpable from the moment we step foot inside Bennett's sprawling Upper East Side apartment, but Senator Sexy-Ass instantly snaps into politician mode. That smile, the one that probably scored him the majority of his votes, takes over. Brilliant and breathtaking. I’m stunned, honestly. Because I’m not used to this version of Graham—reserved and professional. I only know the other, the manipulative and possessive side, the one who’s willing to topple every piece on the board just to get what he wants. Still, no matter how detached he is tonight, he charms everyone he talks to. Demands the attention of every female in the room. I hate the jealousy crackling through my veins as I wonder if any of them know what I know.
That he demands phone sex voicemails or clears out entire restaurants and gifts expensive lingerie on a whim. That his touch is like wildfire and his tongue has the power to punish and reward, all in a matter of seconds.
God, I hope they don’t.
“Ben said you were dating.” A voice interrupts Graham in the middle of his discussion with a brunette he’s identified as Delaney International’s spokeswoman. I peek in the voice’s direction then do a double take. My chest jolts when the man approaching us lets a slow, lazy smile creep across his features. With his tousled dark hair and ability to suck the air out of the room with every step, there’s no mistaking that this is the oldest Delaney brother, Cain. The only difference is the eye color. Like Bennett’s, Cain’s are blue.
I prefer the brown. All day. Any day.
“Bennett’s always talked too much,” Graham responds once the brunette excuses herself. He introduces me to his brother as he drops his hand from my waist to accept a sidehug from Cain that makes me cringe. And wonder how much contact he actually has with his family. He skims his dark eyes around the crowded room before he asks, “No Amity?”
Cain looks up from adjusting his cufflink and cocks an eyebrow. “Amity?”
“Small and blonde, with a lost look on her face—like she was wondering when the next bus to Neverland would show.” Graham presses his full lips into a ghost of a smile and tilts his head to one side. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten her goddamn name.”
His brother’s face lights up with recognition and then he casually shrugs a broad shoulder. “She was dismissed months ago. You know how that shit goes.” Dismissed? Like with Bennett’s visit earlier, I feel like I’m smack dab in the middle of a very intimate conversation. When a soft sound pushes past my lips, and I shift my weight between my feet, he flicks his blue irises down to me. “Are you enjoying Manhattan?”
“I’ve been before, just not—” I stop myself from blurting out more, that I’ve never visited the city with a guy. No, a man. Graham is most certainly all male. I shake Cain’s hand. “I’m Elle.”
“I don’t think my brother’s brought a woman around in years. You must be … something.” He looks me over from head to toe and chuckles, shaking his head. “Monica will hate that she missed tonight. She said she had a headache.”
“Monica?” I rasp, and Graham makes a noise from beside me.
“Our mother. Since she’s screwed him over more than the rest of us, he dropped the pleasantries decades ago.” When I steal a glance up at Graham, he skims his long fingers over the base of my spine. His touch shoots heat through my veins. “Mom always had a thing for Ben and Cain’s friends. If they had a dick, she was interested.”
Cain snorts and winks at me. “That’s an understatement.” I can’t stop my mouth from falling open in shock, which he notices. Something dark flashes in his eyes, and one corner of his mouth quirks. “While you’re in town, you should ask my brother to bring you to my—”
“No,” Graham interrupts. His tone is low, warning, and my head jerks back so I can look at him. His shoulders are so tense they look like they’ll rip his dark blue jacket as he bares his teeth into a tight smile. “She leaves in the morning. No time to show her every Delaney-owned business in town.”
Cain concentrates on his other cufflink and gives a shrug. “Shame.”
It’s the strangest discussion I’ve ever heard between siblings, and as Graham guides me to another part of the open space, I release a heavy exhale. “Cain is…”
His full lips twitch. I’m not sure if it’s a smile or a frown. “Moody? Arrogant?”
“He’s … something.” I race my tongue over dry lips. “Very Delaney.”
“We’re an adjective now,” he muses. “I’ll have to tell my father what you’ve said. He’ll be so proud.”
“Does he … does your father know about your mother?”
“Of course. They’re equally fucked. I could tell you stories about them that would leave you clutching your pearls, dove.”
And that—that explains so much. Zach’s friends were always around when we were growing up, but I can’t imagine Mom making a pass at any of them. I clear my throat and take a breath before I say, “I’m sorry, Graham.”
“Why? I’m even more fucked,” he drawls, tilting his face from mine to cast a smile at the redhead sauntering toward us. He looks at me out the corner of his eye. “Of course, unlike my parents, I admit my shortcomings—or in our case, long ones.”
Smartass. As he speaks in a mix of English and French to the redhead, I wander off, exploring the open areas of Bennett’s apartment. Everything about it is the opposite of Graham’s. It's light and airy, not the wall to ceiling sterile, minimalist look of the place on Fifth Avenue. This has a woman’s touch, so when Vero finds me examining the wall of black and white photos behind the baby grand piano, I point out how beautiful the place is.
“Wrong wife.” She taps a rounded fingernail on an image of Bennett with a tiny, model-esque blonde. “This is the most recent ex. The one who did the decorating. I’m guessing he just hasn’t gotten around to taking her pictures down.”
Bitterness laces her voice, but then she laughs when I tilt my head to the side and glance back at her. She looks nothing like the uptight woman who’d dropped me into Graham’s lap the night of his proposition in an off-the-shoulder red ruffle dress, but her expression is just as guarded. “How was your holiday?” I tentatively ask.
“Peaceful.” She relaxes a little. “After all, there was no Graham.” When I laugh, her stance loosens a bit more. Which probably has something to do with the half-empty wine glass she’s toting around. After she tells me it's her fourth glass, she casually asks, “Are you staying much longer? In New York, I mean.”
“No. I have to work tomorrow, so I'm leaving in the morning.”
“You work?”
I nod. “I just started at The Capitol Buzz, and—”
Her icy gray eyes widen. “The gossip rag?” At my flush, she chokes down more wine and clears her throat. “I love The Capitol Buzz—I just didn’t picture you as the type to work through school, especially there.”
At least she’s blunt. “I don’t like to rely on my dad.”
“Hmm.” She drinks more wine like she’s auditioning to be Cersei Lannister’s Game of Thrones body double. “I like that. I like that a lot, Eleanor. I think we’re the only two people in this room who can say that without twitching.”
I wait for her to point out that I’m relying on Graham for my tuition this semester, but that doesn’t come. This woman knows the ins and outs of his life. The fact she has no clue about my situation, or the role he played in fixing it, fills my lungs with relief. Clearing my throat, I turn my attention to the photos on the wall.
“I'm going to guess this is Graham.” I point to the boy in the middle of the beach picture. He's casting a missing tooth smile at the camera, all the cynicism of the man he’s become missing. The arrogance is still there, though. I’d be willing to bet he was born with that.
“The cocky grin gives it away, doesn’t it?” Laughing, she points to the boy on his right and then to his left. “And that’s Cain and this one—that’s Bennett.” The edge is back in her voice and she blinks down at her glass when I look up to meet her gaze.
Graham’s only mentioned his brother’s marriage to Vero once, saying it was over before it began several years ago, but she’s still in love with him. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. It’s all there, from the way she darts her gaze across the room at him. She flinches when she spots him with his mouth buried against another woman’s ear.
Her smile twists my stomach into knots that take my breath away. “And once again, I question why I do this shit.” She fluffs her hand through her short blond hair, her motions so jerky some of the wine sloshes out of the glass. “Be careful with Graham, Ms. Courtney. The Delaney boys range from not-giving-a-fuck to sadistic.”
“Veronica—”
Sharp gray eyes lower to mine. “At least Graham’s a mixture of the two,” she says dryly.
I don't know how to respond. On one hand, she’s tipsy. And she’s obviously upset because who the hell wants to see the man they care about whispering filthy nothings in another woman’s ear? But I’m also wise enough to take her warning to heart. I already know Graham’s capable of screwing me over.
I’m just the right amount of fool to hope that doesn’t happen again.
I nod my head. Swallow hard to get rid of some of the dryness in my throat. Desperate to tug this conversation away from Graham, I glance over at Cain. “What's his story?”
“He owns a nightclub.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “In a church.”
My brows arch. “He's a priest?” Because that's the only scenario I can think of. Some nightclub to introduce a younger crowd to religion. It would also explain him wanting to separate himself from his parents and Graham’s immediate shoot down of whatever invitation he was prepared to issue me. I’ve got a feeling a church would burst into flames the second Senator Sexy-Ass stepped through the doors.
“I’m sure they have a Catholic school girl night at Eden, but no. He’s not a priest.” The confusion must be written all over my features because she explains, “He and Graham bought an old church in Brooklyn several years back and Cain turned it into a nightclub. Pissed a few people off.”
That’s something else that hadn't shown up when I look Graham. I let out a low breath, watching as he says something to the Delaney spokeswoman that makes her blush. “I bet,” I say huskily.
Silence falls over us as we return to looking at the photos Bennett’s ex had hung. I hear Graham call my name, and I'm about to turn from the wall and join him, but then one of the pictures near the top of the group stops me. I recognize a younger version of Bennett and Graham, but there's something about the pretty brunette with them that sounds an alarm in my head.
She's sitting on Graham’s lap, one slim arm draped around his shoulders, and the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end as I study her bright smile. “Hey Vero? Who’s that?” I tap a finger against her face.
Vero’s eyes shift from me to the picture. I feel Graham’s body heat behind me, and as I arch into his touch as his hand finds my hip, Vero looks up at him, too. “I have no clue,” she says, but her face is frozen.
He tilts his head to one side. “V likes to play games with her job by talking too much.” But he grins. “What has she told you?”
Only that I should be careful around you. And what you’ve already assured me—that you, and your brothers, are screwed up. “Nothing. I mean, we were talking about the pictures. I swear I know this woman from somewhere.” He follows my finger to the picture in question, and every inch of his body seizes. Slowly, so slowly it makes my neck hurt, I tilt my eyes up to him to find a smile plastered in place.
“Graham?” I say, voice hitching hesitantly.
“She’s—” His jaw clenches. “Bennett’s last bitch has bad taste in home décor because she’s nobody.”
“Okay,” I breathe. “But I recognize her.” From where I have no idea, but I remember smiles. And I won’t be able to erase that woman’s out of my brain anytime soon.
“You don’t. And we’re leaving. Vero, call a car.”
She licks her lips and starts to say something but he jerks his head and she slinks off, cursing under her breath. “She’s on vacation,” I rasp, and he gives me a look that cuts right through me. “Is everything—” My words die on my lips when I touch his arm and he pulls away.
“I should get your coat,” he says, confusing the hell out of me.
For a man who speaks about filters, who calls me out on my bullshit at every turn, he has no problem avoiding his truth. Whatever the hell that is. We sit with a giant void between us on the way to his apartment. We take the elevator upstairs with an even bigger space separating us. And I almost expect he’ll tell me to pack my shit and leave the second we step over the threshold and into his foyer, but he doesn’t.
He pulls me to him, his mouth searing mine as he shoves me against the wall. I hear and feel the panties he gave me ripping. And my body reacts—God, it can’t help but respond to him—but my head is elsewhere. On a photo hanging above a piano in the Upper East Side. And the fact that it has broken down the most self-assured man I’ve ever met.