A Smooth Operator (A Modern Vintage Romance)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Remi

" W hy is she here?" My girlfriend, Marina, wondered aloud when Echo walked into the private room at Paint the Town Red, my nightclub in downtown Memphis.

We were celebrating my sister Lani's twenty-fifth birthday, and she'd invited a whole hell of a lot of her friends, including Echo Devlin, who was technically a part of Lani and Marina's group of friends. Well, sort of.

Echo used to be the DUFF! The Designated Ugly Fat Friend.

Lani had to adopt her in middle school because my father was fond of Echo, who had then lived on the Drake estate with her aunt, our housekeeper. Dad admired Echo for achieving straight As despite the challenges she faced at home. She had grown up in a trailer park in Orange Mound. Her mother had overdosed and died. I didn't think she knew who her father was. Her aunt had taken her in when she was eleven, albeit grudgingly. I doubted Echo had had a great childhood. But that didn't change the fact that she was a hanger-on. Lucky for her, Lani was friendly ; otherwise, Echo wouldn't be at my club.

"She's Lani's friend, Marina," I evaded because I didn't want a whole discussion around Echo 'cause Marina was always making fun of her.

I wasn't a big fan of Echo either. Never did like parasites—and that's what she was. First, she'd hung around Lani and her friends and now had managed to get a job in my father's biotech company. Dad said she was smart; not from where I was sitting. Because if this girl had any brains at all, she'd know she wasn't welcomed here.

"She keeps staring at you like she's starvin', and you are lunch," Marina muttered slyly. "You know she's always had a thing for you."

Yeah. I knew. Hell, we all did. But she wasn't the first of Lani's friends to have made a play for me. For Christ's sake, I was dating Marina, wasn't I? But Echo had never been overt. She had only watched from a distance. She'd say a breathy hello and nothing more. She irritated the hell out of me.

My father drove Lani up the wall with his constant praise for Echo. She was a scientist and she was so smart. I wasn’t buying his talk about her super high IQ; I suspected she was just another charity case for my father. The great Dallas Drake always helped everyone out. I had a great dad—no complaints. He let me do what I wanted, never pushing me into anything. When Lani couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do, he hired her, much like he did Echo.

"She's so out of place. Look at what she's wearing," Marina sneered.

Echo wasn't ugly—at all. She was dull. She didn't wear makeup, had glasses, and her clothes were all either beige or black. She wasn't fat any longer. Now, she was curvy. She was quiet and cheerful. I felt guilty for how I treated her when we were teenagers. I was two years older than her—and I'd been just as bad as the rest of them. I didn't do that shit anymore—at least not out loud.

"Enough." I removed my arm from around Marina and rose from the couch. "She's a guest, Marina, and this ain't high school, yeah?"

Advice you should take to heart as well, Remi.

Echo may not have dressed like Marina, a.k.a. hooker of the month, but she didn't look out of place. She was in a shift dress, a loose number that came to mid-thigh. She had sexy legs, I noted. Someone said something to her, and she turned, and I all but groaned when I looked at her ass, which was juicy as hell. Her sandals were laced-up, making her legs look like they went all the way up and down.

I didn't want to hit that! Not at all.

With her makeup-free face and dark hair tied around her brown face in a ponytail, she looked all of eighteen. I was sure she got carded fucking everywhere.

An arm wrapped around me, and I grunted when I saw it was Tommy, my best friend—or rather, he used to be. Now, he was just a bad habit I couldn’t shake. Tommy and I had grown up together, and he was now dating Lani. I didn’t have a problem with that; Tommy was an okay guy, and our families had been friends forever. If there was one thing I took issue with, it was that Tommy had decided to live the good life and not make something of himself. He worked in his father’s pharmaceutical company in a well-paying nepotism job designed just for him. He couldn’t understand why I stepped away from the family business to open a nightclub and two restaurants. In his mind, when you had family money, you didn’t work hard—or at all.

Like Tommy, Lani worked at my father's company, doing something nondescript, which she fully intended to give up as soon as Tommy popped the question, which she was hoping would be tonight. I'd seen the ring and knew she'd be pleased with the five-carat monstrosity.

"How's it goin', Drake?"

Tommy was already in his cups. I hoped he'd switch to coffee if he was planning on nailing the grand finale of the party by asking Lani to marry him.

"You need to cut back on the drink, buddy," I told him.

"Hey, it's my girlfriend's birthday. I'll drink if I want to," he guffawed.

Echo was walking by us then when Tommy grabbed her arm. "Hey, Devlin, babe. How's it hangin'?"

"Tommy. Remi."

I watched as she extricated herself from Tommy's grasp. She hadn't been comfortable being touched by him. What the fuck? It was harmless. Maybe she was a prude.

"Echo. How's it goin'?" I said politely.

"Good." She looked around and saw Lani dancing with friends. "I have a headache and an early morning. Can you let Lani know I wish her the best?"

"Lani won't even notice you're gone," Tommy scoffed. "I don't think she noticed you came."

Echo showed no emotion at that rude remark. She kept her tight smile in place. "You're right. Well, then, goodnight. This is a great club, Remi."

"Is this your first time here?" I asked, surprised. I opened the club two years ago.

She nodded.

"Really?" Granted, she wasn't my target clientele, but I expected Lani to have dragged her along earlier.

Tommy, who didn't know when to shut up, swayed a little, a cruel smile on his face. "Come on, man. Remi, who'll let her into a fancy nightclub like this?"

"Tommy, why don't you go check on Lani?" I snapped.

My friend gave me a bland look and then smirked and winked at me as he walked away.

"I'm sorry about Tommy."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because he was rude," I explained, a little taken aback by her blunt question.

"Are you responsible for how Tommy behaves?"

What in the fuck? Usually, people would just say, "It doesn't matter," or something along those lines and move on. Echo Devlin was as weird as all get out.

"No, I'm not," I admitted.

"Then why are you apologizing?" She demanded pleasantly and didn't even bother to wait for me to respond. "It was nice seeing you again, Remi. Have a lovely evening."

I didn't know why, but I walked with her. "Hey, you don't have to go, you know?"

She shrugged. "I came to wish Lani a happy birthday and drop her present off."

She looked at her watch. A Rolex. Wow! I wondered how she could afford something so expensive. How the fuck much was my father paying her?

Maybe she had a boyfriend, some rich guy who gave it to her? Now, that was a thought. I'd never known Echo to date, but then, I didn't know much about her since she'd gone to Vanderbilt to do a combined bachelor's and master's degree. She came back to Memphis to do her PhD. That's when I started to see her around again. According to Dad, she finished her PhD in record time—and was some kind of gene therapy wunderkind. I had trouble believing that when I looked at her. DUFF, certainly. Smart nerd? I didn't think so.

"Nice watch," I murmured, curious how she got it.

She smiled shyly. "It was a present from your father after I got awarded my PhD."

My father? I knew he liked her, but that was easily a ten-thousand-dollar plus watch. Why on earth would he give a random kid that?

Lani had gotten a Hermes bag when she graduated because she'd nagged him to death about it. I got my Ducati—and I didn't even have to nag. But then I was valedictorian, unlike Lani, who barely graduated.

A Rolex for Echo? Was my father sleeping with this bitch? Was that why my parents were having problems?

"What the fuck, Echo? Why is my dad givin' you such expensive gifts?" I growled.

We were out of the nightclub now and she gaped at me. I could see the confusion in her eyes in the dim light of the outdoors. "What?"

"Yeah, what is my father? Your sugar daddy or somethin'?"

She just kept staring at me, shock on her face. Was that because I was way off or because I had found her out?

"Damn it, Echo, are you fuckin' my father?"

Her eyes went saucer-wide. "What?"

"Stop saying what ?" I barked, and the line of people and the bouncer outside the club looked at us. I grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the fray toward the parking area.

She pulled away from me. "That's a vile and disgustin' thing to say, Remi Drake. Your father gave this to me cause he'd received it from his mentor when he finished his PhD. It was a gift." As she spoke, she removed the watch and handed it to me. "Here, you can give it back to him. No gift is worth this humiliation."

I had no choice but to grab the watch to prevent it from falling onto the asphalt. Before I could get my act together and pull my foot out of my mouth, she was in her car and, in less than a minute, was driving away in her quiet electric BMW.

How on earth could she afford that car? Did my father buy that for her, too? Damn it! I had to stop this nonsense. I knew better. Dad admired Echo and thought of her as a daughter. Right?

Feeling unsure as hell, I looked at the Rolex watch in my hand with disgust. I couldn't face my father; hell, no. If I were wrong, it would break his heart; if I were right, it would break mine. She'd left me in a no-win situation. The bitch .

God! I disliked Echo Devlin. I disliked her prissy attitude, her big brown eyes that looked at me with undisguised devotion—well, not a minute ago, then there was something akin to loathing in them for me.

I'd get to the bottom of this one way or the other, I decided.