Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
CARTER
N ever in a million years would I have thought I’d be obsessed with Kaison fucking St. Clair. Never thought I’d feel anything towards him but hatred and loathing. Never thought how he feels would mean anything to me.
But something shifted when I hurt him at the casino, then seeing those bruises on him after he ran away. I’ve put plenty of bruises on him myself when I tried to beat him into the ground, but he gave as good as he got. What happened to him at the club? That was an attack and I didn’t like seeing him hurt like that. No matter how long it takes, I’ll find those fuckers that thought it was okay to put their hands on what belongs to me.
That’s something I’ll think about later. For now, I have a date.
I pull up to Kai’s construction company and put my car in park right beside his. Gavin looks over at me with a raised eyebrow. “You’re weird when you’re cheerful. Especially when it has to do with a St. Clair.”
I shrug. “You’re right. But…I don’t know. He’s not what I expected. He’s…more. Fuck, I don’t know. I sound like a fucking idiot.”
“You sound like a man with a crush.” Gavin smirks at me. I sock him lightly in the arm and get out of the car.
We head inside to the headquarters. Gavin hangs back in the lobby with Percy as I stride over to Kai’s office.
He has his jacket off, sleeves rolled up his arms, his hair piled on top of his head in a messy bun, a few strands hanging in his face. Kai’s bottom lip is pulled between his teeth in concentration, the plump flesh taking a beating from all the gnawing.
His desk is littered with papers, and pencils are strewn about. Paperweights hold down a large square of paper he’s studying and making little notes on.
I rap my knuckles on the door a few times, leaning against it. Kai’s head snaps up and I watch the mix of emotions cross his face. Surprise, distaste, confusion and maybe something close to like. “Carter.”
“Husband.” His lip twitches as if he wants to smile. “You have lunch soon.”
He looks down at his watch in surprise. “I do. Shit, I lost track of time.”
“What do you have going on?” I walk over to his desk and look over his shoulder. Floor plans are before him, with a list of necessary materials for a new build. “Is this for Indigo Arc?”
Exhaling roughly, he turns around and looks up at me. “I never second guess anything. If I want to do something, I get it done. I’ve never gone up against Pop.” He shakes his head. “Up against Charlie.” He pulls the hair tie out of his hair and drags his fingers through those luscious waves. “He hasn’t been answering my calls. So I haven’t been able to tell him I’m going to do this.”
“Go see him. Make him listen. If you want, I’ll come with you.”
His gaze bores into me, searching my face for something. “No. I can handle it. Thanks though.”
“This looks good. Knocking out these walls here,” I point to the rough plans he has drawn up, “and adding another restaurant will generate more revenue. Having more tables and a high rollers room will elevate your casino. You can even add an events room. You could do small concerts, a room for those charity balls. People pay in advance for those.”
Kai looks back at his hasty plans. He’ll have to have an architect draw the real plans up before he starts building, but he has a good grasp on what he wants.
Picking up one of the many pencils on his desk, he erases something and draws a large room, including beams and load bearing walls. He’s really good at it.
“Why didn’t you become an architect?” I ask, watching him work. “Seems like you know what you’re doing.”
He shakes his head as he keeps sketching, his hair falling over his shoulders. I use one hand to push it back so he can see the papers in front of him. “Pop said that would take too much time from the family.”
I scoff. “You know you can do tons of shit online now. That’s no reason to hold yourself back.”
I watch a smile spread across his face. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.” He finishes drawing with a flourish. Picking up the paper he tilts his head to the side and makes a huh noise. “That…that actually works. Can you project the revenue for the next ten years for me? Including two restaurants, a high rollers room and a possible event center?”
“Sure. It’ll take about a week while I work on it, but I can get it done.”
“Thanks.” Kai sets the paper back on his desk and turns his chair to me. “Why are you here?”
Perching on the edge of his desk, I cross my legs at the ankle. “I came to take you to lunch. And see if you needed one of my guys to fill in until you found a new full-time accountant.”
Kai nods, standing and putting on his jacket. “Actually, yeah. I think that would be good to have someone from your family working here. To blend our families and shit.” I grin. “You have someone in mind?”
We discuss which one of my guys to send over as we leave the office. Kai looks at me curiously when I grab his hand and pull him to the back of his building instead of heading to our cars.
He has a table in the back where I had Gavin set up some sandwiches and drinks that I had my dad’s cook make for us. When he turns to look at me, I explain. “For a while, it might be too dangerous for us to sit in a restaurant to eat. When all this shit blows over, I’ll take you out for a proper date.”
The blush that appears on Kai’s cheeks is breathtaking. He’s so fucking handsome and he’s so expressive now. Everything he’s feeling shows up on his face. Before, I had a hard time reading him, since Kai liked to keep his emotions to himself. Now, he shows me everything.
We sit down and I put a turkey sandwich in front of him, along with some fresh fruit and a bottle of water.
“Thanks. I’m starving.” Kai digs in immediately, taking a huge bite of his food. After he swallows the food in his mouth, Kai says, almost shyly, “This is nice. I’ve never been on a date before. This…is a date right?”
“Yep. Me either. This is all new for me. But I’m trying. For you.”
I’m shocked when his gray eyes soften, and that cute grin curves his lips. “Yeah, me too. I wanna try.” Hesitantly, he holds out his hand and I grasp it. “We’re probably a bunch of fools, actually liking their spouse.”
Smiling at him, I give his hand a squeeze. “Nothin wrong with that.” I take my hand back and bite into my sandwich. “Remember that time when we were sixteen and I saw you in that restaurant with your stupid ass friends?”
Kai gives me a dry look, then throws his napkin at me. I bat it away, laughing. “Yeah, I remember. Pop gave me shit for a week for the mess we made.”
When we were sixteen, me and Gavin were skipping classes at that stuffy private school we went to and saw Kai and his lackies. I didn’t plan to start shit, but when they spotted us, they walked over to our table to fuck with us. Before he could get within earshot, I was out of my chair and I tackled him to the ground. Over someone’s table. While they were still eating. We caused about twenty grand worth of damage fighting and breaking shit.
“You think we would have been friends if our dads didn’t hate each other?”
“Doubt it,” he says. “You’re an asshole.” He pauses, assessing me with dipped eyebrows. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe. You’re actually not bad.”
We sit in silence for a bit, eating and enjoying the weather. It’ll turn soon, but for now, the soft breeze feels good.
Kai finishes his sandwich and plucks a few grapes from the bowl in front of him. “What was the Whitlock house like growing up? Dominic seems…warm.”
I laugh. “He is and he isn’t. He loves us. Everyone can see that. But he doesn’t give us free passes for dumb shit. There have been plenty of times he’s punished us for being reckless and careless. He taught us to fight, so there was a lot of hand to hand when we didn’t listen and he had to take us down a peg or two. He was exactly what you heard about him in the streets and a good father at the same time.”
He ducks his head, his eyes dull. “But you had a good father. And you had a brother. You had people.”
“You grew up alone.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
Kai nods slowly. “Nico was around, but he didn’t go to school with me or anything. His father wanted him to live a relatively normal life before he came to guard me. We’re close, but it’s just him and me. Even with my friends from school, I didn’t have anyone. They didn’t understand the life. They knew I had money and clout, so they hung on to me like a cheap suit. Pop didn’t want me to get too close to anyone. Said they could hurt me if I let them in. That’s why he never got caught up in any bullshit. No one has ever been close enough to him to catch him slipping.”
He tries to hide it, but I can hear the ache in his voice. All these years, he’s been alone. I’ve had Declan and my father’s men’s sons around me. I always had people, friends I could count on. Charlie isolated him, made him dependent on only him, for some unknown reason. God, his father is a fucking dick.
“You know, you’re not alone anymore.”
“Til death do us part, right?” he asks with a grin, tapping my ring.
Leaning across the table, I plant a soft kiss on his lips. He smiles, then threads his fingers through my hair and holds me to him, taking my lips in a slow, deliberate kiss. I groan against him, wanting more of this.
I have to adjust my cock when I pull away, a grin on my face. His eyes track the movement, lust brimming in his eyes. “Keep it in your pants, St. Clair,” I say when I sit down.
His laugh warms something in my chest that’s been cold for too long. Since my mother died. A part of me that nothing and no one could touch. Now Kai has wormed his way in there, making me think about…forever.
I grab some strawberries and eat them. Kai does the same, the blush still on his cheeks.
After he swallows, he says, “You make a pretty good sandwich, though everything else could use some work.”
I scoff a laugh. “I didn’t make those. You know cooking isn’t my strong suit.” He grimaces, making me throw the napkin back at him. He bitched about my burned eggs and toast when he was healing from his concussion, gagging over the plate, giving himself a headache.
“If we’re going to stay married, you need to learn how to cook. I don’t want to be poisoned.”
Surprise washes through me. “You can cook?” I mean, the bit of food I stole from him all those months ago was good, but it was just chicken and rice.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Carter. But I’m willing to share. Come on.” He stands up and starts packing the containers in the bag. “I’m going to tell Percy to close up for me. We’re going to have a crash course in cooking. What’s your favorite food?”
I think, because all food is my favorite. “What can you cook?”
“Everything,” he says, handing me the bag. “I spent a lot of time alone. The kitchen was quiet, and Pop’s old cook let me play around in there. Name it and I can cook it.”
I groan, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him close to me. “That’s hot as fuck. That chicken you made was pretty seasoned.”
He scowls at me. “Chicken you weren’t supposed to eat. That was for after my workout.”
“I know. But it was fun fucking with you.”
“And you got your ass beat for your trouble.”
“Did I though?” I ask, remembering how his lips landed against mine when he was done tossing me around. I don’t think I lost that fight at all.
His light chuckle drifts back to me. “Tell me what you want to cook, and we’ll make it.”
“Lasagna.”
“Easy.”
Shortly after Kai gives Percy instructions, we head to the grocery store—after we both call for more men to watch out for us. Neither of us are idiots. We know there’s trouble lurking and we don’t want to put ourselves into unnecessary danger. Kai already has extra guards patrolling his work site and seated in his lobby.
But shopping goes off without a hitch, Kai grabbing everything we need for dinner. I watch and catalog the ingredients he grabs, not wanting to forget a thing.
Once home, Kai takes off his suit jacket, rolls up his sleeves, washes his hands and gets started. Every step of the way, he tells me what he’s doing. He makes the sauce from scratch, something I didn’t think anyone but chef’s knew how to do.
“After you have everything layered,” he says, adding the mixture of sauce, ground beef and cheese to the pan of lasagna noodles, “you pop it in the oven and let it bake for forty-five minutes.”
He turns to me with a free and open smile and he shifts from pretty to fucking beautiful. This is Kai, happy and in his element. If I thought he loved drawing plans for the casino, it’s nothing compared to how he looks now. Fucking dazzling.
“You’re good at so much shit. How did I not know?” I ask, cleaning up the mess we made.
“I’m not. Not really.” I don’t miss the hint of dismissal in his tone, like he’s used to downplaying his achievements.
I stop cleaning the counter and turn to him. I grab his wrist before he can walk away. He comes easily, leaning against me. I push his hair back, kissing his hair when he ducks his head.
Placing my fingers under his chin, I lift his head until he’s looking at me. “You’re good at a lot of shit, Kai. You may not know everything about me, but you know I don’t lie. All that shit Charlie put in your head? Forget it. None of it is true. You’re brilliant, baby.”
I can tell he doesn’t believe me, but I’ll spend as long as necessary hyping him up until he does.
When the lasagna is ready, we dig in. I can’t stop the groan that escapes my throat. “Fucking fuck, Kai. This is amazing.”
His shy, but smug smile is everything I need.