5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Remi
N ow, I'm sure we've all thought about how we'd react when we saw the person we were with getting nailed from behind by someone we thought of as a friend and nightclub manager. Alex had been with me since I opened Paint the Town Red.
"Remi," Marina screamed.
"No, darlin', his name is Alex. Don't hurry on my account. Y'all take your time, you hear. Come on now, Echo, let's get you a drink, luv."
I put my arm around Echo and shut the door on Marina's shocked face.
I steered Echo into my office and locked the door. I had no idea why I brought her with me. It was impulse. She was there, and I needed someone to lean on.
As soon as we were in my office, I collapsed on my leather couch.
I dropped my face in my hands.
"" Don't hurry on my account." Is that what I just said?" The shit that came out of my mouth sometimes was unbelievable.
"It was actually funny," Echo replied.
I looked at her and saw amusement but also compassion.
"What can I say? I'm a funny guy." I was in shock. There was a whistling sound in my ear like a bomb went off. I thought I was in love with Marina. She was planning an engagement. I'd just fucked that girl four hours ago, and here she was getting it in her ass from Alex.
It was all too much. But as I assessed my feelings, I realized that it hurt more that Alex would betray me than Marina.
Alex and I worked together. He was a friend and colleague.
"You got some alcohol in here?" Echo wondered.
"Yeah." I pointed to my desk.
Echo rummaged as I watched, unable to string words together to help her. I just sat there like an idiot, feeling like an arrow had pierced through my chest, making it hard for me to breathe.
"You keep the good stuff in here." Echo took two paper cups she found somewhere on my desk and poured the Ardbeg Uigeadail, limited edition, expensive shit, into them.
She handed me one and sat down next to me on the couch. She held her cup out, and I bumped mine against hers.
"To seeing things, you cannot unsee ever ," she deadpanned.
Her humor managed to get through my haze of distress. "True. I can't fucking unsee my girl getting nailed by my friend, now can I?"
" Yep ," she agreed.
We drank in companionable silence.
"He did say she had a tight ass, didn't he?"
Echo toasted me with her cup but didn't say anything.
"She does, you know," I told her.
" Please , just because Marina is cheating on you doesn't make it okay for you to kiss n' tell."
Marina was always a bitch to Echo, and yet, she was defending her. I didn't think it was Marina in particular, but she was standing up for sisterhood. I respected that.
"You're right," I conceded.
"Did you have an inkling?"
I closed my eyes, unable to unsee Alex with his eyes closed, his hands on my girl's breasts as his hips slammed into her. "I didn't even suspect," I confessed.
"How long were y'all dating?"
"Eight months. Not long."
There was a loud bang on the office door, and someone tried to open the knob.
"Remi?" We heard Marina screech. "Remi, are you in there?"
I looked at Echo in panic.
"I locked it from the inside," she whispered.
I grinned. "Thanks."
I pulled out my phone and typed something out to my bar manager, who was gay, so I knew he wouldn't be fucking Marina cause I didn't know who else on my staff was banging her.
Me: Marina is looking for me. Alex too. Tell them I left for the evening and you don't know where. Thanks.
My phone started to ring then. Thankfully, it was on mute. I powered it off and set it down.
"I've known Alex for a long time," I breathed.
"He the guy that was with her?"
I nodded. I drank some whiskey. "This is damn fine scotch."
"Yeah. Ardbeg is one of my favorites."
Miss Poopy Pants was full of surprises. "You like scotch?"
She grimaced. "With the risk of having you accuse me again of sleepin' with your daddy; it was Dallas who introduced me to scotch."
Fucking hell! I had said that to her. "I'm sorry about that, Echo. It was a shitty thing to say—insulting to you and my dad."
"Apology accepted."
She sounded sincere, which surprised me.
"Just like that?"
She shrugged. "I hate holding onto anger over things people say. It hurts me more than the person who said it—so why hang onto that feeling?"
That was pretty insightful and unexpected. "Is that just something you say, or do you really abide by it?"
I couldn't imagine someone so sanguine about being able to let go of the awful things said to them.
"Have to," she replied wanly, "if not, my life would be miserable. All my life, people have been sayin' terrible stuff about me to me. I had to learn to deflect early on, ya know?"
I'd never actually allowed myself to see Echo as a living, breathing person with emotions. God! I was an asshole. She'd had a crappy life that she'd single-handedly turned around by working hard. She was probably the only person in her family with a college degree. Hell, she had an advanced degree. And her so-called friends looked down upon her. Right then and there, I made a promise to myself that I would not be one of them again.
"You're pretty awesome, you know that, Echo?"
I could've knocked her down with a feather; that's the look she gave me. Of course she didn't believe me. Why should she?
"I mean it. I'm grateful you're here with me. I can't believe she was fucking Alex; that he was doin' her." I finished my scotch.
She put a hand on my mine. "Betrayal sucks."
"Yeah. It does," I scoffed as I remembered my conversation with Dad and added, "She was hoping that I'd pop the question by this Thanksgiving."
"What question?"
I raised my eyebrows. " The question, Echo."
She frowned and then nodded as realization sank in. "Right. The question. The one you reply with an I do ?"
"Yeah, that one." I walked to my desk and poured another finger of whiskey into my paper cup. I held the bottle up and jiggled it. Echo shook her head, tilting her paper cup to show me it was still three-quarters full of whiskey. Well, she hadn't just been betrayed by her friend and girlfriend.
I sat next to her with my drink. I liked it. She was comfortable, warm, and easy. She smelled like…freesia—fresh, citrusy, and lightly spicy, but with a delicate sweetness. I'd never noticed it before.
"I don’t know what to say when I go back out there." I pointed my chin to the closed door of my office.
"What do you want to say?"
"You're fired?"
"Well, that's got an unsavory reference," she smiled.
Her eyes were a honey brown, and beneath her thin metal-rimmed glasses, they were bright with laughter.
"Yeah. Well, I want to ask Alex to go fuck himself; find another job."
"Because he was screwing your girlfriend?"
"Because he was screwing a customer on premises."
"Like you haven't done that," she teased.
Is that what she thought about me? "You fucked anyone at your lab?"
She seemed to consider that and then nodded. "You're right. I would never do that, and this is your place of work. I'm sorry I insinuated you can't keep it in your pants and be professional at the nightclub."
There was a disarming honesty about her that was charming. I could see why Dad liked her so much. He liked how smart she was and how non-judgmental. If it were anyone else, especially someone who Marina had bullied as Echo had been—they'd have called my soon-to-be-ex a bitch and a whore. Not Echo.
"Well, I have gone out of my way to build that playboy reputation," I interjected in self-deprecation.
"You know what they say about you?"
"What?"
"That you're a smooth operator. Remi Drake can get any woman to drop her panties for him."
"Is that what they say?"
She laughed then and got comfortable on the couch. "Yeah."
"Have you ever wondered who they are?"
"In sociological terms, they include anyone from cultural critics, policymakers, and influential thinkers to religious leaders and celebrities," she answered seriously. "In more defined units, such as a tribe or a subculture, they are the leaders, the elders, and those who hold power and influence."
Yeah, so she was a bit of a geek, but for some reason, that appealed to me. She didn't just spout bullshit. She was a well-rounded person who made informed statements. After all the mindless blathering I heard from everyone around me, speaking to someone who was honest and also smart was a huge turn-on.
What the fuck? Was Echo Devlin turning me on? Since when the fuck did hell freeze over?