Chapter 16
“W hat are we doing here again?” I shout at Oliver over the pounding house music that’s been filling my ears for the last hour.
“Watching our women dance,” he replies, his eyes fixed on Amelia as she, Raven, Rina, Grace, and Elle lose their minds to the music on the dance floor. Even Stella and Layla are here tonight, dancing like no one is watching.
“And we’re not worried about the strobe lights with Grace?” I ask, just making sure since a very pregnant Grace who has epilepsy and is sensitive to strobe lights is in the thick of it out there.
“Nah,” Carter tells me. “She’s good. It’s why we come here instead of going to a real club.”
“That and the drinks are good.” Landon holds up his glass of vodka with lime.
“Are we going to order food?” I complain. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah,” Brecken agrees. “Food. Let’s get some of that.”
He flags down a waitress and asks her for some menus.
“Did you set a date yet?” Carter asks Oliver.
“June, I think, since Luca and Raven leave for Nicaragua after the Fourth of July. Amelia wants to get married in the vineyard house.”
Luca is going to do a medical mission down in Nicaragua.
A cause that became very near and dear to his heart after he suffered a trauma and came face-to-face with just how far-reaching medical inequities are.
He’s taking Raven with him because the two of them can’t be separated for more than five minutes without him throwing a hissy fit.
“And what about a best man?” I toss out.
“Grace.”
I swivel in his direction, taking a sip of my bourbon as I do. “Grace?”
He laughs. “Yes, asshole. Grace. She’s been my best friend since we were infants. Who else would stand up next to me?”
“Um, how about any of us?”
Oliver shakes his head at Luca. “You’ll be groomsmen, but Grace is my person. We tell each other everything.”
“Yeah, but she won’t let you deliver my kid,” Carter counters.
“She won’t let you either and you’re the OB-GYN.”
“I’m the father. I can’t deliver my own kid.”
“I’m confused,” I say, changing the subject off Grace’s impending delivery of my nephew. “If you’re all here to dance with your women, why are you sitting here instead?”
Luca laughs. “Because we’re babysitting you.”
I flip him off.
“Because watching is half the fun of being forced to come here,” Brecken states, licking at his bottom lip.
“After watching Rina dance like that all night, I’m going to fuck her brains out later.
It’s a fun form of foreplay.” All of us stare at him as if we’re about to throw up all over his expensive pants.
He tosses his hand up in the air. “Sorry. My bad. Seriously. Sorry. Sometimes I don’t think about you guys as Rina’s brothers. ”
“What he said. Only with Elle,” Landon says. “And if you ever talk like that about Rina again, you’ll find your head dunked in the toilet.”
“Yeah. Again, my bad. But you can’t deny the watching part.”
“You’re serious?” I question.
“I read it in one of the romance books Rina made me read,” Luca admits. “Seemed hot in that and now that I’m living it, I absolutely agree.”
My head spins in his direction. “You’re still reading those?”
He cracks up. “Dude, they’re like a bible. Rina was one hundred percent right about that. You have no idea all that I’m learning.”
“Same,” Oliver chimes in. “All kinds of things. And when there is a romantic scene, I read it to Amelia, and she gets all swoony and then the sex is even hotter. Forget oysters, romance books are the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
“Yes!” Carter shoots out. “That last one we read was insanely hot. Grace loved the roommate, surprise pregnancy trope.”
I shake my head, slightly at a loss for words until something occurs to me.
“Wait. Are you all reading them together?” All my brothers, including Brecken, turn to me at once.
“Shit. You are. You’re in a romance reading book club with each other.
Do you read this with your women or just with each other? ”
“Both,” they all say in unison, and wow, that’s some shit right there.
“Whenever you decide to settle down, you have to try it. It’s no joke.”
I snort out a laugh. “Well, Oli, I think you know that’s not happening anytime soon if I can help it.
Millie Van Der Heusen can go off and marry someone else.
She can stop texting me relentlessly for that matter too.
I’m not putting a ring on it.” Ever since that lunch, she’s been texting and occasionally calling me.
Not so subtly hinting at the prospect of the two of us getting together.
She even went so far as to say, “when we’re married,” in one of the texts.
I’ve been pushing it down and trying to be as polite as possible while blowing her off, but she’s not getting the message.
Soon, I’ll have to be straight up blunt.
“So you say now, but a wedding in your future I see.”
“Thanks, Yoda,” I smart at Luca.
“Not even with your sexy, curvy assistant or does she hate your guts now that you terrified her so badly she passed out in a public building?”
I narrow my eyes at Landon. “How do you know about what happened yesterday?” But duh, dumb fucking question. “Jesus, Luca. Is there anything you don’t gab about to the entire fucking world? It’s called patient confidentiality, man.”
He smirks smugly, his expression wholly unrepentant as he tosses his ankle up on his opposite knee, his hands going behind his neck.
“She wasn’t my patient. She wouldn’t even let me check her, remember?
No way I was keeping that to myself. Definitely not about that.
You looked like you were about to piss your pants until Miss Feisty Pants with the fuck-me heels came back.
I like her. Question, does she always dress like that for work?
No wonder you have it so bad for her. I mean, damn . Those curves are no joke.”
And once again, I flip him off. Because sometimes that’s all you can do with Luca. “Talk about her curves again and I’ll kill you.”
Now they’re all giving me Cheshire grins. Great. Just tipped my hand with that one.
“This is the same woman you had sleep over at your place last weekend, right?” Brecken questions, finishing off his drink and setting his empty glass on the table, searching high and low for the waitress who never returned to take our order.
Now I remember why I hate this place. Shitty fucking service.
“Yes. Same woman. But nothing is happening there.” Because she thinks the fact that I’m attracted to her is a joke.
And she’s my assistant. And I no longer see women and certainly never get involved with them and Bianca Barlow is a woman you get involved with. She screams attached and relationships.
Oh, and then there’s the fact that my parents still believe an arranged marriage is the way to go and they think Millie is the woman to have it with. Still, I’ll admit, Bianca’s the first woman to come along who I’m tempted to bend the rules for. Who might actually be different.
“But you want something to happen there.” It’s a statement, not a question and I think about what Oliver is saying.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But it won’t and it would be insanely stupid to consider it.”
“Why? Because you’ve sworn off love because you’re a pussy who’s afraid of it or because you might actually like her and are afraid of what that might mean?”
“I’m not afraid of love. It’s not that simple for me and you know it.
You know what I’ve been through.” Some of it.
They know some of it. Not all of it. “All you bastards have been miserable at least once because of love. Not to mention, how on earth can I possibly trust anyone that their affection is real?”
“We were miserable, but look where we are now,” Landon says simply, and since he was the most miserable of all of us after losing his wife to a horrible car accident when Stella was only a toddler, he’s the one I listen to the most with this.
“I wouldn’t change how I loved Reese because I hurt for so long after I lost her.
Her love was worth the pain. Having Stella was worth the pain. ”
“Fine. You’re an exception. You had a beautiful wife and have a beautiful daughter and deserve all the happiness with Elle now.
But I’ve had women do unspeakable things for my name and semen.
It’s worse now that I’m running the foundation.
It’s just easier this way for me. Look around.
” I pan my hand around the room. “Other than your women, how many women are staring at me for the wrong reasons?”
“All of them,” they reply.
“See. No thanks.”
“And you think that’s all Bianca would want with you? Your name and your money and your semen?”
No. That’s the first word that hits my mind.
No. Whereas I questioned her motives and the coincidence of it all when she was first hired, in the two weeks she’s been at the foundation I’ve come to realize she’s an honest, genuine person.
She could have told the world she slept at my place that night, but she didn’t.
She kept that secret when others wouldn’t have.
And I like that so much about her.
“Maybe you should give her a try,” Brecken says when I don’t respond. “See if she fits. Better than stuffy-ass Millie, who actually is after your name and semen.”
I shake my head at him. “I’m done with this conversation. I’m going to dance with your women. If our waitress ever comes back, order me a burger and another bourbon.”
Peeling myself off the wood bench seat, I make my way through the room to the cluster of Fritz and soon-to-be Fritz women in the center, all the while ignoring all the women saying hi and asking if I’m Kaplan Fritz and if I want to dance with them or if I want to buy them a drink.
“Ladies,” I say as I drop my hands on Rina’s hips, giving my baby sister a kiss on the temple. “You all look lovely out here dancing. Your men are having a romance-book-level field day.”