Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
CHASE
“You came.” I was smiling like a fool but I couldn’t stop. “Xan told me I was being too intense, and I admit, I was worried you’d think the travel and the dress and everything was too much, but you’re here. I’m glad.”
She’d showed up looking like a walking fantasy. The dress was nice in the picture, but on her, it became incredible. Just watching her standing there, one hip out and her hand on her waist, was enough to elicit stirrings of interest in my cock.
Caroline opened her mouth to say something, hopefully a declaration of romantic intent, but my stepbrother appeared behind her.
His slicked-back hair and shiny white tuxedo drew eyes to him, even in this crowd. Gerry was always peacocking for attention. He’d been like this ever since his mom Marion married my dad, his third and final marriage. The dramatic outfits, the parties, the harness-clad dates. It made sense: Dad’s attention was hard to come by unless you happened to be born a spitting image of him, then it was impossible to escape .
I was thirteen when Dad married Gerry’s mom, Marion, and fourteen when they divorced. Gerry was six years older than me and hadn’t initially been happy to get two kid stepbrothers, but he’d stayed in touch with Joe and I after the divorce, and always invited us to his outlandish parties.
“Of course she’s here!” Gerry clapped me on the shoulder. “Where you go, Kiwi goes.”
Caroline tensed.
She hadn’t said a word to Gerry in her lovely jumble of an accent. But he’d called her Kiwi, like the flightless bird that was only found in her homeland.
Liquid horror rushed over my body, like plunging face-first into the murky Seine.
“Gerard,” Caroline greeted.
And just like that, every hope I’d had for us evaporated.
She knew him.
What the fuck?
Caroline angled her body between Gerry and I, and began to speak quickly. Trying toexplain? Justify? It was hard to hear the words. Why’s she talking so quietly? Gerard already knew about her; possibly much more than I did. When I realized she was trying to avoid drawing the crowd’s attention, my heart twisted painfully.
I’d known this woman wasn’t Teddy—obviously. That had been apparent almost immediately. And I’d known she planned to extort Joe and I. Call me foolish, but I hadn’t begrudged her that. She’d seen an opportunity and taken it, but stopped when I had confronted her—or had she? I’d assumed so, because I felt like we had a serious connection and I thought she’d felt it too.
But she didn’t. She hadn’t. She’d been colluding with my stepbrother, and I’d been looking forward to introducing her to him, like the fool I was.
I stood completely still as Caroline babbled. She told me my stepbrother had noticed her at his club in New York because she looked like Teddy, and he had paid her to embarrass Joe at a public event.
A potent mix of fury and embarrassment ran through my veins. Each pulse of blood at my temples was mocking. Fool. Sucker. Dupe. Gerry knew I’d be ripe pickings for someone like Caroline. Someone warm and sexy, a breath of fresh air. And so, apparently, had she. The pair of them had mercilessly exploited my optimism when it came to love and intimacy. Gerry knew I was looking for someone to make a life with, he knew I didn’t want to be like Dad, bouncing from woman to woman.
I was the perfect mark.
As Caroline confessed her sorry tale, speaking a million words a minute, I met my stepbrother’s eyes over her head. Incredibly, he had the balls to look unfazed. Neither guilty nor smug. Just matter-of-fact.
“Come on, Chase,” Gerry cajoled. “Don’t you see the funny side? Caroline needed an acting gig and you needed a wounded bird.”
Caroline’s nostrils flared at his assessment of her. It wasn’t accurate, we both knew that. But it was kinder than she deserved.
“I’m just telling it like it is, Kiwi!” Gerard raised his hands to her, palms up. It was just like him to instigate something then pretend the fallout had nothing to do with him. “You were the one who agreed to seduce this walking lecture.”
It all made sense now.
That was her real scam—to get me so worked up that I forgot myself, then extort me. She could ruin my whole career as well as Joe’s. I’d swallowed her lies, hook, line and sinker.
“I’m sorry, Chase. I shouldn’t have done it.” Caroline placed her palms on my chest, like she could soothe me.
I stepped back and her hands fell to her sides.
“I didn’t know who Gerard was to you. I just had to make it look like Joe was still an irresponsible playboy and you were involved with your brother’s ex, and he’d pay me for my effort. That was it. Then just a bit of flirting, no big deal. ”
I grunted, beyond words.
Caroline was speaking in a hushed voice, trying to avoid pulling the crowd’s attention, but Gerry made no such effort.
“Look at it this way, Chase,” he said loudly. “If you weren’t such a pious motherfucker, you wouldn’t have been as susceptible to a bit of spicy corruption. It was a light prank. A little mess between family. Does Joe even need his inheritance? He has a shitload. You have a shitload. What about me?”
I looked at him in disbelief. “Dad included you in his will.”
He scoffed. “After tax, that was basically nothing. I should have gotten more. Most of it went to you two fucks, despite having no clue how to run a business. If I had majority shares in the Sanford Group, we’d be raking it in. You vote against everything that would make big profit. And I could’ve globally franchised the Dragonfly by now.” The look in his eyes had gotten wild. “Your dad was a selfish asshole. Austin put me through hell. He promised us everything, treated me like a son, but then two years later he forgot I existed. Just because you share his DNA and look a tiny bit like him, you got everything, even though you can’t say boo to a fucking goose. Especially not if more than thirty of their goose friends are looking at you.”
It happened so fast I didn’t register it until Gerry was cupping his reddened cheek, looking stunned. Caroline had whirled around and slapped my stepbrother across the face.
Now people were definitely looking at us.
“Chase,” Caroline pleaded, “can we?—”
She broke off and whipped around to see the stares we were drawing, and instead grabbed my lapel and pulled me into a room off the main space. I went because I didn’t know what else to do. I certainly didn’t have anything else to say to Gerry, the greedy, cowardly little fuck.
Caroline stood in the hazy lamplight of the small receiving room, her chest heaving as if she’d run a marathon. It must have been tiring work, taking a hammer to my heart.
“Chase, please listen to me. Yes, Gerard hired me to embarrass Joe and flirt with you at Lueur. I’m sorry. But the rest of it—on the bar, in the bathroom—was because I wanted to. You have to believe me.”
I laughed. That was the last thing I had to do.
“ Say something,” she pushed. “Please.”
“You were hired to seduce me, Caroline. I think that says it all.”
“No,” she retorted tersely. “It doesn’t. I was hired to steal from you and flirt with you, then I happened to seduce you. That’s an important distinction. Like I said, I had a change of heart?—”
“Was it the same with Joe?” I interrupted. “Did my brother make you come too?”
Her jaw dropped. “I barely spoke to Joe! You were there both times!”
I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. “No offense Caroline, but?—”
“ Offense ,” she said firmly. “I shouldn’t have let things between us go so far without telling you about Gerard. I got swept up, I’m sorry. But you don’t get to call me names.”
She thought I was going to call her a whore. Maybe I had been. Not in so many words but the gist. The sexual chemistry between us had been explosive. Liberating. And our relationship—although now I realized I couldn’t even call it that—had profoundly affected me. It cut deeply that it didn’t mean anywhere near the same to her.
She seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Chase, I feel like you’re not focusing on the important parts here. Yes, I was hired to make Joe’s life chaotic, but I did it honestly, notwithstanding the one main lie. I never once tried to—” She stopped and sighed. “I’m a flirt. I won’t apologize for that. But everything that’s happened between us is real. Everything I said, I meant. Everything with us, I really meant.”
“How would I know that?” I snapped, finally losing my temper. I didn’t raise my voice, but I was sharp. Her spine straightened at my tone. “You’re a performer, Floss. Making men lose their minds for you is what you do.”
Her eyes flashed. “That’s not what I do. Burlesque isn’t for men, they just think it is. They think everything is for them.” She adopted a frat-boy voice. “Dude, if a showgirl flashes a tit and there’s no guy to see, does she even have tits?”
“I’m not angry that I was seduced by you, Caroline. Of course I was. You’re funny and beautiful and—” I made myself stop. “I’m mad that you manipulated me, were conspiring with Gerry, and didn’t tell me any of this earlier even though I gave you every chance to. I went to massive fucking lengths to show you could trust me.” I recapped on my fingers. “I didn’t pressure you, I didn’t turn you in, I didn’t blackmail you.”
Her eyes blazed. “Do you want a medal? A trophy to display? I’m not a reward for good boys, Chase, I’m a person. You knew I wasn’t Teddy. And you never asked me why I needed the money. You asked a hundred questions but never that. Because needing money for something, needing , not wanting, is beyond your comprehension. And why would you ask? Everything has always appeared for you your entire life. You expect things to materialize in your outstretched hands!”
I rubbed my eyes. I was too tired for this. Too hurt. I needed to go and lick my wounds and process in peace.
My father’s greatest frustration with me—there was a long list, but this was always near the top—was that I was too much of a pussy (his word). I’d spent a lot of time writing rebuttals to my father’s opinions, retorts I’d never voice, all confided to my keyboard late at night. That was how my blog was born. My bottom line was if my paternal figure thought or did something, a good man would do the opposite.
As a teenager, I had to sit in Dad’s study, surrounded by pictures of him with his famous friends, as he lectured me about how to carry myself with authority, like him, how to sell, like him, and how to hold the focus of a room, like him. I didn’t want any of those things, but that didn’t matter. His sayings were etched in my brain, none of them helpful. Like, “When it comes to women, always leave them wanting more.” And, “Always check the condom.” He would have thought it was pitiable for me to be led by the balls like this. He would have thought Caroline was a scheming W-word.
It was like chewing glass to realize that I was acting like him right now.
And that was how I knew I’d messed up. That was always how I knew.
Caroline was right. It hadn’t occurred to me that someone could be motivated by something other than greed. That was all the Gerrys and the Sanfords and the Durbois and the Fischers of the world knew. Rampant, selfish greed. I’d never met anyone who really needed anything.
If the default of my moral compass was to do the opposite of what Dad did, did I even have a moral compass? Or was I just negative space?
Growing up in the shadow of a huge personality, forging myself as his opposite had felt like the safest option. But now I was starting to feel like my values, my way of being, were just reactive constructs—like I wasn’t even a fucking person. I was just a series of knee-jerk reactions, cultivated by a shitty parent.
“I am sorry, Chase,” Caroline said quietly. “Things got out of hand.”
She looked so small standing beside the large window. She was small—her height was minimal but her confidence always made her seem bigger. I thought about her luncheon sandwiches, and what she’d said about wanting to create a scholarship for burlesque artists.
She was here in this excessive house, at this lavish party, because I’d invited her. I’d been worried she wouldn’t like the dress, or wouldn’t be comfortable enough on her flight. But I’d been missing the obvious. How much did burlesque artists make? Probably not much. One hundred thousand a year? Performers without regular jobs would make less. And was Woodville an affluent area? I had no idea. I’d assumed her dad was still working because he wanted to.
Caroline was right. I’d been thinking about our similarities, about our sexual compatibility and how she made me feel. I hadn’t been thinking about our differences.
Too late, I asked the question I should have asked first.
“What did you need money for?”
“My dad was behind on rent for the café. Mike and I had to step up.”
Too late, I wish my words had stayed jammed in the inside of my mouth. Because the next ones that came out were all wrong.
“You screwed me for a sandwich shop?”
Her mouth fell open.
I was surprised by her answer, that’s all. But what I meant came out wrong. I loosened my tie and steeled myself to explain about my father, but Caroline spun on her heel.
“Caroline, wait.” But I was too slow, too hesitant.
Too haunted by a dead man.
CAROLINE
How could I think that a man who wanted for nothing would want me?
“Caroline!”
I ran as fast as I could in a tight dress—which wasn’t really running at all, more trotting—weaving through bodies in the hallway.
“Caroline, wait!”
I skidded out the doors and into the snowy parking lot, the cold hitting me before snowflakes and good sense. This was the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t just run out into the Canadian wilderness. I didn’t know if this was a bear area, but it seemed prudent to treat all of Canada as a bear area.
“Caroline, please come back inside,” Chase called.
Fishing my phone out of my bra, I tried to find a rideshare. Maybe I could find a cheap hotel, or sleep on the airport floor, or freeze to death in the parking lot. All were better options than going back inside.
When my cold fingers finally got the app open, there was no service.
I stuffed it back in my bra and stared into the dark night, weighing my options. Clouds of my breath danced in front of my face, carbon dioxide doing the bump and grind with Jack Frost’s pheromones.
Eventually I decided not to freeze to death and become a bear’s lollipop.
“Thank fuck,” Chase said when I walked back through the door he held for me. “Caroline, I’m sorry.”
And he was. I knew he was. But just because someone believed their own apology, it didn’t mean they understood their cruelty. And it definitely didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen again. My brother, for example, was a master of apologizing for his assholery, but it never slowed him down the next time. Chase was upset, and he had a right to be, but those were some honest words that had fallen out of his mouth.
“Go back to your stepbrother’s party. I’m going to wait upstairs. Don’t follow me.”
I left him standing in the foyer.
Unfortunately, the place was so huge I couldn’t remember where my room was. I tried three doors until one opened. Like I was a homing pigeon trained for sequins and tit tape, the room I entered was a suite the party entertainers were using as a dressing room.
There were costumes sprawled out on the bed and people lounging on sofas with towels wrapped around their bodies and hair. A few people were snacking, others were drinking champagne with shining clean faces, like they’d just done a day at the spa. Someone was shouting for hair spray.
“Look, it’s Little Miss Champagne!” Thor waved. “Come to spill something else?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated miserably.
A six-foot deity with cheekbones that could cut glass glared at him. “Don’t listen to Thor, he dropped a tray all by himself an hour ago. He’s just trying to alpha you.”
This was the kind of backstage banter I knew. Everyone hated baby performers who stepped on toes and took their tips and guests who messed up their shit. But I was not a baby burly.
Or a guest.
“ ’Scuse!” a person in a pink silk pajama set careened past me into the room, carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “If Elena sent you to get me,” they called over their shoulder, “tell her my shift is over! I’m a free woman!”
An idea was occurring. A ballsy, maybe brilliant, definitely unorthodox idea.
“I’m Summer Holliday,” I told the drag queen with the gorgeous cheekbones who was dressed as a mirror image of Cher. Maybe it was the artist, maybe it was Cher, but she had in-charge vibes. “I’m a burlesque artist. But I pissed off Gerard—you know, the guy who runs the Dragonfly clubs? And now I’m worried he’s going to blacklist me. I need to show him why he’s wrong.”
Cher studied me. Any performer who knew their worth and asked for it, or who established clear boundaries with club financiers, had, at some point, been unfairly blacklisted by a dickhead club owner. Cher knew what that was like. We all did.
“Come in,” Cher said.
The performers in the room were busy and didn’t have time to pause their lives for a stray, but I earned my spot at their dressing-room mirror by putting on Jessica’s lashes (she was in the pink pj’s) and fixing Cher’s busted zip. My white lingerie was ruined, but I had a black set in my bag back in the room, and I grabbed that. Jessica loaned me a dress, and I shucked the champagne-stained gift from Chase.
Slipping Jessica’s gold gown over my head, I felt confident again, more in my element. As I painted, Caroline-the-human’s stress and hurt melted away, and Caroline-the-performer took over.
People thought all stage performers built alter egos, like Sasha Fierce or Ziggy Stardust. It was kind of true. My friend in Edinburgh was Amy when she took her kids to soccer, and Sugar Tits when she was onstage with dildos strapped down her spine like a phallic stegosaurus.
For me, it was a shades-of-gray thing. Summer Holliday was the most confident, most outrageous version of me, but she was still a character. And sometimes a shield.
Chase had seen me as Teddy, falling on tables, and he’d seen me as Caroline, breaking champagne glasses. But he’d never seen me as Summer, doing what I excelled at. Not properly anyway. The chess game had been a half-hearted attempt under subpar circumstances. Chase had no idea what this scam had cost me. Not to mention he was under the wrongheaded impression I’d worked my professional seduction skills on him back in New York.
If Chase thought that I was performing when I seduced him?
He had no idea.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.