Exclusive Chapter
Maeve
There are few things in life worse than waiting, but I’ll tell you one of them. Waiting with Pierce St. James. The man is absolutely maddening.
Take right now, for instance. I’m pacing, but he’s on the couch in his living room, the one facing the large window with the panoramic view.
The lights of the city are nearly hidden by the storm clouds rolling in.
You might see him and think there’s nothing particularly obnoxious about the way he’s sitting there, but you’d be missing all the little details.
He has an ankle propped on his knee and an arm draped across the back of the sleek modern sofa, settled in as though he’s relaxed, when I think it’s safe to say “relaxed” is not an appropriate adjective to describe either of us right now. Which makes his posture a lie.
Then there’s his face. It’s not exactly a bad face, not what you’d call ugly. Sharp cheekbones and jawline, pouty mouth, symmetrical. It’s passable, okay?
Fine, it’s definitely in the top 1 percent of attractive faces in the country. Or it would be if not for those eyes. Dark brown, nearly black, and spaced the proper distance from his nose, it’s not the eyes themselves that are the problem. It’s what he does with them.
I spin on my heel in front of the window, and sure enough, he’s watching me. Those stupid eyes travel the length of me—and listen, I know I look good tonight, but the way they linger over every inch of my body makes my muscles tighten.
Smoothing my hands over my long-sleeve dark floral-print minidress, I continue stalking the living room, ignoring him. A tiny huff comes from the sofa, like he’s scoffing at me, and it takes every single ounce of willpower I have not to march over and smack that smirk right off his face.
The man is a menace, a godforsaken outright smudge on humanity. The only thing more shocking than the fact that I am stuck in the same room with him—alone—is the fact that we were friends up until this past year.
I know. You’re wondering how I could’ve possibly been friends with a guy like him.
Trust me, it has been the cause of countless sleepless nights.
It bothers me that I didn’t notice it before, not because I have regrets from the past twelve years, but because I’m afraid it means my skill at reading people is slipping.
If Pierce and I could have been friends for nearly half my life and I didn’t recognize the signs, what other things am I missing? The thought is terrifying.
Movement from the other side of the room snags in the corner of my eye, and I turn on instinct.
Pierce has gotten up and is removing his jacket.
The man practically lives in custom suits—not something I typically have a problem with, but lately, everything about him makes my blood boil. Doesn’t he own a pair of slacks?
Muscles ripple under his shirt as he tosses the jacket over the back of the couch. My mouth goes dry before I realize what I’m doing. I jerk my eyes back where they belong—the far end of the room—and resume my pacing.
I don’t need to look to feel that infuriating smirk being cast in my direction.
When I reach the end of the room and turn around, I glance at the clock above the mantel. Pierce and I have been out here for nearly forty minutes. If the rest of them don’t invite us into the game room soon, I’m going to snap. Why the hell is it taking this long to put together a stupid challenge?
“If they are in there playing poker,” I mutter under my breath, “so help me god.”
Pierce lifts his chin, and I realize I’ve spoken out loud. Fuck. I had no intention of being the first to cut through the silence filling this room like smoke. As if the man needs another reason to gloat.
“What will you do if they are?” he says, now that I’ve broken the silent treatment and nonverbally declared him the winner in our little standoff. He’s perched on the arm of the sofa, just begging to be knocked over.
I briefly consider ignoring him, but do you know how hard it is to go forty minutes without speaking? God, I’ve been getting lightheaded with the backlog. “None of your goddamn business,” I snap.
His eyebrows do this subtle upward flick, as though I’ve amused him, and you know what? He can go fuck himself.
“Actually,” he says, standing and immediately shifting the energy in the room, “since this is my flat, I have a vested interest in knowing whether you plan to torch it to the ground to spite our friends.”
I roll my eyes to let him know he doesn’t ruffle me, even though my palms have become as clammy as a dead body’s. “Don’t be an imbecile.”
This time his brows move up an entire inch. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Me? The imbecile?” He takes a step toward me, and I instinctively take a matching one backward. “I’m not the one with a vintage hot-air balloon in my basement.”
Tension radiates from my jaw to my head.
I force a single deep breath in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way my yoga teacher is always blathering on about.
It doesn’t help, which confirms my suspicions that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
“I wouldn’t have that stupid balloon if you hadn’t brought in that bloody shell bidder. ”
Once again, the corner of Pierce’s mouth lifts into that ridiculous smirk that I swear will get him killed one of these days. My hands twitch with desire to do the honors.
“And yet, we agreed on the shell bidder,” he says.
“For the thousandth time, we did not!” I say, my voice rising several decibels higher than I intended. I bring it back down to a normal range. “The plan all along was for me to drive up the bidding.”
He shakes his head as though I’m a clueless child and he’s humoring me. “Have you considered that you might be dealing with early onset dementia?”
My nostrils flare as I intensify the glare I have leveled at him. “I do not have dementia.”
Forehead creasing with mock concern, he tsks and shakes his head. “And yet you own a hot-air balloon.” Leaning in closer, he lowers his voice, and I catch a whiff of his cologne—sharp, smooth, a little spicy. “One you paid an obscene amount of money for.”
“Because your bidder wouldn’t back down!” I say.
Several months ago, we attended a charity auction with the express purpose of exacting revenge on Deirdre Cox.
The bitch scammed both of our companies and dragged the name of our joint project, HavenNet, through the mud while pocketing hefty consulting and licensing fees from the people we were trying to help.
She is scum of the earth, and I’d like nothing more than to etch my name on her back with the heel of my favorite pair of Louboutins.
You could argue that she’s brilliant to have been able to pull off something like that, but I would like to point out that she didn’t immediately flee the country after her little scheme.
If she were truly smart, she would have taken her millions of stolen money and retreated to a tiny desert island somewhere, where the rest of the world never has to look at her mousy face again.
Instead, she decided to stick around to try to win some old, moldy hot-air balloon. The same one I ended up with, thanks to the bastard standing in front of me.
“Have you taken your maiden voyage yet?” Pierce asks, snapping me out of my fantasy of hunting Deirdre down and forcing bits of torn fabric from her precious balloon down her throat.
“Actually,” I say, through a smile that feels more like a grimace, “I thought I’d save those honors for you.”
His eyes narrow. “How thoughtful. But I’d prefer not to plummet to my death.”
“How would you prefer to die?” I inject extra sugar into my voice. “I’m sure I could arrange something.”
A flicker of amusement crosses his face before vanishing without a trace. “You couldn’t kill me.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Is that a challenge?”
“Sure.” He shrugs, hands still in his pockets. Those gray dress pants hang from his hips in a way I’m sure some people would describe as sexy, a subset of society of which I am not a member. “Hit me with your best shot.”
“Gross,” I say. “You did not just quote Britney Spears at me.” Running my hands along the spearpoint collar of my dress, I double-check that it’s still lying exactly as it should. I drag the black string tie through my fingers, then tighten the bow ever so slightly. It never hurts to look perfect.
Pierce is still studying me with an unflinching gaze, his eyes resting just below my chin. A tiny quirk of his lips has me reaching back to my collar, even though I just checked it.
“What would you prefer?” His voice has lowered and now sounds almost . . . sultry.
I repress a shudder. “I’d prefer you keep your mouth shut. Things were better before you spoke.”
“Ah,” he says, then looks down at the floor in a show of faux humility.
I brace myself for the next words from his mouth.
“So then you’d prefer I not tell you that we’ve made some tweaks to the budget?”
My head rears back a fraction of an inch. “You did what?”
He shrugs, nonchalant, then pulls his hands from his pockets and begins rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt, still in pristine condition despite being worn all day. Or maybe he comes home from work every evening and changes into a new suit. How would I know?
“You said you prefer my silence.”
I grind my molars together and force my eyes to stay on his face, not on the way his fingers are dexterously folding his sleeves into perfect photoshoot-ready rolls. “Tell me what you did.”
He tugs his mouth to the side and sucks air between his teeth like he’s wincing, the bastard. “I wish I could, but—”
I close the distance between us, my heels clicking on the hardwood floor, the sound like gunshots. “This is a joint project.”
“And yet you seem to have forgotten the meaning of teamwork.” He finishes with his shirt and leans down until our noses are only inches apart.
I steel myself to keep from backing away. I cannot lose face now, no matter how badly I want to put distance between us. “We do not have the funding to go any higher—”
“Who said anything about going higher?”
“The only thing you’ve managed to do so far is increase our costs.”
His brows arch upward. “Is that right? What about providing the tech? The team? The entire project is Luminara’s—”
“But you don’t have the contacts to get it into the countries that need it,” I cut in. “Hence, the Wilson Foundation owns you.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches, and I mentally pat myself on the back for causing him to break, even if it was just for a millisecond. “No one owns me.”
I bite back a smile and cross my arms over my chest. Our verbal firing is finally shifting in my favor. “Really? Wasn’t that Cinderella you were on the phone with earlier?”
“Her name is Amara.”
“I don’t care what her name is. She’s nothing but a carbon copy of the last twenty-five women you’ve dated.”
He rolls his eyes and takes a step backward. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Just that I’ve never seen you take a phone call from your girlfriend with other people around.”
“It was an emergency.” His eyes flash a warning, which I proceed to ignore.
I inspect my fresh and immaculate manicure—tiny red roses hand-painted on a bed of onyx. “I’m just saying it appears both the Foundation and Amanda have your balls in their pockets.”
He moves so quickly I nearly miss it. One second he’s standing a foot away, glaring at me.
The next he’s so close there’s nothing but a hairsbreadth between our bodies, close enough that I can feel the heat of him through my clothes.
His face is bent so near to mine that were I to raise my chin a fraction of an inch, my lips would brush against his. Disgusting.
“You’re mistaken if you think for one second I will be owned by anyone or anything,” he says in a whisper that feels as loaded as a gun to the temple.
I swallow, and his eyes flick down to my throat. He doesn’t even bother to correct me about his girlfriend’s name.
“Are we clear?” he asks.
A loud clap of thunder punctuates his words and reverberates through the entire flat. I jump, the involuntary movement forcing our bodies to brush against each other, and time stands still.
I’ve touched Pierce before. Obviously I have. We’ve been in the same friend group since we were fourteen. We even kissed during one particularly lame birthday party, but that was so many centuries ago, I’m not even sure he remembers it. I’ve certainly done my best to scrub it from my memory.
This, though. This is different. Accidental, for one thing. Not a hug and peck on the cheek goodbye. Not fingers brushing as he hands me a drink. Not sitting on his lap when there isn’t enough room in the car for everyone to have a seat.
I am not a believer in sparks. I’m a grown woman with a career and the ability to make stupid creatures shrink back when they see me coming, for god’s sake.
So I’m not saying there are sparks as my chest makes contact with his, but I’m also not saying there isn’t something.
Because there is definitely something. It’s enough of a something that I find my eyes focused on his mouth as I move away.
It’s the slowest motion in the world, as though I’m waist-deep in a vat of peanut butter.
He has a nice mouth, I’ll say that much.
Don’t care much for what comes out of it most times, but the shape of it is just right.
Big pillowy lips, not thin like some guys’.
There’s a dip in the center of the upper one, a neat little cupid’s bow.
His chin is shaded by a light amount of stubble that only seems to accentuate the lines of his face.
I bet he’s a good kisser.
I blink in surprise. My mouth falls open of its own accord, because where the hell did that thought come from? His eyes track the motion, and now we’re both staring at each other’s lips.
Neither of us moves; neither of us says anything. We’re stuck in this trance that I don’t know how we got into in the first place. There is so much electricity coursing in this little space that I’m suddenly scared to touch a metal surface.
“Maeve—” he says in a raspy voice that sounds as though he’s been screaming all night, but before he can finish his thought, the door of the game room opens.
“We’re ready,” Lux calls.
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