Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30
She wore a plunging red dress that effortlessly showed off her killer assets. Her perfectly-tossed black hair hung down her back. Her beauty literally took my breath away.
I didn’t look away from her as I addressed Roo. “Leave us.”
“But,” Roo protested.
My eyes narrowed on Felicia. “Now.”
He drifted away from me to admonish the guys who were about the wheel the cake out. Felicia gave me a cold smile as I walked towards her. How exactly should I handle this?
I graced her with a fake smile. “Hello, Felicia.”
“You’re still engaged.”
“Last time I checked. What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk.”
“To Porter? He’s right outside.”
“I came to talk to you.”
“Okay.” I lifted my hand up. “So talk.”
“I told you to end your engagement with Porter.”
This chick had a lot of nerve. Yes, my engagement was a charade, but she didn’t know that. Did she ?
“This is definitely a conversation you should be having with Porter, not me.”
She stepped right up into my face. “He’s supposed to be with me.”
The day we went to pick up his boxes, she had been so horrible to Porter. It’d pissed me off then, and it pissed me off now. “If he wanted to be with you, he’d be with you.”
Her smile widened. “He’s too loyal. He doesn’t want to abandon you.”
I rose to the bait. “You talked to him?”
“I talk to him all the time.”
Jealous burned my gut. I swallowed, at a loss for words. “If Porter wants this engagement to end, he’d end it.”
Her eyes narrowed, “He’s trapped. You’ve trapped him. He doesn’t feel like he can leave you right now.”
Heat washed over me. She could easily be speaking the truth. The past week, Porter had been all about keeping me safe. Any kind of sexual tension between us had all but evaporated. I could easily imagine him telling her how he felt trapped by me. Trapped by duty. Trapped by the lies I had spun around him.
He’d told me he wasn’t a player. Claimed he was a one-woman kind of guy, but he had given me no reassurances that I was the woman of his affections. I also knew Porter was such a stand-up guy that he’d never willingly abandon me in my current predicament.
The thought made me nauseous. I needed to get his side of the story, but not here. Not with the media and all my parents’ closest friends standing by.
I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. “I’m at my engagement party. Leave the premises, or I will call security.” I turned my back on her.
Ahead of me, two chefs opened the swinging doors while another one slowly wheeled the giant, tiered cake toward the party. Something soft hit me in the back of the head .
I blinked in disbelief at the soft cream puff lying on the floor. “Did you throw a pastry at me?”
She grabbed another one off the tray and fired it towards me, this time hitting me square in the chest.
I didn’t think. I grabbed a mini lemon custard pie off the tray beside me and threw it at her. I hit her on the shoulder, and lemon custard splashed down her dress with a satisfying thump.
She inspected her stained dress and glared at me. With determination, she fired a strawberry tart at me, which I deflected with my forearm. Strawberry sauce ran down my arm like blood.
I picked up a cannoli, and with the precision of a baseball pitcher, hit her on the top of her forehead. Juicy cream splattered across her face, smearing in her hair.
An indignant noise escaped her. She tossed a peach tart. It skimmed my shoulder, spraying peach compote up my neck. Anger blinded me. I picked up two puffy, cream-filled pastries and stepped forward, dragging both down the front of her dress.
Disbelief coated her eyes. Venom flashing across her delicate features. “You bitch.”
I scoffed. “I’m the bitch? I know exactly how you abandoned Porter.”
She reached out two hands and shoved me. “I told you why I did that. I needed him to know how he felt about us.”
I shoved her back. “If he wanted to be with you, he’d be with you.”
Rage filled her eyes, and she barreled towards me, her entire weight pushing me backwards. For someone so tiny, she had a surprising amount of strength. She caught me off balance and propelled me backwards. To prevent hitting the ground, I stepped back, again and again, unable to catch my balance.
“Look out,” someone said.
My ass hit something, giving me enough stability to grab her shoulders and twist. I flipped her around, and now she was the one flying back, not me. She held onto my shoulders with both hands, pulling me down with her.
In slow motion, we landed on the cake. Felicia was almost lying flat on top of it. Cake and icing spattered out on either side of her. I half fell on top of her, pushing her further down onto the cake.
I reached above her shoulder, trying to find something, anything, to give me enough support to lift myself off her. Instead, my arm sunk up to my elbow in soft cake.
“Get off me you bitch,” she cried. Her hand smeared down my face, dragging the sweet cake and icing across my cheek and mouth.
Using every abdominal muscle I had, I managed to lift myself off her and stand.
“Beth,” Mom cried out.
I froze and lifted my eyes.
We were in the middle of the party.
A hundred guests stood in a circle, looking at us with equal measures of shock and disbelief. Flashes of light blinded my eyes as photographers took multiple pictures of us.
Felicia rolled on her side, across the cake, and managed to stand up herself. Her long, dark hair was now white with frosting. I checked my own dress. Chunks of cake and icing fell in heavy plops at my feet.
Mom stood there with her hands over her mouth. Roo sat on a chair, his head between his legs, his breathing easily mistakable for hyperventilation. The silence deafened as a hundred pairs of eyes watched us.
I cleared my throat. “I apologize for ruining the cake. I know that all of you were looking forward to it.”
Felicia pointed at me. “This woman is a man-stealer. Porter is my boyfriend, and she did everything in her power to break us up.”
Everyone in the room gasped.
“Ex-boyfriend,” I confirmed, my chest heaving with so much adrenaline, yet I still couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs .
“I love him.” She spoke to the entire room. “And she stole him from me.”
More gasps came from everyone around the room. Two security guards came rushing into the room. They evaluated Felicia and me, not knowing who they needed to apprehend.
“Don’t look at me,” I warned them.
The two men slowly approached Felicia, flanking her on either side. “Miss, we’re going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”
“Porter!” She twisted around, looking wildly at the crowd. “Baby, come on. You know you love me. The only reason you’re marrying her is for the money.”
The crowd started to whisper and talk amongst themselves. I stood there and watched as they ushered Felicia out, too afraid to look at the expressions of everyone around me. Now I was the only cake-coated person in the room.
I had one option.
I hauled my purse up over my shoulder, and with more dignity than the queen herself, I walked through the parting crowd toward the doors. No one approached me as I made my way down the long hallway.
To my immense relief, a cab was waiting at the bottom of the front steps. Without giving the valet the chance to move, I opened the door of the cab and got in.
“Lady, you can’t get in here with that mess,” the driver barked at me.
“I was in a three-tiered cake fight. With my fiancé’s ex. And she called me a man thief - so I don’t care what you charge me as long as you get. Me. Out. Of. Here.”
And then I burst into tears.
He started to drive.