Chapter 2
2
Atlas
I ’d known there was someone hiding behind the curtain. I’d known it the moment I’d walked into the room.
I could smell her in the air and yes it definitely was a her.
A sweet, innocent scent. Jasmine, maybe. Different to the more sophisticated perfumes women in Arcadia usually preferred.
I probably should have said something, told Tina we had a voyeur, but she wouldn’t have cared and me, well, I didn’t care either.
I liked an audience.
I’d come along to Arcadia tonight — the elite, private-members club run by my good friend Caleb Cross — with my other good friend Tennyson Fox, to watch a virginity auction.
They had them in Arcadia every so often, all strictly controlled and all above board, and it had been entertaining to watch uptight as hell Ten buy himself the virgin on offer. She’d been a pretty little thing and I’d considered buying her myself, but Ten clearly had her in his sights and he’d been the lucky winner in the end.
He’d gone to meet her, while Caleb had disappeared off fuck knows where, so I’d taken the opportunity to get to know Tina, who’d been sitting by me at the auction and who’d been up for letting off a little steam.
She’d wanted another round and I’d been tempted, but the scent of the woman behind the curtain had got me curious and because I wasn’t a man who denied myself anything, I’d sent Tina on her way.
Now, I stood and watched with some amusement as the heavy velvet hanging in front of the window quivered slightly, but remained in place.
“I know you’re there,” I said, wandering over to the drinks cabinet and helping myself to a nip of the excellent scotch Caleb kept in all the rooms. “So there’s no point in pretending otherwise. And who knows? If you’re very lucky, I might give you what I just gave the blonde.”
And why not? A little voyeur, getting all hot and bothered watching me fuck Tina…. My cock got hard just thinking about it.
Except the curtain remained tightly closed so, after a moment, I knocked back the scotch, put the glass back down, strode over to the windows and jerked back the heavy fall of velvet.
As I’d suspected, a woman stood behind it, eyes like saucers staring up at me, her cheeks flaming. She wore a black skirt and a black jacket, with a plain white shirt and she would have looked like a funeral director or maybe an accountant if she hadn’t been so remarkably beautiful.
Or so familiar.
It had been eight years, but I recognized her all the same.
Rowan James, my ex-stepdaughter.
Nothing much surprised me these days — you don’t get to be part of a triumvirate of New York’s richest and most infamous men without seeing a lot of surprising shit — yet I had to admit, I was surprised now.
Last time I’d seen her, she’d been having a teenage tantrum, screaming at me that I was an asshole before running upstairs to her room and slamming her bedroom door. And that wasn’t an isolated occasion. Rowan had not liked me one bit. I, on the other hand, thought she was a good kid. Had an over inflated sense of responsibility, sure, but with Caitlyn for a mother, who could blame her? There had been a lot of men in Caitlyn’s life and Rowan was protective, which I got.
So I hadn’t let her tantrums bother me. She was just a kid with a fragile mother, who’d had to be the parent more times than she should have, and I knew all about that. My own mother had been the same.
I felt sorry for Rowan. She hadn’t asked for any of the relationship drama that usually accompanied Cait, that included being cut off from her powerful family, the Hamiltons, then marrying a guy who didn’t love her to spite them. After that, and now with a child, she’d gone through men at a rate of knots, trying to find someone who’d look after her. She’d tried me on for size — I was another casualty of a powerful, shitty family, so I related — but it wasn’t forever and we both knew it.
I’d attempted to keep in contact with Cait after we went our separate ways, but over the intervening years, we’d lost touch, and I hadn’t thought about her or Rowan in years.
Now, though, here was Rowan, in fucking Arcadia, the last place in the entire goddamn universe I would have expected her to turn up.
And not only that, she’d just watched me have sex with Tina.
And I was still hard.
Jesus Christ. What a shit show.
It wouldn’t have been such a drama if it had been some stranger watching me from behind that curtain, but no. It was my fucking ex-stepdaughter and that was a problem, because it had not escaped my notice that Rowan James was not sixteen any more.
Gone was the freckled teenager with the stringy black hair she always kept tied back, who was straight up and down and as flat as a board. Her eyes had been a specific shade though, blue in some lights, grey in others, and violet when she was mad. Which was often.
But that stringy black hair was now glossy and shining and swept back into a bun on the back of her head, and the features that had once seemed too big for her face, now fit. Pert little nose. Full mouth with the sweetest cupid’s bow. Sharp, determined chin.
Not her eyes, though. They were the same. They were violet now, a sure sign of intense emotion, and framed by thick, sooty black lashes. And, fuck, I couldn’t help myself. I kept right on going, looking down the line of her body, marking yet more changes.
She wasn’t straight up and down anymore. Hourglass figure, just like her mother, and there was nothing flat about the generous breasts that made her white shirt pull tight. The kid was a woman now, and she was gorgeous, which I shouldn’t have noticed and was pissed that I did.
“Rowan,” I said flatly. “What in the living fuck are you doing here?”
“I…I.” She stuttered, clearly horrified to find me standing on the other side of the curtain, as well she might given what she’d just witnessed. “I’m looking for my boss.”
“Really?” I demanded. “Well, clearly he’s not in here.”
She glanced away, unable to meet my eye, straightening her jacket and smoothing her skirt with restless hands. Her cheeks were flaming. “No,” she muttered. “Clearly not.”
I was an easy-going man — never saw the point of getting too het up about shit — but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed as hell right now.
I didn’t know what had happened to Rowan and Cait in the past eight years, but one thing I did know was that Arcadia wasn’t the kind of place for young women like Rowan.
It wasn’t a sex club, though sex went on, and there were sexually themed evenings every week, the virginity auctions for example. It was a great club, private, exclusive and very discreet. Whatever you were into, as long as it wasn’t illegal, you could get here, and while Caleb vetted the membership ruthlessly, there were some unscrupulous motherfuckers around. Men who preyed on young impressionable women just like Rowan.
Men like my father. Not that I wanted to think about that asshole right now.
“How did you get in and what the fuck were you doing behind the curtain?” I didn’t bother masking my annoyance.
“The club was expecting me.” She smoothed hair that didn’t need smoothing. “I’m only here to deliver a file to my boss, that’s all.” She lifted her chin slightly, her eyes darkening in a way I remembered from her tantrums years ago. “I thought he might be in this room, so I came in to find him and then when you and…”
“Tina.”
“You and Tina came in, and I thought I shouldn’t have been in here so I hid.” This time she didn’t stumble over the words and her gaze was direct. “What about you? Why are you here?”
I ignored that. “You didn’t think to announce your presence? Not even when Tina took her clothes off?”
She flushed an even deeper red. “No. I thought it would be too embarrassing for all concerned. Anyway, I didn’t look, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Little liar. She had looked. That’s why she was blushing so intensely.
“Oh, I’m not worried,” I said. “I don’t give a shit if you saw me. But you have to know that wandering around here unattended can have consequences. Consequences that you may not like.”
“Such as watching my ex-stepfather have sex with some woman? Yes, I see your point.”
Her tone was acerbic as hell and as familiar. Her shooting little barbs at me, trying to get a rise out of me. Maybe she hadn’t grown up as much as I’d thought.
“Listen, kid.” I purposely injected a patronizing note in my voice, just to show her I hadn’t forgotten her teenage years. “The whole point of coming into an empty room and shutting the door is to have some privacy. It’s not my fault you got more of an eyeful than you bargained for, embarrassment or not.”
“Yes, and I apologize for that,” she said stiffly, her jaw set, fingers playing nervously with the strap of her voluminous black purse. “You didn’t answer my question, though.”
“Which one? About what I’m doing here? Having tea and fucking scones. What do you think?”
Her mouth tightened. “Well. It was…interesting to see you again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just?—”
“Not so fast,” I interrupted without heat, curious now. “Your boss told you to bring that file in yourself?”
She hauled the purse strap higher up on her shoulder. “Yes. So?”
A suspicion gnawed at my gut. The only non-members allowed in Arcadia were guests of members, not members’ staff. All work was supposed to be left at the door, not brought inside.
“It’s a client file?” I asked.
“Yes, but why is that important?”
I ignored that. “And your boss wanted you to bring it to him personally?”
“He did, but?—”
“What’s his name?”
Rowan was now looking extremely irritated. “Ben Jordan. What has that got to do with anything?”
Ben Jordan. Of course, it was fucking Ben Jordan. He was a member on probation for various infringements of Arcadia’s rules, including making a nuisance of himself to younger female members. Sounded like he was playing the same kind of games with Rowan, because she the kind of woman he liked. Extremely pretty and if he was her boss, then extremely vulnerable.
Christ, I hated men like that.
“For one thing he’s a fucking creep.” I held out my hand. “Give me the file and I’ll get it to him for you.” I’d also pass it along with a warning not to invite impressionable members of his staff to Arcadia again. On pain of having his membership revoked and my fist in his face.
She glanced at my hand then sniffed. “I can give it to him. I don’t need you to do it for me.”
“Sure. You really want to go wandering around the upper halls of Arcadia trying to find him? Things go on the rooms here, kid. Things that’ll make what you just watched with me and Tina look like kindergarten.”
“I’m not a kid, Atlas,” she said severely, seeming not so much like a funeral director now, as an officious librarian. “And I can look after myself.”
“Oh, I know that already.” I folded my arms and didn’t move, blocking her exit, because I wasn’t going to let her out of this room on her own, not when there were assholes like Ben Jordan around. “Give me the folder, Rowan.” It wasn’t a demand, but it was an order nonetheless, and mostly when I used that tone, people knew to do what I told them.
Rowan’s dark brows twitched, her sulky, pouty mouth tightening even further. Yeah, I remembered that look too. She’d always hated being told what to do.
After a moment, she let out an irritated-sounding breath, then dug around in her purse before extracting the folder and holding it out. “Fine. If you want to do my job for me, that’s up to you.”
I took it. “How are you and Cait?”
“Really? Can’t we reminisce another time?”
“It’s just a question, kid.”
“She’s fine,” Rowan said impatiently.
“Still on her own?”
Something flickered in her eyes, then was gone. “Why? You looking to for an easy lay? Oh wait, you just did that.”
Ah, yes, that was the Rowan I remembered, though she’d never said shit like that to my face. I ignored it. “It was a serious question.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you mean has she remarried, then no, she hasn’t. She doesn’t need yet another man to let her down.”
Another dig and I knew it. But I’d never told Rowan the reason I’d married her mother, and apparently neither had Cait. Rowan hadn’t understood why I’d left then and it was obvious she didn’t understand now.
Me and Cait had been…convenient. We were never in love and our marriage was purely for other benefits — her for protection and me for the money she paid me after the divorce. I was her husband-for-hire. Yeah, we slept together, because she wanted me and I thought she was beautiful. The sex was fine. But Rowan didn’t know all that and I wasn’t about to enlighten her.
“Anyway,” she went on. “She’s not on her own. She has me.”
“Still with that overinflated sense of responsibility, hmmm?”
Annoyance flashed in her eyes. “Still with that overinflated ego, hmmm?”
Sharp little thing, wasn’t she?
I smiled the way I used to years ago, when she was needling at me, letting her know there was nothing she could do to rile me. “Same Rowan, I see. Come on, I’ll walk you out.
She snorted, her gaze darting away once again. “No thank you, I can find my own way.”
I kept right on smiling. “It wasn’t a request, kid.”
“I’m twenty four,” she said impatiently. “It’s been eight years and I’m really not a kid anymore.”
I merely lifted a brow. “Do you want to stand here all night arguing or do you want to go home?”
She didn’t want to give in, I could see it in her eyes. She absolutely wanted to stay here all night arguing and there was a part of me that wanted that too.
But I ignored that part like I always did.
She needed to leave and the sooner the better.