Chapter 2
TWO
We’ve got a private gig lined up for the weekend. All we have to do is camp out in the Hamptons for a few days and make poolside daiquiris with our shirts off. Easiest five grand you’ll ever make—you in?
Am I in?
Five grand to flirt and wink at a bunch of spray-tanned debutantes in bikinis?
Was that even a real question?
Besides, I’m the one who talked Angel into starting this side-hustle in the first place. I mean, even the polo shirts with BarNone Mobile Bar Services embroidered on them were my idea. What kind of friend would I be if I left him in a lurch.
When we rolled up to the house, I felt my jaw unhinge just a little.
Pulling side gigs with Angel, I’ve seen my fair share of mansions and penthouses, but this place is on a whole other level.
This isn’t money. This is wealth. Generational wealth.
The kind that’s carefully managed. Protected and safeguarded.
Fed and grown. Passed down and inherited. A well that never runs dry.
“Who did you say this chick was again?” I ask, my slack-jawed stare still aimed at the sprawling two-story house. Something about it tugs at my memory. Like I’ve seen it before, but I can’t remember where.
“Her name is Paige… something,” Angel offers with a shrug. “She’s a regular at the club. Her cousin is getting married—it’s her bachelorette weekend.”
The club is Level—one of the hottest nightclubs in New York. Angel’s been bartending there for a few years, where I only started just a few months ago.
When he says the woman’s first name, something in my brain clicks.
“Paige Blackwell?” I look at him like he’s got to be joking. “Are you telling me the chick who hired you is a Blackwell? We’re working Gwenevere Blackwell’s bachelorette party?”
”I guess.” Angel gives me a shrug. “She paid in cash, I didn’t really pay much attention to her name. Are they a big deal or something?”
Is the Blackwell family a big deal?
We’ve all heard of the one percent, right?
Well, the Blackwell family is part of the point one percent of the one percent, and its patriarch, Preston Blackwell, is the poster boy for old money.
The Blackwell family is basically American royalty.
At least I know why the house seems familiar. It was featured on the cover of House Beautiful last month. I flipped through a copy of it while I was waiting in line at the supermarket checkout.
“Yeah,” I tell him with a nod, amazed, though not that surprised by my partner’s oblivion. Angel is from Jersey. He doesn’t have social media, and he doesn’t give fuck all about New York society. “They’re a big deal.”
“Well, they didn’t pay us to sit in the driveway and stare at their house,” he tells me, completely unfazed, before he throws his car door open, leaving me little choice but to follow.
Standing on the porch while Angel rings the bell, I hear music coming from somewhere inside the house, the rhythmic sounds of it punctuated with shouts and high peals of feminine laughter.
Sounds like we’re late to the party.
Right before Angel leans in to ring the bell for the second time, the door is yanked open by a familiar-looking woman in a barely there bikini.
Paige Blackwell.
A meticulously maintained bleach blonde with a tastefully done boob job and subtle lip injections.
Just enough to make a difference but not so much that it’s overtly obvious.
She’s exactly like almost every other woman in her mid-twenties that comes on to me at Level—completely fuckable and utterly forgettable.
I instantly recognize her from the club, but even if I didn’t, I’d know who she is.
Paige Blackwell is a social media staple.
Millions of followers across her platforms and everything is a photo-op.
Her father was Gavin Blackwell, the younger brother of Preston Blackwell.
When he died, People magazine did a twelve-page spread on the entire family.
When she sees Angel and me standing on the porch, her face lights up.
“Sorry—we’re out by the pool,” she says with a smile that tells me that I can add Botox to her list of cosmetic enhancements.
“Come in,” She opens the door a little wider, waiting for us to cross the threshold before shutting the door behind us.
It’s everything I can do not to go slack-jawed again because if the outside of the house was impressive, the inside is mind-blowing.
“Wait here, let me go get my cousin—she can tell you guys where to set up.” The blonde rolls her eyes. “She’s holed up in her bedroom.”
Expecting her to take the long, elegantly curved staircase to the second-floor, I watch while she slips around it to travel a long hallway that must lead to a primary suite. A few seconds later, the blonde returns, dragging a very reluctant woman behind her.
A very beautiful, reluctant woman.
She’s blonde too, but not like her cousin. Old money blonde is what they call it—the color of tarnished gold. A delicate, heart-shaped face set with the widest pair of hazel brown eyes I’ve ever seen.
Melisandre Blackwell—although the name is rarely used. Most people just call her Millie.
Preston Blackwell’s eldest daughter.
I’m only guessing because while she’s often mentioned, she’s very rarely seen, and even then, it’s usually the back of her head while she’s ducking into a limousine or a slightly blurry profile while she’s hurrying past the paparazzi staked outside Blackwell Tower—the basis of the family’s multi-trillion-dollar corporation.
While Gwen and Paige Blackwell are social media staples, Millie Blackwell is decidedly more elusive. She seems to do everything she can to avoid the limelight.
“This is my cousin, Millie,” the blonde flips her hand at the woman she’s just all but flung at us, confirming my suspicion. “It’s her house—she can tell you where to set up.”
After aiming a look at her cousin over her shoulder, Millie looks back at the pair of us, her gaze barely skimming over me before she focuses on Angel.
“There’s a full bar in the pool house,” she says, offering him a polite smile.
“The liquor’s been delivered, so everything you need to set up should already be out there. ”
Waiting a beat before she turns to look at me, my tattoos pull her gaze in fifty different directions, all at once. Still staring, I watch her start to flounder, so I decide to make it worse because that’s the kind of asshole I am.
“You okay, Princess?” I ask her, the corner of my mouth twitching when her gaze flies up to my face. “You look a bit flushed.”
Is teasing Millie Blackwell, less than fifteen seconds after I meet her, the smartest thing I’ve ever done? No—but when it comes to beautiful women, I’ve never been smart. As a matter of fact, where this one’s concerned, I might’ve lost my mind altogether.
“I—” She tries to answer me and I have the pleasure of watching the hinge on her jaw loosen slightly, her mouth falling open for just a moment before it snaps shut, making it obvious that she’s not used to being talked to like she’s just another woman.
“There’s a rollaway bar in the garage—you can set it up wherever you think is best.” Eyes narrowed slightly, she gives me the kind of look that would shrivel a lesser man’s ballsack.
I must be some kind of superman because, while I’ll admit there was a definite reaction down south—shriveling was not it.
Before I can recover, she turns that look on her cousin.
“If that’s all, I’d like to get back to unpacking,” she says, her tone making it clear that she doesn’t give one shit if that’s all or not before she turns away from the lot of us, leaving us to stand in the foyer while she disappears behind the staircase.
“Sorry about that.” Paige offers us an exasperated smile, along with an eye roll.
“I love her, but she’s a complete stick in the mud.
” Backing away from the table we’re all clustered around, she gives me a flirty wink.
“Don’t worry about her. We’ll have a good time this weekend—whether she likes it or not. ”
That was several hours ago and, true to her word, everyone seems to be having a blast. I set up the rollaway bar I found in the garage on the veranda near the swimming pool.
These women have been drinking steadily since I cracked my first bottle of Goose, ping-ponging between me and Angel, who’s set up shop in the pool house.
The last thing anyone needs is to find some spray-tanned debutante face down in the pool because no one had the foresight to hire an actual lifeguard.
With one eye on the bar and the other on the pool, I do my job. Smile and wink. Flirt and laugh—and when the very tipsy bride-to-be asked me to take my shirt off, I happily obliged.
“Gawd, you’re so much hotter than Dalton,” she says, chin cupped in her hand while she gazes up at me with bleary blue eyes.
Popping her chin out of her palm, she turns that bleary gaze toward one of several women clustered around the bar, waiting for a refill.
“Like, insanely hot. Why can’t Dalton be insanely hot? ”
“Dalton’s good-looking,” one of her more sober friends reminds her. “And he’s rich.” As soon as it’s out, her friend looks up at me with a wide, slightly mortified expression. “No offense.”
“None taken.” I give her one of my hot bartender smiles while I skewer a couple of cherries on a pink plastic sword.
It’s a lie. I’m offended, but it’s not her fault.
Insanely hot and poor loses out to good-looking and rich every time.
That’s just how the world works. Sliding the drink across the bar, I give the bride-to-be a wink. “Dalton is a very lucky man.”
Sending them back to the pool with a fresh round, I watch as the cousin, Paige, fights her way upstream with an empty glass and a wine bottle tucked under her arm.
Stopping in front of my bar, she sets the empty glass and the bottle on top of it, pushing both in my direction.
“When Stick-in-the-Mud Millie asks for her wine back, make her work for it,” she says before spinning on her heel to saunter back the way she came.
She’s been giving me signals all night. Long looks and knowing smiles.
Unlike the rest of the bridal party, this woman knows exactly what she’s looking for and how to get it.
I have no doubt that if I wanted to, I could be balls deep inside her by the end of the night.
“Sure thing,” I say to her retreating back and am rewarded with another one of those knowing smiles, tossed over her perfectly tanned shoulder before she disappears into the pool house. She’s undoubtedly playing both Angel and me in hopes of doubling her chances of getting laid.
Hell, she might even be bucking for a threesome.
Laughing to myself, I take the brief lull in business to tidy up my bar space and refresh my garnish station from the supply of cherries, limes, and orange slices in the mini fridge under the bar.
Pulling a clean towel from the stack, I use it to wipe down the bar.
Lifting the abandoned bottle of wine while I wipe, I study its label.
Working at Level, I’ve poured more than my fair share of top shelf.
This wine isn’t top shelf—it’s someone’s pride and joy.
The sort of label a wine connoisseur spends a lifetime chasing.
The sort of label that is coveted and never, ever opened.
“May I have my wine back, please?”
Like predicted, Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud’s come to collect.
I look up from the bottle in my hand when I hear her, and my cock instantly starts to throb because she’s giving me that look. The same look she gave me in the foyer this afternoon. Haughty and regal. Cool and detached. Like all of this is totally beneath her—and all of this includes me.
When tipsy bridesmaid #4 made her offhanded remark, insinuating that while I was good enough to play with, I certainly wasn’t good enough to stay with, I was offended.
Hell, maybe I was even a little ashamed.
The look Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud keeps giving me doesn’t just imply it. It all but screams it.
But I’m not offended.
Not by a long shot.
I’m as hard as a fucking rock.
Make her work for it.
A sudden image of Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud on her knees in front of me, mouth open and choking on my cock while I fuck her throat, pops into my head in excruciatingly vivid detail.
Pretty sure that’s not what her cousin meant by make her work for it.
“Sorry, Princess,” I say, giving her an insolent grin to cover up the fact that my dick is so hard it hurts. “No can do.”
My refusal widens those gorgeous hazel eyes and loosens the hinge on her jaw, giving me a brief, cock-twitching view of her soft, pink tongue before it snaps shut. Gaze narrowing slightly, she tilts her head just enough to tell me she’s sure she didn’t hear me correctly. “Excuse me?”
“I said no.” I give her another insolent grin, this one accompanied by a head shake. “It’s warm, Princess.”
Now she looks like I just slapped her in the face. “So?”
“So, a deb like you should know that you can’t drink a label like this warm.
” I look at her like she’s sprouted a third eyeball in the middle of her forehead and have the satisfaction of watching her cheeks heat with embarrassment.
“It’s practically against the law.” Before she can protest or threaten to fire me and have me escorted off the property by the private, well-paid security firm that polices these kinds of neighborhoods, I pluck the bottle of Goose from the auto chiller under the bar and replace it with her bottle of wine.
“It’s going to take about fifteen minutes to properly chill, Princess, so you might as well make yourself comfortable while you wait. ”