Chapter 3
CARTIER
“On behalf of Gianna and Leonid, I want to thank you for coming today…”
I’m in the backyard practicing my speech. A few simple words of gratitude to the mayor of Chicago, that’s all I need, and I can’t even do it without my face glowing like a furnace, and my voice sounding like I swallowed a spoonful of peanut butter.
“Ugh!” I stomp my foot and squeeze my eyes shut. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Deep breath in. Release it slowly. Fool my body into believing that I’m in control.
I peer out across the garden. The high surrounding walls are covered in blooming roses.
There’s a vegetable patch directly outside the kitchen with neat rows of squash, carrots, runner beans, and potatoes.
A rockery. Shaped flowerbeds, miniature potted palms, a pond filled with Koi carp, and a secluded arbor for those seeking some peace or a quiet space to read.
I love it out here. When Mika and I first saw this place, the garden was like a construction site: mountains of dirt, piles of rubble, and a dumpster filled with trash from inside the building.
Watching it take shape brought me as much joy as watching the renovated rooms develop their own characters.
But today, my gaze can barely settle on a red-winged butterfly hovering around the buddleia bush before my pulse is off again on a never-ending marathon.
“Concentrate, Cartier!” I start over. “Thank you, Mayor George, for coming today.”
Why does it sound so stuffy? Since when did a ‘thank you’ get so difficult?
“Gianna is disappointed that she couldn’t be here today, but babies have a habit of popping out whenever they’re ready.” Oh. My. God. He’s a mayor for chrissakes, not the King of the United Kingdom.
I fill my lungs with oxygen, take one last lingering glance around the garden, and head back inside. At least if I’m surrounded by people, it’ll take my mind off Andrej Ivanov.
One of the catering staff that Gianna hired for the event is filling tall slender flutes with champagne when I walk through the kitchen. I’m tempted to take one and down it quickly, but I can’t even get my speech right sober. A glass of cold water won’t cut it either, but it will have to do.
Voices reach me from the common room, and excitement gurgles inside my chest.
This is what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.
This is our dream. For Gianna’s sake, I can park the raven-haired sex-god on a fucking park bench at the back of my mind until this is over.
Later, I can take him out and examine our brief conversation in closer detail, but for now, I need to forget that he even exists in the same world as me.
“Cartier!” Mika blocks my path, all perfect white teeth and fluttering lash extensions. “Is your speech ready?”
“Ye-es?” She called me Cartier instead of Car. Never a good sign. “What’s wrong? Did the mayor cancel?” I could totally get on board with that calamity, but I know how disappointed Gianna will be.
“No. The mayor is already here.” Her voice has taken on a falsetto tone.
I try to peer behind her, and she moves to block my view again. “Did someone spill champagne on the new carpet?”
“Oh God no.” She shakes her head, a lock of dark hair sticking to her lip gloss. She picks it off carefully with diamante studded acrylics.
“What then?”
“Nothing.” She says this way too brightly.
“Okay. Then let’s do this before I change my mind.”
“You’ll be great, Car. Just remember not to look at the audience.”
I smile. “Spoken like a true drama queen.”
The common room is buzzing when I get there. Gianna would’ve been so proud.
I recognize the mayor’s profile and make a beeline for him, following Mika’s advice and avoiding eye contact with the audience.
Three minutes. That’s all it’s going to take to formally introduce him to the other guests, shake his hand, thank him for coming, and step aside.
So, why does public speaking make me feel like I just arrived at the top of a mountain with only one ski?
My legs are shaking, my mouth is dry, and he’s turning around while I’m still mentally unprepared…
Then I spot the person he was talking to, and all kinds of crazy lights explode inside my head.
I drag my eyes away from Andrej Ivanov and shake the mayor’s hand.
Why is he here? He wasn’t on the guest list; I’d have remembered if he was.
I peer around the mayor and he’s still there, watching me with those dark eyes that I swear can see straight through my clothes.
“Yes.” I find myself responding to a question that I didn’t hear.
“Shall we?” Mayor George gestures to the makeshift podium erected at the far end of the room.
And I follow him. Because my body is doing this without any direction from my brain. God help me.
The room goes silent. Don’t look at them, the words pop into my head.
Too late. My eyes have already sought him out, and he’s staring right back at me, his lips curled into a faint smile.
“Um.” I clear my throat. I’m supposed to speak first. “Thank you all for coming.”
I can hardly hear my voice above the blood gushing in my ears, but I must say something intelligible because everyone claps, and the mayor steps forward, his voice filling the room while I shrink back out of the limelight.
A glass of champagne finds its way into my hand when the speech is over, and I down it in one, the bubbles fizzing against the back of my teeth.
Other people congratulate me. They mention the wonderful renovations and the good work that we’ll be doing to help women less fortunate than them with their pearl earrings, their Gucci purses, and their general American accents. I’m polite but brief.
And every time I look around, Andrej Ivanov is there watching me.
From a distance.
As though he’s scared that I’ll bolt if he gets too close.
He mingles. But not with the VIP group clustered around the mayor, the police commissioner, and a representative from the Chicago Women’s Health Center. Which is where I would’ve expected to see Leonid. But with smaller groups, mostly female.
No surprises there.
He was chatting to the mayor when I first spotted him, so they’re obviously acquainted, but now I notice the older man’s eyes following Andrej around the room as if frightened of losing him.
Not that I’m watching him too.
Andrej moves away from a small group of women, and one follows him, brushing his arm lightly in a gesture that’s too familiar for someone she just met.
Or is it? Is she just being flirty? Or am I reading too much into it because he stirs up the air like a man who has women begging him to spread their legs wide and come on in?
I look away, cheeks flaming.
When my gaze finds its way back to the last place I saw him, Andrej is gone. And so is the attractive woman in the obviously expensive shift dress with the sparkling pendant around her neck that may or may not have been a real diamond.
Not that it matters.
Not that I care what Andrej Ivanov gets up to in his leisure time.
So, why do I feel as if the ceiling is pressing down on the top of my head and someone has sucked all the air from the room?
He was messing around with me in the hospital room. He saw me gaping and thought he’d have some fun at my expense, so I only have myself to blame. He had no intention of giving me a guided tour of Chicago. Or if he did, he saw it purely as a direct route into my panties.
“Is that what you want?” the voice inside my head demands like a stern schoolteacher. “I expected more of you.” Because my internal voice has always been way harsher than it needed to be.
I stumble back towards the kitchen, my head down to avoid making conversation, and freeze when the name Ivanov penetrates my miserable foggy brain.
I glance around. Two women are strategically placed near the door that leads to the downstairs hallway; from this vantage point, they can see everyone coming and going.
Sliding my phone from my pocket, I pretend to check my messages and shuffle closer, praying that no one will pull me away before I find out what they’re talking about.
“…rumor about a severed hand being delivered in a box.”
What the actual fuck!
“You can’t believe everything…” The speaker must turn away, and when I chance a glance, she’s waggling her fingers at another woman across the room, false smile firmly fixed in place. “A friend of mine was—”
The woman pauses before she can explain what her friend was getting up to with Andrej Ivanov and greets a man in a gray business suit with air kisses and a coy smile.
“Peter. How lovely to see you.”
I wish that Peter would fuck off so that she can finish telling her story. Perhaps I’m giving off the right vibes because he doesn’t stick around.
“Your friend?” the other woman prompts the instant the suit vanishes in the crowd of guests, and I silently thank her.
“My friend was almost assaulted one night.”
She drops her voice so low I have to move even closer, studying my phone messages like I just found out a meteor is hurtling towards Earth. If Andrej Ivanov is a sexual predator, then it’s better that I discover the truth now rather than later.
“Andrej Ivanov,” barely more than a whisper beneath the buzz of other conversations, “just happened to be passing by, and he pulled the guy off her and knocked him out.”
My stomach flips like a pancake. Seriously?
“He got her to the Emergency Room, made sure that she was okay, and sent flowers the next day.”
She makes him sound like some kind of superhero.
“Are you sure it was him and not his brother?”
“Positive. My friend is married now. When her baby boy was born, he sent more flowers, and,” the speaker pauses for dramatic effect, “he sends a food hamper to her home every holiday.”
“There you are, Car.” Mika’s voice catches me unawares, and my phone slips from my fingers, bouncing across the carpet. “I’ve been trying to untangle myself from an octopus in a suit for the last fifteen minutes. Where were you when I needed you, huh?”
She grabs my arm, Mika-style, and drags me through the kitchen and outside where several guests are wandering around the garden and staring at the back of the house.
“Did you speak to him?”
“Who?” My hot face is a dead giveaway, but I’m running with naivety for now.
“Andrej Ivanov!” She furrows her brow. “He’s only here because of you. You do realize that, right?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” The butterflies inside my chest seem to have a fairly accurate understanding of the situation though. But I need time to process what I overheard.
“Oh no you don’t, girlie. This innocent act might’ve worked in the past, but I’m not letting you get away with it this time. That man has the hots for you, and I’m going to make damned sure that you don’t let him slip through those overworked neglected fingers of yours.”
When Mika is on a mission, I’ve always found that the only option is to deny, deny, deny. “He doesn’t.”
She blinks her long perfect lashes at me. “Car, you’d have to have been living under a rock for the last gazillion years not to notice it. He told me so, himself.”
“He told you that he has the hots for me?”
Those damned butterflies are already clinging to every word and turning them into their own version of the truth.
I should stomp on this fire before it gets out of control because there’s only one person getting hurt in this situation, and it isn’t the guy with the scar on his top lip. Although, I wonder how he got it…
“Not in so many words, but I’m a pro when it comes to hot men and pheromones, and that guy has got it bad.”
And for one fleeting moment, I make the rookie mistake of allowing myself to believe it.
Why? Only because he’s probably the most gorgeous man to ever grace this planet with his presence.
But then, reality comes rushing back with a club-wielding vengeance, and I remember that he already left with another woman.
I shake my head. The barriers are still there, barely. “Too late. I saw him leave with someone else.”
“When?” Her eyes instinctively snap towards the back of the house. “I just spoke to him, and he was very much alone. Why do you think I’m giving you this pep talk, huh?”
“You spoke to him?”
Hope soars through my veins, forgetting that two seconds ago I’d convinced myself that he was a player looking to add another conquest to his already substantial tally.
“That’s it.” Mika places her hands on my shoulders, turns me around, and gives me a gentle shove back in the direction of the house. “Go get him, Car. Live a little.”
But once inside, the mayor wants to chat some more about the shelter.
Then a reporter traps me into giving a brief interview about Gianna’s vision for the future.
I glimpse Andrej wandering around while I’m answering questions about a typical day in the life of Cartier Black for another journalist. Each time his eyes meet mine, I get a jolt of something – excitement, anticipation, fear? – down my spine.
By the time the interview is over, the guest numbers are dwindling, and there’s no sign of Andrej.
I’m disappointed but resigned to it being for the best. But when Mika and I step outside after the last guest has left and we’ve finished clearing up, he’s there, waiting on the top step, leaning casually against the low wall.
His eyes meet mine, and my pulse starts racing.
“Seeya.” Mika waves as she practically flies down the steps and sprints along the sidewalk without a glance over her shoulder.
“Ready?” He pushes himself off the wall.
“For what?” Pizza? A vodka soda? To go to his apartment and lie back on his gigantic bed while he ravishes my body?
“Your guided tour. I promised to show you around, and you should know, I always keep a promise.”
“I’m not sure.” I try to look away, but it’s difficult when his gaze is so intense. “It’s been a long day.”
He knows it’s a lame excuse, but he’s unfazed. “All the more reason to have some fun and unwind.”
Unwind or unravel? Why does an image of him peeling my clothes off me layer by layer pop into my head unannounced? Even worse, why does my pussy respond to that image with a gush of dampness?
“I shouldn’t.”
I shouldn’t cross the road without checking the traffic first either and both situations seem equally dangerous from where I’m standing right now.
He smiles, and I feel like a teenager again drawing pink heart shapes around my initials and those of my first crush, a boy called Robson Hunt with an arrow straight through the middle.
“Don’t let shouldn’t ever stop you, Cartier Black, or you’ll wake up one day and wonder why you didn’t.”
He offers me his hand … and I take it.