Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Hart
“ Y ou always said you never wanted to be the face of our company,” Beck voiced as I held the phone to my ear. “My, my, brother, hasn’t that changed overnight?”
I flattened my hand on top of my head, staring at the tumbler of bourbon on my kitchen island. It was my second glass, and I needed about ten more. “Don’t get me started. I’d like to sue every motherfucker who owns, works, and sends in tips to Celebrity Alert.”
“Has your social media blown up?”
“Fuck no. That shit is on private. But the follow requests have flooded in by the hundreds, and every single one got denied.” I held the bourbon against my chest and put my back against the counter, staring outside at the Hills.
“Those pictures that were posted in the alert left quite the impression.”
“How? I was walking away from our table. I didn’t have my shirt off. I didn’t pose. I didn’t smile. Nor did I even know the pictures were being taken, so I didn’t give them a goddamn thing.”
“You didn’t have to do any of that. But what you gave them, which was your face and your clothes-covered body, was plenty for shit to start spiraling.”
“I haven’t been in hiding, Beck. It’s well known that you have siblings who are your partners. I was on the internet well before that alert went out. But I don’t understand—why now? Why are things exploding like this after only a few photos? When all you have to do is google my name and see photos of me?”
“Because that alert put a spotlight on you, and the women of the internet caught sight. I’m not saying you were invisible before, people in the hospitality industry know your name and your face, but the public? No. And that’s all it takes sometimes—one glimpse, and suddenly, everyone wants to ride you.”
The anger was bubbling in my chest. Out of all the times I had gone out with my brother—and during offseason, that was on a weekly basis—I’d never been photographed. That was his life—it came with the territory of being in the NHL—but it wasn’t part of my life, and I didn’t want it to be.
I ground my teeth together. “I don’t like this, Beck.”
“It’s too late for that. Everyone wants to know who my brother is.”
“I’m the arrogant one. That’s who the fuck I am. And that’s all they need to know.”
“Just wait. It gets worse.”
My head fell back. “Don’t tell me that …”
“You know when a golden retriever tries to kiss you, and you block your face, and all they do is wiggle their snout in between your arms, digging out a spot to get in? That’s what happens when you get outed and try to keep your life private. They dig, brother, and they’ll keep digging until they find you.”
I huffed. “I’m not that interesting.”
“The reel I saw on Instagram this morning disagrees. Hart, the ladies are loving you. You should see all the collages that were posted and all the comments beneath.”
“The what? Jesus.” I walked toward the sliding glass doors, hoping that getting closer to the scenery would force me to relax. Because this news? I wanted nothing to do with it. “There’s only one lady I want, and she’s on her way over.” I took a sip. “Don’t you have a workout to get to or a stretching session you need to be at? What the hell are you doing on Instagram anyway?”
He laughed. “I wanted to see if anyone was talking about our buyout rumor. Sometimes, Instagram is the best source—it’s where rumors either spread or go to die.”
“And?”
“Oh, it’s fucking spreading.”
My eyes closed. “Shit. Is there really a lot of talk out there?”
“Are you asking if there’s talk about you or Horned?”
I filled my lungs, letting the air out slowly. “Beck, you’re fucking killing me. You know I’m not asking about me.”
“I just love giving you shit.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Word is spreading fast, which is why I already contacted our attorney, Troy, to have him draft up a contract. I also reached out to Jenner Dalton, the Spades’ attorney, whom I mentioned last night. I’d like us to start identifying areas we want to open in, so that part is behind us and Jenner can find us land where we can build or existing spaces we can convert.”
“What about Walker? Eden thinks if we start anything before Toro opens, it’s going to send him over the edge.”
“Toro’s opening is already going to put him there. I don’t see how adding more to our plate is going to make him more stressed. The dude is already at capacity. Besides, he’s not doing all the lifting. The four of us have our roles, and we’re good at what we do. Not to mention, with that Celebrity Alert going out, I don’t think we can wait. It’s either we move forward or the Gordons beat us to the punch.”
“They’re not going to fucking beat us,” I growled.
“I hear you, but there’s only one way to ensure that. That’s why I got the ball rolling.”
I walked back into the kitchen, checking the time on my watch. “Have you heard from Walker since the Celebrity Alert went out? I expected a text from him this morning or at least one sometime today and got nothing.”
“Same. I think he’s stewing over the world now knowing we’re interested in buying Horned. I’m preparing for an explosion.”
I chuckled. “I shouldn’t laugh. Whatever that explosion looks like, it isn’t going to be pretty.” I pulled the phone away from my face as the alert came through that Sadie was at my gate. I pressed the button that opened the gate and said, “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll let you know when I hear back from the attorneys.”
“Good,” I said, and we both hung up.
I grabbed the other bourbon I’d poured along with mine and made my way to the front door. As I opened it, Sadie was walking across the driveway and up to the front entrance. With each step, her eyes became more focused on mine.
“It’s been a long day,” she said, waving her hands down the front of her, “and clothes just weren’t happening.”
“What if I told you I loved this look on you?”
Her black hair hung down her shoulders, meeting the sides of her zip sweatshirt that was open, revealing a pink sports bra underneath that showed a hint of her stomach before the start of her leggings. Those were capped off with high socks and sneakers.
“Do you? Really?” She stopped on the top step, and now that she was closer, I could see the emotion in her eyes.
Either today had been a hard one or she was torn up about what she had learned last night.
I handed her the drink. “One of my favorite things about you spending the night is when I wake up before you and get to watch you sleep. When your hair is all over the pillow and wild, and you have no makeup left on your face, and you’re either naked or you put on something of mine. I never need you to dress up for me, Sadie. If you wore nothing but my button-downs or that”—I nodded toward her—“I’d be more than fucking happy.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll cheers to that.” She clinked her glass against mine and took a sip.
“Thank you for coming over.” I moved out of the way, allowing her in, and as she stepped through the threshold, my free hand went to her waist. “I hope I didn’t fuck things up between us.” I pushed my head against the side of the door. “I have a lot of things to explain to you.”
She nodded. “Me too. That’s why I’m here.”
Still holding her waist, I gradually leaned into her neck, watching her eyes close as I neared her skin. And when my lips got there, I waited for her to back up, to move away, to tell me to stop. But while I breathed in her fruity jasmine scent, none of those things happened.
I kissed a soft section of her flesh that was between the bottom of her ear and her throat, and I whispered, “Come with me,” and I grabbed her hand and led her into the living room, sitting on one of the couches.
She slipped her feet out of her sneakers and faced me, and that was when I grabbed her heels and set them on my lap.
“Before you say anything, I need to tell you about the whole Wright thing and where my head has been at. ”
“The … what ?” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Exactly.” She pushed several pieces of hair off her face. “Do you recall our conversation at Horned when I said something to you about how all I’d been doing was meeting Mr. Wrong and you came back with the Mr. Right statement?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“I took your statement literally, thinking your last name was W-R-I-G-H-T and you were just using it in a fun, clever way. And then I saw the W over your desk in your home office, and that confirmed my thought. I never considered you were referencing R-I-G-H-T and that you were playing with me.”
“It’s funny, I thought that joke went over your head, but I didn’t mean to ignore it and never clarify what I was actually referring to. I was only?—”
“I know.” She touched my arm. “It’s my mix-up, not yours. But now I also have to ask you this: is Eden a blonde?”
“No.” I laughed. “My parents both have dark hair. They produced no blondes. Her hair color is the same as mine. Why?”
She groaned, “That’s a story for another day.” She then let out a small giggle. “Mr. Lockhart Wright—what the hell was I even thinking?”
I laughed with her. “I don’t know.”
Once she quieted, she said, “Tell me all the things, Lockhart. Start at the beginning.”
I shifted my body, pointing it more toward her. “I’m going to try to explain this the best way I can. I don’t know if I’m going to make any sense, so bear with me.”
I’d thought about how to address this, but those thoughts and plans were gone.
Sadie had asked me to start at the beginning, so I voiced, “Walker and Beck have been in the spotlight for a long time. Walker made a name for himself in culinary school, and Beck has been a star since high school. I didn’t want what they had—I never wanted that.”
I balanced the tumbler on my thigh and wiped my lips. “I’ve been open with you about my past and how my dates ended after one night, but what I didn’t tell you is that a majority of, if not all, those women knew who I was, going into it. They knew about our family business and our financial status and my famous siblings. But you, Sadie … you were different.” When my hand returned to the drink, I took a long pull of the bourbon. “You knew nothing, and I can’t tell you how refreshing that was.” I squeezed her foot. “To not have you look at me like I was made of dollar signs. To not have you bombard me with questions about Walker and Beck.” I was rubbing across the tops of her toes and stopped. “Did I let that ride for too long? Probably. Should you have heard my last name before the server gave it to you last night? Yes.” I resumed, but I moved my fingers under her toes and worked my way down. “For that, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.”
She crossed her arms, still holding her drink. “Initially, the news was shocking, but maybe that had to do with the Celebrity Alert—I don’t know. I had just read it on my phone minutes before the server came to our table with your cocktails, so I went from seeing your pictures and connecting you to being Beck’s brother to having the server say you were the owner of Charred and that you were a Weston, not a Wright.” Her hand went to her forehead and pushed against it. “It was an info dump, and it all happened basically at once.”
“It was a lot, for sure.”
When her hand left her forehead, her thumb went to her mouth, and she chewed at the corner of her pink nail. “I knew whatever you did in hospitality, you did it well. You had to—between your car and your mention of a jet and this house”— she gazed around the living room—“but honestly, it didn’t matter to me.” She went quiet. “I do wish I hadn’t found out from the alert and the server, but I’m not angry.” Her lips pulled inward, and she inhaled a full breath. “I can’t be angry with you for keeping that from me, Lockhart.”
“You have every right to feel however you want to feel.”
“What I’m saying is, I don’t feel like you lied to me. The Wright thing wasn’t malicious, it was a misunderstanding. You didn’t intentionally mislead me. And as far as The Weston Group is concerned, you just didn’t tell me. That’s not lying either.” I watched her throat move as she swallowed. “And I get it—I get all of it.”
“If I’m being truthful, I didn’t think you’d be this forgiving.”
Her head bobbed, and she broke eye contact. “Sometimes … things need to play out the way they’re supposed to.” Her gaze slowly returned to mine. “And things did. With us.”
I massaged her arch. “I like the way you’re viewing this.”
“Lockhart …” Her voice trailed off as she looked toward the wall of windows. “You wanted someone to fall for you—not your brothers, not your family, not anything you have materialistically.” When she gave me her eyes again, she whispered, “You got that.”
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say those words.”
Her eyes closed for a moment, and when they reopened, the emotion was working its way out of them. “Now, had this been Bryn, you would have had a pretend boyfriend situation on your hands.”
My brows lifted so fucking fast. “A what?”
“She’s in love with Beck.”
“She’s part of a very long list of women.”
“I’m sure.” She captured my hand between both of her feet. “Things happen for a reason—I truly believe that. Look, you weren’t into dating—you were a one-night-stand kind of man—and I wasn’t really interested in dating anyone because I’d met far too many Mr. Wrongs.” She winked. “We found each other at Horned—a place that fuels both of our passions—and things unfolded. I think it’s the perfect starter.” Her brows furrowed. “The only thing I don’t get is anytime I’ve ever called you Lockhart—even a few seconds ago—you never corrected me. Why?”
“Lockhart is my real name, everyone just calls me Hart for short. Shit, my mother calls me Lockhart. But it goes back to what I was saying about my past. All the others have used Hart. But from the moment we met, our intro was nothing like any of the previous women—and that’s because I told you to call me Lockhart. I liked that. I liked that you had a piece of me that no other woman had. That’s why I never corrected you.” I set the drink on the table beside me and reached across the back cushion, positioning my hand on the base of her neck. “Why I told you to call me Lockhart that night we met at Horned was because I was there undercover.” I chuckled. “That sounds so official, but when new restaurants open in the area, Colson, Eden, or I go and check them out. Walker and Beck can’t—they’d be immediately recognized. So, I was in that bar to assess our competition. I just didn’t make it further than a cocktail.”
She smiled. “Oops.”
“In case a waiter or a patron or the bartender heard me tell you my name was Hart, I went with the name I’m not known for. Even though Walker and Beck are the two most well-known Westons, our family is extremely public with what we own, and—who knows—there was a chance someone could have connected me, and I couldn’t take that chance.” I brushed under her chin.
She gave me a large, almost-emoji-like grin. “I’d say quite a few people know who you are now. ”
I hissed out some air and shifted my hand to her shoulder. “Yeah, about that.”
“You were all over the internet today.”
I shook my head. “Make it stop,” I groaned.
She laughed. “You said it yourself—you have a famous family. It’s probably a miracle your face hadn’t already blown up over the internet.” She mashed the gloss across her lips. “It’s such a pretty face too.” She winked. “I can see why all the women are melting over you.”
“Sadie, you’re not helping the situation.” I still chuckled despite my response. “I already lost my shit on the phone with Beck when he told me there were fucking reels made of me. I don’t want that.”
“I might have scanned some of the posts.” She pushed her lips out, attempting to prevent herself from smiling. “Beck’s not wrong. But there’s more than just reels. You’re on every social media site, and the posts are … well, they’re exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of horny women who find you irresistible.”
I sighed. “Fuck me.”
“Looks like I’ve got some major competition out there.”
I could tell she was joking, but I still said, “You don’t.” I grabbed her hand. “I want this. You. Us. All of it.” I waited. “I hope I’ve made that clear. And I hope none of this changes how you feel.”
The emotion had completely drained from her eyes, but it was back. “You’ve been different for me too. From the beginning, nothing has felt like anything I’ve ever had.” She stopped to breathe. “I like you, Lockhart. I really, really like you.”
“Why do I feel like there’s a but coming?”
Her face lowered, and she stared at the way I was holding her hand. “There’s no but .” She finally glanced up again, her chest rising and falling. “ No but at all.”
“We’re in this.”
This time, the emotion came through her lips as they pulled wide. “Yes. We most certainly are.”
As I smiled, I stroked my thumb around hers until I felt the roughness of plastic. There was a Band-Aid wrapped around the back part of her thumb. “What did you do to yourself?”
“Oh. That.” Her cheeks flushed. “I burned myself cooking.”
I grinned. “What were you making?”
“Just … I don’t know … sautéing some veggies.”
“Shit.” There was a series of vibrations in my pocket. “One second,” I said, and I pulled out my phone, exhaling when I saw the message on my screen.
Walker
We need to talk.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
I tucked my phone away back in my pocket. “It’s just Walker. He’s pissed.”
“At you?”
I gave her an exaggerated nod. “Oh, yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m assuming by now, he saw the Celebrity Alert, and that stirred up a shit ton of drama.”
“Why would he be upset about the alert? Unless you’re talking about the part that mentioned you guys buying Horned. Wait, is that really why you and Beck were there that night?” She held up her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drill you. None of this is my business, and you do not have to talk to me about any of it. I shouldn’t have even said that?—”
“Yes. To all of it.” I released her hand and was back to holding both feet, pushing under her toes, and her eyes told me how good it felt. “I’m admitting that to you because I trust you. And I hope that bit of knowledge I just confessed proves my trust.” I held still. “I never talk about work to anyone outside of the family. I can’t. But I just did with you, and I see that happening more. Because what I also see with you, Sadie, is a long future. A future that has no end date.”
She stared at me silently, and then she maneuvered onto her knees and crawled the short distance up my body, straddling my waist, her arms wrapping around my neck. “I want that too.” She lowered herself, aiming her pussy on my cock before she kissed me and whispered, “And I want this.”