11. Jane
CHAPTER 11
JANE
“We have to go,” Adrian says to me after the chef stops shouting.
Feeling embarrassed even though none of this was my fault, I head for the exit—and smack into a woman who is gorgeous enough to be a model.
Spotting the woman, Adrian narrows his eyes. “You had one job: watch the dog.”
This is his dog sitter? Does that mean she’s around often? I’m not wondering this because I’m jealous. Just seems like something a wife-to-be should be aware of, right?
“I’m sorry,” the model says. “This might’ve been a premeditated heist. He led me here and then ripped the leash out of my hand.”
The chef yells something in an even angrier tone, so Adrian herds us all out. Once outside, he looks sternly at Leo. “This is my favorite sushi place. Now I’m probably banned.”
Leo looks sheepish—or more sheepish than usual.
“I’m so sorry,” the gorgeous woman says. “I?—”
“Jane, meet Tiffany,” Adrian says. “Tiffany, Jane is my fiancée—as of today.” He looks at Tiffany pointedly.
Tiffany gasps. “This was your engagement dinner?”
I feel some sort of possessive satisfaction when I show her my ringed hand—which is silly, considering the engagement is fake and I have no idea if she has any designs on Adrian in the first place.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Had I known, I wouldn’t even have taken him for a walk.”
Adrian sighs. “It’s fine. Go home. I’ve got him from here.”
“Am I fired?” she asks.
“No,” Adrian says. “But you will hear me complain a lot if Itamae-san never lets me come back.”
She smiles a dazzling smile. “Fair enough.” Turning, she clickety-clacks away—leaving me to wonder why any sane person would walk a dog in high heels.
“So,” Adrian says when we’re alone. “That just happened.”
“I know,” I say. “Only a billionaire would get kicked out of the most expensive sushi place in the world.”
Adrian looks back at the restaurant door longingly. “I might be forced to buy this building and then leverage that to convince Itamae-san to at least let me get takeout.”
“I see a big problem in our relationship already,” I say. “I have no idea if that there was a joke.”
Adrian smirks and looks at Leo with a stern expression. “Are you going to be a good boy for the rest of the day?”
Leo looks back at his human with such guileless eyes you’d think it was the dog’s evil twin—or some rogue sheep—that nearly destroyed the restaurant a second ago.
“I’ll be good,” Adrian/Leo says in that higher and sped-up voice. “And congratulations, Jane. When I smelled you this morning, I knew you and Adrian would be the perfect couple.”
I cringe at the memory. “What kind of dog are you?” I ask Leo, then feel silly and turn to Adrian.
“I’m a Wolfoodle,” replies “Leo.”
I chuckle. “That can’t be a real breed.”
“My mother was an Irish Wolfhound,” Leo says. “And my father a King Poodle—which is why I don’t like the British and eat massive amounts of potatoes… au gratin.”
“Ah,” I say. “I thought cockapoo was the funniest-sounding mix. I was clearly wrong.”
Miss Miller thinks words like “cockapoo” don’t belong in a lady’s mouth.
“You don’t think Bossi-poo is worse?” Leo demands. “Or pomapoo, or peekapoo, or shihpoo, or sheepadoodle?”
“I think if anyone should be called a sheepadoodle, it should be Leo,” I say. “Seeing how he looks just like a sheep.”
“My favorite is doodleman,” Adrian chimes in. “Which sounds like a superhero who can fight crime with his scribbles.”
I grin. “Mine is huskypoo. Which sounds like something that happens when you’re really, really constipated.”
Miss Miller has just had a fit of the vapors.
Adrian’s stomach growls.
My grin widens. “We should get something else to eat.”
“Want to come over to my place?” Adrian asks. “I have some leftovers from a meal I made the other day.”
“Sure,” I shock myself by saying. “Let’s go.”
Miss Miller considers going to an unmarried gentleman’s house unchaperoned the equivalent of taking a job at a brothel.
“I love NYC architecture.” Adrian looks around with an excitement I’d expect to see on the face of a boy on a playground.
“You do? Why?”
“It’s some of the best in the world,” he says reverently. “Like that building.” He points at the skyscraper to our left. “It was built soon after World War II and was the first time some of those techniques had been used.”
“What techniques?”
He tells me, but I don’t understand much, as what little I know about architecture I picked up when I read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand back in school. Obviously, I was much more focused on the romance subplot of that book than on anything else.
Still, since he enjoys explaining, I nod and let him talk as I only listen with half an ear.
The feeling I’m trying to shake is that I’m going to a guy’s house on our first date.
I mean, with my rational parts (the brain), I know this isn’t a date, and that Adrian isn’t just some guy. However, the rest of me (my loins?) still feels like we’re on the way to my GD—which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Hell’s bells. Part of the reason I haven’t lost my virginity is because I’m too smart to trust men, especially with my heart. That distrust goes double for rakes in general, but especially ones I find attractive, like Adrian. Rakes are where historical romance and reality diverge the most. In the novels, the reformed ones make the best husbands, but in the real world, they disappear from their daughters’ lives, never to be heard from again.
“Sorry,” Adrian says. “Am I boring you with all this architecture trivia?”
I shake my head. “No. It’s actually interesting. Are you an architect yourself?”
“If by that, you mean someone who’s designed a few buildings and made sure they were built, then yes,” Adrian says. “If you mean someone who makes a living designing for builders all the time, then no.”
“Languages, painting, music, ventriloquism”—I look down at Leo—“and now architecture. What else? Do you juggle in your spare time? Breed medicinal leeches? Milk snakes?”
He chuckles. “Is milking a snake a euphemism for something?”
Flooded by naughty images of Adrian fisting his cock, I blush crimson. “Which is your favorite building?” I blurt to cover it up.
“The Seagram Building,” he says without hesitation. “That is, if you didn’t mean my own work.”
I look around. “Where is it?”
“The Seagram? On Park Avenue,” he says and pulls out his phone. “This is what it looks like.”
“Ah,” I say, not bothering to cover my disappointment. “I’ve seen it before. How is it different from other skyscrapers?”
He tells me, but once again, the architectural subtleties mostly go over my head.
“We’re here,” Adrian says when we approach a skyscraper that, in my opinion, is much more impressive than the picture he showed me. It has a steel framework that seems very masculine, though I’m sure there’s a better architectural term for that. “I live in the penthouse at the top.”
I whistle. “I thought this was a retail building, with offices and the like.”
He shrugs. “It’s that too. When I designed it, I?—”
“Wait.” I gape at him. “ You designed this building?”
“I did.” A wistful expression flits over his features. “It even earned a rare approval from my father. That is, until he learned that I’m not going to go on to become an architect, or open my own architectural firm.”
There seems to be more there, but I’m reluctant to pry.
Leo pulls Adrian toward a shiny fire hydrant on the sidewalk near the building.
“Sure,” Adrian says with a grin. To me, he explains, “I put that there for him.”
Yep. Leo walks up to the hydrant, lifts his hind leg almost to my height, and does his business so proudly you’d think he was being knighted by the Queen.
“A sushi meal and then draining my snake.” Adrian adds a large dose of contentedness to “Leo’s” voice. “Now if I could just catch a squirrel and romance a poodle bitch, my life would be complete.”
Miss Miller is mortified. Even this so-called gentleman’s dog is a rake.
“Let’s go,” Adrian says and leads me into the lobby.
For some unknown reason, more than half of the security guards in this building are women—which I guess speaks favorably for whoever is in charge of hiring. That most of them are gorgeous is a little peculiar, and I’m sure I’m just being paranoid when I spot some of them ogling Adrian appreciatively.
“Hi,” Adrian says to everyone. “This is Jane Miller. Please add her to the permanent approved visitors’ list.”
The tallest of the women types something into her computer while I stare at the artwork adorning the walls—paintings, statues, murals, and so on, each more beautiful than the last.
“Those are all works of Mr. Westfield,” says the tall woman after she looks up from her computer.
I gape at Adrian.
He smirks. “Guilty as charged—and thanks to Susan, I didn’t even have to brag about it.”
“So you’re a sculptor too?” I ask. “And a muralist?”
“I dabble,” Adrian says with false modesty.
“Here.” Susan hands me a swipe card. “We’ll also need you to set a password.” She turns her monitor so I can see, then slides her keyboard in front of me.
Pocketing the ID, I type in the password I’ve used everywhere since I was a teen: “MineTill12AM.” It’s based on my favorite novel, Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas, and therefore is not something I’m going to forget.
“That’s not strong enough,” Susan says when she spots what I wrote. “There shouldn’t be any recognizable words in a password. There should be at least one special character, as well as?—”
“How about this?” I replace each “i” in my password with an exclamation point—a trick I use whenever I’m forced to.
She frowns. “It’s better, but?—”
“What’s this for, anyway?” I ask.
“My private elevator,” Adrian chimes in. “The security team isn’t here at night, but with that ID and the password, you can come and go whenever you want.” Turning to Susan, he adds, “Whatever password she chose is fine. My apartment isn’t exactly Fort Knox.”
He puts his hand gently on my lower back and leads me toward the swipe thingy.
Rendered speechless by his touch, I swipe my new card and test my new password with trembling fingers, then let myself be herded into the posh elevator.
The doors slide shut, and I inhale the drugging scent of Adrian’s wood, honey, and mandarin cologne—that is, until I also catch a hint of something barn-like. Wet sheep? It’s coming from Leo.
“Want to see my studios?” Adrian asks, hovering his finger over the button for the second-highest floor. “Or should we go straight to the living quarters?” He moves his finger to the penthouse button.
“You’re the starved one,” I say. “You decide.”
He presses the button for the studios—plural—and the elevator whooshes there with incredible speed.
“This is where I paint,” Adrian says when we exit and turn a corner.
Yep. The giant loft is littered with brushes, easels, and other miscellaneous items I don’t know the names of. An air purifier hums as it struggles to clean the air, but you can still smell paints, glue, and some other chemicals that must be part of the painting process.
In the next room is where he sculpts.
The one after that looks like a garage where a metal band practices.
“Can you play that?” I gesture at the bass guitar.
With a crooked smile, Adrian picks up the guitar and starts playing. It sounds good to my unfamiliar-with-this-music ears—like something from a Metallica album.
Miss Miller thinks this is exactly the kind of music that demons would enjoy as they frolic around in hell.
The next room is filled with classical musical instruments, of which I recognize the piano, the cello, the violin, and the oboe.
At my prompting, Adrian plays a tune on each one—and if it were possible to have an orgasm from being impressed, I’m pretty much there now.
“What’s back there?” I ask, pointing at an entrance we passed without him showing it to me.
“That’s my private gallery,” Adrian says and gestures for me to continue on a path that doesn’t seem to include said gallery.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you a taxidermist too?”
“What?” He glances at Leo as though for answers.
I do my best to keep a straight face. “Do you keep stuffed women in the gallery? Perhaps the other dopes you lured here under the pretext of becoming your wife?”
Adrian chuckles humorlessly. “It’s just a private gallery. Some of the pieces there are not meant to be seen by anyone but me. That is all.”
“Right, right, right. But didn’t Bluebeard also have a secret room the new wife wasn’t supposed to enter?”
He sighs. “You agree to this being covered by the NDA agreement in the secret contract that you’re going to sign?”
I nod eagerly.
“Turn off your phone,” he orders.
“Hmm. If this were a Bluebeard situation, wouldn’t he have me do that too?”
He rolls his eyes. “I think Bluebeard would sneak you into his building without alerting security.”
I turn off my phone and follow as he leads me in.
The moment we clear the door, I gasp—but not because the room is full of tubs of blood, with the murdered corpses of his six prior wives hanging on hooks, as per the Bluebeard story. (Side note: wouldn’t wife number seven have smelled the corpses?) No, my gasp is due to the works of art, each more remarkable than the last.
“They’re not all mine,” Adrian says when he catches me gaping at a suit of armor on display. “Some are pieces I got at auctions—for future inspiration.”
“And that?” I point at a pyramid-shaped cloth structure attached to the ceiling.
“A parachute based on the design by Leonardo da Vinci,” he says proudly. “It’s made out of materials that were available in that day, and it actually works.”
“Wow. Are you a fan of his because he was also a polymath?”
Adrian nods. “The more I learn about the man, the more I wish I could invent a time machine and go back to talk to him.”
After what I’ve seen, if anyone were able to design and build one, it would be Adrian, that’s for sure. “You’ll have to tell me about him at some point,” I say. “What little I know I learned from The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which isn’t exactly a textbook.”
Adrian gestures into the distance. “I have a signed first edition of that book in my library—and every other book that mentions or depicts the great genius who was Leonardo da Vinci. Haven’t read it yet, though.”
“You should. It’s fun—but lacking in romance.”
Adrian steps closer to me, eyes gleaming. “What’s your favorite book?”
As I tell him, my heart flutters from his proximity and the subject of conversation. “I also really like More Than a Mistress by Mary Balogh,” I continue breathlessly. “As well as?—”
“What about the books that the Bridgerton show is based on?” he murmurs. “The show is great, so I?—”
“Wait,” I gasp. “You’ve seen Bridgerton ?”
This is what a Viagra overdose must feel like for a guy.
“Hasn’t everyone who has Netflix?” he asks. “And how else would I know what a rake is?”
So he actually did know. I remove what little distance remains between us. “I love those books, and everything else Julia Quinn has written.”
“Love, huh?” His lips curve temptingly. “That’s a strong statement.”
I don’t answer. Whatever otherworldly force was pulling us together by the boutique is working its wiles on me once again. The sensual curves of his lips are like sirens, drawing me?—
Something in my peripheral vision bursts the momentary bubble of lust—or whatever it was—like an ice bucket to the face.
That something is a naked statue that looks very familiar. Stepping out of Adrian’s gravity field, I point at the statue accusingly. “Is that Susan, the tall security guard from downstairs?”
Adrian steps back from me, looking like he’s coming out of a hypnotic trance. “I was just about to warn you.”
Turning on my heel, I stride over to the statue and gape up at her face. Yep. It is Susan. The face and the height are an exact match, though I have no idea if her breasts are really this full and her nipples this hard, not to mention her?—
“There’s a reason I keep this gallery private,” Adrian says.
Without answering, I scan my surroundings more carefully.
Oh, boy. On the wall south of us is a painting of a naked woman that I also recognize. It’s Tiffany, the dog sitter from earlier—and she’s just as nude as the security guard and with an even more perfect body.
“Do they know about this?” I demand.
Drawing or sculpting women naked without their permission feels like a violation—and if he’s guilty of it, we’re done.
Adrian draws back. “Who do you take me for? Of course they know. They gladly posed for me after I reassured them that I’d keep the final product here, never to be sold.”
“They gladly posed for you… naked?”
He shrugs. “It’s not like I hadn’t seen them naked before that.”
My eye begins to twitch. “Why did you see them naked?” A part of me can already guess, of course.
“I haven’t hidden the fact that I slept around in the past,” he says. “During that period of my life, the encounters were very rarely one-night stands. More often, they were short relationships, and some lasted long enough for them to want to pose for me—and that’s what you’re seeing.”
My mind spinning, I take in the countless naked women in the paintings, and in a few instances, a couple of very attractive men.
“Most of these are professional models,” Adrian says, following my gaze. “And before you ask, none of my flings were with men. I’m pretty much a zero on a Kinsey scale.”
Since I’m still speechless, I just keep looking over the faces on display until I find another one that looks familiar.
“That’s my Uber driver from earlier today,” I declare. “How many women did you need to sleep with for such a coincidence to become possible?”
He finally looks guilty. “She’s not actually an Uber driver. I didn’t like the idea of some rando giving you a ride, so I asked one of my personal drivers to take you.”
I face him, frowning. “She also works for you?”
He nods. “I’ve always tried to end things with women amicably, and we often stay friends. And when a friend needs a job and their skills fit something I need, I’m happy to help out.”
I’m not sure if I want to smash my palms together in applause or across his cheeks. In a way, it’s admirable that he’s not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am type of manwhore. But on the other hand, this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a rake of epic proportions, and for whatever reason, my stomach feels distinctly unsettled at the thought of all those women still being in his orbit.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Adrian says.
“Do you still sleep with any of them?” I blurt. And hey, still better than admitting that I want to burn every painting and knock down every sculpture with a mallet before possibly doing the same to the muses that inspired them.
“I told you, ever since Piper, I’ve been celibate,” he says. “But even if that were not the case, I’d never sleep with anyone who works for me. Ever.”
“You mean that?” I’m also wondering if he will consider me “working for him” once we’re married—but I don’t have the stones to clarify that .
“I wouldn’t risk the custody hearing over some sex,” he says.
Sure, but what about after that? I don’t even bother asking this because the answer wouldn’t be “I’ll be celibate for three years.” He’s obviously going to get back to his rakish ways as soon as it is safe—but maybe be more discreet this time around.
Adrian’s stomach growls again.
“Ah. Right. Let’s go feed you,” I say, glad for the distraction.
“You’re sure?” he asks. “There’s more stuff that?—”
“I’m sure. The tour was starting to get boring anyway.” A lie, but he doesn’t need to know that.
With a sigh, he tells me to follow him and strides back toward the elevator.