Chapter 13
Penelope
Custom Chanel. Lotus silk. Handcrafted stitch by stitch.
My wedding dress required three dressmakers working around the clock in order to have it ready in time for this weekend. Between
CeCe and Selena, this wedding was certainly going to look like a real one.
“We’ll put a couple of satin buttons along the back of this collar to fasten it,” the seamstress from Chanel, Griselda, said
through closed teeth that held a few silk pins.
I’d been standing on a pedestal in front of the mirror in the primary bedroom—Xander’s bedroom—of the beach house for almost
an hour as Griselda made some of her final adjustments. It was the only room with a full-length mirror.
“Alright.” I nodded; I’d spent most of my time in this dress nodding obediently to the elderly seamstress.
Of the five designs the artists at Chanel created, CeCe fell in love with this one and insisted that even if I didn’t choose
for it to be my wedding dress design, I have it made in another color.
The sleek high halter neck left my shoulders and back completely bare.
It was a departure from my demure taste in its provocative backless dip that ended just above the curve of my backside; it seemed perfect for a fake wedding because I’d never choose something like this for my actual wedding.
I looked at myself, running my hands down the luxurious silk.
It had to be a fortune. Xander simply gave his black card to CeCe, so I had no idea what it cost, but I owned enough custom
Chanel to know it was at least a couple hundred thousand dollars.
“Wow.” Sloan stopped in the doorway, holding a yellow envelope in her hands. “Va-va-voom, Pen.”
Every drop of blood found its way to my face. I’d never really seen myself as sexy before. Pretty, of course. But sexy? My
eyes wandered along my reflection again and I couldn’t help but feel that way.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I came to drop off a few things for work and ask you something.” Sloan handed me a yellow envelope. I opened it slowly, tried
to remain completely still as my eyes ran over it. The last time I moved to take a bite of my banana muffin Griselda pricked
me and I was sure it was on purpose. “And that yellow envelope was being delivered when I was walking in.”
I looked up at Sloan, pausing my assessment of the document. “What did you need to ask?”
“Your mom.” She looked down at the floor then around the room. Sloan met my mother, so she had firsthand experience to understand
why I hadn’t even thought to include her in this. “I know this is sort of a surprise for the Chen side, but as for Victoria...
Do you want to invite her to the wedding?”
“No,” I said reflexively. My mother would come but only because she knew she should. I loved her, dearly, but my mother wasn’t
the doting kind. “I’ll tell her about it after it’s done.”
“Are you sure? Are you worried about...” Sloan looked at Griselda, who was busy around the short train of the dress. Sloan
mouthed: Lying?
I couldn’t help but laugh a bit, then immediately stopped when a cool metal pin scraped along my skin. I wouldn’t have to lie that much to my mother; she wasn’t the type to ask questions. As long as I took care of logistics like I had since I was a child, she was happy.
I nodded as I carefully opened the envelope.
“Good news! Tristan’s grandfather would love to officiate,” she added cheerfully.
While mundane for Sloan, the former president of the United States officiating my wedding made my pulse race with worry. This
lie was going all the way to the top of the federal government.
I scanned the document Sloan brought in with her. An anxious skitter prickled along my skin.
“They’re taking control of their Manhattan property,” I explained after a quick review. “The Chen family lawyer states I need
to be out by the end of the month.”
It wasn’t as much of a shock as it should’ve been. I’d always known that home didn’t belong to me. That’s why I’d never fully
unpacked.
“They’re trying to force me back home,” I said, handing Sloan the file.
“Is that the best they have?” Sloan’s lips pursed for a moment as she looked down at the paper. “All we have to do is move
your things into Xander’s place. Either here or his place in the city. We were going to do that anyway, right?”
Yes, it was an easy fix, and my family must have known that. This wasn’t meant to stop me. It was meant to make me nervous.
And it did.
It also meant that Maddox had told someone what happened, and I suspected it was Silas since this development reeked of him.
My half brother, the engineer behind the nickname I reviled, was an expert in torturing me. He knew nothing worked more efficiently
at bringing me down than my own head.
“It’s a warning shot,” I explained.
Ever since Silas took over Chen Tech as CEO, he’d been out to prove himself. And since he had little talent, he needed to
rely on other methods to close deals, like the Xu family’s obsession with ornamental titles.
“A pretty bad one.” Sloan shrugged, a soft smile curving her lips. She took the envelope and dropped it on the dresser next
to the door.
“Alright.” Griselda snapped our attention to her. “Turn now.”
I slowly turned, my back to Sloan and the doorway, being careful not to move any of the precariously placed pins.
The sound of the front door opening and closing echoed through the open foyer and up to us.
“You can’t come up here,” Sloan shouted into the hallway.
The sound of keys dropping against the marble entryway table and a scoff could be heard from downstairs.
“It’s my house,” Xander answered.
“Penelope is in her wedding dress.” Sloan stood in the doorway, her attention to the staircase that overlooked the foyer.
“It’s bad luck.”
His chuckle bounced through the hallway, getting incrementally louder. My back was turned but I could hear him nearing the
bedroom. “I think the divorce papers might be—”
The blunt end to the sentence made me look over my shoulder at him.
Electricity sparked in emerald, illuminating every corner. His playful gaze concentrated into something entirely different.
A warmth spread like wildfire, consuming every last bit of oxygen between us.
The air in my lungs became stagnant.
“I...” I faltered, stammering over my words. “We... needed your room for the mirror. For the dress.”
The room felt stifling and freezing at the same time. My pulse ticked away, up and up, out of control.
“It’s...” He gripped the back of his neck, the column of his throat shifted with a hard swallow. “White.”
“You need to remove these buttons one at a time.” Griselda’s irritated command was a cold deluge that washed away the tension.
I quickly stood up straighter and was rewarded with a needle digging into my side.
She looked at Xander from above the glasses that slid down her nose.
“One at a time.” Griselda began removing the pins one by one and I held the fabric against my chest. “No matter how important
whatever else you’d like to do feels.”
Sloan stifled a laugh as she handed me my robe.
“Got it.” Xander cleared his throat and looked down at the floor.
“One button at a time,” Sloan teased. Her grin stretched from ear to ear. “No cheating.”
“Shut up, Sloan,” Xander grumbled and made his way to his bathroom, keeping his eyes on the floor the whole time. “And get
out.”
***
An hour later, Sloan and Griselda were gone. The dress was on its way for its final alterations and I went to the kitchen
and tried to tidy up the mess I’d made in unpacking one of my suitcases. Since I was planning to stay in Sloan and Marcus’s
guesthouse, I packed enough clothing and other odds and ends I’d need for summer.
My things littered the kitchen, and even bled into the open-concept living room. The general disorder I seemed to unleash
was a stark contrast to Xander’s neat and tidy house, but he didn’t seem to mind.
He was almost a different person on his own.
When he was around other people, his light was so bright it was nearly blinding. Alone, he was quiet and kept to himself, like he was recharging.
“I see why you keep so much in boxes,” Xander said as he joined me at the large kitchen island, his hair still damp from the
shower. He looked at the living room from our spot in the kitchen; it was filled with my things. “All of these are for the
summer?”
Journals were spread across the kitchen island, my work laptop and a few notebooks with some other items were everywhere.
“Sorry.” I walked around to the counter to begin gathering them.
“Most of these are empty,” he noted, giving me a quizzical look as he picked one up and flipped through it.
“Well, you know that thing. Where you can’t remember something and then you do. But you don’t have a piece of paper, and you
don’t know where your phone went, so you get a notebook. But then you decide that notebook should be specifically for that
specific category of thoughts, so you get a new notebook and then...”
His gaze lifted slowly from perusing the notebook to me, brows arched up. He remained silent.
“I’m guessing that’s never happened to you?” I surmised.
“No, but the spreadsheet makes a lot more sense now.” He took a step closer and leaned into me, gently tapping at my forehead
teasingly. My skin prickled at his proximity. “It’s busy in there, huh?”
I scrunched my nose and shooed his hand. “Like Grand Central Station if none of the trains ran on time. Except on certain
days when they ran like clockwork.”
With a gentle laugh he began to neatly stack the at least thirty journals that were strewn all over the countertop. I tried
to do the same. “And all the other days?”
“They tend to crash into each other.”
“What is...” His voice dropped, becoming graveled. “ This? ”
“Hmm?”
I looked up to see what he was holding. A note card must have fallen out of one of the journals. He read the front, then his
mouth hung open as he read the back.
My heart fell into my stomach. I was mortified. It was my...
Well, it was a list of things I wanted to do.
Live on the edge
Learn to surf
See a shooting star
Norman Rockwell Museum
See the aurora borealis
But he was looking at the back side . On the back were more things, but mostly things I wanted done to me .
Have an orgasm without a vibrator
Get tied up
Get blindfolded
Have sex in a public place
“Is this a...” His voice lowered and became hoarse. I crossed the counter as he read it. “Fuck-it list?”
I pulled it from his hand. Bumping into his chest with my own, briefly.
Something came alive in his eyes. Like a debate was happening in his mind. This close, his breath caressed my neck, igniting
tiny sparks along my skin.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” I answered quickly, even though that was a fair assessment. One side was most certainly how I’d
like to be... fucked .
My heart beat frantically. The fact that he’d read it and had a near perfect memory meant he knew exactly what it was.
“Oh.” He took a couple steps back, shaking his head like he’d been knocked out. “Sorry. I didn’t realize... I was reading—”
He stammered to a stop.
I’d never seen him so thrown. Mind adrift and practically stumbling over his words.
Viscerally uncomfortable like he was desperately trying to forget everything he’d just read.
His reluctant eyes met mine for a moment and immediately softened at the corners when they registered the outright mortification
that probably painted my face.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed abo—”
“Hardly matters.” The words popped out of my mouth, trying to avoid the humiliation of both him finding my list of proclivities and his generally horrified reaction. I tried not to take that too personally. Or the fact that he was trying to make me
feel better about it after his generally horrified reaction. “I’ll clean all this up.”
He blinked a few times. “Yeah...”
“Sorry for the mess.” I patted him politely on the shoulder, the other arm filled with journals.