Chapter 39
PAIGE
Anonymous black SUVs pick us up for the party. They drop us off in Monte Carlo’s marina with instructions on which dock to walk up. At the end of dock eight is a large white yacht. It’s surrounded by a dozen others, but this one is by far the biggest.
“Someone clearly owed her a favor,” West mutters to James. They’re walking behind us.
“Or someone lost the last game,” James responds. He’s carrying a briefcase, and he was quiet the entire car ride here.
An attendant welcomes us onto the yacht. We take off our shoes and are offered thin slippers or white-soled boat shoes. Music pounds out from the top deck. Rafe and James share a look, and then I’m shuffled back, walking with West, Alex, Nora and Amber.
I don’t mind taking a back seat during this.
During my whirlwind weeks with Rafe, I’ve seen a lot. But I have the distinct feeling that this will be different from almost anything else.
The attendant escorts us around the outside lower deck, up the stairs and into what has to be the bridge.
There’s a middle-aged Asian woman waiting for us inside, leaning against the captain’s console. Her dark hair is in a short bob, and she’s wearing a sparkling silver dress. Large emeralds glitter at her ears.
“Gentlemen,” she says. Her voice is rough, like she’s a smoker. “And ladies? What a lovely surprise.” She nods to a small dark safe with the door half-opened. “Safety first, if you please.”
Rafe, James, Alex and West all reach into their pockets. It takes me a second, but then I get my own phone out. Nora, Amber and I add our phones to theirs in the safe.
“Well, hello again,” Vivienne says to Nora. “Did you enjoy your last time?”
“I did, yes,” she answers.
“I’m glad. And Alexander, I’m sure you didn’t. When was it?” She cocks her head. Her accent is hard to place, sounding vaguely British. This has to be Vivienne. “You played at one of my tables in January, I believe.”
“Yes,” Alex says. His voice is gruffer than I’ve heard it before. In the short time I’ve known him, he threads humor through everything.
“Let’s get the formalities over and done with, shall we? Your buy-ins, please.” Vivienne inclines her head, motioning someone over. A young man dressed in black joins us.
James steps up to the table with a tight expression. Where Rafe is olive and dark hair, James is the opposite. Pale skin, dark golden hair, and clean-shaven.
He puts the briefcase up on the table. “This covers all four of us,” he says, and opens it with a soft click.
Inside are stacks of cash, all in hundred-euro bills. I’ve never seen that much money at once before.
My hand finds Rafe’s elbow.
It all becomes very, very real in that moment. I still don’t know what Alex has lost. Rafe wouldn’t tell me, and Nora didn’t know. She just told me that players can lose a lot more than money in these games.
Vivienne clicks her tongue. “Orderly. I’d expect nothing less from you, Ashford.”
James shuts the briefcase and pushes it over the table. “Count it, if you must.”
“Oh, you know I always must, my dear Duke.” Vivienne’s smile is razor-sharp. “I have all five of you tonight. Lucky me.”
“Five?” Rafe asks.
“Did I say five? Slip of the tongue. I mean four.” Her eyes slide across us all. “How noble of them all to come to your rescue, Alexander.”
Her associates start counting the money on the far end of the table. Stack after stack of hundreds laid out in quick, practiced movements.
“It wasn’t entirely his to wager,” West says. “It belongs to his family.”
She tuts. “You know legalities don’t matter, Weston.
Promises do. If you want to help your friend out…
I suppose you’re just going to have beat Alvaro tonight.
If he’ll wager the castle at all.” Her eyes land on me.
There’s glittering speculation in them. “And this must be your new wife, Raphael. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” he says. He’s standing closer to me than he normally does.
“You two are doing an admirable job at trying to convince everyone this little union wasn’t the most calculated of business moves.” Her smile curves, and she clasps her hands together. “Now, off you go. The game is set to start soon.”
A guard opens the door behind her, and it opens up into a large room with pristine ivory carpeting and wooden accents. In the center is a large poker table with a croupier setting up.
The doors that lead out to the large upper deck are open, and people mill about, all barefoot and fabulous. Excitement thrums through me. I like this. I like challenge, and adventure, and being in unfamiliar places.
They’re so infinitely more comforting that familiarity.
Rafe’s hand finds the low of my back. “Remember what I told you,” he murmurs in my ear. We let the others file out in front of us.
“You tell me so much,” I say sweetly.
His lips brush over my ear. They’re warm. “No drinks or shots you haven’t ordered yourself. Stick with Nora and Amber.”
“What if you need help?”
His eyebrows lift. “Help?”
“With the game.” I slide my hands up his neck. It feels like I’m in a movie, in a TV show, and I’m someone different. Someone other than the mess of loneliness, anxiety and fear that I run from as often and as fast as I can.
“I’m a good player,” he says, and there’s none of his usual arrogance in his voice. “But I can’t be everywhere. Listen to what people are saying.”
“You want me to spy.”
“I want you to talk. You’re good at that.” He bends closer. “And if you want to stop by the table and distract me every now and then, go ahead.”
“You want to be distracted? I thought you wanted to win.”
“I want others to see us and wonder if our marriage is real so they think less about their own hands.” He kisses me then, a soft brush of his lips over mine, and lifts his head like he does it all the time. Like kissing me is nothing at all. “Can you do that?”
My mouth tingles. “I’ll do my very best,” I say sweetly. “What did Alex lose? Did she say castle?”
Rafe blows out a breath. “Yeah, his ancestral castle in Scotland.”
“Oh my God. Really?”
“Yes.”
“That’s… wow. Insane.” I blink twice. “But I like him so far. Of course I’ll try to help you guys win it back.”
Rafe doesn’t move, despite the others sitting down at the poker table behind us. His fingers remain beneath my chin. “Everyone does.”
“And he likes you,” I say.
His eyes glitter. “Surprised?”
“Finding out you have good long-term friends has been somewhat confusing,” I admit.
His lips curve. “It’s hard to have your preconceived notions challenged, hmm?”
It is. He clearly loves his sister and he’s kind to his staff, and his friends seem the kind of close you can only be when you’ve spent years with one another. The ruthless CEO doesn’t fit with any of those realities.
And he fights at night, in secret, and I don’t know why.
“Yes,” I tell him. “Stop doing it.”
His thumb brushes over my lower lip. “You’re not the only one full of surprises,” he says. “Behave for me tonight.”
“Win,” I tell him.
He releases me and heads to the poker table, taking his place beside James and opposite a number of men and women already seated. There’s a dozen players. West and Alex are there, too.
They were discussing strategy in the helicopter over here. Guessing and strategizing about who their opponents would be. Apparently the man Alex lost the castle to is a known gambler.
Nora, Amber and I walk over to the bar. “Did you both get the talk, too?” I ask them. “About drinks?”
Amber laughs. She’s put her fiery red hair up in a high ponytail. “Yes. My brother is very protective. He doesn’t like that Nora and I are here at all.”
“No shots,” I say, and lower my voice to mimic Rafe’s. “No drinks you haven’t kept track of yourself.”
“Oh my God, those shots,” Nora says. “See the trays some of the waiters are walking around with? I took two at my last party.”
Amber blinks at her. “You did what?”
“It was just alcohol, thank God. But I’ve since learned that Vivienne sometimes mixes in… other substances. So yeah.” She nods toward the bar. “I’m sticking with regular drinks tonight.”
“Good call.” I glance back at the poker table. The game has started, and a silence has fallen around the table. “Think they’ll pull it off?”
“I don’t know,” Amber says. There’s bright color on her cheeks. “Four of them in a single game ups the odds, and they play a lot of poker, but against these people?”
“It’ll be tough,” I guess.
“Yes.”
Nora turns to me. She’s holding a martini by the stem, and her green eyes are rimmed with long black lashes. “You and my brother looked very close just now,” she says.
It’s not what I expected her to say. But I nod. “People are watching us here.”
“Yes,” she says, and smiles. “That’s true. It can be very intimate, don’t you think, to be in public? It changes the rules when you have to pretend.”
I think of his hand on my waist, his fingers threaded through mine. How he kissed me at the wedding. How he kissed me just now.
“You’re very perceptive,” I tell her.
It’s not entirely comfortable.
Her smile widens. “I have experience with pretending in public.”
“Is that how you and West got together?”
Amber laughs and turns toward the bar. “Oh boy,” she says. “I’ll need a stronger drink for this.”
“Let me tell you all about it,” Nora says.
Watching people play poker is boring.
But talking to the people who are watching other people play poker is fascinating.
Nora, Amber and I mingle our way through the guests, and everywhere we turn, people are eager to chat.
Nora is well-known in these circles, even if it’s only her second party.
She’s modeled before and has the Montclair last name.
And everyone is curious about my marriage to Rafe.
We saber champagne on the deck with two members of the royal family of a small European country. We chat with a Thai heiress about reality TV. We trade gossip with two tech billionaires over truffle fries.