Chapter Eleven. Holden
ELEVEN
Holden
“We’re so glad you could come and help celebrate this joyous occasion,” Florence Williams, Chadwick’s mom, says as she claps her hands together and all but squeals seconds before reaching out and grabbing two flutes of champagne from a passing tray and handing one to me.
“I feel like last time we chatted I was predicting this was going to happen, right? At the Rothschilds’ barbecue? ”
“Right. Sure.” I’ve been to hell and back before but this is feeling a little too close for comfort.
I glance around the floating … barge? It’s a large platform sitting off a private dock of the clubhouse. There is a barndominium-like structure built atop it that adds a rustic ambiance for most but just looks to me like a goddamn dressed-up barge.
Apparently it’s the place to host an event here in Westmore, but to me it’s no better than a fucking torture chamber.
Because isn’t that why I’m here? Why I accepted the invitation that was hand-delivered to my penthouse? To put myself through the torture of seeing Rowan celebrate her engagement to Chad?
To try to figure out what he has to offer her that I don’t.
Because unless I can figure that out, I don’t buy this is real for a second.
And it very well could be because I don’t want it to be.
It doesn’t help one bit that I can’t fucking stay away from her no matter how goddamn much I tell myself to burn everything associated with the name Rothschild to the ground.
“No Mallory today, dear?” Florence asks in regards to the date I brought with me to the Rothschild barbecue. The one Audrey pushed on me and who was dropped off at her place more than disappointed with my hasty retreat.
She thought she’d been handed a gift—to be on my arm for the afternoon and hopefully twisted in my sheets soon thereafter. The first happened. The second? Not so much as, simply put, she wasn’t Rowan.
But that was before all of this happened—Manhattan, it’s time to change the dress, the engagement to Chad.
I grit my teeth and glance back over to where Rowan stands. She’s in some summery sundress that accents her curves and strappy sandals with lacelike straps that wind their way up her tanned calves. The same calves my tongue has licked their way up. “No, no Mallory,” I finally answer.
“Shame, dear. Love really is the fruit of life.”
“Yes, well, I’m not one for believing in love.” I offer a stiff smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I was on my way out.”
“So soon?” She hooks her arm through mine.
I tense immediately but force myself not to follow my innate instinct to shrug her off.
“We Williamses know how to throw one hell of a party. We’re just getting started.
Besides, I invite you to stay awhile longer and watch those two right there.
” She points to where Chad has his hand resting dangerously low on the curve of Rowan’s ass.
“They’ll make you believe wholeheartedly in the L word. ”
“I’m sure they would.” Or Chad might end up dead somehow. Thrown overboard. Hands wrapped around his throat. Fist plowing into the perfectly chiseled jaw. “But I have meetings to attend.”
“On a Saturday evening?”
“Every evening.”
“No rest for the weary?”
No, more like no rest for the vengeful. “Something like that,” I murmur.
“What would be more pressing than two of your friends celebrating their commitment to each other?”
Destroying your son’s and his best friend’s lives.
Fucking the oblivion out of some expendable woman simply because she’s not Rowan.
Figuring ways to painfully castrate your son.
“There are a few I can think of.”
She pats my hand and pulls her arm out of where it’s looped through mine. “Then you should focus passionately on those things until you find that love you don’t believe in.”
“Mmm,” I say and take a drink of the champagne she handed me. It tastes like acid.
Or maybe that’s the gut punch of meeting Rowan’s eyes from across the room.
I’m going to need something a hell of a lot stronger than champagne to weather this fucking party.
She still wants me.
I can see it in her eyes. Can feel it in the sweep of her gaze. But there’s something else there. Hurt? How can she look at me like I’m the one who hurt her when she’s the one who ruined whatever this was and chose Chad?
I toy with my cuff links—the ones she had to have left on my desk—and wonder why I wore them here. Why I wore a reminder of a woman I don’t want to want when I already can’t get her out of my head.
Across the room, she parts her lips, almost as if she’s going to mouth something to me, but then closes them just as promptly.
What in the fuck happened?
Rowan doesn’t know the deal has closed. Can’t. I’ve been over where the contract was with Audrey enough times to piss her off and mentally replayed the steps I went through locking it in my drawer enough times to think I’m crazy.
And I know for a fact that Chad and Rhett haven’t said shit.
I made them read that fucking NDA out loud—line by fucking line—so there is zero confusion over the consequences if they spoke about it before I said they could.
The lawsuit that would come down on them would be so fucking huge they’d lose more than they already have.
I made sure the consequences would be worth it.
So what is it that has happened?
What caused this all to go down? What is he promising her that I can’t give her?
And why is she accepting it from him over me?
“It’s like they’ve been hiding in plain sight, sneaking around behind our backs and scheming this all up so that”—smack. Florence claps her hands together—“they come out and surprise everyone.” She laughs and holds a hand to her chest. “I can’t imagine what else it is they have up their sleeve.”
Wait.
What?
My mind spins as I stare at Florence like she has two heads.
Is that what this was all about? Here I was, too goddamn smart for my own good, caught up in my own scheming to have Rowan play me at my own game?
Seduce me. Sleep with me. Try to gather intel to help the people in this town that I loathe.
It’s the oldest goddamn game in the book—the helpless ingenue—and I fell for it.
Fucking hell.
But as I look at her, as I remember what that night in New York was like, my mind begs me to believe this sudden revelation—the proof is front and fucking center—but my heart, yeah, that bastard of a thing that isn’t supposed to feel, tells me differently.
The way she still looks at me with hurt and longing and everything in between tells me I wasn’t making shit up.
She fell for me.
She still wants me.
I swear on everything that put me here, she still fucking does. And yet …
Florence emits that giddy little squeal, and I force myself to look back at Rowan. To Chad pulling her in for a hug and pressing a kiss to her cheek. To the stiffness in her posture that she never exhibited with me.
And when my eyes move from Rowan to Chad, he’s looking straight at me with the cockiest motherfucking smirk on his lips.
Our stares hold as my hands fist and my jaw aches from clenching it.
He runs his hand down her back and rests it on the top of her ass. It’s aimed to piss me off. He knows it. I know it. And it fucking worked.
Fuck it.
I’m out.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I say before walking away.