Princely Passions 1(88)

“We could spend the night here,” she says in a suggestive sing-song voice.

I stare down at her.

Nope. I’ve got nothing.

“I was thinking I should head home early tonight,” I say, trying to let her down easy. “I’ve got an early morning meeting with a new client tomorrow, and—”

“No time for little ol’ me?” she asks, walking her fingers up my arm, smiling and biting her lower lip as she looks up at me. “But I have some new lingerie I wanted to show off to you.”

“Some other time, maybe.” I pull her hand off of my arm and lay it down gently on the table.

Which is when all hell breaks loose.

“Some other time? Some other time?! Maybe? What the hell is your problem, Dominic?” Her nose is turning red, a sure sign she’s about to lose her shit on me.

Okay, so it’s time to admit that I’ve tried to let her down easy, and it isn’t working. So, Plan B.

“Listen, I haven’t been feeling this,” I gesture between us, “for a while. I always told you that I wasn’t going to be serious with you. It’s fun to fuck and let off steam, but you can’t think it was ever going to be more than—”

“I gave up my ass for you!” Heather yells at the top of her lungs, throwing her drink in my face as she screams. “I took it up the asshole for you, you asshole!”

The entire bar is staring at us now. Even the musicians have stopped playing their atrocious elevator music and are just staring.

Nice.

“I told you this was nothing but some fun fucking,” I say under my breath with a smile plastered to my face. I swear, I can feel a thousand eyeballs boring into me right now. I normally have no problems speaking in front of groups; I’ve given too many presentations to clients to have stage fright, but it’s a little different when I have gin dripping out of my hair and down my collar. Oh, and I’ve got someone screaming asshole at the top of her lungs at me. “You got so damn clingy, Heather. It’s bullshit and you know it. You’ve always known the rules between us.”

Heather slings her knock-off Gucci purse over her shoulder and sniffs, “You’ll never have someone as good as me. You don’t deserve me.” And with that painfully cliché parting shot, she storms out of the bar, knocking people out of the way as she goes.

Classy to the bitter end.

I stand up as the band starts to play again and the murmurs of conversations resume, now that the show is over. I work my way over to the front bar and ask the bartender, “Towel, please.” I’ve got gin and tonic all over me. God, I smell like a fucking distillery. Anyone who gets within ten feet of me tonight is going to think I spend my nights underneath an overpass, drinking away my sorrows via a metal flask. I’m going to have to head home and take a shower to get this off me.

“Dominic?” I hear behind me.

Patting at my face and hair with the towel, I turn and …

“Daphne?”

Oh my God, it’s my stepdaughter.

And wow, is she looking fine tonight.





35





Daphne





I walk into the Bemelmans Bar, the sounds of gay naughty talk ringing in my ears as I go. Not that there’s anything wrong with gay sex; I just don’t want to witness it up front and personal, especially not with my boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—as one of the stars.

I order a cosmo from the bar and then wind my way to an open table. I’m pretty sure that Heartbreak 101 means getting shit-faced after finding out that your boyfriend of five years is gay. It’s in the manual, I’m sure of it. Chapter 3, subheading C.

I smile to myself, amused. What could Chapter 3, subheading A - B be?

A) Spend lots of money on new shoes that don’t go with a single item in my closet, which means …

B) Buy all new clothes for my closet.

These are damn good subheadings if I do say so myself. I take another swallow of my cosmo and try to decide what to do. I don’t have to be back to the ER until tomorrow at noon, so if I stay out a little late tonight, it’ll be fine. That was the whole reason why we planned my special birthday gift for tonight.

I take another sip of my cosmo and sigh. Maybe I should go home instead and just call it an early night.

God, I sound so old. Maybe my age is catching up with me. Long hours in the emergency room, operating on trauma cases, doesn’t exactly help.

Something catches my eye and I look up, trying to figure out what I should do. Maybe—

Hold on, is that Dominic?

I stare, open-mouthed, up at the bar, as he asks the bartender for something, and then gets handed a towel. He starts patting his head and shoulders down, and even in the dim lighting, I can see he’s wet. What the hell?