“We have reservations for nine.”
“I’m not hungry,” she bit out.
“It’s the best place in Miami. Two Michelin stars. You can hate me tomorrow, the day after and for the rest of your life, but who knows the next time you’ll be able to visit a world-class restaurant other than the one your husband owns.”
Why was I trying to convince her to go out with me? I could have picked a woman better dressed and more agreeable at the hotel bar and actually enjoyed my time tonight. But for some screwed up reason, I wanted her to go ape-shit when she saw the restaurant. Red was food-crazy.
“Still not interested,” she said coldly, yanking the bottle from my hand and taking a long sip, fury in her eyes. I grabbed the bottle back and pointed its neck in her direction.
“Put your fucking shoes on, Sparrow. I won’t ask twice.”
Okay, this was not the best strategy, but damn, she frustrated the living shit out of me.
“Yeah? What are you going to do if I won’t? Will you kill me, like you killed Billy Crupti?” She hit me with her tiny balled fists. She was too small to make an impact, but that didn’t mean Sparrow didn’t try. Shoving me deeper into the room, she continued, “Will you cut me into tiny pieces? Throw me into the ocean? Make sure there’s no trace of me left, but not give a damn that the whole freaking city knows?”
I shook my head, scrubbing my face and raking a hand through my hair, so frustrated I wanted to punch something. If she was bringing the Crupti shit up, she had nothing more to lose. She wasn’t scared anymore. Or at least not as much as she was pissed off.
Sparrow was not going to come to dinner, and for the first time in my life, I knew there was nothing I could do about it.
I had no leverage over her. I couldn’t restrict her, because she refused to use my money. And I couldn’t hurt her, because I didn’t want to.
She didn’t deserve to be ruined. She wasn’t Catalina.
Quietly, I turned around and stalked into the bedroom. I got dressed, put on my Rolex and some cologne, tousled my hair and walked out of the room, leaving her to polish off the alcohol I had left.
When I marched out to the hotel bar, she was still lying on the carpet, drinking herself to oblivion.
I took a seat on one of the stools and ordered a whiskey. A tall blonde of the model variety who was sitting two seats away from me smiled in my direction. I didn’t smile back.
I drank two, three…four drinks before she came over and offered me her hand.
“Kylie.” She pouted her name, but I didn’t reach for a handshake. “And you are…?”
“Not interested. Sorry.”
Two hours after I’d left, I walked back into our suite, drunk as hell and way beyond fed up with the Red situation. Talk about a liability.
I found her laying in the darkness, curled on the sofa, the dim light spilling from the TV, highlighting the curves of her face. She had a pillow under her head and a duvet covering her body, all the way up to the chin. We weren’t going to share a bed tonight.
“I’m only going to ask one last time. Tell me what crawled up your ass, Sparrow.”
“And what good would it do me? You’ll never give me any answers. You never have.”
She was right, and there was no point in denying it. I was keeping her in the dark.
“Pack your stuff. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.” I didn’t even bother to watch her reaction as I strode straight to the bedroom.
The Paddy business was going to be over in a few hours. His lawyer probably had him signing the papers to make the transfer as we spoke. And I had to get back to Boston to take care of the Van Horn issue. Clearly, my wife was in no mood to play, and let’s admit it, Miami was a nightmare to someone like me.
“I never unpacked,” she replied with boredom.
“The fuck not?”
“I knew we’d be back in Boston in twenty-four hours. This isn’t a honeymoon.” I heard the bitterness. “Like everything else in your life, Troy, this was nothing but business.”
SPARROW
WE SLICED THROUGH the gray Boston streets, the brownstone buildings, jaywalkers and dead-end streets flying by. I pressed my forehead to the glass, trying to ignore my husband as best as I could. His hard eyes were fixated on the road ahead and I knew he wouldn’t talk to me. Knew he’d given up.
I moved my stuff out of the bedroom and into the guest room downstairs, and he let me. A part of me struggled to remember why I didn’t try this approach in the first place, and another part reminded me that for some unexplained reason, I liked sharing a bed with Troy.
Pathetic, I know.
I decided to start at Rouge Bis the next day. No reason to wait until next week. Surprisingly he agreed to let Brock know my first shift would be tomorrow. I tried to fuel my excitement by talking about it with my Lucy and Daisy that night. They still thought I was in danger and demanded I call the police, but both of them knew better than to take matters into their own hands. Rumor was that Troy had a tight relationship with some of the cops around, and besides, they wouldn’t go against my wishes. And my wishes, apparently, was not to do anything about it.
Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted to make it to my next birthday.
The next afternoon, Troy double-parked in front of the alley that led to the side door to Rouge Bis, again blocking traffic, this time a delivery truck. I twisted my body, grabbing my backpack from the backseat, when I heard a thump on my side of the window. Brennan rolled it down, and Brock’s face appeared. He shoved his head straight into my side of the car, his lips bare inches from mine. Knocking twice on the car’s roof and the air out of my lungs, he attempted an easy smile.
“I see a tan wasn’t on the menu for the Brennan couple.”
That was an understatement. I was still as pasty as a freshly painted wall.
Troy’s face broke into a devious grin. “We were busy doing things far more interesting.”
Yeah, like getting drunk in separate wings of the hotel and hating on each other. I had no idea why he made it sound like we were a couple in front of Brock, but with all the shit he kept from me, I didn’t even stand a chance to figure out the reason for this behavior.
“Thanks for the ride,” I ground out, pushing my door open and not giving a damn that Brock was still on the other side. He took a step back, but his gaze fell to my thighs when he saw Troy resting a hand over one of them. First time he touched me since I’d refused to have dinner with him.
“Have a good day at work, Red,” he said.
Why was he acting weird all of a sudden? More specifically, like we were civil with one another.
I looked from his hand to his face. “Yeah, whatever.” And before he’d decided to accompany this little gesture with a goodbye kiss, I dashed out.
“Brock,” Troy barked, making him stick his head back into the car. A traffic jam formed behind Troy’s Maserati, and embarrassment heated my neck again. “You’re needed at the cabin.”
Brock groaned. “I have work here. I’ll be there in the evening.”
Troy glanced at me as he clutched the steering wheel angrily, and then he seemed to relax. “One hour and you’re on your way. I need you. Bring the kit.”
With that, Brock straightened and walked over to join me. Troy still didn’t budge.
Brock opened the side door for me and I entered Rouge Bis. I still had paperwork to sign before I started, and he led me down a back hallway, past the kitchen.
“Aren’t you going to ask where the cabin is? What’s that kit Troy was talking about?” he asked
“How do you know I don’t already know?”
A small smile tugged at his flawless face. “Because I know your husband, and he is very good at keeping secrets. Especially from you.”
True, Troy hid stuff from me. Mainly, he hid the reason why we got married in the first place. I knew that. And then there was Rowan…the thought of him made my spine stiffen.
I rolled my eyes, feigning boredom. “No thanks. I’m perfectly fine staying in the dark with this one. You guys can break the law as much as you like. No need to keep me in the loop.”
“That’s not what I do.” He stopped in front of a glass door. Behind it, I noticed a gray brick wall, trendy office desk, several paintings and leather chairs. “I never break the law.”
“But you break your promises,” I challenged, not sure where all this strength came from. Maybe I was sick of being pushed around by his boss. “You said it’d be worth my while to go to Miami. It sucked.”
“What I meant is I’d cheer you up when you got back. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, sweetheart.”
“Don’t sweetheart me.” I spun, marching into his office. I took a seat on the chair opposite from where he was supposed to sit. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Since I arrived a trillion years earlier than I should have for the dinner service, I was also the first to greet Pierre in the kitchen. The short, fat man walked in with a sneer on his face, smoothing his thick, black moustache with his finger. I jumped up on my feet from a milk crate I was sitting on and flashed him an enthusiastic smile.
“Hi!” I chirped.
“Well, if it isn’t Miss Nepotism. I thought you weren’t supposed to start until next week.” He made his way to the large stove, leaning against it and folding his arms as he somehow defied physics and, despite being even shorter than my humble 5'3", still looked down at me.