CHAPTER 7

Isabella

“Romantic comedies are overrated and unrealistic.” Sloane frowned at the montage of cute dates and passionate kisses flickering across her TV screen. “They’re setting people up for failure with false hopes of happily ever afters and cheesy grand gestures when the average man can’t even remember their partner’s birthday.”
“Uh-huh.” I grabbed another handful of extra buttered popcorn from the bowl between us. “But they’re fun, and you still watch them.”
“I don’t watch them. I—”
“Hate-watch them,” Vivian and I finished in unison.
We were curled up in Sloane’s living room, gorging on junk food and half paying attention to the cheesy Christmas rom-com we’d picked for the night. Some people might say it was too early for Christmas movies, but those people would be wrong. It was October, which meant it was practically December.
“That’s what you say every time.” I popped a fluffy kernel into my mouth, taking care not to drop any crumbs on my laptop. “You’re not entirely wrong, but there are real-life exceptions. Look at Viv and Dante. They’re proof lovestruck men and cheesy grand gestures exist in real life too.”
“Hey!” Vivian protested. “His gestures weren’t cheesy. They were romantic.”
My brow arched in challenge. “Buying you dumplings from the thirty-six best restaurants in New York so you can choose which one you like best? I’d say it’s both. Don’t worry.” I patted her with my free, non-popcorn-filled hand. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
If anyone deserved extra love and cheesiness in their life, it was Vivian. On the outside, her life seemed perfect. She was beautiful and smart and owned a successful luxury event planning company. She was also heiress to the Lau Jewels fortune, but the money came with a price—she’d had to grow up with Francis and Cecelia Lau, who were, for lack of a better word, total assholes. Her mother constantly criticized her (though less so than before) and her father disowned her after she stood up to him.
Francis was the main reason Vivian and Dante’s relationship had had such a rocky start, but luckily, they’d moved past it and were now so sickeningly sweet together my teeth hurt every time I was in their vicinity.
Freaking dumplings. It was so cute and depressing at the same time. I’d never dated anyone who cared enough to remember my favorite food (pasta), much less buy me multiples of it.
If I weren’t terrified of inadvertently summoning the devil (thanks to my lola, who took great pains to instill the fear of God in her grandchildren), I’d make voodoo dolls of my worst exes.
Then again…I eyed my laptop.
I had something better than voodoo dolls. I had my words.
“You know what? Maybe…” I straightened, my fingers already moving before my brain had the chance to catch up. “I can incorporate Dante and Viv’s date in my book somehow.”
This was the part I loved about writing. The lightbulb moments that unraveled new sections of the story, bringing it closer to completion. Excitement, motion, progress.
It’d been a week since Gabriel’s call. I’d yet to hit my daily word counts, but I was getting closer. That morning, I wrote a whopping eighteen hundred words, and if I squeezed in a thousand or so more before movie night ended, I’d meet my target.
Sloane’s brows dipped in a frown. “Dumplings in an erotic thriller?”
“Just because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” My February deadline loomed ever closer, and I was willing to try anything at this point.
“Perhaps one of the characters can choke on one,” Vivian suggested, seemingly unfazed by my morbid take on her husband’s romantic gesture. “Or they can lace the dumplings with arsenic and feed them to an unsuspecting rival, then dissolve the body with sulfuric acid to hide the evidence.”
Sloane and I gaped at her. Out of the three of us, Vivian was the least likely to hatch such diabolical ideas.
“Sorry.” Her cheeks pinked. “I’ve been watching a lot of crime shows with Dante. We’re trying to find a normal hobby for him that doesn’t involve work, sex, or beating people up.”
“I thought he outsourced that last part,” I half joked, tapping out an obligatory sentence about arsenic. Dante was the CEO of the Russo Group, a luxury goods conglomerate. He was also notorious for his questionable methods of dealing with people who pissed him off. Urban legend said his team beat a would-be burglar to the point where the man was still in a coma years later.
I’d be more concerned about the rumors if he didn’t love Vivian so much. One only had to look at him to know he’d rather throw himself off the Empire State Building than hurt her.
Vivian wrinkled her nose. “Funny, but I meant his boxing matches with Kai.”
My typing slowed at the mention of Kai’s name. “I didn’t know they boxed.”
He was so neat and proper all the time, but what happened when he stripped away the civility?
An unbidden image flashed through my mind of his torso, naked and gleaming with sweat. Of dark eyes and rough hands and muscles honed through hours in the ring. Glasses off, tie loosened, mouth crushed against mine with heady carnality.
My body sang with sudden heat. I shifted, thighs burning from both my laptop and the fantasies clawing their way through my brain.
“Every week,” Vivian confirmed. “Speaking of Dante, he’s picking me up soon for dinner at Monarch later. Do you guys want to join us? He’s friends with the owner, so we can easily update the reservation.”
“What?” I asked, too disoriented by the sharp left turn in my thoughts to catch up to the new topic.
“Monarch,” Vivian repeated. “Do you want to come? I know you’ve been dying to eat there.”
Right. Monarch (named after the butterfly, not the royals) was one of the most exclusive restaurants in New York. The wait-list for a table was months long—unless, of course, you were a Russo.
Sloane shook her head. “I have to pick up my new client tonight. He lands in a few hours.”
She ran a boutique public relations firm with a roster of high-powered clients, but she usually outsourced her errands. Whoever it was must be really important if she was picking them up herself, though she looked distinctly unhappy about the task.
I pushed my laptop off my thighs and lifted my hair off my neck. A welcome breeze swept over my skin, cooling my lust.
“Count me in,” I said. “I don’t have work tonight.”
I didn’t love playing third wheel, but I’d be an idiot to turn down a meal at Monarch. It’d been on my restaurant bucket list forever, and it would be a good distraction from my unsettling Kai fantasies.
I couldn’t wait to tell Romero—about dinner, not Kai. Besides engineering, my brother’s greatest joy in life was food, and he was going to die when—
Wait. Romero.
“Oh my God, I totally forgot!” The adrenaline of remembering a forgotten task surged through me, erasing any lingering thoughts about a certain pesky billionaire. I reached forward and pulled my backpack onto my lap. “I promised Rom I’d give this to you guys to try.”
After some rummaging, I triumphantly fished out a high-tech, beautifully ribbed, bright pink dildo.
Two brand-new packaged toys sat at the bottom of my bag, but I liked to show off the goods first, so to speak.
Romero was a senior design engineer at Belladonna, a leading adult toy manufacturer, which was a fancy way of saying he made vibrators and dildos for a living. They relied on testers for early feedback, and somehow, he’d roped me into recruiting my friends for the task.
It wasn’t as weird as it sounded on paper. Romero was a total science geek; if you placed a naked supermodel and the newest design software in front of him, his priority would be mastering the software. To him, there was nothing sexual about the toys. They were simply products that needed perfecting before they hit the market.
That being said, I didn’t test out his designs. Even Romero agreed that would be too creepy, but my friends and acquaintances were fair game.
“No.” Sloane pressed her lips together. “I don’t need another dildo. I have a whole cabinet of those things, and they take up valuable space.”
Like her office, clothing, and pretty much everything else in her life, Sloane’s apartment was an exercise in stark minimalism. Besides the television and, well, us, the only sign of life in her white-on-white living room was the oblivious goldfish swimming in the corner. The previous tenant had left it behind, and Sloane had been threatening to flush the Fish (yes, that was its name) down the toilet for the past two years.
“But this is state of the art,” I argued, shaking the dildo. “You’re one of Romero’s most trusted reviewers!”
Unlike Vivian, who softened her feedback with encouraging words, Sloane specialized in scathing evaluations that dissected each product down to the bone. This was the same woman who wrote multipage critiques of every romantic comedy she watched; her capacity for preempting strangers’ hurt feelings hovered somewhere in the negative thirties. On the flip side, if she said she liked something, you knew she wasn’t bullshitting you.
After more cajoling, threatening, and bribing in the form of a promise to watch every new Hallmark rom-com with her, I convinced Sloane to continue her reign as Belladonna’s most feared and revered tester.
I was still coming down from the high of winning an argument with her when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it.” Vivian was in the bathroom and Sloane was busy scribbling in her notebook—based on how aggressively she was writing, the poor movie was getting eviscerated—so I scrambled off the couch and made my way to the front door.
Thick dark hair, broad shoulders, olive skin. A quick twist of the doorknob revealed Vivian’s husband, looking every inch the billionaire CEO in a midnight-black Hugo Boss shirt and pants.
“Hi!” I said brightly. “You’re early, but that’s okay because the movie just finished. You know, the male lead kind of reminds me of you. Super grumpy with daddy issues and a perpetual frown—until he finds the love of his life, of course.”
Actually, the male lead had been a cinnamon roll, but I liked to poke fun at Dante whenever possible. He was so serious all the time, though his disposition had improved dramatically since he married Vivian.
A flush crawled across his sculpted cheekbones and over the bridge of his nose. At first, I thought I’d annoyed him so much he was having a heart attack right there in the hallway, but then I noticed two things in rapid succession.
One, Dante’s gaze was fixed on my right hand, which still held the prototype toy from Belladonna. Two, he wasn’t alone.
Kai stood behind him, tie straight and suit neatly pressed, his appearance so perfect it was hard to believe he engaged in a sport as brutal as boxing.
My eyes dropped to his hands, searching for bruised knuckles and bloody cuts, but I only saw crisp white cuffs and the glint of an expensive watch. Not a single wrinkle or piece of lint.
Would he exert the same level of fastidious control in the bedroom, or would he abandon it for something more uninhibited?
Both possibilities sent a heady rush through my veins. My grip instinctively tightened around the toy, and I lifted my gaze in time to see Kai’s attention drift from my face to the fuchsia dildo with the agonizing speed of a slow-motion car crash.
Silence engulfed the hall. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could’ve sworn the dildo vibrated a little despite not being plugged in, like it couldn’t contain its excitement from all the attention.
While Dante looked like he’d swallowed a wasp, Kai’s expression didn’t flicker. I might as well have been holding a piece of fruit or something equally innocuous. Still, heat scorched my cheeks and the back of my neck, making my skin prickle.
“We were testing this,” I said. The guys’ eyes widened, prompting a hasty clarification. “Not on each other. Just…in general. To see how many speeds it has.”
Dante shook his head and rubbed a hand over his face. Meanwhile, the corner of Kai’s mouth twitched, as if he were constraining a smile.
A bubble of laughter cascaded over my shoulder. I dropped my free hand from the doorknob, turned, and glared at Vivian, who’d returned from the bathroom and was watching me flounder with far too much amusement for a supposed best friend.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me I was still holding this,” I said, waving the dildo in the air. Dante let out a choked noise that landed somewhere between a sputtering car engine and a dying cat. “Friends don’t let friends answer the door with phallic accessories. Don’t come running to me if your husband keels over from cardiac shock.”
“How is it my fault?” Vivian protested between laughs. She appeared wholly unconcerned by her husband’s imminent demise. “I was in the bathroom. Blame Sloane for not warning you.”
I glanced at my other traitorous friend. She’d moved on from her film critique and was glaring at her phone like it’d personally produced, directed, and starred in her most hated rom-coms.
Interrupting Sloane when she was in a foul mood was like tossing a hapless gazelle in front of an enraged lion. No, thank you. I liked my head right where it was.
“Kai, are you joining us for dinner?” Vivian asked, drawing my attention back to the hall. Her laughter had finally subsided. She moved next to her husband, who wrapped a protective arm around her waist and dropped a soft kiss on the top of her head. A pang of envy wormed its way into my gut before I banished it. “Like I told the girls, we can easily change the reservation.”
“Maybe another night. Dante and I had a meeting nearby, and I just came up to say hi.” Kai’s gaze flicked toward me for a split second. An answering thrill rippled beneath my skin. “I don’t want to crash your date.”
“Nonsense. You won’t be crashing at all,” Vivian said. “Isa’s joining us, so it’d actually be perfect. Seating four is easier than seating three.”
My shoulders stiffened. The last thing I wanted was to sit through an entire meal with Kai. I’d done it before, at a dinner party Dante and Vivian hosted right after they returned from their honeymoon, but that was different. That had been before the piano room. Before dangerous fantasies and accidental touches that tilted my world off its axis.
Kai’s eyes rested on mine again. An invisible steel door slammed down around us, shutting out the rest of the world and cocooning us in a bubble of whisper-light breaths and colliding heartbeats.
Goose bumps rose on my skin. But whereas I struggled to maintain a semblance of calm, he regarded me the way a scholar would examine an old but thoroughly forgettable text. A hint of interest, tempered by a sea of indifference.
“In that case,” he said, the words like velvet in his cultured voice, “I’m happy to help.”
An unwelcome surge of anticipation leaked into my veins, but it was dampened by unease. Dante and Vivian always got lost in their own world, which meant I was facing at least two hours of Kai’s uninterrupted company.
“Excellent.” Vivian beamed, looking happy over something as simple as a group dinner.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. My desire to experience Monarch warred with trepidation over a night with Kai. On one hand, I refused to let him ruin a bucket list item for me. On the other…
“Guys, I have to go.” Sloane came up beside me, so quiet I hadn’t heard her approach. Sometime in the past five minutes, she’d tossed a camel Max Mara coat over her blouse and pants and swapped her slippers for a pair of sleek leather boots. “My client landed early.”
She nodded a curt greeting at the men and handed me and Vivian our bags, effectively dismissing us.
We were too used to her work emergencies to be offended by her abrupt announcement. Sloane wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, and her face should be stamped next to the dictionary entry for workaholic, but if things went to shit, I knew I could count on her. She was fiercely protective of her friends.
“Who is it anyway?” I asked, discreetly dropping the dildo back into my backpack while she locked the door. “Anyone we know?”
Most of her clients were business and society types, but she took on the occasional celebrity like British soccer star Asher Donovan and the fashion model Ayana (one name only, à la Iman).
“I doubt it,” Sloane said as we walked to the elevator. “Unless you follow the lazy playboys section of the society pages closely.” Her voice seeped with cold disdain.
Okay then. Whoever the client was, he was clearly a sore subject.
Vivian and I fell into step with her while the guys brought up the rear. Normally, I’d pester her for more information, but I was too distracted by the soft footfalls behind me.
The clean, woodsy scent of Kai’s cologne drifted over me in a warm rush of air. I swallowed, tingles of awareness scattering over my back. It took every ounce of willpower not to turn around.
No one spoke again until we reached the elevator. The oak-paneled car was built for four at most, and in our jostling to squeeze into the tight space, my hand grazed Kai’s.
A golden streak of heat shot through me, electrifying every nerve ending like live wires in the rain. I pulled away, but the phantom thrills remained.
Beside me, Kai stared straight ahead, his face carved from stone. I almost believed he hadn’t felt the touch until his hand, the one I’d inadvertently brushed, flexed.
It was a small movement, so quick I would’ve missed it had I blinked, but it grabbed hold of my lungs and twisted.
The air compressed from my chest. I quickly tore my eyes away and faced forward like a teen who’d been caught watching something inappropriate. The hammering of my heart reached deafening decibels, drowning out Dante, Vivian, and Sloane’s chatter.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kai’s jaw tense.
The two of us stood there, unmoving and unspeaking, until the doors pinged open and our friends spilled out into the lobby.
Kai and I hesitated in unison before he nodded at the exit in a universal after you sign.
I held my breath as I brushed past him, but somehow, his scent still infiltrated my senses. It muddled my thoughts so much I almost walked into a potted fern on our way out, earning myself strange looks from Vivian and Sloane.
I suppressed a groan, the next two hours stretching in front of me like an endless marathon.
This is going to be a long night.