I chuckled as I finished strapping on my shoes. “Sounds like a lot of testosterone.”
“That’s why Mom could really use a little extra estrogen on her side. Take your time. Think about it. I can come up with some good excuse if you don’t want to come.” The sound of his arms sliding into a jacket followed. He was almost ready. Good timing, since so was I.
“Sure. I’ve got the weekend off as of right now, though that could change in five seconds. I’d love to come meet the saint who put up with you for eighteen years.”
“Please. I’m the angel of the bunch.”
“And those two horns sprouting out of your head are there because . . .?”
“To hold up my halo. Obviously.”
Another laugh as I took a moment to check my reflection in the stand-up mirror. I had it balanced against the partition, so the image was a little distorted, but for doing my own hair and makeup, along with picking out the outfit all by myself, I’d done a pretty damn fine job.
Except for . . .
Reaching behind me, I tugged at the corseting crossing down the back. I needed it tighter or I was going to flash someone at the party tonight, guaranteed. Downside to not having much real estate in the chest department to keep a dress in place.
“Can you give me a hand with my dress?” I asked, giving up. There was no way I was going to be able to contort my arms enough to get the corseting tight enough. Moving out from behind the partition, I pulled the dress up a little higher in the front. “I can get your bow tie for you in exchange for your assistance.”
“I can give you two hands”—Soren emerged from his partition, buttoning his arm sleeves—“but I got the bow tie whipped into submission already. I think.” He glanced down at it, double-checking, before realizing I was in front of him. He stopped moving mid-step. “Jesus Christ.” He blinked a couple of times, staring at me. His hand was still frozen where it had been buttoning his sleeve.
My head tipped. “Jesus Christ . . .?”
Soren gave one more dramatic blink before blowing out an uneven breath. “Jesus Christ, I’m glad the rumor on the street is that he went and died for humanity’s sins because I just committed about fifty-four in my head right now.”
My lips pressed together to keep the illusion of a stern face. “Fifty-four?”
Soren’s gaze swept down and around me. “Fifty-five.”
“What sin is fifty-five?”
Soren gave a crooked smile. “That’s for the priest’s ears, not an innocent lamb’s like yours.”
Innocent. Was that what he thought I was? Was that how he viewed me? He wasn’t looking at me like he was thinking innocent thoughts, that was for sure. I sure as heck wasn’t thinking innocent thoughts about him either.
“You look insanely pretty, Hayden. Like, so insane, I’m an idiot for even trying to tell you how pretty you look.” Soren rubbed his face with one hand, the other indicating at me. “And that dress . . .”
“Jesus Christ?” I suggested.
His eyes flickered to mine. “Jesus Christ exactly.”
I’d been so focused on the look on his face as he stared at me, I hadn’t even noticed he was in a tux. A nice-fitting one that made me think of James Bond and Italian runways. “Your mom picked that out?”
“Well, I picked it out. She just gave it the female stamp of approval.” Soren glanced down at himself like he was expecting to find some garish stain or tear. “Am I way off the mark?”
“No.” My hands folded together in front of me because they wanted to reach out and touch him. “You look . . .” Like sin in flesh form? Like sex wrapped in a suit? Lickable? “Nice. You look nice.”
“Nice?” He held out his arms and took himself in. A hint of dejection settled into his expression.
“I take it back,” I said, giving him another once-over. Nice was the last word I’d use to describe the way he looked. “You look . . .” My eyes met his and I tried to mirror the same crooked smile he’d mastered. “Jesus Christ.”
Soren tipped his chin. “I knew it.”
“Well. you’ve never been one to lack in self-confidence.”
“No, siree.” He moved toward me, his shiny dress shoes drumming across the floor. “So what help did you need with with the dress?” He paused in front of me, appraising the dress like it was a sophisticated equation.
“Oh. Actually.” I took a breath and turned around. “I need help with the back.”
A rush of air hissed from his mouth. “Fuck me with a crowbar and call me Daddy.”
“What?” My head twisted toward him.
“Exactly.” He shook his head, eyeing the corseting trailing down my spine. Then he held out his hands and popped his knuckles. “Okay, okay. So you’re working the whole temptress in the front, seductress in the back thing. Good look for you,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he reached for the corseting. “But would you mind wearing a jacket tonight and just keeping it on all night?”
“Why?” I tried not to grin at the way he was clearly stumped by what to do next. His hands were frozen in the middle of my back, unmoving.
“I don’t really want to spend the first night of ten life sentences in prison tonight.”
“What does that have to do with the back of my dress?”
“It has to do with me gouging out the eyes of every creeper who runs them over you with a certain look in his eyes.”
“Just start at the top, pulling each place the ribbon crosses tighter. Work your way down until it ties at the bottom,” I instructed when he started tugging at one of the end pieces of the ribbon. “What certain look in their eyes?”
“You know what certain look. The one that says he’s picturing doing the nasty with you right then and there.” Soren’s fingers tugged at the top of the corseting, just hard enough to force a gasp from me. “You know, the way I just looked at—” His throat abruptly cleared, his fingers tugging on the next section of ribbon. “Yeah, so, don’t forget a jacket, okay?”
Don’t smile. Do not smile.
I was totally smiling. Thankfully, he couldn’t see it. “I’ll bring a jacket.”
“Wear it. Don’t just bring it. Wear it.” He’d almost made it to the bottom of the corseting, and for a guy who’d been a corset virgin before this, he’d picked it right up. “This corset thing is kinda kinky, girlie. Like, it’s got me wondering if you keep chains and whips in one of those bags of yours. The type who will keep a guy chained in her basement when she’s older.”
My head turned over my shoulder. “I thought I was an innocent lamb?”
“So did I. But now I’m not so sure.”
“The dress changed your mind on that? One small component of a dress?”
“The dress, and maybe other stuff.”
My heart stalled. What other stuff? Could he read minds? Had he been listening in on me late at night when I thought he was asleep and maybe giving that self-love thing a try? Crap. Had he seen the underwear I’d bought that still had the tags on them? The ones I might have been saving in case anything ever came of us?
“What other stuff?” My voice squeaked as I said it.
Soren tied the ribbons into a bow at the bottom. “The chains and whips you keep stuffed in your bag.”
I sighed. He was messing with me. He wasn’t serious. I needed to get a grip.
“Anything else?” he asked, lingering behind me for a moment before coming around in front.
“I’m all set.”
His face pulled up at the same time he stepped closer. “The heels. You’re killing me with those things.” Soren waved his hand above our heads. With my heels, I was taller than him. “My ego is relying on you putting on something that doesn’t look like it was meant to hunt wild boar with or, better yet, flats. Aren’t those in fashion right now?”
“Sure, they’re in fashion. If you’re wearing jeans and visiting the park for the day.” I made it a point to stand up even taller.
His frown deepened. “Fine. But I’m sending my
therapy bills to you.”
“Fair enough.” The mermaid skirt swished around me as I hustled to grab a jacket and clutch from my room. “All set? Because we’re already going to be late even if the cab goes twenty over.”
“Fashionably late? You fashion people invented the term, for crying out loud.” Soren helped me into my jacket, making sure to tuck the back down so it covered the corseting.
“Fashionably late is fifteen minutes. Not an hour,” I replied, wincing when I saw the time on my phone.
He waved it off like it was no big deal after locking the door behind us. “Ah, shit. I forgot to stop by Mrs. Lopez’s apartment.” He paused at the top of the stairway, glancing down the hall.
That familiar stab of jealousy cut me. “What was it today?”
“Drippy kitchen faucet.” Soren sighed before turning his head and following me down the stairs.
“The apartment manager’s supposed to take care of that kind of stuff. Why does she call you every other day when she needs something?” I hadn’t known jealousy had a sound until I heard it echoing in my voice. Mrs. Lopez. Soren was down there “fixing” something every few days, it seemed. I’d never seen her, but in my head, she was an exotic beauty with voluptuous curves that reduced the male species into a drooling, fawning mob.
“The apartment manager fixing stuff. That’s a good one.” Soren snorted, coming up beside me to help hold up the hem of my dress as I moved down the stairs.
“I just don’t know why you’re the only one who can fix whatever it is she needs fixed.”
Soren’s head turned toward me. “She doesn’t have anyone else.”
“But she has you?”
“Ye-ah.” The corners of his eyes were creased in confusion.
He had a right to be confused. I’d done my best to keep my Mrs. Lopez jealousy to myself. I had no idea what went on behind that closed door when Soren visited. I might have paused in front of it a few times to listen in, and I’d certainly never heard any sounds that would lead me to the conclusion he was engaged in manual labor. Physical exertion . . . that was trickier to pin down.
“Why the Mrs. Lopez interrogation all of a sudden?” Soren helped me down the last few stairs before shoving open the building door.
“No reason. It just seems weird that for someone who’s so strapped for time would choose to spend so much of it tending to a woman’s plumbing.”
Soren rubbed his mouth, his eyes smiling. “What warm-blooded guy wouldn’t want to spend his free time tending to a woman’s plumbing?”
My cheeks flamed when I realized how I’d worded it; they heated even more when I replayed his response in my head. What did he mean by that? Was he getting it on with Mrs. Lopez? Was he really just doing home improvement when he visited her . . . or was he doing her?
I had no reason to believe he was. But I didn’t have any reason to believe he wasn’t.
Soren stepped off the curb to hail the first cab that came speeding down the road. As it pulled over, I scrolled through my phone to find Ellis’s address to give to the driver. Soren helped me inside, making sure not to step on my dress, before sliding in beside me and slamming the door.
When I listed off the address, Soren let out a low whistle. “Never thought I’d make it to that part of town in my lifetime.”
“No? Even with your dreams of playing professional ball?”
“I have dreams of playing pro ball, not dreams of living in the biggest house money can buy.” Soren shifted closer to me, the length of his body running down the span of mine. He’d put on cologne. I could smell it in the confines of the taxi and damn if it didn’t feel like it was luring me in.
“You don’t want a big house?”
“What do I need a big house for?”
I thought about that for a minute. I supposed a person really only needed a big house if they were planning on having a big family. Even then, I’d seen a dozen people share a one-thousand-square-foot space harmoniously.
“Okay, so maybe not a big house, but one of those expensive, flashy cars, right? The kind footballs players roll up to clubs in, shiny wheels, Italian makes, zero-to-sixty in two seconds or something?”
Soren gave me a funny look. “I’ve never even gotten my license. I’m a big city, public transportation kind of guy.”
“What if you get drafted to some team in a place that doesn’t have the same kind of public transportation? Like, I don’t know, Texas? What are you going to do then? Hire a full-time cab driver to haul your butt around?” I twisted in my seat so I was facing him, which wasn’t the best idea.
In the darkness of the cab, fractals of light cutting across him as we drove, he looked so good, smelled so good . . . to take a term from his book, he was the epitome of Hayden-Nip. Driving me totally out-of-my-mind wild.
I scooted toward the door and cranked the window down an inch.
“If that happens, then I’ll get my license, buy a car, and haul my own butt around. Thanks for checking.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be one of those flashy, expensive foreign ones right?”
His face drew up like he was considering it for the first time ever. “Nah. I’ll probably just get one of those hybrids. The ones that get crazy good gas mileage.”
“A hybrid?” The image of him squeezing into one of those little cars drew a smile.
“They’re good for the environment, too.”
“Now you’re an environmentalist?”
“‘Saving the ozone, one hybrid at a time.’ That’ll be my bumper sticker. Well, that, and another that says ‘My Carbon Footprint is Bigger Than Yours.’ You know, just to keep them guessing.”
I elbowed him. “You’re such a child.”
“Thank you.”
The rest of the drive passed in the same way—the two of us bantering, teasing, or laughing about something. I’d never known another person like Soren. I’d never experienced a relationship like the one we’d formed. We had an intimacy that came naturally, a simpleness that took me back to childhood. I felt good when I was with him. I felt a hundred other things too, but at the core of it all, I felt good. Happy. Content.
That was perhaps what scared me more than my physical attraction to him. The emotional attraction was dangerous. It couldn’t be so easily severed or excused away. Soren Decker was one fine-looking man, but my soul craved him more than my body did.
“Holy snikkies.” Soren stretched over me to look through my window as we pulled up to Ellis’s home. Which was more estate than home. “Think this guy’s compensating for something?”
“I’d rather not think about my agent’s gender-identifying body part, thank you very much.”
Soren huffed, still gaping out the window. “Yeah, can’t blame you. Especially since it must be the size of a mustard seed judging the size of his manor.”
When the driver stopped, Soren came around to open my door. I was suddenly nervous. I hadn’t been expecting that. Why? Nervous because of spending the evening with Soren? On the closest thing to a date we’d been on? Nervous because I was at Ellis’s place and expected to mingle with the social elite of the city?
Nervous because of something else? Because of something I wanted to get off my chest, even though it felt like it might rip me open in the process?
When I opened my clutch to pay the driver, Soren beat me to it. “Thanks for the lift.” Then he held his elbow out for me, waiting.
“I was planning on paying for the cab,” I said, lacing my arm through his.
He tucked my arm close to his side, which pulled me close against him. “So was I.”
“But I’m the one who invited you. You did me the favor.”
“Exactly. You invited me.” His shoulder rose as we moved toward the front doors. “You did me the favor.”
“By inviting you to some black-tie party with a bunch of people you don’t know?”
His head stayed forward, but he looked at me from the corners of his eyes. “By inviting me to spend it with you.”
“The dress. You’re saying that because of the dress, right?”
“You. I’m saying it because of you.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And maybe because of the dress too.”
My free arm lifted. “I knew it.”
“It’s a damn fine dress.” He leaned in like he was about to tell me a secret. “But only because of the woman wearing it.”
My heart stalled, but before I could figure out what he meant by that, or ask him, a man was there at the front door to greet us with a tray of champagne and instructions to where the party was being held.
“Ballroom?” Soren whispered to me. “This boss of yours has a ballroom?”
“Not your style?”
“Oh, no. Every room in my house one day will be a ball room. Baseballs, footballs, basketballs, the male anatomy type of balls.”
My head shook. Whispering romantic things in my ear one minute to referencing his testicles the next. I had no idea where I stood with Soren.
“They didn’t card us.” Soren lifted his glass of champagne, clinking it against mine.
“We’re not in a bar.”
That was when we rounded the corner into the ballroom. We both came to a halt. I’d never seen anything so lavish, not even on television. There was an actual symphony playing music at the other end, people waltzing from the looks of it, and waiters dressed in tuxes holding silver trays with an array of finger foods I couldn’t name.
Everyone looked expensive. The air even smelled expensive, whatever that scent was. There were dozens of other tall, young women milling around, models no doubt, but I didn’t miss how the arms they were hanging off of belonged to men two, if not three, times older than they were. Soren was by far the youngest guy in attendance. Other than the servers.
“Yeah, about the bar.” Soren took in the scene with me. “Can we go to one? Now?”
“You’d get carded there, you know.”
“Don’t care. I’d rather get kicked out of some dive than spend a night in this place. With these people,” he added under his breath when a guy wearing a floor-length fur coat passed in front of us.
Truth be told, I wanted to leave too. Yes, I loved the fashion industry, but I couldn’t say I loved the parties if my first two minutes at this one gave an indication to how they went.