Chapter 23: The Other Man - PAUL
I had just wrapped up a week-long negotiation in Dubai. The deal had finally closed. Nakheel Dhabi had agreed to let my company’s equipment into the fields his son had refused to touch. But my mind wasn’t on oil anymore.
I settled into my seat as my phone buzzed. My niece, Tara, had sent me a picture of a drawing she was submitting to an art show in New Orleans. I smiled before I could stop myself. Tara had that effect on me. She’d been born two pounds and twenty-seven weeks along, the same week my mother died of cancer, and my sister and I had never quite let go of the feeling that our mother had left one door open on her way out and slipped through it into Tara.
I wasn’t a romantic man. My father worked himself into an early grave and never once, that I saw, showed my mother much tenderness. I loved hard in small, private ways instead, my sister, my niece, the people who’d earned it. Everyone else got the version of me that ran a company and didn’t apologize for it.
Which was maybe why the party a few weeks back still hadn’t left me alone.
Lilly had called ahead of time, practically breathless, telling me about a new girl. A virgin, she said, which didn’t interest me. I hadn’t touched one since I was sixteen. But I went to the party anyway, because Lilly threw the best parties and I happened to be in town.
Then I saw her.
Angel wings. A dress like she’d stepped out of somewhere holier than that room deserved. Every man in the place was doing math in his head, and I was no better, except that when I got close enough to introduce myself, something about her eyes stopped me cold. Like she was looking through me instead of at me.
"I was hoping to be the first of many things," I told her. "I promise to make you feel good." Then I kissed her cheek and walked away like a teenage boy who’d never spoken to a woman in his life.
I spent the rest of the night watching her from the bar. Sawyer, then Evan, then Robert spinning her across the dance floor like he had something to prove. I told myself it didn’t matter. It mattered. I left without her and without anyone else, which had never happened to me before, and I couldn’t explain it and didn’t try.
A week later I took Tara to the park. I looked away for one phone call and she was gone. Thirty seconds, maybe, but my heart stopped for all thirty of them. I found her holding hands with a woman crouched down at her level, wiping Tara’s tears.
It was her. Cadence.
I said her name like it might break something, and when she looked up those light brown eyes hit me the same way they had at the party, except this time she wasn’t performing for a room. She was just a woman who’d stopped to help a crying kid.
I thanked her. My mouth kept going after that without checking with the rest of me. Something about my sister, the baby, babysitting duty. She softened, told me about her twin sisters, and before I knew what was happening Tara had talked her into ice cream.
We laughed. It was easy in a way nothing with me was ever easy. I chased both of them across the park to my car like an idiot, secretly grateful every man who looked twice at her had to watch her get into my vehicle.
At the ice cream shop, Tara, because eight-year-olds have no filter, asked Cadence if she had a boyfriend, then informed her that I was single and rich and she should be my girlfriend. I wanted the floor to open up.
Walking back to the cars, Cadence asked why I paid for sex. I gave her the generic answer. Then she said something that landed harder than she meant it to.
"I don’t understand why any normal girl wouldn’t want to sleep with you."
"You didn’t," I said. "Because you chose someone else." I don’t know why it came out like that. I wanted to take it back before it finished leaving my mouth.
She stopped walking. "You were my second choice," she said, quiet, like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud either. She turned to leave and I caught her elbow, and what I saw in her face wasn’t anger. It was sorrow. I’d been so busy being wounded that I’d forgotten what world I’d asked her to survive in.
I apologized. Really apologized, which I don’t do, except for my sister and my niece. She studied me for a second, then smiled and held out her hand to introduce herself properly. Shaking it, I understood I wanted more from her than the obvious thing. I didn’t have a name for it yet. I just knew I wasn’t done.
My plane touched down in New Orleans a little after noon. Darryl met the car at the hotel, and by three I was in the gym trying to sweat out a nervousness I hadn’t earned yet. She wasn’t even due for hours.
I showered, dressed, reheated the dinner the chef had left, and paced my own penthouse like a man waiting on a verdict. I had done this before, more times than I could count, and none of it had ever made my palms sweat the way this did.
The phone rang. Darryl’s voice: "Your guest is here."
I hit the button and the elevator camera lit up the television. Cadence, alone, red dress, hair down her back in loose curls, looking directly into the lens like she knew exactly where I was standing.
"Hello, stranger," she said. "You look really nice. Did you actually cook me dinner tonight?"
"Yes. You look absolutely gorgeous, Cadence."
She smiled. "Thank you. I wanted to look my best for you." Then, tilting her head: "Let’s play a game. I know how you like to watch me. You’ve invaded a few of my dreams lately, about how you’d want me, if you had me."
"What did you have in mind?"
"Strip Elevator." Her fingers trailed the buttons on the panel. "I know you can control this from up there. Start it, stop it, whenever you like."
"And how would you know that?"
"A little birdie told me." A slow smile. "Ready to begin?"
I picked up the remote that controlled the camera feed and turned the volume up. "One question first. Are you wearing the present I sent you?"
She didn’t answer with words. She pressed one polished finger to her lips, drew it slowly down her throat, and let it rest between her breasts. When she peeled the fabric back, red lace caught the light.
I was already leaning toward the screen, and the night hadn’t even started.
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