“Yes, it does,” I counter. “It means he took the time to go and look for something pretty he thinks will make me happy.”
“You can use that necklace to pay, Melanie. Just tell him you lost it or something and get rid of this debt. Those men kill for five bucks—they’re fucking gangsters! Even the guy Pete deals with, Eric, looks sharp and polished in that suit, but they don’t trust that guy for shit. He just kisses Rem’s ass ’cause he’s their prime moneymaker, but everyone knows his boss Slaughter makes Scorpion look like a teddy bear. They say he’s got an enforcer that’s like some demon straight from hell, and he’ll come collecting whether you want him to or not!”
He looks around warily, then leans closer, across the table, lowering his voice. “Pete heard rumors the only guy with a lick of sense was Slaughter’s eldest, but he didn’t want shit to do with the dad and apparently dropped off the Underground years ago. Not even his son wants anything to do with a man like Slaughter. I swear I don’t sleep thinking you still owe them.”
My heart starts stampeding in my chest with renewed fear, and I hold my hands up, palms out, to pacify him. “Riley, I asked for more time, okay? We have to just . . . breathe here.”
“What? What the fuck? When’d you ask for more time?”
“Last time I came to see Brooke. It’s okay. Really! I just sold my car and can buy more time if I maybe give them half the payment.”
“No you fucking can’t, they’ll take it as interest and demand you pay fully before you can even walk out the door! Don’t ever approach men like these alone. Jesus, just trust me and get out of this, Mel. I paid my debt and I want to pay yours, and if you won’t let me, then at least promise me you’ll let your new boyfriend help. If you’re too proud to ask, just pretend you lost those diamonds on your neck and get rid of this debt; trust me.”
I guess I look as hopeless as I feel, because he adds, more direly now, “I vow, Melanie, if that debt isn’t gone before you leave, I’m telling Tate and we’re taking care of it for you, him and me.”
I gasp in outrage. “I will not let you or my best friend’s husband step into this, do you hear me? And I will not involve my boyfriend either. This necklace means something to me.” I touch my diamonds with an awful wrenching sensation in my chest as I wonder—Is this the only way I’m going to be free, letting go of the only thing the man I want with all my heart has given me?
“Riley,” I whisper, almost plead with him, “I’m just not this girl who swindles her boyfriends out of expensive things to turn them into money.”
He glowers at my precious necklace, and my stomach starts to hurt just thinking about parting with anything that has to do with Greyson.
“That gift didn’t mean to him what it means to you, I assure you,” Riley says with annoying self-confidence. “I’ve never seen a guy more in love than Remington, and he doesn’t need to throw dollars at Brooke to show it.”
“Well, Grey has a different style, so what? The end is the same. I feel pampered and taken care of and he gets a look in his eyes when he sees me wearing them that I absolutely adore.”
I can’t stand having another person in my life criticize Greyson to me! So I stare at him narrow eyed and add, so that he at least gets the true depth of my feelings for my man, “When he looks at me like that, I swear it’s all so perfect I sometimes have nightmares that I dreamed it all, that he’s too good to be true.”
“Maybe he is, Melanie. Maybe he’s two-timing you right now, meeting with some chick in secret as we speak.”
“Ha!” I lift my glass and sip my drink. “He’s a workaholic. If I have anything to worry about, it’s that mistress of his called Work Myassoff.”
Riley smiles at me, a chilling smile, a very unfriendly smile, and he nods to the entry of the restaurant.
I turn about ninety degrees to get a look . . . and that’s when I see him walking into the restaurant.
Him.
Grey-fucking-son.
All my recognition flares into disbelief, excitement, and then, anger combined with a bolt of nearly blinding lust.
It feels as though an energy source clings to his skin, for the entire air shifted the moment he materialized in the room. Over six feet of pure male perfection. Greyson. Fucking. King. My hormones burst awake when he starts walking forward, following the maitre d’, his eyes directly on a table at the far end.
I can’t believe it. My eyes run up and down his form. There is no word for the way Greyson walks, with a hand in his pocket, his face somber, his cheekbones chiseled, his jaw smooth and tan, his mouth perfection, his dark hair carelessly tousled; I swear that awesome hair is the only thing careless and playful about him. The rest of him is Bond 007 perfection, even those narrowed, hazel-green eyes, which seem beautifully self-contained and remote. Even now, two months after going out with him, I can sense he’s still holding back the most crucial part of him, but I can visualize an “us” and what we can be so perfectly, and I’m determined to make it happen. Greyson and Melanie, living Happily Ever After.
Then I see the woman at the table. Waiting. A redhead.
My blood pools at my feet when Greyson bends to kiss her cheek.
Riley and I only stare.
And I’m certain it’s not him. He’s working . . . somewhere. It can’t be him.
But it sure looks like him.
He’s wearing all black, his hair shining under the light, and he settles down in his chair, leans back in that self-assured way of his, and starts talking over a fucking candle to a redhead. A fake redhead. One who looks older and expressionless.
Mrs. Botox.
OMIGOD!
It cannot be Greyson!
I never get cheated on, I’m the one they cheat with.