The Winemaker's Dinner: Dessert (The Winemaker's Feast) (11 page)

Judy tugged at Jaden’s hand. “Come along, darling. Time is wasting. We’ve got to get you inside as soon as we can.”

A wicked glint lit up Damian’s eyes as Jaden joined him on the step and repeat. “Let’s hear it for tonight’s host and my former partner in crime—one of Miami’s top ten hottest celebrities, the lovely and beautiful Ms. Jaden Thorne!”

That son of a bitch! Jaden was no stranger to being put on the spot, but this was too much. Kevin hadn’t felt this was a relevant detail to share with her? What the hell was Damian even doing in Miami?
Asshole
.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she growled through gritted teeth.

“Such foul language from a talented mouth. I’m sure you can find better things to do with it than curse at me,” Damian whispered.

Jaden shuddered. “You have no right to be here.”

“I heard you were single.”

“I heard you got beat up by a girl.”

Damian turned his head sharply to look at her.

“What?” Jaden asked innocently. A megawatt smile was plastered on her face as she turned to meet his stare, but her body trembled with hatred. “You do remember what happened the last time you pulled this shit, don’t you?”

“Relax. I’m here for the PR. That’s it.” His cocky voice matched his cocky smirk. He cinched his arm tighter around her waist and pulled her closer as he whispered, “Thanks for that, and thanks for this…”

“
One Hot Kitchen
, and one hot host!” he yelled to the crowd, and before Jaden knew what was happening, he’d scooped her body against his and planted a kiss that gave the cameras the shot they’d been waiting for. The more she struggled, the closer he held her to his chest, cementing the kiss and earning them a round of applause from the onlookers.

At last he removed his lips from hers. “Thanks for the front page, Jade.”

It took every ounce of her energy to contain the sheer rage that pumped through her system, but on the red carpet in front of the press, what else could she do? Jaden just stood there, shocked and stunned, as she watched him slither away into
her
party, in
her
town. He’d fucked her again. Thank God Ivan hadn’t been here to witness that. But it didn’t matter much. There’d been plenty of pictures and at least a few of them were probably up on the Internet already.

Gathering the sanity and dignity she had left, Jaden did her best to disappear. She headed for the bar, for Tasha, and perhaps a bottle of tequila.

Finding her friend, who was busy chatting away, she snatched the drink right out of her hand and slugged it down like a cold glass of water on a hot summer’s day. But it wasn’t. The liquid traced a scorching path down her throat and settled in her stomach.

“Good lord, Jaden, that was a glass of chilled tequila I was going to pour into shots. What’s wrong with you?”

Trying to shake the sensation of burning alcohol from her throat, Jaden nodded in the direction of Damian, who was now smiling and nodding his way through the crowd.

“Holy shit!” Tasha looked from Damian to Jaden and back again. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just make it through this, okay?” All her excitement and hope for the evening had dissipated. Now she’d be reminded of her failings all night. “Fuck it. Give me another shot.”

Chapter 15

“Sounds of Silence”

S
INCE
H
E’D
T
URNED
T
HE
C
ORNER
and made the commitment to begin putting to rest the months of avoidance and turmoil he’d wrestled with post-Jaden, Ivan found that the sounds, smells, and tastes around him, which had been muted for months, had slowly begun to regain their luster. Take right now, for instance. The late-night air around him vibrated with electricity as he breathed in his surroundings: an A-list Miami Beach nightclub. After a long day at work he’d selected a spot in the middle of the lounge so he could absorb every bit of the energy. For the first time in months he felt clean of the addiction that had plagued him, and as he chatted with the waitresses, bartender, and fellow patrons sitting around him, he had no hidden agenda. The freak was silent as months of hidden sorrow and angst began to thaw and melt away.

Servers passed in a blur and two men in black suits began to rope off a reserved section across the room from where he sat. Ivan brought his glass of Jack on the rocks to his lips and sipped as he watched.

“Looks like they’ve got a big party coming in.” A soft female voice spoke the exact words he’d been thinking.

His gaze followed the enchanting sound of her voice and there, three barstools away, sat a gorgeous blonde in a simple black dress.

She shook her head. “Probably nothing more than a pack of frat boys looking to spend daddy’s money.”

“Or a group of high-priced businessmen looking to spend their kids’ college education,” he added, smiling.

“You might get lucky,” she said, returning his smile. “It could be a gaggle of bikini models fresh from a photo shoot.”

“If only!” Ivan said with an honest to goodness laugh, half hoping the stranger was right.

She laughed with him and held up her wine glass as if to toast from across the distance. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

Ivan raised his glass in her direction and kept his eyes trained on her as he took a drink.

She winked at him and turned back to face the bar. Much to his surprise, the freak was silent, but he was intrigued. There’d been no siren call, no overt flirting, and no licking of lips or beckoning looks. This was just a girl—albeit a stunning girl—who seemed to offer nothing but conversation and maybe a laugh or two. When she glanced back in his direction, he was still looking at her and smiling.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked, listening for the roar of the freak, but it never came.

She patted the leather barstool beside her and tipped her head. “Please do.”

Ivan picked up his drink and walked over. In an effort to short-circuit the freak, should he decide to appear, he introduced himself. “I’m Ivan.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Elle.”

Two drinks in, Ivan realized this was the first interesting conversation he’d had with a woman in months. She was funny, warm, and anything but the Miami Beach type he’d been accustomed to, and it was a nice change. He felt comfortable just being in the moment with her. It had been too long since he’d made an effort to talk to a woman he was interested in mentally, instead of just physically. Rather than being just a body, Elle was a face, she had a name, and he was thrilled to find himself making an effort to connect with her.

She had an accent he couldn’t place. But he listened, enthralled, to her tales about her modeling career and travels across Europe and the United States. And his interest was really piqued when she admitted that modeling wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, that she had ambition for something greater than the gloss. Ivan sat back and marveled. This was nothing like the small talk he’d occasionally endured with the women he’d frequented during the past few months—women who had too much to say about nothing.

“What do you want to do now? You’re too young for retirement,” he asked, fascinated by her eyes.

“Well, I’d have to say photography is my main love.”

Interesting…
This easy conversation, combined with the alcohol and the good vibrations, was the right kind of medicine. She was fun and unapologetically silly, and he genuinely enjoyed her company.

As they bantered back and forth, Ivan relished the return of the brilliant colors that only dirty, deviant sex had sparked for him the last few months. Even the pulse of the music felt stronger, more alive as it reverberated across his skin and down his chair, and the sounds of glasses clinking and cackles rising from the big spenders who’d just entered the bar sounded a bit more crisp. But they did little to deter his conversation with Elle. He was allowing himself to reclaim who and what he truly was, and it was invigorating.

Then, just as he raised his glass to his lips, someone bumped against the back of his chair. He lurched forward and spilled his drink over the rim. Elle gasped. The man mumbled a drunken apology, and Ivan blew it off as just some Miami Beach party boy—who smelled as if he’d had one too many. He shrugged and smiled at her, but instead of moving on, the man remained standing behind him, now bantering loudly with his buddy. Ignoring the drunken fools, Ivan tried to stay focused on his new friend, a woman he might actually be into.

“Damn, man, you should see what that ass looks like under that skirt. It’s perfect.”

“Fuck her ass! Look at her tits.”

“Amazing, I know. Trust me.”

The drunken banter grew louder, and it became virtually impossible to talk as the club grew more and more crowded around them. Elle smiled again, but turned her attention across the room to watch the dance floor for a while. Ivan followed her lead and decided on a little people watching of his own. But despite all efforts to ignore the men, he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation unfolding behind him.

“What, did you fuck her?”

“It’s a funny story.”

“I knew you didn’t.”

“Now, hold on just a minute.” The guy’s voice grew irritated behind him.

“So, we’re at this party, and she’s drinking like it’s going out of style. I catch on and start sending her drinks. She’s sucking them down all night, and then she starts rambling to me about some boyfriend she has back home. One thing leads to another and—”

“Tell me you used the ‘He’ll never know’ line.”

“Damn right I did. Women eat that shit up.”

The conversation behind him now commanded Ivan’s full attention, so when the guy telling the story mentioned that woman with the perfect body was present in the room, and wearing a blue dress, he couldn’t help but be intrigued. What man wouldn’t be? The sound of the guy’s voice grated on his nerves, but if she was half as gorgeous as he’d made her out to be, he had to at least have a look.

“Frankly, she was a little too easy.”

“So did you fuck her?”

Like an overly dramatic
telenovela
on Spanish TV, Ivan was drawn in by the ridiculous story line and cheesy one-liners he heard. He had to know how it ended for his own amusement.

“I finally convince her to leave the event, and by that point I’d gotten her drunk enough to let me drive her home—to my house, of course. As we’re driving, I start trailing my finger up her leg, dipping it under skirt. Getting her all worked up, you know. I could tell she’d already made up her mind at the party, so I was just playing with her. And the second I pull in the driveway—before we even get out of the goddamn car—she literally jumps across the seat and starts grinding into my lap and sticking her tongue down my throat.”

Elle leaned over and placed a hand on his arm. “I have to run to the ladies’ room,” she told him. “Will you be here when I get back?”

“Absolutely,” he said, nodding. “Maybe by then they’ll be gone and we’ll be able to hear each other again!”

She smiled and disappeared, leaving him free to focus on the train wreck of a conversation behind him.

“You better have fucked her proper.”

“Here’s the fucking thing. We get inside, barely, and I get her down to her bra and panties in sixty seconds flat. Drunk women are so easy. And she’s hot, trust me. Lean legs, toned stomach, and an ass to die for—a really sporty-looking fuck. So we start making out again real hardcore, and I think I said or called her something I shouldn’t have, because out of nowhere she just fucking stopped with this blank look on her face and broke down crying.”

“Ouch.”

“I love my boyfriend…I can’t believe I’m doing this,” the drunk whined in a high-pitched voice. “You know, the typical shit that falls out of a woman’s mouth when she’s had too much.”

“So, she wasn’t kidding about the boyfriend, eh?”

“Yeah, he’s some asshole who lives here in Miami, actually. Seems like a real dickhead.”

Now thoroughly intrigued, Ivan took pity on the guy in the story. Unfortunately, he could totally relate.
Poor guy must have shitty taste in women, but I gotta see this girl
. He turned and cased the room for the heartless bitch with a killer body in the blue dress. His eyes moved over dancing party-goers and desperate hopefuls, but nowhere was there a blue dress hiding the promise of physical perfection. Then his eyes fell on a once-vacant table that had now been filled by the private party. The dress wasn’t blue, though. It was teal.

The curve of her hip was one he knew well. He’d gripped it many times before. He knew the feel of the V that formed at the top of her breasts. He’d often laid his face against her soft skin as he fell asleep in her arms. And he knew firsthand the boyfriend in this romantic tragedy who had shitty taste in women. It was him.

Chapter 16

“Freak on a Leash”