Page 33 of Sensual Games

“Excuse me. I’m sorry, I just remembered I promised to make a phone call. I won’t be long.” I pushed back from the table when the air in the room suddenly felt too dry and heavy for me to breathe. I was making an ass out of myself, but I wasn’t the one who put me in this position. Mom and Dad sitting there staring at us, practically hanging on every word, did. Didn’t they know how pathetic this was? How blatantly obvious? Clover seemed like a smart girl. What did she think about it?

I wasn’t going to stay around long enough to find out. I made my way through the restaurant, which was full on a Friday evening. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I would suffocate.

The warm air outside was better than what I had just left. I loosened my tie and considered walking. Just going, leavingwithout another word. I could always reach out to Clover and apologize. She might even understand. What I couldn’t do was sit and be part of that charade a minute longer.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The sound of Dad’s voice behind me left my molars grinding and my blood boiling. “You left that lovely girl in there while you’re standing out here doing what?”

“Believe me,” I gritted out, turning around to face him. “It’s much better for me to be out here. What is this, a goddamn sitcom? Mom and Dad clumsily match their kid up with some random girl who comes from the right family? Do you know how awkward this is?”

“When will you grow up?” Gone was the charming, affable guy from the restaurant. He had never existed in the first place. “This is how it’s done. You’re introduced to a nice girl, you get to know each other, and you realize you couldn’t possibly do much better.” He ended with a short shrug.

I barked out a laugh. “Thank you for your faith in me.”

“Lucian. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s got a great future ahead of her. What else do you need to know?”

“Remind me again how you and Mom met.” The brief flash of uncertainty that passed over his face was gratifying. I knew damn well Mom had been close friends with Dad’s sister, my aunt Lourde. They hadn’t been set up by their parents, even though my grandparents had certainly tried.

“That has nothing to do with this,” he scoffed.

“That has everything to do with this. You can’t force me into becoming involved with someone all because you think she’s acceptable. I’m not going to be part of this charade.”

“Just like you didn’t want to be part of the family business? Yet there you are, succeeding in spite of yourself.”

This time, it made sense for Ivy to come to mind. She was the reason I was succeeding. She was someone I would much rather have had dinner with, no matter how hot and smart Clover was.

“I’m leaving,” I decided. “Please, tell her… I don’t care what you tell her. I got called away.”

“No.” He tried to block me. A waste of time on a wide sidewalk with plenty of room to sidestep him. “You will not embarrass us this way.”

“Considering I never asked you to set me up with her, this embarrassment is on you.”

I walked away, knowing there were too many people on the street for him to try to stop me. If there was one thing Dad couldn’t stand, it was making a scene. He was much too important to do anything so low class.

I walked one block, then another. My head pounded with every step I took. The bastard. What the fuck was he thinking? I would catch hell the next time I saw him, though I couldn’t bring myself to care. He brought this on himself. It was bad enough I had to play along in the office.

Dad had sent a car to the office to pick me up for dinner, meaning I had to grit my teeth and order an Uber. I could have walked home if I were going there, but the last thing I felt like doing was sitting alone. I was in no mood to bullshit with the guys, either. To sit around and hear about how happy they were while my fucking parents tried to set me up tonight like I was some hopeless wreck, unable to find a woman on his own. The more I thought about it, the worse it pissed me off.

Rather than order the car to take me home, I copied and pasted an address I’d gotten from office records earlier today. On a whim, I had looked up Ivy’s address to get a sense of where and how she lived.

Now, I would see with my own eyes what I had looked up online. A tiny, rundown walk-up in a shitty part of Brooklyn, where rents were cheap and crime was higher than the surrounding area. In other words, something she could afford on the pittance she’d probably made at Jones. I didn’t know if she would be home, but I wanted to try.

Once we were on our way, I tried to call her. The phone rang several times before sending me to voicemail. She probably had a life. Work could not be all there was. I ended the call without leaving a message. “What am I thinking?” I muttered, staring at the phone.

“What’s that?” the driver asked, raising his voice to be heard over his shitty music.

“Can I change the destination? I’ve changed my mind.” Instead, I sent him to the bar, where Miles and Noah told me to meet them after dinner. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to show up on some woman’s doorstep, and I wasn’t going to sit around feeling sorry for myself. I was Lucian-fucking-Diamond. While my father might not have thought much of that, I had stopped listening to his opinion years ago.

There was only one person whose opinion seemed to matter at the moment, and she didn’t want me.

14

IVY

It took literally everything I had to drag myself up the stairs on my way to my apartment. I never thought I’d look forward to seeing it the way I did late Sunday afternoon. The weekend was as good as over.

It was like I’d been living in an alternate reality the past couple of days as I camped out in Mom’s room at the nursing home. It was all I could think to do once I’d gotten the call after work on Friday night, telling me she fell again. This time at the expense of her hip.

Just thinking about it made emotions swell in my chest, threatening to crush me. I couldn’t let it upset me again. I’d spent the whole weekend beside myself as it was. I didn’t know if there was enough moisture left in my body to shed a tear.

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