Page 19 of Filthy Rich

Apparently not, because Lilah told us what we were having for dinner, and it struck me as absolutely hilarious. Spaghetti and…meatballs.

Of course I immediately thought of Caleb and the flowers he’d sent to me. But more so my very rude rant when he’d called me to flirt. He had been flirting with me. I knew it, and I shut him down anyway. I’d been rather a bitch to him, and Caleb had been nothingbutnice to me.

I pulled my phone out of my purse and took some pictures of Nan and Herman first, because they were adorable and so happy together it was a must. Then I arranged my plate of spaghetti and meatballs for a photo op and snapped some foodie pics.

“What on earth are you doing, Brooke?” Nan asked me.

“I’m taking pictures of your engagement dinner, Nan. Every woman should be so lucky to have spaghetti and meatballs when she gets engaged.”

Ileft Nan and Herman after dinner and took myself home to the cottage. Home tomycottage. Now, that little idea was going to take some getting used to, but I felt confident I could manage it. How did I go from paranoia about money to owning a two-million-dollar cottage on Blackstone Island in the space of an evening? How was that even possible? My nan was marrying her long-lost love, Herman, who just happened to be the mayor. They were getting married in exactly one month and I was planning it with Eduardo, who didn’t even know he’d been commandeered into service.

God.

I wanted to do a bit of research tonight, and make some notes on ideas for the wedding, so I could be ready to begin full speed ahead with the actual plans in the morning. Only a month’s time to prepare. I knew it would be a challenge, but I’d make sure it was special for Nan and Herman if it killed me.

The first thing I did whenever I got home was change out of my work clothes. By the end of the day, I was beyond ready to ditch leather leggings and boots after nearly twelve hours of wearing them. The bra, too. Nothing felt better than to exchange the pretty stuff for cozy flannel pajamas and warm socks that maybe weren’t quite so pretty.

I made some tea and drafted a long email to Eduardo with the details and invited him to come over to the island tomorrow—if he was free—so we could search venues. I assumed they would want it at Stone Church, the old stone chapel perched against the rocky shoreline. Very stark, but reminiscent of the chapel on Cumberland Island where JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette married. It was going to be gorgeous.

It was just past ten when I picked up my phone to look at the pictures I’d taken of Herman and Nan. I saw the spaghetti and meatballs pictures, too. I don’t know why I decided to message Caleb. It was stupid really, but I wanted to reach out to him and apologize again. I felt badly with how our conversation had gone about west-side vs. south-end. Ouch. So bitchy on my part. My comments had been cringeworthy, despite the fact I couldn’t remember them exactly. Thank. God.

I did remember, however, that Caleb had said for me to think of him whenever I saw a meatball.

It was the least I could do to be accommodating, I told myself as I tapped out my text.

Thought of you tonight at dinner. –Brooke

I attached a picture of my plate of meatballs and pressed Send.

Nine

CALEB

“Fuck!”

Fuckshitcocksuckermotherfucker.What were the odds she would contact me now? I stared at Brooke’s text and wanted to call her so badly. I wanted to talk to her, mostly to hear her say my name in that beautiful, oh-so-proper voice of hers. “Is this Caleb calling?” I could hear her saying it. Knew exactly how she would sound when she did.

But I couldn’t call her right now no matter how badly I wanted to.

It would screw up my plans for Monday. She didn’t yet know I’d retained her services for my penthouse, and of course, had no knowledge my family employed her grandmother at Blackwater from the time before I was born, either. I had to set my plan for Blackwater in motion first, and then I’d tell Brooke who I really was, when we were at a point where the mistakes that’d been made were being set right. She’d never give me a chance otherwise. Brooke would tell me to fuck on off to my west-side mansion with the rest of the filthy-rich bastards who didn’t understand how things really worked.

I could hear her voice saying those words, too.

I wasn’t really concerned about my name because there were a lot of Blackstones in this area, probably distant relations, but it was still a common enough name to pull off anonymity when we met on Monday. I didn’t want her to know I was on the island this weekend, either, and if I called her back now, I knew I would cave and ask to meet her somewhere. She was too tantalizing to me and the temptation too immense for me to trust myself.

Her message made me fucking happy, though. Brooke thought about me at dinner tonight. She remembered the idiot with the black eye and the inability to be coherent—and she hadn’t ditched my number, either.

I stared at the picture she’d sent and wondered what time she’d been eating her dinner, and where she ate it, and with whom. I wanted to know every detail.

I suspected it was right about the same time I’d been jerking off in the shower to thoughts of her. Pretty pathetic. What would she think of me if she knew?

Lucas strolled back into his game room with a bottle of Lagavulin in one hand and two Cohiba Espléndidos in the other. “What was the f-bomb for?”

“I’m gonna need some of that Lag before I can go there, bro.”

“Brooke is why you came here. I figured out that much already.”

I looked pointedly at the bottle of Scotch in his hand as a reply.

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