Page 61 of Big Balls
Sheila smiles, then reaches for me and hugs me quick and hard. I squeak. “I’m proud of you, Zoe Deveraux. The Autism Society of Greater New Orleans is lucky to have you.”
That’s right, I came back home with the stupid billionaires boys’ club guys on whoever’s private jet it was. Because it turns out I was running away from my problems, specifically my residual feelings for Big Balls and his perfect little Katy.
But I didn’t feel those feelings any less because I was in California. If anything, the distance made it so much more difficult to bear. At least now that I was back home, I could find little reminders of the happiness I’d had with the two of them.
If I got beignets, it reminded me of taking Katy to Cafe du Monde. If I walked through the park, I thought back to our picnic and leaf art project, and how Ethan’s looked like cat turds.
And now as the event coordinator for one of the leading autism and educational support charities in New Orleans, I was making things happen for kids like sweet Katy.
It felt right to set up this fundraising event with the Sinners’ WAGs. I remember Ethan telling me more than once that they were the epitome of everything good about the team, and it had certainly turned out to be true.
Every single woman in the room had put in the time and effort to make tonight’s event a major success. With most of the Sinners being coerced into attending, the rest of the high-dollar tickets sold quickly. Even before we’d dealt a single hand of cards, we’d raised enough money that we could establish a college scholarship for a high-achieving high school student with autism.
It was the Lisa Alexander Memorial Scholarship, and even though I hadn’t asked Ethan about it, his friends convinced me that he wouldn’t mind. They were the people he was the closest to in the world, so I believed them.
The trick was going to be how to pull off tonight without having to run into Ethan himself. I could be busy in the back room for a while, but eventually I was going to have to come out and give a small speech about the scholarship.
I had an arrangement with the other three members of the Big Easy Billionaires. I never asked about Ethan or hinted even that I cared whether he existed. In return, they didn’t bring up the topic of him or dating or anything like that to me.
It had been working well for us so far, but I knew Ethan was going to put in an appearance at this charity poker night, and it was much more difficult to pretend he didn’t exist when I had to see him in person, breathing and beautiful.
Maybe I could fake sick and head back home for the night. But my eyes skate across the room to the table housing my father and all of my brothers. Yes, of course they’d bought tickets. You would have thought I’d won some sort of award with the way they fussed over me for getting this event together.
It felt good to have them so obviously proud of me. And it might not be the hands-on teaching type work that I longed for, but I was doing good for kids like my brother and Katy. Plus the connections at this organization were directly tied to all of the best agencies and schools in the area.
Someday, I hoped to interview again with Worthington Academy. But this time, I’d be able to tell them about the charitable work I’d done. I was also volunteering at the local public school to help tutor some of the kids who were considered “high risk.” I was going to earn my way into Worthington on my own terms, not because Ethan Alexander bought me a job.
Damn him. I know he wanted to help me get back to where my entire family is, but what he did was both heavy-handed and more than a little bit insulting. I didn’t want my employment to ever be because someone I had been sleeping with paid for it. That felt way too transactional, like the only value I had was my sexual relationship to the person with money.
But more importantly, I didn’t want to be one of those people that Ethan Alexander thought was always trying to use him for his money and connections. He may have leveraged his money and connections for my benefit, but I wasn’t going to make use of them and prove him right.
I have more than enough drive to make it on my own. When Sebastian offered to set me up for an internship with this particular nonprofit, I had nailed down a job offer within the first three weeks of my tenure.
I hadn’t let up since. I was already getting a reputation for being aggressive and innovative with ideas for fundraising, including the event tonight.
And in light of the interview that Ethan had given, there was no way the attendees wouldn’t be emptying their wallets in support of this particular cause.
Ethan Alexander’s interview with Alicia Cuthbert aired on Wednesday evening, and even though today was now Saturday, it was still the only thing that anybody in New Orleans wanted to talk about.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch the interview, because I was not ready for another two to three days of eating Oreos in bed and feeling sorry for myself. Not yet.
I let Ethan Alexander ruin me once, but I was smarter now, and there was no way I was going to let it happen again. I’d built a fortress around whatever charred little pieces were left of my heart, then dug a moat around that fortress and filled it with alligators.
You get the point. There was a zero percent chance of me tuning in to listen to the man I still yearned for talk about his daughter or life as a single dad.
And according to popular rumor, he’d made some big statement about finding the right person and falling in love easily, and when I heard about it the first time, I had to excuse myself to the restroom for a small, quiet, toilet cry session.
I didn’t want him to be in love with anyone other than me. Why couldn’t he figure out that I was the right person? Why didn’t he bother coming to see me when I came back home? The worries on this issue had kept me twisted up inside my head for far too long.
For tonight, I have to put all of my messy feelings about Ethan Alexander away. I’m a professional, and I’ll do whatever I need to in order to make this event a major success tonight.
Jackson is the first of the guys to arrive. He comes into the ballroom and heads straight for me, letting out an ear-splitting wolf whistle. The table of my brothers and my father all start to rise up to defend my honor, but they sit down as soon as they see that I’m laughing and hugging the culprit.
“You’re a bad man, Jackson Schmidt.” I press a quick kiss to his cheek. “Where are the rest of the scoundrels?”
He holds me at arm’s length and spins me around one time. “They’re right behind me.” There’s something in his voice that tells me I’m not going to like how this is going to play out. “All of them, Zoe.”
My mouth goes dry, and my hands feel itchy. I feign a cheerfulness that I definitely do not feel. “Well, it was going to happen sooner or later. I guess it’s sooner rather than later.”
