Page 19 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

“Ms. Cannon?” Carl Erikson, the host of this party and the only man brave enough to step forward when everyone else moves back, grabs Christabelle’s arm and gently pulls her away. “It’s time for speeches, I think. My sweet Janey is ready.”

Pissed, Christabelle’s daring eyes come back to mine and pin me where I stand. “You’re not scary, Mr. Malone. You’re just a man. A mortal. You’re a bully who was handed big guns and an even bigger ego. But that’s all you have.” Her lips curl into a dangerous sneer. “Perhaps you’ll die too, just as your mother did all those years ago.”

“Ms. Cannon!” Erikson pulls her back, more forcefully this time.

He’s an antelope, stuck between two lions. One is the glitterati, able to make or break a family’s social reputation with a single penned piece. The other, a gangster willing and able to end lives for everyone he holds dear.

Being me is not about being a bully, like Christabelle thinks. It’s about running a business. And to do that means keeping everyone in line.

There can be no progress without organization.

“Please,” Erikson begs, desperate in the way he pulls on her arm, “would you escort me to the dining room?”

“Keep my brothers’ names out of your mouth, Christabelle.” I take a step closer, two steps, and stop only when our chests touch and her sweet perfume fills my lungs. “It’s best you heed my advice.”

“And if I don’t?” She jerks her arm free from our host and stares up at me with eyes I swear hold fear. Pride, too. Passion. Emotion. “What will you do about it?”

“Ms. Cannon?” Another man, older, more fatherly than Erikson, steps into the room and crosses to the dance floor, taking a hat from the top of his head. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but there has been a family emergency. We must go.”

“Edward…” She swallows whatever else she might’ve liked to say, but holds my stare. Her glorious, silver-eyed gaze demanding I answer her questionsor else.

Tensions in the room run thick, and the silence of those around us is glaring enough to make me realize that even the piano man has stopped playing.

Finally, she breaks our standoff with a nod and turns away. In doing so, she inadvertently—or not so inadvertently—shows off luscious back dimples and a long spine that disappears behind a bow that would reveal her modesty if it came undone. Her long hair dangles to the middle of her back, wavy and with a few salon-styled curls that play off her olive-toned skin.

Typically, I’m more into the brown-eyed, brown-haired type. But Christabelle’s existence has me reconsidering. Her stare, reassessing. Her attitude, sparking an odd war within the depths of my stomach between familial protection and desire.

“Congratulations on your engagement, Janey.” Cannon smiles for the chick and lowers into a subtle curtsy. Then she looks to Erikson and tips her chin. “A family emergency. I must excuse myself.”

“Of course.” Visibly relieved that the conflict appears to have come to an end, he snaps his fingers and successfully sets everyone in motion again.

The piano music resumes, the guests mill around once more, and a server slides in like he has wheels on the bottoms of his shoes.

“Yes, sir?” he asks Mr. Erikson.

“Fetch Ms. Cannon’s coat. Immediately.” He offers his arm and waits for Christabelle to wrap hers around, then they’re off, leaving the rest of us behind and my temper flaring.

I’m not Timothy Malone. I never have toforcea woman into my bed. They come willingly. But watching this one walk away, her svelte body burned into my memories, and her aggressive defiance my newest kink, it’s too much to bear.

So I scour the party for someone to bring home for the night.

I want to take. I want to steal.

I don’t want to begiven.

Stopping on the hotel heiress whose engagement isn’t worth shit anyway, I crook my finger and grin when she walks my way.

She’s angry too. Her party, ruined. Her spotlight, shining on another woman. She has a little toxic energy to work through, so when I offer her my arm and not a single word of explanation, she takes it.

“Let’s go.”

I head to the left, where Christabelle moved to the right. But I don’t miss her heated, silver stare as Jane and I cross the threshold and walk away from the dud of a party. I don’t miss the scorn from a woman who thinks she’s royalty and above all others.

No one has ever told her different.

It’s time her bubble is burst.

Sliding out of bed twelve hours after I left the Eriksons’ penthouse, I leave the woman whose wedding may or may not go ahead in a month, as the invitations currently circulating indicate. I guess it depends on what her fiancé has to say about where she spent her night.

---