Page 5 of The Decadent Gift (The Gift 3)
Kate: Are they your driving gloves, Jake? You’re so fancy.
Jake: Yes. You found out my dirty little secret. I wear leather driving gloves while tooling around town in my Rolls.
Kate: How very dapper.
Jake: That’s me. Dapper and dandy. Anyway, they’re the boxing gloves because today has been a helluva day in the ring.
Kate: Ooh, tell me about all your fights. I presume you pulled no punches?
Jake: They don’t call me the hard-ass for nothing.
Kate: They call you that because your ass is hard?
Jake: Oh, hey. You noticed my ass. Excellent.
Kate: I was simply speculating on the nickname.
Jake: Don’t try to deny it now. You’ve been checking out the goods in the trunk. Understandable, since this ass is carved from stone.
Kate: Stone is cold and unpleasant.
Jake: Things no one says about my ass.
I inserted an eye-roll emoticon, then finished with . . .
Kate: Is there a list somewhere of things said about your ass? Admit it—you made that list yourself.
Jake: Don’t need to. I believe you’re that list’s keeper.
Kate: Now you’re the ass.
Jake: That may be true. In any case, I just finished birthday shopping with my sister for my mom, and I’m on my way over. I know you’re counting down the minutes. I’d bet money on it.
Kate: You’d lose that bet.
Jake: Doubtful. Highly doubtful.
Laughing, I shoved the phone into the side pocket of my purse. I was not counting down the minutes until I saw him.
Or the seconds.
Please. I had other matters on my mind.
Even though the man did have a terrific rear end.
Not to mention a handsome face.
And a fast mouth.
Damn him. Damn all the what-ifs I entertained about him.
3
Jake
My back was tight, my muscles taut. Hell, my mind had high-tension cables running through it.
That was par for the course for the last several weeks.
I left the office on a Thursday evening, the sun already set, the city lit with miles of neon, glitter, and glitz.
I drank in the New York skyline, the Eiffel Tower, the pyramid and its eye as the Lyft took me toward the Strip. A place I loved. Too bad it’d been a while since I’d enjoyed all this city had to offer. But this evening I was coming up for air.
It had been some time since I’d had a night out with my friends.
But first, shopping.
I tried to shed another long day as I headed to Caesars to meet my sister.
Christine had demanded my presence as a shopping companion, since our mom’s birthday was next week.
After the driver dropped me at the massive hotel, I made my way through the casino, enjoying the sound of games and slots until I reached the stores, scanning for Christine. My sister leaned against the wall outside the perfume store, dressed in black, her brown hair piled high on her head, a pair of silver glasses on her face, looking every bit the badass businesswoman she was. She founded and ran Hamilton-Carey, a cruelty-free beauty products company that supplied several of the hotels on the Strip.
She narrowed her eyes above the frames, like she didn’t recognize me. Staring down her straight nose, she acted as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Wait. Is that you? In the flesh? As I live and breathe?”
“No. It’s my hologram twin.”
“Ah, that makes more sense,” she said. “I was thinking ghost, but hologram tracks.”
“Fine. I’ll play your game.” I sighed like I was genuinely annoyed, but I wasn’t. I was, however, curious what the smarty-pants meant. “What exactly are you saying?”
She studied my face, peering at my eyes, my nose, my ears too. She patted my cheek. “It is you. I just wasn’t sure what you looked like. Now, I see you’ve aged ten years in these last few months.”
I scoffed. “Thanks. Good to see you too.”
She laughed, tossing her head back, having a blast at my expense. She slugged my arm. “Just giving you a hard time. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you that I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you,” she said, gesturing toward the shop.
We entered the land of olfactory overload, a bright white store with too many bottles of eau du toilette. But Mom liked her perfume. And moms deserved whatever they wanted for their birthdays.
Mom had a collection of favorite scents, so here we were, looking to add to it.
“It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve seen you, Christine.” Defensive was my natural state of mind. “Don’t you recall that I saw you when we were watching a Warriors game at your place with Carson?”
As we wandered past some celebrity scent created by a singer with only one name, Christine tossed me a skeptical look. “Hello? That Warriors game was three months ago. We watched it on Valentine’s Day. And I live two miles away from you. You haven’t seen your nephew recently either,” she said, but there wasn’t any accusation there. More like sadness, and that made me sad too.
