An Improper Deal (Elliot & Annabelle #1) (Billionaires' Brides of Convenience Book 3) (22 page)

I don’t understand. “What are you talking about?”

“Somebody spiked the punch.”

Cold sweat covers my palms and leaves a shivery trail down my spine. Fury throbs at the base of my skull. “Who would do that?” I jump to my feet, blood roaring in my ears. “Who the
fuck
dumped champagne in the punch?” My voice is shrill.

“Oh my gosh, what’s the big deal?” Tiffany says. “I put some in to spice things up. Who drinks such a bland punch?”

“You!” I march toward her. If she weren’t Elliot’s stepmother… “Are you freaking in
sane?
She’s a minor!”

“She’s fifteen. I started drinking even younger.” Tiffany rolls her eyes. “Everyone in Europe drinks when they’re teenagers, and they’re fine. If you’d let her indulge once in a while, she wouldn’t be such a lightweight.”

I clench my hands, my arms stiff. I so want to slap that superior expression off her face. “Get out,” I say between my teeth.

“Excuse me?” she says, a hand over her chest.

“Get. Out. You aren’t welcome here.”

“You can’t do that.” She turns to Elliot. “Tell your wife! She can’t just order me to get out. This is your home.”

“And now hers as well,” Elliot says, his voice cold.

She looks at Julian. “Say something! I won’t stand for this disrespect.”

“I won’t stand for yours either,” I say before Julian can weigh in. “Do you have
any
idea how dangerous it is to get a young girl drunk without her knowledge or consent? Thank god she was with people who care about her, but…” I swallow the rest as ugly memories I’ve worked so hard to ignore start pushing at me. “Get out. Now!”

Julian gives me a narrow-eyed look, then he shrugs. “Let’s go.”

“We can’t just go like this!” Tiffany points at everyone but Julian and herself. “This kind of stuff happens because you’re too easy on your kids.”

Blake raises his eyes heavenward. “Oh, yes. God save us from overindulgent parents.”

“See that?” Tiffany gestures at him. “Obvious disrespect!”

“Tif, we are leaving.
Now
.” Julian’s voice is hard, full of authority.

It cows her, and she takes her clutch and leaves, head held high. You’d think I was the one being unfair.

I gather Nonny in my arms and spare a brief glance at my guests. “You should go ahead and eat. I’ll take care of my sister.” I breathe in deeply. Embarrassment and anger swirl inside me, a volatile mixture like a bomb about to go off. I tilt my chin and face Elliot and his siblings. “I’m sorry you had to witness that. But the chef has done some amazing work, so you should go ahead and enjoy the dinner. Nonny and I will be fine.”

“If you need my—” Elliot begins.

“No!” I stop, realizing I almost screamed at him. I inhale deeply, doing my best to defuse the bomb in my head. “No,” I say again, more calmly this time. “You’re the host. I can take care of my sister myself.”

Annabelle

Nonny’s heavy, but I manage to carry her to her room. She’s so out of it she doesn’t even stir when I put her on the bed. I smooth the hair from her face. An old mixture of dread and panic wraps around my throat, and I fight for air.

Get a grip girl! This isn’t about you
.
It’s about your sister
.

I drag a chair over and sit by her bed. She’s breathing evenly. She turns to her side and curls up, holding my hand. I squeeze it.

She should never have to know what it’s like to wake up after passing out from drinking. Granted, I don’t think any of Elliot’s siblings would let anything happen to her, but I thought the same thing when—

The door to the suite opens, and Elliot slips in.

“What are you doing here?” I say. There’s no way the five-course meal is over already.

“Everyone left.”

“Why? They shouldn’t have.”

“Hard to pretend everything’s fine when something like this happens.” His voice is calm, and I can’t quite figure out what he’s trying to say really. Does he blame me for ruining the event?

I make sure Nonny is fine, then stand up and gesture for him to leave the room with me. I don’t stop until we reach the master suite.

Elliot follows me in and closes the door behind him. “I’m sorry about Tiffany, but you went overboard. Nothing would’ve happened to Nonny. I would’ve made sure.”

“That’s not the point,” I tell him. “I don’t want Nonny to feel comfortable or safe about drinking, ever.”

“Why not? Everyone does it.”

“So if everyone jumps off a bridge, she should too?”

He cants his head. “You’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“No. You just don’t get it because you’re a man. Who’s going to hurt you even if you pass out? Worst case, somebody robs you, but it’s just money.”

“Gigi—”

I raise a hand. I don’t want to hear him call me by another woman’s name. Maybe that woman would’ve been more understanding, but I’m not her. He doesn’t know anything about me. “I can’t stay here if this kind of thing happens again.”

“For fuck’s sake, you’re being unreasonable.”

That only pisses me off more. “She could’ve been hurt! When a young woman gets drunk like that she is a victim waiting to happen because there’s no guarantee that the people she thought were on her side won’t take advantage of her. Don’t you know anything? Fine, it’s okay now. I get it. But what about next time? What if she gets careless or somebody spikes her drink again? She could be raped or get pregnant or ruin her life or experience hundreds of horrible scenarios!” My chest rises and falls rapidly as I slash the air with my arm.

Elliot pulls back, but his brilliant eyes never leave my face. “Did something like this happen to you?” he asks, his voice quiet.

I swallow a hot lump in my throat. Panic and anger have made me careless. “No,” I say. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Elliot just looks at me.

“It’s common sense.” Wrapping my arms around myself, I tear my gaze away. “Every young woman knows this.”

“No. Elizabeth ‘knows’, but not the way you seem to.”

I flinch, my eyes flying up to meet his. “Did something happen to her?”

“No. I’m saying something happened to you. She can quote statistics and studies. She raises money to help women and children, and she has to be able to throw numbers and anecdotes at potential donors to get them to fork over some money. But she doesn’t react the way you do.”

Dizziness comes suddenly, and I grip the vanity behind me. “I see.”

“So.” He folds his arms. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” I’m not going to talk about the sordid story. It’s so cliché, it’s painful.

“Were you raped?” he asks quietly.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know or you don’t remember?”

I just shake my head. Coldness seeps all the way to my bones, and I clench my teeth. Breaths hiss through them.

“Did you get pregnant?”

I shake my head. I don’t even want to think about that period of my life. If I deny it, it doesn’t exist. Nobody knows anyway, not even Traci. Whoever got me pregnant never stepped forward, and if the universe has even a modicum of kindness, the boy was too drunk to remember anything.

“Look at me.” Elliot steps up, grips my upper arms and shakes me. “Look at me when you deny it.”

My eyes clash with his. They’re thunderous, a stormy sea of seething emotions.

“Tell me again you weren’t.”

I swallow. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that nothing happened to me, and I’m just a girl who had your typical upper middle class childhood, nothing more, nothing less. But I can’t. The lie sticks in my throat, and the hot ugly truth, the one I’ve kept buried deep inside all these years, finally comes out.

“I drank,” I begin, my voice low. “And I passed out. Seven weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. Couldn’t tell anyone. No doctors.”

I couldn’t have the baby. I was only fifteen at the time. My parents would’ve been so disappointed, devastated in fact, that I put myself in that position. Mom in particular told me to be smart because girls have to be smarter than boys—we’re weaker and more fragile…and we have something they want badly enough they’ll sometimes resort to violence to get it.

But I didn’t listen. I was so very stupid.

“What happened to the baby?” Elliot asks.

“I miscarried,” I whisper. But there’s always a part of me that will forever wonder if the miscarriage happened, in part, anyway, because I didn’t want the child. I wanted to expel it from my body with the force of my will—and more—because no doctor would get rid of it without informing my parents first.

“Jesus.”

I pry my arms from his grip and step away. “Does it bother you that I’m damaged like that? I’m not just some fun, carefree stripper who likes sex for money.”

“Shut up,” he says roughly. “Not a single unkind word about yourself or I’ll put you over my knee.”

“Why would you care?”

“What the hell does that mean? Of course I care!” He drags his hands through his hair. “What happened to you is wrong!”

“I’m just one in four. Not that unusual. I looked up the stats.”

He spins around, then rushes toward me. His face is in mine. “
So that justifies what happened to you?
” He flings his arm. “Fucking numbers? They justify nothing.”

Suddenly I’m tired. I don’t even know why I’m expending emotional energy on him. “You’re right. They don’t. Let’s just stop. There’s no reason for you to be so upset.”

“How can you just dismiss it like…that? What’s the matter with you?”

I laugh. It is an ugly sound, but I can’t help it. It kills me that he wants to know what’s wrong with me. Doesn’t he know? “How can you ask me that? You’re the one who insisted that I’m not good enough.”

He recoils as though struck. “What are you talking about? I’ve never said anything like that.”

“You won’t even call me by my name. To you, I’m a substitute for Gigi, not a person. Not a woman named Annabelle Key. But because I need money and you have plenty to spare, you get to make me into whatever you want.” He pales, but I don’t stop. The dam that used to contain my bitterness has been breached, I couldn’t control the torrent even if I wanted to. “You’re just like that boy who took me when I was unconscious. To him I wasn’t a person either. Just some orifice where
he
could stick
his
dick for
his
pleasure.”

A tremor racks him. His hands clench so tightly, his knuckles turn white.

My mouth keeps going. “Don’t worry. I signed the contract. So I’ll honor it. I won’t be like my father who cheated and lied.”

Our rough breathing fills the room. It takes a while before Elliot finally blinks.

The muscles in his jaw bunch, and his Adam’s apple twitches. “If you think that way, why did you even agree to the deal?” His lips barely move as he speaks.

“Money. What else? That’s all you offered, isn’t it?”

Except for the two red blotches on his cheeks, he’s even paler now, but it’s not the pallor of the sick. It’s the pallor of someone at a precipice and debating whether he should just let loose or rein it in.

I continue, “I need it so I can have the kind of life I want for myself, so I can provide for my sister. I’m sick of not being in control because I have nothing.”

His knuckles are bone white. “You are wrong,” he says. “You already had something, but you just didn’t know it because you thought you were damaged and unworthy somehow.”

“Don’t talk like you know me.”

“Don’t I? You’ve sacrificed everything for your sister. You won’t touch a drop of alcohol. You sold yourself for money because that’s all you put any value on. Without the million bucks I threw in your face, you would’ve never slept with me because you’d never enjoyed sex before.”

Each observation pierces me like a lance, leaving me bleeding. I curl my hands. “Isn’t it great? We decorate our relationship so prettily, but ultimately you’re my john and I’m your whore.”

He closes the distance between us in a step that’s almost a leap. His hands wrap around my upper arms, and he shakes me until my teeth rattle. “If you ever say that about yourself again, I swear to god—”

“You’re hurting me!”

Instantly, he lets go. The handprints look livid on my bare skin. Anger and regret flit through his eyes, one following the other, as he glares at me.

Then without another word, he stalks out of the room.

I sink to the floor, curling up with my knees supporting my head and my arms wrapped around my folded legs. The area where Elliot grabbed me throbs, but the physical pain is nothing compared to what’s inside me. I feel like somebody’s taken a wrecking ball to my heart.

Elliot

Anger and shame churn as I stride out of the penthouse, pounding against my skull. I have to get the hell out before I do something I’ll regret. I don’t trust myself to talk to her rationally. I’ve already hurt her. The marks on her arms… They’re probably going to bruise. Damn it. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I knew better than to lose control. The last time I lost it… Jesus.
I don’t lose control
,
I don’t let women get to me
. They just roll off like raindrops on an umbrella—just as inconsequential and forgettable.

The story of her rape goes through my head in an infinite loop.
What the hell?
None of the background checks dug up any info about a rape or subsequent pregnancy…or miscarriage. On the other hand, it makes sense that she wouldn’t tell anybody…although it’s mind-boggling that her doctors had no clue. But maybe she never got checked and just let her body do its thing.

I’ve stopped underestimating women—and how far they will go to get what they want.

A violent need to destroy something roils in my gut. I would do anything to go back and rip apart the son of a bitch who took her choice away from her.

You’re just like that boy
…

Fuck.
Fuck!

I tunnel my fingers into my hair and grip until it feels like it’s coming unrooted. I didn’t… She has no idea what the hell she’s talking about. But then how could she know when I never told her?

My siblings don’t know either. I’ve never talked about it. At first I was a malleable idiot. Then later I was too humiliated and furious.