Deceive (Declan Reede: The Untold Story #2) (29 page)

The drive to the city was just as awkward; the conversation stale and stilted. Even though I’d promised Alyssa I would stay, the urge to run still built within me. It weighed down my limbs and made every action more difficult than it should have been.

“I’m sorry about Dad and Josh,” Alyssa said. It was the fourth time she’d tried to apologise on their behalf.

I shook my head. “They were just looking out for you.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes, because if I did, I would falter. I would have broken down. The problem was that nothing Curtis and Josh had said was a lie. Every word was the truth—a truth I needed to remember so I didn’t hurt Alyssa worse than I already had. With the choices I’d made, I’d damaged her in ways I couldn’t possibly begin to fix.

Glancing across the car, the thought that staying with her would cause her more problems in the long run ran on a loop in my mind. To stop the words coming out of my mouth, I sighed and raked my hand through my hair.

“They’re wrong!” she said. Each word was pitched higher than the last. “Ask me again.”

The insistent tone in her voice drew my attention. As I parked the car, I watched her carefully as I spoke. “Ask you what?”

“What you asked me last night. On the dance floor. Ask me again.”

“Move in with me?” I asked, trying to confirm whether that was the question she wanted me to ask.

“Yes, Declan. Yes. I want to.”

“But what about—” I wanted to raise all the concerns the doc had raised, the points her father and Josh had made. I wasn’t to be trusted. I was poisonous. Because of me, she would be hurt again. She pressed her fingers to my lips to cut me off.

“I don’t care about anything else. The details will work themselves out in the end. All I know is that I don’t want to be apart from you again. I let you walk away once, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it again. These last few weeks have been un-fucking-believable. I’ve dreamt about you sweeping me back into your arms so many times during the years. That’s why I needed another taste of the forbidden fruit in London. How could I resist it? Resist you. You’re every dream I ever had. But this, Dec, everything you’ve done and become since coming home, it’s all been so much more than I could have ever imagined.”

“But, Lys—”

“No, no buts. It’s my fault we had a bad start to the night. I thought my father would be more mature than that. He seemed to understand . . .” She trailed off and then sighed. “Let’s worry about that later. For now, let’s go inside and enjoy ourselves.”

I scrunched my nose in disgust—it might have been for a good cause, but at the end of the day, I was still going to be stuck as the “celebrity du jour” for the night.

Alyssa laughed a little, the melodic tune helping to lighten my mood. At least a little.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Okay,” she repeated with a firm voice. “Let’s do it.”

I took a deep breath and pushed open the car door. As she came near me, I eyed Alyssa’s shoes. They were fuck-hot and made her legs appear longer, but they weren’t exactly practical. Especially considering I’d had to park under King George Square secure parking, and we’d have a short walk to City Hall, where the benefit was being held.

“Aren’t those a bit of a health hazard?” I asked, nodding at her feet.

She lifted one foot and twisted it left and then right. Fantasies of fucking her with those shoes on raced through my mind as she did. “They’re just shoes,” she said, after a moment.

At first, I thought she was responding to the fantasies playing through my mind.

“No, I mean you used to have a habit of tripping over thin air,” I teased. “Do you really think stilettos were a good choice?”

She poked her tongue out at me and I narrowed my eyes.

“Do that again,” I dared her, wrapping my arms around her waist and holding her tightly.

When she stuck her tongue out again, I captured it between my lips. With a small moan of delight rumbling in my throat, I sucked it into my mouth before pushing my own forward to meet it. She melted into me as our kiss grew hotter and less PG-13. She shivered in my hold, and I backed away. “Let’s get you inside. It’ll be warmer in there.”

She nodded.

I slung my arm around her shoulders, and together we walked to City Hall. As we came up onto the top of the square, two thoughts struck me. The first was that the last time I’d been to City Hall was for the New Year’s Ball—the one where I’d fucked Darcy in the cloakroom. It made me sick to my stomach to think that I had ever stuck my dick into that skank, but the thought that sickened me the most was that she was by no means the worst. I’d sunk to much deeper depths during my time away from Alyssa.

The second thing that struck me was that by going into the fundraiser with Alyssa on my arm, I was announcing to the public that I was a changed man. I was
arriving
at a function with a date rather than just leaving with someone else’s. It might have seemed insignificant, but I was telling the world that Alyssa Dawson owned me completely. That I was trying to put my past behind me for a better future. The doubts and concerns, which had threatened to drown me all night, lifted with the thought. I stole a glance at Alyssa and saw she was watching me intently.

“Wow,” she whispered. “What just happened? You look . . . lighter somehow.”

“I just realised I love you.”

She chuckled. “Good, because I love you too.”

I moved my hand so that it rested on her hip and pushed her into the room slightly ahead of me. A few heads turned to look at her, before looking away. Then many turned back for a second glance. She was stunning, so I wasn’t surprised by the lingering gazes, but it was the way the realisation of who she’d arrived with seemed to domino around the room that surprised me. Whispered conversations broke out everywhere. I felt like hoisting Alyssa up onto my shoulders and declaring to everyone in the room that yes, she was mine. Or perhaps more appropriately, that I was hers. And always had been.

I held my head up high—unable to stop the huge-arse grin that crossed my features—as I led Alyssa to our assigned table. It was sitting empty, and I cringed when I saw the sign on the table that read
Wood Racing
. I should’ve known Paige would do something like that to set me up somehow, but I’d already promised. I didn’t want to let the kids down either, so I didn’t make a fuss. However, I did grumble about it in Alyssa’s ear when I pulled her seat out for her.

“Don’t stress,” she whispered back. “You still have your autograph session or whatever is going to happen. You can mention your true colours then.”

“You’re not only beautiful, and sexy, but wise too.” I kissed her on the cheek and took my own seat. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“You got lucky, I guess.” A small grin crossed her lips.

I leaned across the gap between us, placing one hand in her lap and the other on the back of her chair so I could get close enough to her that I could whisper in her ear without anyone else listening in. “Do you think I’ll get lucky again later?”

Alyssa flushed and squirmed in her seat before glancing around the room. After a moment, her eyes grew wide as she looked at some of the other attendees—she was clearly in awe of the B-list celebrities and obvious money in the room.

I’d neglected to tell her that to get a ticket for a fundraiser such as the one we were at generally cost between two and five hundred dollars a seat. Not to mention it was upwards of two grand for a table. It was where the wannabe rich and powerful came together to show how willing they were to unite for a good cause. This one was for a children’s hospital, but another night it might be for cancer research or the RSPCA. At the end of the day, it was often more about showing how philanthropic they could be than it was about the specific cause.

Usually I hated having to attend them, but with Alyssa at my side, it wasn’t so bad.

The seats at our table filled slowly. With each new arrival, my heart sank further. I recognised each and every one of the faces who had taken seats near us, and they were all associated with Wood in one way or another. Alex, the Wood PR agent, walked in with her business partner, Ross. They sat across from us at the table. Alyssa gave Alex a small smile but earned nothing but a glare in response.

“Do you know her?” I asked Alyssa, even though I had my suspicions about the reason for the look. After all, being driverless, and forced to rely on the competition for help, was no doubt a PR nightmare for Alex. That made me, for all intents and purposes, the enemy at the table. Unfortunately for Alyssa, she was tarred with the same brush by association.

My suspicions were made stronger when Alyssa shook her head and whispered back, “Never seen her before in my life.”

Right before the doors were due to close and dinner was to begin, another couple entered. I watched as they walked across to our table, filling the two remaining seats. One of them I recognised instantly. Felix Wood—Paige Wood’s son. He’d gone into football instead of cars. Despite that, I wasn’t overly surprised to see him representing his mother’s team at the fundraiser. He was as big a drawcard as anyone else at the function after all.

I didn’t immediately recognise the woman on his arm, but there was something vaguely familiar about her. Her bright red hair was twisted into a loose mess at her nape. She wore a tight-fitting green dress that hung so low on her chest that only her nipples were covered, and they were so erect they almost held the material away from her skin anyway. I pondered the familiarity of her a little more, watching intently as she sat down beside me.

While I was still starting at her, she turned to face me, her face forming a small smile.

“Declan,” she purred. “What a surprise to see you here.”

She sounded anything but surprised, and I wished I could place where I knew her from. A sinking suspicion grew within me that she was a one-night stand come back to bite my arse.

Alyssa gasped beside me. At first, I thought it was purely because of the obvious note of recognition the woman’s voice held as she’d spoken to me. When I turned to look at Alyssa though, she was staring at the other woman as if they were old acquaintances. I stole another glance at the vaguely familiar stranger—who seemed to know me—for a moment, trying to figure out where I knew her from.

And where Alyssa might know her from.

She took Alyssa’s hand and introduced herself as Matilda, and in that moment, I understood exactly who she was. And just how dangerous it was for her to be at my table with Alyssa.

Fuck me
. I wanted to groan into my hands and then drag Alyssa from the table. To go anywhere else.

It didn’t make sense. Why the fuck was “Tillie from the club” at the fucking fundraiser? Tillie from the magazine cover. Tillie of the fucking infamous public threesome after Bathurst that had been a major catalyst in everything that followed.

Even though I probably should have thanked her, because everything that had happened after that had led me back into Alyssa’s embrace, I couldn’t. All I could think about was whether she might be the reminder that would force Alyssa to understand the truth in her father’s words.

I felt a strong urge to apologise for dragging her to the event and making her have to sit across from the woman from my past. The last thing either of us needed was any further reminders of my prior indiscretions after the way our evening had started. There was no way for me to do that without drawing further attention to the uncomfortable situation though. I turned my face up to the ceiling so I didn’t have to look at either woman and begged the ground to open up and swallow me whole. When that didn’t work, I excused myself from the table and almost raced into the men’s room.

For a few minutes, I paced the room, screaming obscenities at the mirror before splashing my face with water to try to force myself to focus. When I walked back to the table, I found Alyssa and Tillie in conversation. Alyssa was actually smiling—either she was a better actress than I thought or she didn’t actually know who she was talking to.

“Dec,” Alyssa said, looking up at me with a smile. “I never told you about my flight home from London, did I?”

It seemed a random statement, and I didn’t know what to make of it. With the question dancing on the tip of my tongue, I shook my head as I squeezed myself back in between the two of them.

“I—I was on the same flight as you,” Alyssa admitted.

My jaw fell open as all of the near misses I’d written off as impossible came flooding back.

“I’m sorry,” Alyssa continued. “It was childish, I know, but I just couldn’t—” She cut herself off. “Well, you know.”

With my jaw still gaping and my mind still racing over where she might be going with her admissions, I nodded. I understood her need to run, to protect herself and Phoebe. I’d been an arse to her and she had every right to avoid me.

“Anyway, Tillie here rescued me when I was in desperate need of a coffee.”

My stomach plummeted as I recalled seeing Tillie order the drink, and exactly what happened after when she returned to my table.

“Declan and I actually had a conversation after I got your coffee.” Tillie placed her hand on my arm.

I wanted to snatch away from her hold, but there were too many gazes levelled in my direction to do anything stupid.