Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,130
perfect white smile and his Ivy-League smirk, Joshua Grayson is exactly the kind of man I would choose to run a company — but not the kind of man I would choose to take to bed. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me like I’m a child, all the more disturbing since he’s known me my entire life. I’m all grown up now, but I know when he talks to me he still sees the shy teenage girl who had a habit of hiding behind her older, more confident sister.
“Avery,” he nods, standing when I enter the room. “Happy birthday. Nice to see you before the big night.”
“Thank you,” I nod my hello, as bile burns in my throat.
“The weather’s perfect for a rooftop soirée,” he adds, trying to keep the conversation going. When he smiles, a deep dimple creases his right cheek. I’d like to stab my manicured nail into his dimple and wipe the smile right off his face. He has one of those deep voices that makes my chest hum when he speaks, but I can’t say I enjoy listening to him.
“Perfect,” I agree. I try so hard to be cordial, but it’s already exhausting. I don’t want to be talking to this guy. I don’t want to be here. It’s my twenty-fifth birthday, and I want to be having shots off some half-naked bartender’s abs, not making small talk about the fucking weather with the guy my father wants me to marry.
“Well, I should let you two get on with it. I’ll see you both tonight.”
“Bye,” I say, a little too loudly, a little too saccharine sweet. Josh is smart. He knows I can’t stand him. So far, it hasn’t swayed his quest to put a ring on my finger and a hefty percentage of Capulet stocks into his share portfolio.
I watch him button his jacket as he stands and leaves the office, making sure to brush past me with his elbow as he exits. His hands are big, but sophisticated, perfect for playing the piano. I wonder what he’s like in bed, if he’d wrap that hand around my throat while he was inside me, or use it over my mouth to stifle a moan, and even though my cheeks pool with blood at the thought of fucking the guy who’s just finished a business meeting with my father, something cold settles in my stomach.
Resignation. Loss.
It is something like dying, this process. I might be obedient and poised by day, nodding my head and smiling when it’s appropriate, but in the dark my nightmares come to feed off me, hungry little vampires that sap me of every bit of strength and bravery that I possess. I bolt upright in the dead of night, when the only light is red numbers on my bedside table that tell me how many more hours until it’s light again — the dark hours when all I can think about is how to stop the full-force collision my fate is careening toward.
I wait until the door swings shut before I turn to my father, letting out a breath. “Jesus fucking Christ, can you let me know next time I’m about to be ambushed by my stalker?”
“Avery!” My father says sharply. He’s already drinking, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand as he turns from the window to address me.
“Happy birthday, dear daughter,” I say in a silly voice, pretending to be him. “Why thank you, Daddy! I’m so glad I get to be paraded around San Francisco like a mail-order-bride on my birthday! How sweet of you to remember.”
I flop down into the chair facing Daddy’s large mahogany desk, the one that I’ll be replacing with sleek glass and metal when it’s my time to move in and let him retire somewhere exotic and remote. All of his old-school furniture makes the place feel stuffy, confined, even though this office takes up half the top floor of Capulet Corp.
“What was he doing here, anyway?”
My father looks at the ground. Panic floods me. “Daddy?” I raise my eyes in disbelief when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a red Cartier box, setting it on the desk between us as if it’s a bomb.
I snatch up the box, praying to the Jesus I just blasphemed ten seconds ago that there’s a necklace or a pair of earrings, anything but—
An engagement ring. The diamond sticking out of the box is obscenely big. Princess cut, at least five carats, a diamond