the eyes either.
Bradford told me he would pick me up at six o’clock and not be alarmed when he showed up with an overnight bag he had packed from rifling through my things. I will be staying with him again tonight. All he needed to know is my wig color choice of the day, and I requested he has a supply of condoms on hand.
I was glad to have a few days away from my apartment. I needed a break from the building after the dumpster scare, and it sounds like my parents’ apartment was under construction on the third floor. I refuse to call it that slimeball’s apartment. He is dead to me.
I have to sever my emotional ties with Queenie’s and look at the place as a roof over my head and my workplace two days a week. I might even throw in the job and concentrate on Kingdom of Wigs. It is my mother’s baby, and I feel closer to her when I am working here.
Last night was the first night I have ever slept anywhere but at Queenie’s, and I didn’t miss it. I realize now how thick the air was with the tension between the slimeball and me.
I’m on my own now.
I’m free.
I’m going to enjoy this time with Bradford, however fleeting it may be.
Queenie now reigns over her life.
16
King
It’s been a week since Queenie’s attack, and so much has changed in my life.
Every night I brought her back to my city penthouse. I made her dinner, well, Chef did, and then we hung out like two people should as they got to know each other. After dinner, we sometimes watched old ‘80s movies in the theatre room with Hemsworth and Chef. We took midnight swims in the indoor heated pool. Layken and her husband, Henry, visited, and we made love every night.
I thought I had it all before I met Queenie. Money can buy me anything my heart desires, but it can’t buy love.
Yes, I’m falling in love with her, and I know it is too soon for that. But what do you do?
Today is Queenie’s twenty-fourth birthday, and I’m holding a surprise party for her on the second floor of Queenie’s. The unused space has gotten a facelift. I added a small kitchen, and the bar got upgraded. It’s more like a cozy gentleman’s room of the early twentieth century with deep club chairs, surrounding low tables, and a crackling fireplace brought back to life that had been standing dormant.
Xander and the larger extended crew he brought in made quick work of turning the third floor into one big airy two-bedroom penthouse with a theatre room and study, leaving all the original features. All of Queenie’s furniture and personal items have been put back with plenty of space for her to redecorate and add other pieces.
Tonight I’m going to reveal what I have done as a birthday gift for her. I like Queenie staying with me, but now we can stay at Queenie’s as well. I’ve got two homes in Chicago, the modern penthouse and the late nineteenth-century German Baroque Lincoln Park Mansion, which was my parents’ home. I haven’t wanted to stay there for long periods since their death, but now I want to show it off to Queenie and get her input on redecorating the place.
Because it’s a Sunday and Queenie’s tavern is closed, I’ve invited the bar staff she’s worked with and all of Xander’s crew and Chef and Hemsworth. Henry and Layken are coming, and so is Nash and any plus ones. I’m keeping the party intimate, not wanting to share Queenie with any of my professional friends just yet.
Little did I know that I would be getting a surprise as well.
17
Hemsworth
The party for Queenie has gone off without a hitch. Champagne flowed, and everybody had a good time.
I’m standing by the fireplace admiring my handiwork, sipping on a cognac.
I’m happy to report that Queenie and Bradford make a fine couple. All I had to do was put Queenie in Bradford’s path and hope for the best. I was tired of all the floozies he wasted his time on. If Lorcan was going to take Bradford seriously, I had to find a kind-hearted girl to show Bradford what he was missing out on with these other floozies, but one who could stand up to him and be her own woman.
Enter Layken, Henry’s wife and my partner in crime, who also happens to be Lorcan and Fern’s daughter.
Project Mission Impossible