My family had their private box, lived in a building that cost hundreds of thousands in community charges a year alone, and the price tag on their apartment was more than most millionaires could afford.
They’d rammed those facts home very neatly. Too neatly. I smelled Gina in the wings.
For whatever reason, she’d always been able to get my mother on her side. Probably because my mother recognized the likeness between them.
How Gina had explained away her own dismissal, I wasn’t sure, but I was content with her reputation being ruined on a professional front. Whether she turned my parents against Phoebe and me was something I frankly didn’t give a damn about.
But I’d tried.
They’d never be able to say I hadn’t.
I’d brought her to them with the intention of a truce, and here I was, stuck with the cold shoulder from the woman who meant more to me than life itself, while I was wailed at by a fat lady in a Viking costume.
Dear God.
My mother couldn’t have tortured me more. Wagner? I hated him more than any of the other dreadful opera composers I’d had to endure over the years.
“Are you wet?” I whispered into her ear, finding Phoebe far more entertaining than anything else in my vicinity, like usual.
She gulped. “No. I’m furious.”
I couldn’t blame her, even if I did appreciate the tight longing I heard in her voice. My darling was quite accustomed to my saving her, and save her I would.
“Don’t you want to know what my gifts are?” I enticed.
“No. Not unless it involves one-way tickets out of this hellhole.”
I snorted. “Glad to know you hate the opera too,” I mumbled.
“It’s nothing to do with that. It’s—”
“I know exactly what it is.” I reached over and patted her thigh. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to slip my fingers between her legs and explore her glorious pussy, claim it for my own once more, and taste her delicious cunt like it was a meal and I was a man dying of starvation.
Just the thought had my cock hardening, but I knew for a fact that she’d never come. No matter how hard I teased her, enticed her, and seduced her, my mother’s rudeness had done the impossible.
Turned my woman cold.
Fuck, I loathed the creature who’d had her belly spliced open to bring me to life, and she could be damn sure that the only way I’d ever visit was if she fucking begged me to.
Even then, it had better be worth my while.
“What’s my gift then?”
“Gifts,” I corrected instantly, hearing the sigh in her voice and knowing that was the point where Phoebe’s mood turned around.
It always worked.
Just a reminder of who I was to her, her professor, even if I’d been cast out for my deviancy, was enough to ground her.
And didn’t I just love her all the more for that?
“Okay, gifts,” she whispered.
I pulled out the four items I had in my various pockets, and as she peered down in the gloom, I saw her surprise. Hell, I couldn’t blame her. I’d felt like a walking purse.
“What are they?”
I passed the watch to her, then grabbed the other and placed it around my wrist, securing it before I reached for hers and did the same.
She tilted the face this way and that, and I allowed her some time to discern what she was looking at because it was damn dark in here.
When she recognized them, her mouth dropped open, and she whispered, “You didn’t.”
My lips curved. “Would you expect anything less from me?”
She swallowed thickly, her throat visibly working before, with awe in her tone, she muttered, “Mrs. Linden’s?”
I nodded, and her hand snapped out to grab mine. She squeezed my fingers so tightly that it almost hurt, but I understood. She was showing me her emotion the only way she could at that moment.
I raised our joined hands, brought them to my lips, and kissed her knuckles.
“Gifts number one and two,” I informed her, including the man’s vintage Rolex as a gift, one I’d wear forever for her, even though she knew I didn’t wear any jewelry.
I would be soon, however. At least, if I had my way.
She blinked. “Number three?”
This one was a piece of paper, and it had been fucking hard to get too. I passed over the few sheets of A4 that signified Scottie’s change of status. Again, I watched as she tilted and turned it, trying to read every word. I knew the second she did because her nails dug into my thigh.
“How?”
“Money.”
Her throat worked, the muscles playing in the meager light from the stage. “She sold him?”
I sighed. “Don’t think of it that way. He’s ours now.”
“Nicholas…” Her voice wavered, but I heard the tears in it, heard the emotion, and I smiled at her before leaning over and kissing her on her trembling lips.
“You’re welcome, but I didn’t do it for a ‘thank you,’” I informed her. I did it for Scottie, and for us. We were a family in everything but the eyes of the law. Well, fuck that. Now the law was on our side, and that was the way it should be.
I wasn’t going to allow that bitch into our lives any more than necessary. Phoebe had given her an ultimatum, a fair one, and her mother hadn’t heeded it.
Well, I had, and I’d moved things to a formal, legal footing.
“I know, and that’s why it’s all the more incredible because you did it anyway.”
I grinned at her, knowing that she’d never anticipate the final gift. Especially not when my mother was shuffling to our side, silently informing me of her displeasure at our inattention to the travesty going on downstage.
With the box in my grasp, I recognized that my palms weren’t even sweating as I handed that to her too. I wasn’t nervous. I was beyond ready for this moment. It felt like my entire life had been leading toward tonight—to here, to now. Even if it was with Wagner serenading us in the background.
And when she opened it, her fingers feeling for the contents, with every part of her tense as though my mother, the Queen of the Damned herself, had frozen her solid.
She hadn’t, of course. Mother was closer to me than to Phoebe, by my design. The last thing I wanted when I’d seen the initial reception of my fiancée to be, was for the two of them to be seated beside one another.
Phoebe’s mouth trembled as she mumbled, “Nicholas… it’s too soon.”
My brow furrowed. “Not soon enough,” I complained, and was stunned when she laughed.
Laughed.
That wasn’t in my plan.
“Well, then?” she prompted, and I blinked and frowned at her. “Don’t you have something to ask me?”
Ah.
My grin made a swift reappearance.
“Don’t you already know the question?”
“I’m sure I do,” she half-purred, in a tone that had my cock leaping to attention. “But a girl likes to be asked.”
And so, I did as my girl wanted.
I asked.
And she answered.
Phoebe
Five years later
The hot summer sun burnished my skin with a delicious golden color that made everything pop. I’d never had the time to sunbathe. Hell, I’d never had the inclination either.