Chapter 44: : Chapter 44

“There’s freaking tissue paper, Em! Gilt-edged tissue paper!”

I lean away from the mirror above my sink so that I can see Phoebe through my open bathroom door. She’s holding the lid of the package in her hands and she’s staring reverently at the tissue-paper-wrapped contents on my bed.

It arrived half an hour ago, precisely three hours before tonight’s Olson-Ferber charity gala. The courier didn’t have a sender’s name, but he didn’t have to—this has Ruslan’s fingerprints all over it.

“Just open it,” I chuckle before I go back to applying my eyeliner.

“Respect must be paid, Em! This is like foreplay; you can’t just charge right in. Did you see the label on the top of this baby?”

I’m trying not to laugh but that’s just making my hand shake even harder. Abandoning my eyeliner, I join Phoebe in front of the sleek black box. It’s embossed with a cursive Vivienne Westwood stamp.

Phoebe puts her hands over her heart. “It’s gorgeous. I’m swooning.”

I frown. “You haven’t even seen the dress yet. Save the swoon for when it counts.”

When I pull apart the leaves of tissue paper, Phoebe gasps. “Red! That is so your color.”

“You would have said that no matter what color it was.”

Phoebe fingers the fabric and sighs longingly. “He’s a keeper. The man is a gift from the angels above.”

I cock an eyebrow at her. “What ever happened to ‘protect your heart’ and ‘don’t get sucked in with over-the-top, expensive gifts’?”

Phoebe gestures to the dress. “It’s Vivienne Westwood!” she repeats for emphasis. “Also, are you aware that you’ve only lined one eye? If it’s some kind of statement, then you do you, girl, but if not, in the interest of honesty, it’s kinda terrifying.”

Rolling my eyes, I head into the bathroom again to finish my second eye. Phoebe follows me and leans against the threshold, letting her euphoria drop for a moment. “Re: protecting your heart—at this point you know the stakes. I’m not gonna beat you over the head with lectures and cautionary tales.”

I try to keep my hand steady while I ring my second eye with dusky charcoal. Phoebe’s right—I do know the stakes.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to matter.

Ruslan and I have been sleeping together now for almost five months. Between the hours of nine-to-five, I’m a constant, dripping mess with near-permanent rug burn on my knees. And as if that weren’t enough, twice a week, we leave the office together and go to his penthouse on 48th. He offers me a drink and then he fucks me to within an inch of my life.

We’ve christened the living room, all the bedrooms, the kitchen, even the bathrooms. He’s had me up against the windows, the walls, bent over the sofa and the table, sprawled out across the kitchen counter. Standing, sitting—you name it, we’ve done it.

And the crazy thing is—he only keeps getting better.

The moment his tongue hits my pussy, I turn into a goopy puddle of need. The oral sex is great, but every other kind of sex we’ve had has been equally incredible. I leave his apartment practically levitating off the ground every time.

But I do leave. Given my precarious emotional position, I’ve been constantly telling myself that I need to be diligent about leaving the apartment right after the sex. It’s just… that it isn’t always so easy to do. Especially when he asks about the kids. Which he does. Often.

So to recap the whole shebang: my boss and I are having amazing sex on the regular, although he almost always wears condoms now.

He is taking Josh out twice a week for their one-on-one male bonding outings and it’s making a world of difference to my surly eight-year-old.

He brings ice cream home for the girls every time he drops Josh off.

He wiped out all my debts in the blink of an eye.

He keeps making all these sweet, thoughtful little gestures or doing random odd jobs around the house just to make my life easier. Like fixing the car. Or sanding down the legs of our lopsided coffee table so that we don’t need the coasters to hold it up anymore.

And sometimes, every so often, I catch him looking at me with this strange expression on his face. The naïve fool in me keeps hoping that it means that maybe he might be catching feelings, too.

Because, despite my best efforts, I’ve gone and fallen hard for the one person who I’m contractually obligated not to fall for.

It never fails to amaze me how things can be so great and so terrible at the exact same time.

Once my makeup is done, Phoebe helps me wiggle my way into the dress. I have to suck in my breath as she zips up the corset, but after a little effort on my part and a lot of grunting on Phoebe’s, I’m zipped up and feeling just a little bit fabulous.

Phoebe claps her hands to her cheeks the moment she circles around to face me. “You look gorgeous, Em. In your movie starlet era.”

I don’t have a full-length mirror to take advantage of, but I do feel amazing. The Bardot neckline and the thigh-high slit have me feeling sexy, but the structured corset and the subtle A-line silhouette provide just enough coverage to make me feel elegant, too.

“What’s wrong?” I ask when I realize that Phoebe has her head tilted to one side as she frowns at me.

“The nude lip is nice, but I think you need to go bold for this dress.”

“Not my red lipstick.”

She smiles. “I think you have to.”

“It’ll be too much.”

“Um, hello? You’re going to be on the arm of the hottest bachelor in New York tonight. You need to bring the fire.”

“I don’t know…”

She waves away my hesitation and grabs the seduction red lipstick from my threadbare makeup bag. “Well?” she asks, holding the lipstick up like it’s a weapon. “Go big or go home, right?”

Laughing, I nod. “Alright then. Lay it on me.”

“Yesss!” She keeps snapping her fingers. “Girl, slay! He won’t be able to take his eyes off you!”

Yeah, I think to myself with that mix of self-loathing and fluttery hope that’s come to feel all too natural lately. That’s what I’m hoping for.

And that’s exactly the problem.

When I walk out of my bedroom, everyone freezes. Amelia and the kids are sitting in the middle of the living room floor, having shoved aside the coffee table to make a sprawling Lego city populated by Barbies galore—another present from Ruslan.

Caroline just gasps. Amelia wolf whistles. Josh’s jaw drops and Reagan jumps to her feet. “Auntie Em! You look like Cinderella when the Fairy Godmother made her a dress.”

Phoebe giggles. “Hit the nail on the head, Rae.”

Reagan frowns indignantly. “I didn’t hit anything, Aunt Phoebe.”

While Phoebe tries to explain that expression to a five-year-old, Josh and Caroline skip over to me.

Caro strokes the dress with the tips of her fingers. “You look like a princess, Aunt Em.”

Josh nods. “You look beautiful.”

I’m gonna have to try doubly hard not to blush tonight. I don’t wanna blend into my dress too much.

“Thank you, my loves. Now, be good for Amelia and Aunt Phoebe. Go to bed when you’re told. No negotiations, okay?”

“Aw, can’t we come down and say hi to Ruslan?” Caroline pleads.

“Not tonight, honey.”

She hits me with her trademark heartbreaking pout, but I kiss her hard, leaving an imprint of my lips on her forehead.

“I want a kiss like that!” Reagan insists immediately.

I brand the girls with matching lipstick marks on their foreheads and blow kisses to everyone else. I take the stairs slowly, still getting used to the three-and-a-half inch—yes, Phoebe measured—Manolo Blahniks that Ruslan sent along with the dress.

When I finally reach the ground floor lobby, I take a deep breath. Ruslan’s SUV is parked out front, exactly on time as usual, but I need a second to collect my nerves.

This is your Cinderella moment, Emma. Just enjoy it.

“Okay. Here goes—”

I’m reaching for the front door of the apartment building when it flies inward, nearly taking my hand out. “Jesus! Caref—”

I catch the overpoweringly rancid scent of beer, smoke, and throw-up, and I freeze.

Leave it to my brother-in-law to ruin everything. As usual.

Ben takes a moment longer to recognize who he nearly clobbered with the door. When his eyes land on my face, they go wide. Then they trail over the length of my body. Twice.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” he blurts at last.

I clear my throat. “It’s called a dress. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

When I try to walk around him, he blocks me. “Where the hell did you get the money for that get-up?”

I narrow my eyes. “If you must know, Ruslan gave it to me.”

“Oh, Ruslan gave it to you,” he sneers. “What else has he been giving you? I’ve got a guess.”

“Ben, I really don’t have the time for—”

“Did he pay off all your credit card debt, too?” Ben demands. “What about the basketball program Josh is in? Or the new shoes all the kids have suddenly? I’ve got guesses for all that shit also.”

I don’t want to answer the bastard, but it’s my best chance of getting out the door sooner. “Yes,” I grit out, “Ruslan helped with some of those things. And I paid off the rest.”

“How?”

“I’ve been putting in a lot of overtime lately, okay?” He’s moving a little closer to me and now, my sweat glands are really kicking it up a notch.

“Overtime, huh?” He leers. “Is that code for ‘working on your back’?”

“Asshole!”

I’m tempted to slap the hell out of him. Instead, making use of his unsteadiness, I bolt around him and rush through the door before he can stop me. Unfortunately, the rank turd follows me outside.

“I’m not done talking to you!”

“Well, I’m done talking to you!”

I’m in the process of flipping him the bird when he grabs my arm. “Listen here, you—”

Suddenly, Ben is yanked right off me. I turn to my savior, expecting to see Ruslan. But instead, it’s Kirill who’s got Ben by the front of his soiled t-shirt.

“W-who are you?” Ben demands.

“Right now? Your worst nightmare.”

I raise my eyebrows. Under normal circumstances, a line like that would be a cringe-inducing cliché. But apparently, with the right delivery, it’s surprisingly effective. Ben seems to agree—he goes deathly pale and his twitching kicks up a notch.

“There are better men than you that have their eyes on Ms. Carson. And I won’t hesitate to pluck yours out if you ever lay a hand on her again. Understood?”

Ben nods obediently, his eyes wide with fear.

Kirill shoves Ben back. His heel catches the curb and he lands with his ass on the pavement. Kirill flashes me a charming smile and offers me his arm.

“Shall we, madam?”

It’s not exactly the fairytale departure I’d hope for.

But this Cinderella’s gonna take what she gets.