Chapter 31 Chapter Thirty One
CANDY’S POV
“Nikandr.”
His name is like a breathless prayer on my lips, a wish, a beckoning all rolled into one. And I want to go to him, to run into his arms and laugh and cry and let these past painful months fall away like it never happened and pick up where we left off like it was just last night I slept cuddled up next to him, but my stupid feet won’t move.
They won’t let me go to him to tell him that I missed him. They won’t let me go to him to tell him I’m glad he came for me and to vomit everything I should have that morning at the airport.
Instead, I stand at the doorway, my eyes drinking him in, devouring him because he still looks every bit as devastatingly handsome as he did that first morning I’d woken up tangled between his sheets. If anything, he looks even better dressed in his neatly pressed suit that’s missing its jacket, his pristine white shirt with the rolled back sleeves and opened top button showing a tantalizing tease of his tattoos.
The same tattoos I’d stayed up some nights lazily tracing while listening to his sweet nothings and random stories of his wild childhood.
Edible, might be the word I’m looking for. Masculine virility on two legs.
The lead weight shackling my feet finally start to let up a bit, permitting me to go to him like I’ve wanted to do since my eyes found this vision of him here, refusing to let go. I need to touch him, be sure he’s not a figment of my imagination and I have a lot to ask him.
How did he find me? Did he miss me like I did him? Did he nearly go insane from craving what we had in that little bubble of ours back in Hawaii too? Is that why he’s here?
Almost running, I cover the distance between us, stopping just shy of being in his arms because for the first time since I lost my mind at the sight of him, I notice something is off with him.
He……He looks nothing like someone who came all the way to Chicago and directly to the front of our porch out of dying need to see me again and rekindle old flames, no, he looks the exact opposite instead. His furrowed brows and clenched jaw in a vividly white face looks like that of a man that’s just seen a ghost. He looks every damn thing like a tortured man who is facing his worst demon and is unsure how to confront it.
Falling a step back like he slapped me hard across the face, I pin him with a glare.
What the fuck is his problem. It’s not like I kidnapped him and yanked him here, no, he came of his own volition, so why is he staring at me like I’m his undoing wrapped in silk?
I open my mouth to put my question into words in my nastiest tone because I’m decidedly over this bullshit, but dad’s all too familiar voice steals the moment from me in the last second. I turn as if possessed to find my father flashing him with his brightest smile, ignorant of the palpable tension between me and the man before us, which is a surprise because the tension is so strong it’s sucking the air out of me.
“Glad you’re finally here, Mr. Cobb.” Dad says, shoving past me to extend his hand for a shake. “Hope your trip was nice at least.”
Wait, how does my dad know him?
Nikandr doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even return the handshake, all he’s doing is looking at me like I’m the star in this nightmare of his that he wishes will disappear.
Coughing lightly to cover his embarrassment, my suddenly kiss ass fan girl of a dad continues.
“Come on in, sir, maybe you can stay for dinner before you leave, my wife made her special recipe and it’s mouth watering.”
“Sure.” I hear Nik squeeze out, breaking eye contact with me for the first time to acknowledge dad.
Smiling, dad turns to me, his face registering in surprise the fact that I was all dressed up and ready to dip from their bullshit before I opened the door to the bizarre, one percent chance of finding my holiday fling right outside the door. Recovering quickly and putting up his usual perfect family front, he slips his arm across my shoulder.
“This is my eldest, Candy.” He gestures. “Candy, Mr. Kingston Cobb.”
“Nice to meet you, Kingston.” I respond sternly, choosing his first name intentionally and enunciating every syllable of it to prove a point. No wonder Peach and I couldn’t find him anywhere, he didn’t want to be found.
It’s the only logical explanation for why he lied to me about his name. God knows what else he lied to me about.
Folding my arms across my chest in anger, I ask with deep sarcasm veiled thinly by my practiced sugary sweetness. “I’m curious though, what business brings you all the way to Chicago, sir? I’m sure you are a long way from home.”
Before he can say anything in his defense, dad cuts in like he’s been doing all night.
“Candy, he’s your sister’s soon to be husband.”
The false smile pasted on my face falters as dad’s response cuts through the air like a sharp knife, striking me like a punch to the gut and wiping every trace of sass from my face and anger from my body, leaving me numb from shock.
He’s what?
Jesus! How could I have been so fucking dumb. I should have been able to piece the jigsaw together the moment I saw my father, the Jeremy Kane that bows to no one disgustingly sucking up to him and kissing ass like it’s what he does for a living but my brain was so muddled by the sight of him that I missed it.
God I’m so stupid and so slow.
“Candy….” He let’s out in a defeated breath but the sound is too distant to get to me in the dizzying haze shrouding me.
Peach’s husband to be? As in the better way of wording what he really is – a part of the crime syndicate dad had been laundering for, here to take my sister as his war prize for the money dad lost.
The bastard I’ve hated with every fiber of my being since hearing about him and it turns out to be the same man I was stupid enough to fall for.
“Fuck.” He swears and I share the exact sentiment.
I am indeed fucked because how do I deal with this, how do I fight it?
“Do you two know each other?” Dad asks puzzled.
“No.” I answer almost too quickly before he can, hearing my own voice like a separate entity from the me that’s confronting this situation. Of course I do not know this man. The man I knew is dead and this one here, this reformed version that’s every bit as good looking but also too vile for me to stand?
Him, I do not know.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I finally see Adrian’s familiar, black Maybach pull into the curb behind his Aston Martin, rolling to a stop.
Suddenly, I feel eternally grateful that I accepted to go with him to his business. I would die if I have to endure even one more minute of this perpetual hell. And work is my favorite distraction and personal therapy.