Page 6 of Venom and Lace
Juliet turned a few feet away from me and he leaned close to her, whispering in her ear. Juliet’s face turned a shade of crimson, her mouth forming an “O.” She gripped her purse in her hands, nodding as she turned back and rushed towards me.
“Thanks, Mr. Goodacre,” I said as we passed through the door.
“Call me Riddick.” He leaned in the doorway. I could see the resemblance now—the same cocky grin, the dark “fuck me” eyes, with the disheveled hair and dimples.
When we were outside again, I whipped the tabloid out of my bag and shook it at Juliet’s face. “What the hell is this?”
She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “He knows I stole his pen!” Her eyes were wide, face flushed.
I opened the tabloid to the picture of me and Mr. Goodacre. “Focus, Juliet. What am I going to do aboutthis?”Panic raced through my veins. The last thing I needed right now was to be front and center on a tabloid with a strange man.
She grabbed the tabloid from my hand and skimmed through the article. “It’s not bad, Nova. It says here he’s a philanthropist. He donated an entire wing to Chicago Memorial Hospital.” I rolled my eyes as she continued to read. Ryzen Goodacre, the biggest property owner in all of Chicago. Billionaire real estate developer by day, playboy womanizer by night.Gah, not a huge surprise there.“They don’t know who you are, don’t even know your name.” She folded the tabloid back in half and shoved it into her bag.
“If my family sees this, they are going to lose their shit.” Which normally would make me happy, but not when Grams’ seventieth birthday was coming up, and definitely not after my sister had had a meltdown over me getting a new apartment and not her. I rubbed my temples as we walked towards the subway. The last thing I wanted was to give my father, or sister, ammunition against me. It was a constant battle of wills with them. My sister was always trying to one-up me, and my father was always finding a reason I wasn’t good enough in his eyes. I had spent most of my adolescence trying to prove him wrong, but nothing ever worked. And this tabloid that could put a black mark on his reputation? I was in for it, without a doubt.
Juliet hooked her arm through mine as we walked down the steps to the subway. “They won’t find out, Nova. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Famous last words.
********
There hadn’t been time to stop for lunch, let alone worry about Ryzen Goodacre. Juliet spent the afternoon hosting a focus group with ten people discussing how they shopped for adult toys. There had always been a stigma around it, like it was a dirty thing to do and you should be embarrassed. But not to us. We wanted people to feel empowered, to say confidently, “Why, yes, I own a ten-inch dildo. What’s wrong with that?”
While she ran the group, I helped Owen with photographs for the new website. We were running on a combination of granola bars, bananas, and caffeine, and by seven o’clock we finally hit a brick wall.
An hour later, we were stretched out on my couch in my new flat. Empty containers of food from our favorite noodle place, All About the Noodz, were stacked on top of unpacked moving boxes. I handed the last spring roll to Juliet and went to the kitchen for another bottle of wine.
“You wanna talk about it?” Juliet lay on the couch, fanning herself with the wedding invitation I had received from my sister.
I scoffed and stabbed the corkscrew into the bottle of wine. “Nothing to talk about.” I walked back over to the living room and sank deep into the couch, not bothering with a glass this time. “It was a matter of time. I’m just surprised it took Grace this long to get a ring out of him.”
Don’t be fooled by the name. My older sister Grace was anything but good, as the name implied. When I was seven and Grace nine, all my Barbie dolls disappeared. She told my father she saw one of the housekeepers put the dolls in the trunk of her car. My father, being the man he is, fired the housekeeper instantly. A few days later I saw Grace by the pond on the edge of our property, ripping the heads off of the dolls and throwing them into the water. I was too scared to tell anyone. That was the moment I realized she was Satan.
Once, in high school, she made copies of pages from my journal—mostly the ones where I proclaimed my love and devotion for Billy Eisenhower, the star quarterback—and plastered them on almost every locker on every floor of our high school. It must have taken her hours to do.
And then there was my junior year in college, where my boyfriend of two years, Dalton, proposed to me and I took him home to meet my family. The next morning, I found him and Grace in bed together. But I guessed she wasn’t the only one to blame. And hell, she’d done me a big favor.
“I never understood how Grace could be so cold-blooded—and how Dalton fell for her bullshit. I mean, you guys dated through all of college, and he just threw it all away. And now they’re getting married after all this time.” Juliet sat up and put her empty glass on the box next to her. “Are you going to go? To the wedding?”
I took a swig from the bottle and then passed it to her. “I think so. Just to prove that I don’t care about them and their stupid wedding.” I would face them, and every person in that wedding who knew that my fiancé had left me for my sister, with my head held high and my middle finger pointed in the air, if I had to. Because I didn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone thought. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it had been utterly devastating at the time. My entire world had crumbled around me, even though I’d fought hard to act like it hadn’t. I’d spent months thinking of ways to get revenge on them, until one day I didn’t care anymore. I was over it. And men. “I dodged a bullet with him. I’m thankful it happened. Besides, we have bigger problems than my crazy sister.”
Juliet clicked her tongue and handed the bottle back to me. “We will figure it out. The lease, the demonic sister, the tabloid. We got this, babe.” She squeezed me tight. “And on that note, it’s time to head home to my lonesome apartment.”
Ten minutes later I stood outside and waved goodbye as she climbed into an Uber. I punched the passcode into the keypad, and it beeped, showing I had entered the wrong code. I punched it in again, bouncing back and forth on my feet as I realized I was standing out in the dark only in shorts, a tank top and fluffy slippers, with no cell phone and no backup keys. It beeped back with the same annoying noise, and I threw my hands up in the air. “Come on, universe. You owe me one.”
A car drove by, its headlights reflecting off the metal fence by the parking garage, highlighting the entrance door. The only thing separating me from my apartment was that fence. The few glasses of wine I had drunk made me realize there was only one choice. I jogged over to the fence, realizing too late that I was standing in mud. I shucked my slippers over the fence and lifted myself up. A ripping noise and a blast of air on my butt made me groan, my shorts ripped open in the back as I landed on the other side of the fence. I entered the code into the keypad and pumped my fist in the air when the door swung open.
I covered my backside with my hands and ran as fast as I could to the elevator. I looked around and grinned as I punched the ‘up’ button on the panel. As long as nobody saw me in my current state, then I would call it a win for tonight. The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. I slammed right into a hard surface and looked up.
Mr. Goodacre stood there, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip, watching me.
“Hello again, Miss La Roux. We really need to stop meeting like this.”
Chapter Three
I rubbed circles into my temples. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking drinking all that wine last night. I could blame it on the fact that I was on the cover of some trashy tabloid. Or that one of our vendors had sent the wrong shipment of vibrators, again. Could even blame it on the fact that my demonic sister was engaged to my ex-fiancé. But those were all minor problems compared to losing our lease. That alone could cause a domino effect of chaos for us. Like that time at Mardi Gras when Juliet convinced me to flash a group of strangers for some beads, and my shirt got caught in my hairband, making me slip down the stairs and land in a pile of horse manure bigger than my body while everyone around me took pictures. A shiver ran up my spine at the memory.
I checked my watch as the Uber stopped in front of the Goodacre Corporation building. I had been beyond mortified when I’d run into Ryzen last night, mud all over my legs, my ass hanging out for the world to see. He hadn’t said a word about it—just handed me his jacket, which I tied around my waist, and asked me to come to his office at noon tomorrow. He hadn’t given any other details, so naturally I assumed he was about toFifty Shades of Greymy ass. Juliet didn’t seem to agree, but trust me, Ryzen Goodacre definitely seemed like the type.