Page 3 of The Heartbreaker
Three Months Later
Ridge
Out of all the places I’d expected to end up tonight, a strip club wasn’t one of them. Shit, I wasn’t complaining. Spending an evening looking at naked women wasn’t exactly a bad time in my book. Especially when the ladies left the stage and pranced topless around the lounge, where all the patrons, including myself, were sitting. That gave me an up-close-and-personal look at their bodies. Asses that were covered by only a thin, usually sparkly thong. Nipples so hard that it was as though they’d been rubbed with ice. Eyes that taunted as they locked with mine and skin so heavily perfumed that their scents lingered long after they passed me.
I wasn’t a virgin when it came to strip clubs. I’d visited my fair share over the years, so I knew that inside these walls was nothing more than a fantasy. The strippers were saleswomen.The nods and smiles and words exchanged were all selling tactics.
The only real thing that came out of a place like this was a fucking hard-on.
That was why, earlier tonight, when the thirty or so of us had packed into a party bus, celebrating Brady Spade and Lily Roy’s joint bachelor and bachelorette party, and Brady announced this was our next stop, I hadn’t been excited. Brady was one of the executives at Cole and Spade Hotels, our company, and the last of the Spades to settle down—something I’d never, in my lifetime, thought would happen with a reputation like his.
But he’d proven everyone wrong—and by everyone, I meant all of California and probably half of the West Coast.
Rhett looked about as amused as me, so I rested my arm across his shoulders and said, “I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather be at a club right now.”
“That sounds as insufferable as this,” he replied.
I wasn’t surprised by my brother’s answer. The last three months had been tough on all of us. As the leader, I encouraged my siblings to keep living, to keep enjoying—that was what Dad would have wanted. What would make him roll over in his grave was if we stopped living because of his death.
Rowan was trying her best. She didn’t like to leave Rayner, but since it was a joint party and her boyfriend, Cooper, was Brady’s brother, she was here. She was smiling. Drinking. There was a look of happiness on her face as she mingled with the girlfriends of the Spade brothers and the Daltons, their best friends.
But that wasn’t the way Rhett looked at all, slumped in the chair next to mine. His expression told me he was going to hit something. Not just punch it. He wanted to pulverize it.
“You all right, brother? I know the last few months?—”
“Don’t talk to me about the last few months. Not here.” His expression turned grim. “Not now.”
“I hear you. My bad.” I squeezed the spot I was holding. “But is that what’s bothering you? Dad?”
He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together as though he was getting ready to lock them into a fist. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure who was about to roar the loudest, Rhett or the lion tattooed on his thumb.
“You know why.” His teeth ground together.
I circled back to our father as the reason he was acting this way. Work could be another cause. My brother had been putting in some serious hours lately, and maybe he was feeling guilty that he’d taken the whole weekend off.
Or, hell, maybe it was something else.
“How about you help me out and just tell me the reason, so I don’t have to keep racking my brain?—”
“The date, Ridge.” His head shook in a way that told me he was disappointed. “What’s the fucking date?”
The date.
The date.
And then, like a bolt of goddamn lightning across the back of the head, it hit me.
Fuck.
I gave him a solid squeeze, rubbing his muscle back and forth.
How could I have forgotten?
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him.
