Page 23 of A Merry Invitation
She shook her head in response but didn’t look up at him. He counted it a good sign that she’d agreed to come here with him after all that had happened. Although he would’ve gladly taken her home if she’d requested it, he felt better with her being close.
“I planned to do this after our dinner, but,” he paused and sighed. “I guess with all that’s happened, I should just get it out of the way.”
“Get what out of the way?” she asked in a quiet voice. “What just happened, Slay? I mean, I know literally, but I’m trying to wrap my mind around everything I’ve just witnessed, but I…I can’t.” She rubbed her palms up and down her thighs, that lovely green dress still shining with a holiday gleam.
He nodded and dragged a hand down his face. This was turning out to be one hell of a holiday week.
“The Corporation is a private sex club,” he started. “Very affluent, ridiculously rich people are members of the club. We have locations all over the world and while our mission is to provide pleasure, our goal is also to maintain autonomy for our members and our establishment as a whole. That’s why I didn’t mention that I worked there until you showed up and it’s why I have to ask you to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
He’d realized this the moment he’d put her in a car to take her home on Wednesday evening. He hadn’t needed Jus to tell him even though the guy had been staring at him knowingly the moment Slay had returned to his office, still dazed and thoroughly confused by the sex he and Willow had in that Watch Room.
She gave a brief nod. “I figured it was private,” she said. “I mean, after I got home the other day and really thought about it. So, what’s going to happen to Titus? Is he going to jail? Won’t he talk about the club if he does?”
“No,” Slay immediately replied. “He won’t say a word.” He was sitting forward in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees. “He’s not going to be a problem for you either. Not ever again.”
When she looked over at him, their gazes held. He wasn’t going to lie to her, but he wasn’t going to offer any information that he felt she didn’t need. This wasn’t her world and yet, he’d inadvertently pulled her into it. Keeping her safe was always going to be his priority.
“Did Big Sexy kill him?” she asked.
Slay frowned. “Who?”
“The guy who showed up,” she replied. “The big guy that you sent for me at the Christmas party. He never formally introduced himself so that’s the name I gave him that night.”
Slay gave a dry chuckle. “So, you think Jus is sexy? I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of that.”
“Are you jealous?” she asked and Slay could only stare at her.
For all that had happened tonight and for as stunned as she’d appeared, there’d never been a moment of fear that he could tell. She’d stayed behind him just as he’d silently requested of her during the standoff with Titus and when Jus showed up, she’d only watched. There’d been no screaming, no crying or even shaking with shock for that matter. She’d been steady and resilient and he wondered why. What he also hadn’t anticipated was the question she’d just tossed his way.
“Nah,” he said and then shook his head. “Look, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about tonight.”
“Okay,” she said.
This had really been his reason for going to see her tonight. For the flowers and the dinner he’d planned in the private dining room of Blackbriar’s, one of his favorite American steakhouses in the London, owned by one of his former teammates. It all had gotten muddled in the Titus mess, but it was still important that he say his piece to her and that he wait patiently while she decided what she was going to do with what he had to say.
“I was married before,” he said and then cleared his throat. “I know you heard what Titus said about me not being able to keep my wife from creeping out on me.”
“I’m long past believing anything that man had to say,” she replied with a roll of her eyes.
“I get that,” he told her. “But he wasn’t lying about that. All my life I wanted to play professional football. My moms wanted me to find a good wife and give her grandbabies.” He smiled at that because he could still hear her sliding in those jabs every time they talked on the phone or on the rare occasions he went back home to visit her.
“Did your father want you to play ball too?” she asked.
He shook his head. “He didn’t want me at all. Left my moms when she was pregnant. But he miraculously appeared during my first season in the NFL. I told his ass never to show his face again and he hasn’t.” The fact that he hadn’t beat the old man’s ass for having the audacity to approach the grown man he hadn’t even witnessed being born, was a miracle.
“But me and my moms we had a good life. She worked hard to pay the bills and I worked hard to get good grades and the college scholarship that put me on the road to giving her all she deserved. She retired from teaching during my third year in the league and now she does some tutoring here and there just because she loves kids. But mostly she spends her time at her church or sitting on her porch painting all the pictures she didn’t have time to paint when she was working so much.”
“That sounds nice and soothing. I’m sure she’s very proud of you.” Willow’s tone was comforting, her gaze on him understanding.
He hadn’t realized how much he needed both until this very moment.
“I love and respect her so much.” He dropped his head and stared at the deep gray carpet for a few moments, before looking over at Willow again. “So, when I met Ebony and we really hit it off, I married her. A year into the marriage she was pregnant and my moms was ecstatic. I was happy too, you know? I’d made it. I had the career, the money, the wife, a baby on the way. And my moms was so proud of me. Life was the sweetest.”
She sat up so that she was close enough to reach out a hand to him. Slay stared at her extended hand for a few seconds before accepting it. He let her lace her fingers with his and then took a deep inhale before continuing.
“I had it all by the time I was thirty years old. And by the time I turned thirty-three, I’d lost it all. I got hurt. An injury that I wasn’t going to come back from, not in the way I needed to come back to play again. Within months of that news, Ebony announced she was leaving. She hadn’t signed up to be with a man who couldn’t work.” The laugh that escaped his throat was anything but happy. “Then, because she hadn’t pushed that knife deep enough into my back, I found out she was leaving me to be with my personal trainer. A guy she’d apparently been sleeping with behind my back for a long ass time because he was actually Cyan’s father. Not me. So, I lost my wife, my daughter and my job all in one year.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she said and Slay frowned.
