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His face pinches, and his eyes flash. “How much is she paying you? I’ll pay you?—”
“We both know you can’t.”
“How can you even?—”
“Make basic assumptions without an education and tattooing people’s skin for a living? No clue. Perhaps it’s a wild guess based on your desperation.”
“If you think you’re going to get Georgia’s money?—”
“As I told Georgia, her money is the least appealing thing about her.” I shrug nonchalantly, keeping my tone light.
He shakes his head, growing ruddier, more frazzled, a man visibly coming unglued at the seams. “This can’t be real. There’s no way.” He pans his hand across the room as if he knows exactly where she is, which I’m positive he does since I do as well.
As a man who was obsessed with the same woman, I suppose we share that commonality. Only I never stalked her or made her feel trapped or wanted to control her while taking her for all she’s worth. And that thought turns me mean. The desire to hurt him—to actually destroy every piece of him—compels me.
I hold up my left hand, flashing my black band at him. “It’s as real as it gets, Ethan.”
“You motherfucker. You think you know what you’re getting into. You’re just a tattoo artist. A simple, uneducated lowlife, just like you said. Your best friends and your sister’s death are your only claim to fame.” He pauses here, watching to see my reaction to his mentioning Suzie, but again, I don’t take the bait, and he slams his glass down on the buffet table, rattling a dish and drawing attention to himself. “She hasn’t gone to see you, and I know you haven’t gone to see her. It’s bullshit! All of it.”
“You might want to keep your voice down, Elliott. You are at a corporate event.”
I glance over and see Georgia talking with two other people, but her eyes are on us, worry creasing her forehead when a third person—Alfie Earnheart—joins her. He smiles warmly at her, resting a hand on her shoulder and then drawing her in for a hug she returns.
I turn back to his son. “Nice talking to you, Earl. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure my wife eats something.” While I go meet your father and see if he’s just as big of a weasel as you are.
Ezra is a hot head. But I’m not sure how smart he is. From what I’ve read online about Alfie Earnheart, without even getting into his real stuff yet, he’s the complete opposite.
With slow, even strides, I make my way over to Georgia, who is now alone with Alfie, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, dark eyes like his son’s, and a suit that is all power. I haven’t had a chance to send him the link yet, but I will. And when he opens it, I’ll have a lot of fun digging through all his secrets to see if his mild-mannered exterior is fake or not.
Georgia is telling him something I can’t hear, and I watch as he squints at her, steps into her personal space, and I swoop in, wrapping my arm around her waist and moving her body so that I’m between them and he can no longer touch her. She starts, but quickly recovers when she sees it’s me and snatches the plate from my other hand.
“Oh, Lenox. Perfect timing. I’m starving.” She turns back to him. “Alfie, this is who I was telling you about. I’d like to introduce you to my new husband, Lenox Moore. Lenox, this is Alfie Earnheart, the current CEO of Monroe Securities and my father’s closest friend.”
He reaches out and shakes my hand, though he doesn’t try to crush it the way his son did. He’s assertive and calculating, his eyes assessing, almost sizing me up, though he’s visibly unhappy about hearing I’m Georgia’s husband. “Her husband?”
I lift her left hand and kiss her knuckle just beneath her rings. “I’m a lucky man, wouldn’t you say?”
He glowers at me, realizing I’m likely taunting him despite my even tone, and he gives me a disdainful once-over. I refrain from grinning. “Did she pick you up off the street?”
“No, my tattoo parlor, actually. I see your son hasn’t told you anything about me yet. I’ve known Georgia her whole life.”
“Funny, so have I, and I can’t remember ever hearing about you as a person in her life.”
“Yes,” Georgia chimes in as she takes a bite of the shrimp. “He’s best friends with my cousins Zax and Greyson.”
His eyes round, but then he quickly dismisses me as anything of substance, putting his full weight on her. “Georgia, what on earth have you done? What could you have been thinking making a decision like that?”
“I’m very happy, Alfie.”
He shakes his head as if that’s inconsequential. “Honey, this is not the time for that sort of thing. You have a company depending on you. Your father would be so disappointed.”
My jaw tics and I take a step forward before I can stop myself, using my height and size to my advantage as I glare down at him since he’s a solid four inches shorter than me. “Do you make it a habit to be condescending and disrespectful to your company owner and chairwoman?”
Alfie is nonplussed, and I’m assuming no one has ever challenged him before. Not even his sniveling little worm of a son. “As she stated, I was her father’s best friend and I’ve known her for her entire life. I’d say as both someone who cares about her and the current CEO of the company she is to inherit, I have every right to challenge her on this. She was supposed to marry my son,” he snarls. “That was the agreement. She was not supposed to marry some bottom feeder looking to strike it rich through an advantageous marriage.”
“An advantageous marriage? Who are you? Jane Austen?”
Georgia spits out a spray of pink alcohol straight into the air and then glares at me as she wipes at her lips and chin. “That’s twice today, funny man.”
