Chapter Four
Callum
I knew something was wrong based entirely on the fact that Oz was being quiet for once and there was rarely anything quiet about Osborne Tate. He was a lumbering, six-foot-five giant of a man who shook the floor when he walked. The sound of his footsteps and the boom of his voice announced his arrival before he ever stepped into a room.
I had met him five years ago at a bar in Scotland and with similar interests but opposite demeanors, we got along quickly. Shortly after, we’d renovated the Pike Distillery. A few years later, we’d made the Pike name something every whisky drinker would recognize at a bar. But I still had a constant hard-on for branding, which was why I opened The Pike last year. It was my eighty-seat cigar lounge on Fifty-First and Park, serving only my whisky and a handful of other spirits owned by the conglomerate that acquired our company. The club was members only but we offered Scotch tastings every other month, open to the public by reservation and the purchase of a ticket priced just under three hundred dollars a pop. Oz and I made sure to be present at every one because they used to be full of fat cats in thousand dollar suits, all of them waiting to approach us at the end with some sort of business pitch.
But as we got popular, the trend of our audience changed. We didn’t complain. Now the tastings were half-filled with gorgeous women in short skirts, who crossed and un-crossed their legs while eyeing me and coating their lips with my Scotch. They were perfect – generally coming straight from the office, too busy with their careers to think about anything beyond a quick fuck and a good orgasm. Which I was good for. Oz eventually started calling tasting nights “The Reaping.” They were guaranteed sex. Even our waitresses started taking notice.
“They call him the Viking and you the Greek God. Which I think is fitting,” one of them murmured as she dropped off my third round. I always sat with Oz at the far leather booth while the tastings went on. It wasn’t till the end that we had to speak. Of course, Oz usually shouted across the room to pitch in with random facts and corrections, none of which were true because he’d just made them up. I was fine with it because everyone laughed and hardly understood what he was saying anyway. After five drinks, his accent surfaced and he started rolling his Scottish ‘R’s like twelve pound bowling balls.
But tonight, he wasn’t drinking or speaking. He was preoccupied with his phone and occasionally glancing at me but not saying shit, which definitely meant no good. I tried to ignore it and focus my attention on the new girl, who kept “accidentally” brushing her chest against me while dropping off our drinks. “See one you like?” She peered over her shoulder at the women in attendance.
“A few,” I lied. My eyes were naturally drawn to a certain type and I didn’t realize till tonight that that type was any pretty girl who resembled Lake. Average height, glowing skin and thick, wavy hair – light brown and darker would do the trick. I spotted three of those tonight and they all had their eyes glued to me but my mind wasn’t reacting the way it usually did. At this point, I usually had my choices narrowed down and started picturing the one I wanted in my bed with her hands bound by her panties. But I had none of that in mind tonight because despite having her coloring down, none of these girls were Lake. And I had seen Lake again. Recently. Witnessed her beauty up close in person, so now my own type was ruined. They looked good but they weren’t Lake and I was apparently fucked, cursed to spend my life holding every woman I looked at to her standard of beauty.
It wasn’t happy about it.
“Well, let me know if none of them make the cut. I’m not doing anything after work and I’m too nice a girl to let you go home alone.”
I blinked over at the new girl, wishing I remembered her name. “Is that right?”
“Mm-hm.” She didn’t bother to lower her voice. “And I may or may not have heard about the way you like it, but that works perfect for me. You weren’t the one who did my interview but I did tell them that one of my greatest strengths was taking orders.” She winked. “So keep me posted on tonight.”
Her long, blonde hair was in a high ponytail and suddenly I could imagine it wound around my hand as I told her how to suck me off. “I’ll be sure to do that.” I kept my eyes on her as she walked away.
“No fucking the waitresses. I thought that was a rule.”
I turned to Oz. “That was a rule for you.” I’d had too many good servers go batshit after sleeping with him and being shocked that he didn’t remember their special night a week later. Unlike me, Oz made women feel as if he were in love with them, even when he didn’t know their name. It rarely ended well for him but he was too jovial to give a shit.
“You’re right. Fair enough. But I still don’t think you should take her home.”
“Why.”
“I think you’ve got other business to take care of tonight.”
“Alright, what are you talking about?”
Oz heaved a sigh and tossed his phone on the table with a clatter. “Logan’s been texting me with some concerns.”
“Logan? What concerns?” Oz and Logan were my two closest friends but they existed in two separate worlds for me. Logan was the friend from my childhood, who went to Yale like a good Upper East Side boy and then graduated to work at the same hedge fund as the likes of Theo Spencer. He followed the rules and were it not for me, he’d never spend time with a lunatic like Oz, who had whisky and cereal for breakfast and wore women on his arms like they lived in his wardrobe. They only had drinks together when I was there as a buffer so I couldn’t imagine that Logan was texting Oz for any reason that wouldn’t eventually mean trouble for me.
“He was asking if I thought he should tell you.”
“About what, Oz?”
“That girl of yours. River?”
“Lake.”
“That one. She’s at a party right now for a…” he checked his phone and muttered with a laugh. “Theo Spencer. Fucking posh name that is. Apparently ‘his friends are trying to get her shitfaced before he even gets here.’” My blood boiled in a second flat. Oz made a face like I’d performed a magic trick. “Holy shit. Look at you giving a fuck about another human being for once.”
“What else does it say?”
“I’ll tell you after you tell me who the girl is.”
I took a drink, pacing myself to finish it within the next ten seconds. “I’d rather not.” Oz was a part of my world after her. He knew nothing about her and I liked it like that.
“But you don’t even know where she is and you aren’t going to get the information from Logan because he’s just decided not to tell you about any of it.” Oz tossed an arm over the back of the couch and leaned back with a satisfied grin. “Now go ahead and give me the best summary you got. And then we’ll save the lass together.”