Page 12 of Falling for Them (Cinderella’s Daddies #1)

Eleven

Sebastian

A night at Vice with Kingston has lost all appeal. He doesn’t so much as look at the beautiful women who parade in front of our booth. They’re each trying to attract his notice, or mine. Or, the more daring and adventurous ones are trying to attract us both at once.

But Kingston doesn’t care about any of them. And to be honest, neither do I.

Finally, I set down my iced tea and face my friend.

“You want her,” I say. “I want her. What’s to stop us from having her?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb, asshole.”

He taps his fingers on the side of his tumbler. “She’s with Joel.”

“But is Joel with her?”

He just shakes his head. He’s getting more and more pissed about this, but I have to push. If I don’t, he’ll accept a defeat that only ruins things for both of us.

And possibly ruins things for Ella, too. Because I want to give that little princess the motherfucking world.

“Look,” I say. “We both know Joel is a fuckboy asshole. I’m not sorry for saying it, because that’s just the truth, King. I think we should make a move. Did you see her eyes the other night, in your office, when I showed up?”

“I saw her eyes,” he says, his voice a growl.

“Exactly. She wanted you. And she might’ve even been convinced to want both of us.” I clear my throat, take a sip of iced tea. “I saw her sing at a karaoke bar, almost a week ago.”

He looks over at me, startled. “You were at a karaoke bar?”

“Shut up. I go sometimes. It’s relaxing.”

“And you saw her there? She sang?”

I nod. “I didn’t get the impression she wanted to, but she was fucking great, King. You would’ve been proud.”

“We don’t have a right to be proud of her. She does her own thing. She has her own life.”

“She lives in a shitty apartment.”

I hated dropping her off at that place. It didn’t look safe, and it didn’t look comfortable.

He grimaces. He doesn’t like the idea of her shitty apartment any more than I do. If she were ours, we’d take care of her properly.

She’d be ours to cherish…ours to punish.

King’s eyes flash with anger and his usual scowl deepens. “She’s not ours, Bash. I can see that look in your eyes.”

“She should be ours.”

“She’s not. She’s not free. We don’t mess around with women who aren’t single. Rule Number Two.”

Rule Number One is enthusiastic consent. I can imagine Ella enthusiastically consenting to put my dick between her tits, and the thought gets me hard.

“Bash,” Kingston says. “We’re not seducing my son’s girlfriend.”

“Fine. But when she isn’t his girlfriend, all bets are off.”

He frowns. I get it. The idea might sound gross, going after his kid’s girlfriend. But she’s an adult. We’re adults. If everyone’s on board, a la Rule Number One, then I don’t see a single fucking problem with it.

I don’t tell him that I left a gala ticket on her cart earlier tonight. I’d been hoping fuckface Joel would bring her, but then I was on PhotoGram and happened to see an up-and-coming model/influencer post how excited she was to attend the gala with none other than Joel Tyler.

Two-timing asshole. I bet Ella doesn’t follow all of these people on PhotoGram. If I didn’t have to occasionally check in as part of old record contracts, I wouldn’t be on the channel, either.

At any rate, I saw the post.

And I decided to do something about it, in my small way.

Whether or not she comes to the gala…that’s up to her.

Kingston and I hang out for a little while longer, but there’s no joy in it. A woman comes up to ask for my autograph, and it garners the notice of several other people who then figure out who I am.

“And this is our cue to leave,” I mutter to King.

Five minutes later, we’re out of there. Yet still nowhere closer to making Ella ours.

Ella

Mrs. Dali wakes me gently. Warm light comes through her gauzy curtains, filtering a rosy pink through the room.

“Good morning,” she says.

“Good morning.” I sit up on her couch, warm beneath the afghan she gave me last night.

We worked well past four a.m., only stopping for tea refills, and I even switched to black tea so the caffeine could help keep me up.

Now I can say that the dress was ugly, but it’s taking shape.

The dress used to have everything wrong with it.

Fabric flowers, tacky beading, and even lace trim to go with it.

Not to mention long, flowing trains of fabric that draped from the back of the shoulders.

It was truly a product of the early seventies.

The only tolerable thing about it was the shimmery blue color of the fabric.

Mrs. Dali had taken one look at my expression, because I have no poker face, and seen that the dress wouldn’t work.

But she took it out of the garment bag anyway, and started reassuring me that this dress had “good bones” and we could make something out of it.

I hadn’t believed her, to be honest. My worst-case scenario soon became fixing it up with her and then putting it on and pretending go to the gala while really hiding behind our apartment building for four hours.

Because no way did I want anyone I knew to see me in this dress.

However, after we stayed up for hours, pinning things, cutting things, and basically performing surgery on this dress, it has turned into something really quite amazing.

I could never have even attempted this on my own.

Mrs. Dali is a wizard, and she has every possible thing we could need, right here in her apartment.

I didn’t even know that sewing kits were a thing, and here she has like five of them, little boxes with threads and needles and pins all stuffed in side, in every shade of the rainbow imaginable.

“Did you sleep long enough?” she asks.

“Plenty.” I check the time on my phone. I only got four hours of sleep, but I feel awake, rejuvenated. Standing up, I stretch. “I really appreciate you letting me crash on your couch.”

Around four a.m., I tried to go back to my own apartment, but my brother was sleeping outside of it, leaning against the door. I just couldn’t deal, and when I returned to Mrs. Dali’s apartment, she was kind enough to offer me her couch.

But I don’t want to take advantage of her already generous hospitality, so it’s time to get going.

I turn around to look at where we left the dress last night, and gasp in surprise. “You’ve done more with it.”

Her brown eyes crinkle at the corners and she gives me a smug smile. “Yes, I always wake up early, so I slept for a couple of hours and then I was awake at six. I haven’t been able to leave the gown alone.”

“It looks incredible,” I say.

The plunging neckline is far more risqué than anything I would ever choose to wear.

It’ll land halfway between my breasts and my belly button.

The wide band going across the waist is no longer covered in a mishmash of beads, lace, and fake flowers; it’s now a single fabric panel with two silk ribbons sewn at the top and bottom.

The funky streamers at the shoulders are gone completely.

My throat tightens as I struggle to hold in my emotions. “I don’t know how you managed all of this.”

“Well, I had your help, Ella,” she says.

“It didn’t look this good last night.”

She gives a little laugh. “Nothing looks good at three a.m. Why don’t you try it on?”

I pick it up, my motions reverent. This dress is no longer an abomination—it is now a work of art. Smiling at Mrs. Dali, I hurry to her bathroom, saying over my shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

Kingston

I don’t know why I bother trying to work the day before the charity gala.

I do this every January, think that I might be able to concentrate, but that’s never the case.

Everyone in the world has things to ask me—is the caterer set, have the cases of champagne been ordered, do we have a back-up band on call in case something goes awry with the string quartet, and, from my son, is a tuxedo absolutely necessary?

To that last question, I responded, “Yes, it’s fucking necessary.”

My inbox is filled with questions about the gala. My voicemail is filled with questions about the gala. Nothing is absolutely crucial.

I should go home and rest before tomorrow.

But Ella’s here, working her cute little ass off, and for some reason, I can’t seem to leave until she does, these days.

I don’t know if she notices or not, but it matters to me.

Especially when Joel hasn’t been here. What the hell is wrong with that boy?

I wish I could talk some sense into him.

Bash will be pleased if the two break up, but then I’ll be faced with a new problem: seducing my son’s ex-girlfriend.

Fuck.

A sharp cry sounds down the hallway. Ella? Is she okay?

I drop my phone on my desk and hurry in the direction of the sound.

I find her crouching on the floor near the restrooms, wrapping a tiny paper napkin around her finger. Blood is seeping through the napkin.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Be careful,” she says. “There’s glass on the floor. It looks like someone dropped a dish and didn’t get all the pieces.”

I don’t fucking care about getting cut—I need to get her patched up.

“Come with me,” I say, reaching toward her. I’m afraid to touch her—it’s not like she’s in the process of falling off of a ladder. If I touch her now, when it isn’t a full-blown emergency…oh, fuck it.

I grip her upper arm as gently as possible and help her rise to her feet.

She wobbles slightly. “Sorry, blood. I’m not great with it.”

“No problem, you can lean on me.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have my own bathroom attached to my office. There’s a first-aid kit in there.”

“Oh, right. I’ve cleaned in there before.”

I forget sometimes that she knows the ins and outs of the Tyler building more than most.

We’re slow moving down the hallway, and at one point Ella glances at her finger and nearly falls over.

“Don’t look at your finger, okay, sweetheart?” Shit. “I mean, okay, Ella?”

“Okay, Mr. Tyler.”

It is quite possibly literally killing me to not pick her up and carry her right now.

I can’t stand that she’s hurt and I want to haul her into my arms and whisk her to safety and bandages.

I want to kiss her cheeks and lips to reassure her that despite the pain, I’m here to care for her and make sure she’s as safe and healthy and loved as possible.

We reach my office and shuffle toward the bathroom. I flick on the light switch, and Ella blinks in the suddenly blinding glare. She looks down at her finger again, and her eyes roll back and flutter shut.

I catch her just in time.

Well, hell. I brace her in my arms while I get the first-aid kit from under the sink, then I sit on the floor and prop her in front of me, her back to my front. Her navy dress hikes up on her thighs, so I tug it down. It’s a struggle not to smooth it over her legs, but I resist the urge.

Carefully, I unwrap her finger and wipe antiseptic over the cut. Then I put a bandage over it.

If she were mine, I’d kiss the bandage after, and then I’d kiss her lips and tell her that she’s safe now.

But she’s not mine.

Still, I’m trapped behind her…and there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Ella

Consciousness returns. I’m leaning against something warm and firm, and it smells good, like sandalwood. It takes me a minute to figure out where I am, and then I realize: I’m in Kingston Tyler’s bathroom.

And that warm, firm, nice-smelling thing that I’m leaning against?

Fuck me. It’s Kingston Tyler.

I jolt forward.

“Easy,” he says, his voice a low rumble behind me. “You fainted. You’re okay now.”

I groan. “Blood from cuts and injuries. It does it to me every time.”

My skin feels clammy and cold, but humiliation burns through my body. I can’t believe I freaking fainted. I scoot away from Mr. Tyler, horrified that I’ve been smashed up against him like this.

“There’s no rush to get up,” he says.

“You can’t be comfortable,” I say. “I am so sorry to have put you in this position—”

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault you got hurt. I’m just glad I happened to be here tonight.”

I shake my head. This is a nightmare. He must hate me.

Carefully, slowly, I risk a glance at my finger. It’s covered in a bandage, all wrapped up. Not a drop of blood in sight. There aren’t even any bloody paper towels or anything.

“Everything’s in the waste basket,” he says, likely noticing the way I’m looking all around. “I’ll take it out later, so you don’t have to see it.”

“That’s really kind of you,” I say, “but it’s my job to do these things. I’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

His body moves as he shakes his head, I think. I’m afraid to turn around and look at him. “Allow me to help you in this way.”

The way he says it, all rough and stern, has me nodding automatically. “Okay, yeah, sure. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I’m determined to stand up. He hurries to his feet behind me, and he’s up before I am, reaching down to help me stand. Although I’m afraid to look at his face, into his stormy eyes, I can’t help it.

“Thanks again,” I whisper.

Those dark blue-gray eyes find mine and he nods. “I told you. You work here, which means I’ll protect you, keep you safe.”

It’s not something I’ve heard from any employer, ever, much less someone that my actual employer contracts with.

And somehow, my crazy heart wants to believe he means those words just for me.