“Come on, hurry up, Dylan. I thought you could walk faster than that.” My brother stopped and pointed at me. “Let’s go. Everyone’s waiting for me.”
“Okay, Kent, I’m coming. I mean, who’s waiting for you? The strippers?”
“We’re going to a dance club, not a strip club.” He laughed. “My friends. I mean, it’s not every day you get married.”
“But this isn’t even your bachelor party, dude.” I rolled my eyes. “This is just hanging out with your friends at the club.”
“But we’re celebrating the fact that I’m soon no longer going to be a bachelor.”
“Which I don’t know what you’re thinking,” I grumbled as I caught up with him. “Why would you want to go and tie yourself down to one woman for the rest of your life? You know that means no more pussy.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He rolled his eyes. “Married people have sex.”
“I mean no more other pussy.” I laughed. “It will be Lucia’s pussy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And that’s if you’re lucky. It might just be one day a month. Or one day a year.”
“Oh, bro, you have absolutely no idea what it is to be in love, do you?” Kent looked at me sadly.
“I know you’re not feeling sorry for me.” I rolled my eyes. “I can have any woman that I want.”
“Yeah, you can. But …”
“But what?”
“But do you really deserve them?”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, you can have any woman that you want, but all the women that you pick are infantile and snobby and superficial. Why don’t you go for real women?”
“Who are the real women?” I asked. For some reason, a picture of my new secretary, Abby, came to mind. She was a real woman, but she was dowdy and frumpy. I bet even Kent wouldn’t tell me to be with her.
“I don’t know, like a nurse or a teacher or—”
“Boring,” I cut him off. “Come on, let’s go and dance.”
“You’re going to dance tonight?” Kent looked excited.
“Well, it is a dance club, right?”
“Yeah, but you don’t normally dance.”
“Well, I’m dancing tonight,” I said, just to get him to shut up. I hated dancing. I didn’t have the best rhythm, and I always felt self-conscious. I never felt like I was in power on a dance floor, unlike some men. I was in power when I was in the boardroom or the bedroom. That’s where my talents lay.
“Okay, we’re here,” Kent said, pulling out his phone. “Let me text everyone.”
“I thought you said we were late and that they were here already.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know where they are. If they’re on the dance floor already or by the bar—”
“Okay, brother.”
Even though I was annoyed, I loved him. Kent was my best friend. He was a part of me. Together, we’d come so far. I looked at his handsome face with his floppy blonde hair and his big blue eyes. He was a younger, more innocent version of me. I’d shielded him when we were younger, and I was glad to do so. He didn’t have the hard edges I had from being abandoned by our parents and going from foster home to foster home. I’d made sure that we were together through it all. I’d made sure that he was okay. I’d made sure when we had nothing to eat, he always had something. I loved my brother, and I did everything for him. That’s why I was at this club. And I knew he knew it. Kent would do anything for me as well.
“Okay. They said they’ll be here in five minutes. Don’t be angry, Dylan.”
“Why would I be angry? You were the one that was telling me to hurry up. You were the one that—”
“Okay, okay. Do you want to go inside instead of waiting out here? I’ll buy you a beer or something.”
“That’s fine. I’d rather have some cool air before we get hit on by the women of New York City.”
“I know you think you’re a hotshot, bro, but they’re not going to know who you are in the club. You’re just another guy. They’re not going to know you’re a billionaire, that you’re the Dylan McAllister.”
“It doesn’t even matter though, my brother.” I laughed. “One look at this face and they’ll be all over me.”
“Well, I have the same face as you,” he said.
“Yeah, but you’re engaged. And we both know Lucia would not be happy to hear that you were flirting around.”
“Well, that is true,” he said. “But she did give me one exception.”
“Oh? What’s the exception?”
“She said that I could have a dancer at the bachelor party.”
“She did not.”
I was legitimately stunned. Lucia was the jealous type, and I could not believe that she’d allow him to have strippers at the bachelor party. What was going on? Had hell frozen over?
“Well, I mean, she said she was going to hire the company.” He shrugged. “I don’t really know—”
I laughed. “Dude, there’s not going to be any stripper or dancers. It’s most probably going to be some old grandma teaching you how to waltz or something.”
“No, you don’t know that.”
“Trust me, I know women like Lucia.”
“Whatever, Dylan.” Kent frowned.
I pressed my lips together. It was a little bit of a sore spot between us because the weekend that Kent had met Lucia she’d actually been making a play for me. I’d found her humor to be annoying and she had seemed to be too girly-girly. So I’d walked away and left her to talk to my brother, who had thought she was attractive and had enjoyed her humor. They had eventually gotten together, but sometimes I still like to tease him that I had been the one she was after initially.
I heard a gaggle of feminine voices behind me, laughing about something. And all of a sudden, a weird feeling came over my body. I turned around. Did I know any of these women? There were four beautiful women who appeared to be in their mid to late twenties, dressed to the nines. Short skirts, high heels, hair done, and lots and lots of makeup. They hadn’t noticed me or Kent, which surprised me because normally women were all over us. It’s like they could sense we were rich. But these women were busy laughing about something. I heard one of them saying something to some girl called Isabella, who appeared to be the girl at the front, with long brown hair. She was pretty, but she was grinning too much for me. I liked someone with a good personality, but not someone who looked like they should be hosting a children’s TV show.
“And Jack said to me that if I want to go to Spain on the honeymoon, then we can do it. We’ll even go to Antarctica if I want,” she was saying to her friends.
I tried not to roll my eyes. Well, no wonder she was so happy. She had convinced some poor idiot to get married to her. Who would want to go to Antarctica on a honeymoon? How was that romantic?
“Oh, I’m so jealous.” Another girl spoke and I froze. That voice was familiar. Very, very familiar. I blinked and looked once again at the four women. Who had spoken and how did I know that voice?