KAZ’S DRIVER eased the town car to the curb outside the bar Milo had suggested. The entire drive had given him a chance to bury the roiling nausea caused by flashbacks of his life, but he was still left with boiling anger. Celeste was getting fucking married a year after…. He couldn’t even bring himself to think of it without exploding or going on an insane rampage through the city.
Love sucked.
Having a day to celebrate it sucked worse. Finding out the girl he once loved was getting married on said day was cause for damage. Serious damage. Preferably to a bottle of tequila.
The second the car glided to a stop, he threw open the door and headed straight into Santino—an upscale hole-in-the-wall that harkened back to the quiet bar days. No dance floor here.
The bouncer outside nodded as Milo approached and knocked once on the door. It was members only, for people who liked to drink alone and not be bothered.
“He’s with me,” he said, hiking a thumb over his shoulder at Kaz, who he assumed trailed behind him.
The bouncer nodded again just as the door slid open. Milo headed straight for the massive mahogany bar that dominated the space. The lack of Valentine’s Day décor made him feel marginally better. Thank God for tiny miracles.
Unfortunately, the lack of people drinking themselves to an early grave showed just how in love the entire city was. The nausea he’d kicked came back with a new level of pathetic. Was he the only brokenhearted SOB in a city of millions? Impossible, but it sure seemed that way.
Peter, the bartender, grinned at him, but the second he recognized the blood in Milo’s expression, he immediately filled a shot glass with the most expensive tequila they had in stock. Milo threw back its contents. The golden liquid carved a burning trail down his throat, easing his rising temper. He slammed the shot glass down, and Peter immediately filled it again. The guy was getting a ridiculously large tip tonight.
“Straight up?” he asked, pointing at the salt shaker and the wooden bowl full of lime slices.
In response, Milo downed the second shot without a glance at the tequila training wheels.
“Straight up, then.” He filled the glass again. “Would you like to drink it straight out of the bottle to save time?”
“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm today,” Milo growled, rethinking the huge tip. He took a seat on the leather barstool as he swallowed the third shot.
Finally the hot anger turned into warm annoyance. The tequila was doing its job. A few more and he would be in happy oblivion. He couldn’t wait. With the ribs in his stomach, it would take most of the bottle before he was good and drunk. And hopefully stupid.
What started off as a night of eating his feelings away had turned into getting plastered until he blacked out and all the events prior to arriving at Santino ceased to exist.
Peter whistled. “Who screwed you over?”
Milo glared. “You don’t need to keep pouring. Just leave the bottle, and I’ll take care of myself.”
The bartender shrugged and moved a step toward Milo’s left, where Kaz had taken his own seat. “I’m assuming you’re a guest of this fool?”
Kaz said in that deep, serious voice of his, “I’ll have a scotch, neat.”
“What kind?” Peter asked back.
“Top shelf black label,” Milo answered for him after he downed his fourth shot. He glanced sideways at Kaz, who nodded and treated him to the same assessing gaze he’d given when they first met that morning. “This one is on me. And don’t argue. Your money won’t be accepted here, because you’re not a member.”
Kaz looked at Peter, who confirmed Milo’s statement with a nod as he slid the glass of scotch toward him. Milo slipped off the barstool and indicated one of the more private booths with a tilt of his head.
Wrapping a large hand around his drink, Kaz unfolded his impressive height off the stool and sauntered over to the booth with the swagger of a man who owned any room he was in, even an empty one. Milo took a moment to study his broad shoulders and the torso that tapered to slim hips and a nice ass. Then he closed his fingers around the neck of the tequila bottle and followed. He slid into the opposite bench of their booth.
“It might not be my place to tell you this, but shouldn’t you at least think of slowing down?” Like a man who had all night to spend with someone about to get slobbering drunk, Kaz took a languid sip of his drink.
Milo covered an unattractive burp with the crook of his elbow, then said, “The drunker I get, the better I will feel.”
His impromptu drinking companion snorted. “Said every alcoholic in the world.”
To make his point, he swallowed another shot. He’d lost count by then. That was good. Losing count meant he was well on his way to being blackout drunk.
“This is for one night only. Trust me.”
The soft lighting and brick interior gave the bar a masculine feel that fit Kaz well. Through hooded eyes, Milo stared at him from across the table.
“So….” Kaz tilted his glass toward him. “What are we drinking to?”
He refilled his shot glass and raised it. “To bitches who break your heart.”
They touched glasses.
Kaz took another sip from his scotch and fished out a red-and-white pack of cigarettes and a Zippo with a dragon design from his inside jacket pocket. Only at Santino was smoking indoors still tolerated. The owner must be paying someone off to avoid fines. Milo didn’t bother stopping Kaz when, with practiced moves, he tapped out a cigarette and sandwiched it between his lips. Then he flipped the lighter open and sharply turned the wheel with his thumb.
The flame danced for a moment. Seconds later, he exhaled, filling their space with smoke. The entire process was hypnotic. Milo admired the man’s balls for not caring if he minded. In truth, he didn’t. Models smoked like chimneys.
“What’s the story?” Kaz asked after another drag. “It’s obvious Celeste is more than just a friend.”
Milo was sufficiently drunk for the walls to come down. Soon the loss of his inhibitions would follow. But before things got crazy, talking it through in drunken commiseration seemed like just what he needed.
“Celeste and I started going out my junior year of college. She was the best damn thing that ever happened in my life. Before her, I was just coasting along, content to keep moving forward without a real goal in mind. She was the one who convinced me to aim to become the editor in chief of Rebel after Cassandra retires.” He shook his head in disappointment. “She showed me what I could do if I applied myself.”
With an unreadable expression, Kaz listened. He nodded once in a while to show Milo he was paying attention, as though the seriousness of his features weren’t an indicator of his rapt interest. So Milo continued between more shots.
“I was so in love with her that I was willing to move to Tokyo for a year when she got a paid internship there, just so we wouldn’t have to do the long-distance thing.”
“Ah, that explains your proficiency in Nihongo.”
“Damn straight. Hers too.” He slapped the tabletop and welcomed the sting in his palm. “Three years into our relationship, I was ready to settle down and start making babies with her. Or so I thought. You saw her tonight. Wasn’t she the most beautiful thing on two legs you’ve ever seen?”
“I’ve seen better,” Kaz muttered into his second glass of scotch, which Peter had sent over, along with an ashtray.
“Well, to me, she was the sunshine after a long winter. I was fucking crazy about her.” He snorted. “I had everything planned. Valentine’s Day. Reserved the best table at our favorite restaurant. I even had the ring. Harry Winston. A karat for each year we were together. Princess cut—”
“Because she was your princess,” Kaz interrupted, disgust clear in his statement.
“You’re getting it.” Milo had guzzled enough of the tequila that his long-awaited numbness had finally arrived. He could get through the next part without breaking to pieces. “Everything was going smoothly. I was in my best Armani, and she was in this sexy emerald green Stella McCartney I borrowed from the Rebel closet. I pre-ordered all her favorite food, including the baked Alaska she loved that I completely abhorred.”
“Don’t tell me, the ring was in the dessert.”
“Hell no!” He licked at the tequila that didn’t quite make it all the way into his mouth. “I wasn’t going to leave a ring like that in the hands of the waitstaff. I had it tucked inside my breast pocket, waiting for the right moment. Little did I know she had plans of her own.”
He shook his head ruefully and sighed long and loud. “She waited until the middle of dessert. With a serious expression, she reached across the table for my hand. When I moved to lace our fingers together and she refused, it should have been my first red flag.”
The tequila inched from comforting to sickening as the line of his lips tightened. The room started to spin like that tornado ride he forgot the name of at the state fair—slow at first until it reached full barf-inducing momentum. “With a serious face, she began telling me that in the last six months she’d met someone else and had been seeing him behind my back. I was so shocked all I could do was stare.”
Kaz cursed under his breath in Japanese and scratched his eyebrow with a thumb. The smoke from his second cigarette curled toward the ceiling.
“Kuso is right,” he repeated. “Afterward, she got up and walked out. When I got home, all her stuff was gone. She’d packed and moved out while I was preparing for what should have been the most romantic night of our lives. I hadn’t seen her again until tonight. And fucking engaged. Probably to the same prick she was screwing around with behind my back.”
Tired of using the glass, he drank straight from the bottle. What the hell. He was beyond caring.
“I never thought anything could hurt more until I saw her all gorgeous and fucking happy, and there I was attempting to drown myself in a platter of baby back ribs. I didn’t think she could ever break my heart twice, but she managed it quite nicely tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” Kaz murmured.
The sincerity in those blue eyes raised Milo’s ire. “Don’t pity me. I may look pathetic right now, but come morning I will be fine.”
He tilted his head back, mouth open, and poured more booze down his throat. The bottle was running dangerously low.
Then he slurred out, “There’s no such thing as a happily ever after, Kaz. Be good to remember that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because mine just ripped out my heart and stomped on it with size eight stiletto Christian Louboutins.” He slid out of his side of the booth and slipped in beside Kaz.
Beneath the scent of scotch, Kaz smelled of musk and spice. Of course. A masculine scent for such a masculine man.
Milo could never pull off that kind of cologne. He opted for cooler scents. His inhibitions had finally left the building when he leaned in and pressed his nose against the swath of skin above Kaz’s shirt collar. The man didn’t flinch away—a testament to his confidence.
Then he said, “Goes to show what happens when you let your guard down. Love will eat you alive and spit you out.” Without thinking of the consequences of his actions, he snuggled closer against Kaz and rested his head on the other man’s strong shoulder. “That’s why, after what that bitch Celeste did, I promised myself I would never fall in love again. For an entire year, I buried myself in work and became Cassandra’s executive assistant. I’m learning everything I can about how Rebel operates, making important contacts in the fashion industry, like Kenji, and preparing myself for the day I can take over.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Kaz said. He shifted, settled his arm around Milo’s shoulders, and pulled him in closer.
All Milo could think was how warm the man sitting beside him felt against his own body. No matter how hot under the collar he got from the massive amounts of tequila he’d been drinking, he couldn’t get enough of the heat that emanated from Kaz.
To think the day started with him being so intimidated by this serious, eloquent, handsome-as-sin Japanese businessman. Now that they’d spent some time together and he’d bared his soul, there was nothing intimidating about him at all. In fact, beneath his stoic shell was a sex appeal Milo found quite attractive. He was drunk enough to admit that to himself. He’d been working around beautiful people long enough to appreciate high quality when he saw it.
“Have you ever considered being a model?” he murmured up at Kaz. “I’m pretty sure Brioni would hire you on the spot for any one of their catalogs.”
Husky laughter reverberated from deep inside Kaz. The sound hit Milo in all the right places, and he lamented the layers of clothing that separated them.
“You, my friend, are sufficiently drunk.”