CHAPTER 3

I ignore my inward panic and keep walking. My phone vibrates in my purse and I take it out to see it's Jack.

"What?" I demand with a frown.

"Easy, tigress, have you found your millionaire husband yet?" He asks curiously.

"No, I think I'm about to soon."

"Hurry, okay? Our future and my future girlfriends depend on tonight."

"Don't I know that already?" I sigh. Sometimes I wish I wasn't the firstborn. "Hope you found a good excuse to tell mom."

"Jakes got that covered, remember he's the brain." He chuckles.

"Yea and you are the mouths." I chuckle. "I have to go now."

"Okay, good luck." He says before the lines go off.

I open my purse and try to put my phone on when I hit someone and lost my balance, sending my purse and the glass of wine flying.

I'm flying in the air, I'm going to fall and be laughed at at this party. Damn!!

"You're okay ma'am?" I hear someone say to me.

I open my eye to see a beautiful pair of blue eyes staring deeply with caution into mine. Then I feel a pair of muscular arms around my waist, holding me, protecting me.

He smells rich.

I'm in heaven.

He sets me down on my feet and helps me pick up my purse and hands it to me. I take my time to study him. His lips are irresistibly beautiful and his nose is nicely shaped. His blond hair glittering with the changing lights, his nicely trimmed beards...... I stop when I see him with a devilish smile. I'm analysing him and he knows!

I swallow quickly and blink my eyes, and he cleared his throat and hands me my purse. "Thanks for saving me from falling," I say, blushing madly.

His smile widens. "Can't let you fall on that pretty bum of yours, can I?"

I can already tell he is a flirt.

"Well, that's kind of you."

"My name is Luke, Luke Power."

Luke Powers? He owns one of the major clothing designs in the states. I hear a lot about him. Rich, young, ambitious.

I'm going to pee myself or worse, I'm going to faint.

"I'm Taylor Snowfall."

His eyes narrow at me as though reading me. "What are you doing here, then?"

"The same thing everyone here is doing, fundraising."

We walk away from the crowd to a much quiet place.

"Really? I've never seen you before."

"That's because. I. Just. Came. Back. Home. Last. Week." I pick my lie carefully, not to pick the wrong ones. "Dad. Says. To. Get. Used. To. This. Types. Of. Parties."

"That's kind of him." His eyes rake over my body just like Rory had earlier and except there's more hunger in his eyes as they reach my thigh. "A goddess-like yourself might need someone around you for the night."

I choke out a chuckle; he isn't asking to sleep with me tonight, is he?

"Well, I just met you, isn't it going to be too early to have sex with you?" I try not to let my nervousness show, although I was getting nervous.

He places a hand on my thigh and my breath cuts in fear. This has to be a dream. This is certainly not how I want tonight to go.

"Come on, it's not such a bad idea, and it won't be once we go into the room."

"No." The word comes out like a cry and I try to move away.

What's it and guys mistaking me for a whore today?

I throw a punch with my other hand, which is not trapped, but he catches it and pins it down. His hand roughly explores my thigh, and he moves it higher into my dress and soon his hands touch my panties. By this time, I'm struggling to get free from him, but failing.

His eyes are filled with lust, and he drags me closer to himself. He tries to kiss my lips, but I turn my face away, and my tear threatens to spill, but I blink it back.

How did it get this far?

"Let me go, let me go!!" I shout, but it falls on deaf ears.

"Shut up and..."

His words are cut short when he is forcefully pulled away and he lets me go. I immediately adjust my dress and move away from the two men who are throwing punches at each other. I look at the ground again, but this time all I see is one getting beaten up.

When the other man feels satisfied, and that he's done enough, he gets up and walks towards me. Unable to run, I move back, frightened, as I can not make out his face, but soon my back hits the wall. Damn!!

I stand there wondering what thing is yet to happen to me; the man got even closer and his hand softly stroked my cheek. I whimper and close my eyes as the tears I've been holding back for a while now roll down my eyes. I hate crying.

"Did he hurt you that much?" He asks carefully. I can also feel the anger in his voice, which is not directed at me.

I open my eyes to see the light illuminating Rory's face as he gazes into mine. My tears fall even more and I sob. I feel terrible; I feel terrible. First, because I was mean to Him earlier, and he still saved me, and because our plans have now been ruined.

"Shh, come here." He pulls me into his muscular arms and I let him hug me.

We stay that way until we pull away and I wipe my tears off and pull myself together, clearly not willing to cry more than I already have.

"Thank you, Rory," I say, not looking up at him, though. "But you didn't have to, I had it under control."

He scoffs in disbelief. "He had you under control from the way I saw it. What were you thinking?"

His concern is annoying.

My eyes flare in anger. "It's none of your business." I spit at him.

"That's what is going to get you into trouble. You're rude and rebellious. That would be okay if you aren't so weak and vulnerable." He says in a cold, harsh tone.

I slap him hard in the face and he clenches his cheek; I guess from the sting of the slap. He grits his teeth and glares at me but says nothing.

"I'm not weak and I'm certainly not vulnerable and because you saved me from the sick bastard just now doesn't mean you know the first thing about me," I say slowly through gritted teeth.

With that, I walk away from him. He stands there in silence, watching me as I walk away into the darkness, but I don't care to look back at him.

I enter the room and throw my purse into my handbag and grab it from the chair and hang it, ready to leave the hotel. I don't want to be here when he gets back. There is no reason to be. I don't even want to see his face ever again and I wish our path never crosses in this lifetime again.

.

“Wake up, sleepyhead!” Jack’s deep voice barges into my room and his annoying self.

“Go away!” I groan, burying my head deeper into the pillow, desperately wanting to get at least a minute more of sleep.

Three weeks ago, I broke my alarm mistakenly and since then Jack has taken it upon himself to be my new annoying alarm.

I wish I could break him too!

“No way, get up. Do you want to get fired from your work for going late?” He snaps, clapping his hands.

He’s right. My job is keeping this family together. You can say that since my trip to the Five-Star hotel three months ago, things haven’t been the same for both me or my family.

When I got back home that day, the three Js looked surprised to see me come home that early, though none said anything to me. They did the next day though, throwing many questions like...

“How did it go?”

“You looked worn last night. What happened?”

“Why did you come back so early?”

“Did you find us the millionaire?”

“Are you going to be married soon?”

“Are we going to be rich soon?”

“How long are you going to be married?”

In all the questions, only one made me tear up. It was when Josh and Jake asked in unison.

“Did something bad happen?”

I covered my face and shook my head, but I wasn’t kidding them.

“Did someone stop you from doing what you needed? ‘Cause when I called you yesterday, you seemed in control.”

So I told them everything. I’ve kept nothing from them and I didn’t plan on starting then.

The three, like the triplets they were, all grew red from anger at the same time. Jack was pacing. He couldn’t even sit down. He kept tugging on his hair while he ground his teeth together.

“Is he dead? Did the other man kill him?”

I told him I didn’t know, and they said he should be dead or he would die in their hands and I knew they weren’t kidding.

Josh took my hands and stare into my eyes, before saying, “You did your best.”

“How?!” I exclaimed sadly. “I left home $1500.44 and now I’m home with 44¢.” I took my purse, opens it to further explain my failure.

I opened and turned it down and instead of forty-four cents falling out; I saw dollars in my purse. We all ran towards it quickly and I picked it up and when I counted it, it was one thousand five hundred dollars.

“It’s impossible,” I told them. “I paid everything to the receptionist who gave me my room.”

They... We didn’t care how it got there. All we cared about was that we weren’t empty in our hands anymore.

The week followed. We realised that Luke Powers didn’t die that night because the ‘You & I’ host Mona Lisa interviewed him.

The Js and I all came together to further watch him speak. He seemed to recover fast from the beating, but I could still see his left cheek redder than the other. Rory didn’t kill him that night, I guess, but watching him talk on the TV made me wish he did.

He went on and on about his fashion taste, the Power fashion house, and what he does in his free time, which to my surprise was “charity”. I could tell he didn’t even know what charity was and even if he did, he needed to be treated before he can come close to the children.

Mona Lisa asked him about the recent rumour of him being mugged and what it was about.

He laughed richly; I remembered that laugh and it only made me sick.

“That’s true. I got mugged a week ago at the fundraiser party, but I’m alive and well.”