A Price to Pay by Alice Raine

Author:Alice Raine
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786152596
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Oliver

Marcus had grand plans of dragging me halfway around the world for my stag do, but in the end my demand for a quiet night with the boys had won out, and I was now sitting around a table with Marcus, Nathan, David, Nicholas, and Matías, who had flown in especially to join us for the weekend.

We were in The Vaults, an exclusive members club underneath the streets of Central London, built within old arches and tunnels of the underground system, and had just experienced one of the best meals I’d ever eaten.

The club was lavishly decorated with silks, velvets, and fine pieces of wooden furniture, and lit with the flickering light from oil lamps and candles. All in all, it had quite a Victorian Gothic vibe going on. The Vaults specialised in high class dining and also boasted one of the best wine and Cognac cellars in the whole of London, so Marcus had chosen our venue well.

So far, we had experienced the quality of the food and wine, and now it was time to begin sampling the spirits they prided themselves on.

‘That was delicious,’ Nathan declared, pushing his dessert plate away and giving an appreciative pat to his stomach.

Marcus wiped at the corners of his mouth and threw his napkin down. ‘It was good,’ he conceded. ‘I could have done better, though.’ His boast didn’t last long, because he burst out laughing almost immediately afterwards. No matter how skilled he was in the kitchen, my friend had never had a big head about his talents.

‘I have no doubt you could have, but I wanted you here at the table with us, not sweating away in a kitchen all night,’ I informed him with a grin.

A server gave a polite knock on the door to our room and entered while balancing a large silver tray loaded down with sampling glasses filled with a range of their finest Cognacs.

She placed them on a side unit and then set about making sure that we all had five different glasses in front of us. Once she had handed an information card out to us with details of the grape varieties used, she made to leave the room. Pausing by Matías’s chair, she leaned down and murmured something, her cheeks heating so much as she did that it piqued my curiosity.

As soon as she had left the room, Matías looked across at me with a devilish grin and rubbed his hands together. ‘My stag gift for you has arrived, my friend.’

Something about his expression and the wicked twinkle in his eye automatically made me suspect the worst and I was shaking my head even before he’d had a chance to explain what his “gift” was.

‘I said no strippers, Matías,’ I warned on a growl, but he held a hand up and shook his head with a look of mock offence.

‘You always think the worst of me, old friend, no?’ he answered with a frown. I was wondering if perhaps I had made

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