Then why did she still feel as if she was disobeying him, somehow? And why was her bottom throbbing all of a sudden?
She slumped back into the position she'd been in most of the afternoon, paints and supplies all around her but nothing coming to her except visuals of events she'd much rather forget. Or she wished she'd rather forget. Her mind, apparently, preferred to go over them in excruciating, embarrassing, arousing detail.
"Your work is beautiful."
She yelped, knocking over everything she kept in a careful nest around her, sending both herself and the easel crashing to the floor, too.
Loch extricated her from the mess. "I'm sorry to startle you."
"How the fuck did you get in here?" She didn't care about a little spilt paint—that's why the floor in here was still old, cheap linoleum, the pattern of which was no longer visible beneath the paint splotches. "The door was locked and chained and bolted!"
"But the back door has a very simple lock on it." He shrugged, almost as if he was embarrassed. "Lock picking was a talent I picked up during my misspent youth."
"Jesus, who raised you, Fagin?" she joked.
"No one, really," he answered truthfully.
Her eyes widened. That was hardly the answer she expected from him. "No one? You had to have parents."
Another diffident shrug. "I'm sure I did, but I never knew either of them. I was abandoned in the bathroom of a bus station as a baby and raised in an orphanage, then I was put into a series of steadily worsening foster homes, until I took matters into my own hands when I was about thirteen and struck out on my own."
"At thirteen?" she squeaked incredulously, recalling how loved and comfortable and warm and spoiled her existence had been at that age.
He nodded, hating the look of pity on her face. "I was quite capable of taking care of myself by then." Much better than the majority of his foster parents, he thought, but didn't add.
Although she was curious and would have loved to have heard more, everything about his body language and tone of voice shouted that he would prefer not to talk about it, so Arden left off and instead picked up her outrage at him having blithely broken into her place.
She crossed her arms over her chest—ignoring the fresh, wet paint stains on her shirt and hands, looking up into those disconcertingly bold, dark eyes of his and saying firmly, "Get the fuck out."
He chuckled, and she realized unexpectedly that she liked the sound of it, and that brought her up short mentally very quickly. "Well, you certainly do have a one-track mind. But I promised Sylvia that I would look in on you, and I really do want that account number."
Sylvia, of course. He wouldn't have come over here on his own.
"You've seen me. I'm fine."
Her swollen red eyes and the fresh traces of tears on her cheeks made a liar of her.
"Your promise to Sylvia is of no concern to me, and I'll send you the number when I'm damned good and ready." Unable to stop herself, she laid hands on him voluntarily for the first time, putting her palms on his midsection—and noting errantly that it was like touching marble—and tried to push.
Loch crossed his arms over his chest and stood there, obviously amused at her attempt to move him.
She realized quickly that it wasn't going to get her anywhere—it was like trying to move a brick wall—so she mirrored his position, saying, "If you don't get out of here, I'm going to call the police and have them remove you."
"No, you won't," he replied with infuriating calm.
Arden really didn't want to know, but she asked anyway, "Why not?"
"Because that would cause a scandal for me, which might well result in the company going under, and thus, your best friend would lose a really good job. You would never do that in this situation, because you know you're not in any real danger from me. You're just annoyed at me, and you would never forgive yourself if you were the reason your best friend was unemployed."
Damned, if he wasn't right.
"I hate you."
"Good." He nodded. "I'd rather have you hate me than love me, because at least hate is a real emotion."
Arden rolled her eyes, but she was in no mood to argue with him. Instead, she turned her attention to what she could do to get him to leave voluntarily.
She found her checking account number and her bank's routing number and gave them both to him on a sticky note, saying, "You've seen me. You can tell Syl that I'm fine. You have your numbers. Out. Now."
He found himself in the unusual position of wishing he had more reasons to stay, but he allowed himself to be maneuvered to the door, where he turned around to catch her eye. "Are you sure you're all right? Do you want me to stay with you?"
She didn't mean to be impolite, but she actually snorted at his offer. "Sorry. But you're the person I'm trying to get away from, so, no. And I'm fine, thank you very nicely."
"I'll be in touch—we still have papers to sign," he mentioned, his foot already out the door as she practically slammed it in his face.
"Fine. Let me know when," she said through the door.
He hadn't been hustled out of a woman's apartment since he was in college, and even then, it was only because her husband was on the way home, not because she wanted to get away from him. Most women wished he would spend more time with him—but not this one.
Loch shook his head all the way to his car. There was something about this woman that attracted him in weird ways that he'd rather not examine too closely. Hopefully, once he'd indulged himself in these twenty-five somewhat expensive nights, he'd have worked her out of his system, and he could go back to his normal life.
Chapter 6
Monday morning, her phone trilled an alert, waking her up at the crack. It was a message from her bank, saying that a deposit had been made and notifying her of her current balance.
"Son of a fucking bitch!" she cursed when she saw the amount. Seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three dollars and eighty-two cents.
Her account, of course, had originally been overdrawn.
Her text was succinct.
What the fuck, Frazier?
Good morning to you, too. And I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Arden.
You sent me eight thousand dollars!
Yes, right.
No, that's NOT right! We agreed on four for twenty-five nights.
We agreed that if the money you earned wasn't there the next day, then I'd pay double.
No, YOU said that. I specifically said that I didn't want double. And even if I had agreed to that, which I didn't, it wasn't your fault that it wasn't there the next day; it was mine, because I hadn't given you the numbers!
The bastard didn't bother to respond to her.
IT WAS MY FAULT, she yelled. Take 4K of it back!
No. You earned at least 8K.
Arden fussed and fumed, on the verge of throwing her phone across the room, but she couldn't afford to replace it, so she settled for punching the nearest pillow.
Taking a deep breath, she responded, Fine. Then this thing is over, after which she stomped into the bathroom.
In the time it took for her to go to the loo and come back, her phone had alerted again.
He'd taken it back.
His text showed up while she was still grinning down at her phone in celebration of her victory: There are still papers to sign and my friend the lawyer wants to meet you beforehand. When can you get together with him, and then when can we finalize things?
His friend, the lawyer—Thomas Grant—could not have been nicer. He was warm and friendly and kind. It made her wonder how they had become friends, since they were such polar opposites, but she wasn't about to ask. It was none of her business. He did, however, spend nearly the entire hour she was with him trying to talk her out of doing what he could see she had already decided to do, not that she blamed him.
He even offered to go to bat for her with her creditors, instead, but, when she pressed him about that after having described her financial situation, he h
ad to admit that there probably wasn't much he could do for her.
The reality of the situation was that Loch's money was the only thing that could save her—she'd already resigned herself to that fact or she would never have slept with him in the first place—so he had to accept it, too.
The meeting with Loch took place after hours in his friend's office. He was surprised, offering his own office, but Arden had insisted, preferring that they meet in a neutral place.
She should have thought of it, but it still startled her when she realized that he had brought his own attorney, of course, as the four of them sat down at a large conference table.
Not for the first time, she wondered how the hell it was that she found herself in this situation, smiling slightly at the absurdity of it all.
Loch couldn't keep his eyes away from her. He hadn't seen her in nearly a week, and he thought she looked a bit thinner, a bit paler—if that was even possible—and a bit more delicate than she had, and he wasn't sure if it was this arrangement they were creating that was stressing her, her financial woes, or the fact that she was still grieving.
He was betting on a combination of all three, and although he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize their agreement in any way, he wasn't happy to be an added cause of tension in her life.
Still, she had smiled there for a brief moment, as if she had a secret of some sort, and he immediately wanted to know what it was.
As papers were passed to her from his lawyer—many more in that direction than the opposite, of course, because she didn't have the assets or the money that he had to protect—Thomas intercepted them and explained each one to her before she signed it, among which was a non-disclosure agreement, and all of which she signed quite blithely after being told what it was—even the one that said that either one of them could terminate the agreement at any time, for any or no reason at all. That kind of surprised her, but she signed it anyway.
Thomas—who, of course was attempting to do his duty by her to the best of his ability—tried to discuss what they meant, how they impacted her, and impress upon her the need to truly consider what she was signing, but—beyond a few stipulations of her own, the only thing she cared about was the money.
She didn't want this relationship—such as it was—gossiped about, so she certainly wasn't going to go running to the press about it, and she had originally wanted less money than she was getting, so she wasn't a gold digger. All in all, she really wanted very little from him.
When it came to the financial agreements, though, he didn't even bother to pass it to her, but rather handed his lawyer a couple of copies of a document he had created for her that she had already signed which contained her own financial specifications and, quite frankly, taking great delight in his friend's look of astonishment when he read it.
"My client would like to stipulate that she will take nothing more from Mr. Frazier than that which they are agreeing upon herein. He is to give her no gifts or bonuses of any kind, not even so much as a birthday card."
Thomas handed her the form that they had given him, motioning for her to hold off signing it until he had signed the one they had given them.
Loch knew he should have felt fine about signing the document. He'd never thought she was after his money in the first place—she'd proven her point to the contrary—and he certainly wasn't prone to gift giving himself, but somehow, the coldness of the restriction—the fact that she was spelling it out so rawly—chafed him.
But he signed it, and she did the same.
When they were done with his forms, Thomas produced his own about what her requirements were of him.
"Given the nature of this arrangement, my client wanted certain things to be spelled out." He blushed furiously as he did so, but he read each item aloud as the other men followed along.
"She will not consent to being shared with anyone. That is non-negotiable."
Loch looked as if he might balk at that one, but he merely nodded.
"I realize this is redundant—it's really already been addressed, but my client was insistent that it be spelled out here. She specifically will not accept a double payment, for any reason." Tom looked over at him quizzically.
That got him to smile and chuckle softly as he inclined his head to her formally. "Touché. So noted."
"She will maintain and reside in her own home at all times, spending only the hours necessary to conform to the specifications of the agreement at the place of Mr. Frazier's choosing."
He opened his mouth but didn't say anything, looking more and more unhappy.
"Nothing is to be done to her that might result in the permanent alteration of her person, i.e. no tattoos, piercings, etc., nor that which might be considered detrimental to her health."
"No problem." He couldn't imagine marring that beautiful skin of hers in any way that didn't fade after a few days—or perhaps weeks, dependent on how she'd misbehaved.
"And, although she readily agrees to make herself available to you when you request her presence, as she has a much more fluid schedule, shall we say, she requires that you recognize her ability to decline such a request, such that, if she's in the middle of an artistic moment, she can do so without penalty."
"No."
Even Loch's lawyer gave him a surprised look, so he repeated it.
"No." As he elaborated, he was looking at no one but her, and Arden couldn't help but blush. "I'll remake a room at my place—of your choice, barring my study—with all of your art stuff that you can use as a studio while you're there, should we end up spending consecutive nights together, if you feel inspired, and I will agree not to demand anything of you during those times. But one of the basic tenets of this…relationship is that you do not get to say no to me."
Unwilling to argue, as long as she felt he would respect her need to create should the mood strike, Arden nodded. "All right, but in that studio, wherever it is, I must be autonomous."
Not really understanding why she was so insistent about that, Loch nevertheless agreed.
When everything was signed—except those things that needing adjustments, which would be sent to them both later—Loch stood and held his hand out to her, pinning her with his gaze.
She was—for some reason—unprepared for his demand, and it was plain in her voice to each of the three men present that that was the case. "T-tonight?"
Thomas stepped up next to her, saying, "Loch, I'd like to speak with my client in private."
That uncomfortably intense gaze shifted from her to Thomas, but Thomas was obviously used to it. Rather than tensing against it, as she automatically did, he literally relaxed into it, even though Loch looked as if he wanted to throttle his so-called friend for cock blocking him so obviously.
"Make it quick," he grumbled, not bothering to hide his anger at having been successfully thwarted.
When the door was closed behind them—much more quietly than he would have, she was sure, since it was his lawyer who was the last out—Thomas bade her sit down.
For a moment, he was silent, then he gave her virtually the same kind of stare she always got from Loch, minus any trace of Loch's ever present overt sexual hunger.
"Do you know how Loch and I met?"
"No." She had a feeling she was about to hear. "He hasn't told me."
"I'm not surprised. We were in foster care together at a couple of different places. We became friends, which is always a dicey prospect since you can't count on anything, really, when you're a ward of the state. But I could always count on Loch." He practically choked up as he spoke. "Not at first, though. At first, he was sullen and withdrawn and nowhere near the warm, loving, emotionally effusive person I'm sure you've become acquainted with."
Arden couldn't help but snort.
Thomas' smile was endearingly lopsided. "Yeah, I know. But believe me when I say that he's a thousand percent better than he was when I first met him.
"I don't know what it was about him, but I was drawn to him for some reason, and I did
my best to befriend him, although he certainly made it clear that he had absolutely no interest in having a friend. He was older than I was and had been in the system much longer. I don't know if he had ever been just a regular, happy kid. By the time I encountered him, he was already hard as nails. But I persisted, and we formed a friendship of sorts—kind of like in that Looney Tunes cartoon with the big, nasty bulldog and the tiny dog sidekick that's always yapping around him. I was that yappy dog. I was always the runt, you see, and along with that came being picked on by bullies—but not once Loch decided that I was his to protect."
He shook his head slowly, obviously lost in his memories. "I can't tell you how many times he saved me from being knocked around and how many beatings he took for me for doing so, at least, at first, until his growth spurt. He looked out for me, and I did my best—in my small, highly ineffectual way—to look out for him, but in some of the situations in which we found ourselves, there was nothing I could do to save him from some pretty bad stuff."
By this point, tears were literally pouring down Arden's face.
Thomas cleared his throat and went on. "He struck out on his own long before he was supposed to legally—he just disappeared one night—but he never lost touch with me. He's quite adept at getting into places undetected when he wants to be."
Arden frowned, but laughed wryly at the same time. "Yeah, I've become personally acquainted with that tendency."
Tom smiled. "Yeah. He was a really good thief, in his day. Luckily, he straightened out, but he did come to see me wherever I was and whenever he could, even bringing the occasional treat because he was already working, along with going to school. He was like a big brother—albeit a reluctant, grudging one.
"Anyway, like I said, he kept track of me, encouraged me in school, attended my high school graduation, and even helped me with college expenses, as he could. I didn't know it then—I knew he was in school, too—but I didn't know that he was giving me as much leftover money as he could from the three jobs he was working besides doing work-study for the school, too." He paused before going on with his story.
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