Cocky Prince

by Jules Barnard

  “It worked,” Gen says to Adam after we settle. “Jeb’s friend was able to record the conversation with Blackwell. They’re obtaining a warrant for the house where Blackwell is keeping the escorts.”

  Jeb is Gen’s father. “What is she talking about?” I ask Adam.

  He’s leaning against the counter, his head in his hands. “I spoke to Lewis a couple of weeks ago. Asked him why Sallee Construction wasn’t involved in the Bliss suite remodel. It seemed suspicious to both of us, and he put me in touch with Gen’s dad, who helped with the Drake Peterson conviction.”

  “You organized this…without talking to me?”

  “Adam was already a target,” Lewis says, looking over from where he’s sitting on the couch with Gen. “He didn’t want you involved until we knew more and had support from the police.”

  Mira reaches across the island and touches my arm. “It all happened so quickly. Tyler and I were out to dinner and just found out too. So did the rest.”

  One of the police detectives introduces himself and closes his clipboard. “Joseph Blackwell is under arrest. As your friend mentioned, we’re putting together a search warrant for the apartment building where they’re keeping the women.”

  Gen closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I can’t believe Blackwell did this.” Lewis tightens his arm around her shoulders. “What happened to me was bad, but sex trafficking?”

  “A federal offense,” the policeman says, and hands each of them a card. “Contact us if you have any concerns. We’ll give you updates as they come in.”

  The detectives leave and I rest my head on Adam’s shoulder, wrapping my arm around his waist. “You should have told me,” I say softly.

  He breathes into my hair. “Didn’t want you on Blackwell’s radar.”

  I look into his face. “I should have trusted you to do the right thing, but you need to trust me too. We could have talked and I would have supported you.”

  He nods. “I didn’t find out about the escorts until tonight. There were threats by Paul before—” He shakes his head. “I just didn’t want you hurt. I couldn’t have stood that.”

  Adam was put in a tough position. I understand, but I’m not okay with him keeping things from me.

  Before I can respond, Mira speaks up. “Just think, Hayden. If you hadn’t sucked up your pride all those weeks ago and made nice with Adam, the police wouldn’t have such good material.”

  Adam looks at me. “What’s she talking about, sucking up your pride?”

  Time slows. Adam lost his father tonight; he’s exhausted, vulnerable, and I can read the thoughts crossing his mind. “Something silly in the beginning. It was nothing.”

  Mira rests her chin on her hand, leaning over the counter, and clearly not getting the tension she’s causing. “Hayden was supposed to get close to you so that we could figure out if Blue was still running the suite Tyler and I found, but I never thought you guys would get that close.” She snorts, laughing, and I glare at her. “What? You guys are cute.”

  “You’re not helping.” I turn to Adam. “Don’t listen to her…Adam?”

  He stands abruptly, wavering slightly on his feet. “I have to go.”

  “Wait.” I stand beside him. “I’m going with you.”

  “No,” he says forcefully.

  I step back. “Adam, what Mira and I talked about all those weeks ago has nothing to do with you and me now.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  My eyes widen. Anger radiates from his body.

  Jaeger walks over. He’s one of Adam’s best friends and he must have read the hurt on Adam’s face. “What’s going on?”

  Adam swivels his head and sneers at Jaeger. “Protecting her again?”

  “Concerned,” Jaeger says. “For both of you.” He peers at me, a question in his gaze.

  Adam has been frustrated with me before, but never like this. He took everything Mira said the wrong way, and I know why. “Tonight’s been horrible. Please just listen to me.” I look at Jaeger, who’s still watching us. “His father—”

  “This isn’t about my father!” Adam snaps. “Was it all a lie?” He waves between us. “I was a dick to you in the past, but I never thought you’d stoop to this. Well played, Hayden. Kick the jerk while he’s down.”

  “No! It’s not like that.” Tears fill my eyes. Not because of his words, though I’m not too fond of those either, but because he’s pushing me away—using this as an excuse. “You’re doing this on purpose. I don’t know why, but you are. If you’d just stop and think, you would know how I feel about you.”

  He shoulders past Jaeger and stalks out the door.

  “Go after him,” I say. “Don’t leave him alone. He—His father… Just go with him. Please.”

  Jaeger glances at Cali, and she nods rapidly. He grabs his keys and takes off. I see him talking to Adam outside, then Adam gets in Jaeger’s car and they drive off.

  The next thing I know, Mira is beside me, holding me up. “Hayden, oh my gosh. I’m such an asshole. I’m so sorry. The police told us everything Jeb’s friend recorded in the suite and how it all went down. I thought Adam protecting you tonight was beautiful—I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

  She hands me a tissue and I wipe my nose. “It’s not your fault. He’s not himself.”

  I explain about Adam’s father and the room goes silent.

  “You’ll stay with me and Tyler,” Mira says, and I nod. I want to be with Adam, supporting him, but he has it in his head that he can’t trust me.

  He. Doesn’t. Trust. Me. Maybe he’s grieving and acting erratically, but it doesn’t change the result.

  All this time, I waffled over whether or not to trust Adam, believing his omissions about Blue were damning. How did things come to this?

  The one guy who knew me and stood by me—and I made it so that everything we’d shared was built on a lie. My lie.

  I omitted what I knew about Blue. It was unintentional—I thought Adam had talked about the original suites with Tyler—but I held back by not openly discussing it. By protecting myself and my plans for turning Blue Casino around. I don’t blame Adam for thinking I lied to him.

  How can he ever trust me?

  Adam

  Jaeg and I enter Hunt’s small apartment with my key. Hunt is slumped over the kitchen table, his outstretched hand gripping a quarter bottle of Jack. “Got any for the rest of us?”

  Hunt lifts his head. His eyes are bloodshot, his complexion pale. “Always,” he slurs.

  Jaeg rests his hand on my shoulder. “You think this is wise?”

  I glare at his fingers, then his face. He drops his hand. “You don’t need to worry about protecting her from me. I’m done with her.”

  “Who?” Hunt asks at the same time Jaeg sighs and says, “It’s not her fault. You don’t mean that.”

  I collapse into the chair opposite Hunt. “She used me. It’s exactly her fault. Don’t know why I thought she’d be different.”

  “Don’t be a hypocrite, Adam. You never thought about something casual with Hayden? In the beginning, before you were invested?”

  I blink at Jaeg. I can’t process what the hell he’s trying to say to me. So I keep it simple. Everyone leaves. Hayden betrayed me. I leave her before she leaves me. “She’s just like the others. They all want something.”

  I snort. That’s exactly what Paul said about women. Great, now I’m quoting douchebags. I need a drink.

  Hayden didn’t want me to provide for her like the other women I dated. She wanted something altogether bigger. She wanted to use me to make her past right.

  I trusted her—cared for her. More than I’ve cared for any woman. And she used me. “I was an idiot. I know when the writing is on the wall. I invented the writing.”

  Jaeg sighs again. “Hayden isn’t like that.”

  “This about that girl you’ve been spending time with?” Hunt’s voice sounds clearer by the minute. I grab the finger-marked glass on the table and reach
for the bottle of Jack. “Dump her,” he says. “You don’t need that baggage.”

  I slam my fist on the table and Hunt flinches. “She’s not baggage.”

  She’s out, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let my shithead brother, or anyone else, badmouth her.

  Jaeg leans forward on the table. “Don’t do this, man. Your brother just gave you the advice you gave me in high school—do you remember? Things worked out for me in the end, but in this case you’re wrong. Don’t lose the girl.”

  I stare at the amber liquid in my hand. “There is no girl,” I mutter, and take a swig. The liquor burns down my throat, warming the patch of ice that formed over my heart the moment I walked away from Hayden.

  Chapter Forty

  Hayden

  I return to work Monday, and it’s as if nothing happened Saturday night—no celebrity auction, no police raids. All traces of the burlesque show and the celebrities are gone, the casino floor buzzing and chiming away. Business as usual. Except on the executive floor. Up here, we’re missing a few key players.

  Blackwell and the Blue Stars are nowhere to be found, not that we need them to run the place. Blackwell made the big decisions, but those don’t occur every day. The casino will be fine until an interim CEO takes his place. Some of the Blue Stars were managers, but somehow they mostly worked on Bliss and Blackwell’s special projects—all of which have been put on hold. The only Blue Star manager who actually performed his job was Adam. Adam runs hospitality, and he hasn’t shown up today. He also didn’t return my calls yesterday.

  I spoke to Jaeger, and he told me to give Adam time. That he’d come around. But I’m not so sure.

  Without meaning to, Mira said the one thing while Adam was most vulnerable that could push him away for good. She implied I’d used him to get close to the Blue Stars. And I can’t deny it, because it’s true. The only difference is, somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Adam and completely forgot about my original intentions. But how do I explain it and have him believe me when I kept so much from him?

  That seed of doubt about why our relationship began has burrowed in his head. Other women have used him, and I suspect that even his own father used him. Then everything happens on the day he loses his dad, a man whose love he wanted desperately? I don’t know how to get through to Adam after all that.

  He said that he and his brothers weren’t close to their father. That Ethan Cade didn’t care about them. But I’ve never seen a group of strong men look more stricken and vulnerable than when they learned of their father’s passing.

  “Hayden,” Mira says, and I look up. “Go home.”

  I stare at the stack of papers on my desk.

  I toss scissors, pencils, and about twenty notepads in my desk drawers, trying to clean it up. Then hand the pile of papers to Mira. “Will you—”

  “I’ll go through them,” she says.

  I have the sudden urge to clear all of this crap away. I was covered in filth with Blackwell in charge, tainted by dirty power and evil intentions. I wanted to make this place better. But maybe it wasn’t this place. It was my past I needed to accept.

  Mira looks at me nervously. “Do you want me to call anyone?”

  “No. I know who I need to see.”

  I pull up to Adam’s house half expecting him to be away, but both of his cars are in the driveway. No security detail, I note. I imagine he doesn’t need it now that Blackwell has been arrested and held without bail.

  None of the documentation the police retrieved pointed to Blackwell. Had he kept to his typical practice of not attending casino events, he might have been able to blame the sex trafficking and drugs that would be brought into the casino on someone else, the way he blamed past illegal activities on Drake Peterson. But Blackwell was arrogant and proud of Bliss, so he attended the grand opening and directly implicated himself.

  From what I’ve heard, the police have everything they need to lock Blackwell up, along with the Blue bodyguards who hid the women away in the apartment. Technically, nothing illegal occurred at the casino; there wasn’t time. But between the recorded conversation from Jeb’s friend and the raid on the women’s home, the police had everything they needed to press charges against Blackwell and many others. The detectives said there is even evidence against De la Cruz—Blackwell’s confidant and godfather—which they’d been trying to obtain for over a decade.

  I’m told we don’t need to worry about retaliation by De la Cruz. The only person who should be afraid is Blackwell. Apparently, Blackwell and the guards he had Adam hire possessed enough information on the drug and human-trafficking business De la Cruz ran to lock the man up for several lifetimes. Full-time guards are protecting Blackwell in prison until the trial. De la Cruz is powerful, and there’s a risk to Blackwell’s life even in custody.

  I knock on Adam’s front door. Birds chirp in the pine trees off to the right, and the faint sound of the lake washing against the shore sounds in the distance. It’s so peaceful, yet my palms are sweating.

  Adam opens the door. He’s in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair uncombed—and I want nothing more than for him to hold me. But his stoic expression suggests that won’t be happening. “This isn’t a good time.”

  “When would be a good time? I need to talk to you.”

  He leans his hand against the doorframe, glowering down at me. “So that you can use me for more information?”

  I wet my lips. “You’re right. I did that. But it was before I knew you.”

  “And that should matter? Whatever we had is based on a lie.”

  “That’s not true,” I say firmly. My gaze flickers past him into the room. “May I?”

  After a heated beat, he drops his arm and opens the door. I walk no farther than the entry. No matter what I say, this has to come from him. He needs to decide. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try and convince him of the truth. “I know what you’re doing and it’s a load of bullshit.”

  He raises his eyebrows, his shoulders taut and unyielding. “Came here to yell at me? You’re wasting your breath.”

  The cold Adam is back. The guy who wants no one to know how he truly feels.

  I step closer. “Really? Because you made one miscalculation. You showed me who you are. Not the cold, unaffected rich boy, but the warm man who’d do anything for the people in his life.”

  He shakes his head and crosses his arms, throwing up a physical block, along with the emotional. “You don’t know me.”

  “In the beginning, part of my reason for getting to know you was to see if what Mira and Tyler had discovered about Blue was still going on. That meant getting close to someone involved with Blackwell’s Blue Stars. I didn’t want to know you. I didn’t like you.”

  “You’re not making a case for yourself,” he says dryly.

  I let out a shaky breath. None of this is coming out right.

  “Don’t you see? I was wrong. And I think a part of me—the part that’s all heart and no head—knew I was wrong about you. You’re the son who stood beside his father, no matter how badly Ethan Cade ran the household. You’re the brother who keeps the family together when the others aren’t talking with one another. The clotheshorse”—my voice cracks, but I can’t stop, the words pouring out of me—“who uses one-tenth of the closet so that his girlfriend can have the rest for her insane shoe collection.”

  Tears are streaming down my face, and I don’t even care. “And you’re the guy who pushes everyone away when they get too close. Because to be close is to lose them. Just like you lost your mother. Just like you lost your father. But you don’t have to lose your brothers—or me.”

  His chest rises and falls rapidly, his face red. “Are you finished?”

  “I don’t know.” I swallow. “Am I?”

  Adam stalks toward me, stopping inches away. “All that matters is that I am finished. With you.”

  I wipe my face. “Of course you are.” I take a shaky breath and walk to the door. I look over my shoulder. “But you know
what? I know you. So live with that, Adam Cade. There’s someone out there who’s seen you, who loves you, and who knows why you pushed her away.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Adam

  I blow sawdust off the wood I’m cutting in Jaeg’s workroom, and toss back a bottle of water, feeling the cool liquid slide down my throat. I’ve been bent over for hours, focused on my project, where my mind won’t wander. Being in town with memories of my father, Hayden—it’s getting to me. I’m considering leaving. Starting fresh somewhere else. Maybe New York. I’d miss my shithead brothers, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t stay in this town.

  “Hold the brace,” Jaeg says to Tyler, who came over to help him put together a giant trellis he’s been working on for the last several weeks. He’s incorporated one of Cali’s designs into it, and the end result is pretty amazing. A log across the top has a doe and buck standing together, heads touching. Shapes and spirals form down the legs of the trellis, creating a forest scene.

  “What’s that for?” I say.

  Tyler glances at Jaeg, and Jaeg pats the base. “Engagement trellis.”

  I shouldn’t have asked. The last thing I want to think about is someone getting married.

  It’s been a week since the Bliss opening. A week since my father passed and the private funeral that followed shortly after. And five days, three hours, and twenty-one minutes since I threw Hayden out of my house.

  I pick up the paint for the birdhouse and focus on my project.

  “So what do you think?” Jaeg asks.

  I look over. He said something before that, but I was caught up in my thoughts. “About what?”

  “Cali has a friend of a friend. We thought we’d set you up.”