Raw Heat

by Cherrie Lynn

  “For what?” he asked in his smooth, deep voice, and she’d almost forgotten what she’d apologized for.

  “I don’t know what happened to me. I was—” It all came back in a rush. Last night. Benjamin. Here. “My brother,” she murmured.

  “Your brother?” he asked just as she hoped he hadn’t heard.

  “He was here last night. Your opponent.” She lifted her gaze from the depths of her jet fuel to meet his. “He’s an addict.”

  If that surprised him, Damien gave no indication. He took a drink from his own cup, which had already been sitting on his desk when she woke. “A lot of them are.”

  Are you? she wondered, but of course, she couldn’t dare ask. “How did he get in? Did he mention me?”

  He shrugged and shuffled some papers on his desk. “There’s a vetting process, but I let others handle that.”

  Stacia? Well, Emma damn sure wasn’t going to ask her about it. In fact . . . was she out there right now? Shit. The last thing she wanted was to be the subject of workplace gossip. She wanted to do her job and go home. Speaking of her job . . .

  Her laptop was on the floor beside the couch. She leaned over to set her coffee down and picked up the computer. “I came up here last night to show you something I found. I thought it was important. I hate that it had to wait because I fell asleep; you should have seen it last night.”

  Damien glanced up at her, waiting for her to go on. He was a master at letting his silence ask the questions for him, and she hated that. Emma drew a breath, opening the lid of her laptop. “It came to my attention that one of the bartenders was consistently underselling and so I’ve been taking inventory of the alcohol and—”

  “Aaron.”

  Frowning, she looked up at him as the machine booted up. “You already knew?”

  “There’s little going on here that I don’t know.”

  “But . . . why are you allowing that to happen?”

  “It’s being handled.”

  What did that mean? No, she didn’t want to know. She closed the lid again, wanting to feel relieved the weight was off her shoulders, but that wasn’t possible right now. “I’ve spent days on this to find out you already knew?”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. “I appreciate your dedication, if it’s any consolation.”

  Then how about a raise? Nah, that could keep until another time, even though he would probably give it to her. One thing she could say about him: he was generous.

  Giving her hair a comb-through with her fingers—her reflection in the black mirror of her laptop screen had been the stuff of nightmares—she set the computer aside and got slowly to her feet. “Well, then. I . . . guess I’ll get to work.” In the same clothes I wore yesterday. Groovy.

  “You can go home. Take the day, if you want. You were here all night.”

  He probably never knew when she was here and when she wasn’t, as long as her job was done to his satisfaction. She was the one who handled the time sheets and payroll; all she required from him was a signature. “Thank you. I might do that,” she said. But even the change of gears in the conversation hadn’t turned her mind away from seeing her brother here last night. Her hurt and confusion over it were like a heavy weight settled in the middle of her chest. It made it hard to breathe.

  Licking her lips, she gazed at the man capable of crushing her world with a single number. He wasn’t even looking at her now, but tapping away at his iPhone screen, his thumbs quick and efficient.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can.” Doesn’t mean I’ll answer, was the unspoken caveat.

  “My brother . . . I need to know the damage.”

  Chuckling, he slid his phone away and laced his fingers together on the surface of his desk, giving her his full attention. “Why?”

  “I just do. Please tell me.”

  “All right. Thirty grand.”

  The figure was a gut shot, and Emma choked back a sob as the room seemed to tilt around her, skewing the brightness into darkness. Her hand went to her mouth. She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to crawl back under the blanket and never come out again. The only steady thing in her shifting world was Damien’s eyes on her. Oh, Benjamin, why? My God, what is he into?

  “I take it he didn’t do all this in one night?” she asked, proud of how even her voice sounded.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  She should leave and not push it, but her mouth wouldn’t let her. Her love for her parents wouldn’t let her budge until she spoke her mind, until she stood up for them. This was a man who, rumor had it, had written a check for twenty thousand dollars to one of his waitresses so she could get herself and her kids away from an abusive husband. Who’d helped put one of his bartender’s kids through college. She figured there was more she’d never heard about. “That amount of money . . .” she began tentatively, “That’s everything to my family. Can you . . . let it go? As a favor to me?”

  “He doesn’t owe it to me, Emma. It’s already mine. The loan sharks are who he has to worry about now.”

  Well, at least her boss hadn’t waded into that particular predatory business. “I know that, but you don’t have to keep it. With all due respect, that’s a drop in the bucket for you. If you could let me try to figure out his debts and then—”

  “Charity isn’t in my nature.”

  Maybe the rumors were lies. Or maybe he was lying now. Either way, the anger that flashed through her pain was towering, incinerating any misgivings. “How about being a decent human being? Is that in your nature?”

  For the first time, he truly began to look interested in the conversation. She considered that a win, however small it might be. “You think I made it this far by being decent?”

  “No. You made it this far on luck.”

  “I made it this far on strategy. Your brother sat down at the table of his own volition. That isn’t my fault. That’s on him.”

  “You don’t understand. My parents are already ruined because of him.”

  “And that’s on them.”

  She couldn’t believe she was talking to her boss this way, but God! She’d had no idea he was this insufferable. “Don’t you have parents? Weren’t they willing to sacrifice everything for you?” she demanded.

  “No.” His voice was the crack of a whip, cold and precise, and she recoiled from it, immediately wishing she could reach out and take back those careless words. She would never have said that, she couldn’t have known . . . But the sudden, devastating emotion she’d glimpsed in his dark eyes was gone as fast as it had come. “No,” he amended, composure regained, “but I do have brothers I would do anything for.”

  Emma drew a breath, feeling another tiny victory. “So then you must know how I feel.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. My brothers would never put me in your position. But I understand the devotion you must feel.”

  She had to wonder if those were just words, if Damien had ever been devoted to anything other than himself. He spoke about it so offhandedly. No one who’d ever loved anything fully and completely could be so blasé about it. “I don’t think you do,” she challenged, earning another withering look from him.

  “I don’t believe,” he began, “that devotion is an inexhaustible well. There are limits to what a person is willing to do to help someone, even someone they love.”

  “How can you say that? People die for others. Some people give their lives to protect total strangers.”

  “Dying is easy.”

  Jesus Christ. “Oh, yeah? Have you done much of it lately?” He chuckled, watching her closely, and she got the distinct feeling he was laughing at her. Baiting her, just to gauge her reactions. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Immensely.”

  “You just said you would do anything for your brothers.”

  “But, Emma, I wouldn’t do anything for yours.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “I’m afraid that’s
the only point. You asked. My answer is no.”

  And everything about his demeanor told her his answer wouldn’t budge, no matter how she begged, how she pleaded, no matter what she offered him. She had only one more card to play. Lifting her chin, she said, “Then . . . then I can’t in good conscience continue my employment here.”

  Finally, his expression softened. “Emma.”

  She absolutely refused to acknowledge the shiver that skittered down her spine at the way he said her name then: gently, almost reverently. “I’m sorry. No—Actually, you know what? I’m not sorry. But I can’t work here anymore. I can’t work for a . . . for . . . for someone like you.”

  “Go home,” he urged, standing from behind his desk. “Take the day off, get some real sleep, and have dinner with me tonight. We can discuss this then.”

  “Discuss my resignation? Or my brother?”

  “Your resignation.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” She turned and headed for the door.

  “He’s coming back tonight, you know.”

  That froze her in her tracks, and she slowly pivoted to face him again. “What?”

  Damien leaned over his desk a bit, placing his weight on his fingertips. Silhouetted against the morning light streaming through the windows behind him, he looked like some dark avenging angel. Only he was closer to a devil. “He said he’ll be back tonight.”

  “Don’t let him in!”

  That sinfully seductive mouth tilted up at one corner. “Don’t you want him to have the chance to repair some of the damage?”

  “No. He’ll only do more damage, and you know it. He’ll turn thirty thousand into sixty.”

  “Or more.”

  If he didn’t stop, she was going to rip a piece of his stupid naked art off the wall and break it over his smug head. “This is all a game to you, isn’t it? But this is our lives. Stop playing with people’s lives.”

  “People play with their own. Consequences, Emma.”

  “And you only provide the playground, I suppose.”

  He just looked at her, an errant lock of black hair touching so near the corner of his left eye her fingers ached to brush it away, if only she didn’t hate him so much right then. Emma felt her blood boil under that assessing stare. She wished she could say it was all anger. What was he thinking right now? His expression could have been carved from granite, and it was so disconcerting.

  “I want to be there,” she said.

  He straightened and cocked his head. “What?”

  “If he’s going to do this, I want him looking me in the eyes while he does.”

  “He’s in the belly of the beast. It isn’t going to make any difference who’s there to see it.”

  “If that’s true, then I want to know. I want to be able to tell my parents that he stared me right in the face and screwed them all over again. I don’t want them spending a single dime on him this time.” To her extreme frustration, tears sprang to her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to cry in front of him, to appear so desperate, even though she supposed she already had that covered in spades. “You can’t know what this feels like, watching your dad slowly kill himself working so hard, and seeing your diabetic mother cry over barely being able to afford her medication. Knowing all the while that if he goes to them for money, they will search for change underneath their couch cushions to help him out. If he comes to me, I’ll give it to him just to keep him from going to them, even though that will keep me from being able to help them.” She drew a steadying breath, hoping the tears would abate now that she’d exorcised their source. “But I realize this isn’t your problem.”

  “Consider yourself fortunate to have people like your parents in your life,” he said, not unkindly, but with little in the way of warmth. She hadn’t known what response she expected from her harangue, but it had been a little more than that.

  He didn’t care. Absolutely gave not one single shit about anything but cleaning out her brother’s pockets if he could. And oh, he could.

  Emma smoothed down her skirt, licked her lips. Swiped up under both eyes and shook a swath of hair behind her shoulder, making sure her voice was steady before continuing. “So I guess my brother and I will see you tonight.”

  “And if he does exactly what you’re afraid of? There has to be a limit to how much you’ll take.”

  “Maybe. Whatever it is, I’m not there yet. I’m not as cynical as you. I hope I never will be.”

  “You might not believe me when I say it, but I hope so, too. I honestly do.”

  She was a little puzzled by that, wondering if he’d allowed a rare glimpse into some inner pain he carried—hell, anyone as jaded as he was had to have some scary things lurking in their closets. People didn’t just turn out like him, did they? She had to believe they didn’t, but at the same time, it made her sad to think of the inner turmoil that would make someone so . . . hard.

  “Oh, and about your resignation,” he said, jerking her attention away from her musings and back to the imposing figure he cut behind his massive desk, “I don’t accept it. Not yet. Think it through.”

  “I might have been . . . hasty,” she admitted. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you.” He stared darkly at her.

  “Um. Will that be all?”

  “If you don’t have anything further.”

  “I don’t.”

  He picked up his phone again. “Then I’ll see you tonight.”

  Emma was almost to the door before she remembered his lurking assistant, and she turned back with a pained look at him. “Is Stacia here yet?”

  “I’ll send her downstairs.”

  “Thank you.” She waited while he did so, but the most awkward couple of minutes of her life were spent waiting to make sure Stacia had left her desk so she could slip out. Only when she was hauling ass down the stairs and out the back entrance did she feel as if she could breathe again.

  He invited me to dinner. She hadn’t missed that. How could she? A business dinner, of course, but still the thought of sitting across a table from him in a restaurant, under the scrutiny of those X-ray eyes with no escape, made her stomach turn a slow flip. Best that she had ignored that invitation. Nothing good would come from it, she was sure.

  Chapter Three

  Emma hit the blinker to turn in the short driveway of her little white A-frame house, daydreaming of her cozy bedroom, only to sigh when she spotted Ben’s car already parked at the curb. She should’ve guessed that he would be looking for her after last night, but she’d hoped that confrontation might come later. Her slumber on Damien’s couch had been so restless that a two- or three-hour nap sounded divine right now.

  As she got out and locked her car with a chirp, she clearly saw through Ben’s car window that he was asleep himself, his seat reclined. He’d probably driven over here drunk, something else to ream him about. For a moment, she was tempted to leave him there and go inside, but she couldn’t hold this in any longer. Marching over, she pounded on his window to wake the dead.

  Ben jerked to consciousness, sending her a baleful glare through the glass before popping open his door and unfolding his tall frame with a stretch. “Late night, sister?”

  “At work. I slept at the office,” she said shortly. “What’s your excuse?”

  He ignored the question. “Didn’t realize you have a bed at your office.”

  “A couch. And how would you know? Have you ever been in my office?” She put a finger to the corner of her lips in a mock gesture of pensiveness. “Oh, wait. There was that time you did visit upstairs. You could’ve dropped in on me then, I suppose, but you didn’t.”

  Her brother straightened his denim shirt and then rubbed at the back of his neck, wincing. “Fuck, my neck hurts. Do you have any coffee?”

  Emma wanted to refuse, to send his ass packing because, despite everything she had to say, she was finding it difficult to look at him right now. He was so careless. Hell, why shouldn’t he be? He’d been handed ev
erything his entire life. Everything he owned had been given to him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Are you totally oblivious?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You. Players. Last night.”

  He waved a hand dismissively and began walking toward her front door, leaving her no choice but to follow. “That was nothing, Em. Don’t blow it out of proportion.”

  “So help me God, Benjamin, if you go to Mom and Dad for money again—”

  “Nobody’s going to Mom and Dad for money. Calm down.”

  She elbowed her way in front of him and snatched her keys from her purse before jamming one into the lock and giving it a ferocious twist. “Yeah, yet. You know you’ve tapped them out.”

  “Seriously, where were you last night?” he asked as they entered her living room to Bentley’s happy yapping. Despite everything going on, she had to stop and scoop up her little black Chorkie, loving on him in apology for leaving him alone all night. Even Ben walked over to give the dog a scratch under the chin, but Bentley’s lip drew back to bare his needlelike teeth as he growled at him. “Little asshole.”

  “Don’t call him that.”

  Ben turned and strolled toward her kitchen, rubbing his shaggy dirty-blond hair. “Dog’s a little asshole, Em.”

  Yeah, well, so are you. Emma set Bentley’s feet on the hardwood floor and followed her brother, shoving in front of him at her counter so he wouldn’t make a colossal mess at her Keurig. “Get back. I’ll do it.”

  “Sor-ry. Jesus.” He backed away and sat at her bistro table. “I would think you’d be in a better mood. You obviously made the walk of shame this morning, no matter what you say.”

  “For the record, no, I did not, but it wouldn’t be your business if I did. And you and I need to have a serious talk.”

  “Not now, Em. You don’t know how my head is pounding.” He put his elbows on the table and rubbed at his temples.