A second later, however, Brady’s dimpled smile returned. “But I guess one good thing came out of it, right? Turned you into one of those optimistic types who wants to help people? Right the wrongs of the world?”
She gave a slight laugh. “Pretty much.”
Cassie leaned in. “She’s the best paralegal around. Crazy organized. Never misses a detail.”
Lilly’s lips turned up in a shy smile as she ducked her head.“I like the research,” she said. “Catching the things no one else finds. It’s like solving a puzzle.”
“Then why haven’t you become a lawyer like the rest of these clowns?”
Lilly paled slightly and shoved her hand into her hair. “I just decided not to take the bar yet. After graduation, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the commitment.”
Something didn’t match up. Her casual tone wasn’t meshing with her body language. Jack wondered what she was trying to hide, but she seemed so uncomfortable that he was overcome with an instinctual need to protect her, to make her feel safe.
“Not everyone who goes to law school becomes a lawyer,” he said. “I’m an example of that.”
Lilly glanced up, confusion barely hiding the pain in her eyes.
“Yeah, Jack thought being a lawyer was overrated,” Brady said. “He was the youngest attorney to make partner at our dad’s firm, but he turned it down for Harvard.”
Jack shrugged. “I’m more comfortable in the classroom than the courtroom, so I teach.”
“What subjects?” Cassie asked.
“Finance and trade. The corporate life wasn’t for me.”
That changed the topic of conversation. Gabe and Cassie began to reminisce about their finance classes in law school, and Brady turned his attention to the game. Lilly’s hand was still buried in her hair, but her eyes had become clearer. Brighter. Her chin dipped in a silent thank you. Jack gave her the tiniest shake of his head in return, but as the seconds dragged on he didn’t look away and neither did she. There was something irresistible about her inability to break their link, and it made him crave more. He wanted to keep her like that, to make her hold his gaze a beat longer, to coax that blush back to her face.
Jack watched her intently until she released her grip on her hair, her hands sliding into her lap. Blinking rapidly, she swallowed, and then her cheeks rushed with color. It was the reaction Jack was waiting for—expected, somehow, and he felt a surge of victory. He chuckled softly, which only seemed to make Lilly’s blush deepen even further.
Then Nick returned to the table, and reality hit Jack like a cold shower.
“Did I miss anything?”
Brady vacated the seat next to Lilly, letting Nick take his spot back. “Nah. Just boring lawyer conversation.”
Jack stared at his beer, the rush he’d felt instantly shorting out. He shouldn’t have been looking at Lilly like that, shouldn’t have tried to entice anything from her youthful face. She could only be in her twenties, and he was barely out of mourning. Was he going straight from grief into a fucking midlife crisis?
The redhead in Patrick’s lap let out a loud giggle. Patrick pushed her to her feet and stood, grinning devilishly as he towed her toward the table.
“Hey, everyone. Sorry I didn’t get to say hello.”
Patrick wasn’t remorseful. If anything, he was sorry he had to make niceties before taking his conquest home.
“I’d love to stay and chat, but I think…Lisa and I are going to call it a night.”
He looked at the redhead for verification, as if to make sure he’d gotten her name right. She gave him a hungry smile in return. Jack wanted that same look on Lilly’s face. To see her eyes grow wide. To see the color rise on her cheeks again, and peel off the layers she’d wrapped around herself.
He needed to get the hell out of here.
“I think I’m ready to head out too,” he said, giving Brady a look that said he’d had enough for one night.
“Actually I’m pretty tired,” Lilly said, a silent exchange passing between her and Nick before he agreed to take her and Cassie home. They settled up, and Jack kept his distance from Lilly as he led the pack, his eyes on Brady’s Jeep.
“I say we make this a tradition,” Brady bellowed when they reached the curb. The wind whipped at their faces, the towering presence of Fenway doing nothing to block its assault. “Friday nights by the Green Monster. Who’s in?”
Nick wrapped an arm around Gabe. “We are.”
“Me too,” Cassie added, then raised her eyebrows at Lilly.
“Sure,” she said. “Sounds good.”
Brady hooted and unlocked the car. “Jack?”
Jack didn’t look up as he opened the passenger door. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.” It wasn’t a good idea to be back here next week, not after whatever had just happened.
He sat down and slammed the door, waiting for Brady to get him as far away from Lilly as possible.
Chapter Six
Lilly climbed into the backseat of Nick’s car and watched Brady’s Jeep disappear around the corner. Her pulse was racing, her joints loose-fitting somehow, her limbs flushed with an odd combination of bonelessness and excitement that started when Jack locked her in his gaze. For those few seconds, she felt safe, but imprisoned somehow too.
She’d never felt anything like it.
Cassie sat down next to her. “You okay?”
Lilly blinked a few times, trying to break out of the bizarre fog she was in. “Yup. Totally fine.”
She looked out the windshield as Nick started to drive, compelled to seek out Brady’s car again, but she couldn’t make it out. It blended in with the mass of taillights underneath the neon colors of Boston’s famous Citgo sign. She leaned back and sighed. It wasn’t as if Jack had paid her any interest. He’d barely talked to her at all. Then again, he didn’t speak to anyone until that moment when he saved her from the spotlight, taking the group’s attention onto himself.
Cassie reached over and squeezed her hand. “Hey, how about I hang out at your place for a bit? You look like you could use some company.”
“Okay,” she replied, but her mind was still on Jack’s stormy gray-blue eyes, so intense and yet so gentle. There’d been a few lines stamped around them and a sprinkling of gray in his sandy blond hair, but those signs of age had only made him more attractive.
Lilly shook her head. She needed to stop thinking about him, and that look they shared. It seemed to mean something, as did the half smile he gave her afterward, which vanished as quickly as it came. She was probably imagining things. And she wasn’t interested anyway. In him, or anyone else.
Once Nick had dropped them off and they entered her apartment, Rumbles pranced toward them, rubbing against their legs. Cassie bent down to scratch his head.
“You want to watch a movie?”
“Sure. You choose.” Lilly sank down on the couch and handed over the remote. Cassie picked a romantic comedy, and Lilly tried to watch but she couldn’t focus. She missed half the jokes before they’d gotten halfway through.
Cassie turned it off. “Okay, that’s it. Spill.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t try to play me. You’re totally out of it.” Cassie narrowed her eyes, as shrewd as if she were questioning a witness. “You’re telling me the truth, right? Damien hasn’t tried to worm his way back into your life?”
Lilly winced, a sudden burning path of acid slicing up her throat. She picked at the seams of the couch. “He’s engaged, remember? He doesn’t need to talk to me.”
Cassie fell back against the cushion with a huff. “I can’t believe he called to tell you he was getting married the night before the freaking bar. I mean, who does that?”
Lilly tried to reply, but the words got stuck in her throat. It had been Damien’s final act of cruelty, the runner-up to breaking t
hings off on her graduation day. She hadn’t known what to make of his call at first, but there was some small, stupid part of her that hoped he missed her. Wanted her. Needed her. She’d never anticipated his news or the way he seemed to be baiting her with it, gauging her response—testing her, like he always had. All she could do was utter her congratulations before ending the call.
But it wasn’t Damien’s announcement that made her skip the bar. It was what happened afterward that truly destroyed her.
“Selfish assholes do that.”
Cassie snorted. “True. Thank God you’ll never have to be in a relationship like that again.”
“Never,” Lilly agreed, but the word mocked her. It was a fallacy she felt every morning, after her nightmares looped into her fantasies before shifting back into shame.
After a quick hug, Cassie saw herself out with a promise to call tomorrow. Lilly made her way to her bed and tried to sleep, but the angry dreams came like they always did.
“You seem so sweet. So innocent.” Damien coiled his hand around her hair and pulled. Hard.
Lilly sat up and put her head in her hands, but the recollection of the first night he took her home with him lingered like a ghost—the sensation of his fingers against her scalp, and the way he looked at her, lust in his sharp green eyes.
“Anyone ever done that to you before?” he whispered, his words hot, naked and treacherous.
“No.”
His fingers tightened. It felt so good. So unbelievably, ridiculously good.
“Sir,” he said, the veiled threat in his voice as exciting as it was terrifying. “I want you to say, ‘No, Sir.’”
If only she’d had the sense to recognize how dangerous he was underneath his polished exterior, that she’d never wanted to flirt with the darkness he offered. But she was the dumb, gullible lamb, and he was the wolf, seducing her to her own slaughter. In one night, he answered the question of why sex with other guys was always missing something, his handprints marked on her flesh like a brand. By the next morning she was a junkie craving her next fix.
He’d told her his conditions, and she’d accepted them without a second thought, too hungry for what he could do to her to question why she was never allowed to tell anyone. Too desperate for the way he’d tell her to kneel and make her beg, then reward her by turning her inside out with pleasure.
Too trusting in him to wonder if he was being honest when he said, “This is what good submissives do.”
For a year she followed his rules, always remembering to address him as Sir in private, despite the way he kept his distance in public. Despite how he’d always abandon her after the passion ended, locking the bathroom door to shower while she was left to the cold confusion of empty sheets.
She’d been so fucking naïve, believing she was his. No matter how many times Damien called her mine, it was a ruse, a line that snapped the second their play was over. Lilly knew better now, enough to know there was nothing to love about being submissive. All it meant was that you could be humiliated, used and thrown away.
She burrowed deep beneath the blankets, praying for a dreamless sleep.
That world wasn’t for her and never would be again.
Chapter Seven
Campus was busy despite the early sunset, students spilling out of lecture halls and dorms, their conversations carrying across the snow-covered quads. With his office door closed, Jack was able to block out the noise, which would’ve been excellent, if he’d been able to concentrate worth a damn.
He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, but it only made his recollection of Lilly’s face even clearer. It was more than physical attraction that had her on his mind the last few days—there was also a curiosity he couldn’t smother. A desire to unravel her, to know more about the past she seemed to need to keep hidden. But she was far too young, and he had no business thinking anything about her. He wouldn’t be seeing her again, anyway. He’d already made the decision not to go to the pub this Friday.
Problem solved.
He reopened his eyes as a rap sounded on the door.
“Office hours aren’t until Thursday,” he said, but the door swung open anyway, revealing Patrick with a wide grin, his tennis bag slung over his shoulder.
“I’m going to have to meet you here before our games more often. I never realized how many Ivy League girls are looking for a sophisticated older man.”
“If they were looking for sophisticated, they wouldn’t be talking to you,” Jack said. Patrick flipped him the bird. “Did you come here to hit on my students, or to be a pain in my ass?”
“Both.” Patrick plunked down into one of the chairs. “You still working?”
“Noticed that, did you?”
“Well, get it out of the way now. Free up your weekend hours for the pub.”
“I’m not going.”
Patrick waved off his rebuttal. “So you didn’t score. This week will be better.”
“Repeating the process won’t make it any more of a success. There was no one there I wanted to talk to.”
“No one.”
“Yup. You saw me. Total waste of time.”
“Yeah, I saw you.” Patrick paused. “That Lilly was a cute one.”
Jack flashed him a warning glare.
“What? You were looking at her.”
“And how would you have noticed, since you spent the night with your face in Lisa’s breasts?” Jack asked. Patrick smiled proudly. “She’s ancient history now, I assume?”
He snorted. “Duh.”
Jack gathered his papers into a pile and sighed. “Fine. Yes, Lilly was…cute, but she’s Nick’s little sister and probably not much older than Josh. So you’re dropping the subject. I’m not going, and that’s final.”
“You have an entirely overdeveloped sense of morals, my friend.”
He was about to say something about exactly how underdeveloped Patrick’s morals were when his cell rang. Jack looked at the screen, both shocked and thrilled at who was calling.
He hit send. “You must be calling to ask me for money.”
There was a familiar laugh on the other end. “No, Dad, I’m not.”
“Sure, sure.”
Patrick’s eyes lit up. “Is that Josh?” he asked. Jack nodded. “Put him on speaker.”
Jack shook his head, but Patrick angled an arm out, nearly snatching the phone from his hand.
“You’re a dick,” he mouthed. “Patrick is here. He wants to say hi.” He hit speakerphone and put the phone down on his desk.
“Hey, runt,” Patrick said. “It’s a good thing you finally called. I was going to tell your father to cut off your tuition.”
“I haven’t been avoiding him, I promise. This program is kicking my ass,” Josh insisted. “But I had to call when I saw what Uncle Brady said on Facebook. Dad, were you actually out at a bar last weekend?”
“I was.” Jack shifted to face his computer and opened a browser. “Why?”
He waited for judgment, for the words have you forgotten about Mom already? but Josh only laughed. “There’s no ‘why’, Dad. I’m just happy to see you out.”
Jack navigated to Brady’s page and read his status from Friday: “Kicking it old school style at Barrel ’n’ Flask! A good time was had by all.”
He’d tagged everyone who was out that night, including Lilly.
“Did you have fun?” Josh asked, but Jack was distracted, his mouse hovering over the link to Lilly’s profile. He should’ve ignored the impulse to learn more about her, but the chance to peek into her life was too enticing.
He clicked on the link, the simple act feeling strangely illicit, but her profile was private. All he saw was a photo of her in graduation garb, her cowl in Northwestern’s purple and gold. She should’ve looked happy, but her smile seemed forced. As if it hurt her to even try.
/> What happened to you?
“Dad?”
“He had a great time!” Patrick answered. “We’re going again on Friday.”
Jack glowered at Patrick, but it was too late. He sat back in his chair, smug.
“That’s awesome,” Josh said. “Man, talk about role reversal. You’re out at a bar while I’m stuck in the library all the time.”
Jack quickly closed the browser. “You’re working hard. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” Josh said. “On that note, I’ve got to get back to studying. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m glad you called.”
“Me too. Hey, Patrick, keep getting my dad out of the house. It’s good for him.”
Jack yanked the phone from the table, taking it off speaker before Patrick could say anything else. “Don’t go another month without calling again, okay?”
“I promise. Love you, Dad.”
Jack’s throat went tight. “Love you too.”
He ended the call and took a breath. Patrick gave him no time to recover before starting in on him.
“Looks like you’ll be seeing Lilly again after all. Doctor Archer’s orders.”
Jack glared at him. “You drive?”
“Took the T.”
“Let’s go.”
Outside, the inky sky was clear, the air a piercing cold. Jack stalked toward his car and wrenched the door open.
“Something crawl up your ass when I wasn’t looking?” Patrick asked as they climbed inside.
“You want to back off?”
“See, now this is why Josh wants you to get out more. You’re way too uptight—”
“Your version of ‘going out’ is not what Josh meant. He meant have a few beers, watch a game. He didn’t mean stare at a woman half my age.”
“At least now you admit you were staring at her.”
“Damn it, Patrick. Just leave it alone.”
“I’m only trying to do right by you. By what you said Eve wanted.”
“This isn’t what Eve meant, either.”
His Contract: Legally Bound, Book 1 Page 4