You Dropped a Blonde on Me

by Dakota Cassidy

  Connor sighed, shooting Jordon a resentful glare. “Yes, sir.”

  “Took a pretty good shot there, eh? Lemme have a look to be sure there’s no real damage,” Campbell said, his words calm and collected.

  Jordon hopped from foot to foot, his jaw twitching. “It was his dad,” he blurted. “Mr. Cambridge hit him. They had a fight because he came to take Connor’s car. They said some stuff to each other, and Mr. Cambridge got mad. Really mad.”

  Maxine’s head snapped up. “Your father did this to you?” she rasped between teeth clenched so hard they hurt. Surprise raced through her veins, turning them cold as ice. Finley was many things, shitty things, but he’d never hit either of them.

  Never.

  She rounded on Connor, pushing Campbell out of the way with a palm to his chest. “Your father did this to you, Connor? Answer—me!”

  His sullen expression was all the answer she needed. “Yes. But I—”

  The pendulum swung.

  From joyous relief to enraged, seething, hot, oozing anger.

  “I’ll damn well kill him!” Maxine screeched, pushing her way to the kitchen and taking the keys to her mother’s Rio without even asking. Out the door in a flash, she didn’t hear anything but the vibration of adrenaline pulsing in her head. The itch in her fingers to claw the bastard’s eyes out.

  She definitely didn’t hear her mother bark an order at Campbell: “Warm that truck up before she lands herself in the hoosegow!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Note from Maxine Cambridge to all ex-trophy wives: If you’ll recall, earlier advice was given with regard to never letting your pending ex see you sweat. Keeping in mind violence is never advocated, there are extreme circumstances when sweating will be absolutely unavoidable. They involve protecting your child at all costs and a rockin’ right hook. Be sure to put your weight into it. Oh, and change into something appropriate first—something that at least dates back to the 1990s. Just trust me.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into this—again,” Len purred into Adam’s ear, stretching her long limbs beneath the crisp hotel sheets. He’d seduced her into coming back to his hotel room for some early-afternoon frolicking, and she found she had to fight a groan of reluctance at leaving all this luscious man for temperamental brides who couldn’t decide what color their guest book pen should be.

  Adam chuckled, deep and rumbling against her ear pressed to his chest. “I can be very persuasive.”

  And totally addictive. But there’d be none of that, Len reassured herself. She was doing that more and more lately—reassuring herself she could keep this about nothing more than sex. “I have a million things to do.” She began to slide away from his warm arms, arms she couldn’t stop thinking about when she wasn’t surrounded by them.

  “I can think of a million better things to do than deal with neurotic brides. They all involve this bed.” Adam patted the place she’d just left and grinned.

  She laughed, hoping to keep the mood light when she felt anything but. “But those things won’t pay the bills.”

  Adam rose up on his elbow, eyeing her as she shimmied back into her slim pencil skirt. “Don’t you want to know how I pay my bills, Len?”

  Yes. No. Yes. Curiosity had eaten at her since the night they’d had their first encounter, and it continued to do so every encounter since then. Yet, there was something that kept her from asking questions about his life, his job, or why, at the drop of a hat, he could show up at her office any time of the day and convince her to come back to his hotel room and make love.

  There were moments when she still couldn’t believe she was involved in an intimate relationship with a man she knew almost nothing about other than that he was here for business. What kind of business she couldn’t guess. Every once in a while, Len heard bits and pieces of Adam’s conversations on the phone with someone she’d concluded was his secretary by the way he told her to reschedule client lunches and make sure to conference him on staff meetings.

  But what his dealings here in Riverbend were remained unclear.

  And she liked it that way.

  Mostly.

  Clearly he had money, and the proof wasn’t just in his clothing or his cultured vocabulary; it was in the respect the hotel staff paid him. Len knew money—Adam didn’t blatantly reek of it. He wasn’t flashy or gaudy, but judging from the leftover bottles of wine she caught glimpses of during their trysts, and the labels on his clothes, strewn across the floor, he had a decent bank account.

  Somewhere.

  Somewhere she was better off not knowing about.

  There was definitely something to be said for forbidden and mysterious sex with no strings attached. Even if each sexual encounter they shared made it harder and harder for her to leave him.

  Adam ran a long-fingered hand along her thigh, driving her skirt upward. “So—don’t you want to know how I pay my bills?” he repeated.

  “I thought we had a deal.” The reminder was meant to come off breezy and light, but even she heard the panic in her voice.

  “Deals were made to be broken.” His reply was easy, but his eyes were growing hard.

  With her back to him as she slid on her shoes, Len sucked in a shaky breath. “Not this one. You get what you want, and I get what I want, no questions asked.”

  She thought she heard him rasp an aggravated sigh, but chose to ignore it. Fitting a smile on her lips, Len leaned down and gave Adam a quick kiss, moving away before he could coax her into another hour of playtime, but he caught her arm. “Who says I don’t want more than just your enormous libido?” He winked playfully, but his question had a hard edge that made her squirm.

  “You did when you agreed to, to”—she waved her hand over the bed—“this. Have you changed your mind?” She held her breath.

  Adam’s eyebrow cocked upward. “Haven’t I changed yours?”

  If he only knew how close he was to doing just that. Len smiled, making her way toward the door to avoid any more eye contact. Instead, she focused on the peephole at the top of the door. “Nope. But if you’ve decided this isn’t your thing, I’ll know by the silence of my cell phone. No harm. No foul. Byyyee, Adam.”

  Len pulled the door open with as much confidence as she could outwardly muster, keeping her shoulders square and her head high.

  When she hit the other side of the door, she jammed a knuckle in her mouth and steadied her shaky legs by leaning back against the corridor wall.

  Thinking back to her earlier notion that this thing with Adam was supposed to be fun, she decided fun didn’t leave you hoping you hadn’t just made one of the stupidest declarations of your life.

  “Finley—where—are—youuuu?” Maxine screamed into the airy, white modern interior of the dealership that had bought and paid for almost everything she’d ever owned.

  Snaking her way past the cars on the showroom floor—cars that cost more than most houses in her mother’s village—she cracked each one with a fist like something out of a scene in The Warriors.

  A receptionist, as pretty as, maybe even prettier than, Lacey popped up from the front desk like a toaster strudel. Her perfect makeup and young fresh skin lost their dewy glow when she frowned, giving Maxine a horrified look of disapproval while taking in her bathing suit and flip-flops. “Can I help you?” she squeaked, rocking on her heels and brushing invisible lint from her thin pencil skirt with shaking hands. “Omigod! You’re . . . Are you . . .”

  “Am I what?” Maxine spat.

  “The Cambridge Auto lady . . . oh, but you couldn’t be. You’re too ol . . . .”

  Maxine stuck her fingers under the straps of her bathing suit and hiked her breasts up. “There. More familiar? Yes, I was the Cambridge Automobile girl, probably while you were still wrapped in swaddling clothes. And yes, I’m too old to do the commercials anymore. Now where’s Finley?”

  “I’m sorry, but he said he wasn’t seeing anyone today,” she said with a dismissive tone, her eyes flitting to Finley’s door.r />
  Maxine’s eyes narrowed, zeroing in on the door proudly displaying Fin’s name right behind Barbie’s desk. She rushed the receptionist, stalking toward her, her lips in a snarl. “I’m going to give you the heads-up here, eye candy—move the fuck out of the way or I’ll tear your hot, firm ass up like a wrecking ball. Got it?”

  The young woman, a gorgeous platinum blonde and taller than Maxine by at least three inches, blanched. “But I told you. Mr. Cambridge said he wasn’t seeing—”

  Maxine interrupted her by way of half climbing over the chest-level desk area and slapping her hands on top of it with a sharp crack. “He’ll see Jesus when I’m done. If I were you, I’d pack my bags for the Rapture, honey.”

  Her mouth fell open, her beautiful sloe eyes confused. “What’s the Rapture?”

  “Move!” Maxine screeched.

  The few sparse late-afternoon Richie Riches, out shopping for trinkets for their overindulged children and underage brides, made shuffling noises with hurried feet.

  She had two brief thoughts when she knocked open the waist-high swinging door that led to the area behind Barbie’s desk and to Finley’s office with her knee.

  First, that damned well hurt.

  Second, how sad Finley wouldn’t be able to make another million bucks he could lord over her head today because his crazy almost ex-wife had shown up and scared off all the customers.

  Slapping her hand on Finley’s office door, she roared again, “Finley—get out here, nowwwwww!”

  A scuffle from behind, and the loud gasping from someone as they burst through the beautiful, ornate glass doors of the dealership sounded like they came from another dimension. She heard it, acknowledged it, then ignored the familiarity of it.

  Because she was going to kill Finley today.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Not the fact that a place that had once seemed like home now felt like a foreign country. Not the fact that employees who used to smile at her now hid their faces behind car magazines. Nothing mattered but grabbing hold of Finley’s throat and choking the ever-lovin’ shit out of him for laying a brutal hand on Connor.

  The door popped open to reveal a condescending Lord Finley. Nothing less than she’d anticipated on the ride over, but infuriating all the same. Her stomach did that crazy jig of fear it did whenever she had to confront her tormentor. But this time? This time he hadn’t tormented her, he’d tormented Connor—and he’d pay.

  “Did you hit my son?”

  His head, not a hair out of place, tilted back to give her his disapproving, barbed gaze. Like she wasn’t worth the scum on the bottom of his Gucci shoe. “What the hell are you doing here, Maxine?”

  Her head rolled on her neck, her eyes bulged with anger so rife, so ugly, she knew she resembled an escapee from the whacked ward. She just didn’t care. She didn’t care that so many of the people she’d once entertained at dinner parties were now gawking at her in astonishment. She didn’t care that they were judging her fanciful bathing suit and supermarket flip-flops. She just didn’t care. “I said,” she growled, “did you hit my son?”

  “Let me tell you a little something about your son, Maxine,” he drawled, his anger on a very obviously tight leash. “He’s a disrespectful little bastard, and I won’t have it. I don’t care if he’s living with you and that mouthy flake, he can’t talk to me like that!”

  Standing on tiptoe, Maxine seethed a response. “That’s not what I asked. I asked you if you hit—my—son?”

  His silver fox eyebrow rose with mocking delight. There was game to be had, and he loved nothing more than to toy with his opponents. “And if I did?”

  Whether it was the way he so carelessly brushed off the idea that he could manhandle Connor at whim or the “I dare you to try and stop me” attitude that set her off, she couldn’t say. The months of frustration, the penniless dependency on her mother’s depleting retirement fund, the lost and confused state of helplessness and fear as she struggled to figure out what to do to take care of Connor exploded like a mushroom cloud of wigged out.

  He could take everything from her—he could threaten, bulldoze, and tirade until she cowed right back to her little corner.

  But he could not lay a hand on her son.

  Maxine’s arm reared back before rhyme or reason could prevent it. “I’ll kill you, you disgusting sonofabitch!”

  There was a sharp crack—so sharp it rang with a satisfying vibration in her ears. Her fist connected with his nose, hard and fast, stinging her knuckles upon impact. A sting she relished, licking her lips like she was savoring the finest caviar.

  Finley’s head snapped back in a quick bob, blood from his nostrils arched through the air in perfect crimson droplets.

  And then it was on—Maxine was all over him like some enraged street fighter, clawing at his hair, pummeling him with her fists. “If you ever touch my son again, I’ll kill you!” she hollered, gripping the tie around his neck and jerking it back and forth.

  Hands she barely noticed were suddenly on her, grabbing her around the waist, dragging her from her mission of annihilating Finley forever. Her feet swung in mad circles, making an attempt to get away until she heard her mother’s voice saying, “Get off of me, you lackey! I’ll knock your eyeballs sideways from here to Sunday!”

  “Max!” A distant, deep voice called to her. “Calm down—stop struggling,” it yelled in her ear. The iron grip belonged to the voice, and with slow realization, the two came together.

  Campbell.

  Her gasps of breath were choppy and harsh as the rush of furious rage she’d experienced seconds ago left her body in a whoosh. She slumped against the hard body behind her, staring in horror at a bloody, disheveled Finley.

  “Someone get me a handkerchief, Goddamn it!” he ordered. “Has someone missed the fact that I’m bleeding?” he questioned the few mortified salesmen on the floor. “Joey, call the fucking police!” he demanded.

  Maxine’s temper shot back up ten notches. He was going to call the police after he’d hit her son? “Campbell,” she barked with a squirm. “Let me go! I’ll make Jersey’s finest busy little bees when they have to look for your limbs to reattach them, you child abuser!”

  “I’ll tell you one last time, Max, can it or I’ll drag you out of here,” Campbell threatened with a hiss, gripping her at her waist with one strong hand, and clamping her arms behind her back with the other.

  Finley wiped his effusively bleeding nose with a handkerchief. “Listen to your boy toy, Maxine, and get the hell out of here. Go home and wait for the police, you crazy bitch! I’ll have you locked up for assault and battery.”

  “Is that really necessary?” was Campbell’s shocked response.

  “You bet your ass, boy toy. She came at me like some kind of wild animal. You saw it.” He jammed his face in Maxine’s. “I think you’re unstable, Maxine. How can you possibly take proper care of my boy when you’re clearly mentally unfit?”

  Campbell set her behind him with a firm drop to the floor. His face, almost always placid and worry-free, was a mask of tight planes and gritting teeth. “Plant your feet, tiger. Do. Not. Move. A. Muscle,” he ordered, his tone rough and cold as ice. When his attention returned to Finley, his voice rang with a mixture of emotions. “You’d have the mother of your child arrested after you hit your son?”

  Finley batted a hand in the air. “She’s fucking nuts. You bet I’d have her arrested.” He rose on his toes to bark the words into Campbell’s face.

  The silence frightened Maxine. The tension between the two men simmered like a pot of sauce preparing to boil over. Sanity returned in a resounding moment of clarity. Her old role a rote response. Maxine’s hand went to the rigid muscles on Campbell’s back. “Campbell, forget it, let’s go, please. Let him call the police. It won’t be the worst thing he’s ever done to me.”

  But he shoved her back behind him, aligning himself with Finley so he towered over him, making Finley appear smaller than Maxine could ever remembe
r.

  His power trip didn’t seem quite so ominous with the strength and coiled tension of Campbell glaring down at him. “You really are some piece of shit, old man, hitting teenagers like you do. You cut the kid’s eye. Next time you want to go a round, give me a call. I’d be happy to show you what happens when you take a cheap shot at a boy toy. You’ll be so busy pulling my fist from your ass by way of your throat, you won’t have time to call the cops.”

  Yanking her hand into his, Campbell dragged her out of the dealership, scooping up her mother along with her.

  As they hit the hellishly hot blacktop, Campbell stuck his hand out. “Keys,” he demanded in Maxine’s direction.

  “In the car,” she muttered.

  “Mona, drive home.”

  For what was probably another first in Maxine’s life, her mother didn’t speak a word. Her parting shot was a wink at her daughter before she got in her car and drove off.

  Campbell pointed to his truck with a stern brook-no-bullshit finger. “In.”

  Maxine shuffled away like a chastised kindergartner, pulling open the door and grabbing the high handle above the window to drag herself in. A glance at her hand, now swollen and bruised from the shot she’d taken at Finley, made her wince. Exactly what she didn’t need—a trip to the emergency room. A flex or two later, and at least it didn’t feel like anything was broken.

  Campbell hauled himself into the truck, making no effort to hide his anger when he turned the key in the ignition. The rev of the engine rumbled as they left Cambridge Auto in a cloud of gravel and dust.

  Her covert glance at him from beneath her eyelashes told her all she needed to know. Someone was in for a ration of shit. Someone named Max.

  Campbell surprised her when he pulled off the highway and into a fast food parking lot. Setting the car in park, he swung in his seat to face her. “Hand,” was the gruff demand.

  “Wait,” she protested with a weak mewl. “Let me explain—”

  “Hand. In mine. Now.”