by Lexi Whitlow
CHAPTER EIGHT
Three Years, Five Months Ago
She comes to my apartment, showing up like I told her. Cullen thinks I’m at the bar, intimidating the girl and her aunt, letting them know I’ll be watching them, that their days as small business owners are numbered.
But I’ve got other plans. I might be an idiot, but I don’t want anyone putting hands on this woman.
I pour her a glass of water and usher her to a chair at the rickety table where I eat breakfast every morning.
“Thanks, but no. I’ll stand.” Her hands fly around like butterflies, nervous. She can’t keep still. “What’s this grand idea of yours? And what makes you think Cullen’s so dangerous?”
“It’s not that I think he is. It’s a fact. Anyone who comes after his money, even if they’re pretty girls who don’t know what the hell they’re doing—he’ll get you one way or another. He’s a mean fucker. He’ll take down your aunt’s bar. Or he’ll have me take you somewhere no one can find you and—”
She backs away from me, almost imperceptibly. “You said I wouldn’t get hurt.” Her brows are furrowed, and she’s shaking more than she was when she walked up the stairs. “What the hell did I get myself into?”
“Your aunt did this. She has some beef against Cullen. Guess she hatched this card-counting plan once her niece with the photographic memory came into town—that right?”
She nods slowly. “Ten thousand. That’s all we were after. She thought her boys would be in and out while Cullen had eyes on me. She said he wouldn’t hurt me, but I see that she—”
“She was wrong. There’s a target on you and your aunt, Sunshine.”
She crosses her arms. “And you have a plan to fix this?”
I nod at her and look away. Something clenches in my chest. This isn’t something I imagined myself saying to anyone. But here we are.
“You’ll marry me. He won’t go after my wife or her family.” I might be blinded by my lust for this woman, but I know that much is true. It doesn’t hurt that the thought of marrying her—even if it’s for a month while she and her aunt get out of town—makes me hard as fuck. She’s not the type of woman who ever belongs to a man, not truly, but if I could come close, it’d be worth pissing Cullen off.
Her pink cupid’s bow lips part in a perfect O shape, and I lean forward and take her face in my hands, brushing my thumb against the bottom of her lip. “That’s fucking crazy—”
Instead of letting her give me some drawn out explanation of why I’m being “fucking crazy,” I kiss her. I kiss her until she responds to me, until her tongue dances across mine, until her resistance is worn down and her flesh is hot against mine.
“Stop with the ‘we can’t,’ ‘I can’t’ bullshit, will you? Cullen won’t fuck with family. So you marry me, we get the certificate, get you the hell out of town, and I sign the divorce papers. It’s simple. I make you family. He leaves you alone.”
She’s wearing a little slip of a dress, green like her eyes, and it makes me think of flipping her skirt up and ripping down her panties. She marries me, I save her ass, and her aunt’s bar lives to see another day.
“Marriage is never simple,” she mumbles. I’m sure she could go on for days about what an asshole I am, about what a stupid idea this is, how we barely know each other, and how I’m an idiot for thinking anything will keep Cullen away from his vengeance on Bianca. But I know I’m right this time. Cullen will stay away from my family. And her lips are better used for something else.
I slip that little green dress over her head and throw it down in my hallway, then push her up against the wall. She’s wearing a white bra and panties, her freckled skin pink and generous, looking just like a farmer’s daughter. But I expect she’s somewhat less innocent.
“Did you hear what I said—this plan is absolutely fucking—”
I swing her into my arms, unhook her conservative white bra and toss it aside. “I wasn’t listening,” I mumble. I cup her breasts in my hands and take my tongue to each nipple, listening as she gasps and sighs. “Because Cullen’s out to get you and your aunt. And I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to you.”
Her eyes go wide, and she whispers my name.
Present Day
Marriage is never simple.
I hadn’t believed her. I thought I’d take her to the courthouse, get hitched, and get divorced a couple of months later once she got safely to North Carolina and Cullen cooled down.
It wasn’t that simple then, and it’s not simple now. Not when I’m sitting in a fucking divorce lawyer’s office, looking around like an asshole.
I clench my knuckles and look around the stupid fucking divorce lawyer’s waiting room. It’s done up in that tacky fake wood paneling that was popular about three hundred years ago, and there’s one of those pink and blue paintings of a cottage set back in the woods, painted to look like there’s light from a sunset pouring over the whole thing. It’s meant to be cheerful, I guess, but a divorce lawyer’s lobby probably isn’t a place where a lot of people are real cheerful.
But not showing up three years ago when she asked me to was a shitty idea then, and it’s a shitty idea now. So here I am, being some kind of man about it.
Summer strolls through the door, right on time. Instead of her scrubs, she’s wearing a black pencil skirt and a pair of sensible flat shoes she wouldn’t have been caught dead in when I first met her. She has on some kind of flowy blue blouse that’s likely intended to look professional, but it’s slightly too low-cut, and Summer’s tits could never quite manage to look professional.
She’s not the same girl who wandered into a college bar with a shimmery, tight little dress. But she’s still sexy as hell, even though she looks like she’s in need of a good night’s sleep and possibly another bowl of fish and grits.
I stand up, and something tightens in my chest when I look at her. She made it clear when she sent me away the other night that she has no intention of working things out. Well, two can play at this game. I nod at her, even though I’d rather take her right back to my apartment, where she belongs. “Summer,” I say. It probably wouldn’t be a positive choice, as my sponsor would say, to call her Sunshine in this situation.
“Ash,” she says, a faint blush rising over her cheeks. I know she prides herself on being unreadable, and that piercing gaze of hers usually is. Even now, her expression is as flat as the wood-paneled wall. But that blush gives her away, every single time. Even here, even in her conservative little get-up in this fucking depressing lawyer’s office, there’s a jolt of electricity that moves between us.
But I’m here to play a part today, to play-act my way through this little charade. So I smile, and I straighten up, wearing my button-down shirt and a pair of my buddy’s slacks. I have the sleeves rolled up half way, because fuck button-downs. But otherwise, I’m just as professional as Summer. She smiles faintly at me.
Before we have to say any awkward bullshit, the lawyer’s assistant welcomes us back to the office, where the lawyer sits with his puffy red cheeks and his shitty brown suit. He looks like he’s about one BLT short of a heart attack, and the wedding ring on his left hand looks like it’s struggling for room to exist on his giant sausage fingers. He smiles at us, and then glances at Summer’s tits as she sits down, his eyes lingering a little longer than necessary.
I crack my knuckles and shake out my shoulders like I’m getting ready for a fight.
“So, Summer and Jonathan—”
“Ash. I don’t go by Jonathan.”
“Yes, Ash. Got it.” The lawyer grins, but his eyes are beady and dead. “Let’s get down to brass tacks. This is an easy case. You all have been separated for three years—”
“Not by choice.”
Summer cuts her eyes at me. “Ash, come on. We talked about this.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t agree to this.”
“That may be, Mr. Ash.” The lawyer looks to me. “But Ms. Collington tells me you left her three years
ago, and that you’ve been separated since then. That’s grounds for what we call ‘abandonment.’ Since Ms. Collington is back in the states, she can file for divorce in North Carolina, uncontested.”
I nod, like I’m considering what he’s saying. But when he turns back to Summer, I pull a neatly folded stack of papers from my back pocket. “I’d like to submit these. These are emails dating back to 2012, asking Ms. Collington where in the fuck she went. There’s some colorful language in the first one, but you’ll see the following emails aren’t so bad.”
Summer groans, and I look at her. She’s turning redder now, with rage instead of lust. “Ash—what the fuck—”
The lawyer’s eyes open wide at Summer, and then he looks to me. “Now, what is it you’re suggesting, Mr. Ash? You going to contest this divorce?”
“All I want is the legal separation, just like everyone else in the state. We’re entitled to that. A year of legal separation where we’re still married but not living together. Not unless you want to move in—”
“Ash, no.” Summer’s voice is raspy, almost like it’s going to crack. “We can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
“Contingent on the separation going through, I won’t reveal that she and I are married. Not to her mother, not to her place of work.”
She looks at me, tears beginning to form in her eyes. “Ash, what’s the point of this? What in the hell are you trying to do?”
“Just giving us a chance. Even if it’s a snowball’s chance in hell. Even if it doesn’t make a difference. All I want is time.”
The lawyer shuffles through the emails and nods. “We can do this. I don’t see any reason why not to file for the legal separation—”
“I see every reason why not to—but this man is hell bent on screwing up my life.” Summer stands up and slams her hand against the table. Both the lawyer and I jump, and she walks out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
“Send me the paperwork at my address,” I say, leaping up and following after her. I need to make some headway with this woman on this day, come hell or high water. She’s already out of the door and marching to the car in her sensible shoes, her ass bouncing and delicious. I run out into the parking lot and catch her arm, probably like a fool. A long time ago, my father said there weren’t second chances, not for men like him. He was drunk and raging, and my mother was long gone.
I believed him for a long time. But when Summer turns around and looks at me, there’s a flash of something in her eyes, something that makes her look like the girl she was when she met me.
It only takes a second for her face to change back to hard lines and cold eyes. “Ash, what’s your goal?” Her voice is stony, none of the emotion I heard in it before. “Is it because you can’t have me? Or what?”
“It’s because you’re mine, Sunshine. I won’t let it end like this.”
“You already let it end, Ash. A long time ago. It was good for the couple months we were together. And then—”
“And then you were gone.”
“You know that’s not fair. The plan was to get me back to North Carolina. You promised you’d come with me. And you never came.”
I take her other hand and hold both of them in mine. “If you’d read those emails, you’d know that I couldn’t come, Summer.”
“What in the hell do you mean, ‘couldn’t?’”
“Cullen told me that if I stayed in New York, he’d leave you alone for good. Your aunt too. And your mother.”
Her hands are still in mine, her skin clammy. “My mother?”
“He knows a lot more than you expect, Sunshine.”
“And now?”
“He’s retired. Told me the hit was off altogether.” I shrug.
Her shoulders hunch forward, like the wind’s been knocked out of her. “After all that time worrying—about you—about my aunt.”
“It’s over. It’s long over.”
“You didn’t come because you couldn’t.” She says it flatly. I sort of expected her to fall into my arms. “That’s some kind of bullshit, Ash. There’s always a choice. Don’t tell me it had to do with Cullen.” She crosses her arms and steps away from me, lower lip in a slight pout.
“It was because of Cullen, but not for the reason you think.”
“God, you with all these secrets. Just get out with it. I know you want to convince me of something here, and I still don’t know why.”
“I wanted to go with you more than anything, to start over.”
“You didn’t care about me to get out. You told me you couldn’t.”
“I paid my way. Spent the savings I had and left, looking for you.”
A shadow crosses over her face, and she sighs. “What changed? You were going to come with me, come hell or high water. You were going to leave and hope they didn’t find you. And you didn’t. You left me there, standing alone.”
“There’s more to the story, like I said. I’ll tell it if you grant me the separation. Time to sort things out—”
Her face goes red in an instant. “Holy shit, Ash. That’s extortion—”
I laugh. “Not really. More like a promise. With a condition.”
Her face is still red, her body nearly shaking with rage. But she’s curious, too. This is the one card I have to play, and I’ll keep it until she remembers that I’m the one she needs to be with. “Let me walk you home, Sunshine.”
The breeze whips her hair around her face, creating faint shadows and lines that play over her wide-set eyes and the gentle slope of her nose. She was beautiful when I first met her, yes. But now, she’s grown into a woman, far more than the adrenaline junkie girl she was in New York. I step to her and brush my hand against her neck, and she shudders in response. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of the taste of her skin.
“No, I don’t think—”
“You don’t think what? If you don’t want me, then there’s no reason you can’t let me walk with you.”
She pauses and looks at me with that thousand-yard death stare she used on me when I accosted her outside of the hospital. “I spent a long time thinking you didn’t want me enough to stay beside me, Ash. Why should I give you a chance now?”
“Because I want you. I always did. I want you so bad I can barely breathe when I look at you. Because I came here to find you and build a life. And a man that does that deserves a chance.”
“I won’t sleep with you,” she says, her voice haughty. Her arms are still crossed, but she shivers when I pull her in close. It has nothing to do with the cold because it’s June in North Carolina, and the air is fresh and warm and sweet.
“Whatever you say, Sunshine.” I lean in and brush a lock of hair away from her face. “But let me remind you that I can make our separation a little more enjoyable. That was never a part of our relationship that had any difficulty at all.”
“Just—” she starts, her voice a pale whisper. “Just keep your hands to yourself, and you can walk me home.”
I chuckle and stuff my hands in my pockets. “You’re my wife. It’ll be hard to keep my hands to myself with you looking like that.”
“You better,” she chirps and starts walking off down the sidewalk, angry and sexy all at the same time. She turns and looks at me. “You coming?”
CHAPTER NINE
Three Years, Four Months Ago
It’s late when I get home, and my body is still on fire from Ash. I could say it was his touch that did it, the feeling of his fingertips as they found my sex and played me until I couldn’t bare anymore. But I’m beginning to think it’s just his presence.
I barely make a noise when I come into the bar. I don’t have an explanation for it, but it feels like there’s something wrong, something happening here that shouldn’t be.
I’m shaken by Ash’s ridiculous proposition, and I know I’m making things up. You can’t sense when something is off... can you?
I’m a woman of science, but I hold my door key in my hand like a shiv when I walk in
to the darkened bar. Maybe there’s something in my lizard brain that makes me aware that something’s off, that nothing here is right. The door to Bianca’s office creaks, like it’s opening a bit at a time, but there’s no telltale ray of light across the floor. A chill runs down my spine, and I remember Ash’s words.
There’s a hit on your family, and there’s no way out.
He also mentioned making me his. That’s not exactly what I had in mind for the rest of my summer in New York, but even when I think about it in passing, something primal hits my gut. As I walk through the darkened bar, I roll the idea over in my head. Ash, offering me his protection. In return, I’m his—for how long? As long as Cullen targets my family? Or until Ash decides he doesn’t want me anymore, doesn’t want to fuck me or use me?
The rational part of my brain is angry even considering it.
But desire writhes through my body, make its way to my sex, arousing me even through my fear. When I reach the foot of the stairs that leads up to my apartment, I hear my aunt talking, and a man’s voice responding. Her words are forced and angry, increasing in volume even as the man’s voice remains steady and cold. I peer around the staircase and look to see that Ash’s boss, Cullen, stands over my aunt’s desk, hunched toward her like a lion poised in front of its prey. I can barely make out my aunt in the shadows of the darkened office, but her voice rises again, and this time, I hear her.
“I just don’t fucking have it this time, Cullen. I don’t—”
I walk up two more stairs and hide in the shadows, heart pounding hard against my chest, so loud and insistent that I feel like Cullen might whip around the corner and pounce on me. The bar is dark, all shadows and white moonlight. Cullen’s voice rumbles again, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. Whatever it is, it’s not good, because my aunt groans, and I hear her throw one of the antique beer bottles she keeps on her desk. It crashes against the wall. Cullen’s laughter crashes through the darkness, and my blood turns to ice.