Can't Buy Me Love

by Rin Daniels

  The chimes jangled again, and the hostess moved to intercept two men. They scanned the restaurant over her head, gestured to the seating area.

  Adam blinked. “What do you mean you know?”

  David’s gaze turned back to his son, filled with as much confusion as Adam felt. Until it suddenly cleared on a surge of sharp amusement.

  He braced his forehead against his palm, elbow on the table. “Oh, for crying out loud. Son, you’ve got no eye for women.”

  “I don’t want to hear that from you,” Adam snapped under his breath. Not under enough.

  The hostess smiled the two men through.

  David’s subsequent laugh caught an inquisitive glance from the scruffier of the two, a lean man with what Adam figured was a permanent five o’clock shadow and sun-streaks in his shaggy surfer hair.

  They passed the bar area, and the high table he occupied with his father.

  David leaned forward. “That,” he said clearly, low enough that it wouldn’t carry, “is Katherine Harris.”

  For a moment, he didn’t get the reference. Then it splashed over him, a frigid wash of recognition. Adam’s spine turned to ice.

  Katherine Harris?

  No, he thought as his eyes returned—like the traitors they were—to her table. He’d known her as Lindsay Fisher. Just out of high school, with long blonde hair, a wide mouth tailor made for his fantasies and...

  Dark green eyes. Christ. How had he forgotten those eyes?

  The taller man with longer hair slid into the booth across from her, startling her gaze from the menu she pored over. Those eyes Adam now kicked himself for not recognizing widened.

  Narrowed just as fast.

  Her lips moved—too far away to hear what she said.

  A date? No, not with two men, unless her habits had seriously spiraled.

  A fist curled in Adam’s gut.

  “How long has she been back?” his father wondered.

  He hadn’t even been aware she’d come back. What for? A second chance at his money? At lying her way into his bed, hoping to trap him into some sham of a relationship?

  Did she target him in that party?

  Did she really think he was that stupid? Slow, sure, but stupid?

  Hell, he felt like it. Five years ago, he’d been twenty and home for summer break. Adam had lived by himself because he wanted to feel like a normal college student, even if he didn’t have to worry about things like rent and bills.

  He’d thought the feisty blonde he’d met one day in the park had liked him for him.

  An idiot assumption.

  The investigative report his dad had ordered on Lindsay Fisher’s all-American middle class family still occupied a dusty corner of his home office. It had stripped away all the pretty lies she’d told him, left him exposed as the idiot he was.

  So the con artists had come back to Sulla Valley. Ballsy. What was the goal, this time?

  Besides money.

  “Adam?” His dad snapped his fingers. “Earth to Adam.”

  The stockier of the two men leaned over his partner, planting a hand on the table. It allowed him to loom over Linds—over Katherine. Forced her to tip her head back to maintain eye contact.

  A dick move.

  Whatever he said to her, a low rumble Adam couldn’t make out, obviously pissed her off. Her shoulders went rigid. The menu hit the table between them.

  The guy with the dark whiskers on his jaw ran a hand over them, looking around idly. His eyes met Adam’s. Tilted some in a rueful smile emphasized by a shrug. As if to say what can you do?

  Most people would smile back, Adam reasoned. Leave personal matters alone.

  Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed when the color leached from Katherine’s face.

  He did.

  * * *

  “Facts are facts, is what I’m saying,” the man with the wide shoulders said, leaning over Kat’s table like he was just checking in.

  Nothing to see here, restaurant patrons, be about your business.

  The second man, handsome in a laid-back and scruffy kind of way, pointed out, “Nobody needs to get hurt over this. I’d hate to see it happen.”

  “I agree,” Katherine shot back, her voice taut with the strain she couldn’t show. She hadn’t expected this. Maybe she should have—her luck wasn’t holding up in Sulla Valley. “But I’m telling you that we’re going to have to come to some sort of terms.”

  “Terms need a deposit, sister.”

  She snorted before she could help herself. “Too many mob movies, right?”

  The shorter man’s features darkened.

  The other elbowed him in the planted arm, forcing him to ease off the table. “Funny thing,” he said lightly. “Johnny here is legitimately descended from honest-to-God Italians. Isn’t that right, Johnny?”

  Johnny grunted.

  “Just decided to wander into the family business?” Kat asked sweetly.

  Another grunt, but this one bit.

  The loan shark seated at her table sighed. “Don’t get cute, little girl.” Now it was Kat’s turn to bristle. “Family is exactly the problem here, isn’t it?”

  Out of the mouths of loan sharks. She looked down at the table, her face flaming in embarrassment. In anger. She’d never been so grateful for Nadine’s tendency to run fifteen minutes late. She couldn’t imagine what her friend would say.

  Nothing good.

  “How’d you find me, anyway?” she asked.

  “We have ways,” the guy said, flashing a smile like he knew exactly how trite that sounded.

  It didn’t take the edge off.

  “Fact of the matter is,” he continued, “you owe—”

  “I don’t owe anything.”

  “Your mom, then,” he amended good-naturedly. “She owes, and it’s due. So your options are pay up, or we’re going to have to get our money some other way.”

  God. This was so stereotypical, it was almost worth laughing outright. Which probably wouldn’t help.

  Neither would laying her head down on the table and crying.

  She clenched her hands under the table. “Why are you hassling me?”

  “Because I’m squeamish,” the scruffy one answered lazily. “Going to an old lady’s place to hassle her, well.” He spread a hand on the table. “Not my favorite part of the job.”

  “I don’t mind,” Johnny volunteered.

  Kat’s stomach knotted. She didn’t have to watch the movies to read between the lines. Money was money, and if they could squeeze it out of her, they would.

  And if they couldn’t? They basically just admitted to knowing where her mother lived.

  “Fine,” she said tightly. “Fine, I get it. I can’t give you anything now, will you give me a few days?”

  “Well, now, I might—” the loan shark began, amiably enough, but faltered when a deep voice cut in, “Is everything okay here?”

  Kat jumped in her seat. Cringed when her knee hit the table, rattling the condiments at the inside edge.

  The face that accompanied the question drained what was left of her will to live.

  Of course. He’d be here. And why not? Her luck wasn’t getting any better.

  Adam didn’t look at her, didn’t even spare her a glance. The focus of his intensity blinked up at him, owlish in his slow regard, and then flashed a grin that Kat would have called fine—if it didn’t remind her too much of the shark he was channeling.

  “Everything’s good,” the guy replied.

  Johnny blinked slowly. When he bent down to murmur in the other guy’s ear, Kat shot Adam a sidelong peek.

  He’d tucked a hand on the back of her booth. The other in his pocket, like he wasn’t worried about anything at all. It made for a hella possessive pose, and she’d bet everything left in her bank account that he knew it.

  The hucksters across the table knew it, too.

  “I’ll call your office,” Kat said, deliberately pleasant—desperate to ensure Adam didn’t hear anymor
e. How much had he heard?

  Any of it?

  God, all of it?

  The friendlier of the two studied her face, then Adam’s. His smile was slower this time, and lacking most of the edge. He made up for it in creepy.

  Kat just wanted him gone.

  “Got it,” he said, and scooted out from the bench. “Come on, Johnny. Let’s leave the lovebirds to their lunch.”

  “But, Lucas—”

  That hand braced on the back of her booth covered her nape, cutting off her protest. “Have a good day,” Adam said evenly.

  Waves of heat curled all the way to her toes, radiating out from the possessive weight of his fingers on her skin. Kat didn’t dare speak.

  She wasn’t certain she wouldn’t squeak.

  When the loan sharks had left, the door chimes fading to the usual buzz of ambient conversation, she waited for Adam to let her go.

  He didn’t.

  Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. “You can go away now.” There. A semblance of normal. If tense.

  His thumb dipped into the curve of her neck. Skimmed over the pulse she wondered if he felt throb under her skin. “Are you in trouble?”

  Trouble, he asked. Not if she was okay, but if she was in trouble. Typical.

  She shifted, reaching for her glass of lemon water. His hand finally dropped away. “Please go away.”

  He didn’t. He sat down in the booth vacated by the huckster his presence had helped shoo away, and clasped his hands on the table like he was in for the long haul.

  Yeah, right.

  His gaze pinned hers. “Do you need money?”

  She almost choked on her water. “What? No. God.”

  “You say that like it’s totally out of character,” he pointed out. His mouth—damn, his mouth—shifted up into a half-smile. “Katherine.”

  Oh, come on. Now he knew?

  Of course he knew. He’d probably had her investigated after that fiasco of a meeting.

  Kat looked around the restaurant in vain hope for rescue. She found none. Nadine was only five minutes late. There was plenty of time before she caught up.

  Adam watched her with all the patience of a cat toying with its food.

  Kat wasn’t sure what it was like to feel like food. If it was anything like how he’d made her feel at that party, she wasn’t positive she’d hate it.

  And that was the problem.

  She wrapped her hands around her cold glass. “How’d you know?”

  “You didn’t really think you could come back and no one would recognize you, did you?”

  She had. Admittedly. “You didn’t,” she said, saccharine sweet.

  Color stained his cheeks. “So, what’s your plan, Lindsay Fisher? Cute name, by the way. Fisher. Made a whole lot of sense, after.”

  She winced. “It wasn’t—”

  “What?” he taunted softly. “Your idea? I’m sure. How’s dear old dad?”

  Her jaw shifted. So he hadn’t investigated her circumstances, after all. “In jail.”

  “Who’d have thought?”

  “I did,” she retorted, and shifted back in her seat until her shoulders pressed against the booth. It didn’t give her all that much space, especially when he just scooted forward, cupping his chin in his palm like he had all the time in the world and she was the highlight of his day.

  He’d only gotten more handsome. Leaner in the face, but sharper in the eyes.

  Too sharp. Where his gaze touched, she felt the urge to rub it until the tingling went away.

  Thank God he couldn’t look beyond the table’s edge.

  Her heart hadn’t mellowed over time, she hadn’t matured. Just the opposite. Her pulse skipped now when he asked, “So, what’s the scheme, Katherine?”

  “Kat,” she corrected sharply. “Only my mother calls me Katherine.”

  “Okay.” His lips curved at both sides, now. “Kat. How much money do you need this time?” Single-minded focus.

  “Stop it.” She crossed her legs, bit back an apology when her foot nudged his leg under the table. His jeans were soft against her bare toes, well-worn.

  Adam Laramie in a suit was divine, but in a casual button-down and well-loved denim, he was entirely too approachable.

  Did he wear undershirts? A-line tank tops?

  Or was it nothing but skin beneath dark purple Ralph Lauren?

  She didn’t realize her gaze had fastened on the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, tracing the vee of tanned skin at his throat, until he ducked his head to meet her stare. “If you need money,” he said, “you can pay me back.”

  Nothing about that sounded generous.

  She blinked rapidly. “What, as an escort?” she asked before her internal filter could rein it in.

  His voice roughened. “That depends. Are you offering me a date?”

  The fluttery sensation in her belly spread to a warmer bloom. She shifted. “I don’t need your money, Adam.”

  “Everyone needs money.”

  “I don’t,” she insisted. She lied through her teeth and she knew it, but the hell with Adam’s money. That wasn’t why she’d come back.

  Not this time.

  “Does this mean your offer is off the table?”

  Her fingers closed on her water glass, slid in the condensation. “What offer?”

  “I’m talking about a date, Kat.”

  Her lips parted.

  His gaze slid to her mouth.

  She licked her suddenly too dry lips and managed an extremely clever, “What?”

  This time, when he smiled, there was nothing halved or rueful about it. It nailed her right between the eyes, a wicked curve designed to carve through feminine resistance like a yacht through ocean waves.

  All high class and supreme power.

  She shouldn’t have found it attractive.

  She totally did.

  “I want to take you on a date,” he said, leaning in. “You, Kat Harris. And me. Together. Do you get it?”

  “Why?”

  “Hell if I know,” he replied, with that same forthright ease. Like they were talking business or sports or, oh, anything but this.

  She frowned at her glass. “Is this water?”

  Adam’s chuckle ruffled things low in her body he’d already handled—and how. She fought the urge to squirm. “Why, are you planning to throw it at me?”

  Apology flitted over her tongue.

  She refused to deliver it. Not that one. He deserved what he got that night. “I’m not sorry. Not for the whiskey.”

  “You have something else to apologize for?” His voice lowered to a dangerous level. Soft in volume, but predatory in the extreme.

  She winced. She didn’t even try to hide it—what use would it do? “If I apologized now for five years ago,” she asked quietly, and his eyebrow twitched like it wanted to hike up, “would you believe me?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. It hurt, but she’d expected that. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” he asked, so bluntly that she couldn’t stop herself from laughing in mingled surprise and embarrassment.

  Was she that obvious?

  His eyes darkened. “Did you come back to see me, Kat?”

  Yes. She looked down at her glass again. It wasn’t any safer. The condensation clinging to the smooth sides contrasted the clammy nerves dampening her palms. “I’d hoped for a better setting.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just waited.

  The words felt like lead on her tongue, heavy and unwieldy. Kat had planned to apologize, but she’d hoped to wow him first. To make him look twice at her, to think of her like an equal—or at least, given his billionaire bank account, like no threat to his money.

  This was backwards in every way.

  Her heart pounded in her chest, echoed in her ears, as she took a small breath. “Okay,” she said on the exhale. Her voice squeaked. Just freaking great. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”

  “What?” He ti
pped his head to the side. “Were you apologizing to your glass?”

  Kat’s mouth tightened as her gaze flew up, but she wasn’t expecting the amusement that danced in his tawny eyes. Or the lazy curve to one side of his mouth. She stiffened. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Yes.” He leaned over the table. “I actually didn’t come over here to ask you out.”

  “You could have fooled me,” she muttered.

  His grin deepened. Like he knew what she felt—what she was thinking—and was pleased by it. “Did you think about me, Kat? After you left, did you remember the things we did in my car? In my bed?”

  Heat suffused her whole body. Her glass clicked against the table. “Did you even hear me? I said I’m sorry.” She glared at him. “You know, for everything.”

  “Everything?” he repeated, so full of innuendo that she was pretty sure her toes curled up in her sandals.

  “What, you still expect me to apologize for the other night?” she shot back, then wished she didn’t when his eyes gleamed in triumph. She huffed out a dismissive sound. “That’s not my apology to give.”

  “You’re right.” Adam’s fingers drummed on the table. “I’m sorry for failing to recognize you after five years and a total makeover. The orgasm I gave you was wildly inappropriate and I’m extremely ashamed of the fact I only gave you one.” His lashes lowered as her cheeks caught fire all over again. “Let me make it up to you.”

  “You’re a menace,” Kat whispered. “Why aren’t you angrier?”

  “I was.” He leaned over the table. “I’m five years past angry. You want to apologize? Then prove it. Go out with me, Kat.”

  No. There was no reason to do it. Sure, they had the kind of chemistry that made a meth lab look like child’s play, but like a meth lab, one wrong turn, and she was pretty sure they’d blow up spectacularly.

  He was a player.

  She was an ex-grifter.

  He seduced strangers at parties in dark corners.

  She’d carried a torch for him for five years.

  This was never going to work.

  “I can’t,” she said. Damn, it hurt to force through her aching throat. She should have been jumping for joy, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready for this. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “It’s complicated,” she said, closing her eyes. “I’m going legit, Adam. Forget my family history, forget five years ago, I’m—”