Can't Buy Me Love

by Rin Daniels

  Kat flinched, but focused on finding the painkillers her mom carted around in those individual packets. The purse was one of those bags with a zillion pockets, shallow but wide.

  “Why, if it were me,” Barbara said sternly, “I’d slap his face good. I bet that would get his attention. Most women are too cowed to slap a billionaire, you know. Gives these men all sorts of ego.”

  “I wasn’t going to slap him when he gave us the money,” Kat said, irritated to find herself rising to Adam’s defense automatically. He didn’t need her defense.

  He was a jerk.

  But then, so was she.

  She was the one who said yes. It had been her choice, damn it, and it had cost her everything.

  Twenty thousand dollars worth of regret.

  She pulled out a mass of papers, a square packet of aspirin caught in the middle. “Clean out your purse, Mom. It’s like a small army lives in here.”

  “I’ll get around to it.” Barbara padded across the kitchen, two bowls held in her hands. The smell of coffee brewing permeated the air. She set a bowl heavy with chocolate swirl ice cream in front of Kat with a flourish. “Voila. Dinner fit for a queen.”

  Kat peeled a wad of receipts from the papers tangling the painkiller packet, glancing over them by rote. Two from their day out. One from a coffee shop, another from an office supply store.

  Barbara sat across the table from her, setting her bowl down with an air of finality. “Frankly, it’s best you got to see his true colors now,” she declared. “It’s much easier to walk away before things get serious.”

  Her fingers smoothed over the office receipt. Printing fees.

  What did her mom need printed?

  “Katherine?”

  Kat looked up, blinking. “What?”

  “Are you listening to a word I’m saying? Really, sweetie,” she huffed. “I’m trying to cheer you up, the least you could do is pay attention.”

  Kat set the bundle of receipts down, creasing the leftover painkiller packet between two fingers. “Sorry,” she said. Habit, mostly. She didn’t want to think about Adam Laramie. Didn’t want to be cheered up.

  Her body still ached in the places he’d touched, and there were parts of her inner self she didn’t want to examine too closely in case it started bleeding.

  Could someone bleed to death from a broken heart?

  She didn’t know. She hadn’t bled when they ran five years ago. Was she even in love then?

  Not like this.

  Like a painful tooth, she couldn’t stop herself from prodding at it.

  “I think you’ll be much better off,” Barbara said briskly, waving a elegant hand as though that was that. “Now, where shall we go to next?”

  Kat tore into the packet of painkillers, tipped the two pills into her palm, but she didn’t take them. She stared at her ice cream as a dribble of chocolate oozed down one side.

  Go?

  She looked up, eyebrows knotting. “Why are you so eager to go?”

  Barbara licked at her spoon. “Don’t be silly, sweetie. Of course I want us to go. There’s no reason for you to stay here with that creep.” She huffed, ponytail swinging. “I can’t imagine what he asked you to do for a mere twenty thousand dollars.”

  Mere. Mere?

  That’s right. It was a mere twenty thousand, a paltry amount to a billionaire. Adam Laramie was a ripe vine, an oil deposit that her mother would have leapt at the chance to tap not all that long ago.

  Ordinarily, she’d have been encouraging Kat to smooth this over, to go back to him, to keep her claws hooked nice and tight.

  But not this time.

  Kat was too familiar with her mother’s ego to assume Barbara Harris had turned over a kinder maternal leaf.

  She set her spoon down beside her bowl. “How did you know he was a billionaire?”

  “What?” Barbara’s nose wrinkled. “Oh, you’d mentioned it, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t.” She hadn’t so much as said his name.

  “Oh, well.” Another hand wave, and the spoon in her fingers glinted. “Then I must have read about him somewhere.”

  Plausible, if Adam had introduced himself the night of the fire.

  Unlikely.

  Kat very slowly set the painkillers on the table beside her untouched bowl. “How long?” she asked quietly.

  “What?”

  “How long?” she repeated. Her voice rose an octave. “How long did it take you to figure out I was going out with Adam Laramie?”

  Her mother’s eyes flashed in annoyance. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Kitty Harris, don’t be so obnoxious.”

  She swallowed the immediate retort, let the name slide. Instead, she slumped back into her seat, laughter frothing to her lips in a strained, painful surge. “Oh, God. I am so stupid.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t even.” Kat cut her mother off with a savagery that caught them both by surprise. She stood, her chair scraping back, and flattened both hands on the table.

  The receipts fluttered.

  “How dare you?” she asked, voice shaking. “You knew. You knew that I’d fallen back—” In love. She couldn’t say it. Not now, when it all lay shattered at her feet. Not when she’d done it to herself and didn’t even question what put her there. “You knew I saw him again. When did you put the pieces together?”

  The mask of put-upon concern slipped from her mom’s regal features. She sighed. “Please, Katherine, you’re making a scene.”

  She slapped the table. “It’s just us, now. You and me. There’s nobody to judge, Mom, so just tell me.”

  Barbara stirred her melting ice cream, studying her daughter with a critical eye. Then, with a small shrug, she said, “The night you wore that blue dress. The frothy number with the beads.”

  The first date.

  Kat’s eyes widened. Then narrowed just as fast. “You followed me.”

  “Well, I was worried,” her mom retorted. She laced her hands under her chin. “You wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Because it was private,” Kat said, her voice rising. “I didn’t want you to stick your nose in it! God only knew what you’d do—”

  Her mother’s eyes flicked away.

  Kat froze. Her voice croaked. “No. What did you do, Mom?”

  “Me?” The very model of wide-eyed innocence. It didn’t sit right on Barbara’s face. “I didn’t.”

  Kat’s temper cracked. “What did you do? Tell me, or I swear to God, I will walk out just like Jackie did and never look back.”

  Barbara’s mouth twisted. She dropped the façade, a flash of pain shattering her composure—so obvious even in Kat’s high fury that her heart ached with it. “You wouldn’t.”

  She would. And she didn’t take it back. She refused.

  She’d already lost everything else. All thanks to money.

  Thirty thousand isn’t enough.

  Wait.

  Kat was a good estimator, but Adam lived and breathed money as a rule. He knew what he held in his safe—he knew what two stacks of bills added up to.

  Thirty thousand?

  What was left of her heart sank into the pool of acid her stomach had become. “Oh,” she breathed. Her knees wobbled. She sank back into the chair before they gave out on her entirely.

  Her skin prickled under a wash of numbing cold.

  “You didn’t.” Her forehead pounded. “Tell me you didn’t blackmail him.”

  Barbara sighed. “It’s only a little pocket money.”

  There was only one thing she could think of that Adam would have paid to keep quiet, one moment that night that would have given her mother opportunity to blackmail a man for money.

  Kat had been an unwitting accomplice to a bona fide badger game. Entrap a man into a compromising position, then make him pay to keep it quiet.

  No wonder Adam distrusted her. No wonder he’d treated her with such scorn.

  It didn’t absolve anything, but, oh, God, it explained so much.

/>   She pressed shaking fingers into her aching forehead. “Why did you bring him down to the scene of the fire?” And then, with sudden clarity, she whispered, “Did you burn down my salon?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Her mother threw up her hands. “So I’m the wicked stepmother, am I? The queen of every villainous plot?”

  Kat flung a hand to the side. “Just answer me!” Her voice sheared through the kitchen. “For once in your whole life, Mom, be honest.”

  Barbara studied her in cautious silence. Then, with a huff, she said, “That salon was doomed to fail—”

  “Mom!”

  “I knew if he saw you at your most vulnerable,” she said over Kat’s wail, “he’d fall hook, line and sinker. You’re very pretty, Katherine, and men like him can’t leave a broken doll alone.”

  Kat flinched.

  “I’d hoped that he’d actually commit, but I guess that didn’t work out. So!” Barbara pushed her bowl of ice cream soup aside. “Since he can’t be relied on, we have a little money to get by with and we can start new somewhere else. Isn’t that what you want? A fresh start?”

  The words rang hollowly in her ears. Kat stared at the pile of notices, the red ink and denials.

  “The loan sharks,” she said dully. “They’re not from Washington, are they?” Barbara’s silence said it all. “And the bruise on your arm?”

  “In my defense,” Barbara said hastily, “that boy tried to force his way inside. The edge of the door caught me.”

  It didn’t help. “You borrowed that money recently, didn’t you?” Of course she did. Her mother’s eyes flicked away. “So even if we go somewhere else with this so-called fresh start, you’ll just go borrow more money, won’t you? You can’t help yourself.”

  “Now, Katherine—”

  “No.” Kat’s throat closed. She forced the words out anyway, gripping the edge of the table before the world spun out from under her. “Don’t lie to me anymore. It’s enough.”

  “Sweetie.” Barbara rose, circled the table and bent over Kat’s chair, resting her hands on Kat’s shoulders. “Think this through. We’ll just start somewhere else with the money we have, go where no one knows us. It’ll be like the old days, don’t you think? You and me on the road.”

  Without Jackie. Without Kat’s father.

  Just her and her mom and a mountain of regret.

  Kat slid out from under her mom’s grip, shuddering. “All my life,” she said, choking on it. “All my life, you and dad stopped just short of selling me. Every badger game was a near miss, every entrapment game was one bad call from going so wrong, but you never made me feel like a whore.”

  Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “Katherine.”

  It was a language warning. She cracked a brittle laugh. “Fuck that,” she said, finding at least a fraction of joy when Barbara sucked in an indignant breath. “No more. Congratulations, Mom. You successfully turned me into your very own prostitute.”

  “Katherine!”

  She stumbled away from Barbara’s outstretched hand, spots of red and black flickering at the sides of her vision. “I’m done,” she said. “That’s it. I’m done with all of this. I’m done with you.”

  Barbara’s voice called after her as she half-ran, half-staggered through the house. She couldn’t remember where she put her purse. Couldn’t remember what happened to her keys. She made it outside, slapped in the face with the muggy evening air, and immediately broke into a chilled sweat.

  She couldn’t stop.

  Her purse was in the passenger seat of her car. She’d forgotten to take it in. The keys hung from the ignition.

  Oh, God.

  Hands shaking, she turned the keys, relief flooding her when the engine turned over. The front door opened. Barbara Harris spilled out of it like a supporting actress in an Audrey Hepburn film, all colorful silk and wild waving.

  She called something Kat couldn’t hear through the dull roaring in her ears.

  As she drove away, her traitorous gaze slid up to the rearview mirror.

  Barbara was gone. The front door closed.

  She made it all the way to the first four-way stop before her body broke down. Trembling violently, she reached for her phone, stabbed Nadine’s contact info.

  Her friend answered on the first ring. “Hey, cupcake, I was just thinking about you!”

  Kat couldn’t stop herself. Her greeting dissolved into a broken, empty sob.

  “Oh, jeez,” Nadine said on the line, her cheer snapping into worry. “Where are you? I’ll come and get you right now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SO THAT WAS it. Adam had done it. Four weeks of grueling proposals, countless tests of his temper and his patience and his intelligence, meeting after meeting, and he’d walked away the winner.

  “Here’s to you, CEO of Laramie Industries,” his father cheered, lifting his glass of whiskey in toast. “I knew you could do it.”

  Adam clinked his glass against David’s, but the hole in his chest didn’t ease under the burn of his father’s scotch. A new bottle, the kind his dad liked to save for a special occasion, and it tasted like rusted nails and acid to him.

  The sunlight streamed through the terraced garden, outlining the patio they occupied in shimmering gold. The heat was intense out of the shade, but he’d grown up in this muggy environment—it didn’t usually bother him.

  Right now, he felt like he might choke on it.

  “You did good, son,” David said, resting his elbows on the railing. The yard below was crisp and green, watered daily by staff that came for a few hours and left. “I’m proud of you.”

  Adam chuckled. Even he realized how humorless it sounded. “All it took was dedication.” And a need to bury himself in work until he couldn’t draw even an ounce of energy to think about anything else.

  Like Kat.

  Like the money she’d left at his feet.

  Or the money she’d taken.

  Go to hell, Adam Laramie.

  Oh, he was there. And the check she’d sent a week ago wouldn’t let him forget it.

  David rotated the glass between his flat palms, a habit that had cost him more than a few good glasses over the years. It also tended to signal a subject guaranteed to get on Adam’s nerves.

  “You know,” he began.

  Adam braced himself.

  “I’m a little worried about you.”

  There it was. David wasn’t much for preambles.

  Adam tossed back the scotch in his glass, hissed as it burned all the way down. “Don’t be,” he said shortly.

  His father’s shoulders shifted. His smile, aimed over his shoulder back at Adam, was wry. “And that’s why. You look like you’ve been beaten to death.”

  “Hardly,” Adam replied, bone dry.

  “Emotionally, son.” He turned, resting an elbow back on the railing, and thumped his chest with one fist. “Here.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Adam groaned. “Spare me the father-son talk. I’m fine.”

  David swirled his drink, then sipped it. “Thing is,” he said anyway, ignoring Adam’s request entirely, “I don’t think you are. You were like this after your mom left, too,” he added. “Surly little bastard.”

  Adam didn’t rise to the bait. “I wasn’t,” he said shortly. That was then. This was now. Totally different women. Totally different situations.

  “Yeah, you were,” his dad chuckled. “You buried yourself into school and extra-curricular activities until you barely had enough energy left over to eat. The staff all talked about it.”

  “It’s fine.” Adam rose from the lounge chair, reached for the bottle.

  His fingers froze inches from it when David said mildly, “You were like this when Katherine Harris left five years ago, too.”

  Adam’s hand fell to the table. His jaw shifted. “What are you getting at?”

  “Me?” David smirked into his glass. “Nothing. Just reminiscing. Listen,” he added without any further preamble there, either. “Talia wants
to know if you’ll be best man at the wedding.”

  Adam sank back into the chair. It creaked beneath his weight. Covering his eyes loosely, he laughed briefly. “I can’t believe you’re marrying a girl younger than me.”

  “Yeah, well.” David tipped the contents of his glass into his mouth, swished once and swallowed. “She’ll make an honest man out of me.”

  “And dear old Daddy Goldberg won’t be breathing down my neck so hard.”

  “A side benefit.”

  Adam dropped his hand to glare at his father, eyebrow hiked high. “Admit it,” he said flatly. “You bought her. Just like you bought my mom, and every other girl you dabble with.”

  He wanted a fight. Something sharp. He wanted to share this tangled nest of anger and pain inside his chest.

  David didn’t rise to the obvious bait. “Maybe,” he said, setting his glass down and nudging it closer to his son.

  Adam took the cue, bent to get the bottle and pour more of the heady scotch into both glasses.

  “Maybe not,” David added. He took the glass Adam handed him with a faint smile. “I can’t say I know what’s going on in her head. But I’ll tell you this, son.” His head eased back, face tipped to the sky. “The feeling I get when she says she loves me, well.” His smile widened. “You can’t put a price on that.”

  Adam’s glass froze halfway to his mouth.

  Somewhere in the cavernous emptiness of his chest, an ember flickered to life.

  I love you.

  She’d said it once. Three little words.

  What had he done?

  He’d put a price on it.

  But then, she’d lied, hadn’t she?

  Did it matter?

  “Dad,” he said slowly, glass winking in the sunlight. He frowned at it. “How do you justify it?”

  David tilted his head. “Which part?”

  “The women.” He jerked his head to one side, unconsciously mimicking his dad until he caught himself and sipped from the glass instead. “Don’t you know they’re lying to you?”

  His father’s laugh surprised him. “Well, now, that’s a pretty harsh view. How long have you felt that way?”

  Forever. He stood, made his way to the railing to brace his forearms against it. The sun dappled over the yard, cheerful shades of green and yellow and the sparkling white patio.