“No. No, I’m not staying there.”
“Where are—”
“How about the Applebee’s on Westwood.”
Applebee’s? Goodness. Talk about slumming. “Okay.”
She hung up her cell phone, feeling like a woman with a secret. Something delicious and naughty. A dangerous lover. A date at a third-rate restaurant chain.
She hardly recognized herself right now. And she liked that. She liked that a lot.
Luc rolled over and before his hand touched the cold sheets where Tara’s warm body should have been, he knew she was gone. Middle of the night, middle of the day, first thing in the morning, it hardly seemed to matter. Over the last few days, whenever he fell asleep, she slipped out of his bed, like a ghost.
It was getting hard not to take this shit personally.
And he couldn’t stop falling asleep. It was as though his body knew its work was over and it had gone on holiday. He took naps. Every day. Sometimes twice, depending on how often he could get Tara alone.
He’d expected a lot of things when he started this … relationship with her. But not this. She let him past all her walls, only to put up giant fences to keep him out. She locked herself in her damn workshop all day and night. He understood that the Nordstrom deal was tomorrow and she needed to be ready, but that boot had been designed years ago, and this … manic behavior told him something else was going on.
It didn’t take a genius to see what she was doing, keeping him at arm’s length. And it wasn’t just sneaking out of his bed. She found every reason not to spend time with him, unless that time was spent naked. Or sort of naked.
He’d ask her to dinner and she’d take off her shirt.
This afternoon he’d suggested she go skating with him and Jacob, watch a peewee game. She’d lifted her skirt to show him that smiley-face underwear he just couldn’t resist.
He stared up at the shadows growing long across the ceiling. She closed her eyes when they kissed, didn’t look at him when she came.
Loving her hurt. And maybe if he knew she didn’t feel something, if he was sure that this was just sex, it might hurt less. But she wouldn’t keep him out if she wasn’t scared. If she wasn’t protecting something.
And that, in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, gave him some hope. Forcing his lazy body into movement, he threw off the sheets. He needed to make a few phone calls but then he’d go find Tara, and, if he had to, force his way into her life.
chapter
27
The demon was gone. Thursday night before the Nordstrom meeting and her muse was nowhere to be found.
Wasn’t that a bitch?
And while the meeting was about the boots, she’d hoped to have a few new designs to show off at the same time. But the paper in front of her was still blank and her head was still quiet.
The blame was obviously Luc’s. Despite her every single effort to keep him at arm’s length, less than a week with the man and she’d been screwed silly. Screwed happy, really. And the demon wasn’t a big fan of happy. It wasn’t her natural habitat.
But Tara found herself reluctant to give it up.
The door to the workshop opened and the shadows rippled around her desk as Luc walked in. Her heart stirred, leapt in reaction like an untrained dog. There was some kind of metamorphosis happening. A transformation. And she had to wonder what kind of butterfly was going to emerge from a cocoon so ugly.
“You still working?”
“The meeting is tomorrow; I was hoping to have a few new designs.” She sighed and stared down at the empty paper. “But I don’t have any ideas.”
“Maybe you need a break.” He touched her hair, his fingers combing through the curls, and sparks of pleasure littered her body.
“Yeah, my last ‘break’ took half the afternoon. I think part of the reason I can’t work is someone keeps taking me back to bed.”
“If I remember correctly, that break was your idea. I wanted to take you skating. And right now I was just thinking about getting some dinner. Feed the muse.”
Her laugh was dry. Little did he know the muse ate conflict and anger and resentment.
“I think I should try to get something done.”
“You getting nervous? About tomorrow?”
“Getting?” She laughed and shook her head. “I’ve been nervous since the meeting was arranged.”
He sat on the stool across from her desk, his face cut in half by shadow, and she couldn’t see his eyes. But there was something about his stillness that had nothing to do with relaxation. The man was poised for something and she didn’t know what.
“How about if I went with you?”
His words fell into a vast empty well. And from the bottom of the well, finally, the demon spoke up.
Who the hell does he think he is?
“I don’t need you to hold my hand.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I just thought … you know … as CEO—”
“You said you didn’t care about this company.” Resentment radiated to her fingers, to the tips of her hair, and the demon reached full power.
This is ours! the demon cried. Ours. No one else’s.
“I care about you.”
“If you’re bored, find a different hobby, Luc. This is my business.”
“Whoa, whoa.” He held out his hands as if warding off an attack. “I just want to share something with you besides bodily fluids. I thought it might be fun. Working with you.”
She stood up. “I don’t work well with others.”
“Okay.” He stood too and walked around the desk and as he approached, the smell and heat of him turned the edge of her temper to mush. This was the man’s effect on her. She couldn’t keep herself straight anymore. There was a good chance if he touched her, she’d say yes. She’d say yes, come to this meeting, take away what’s mine, just because you’re bored and I’m here and I’m falling in love with you.
Funny how she thought sex with Luc would be safe. This man could bring down her life like no one else.
“Why are you pushing me away, Tara?”
Instead of answering him, she kissed him. Launched herself against his chest, fitted every aching part of her body against the relief of his.
He lifted her against him with one hand and cupped her chin with the other, pulling her away, and she saw cold anger in his eyes. “You won’t let me be a part of your work, or your life, but you’ll fuck me, is that it?”
She panted, licked his lips. “Something like that.”
“Fine.” He put her down and spun her, pushing her up against the drafting table, the edge of it biting into her stomach. Fear gave lust a new color, something black. Luc was always in control, always a gentleman. But this man pushing her over the edge of the table felt dangerously, decidedly, out of control.
Her body went wet in a heartbeat.
“You like it this way, don’t you?” he breathed in her ear, his hands roughly cupping her breasts. His fingers found the hard ridge of her nipples and pulled. Too much. Too much. She whimpered and pushed her ass against him, urging him on, wanting this so badly, so suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
“You don’t have to look at me, do you?” He bit the side of her neck and she whimpered, standing up on her tiptoes, trying to feel him along her spine but he tipped her over, putting distance where she didn’t want it, controlling her like a woman on a string.
His hands slid down the top of her shirt, ripping a button off, gripping her breast while his erection pulsed against her ass. “Tell me,” he whispered in her ear before using his teeth against her.
“Wh … what?”
“Tell me, ‘Yes Luc, I like it this way.’ ”
“I like it …” His hand ran under her skirt to the aching wet heat between her legs. There was no soft touch, no careful teasing. His fingers sunk deep and she cried out as the giant wave of orgasm began to lift her right out of her body.
“What were you saying?”
She would have smiled if she we
re able. She would have laughed, she would have turned around and kissed him with all of her heart if she’d been able to do anything but stand there and shake, riding his fingers.
“Luc …”
His fingers slid out of her body and she cried out, pushing herself against him, trying to find him, to lure him back. “It’s simple, Tara. If you say, ‘Yes Luc, I like it this way,’ you’ll get rewarded.”
She groaned, spreading her legs slightly, pushing against him, trying to make him break, trying to get him inside her.
“Ah,” he laughed in her ear. “You know your reward, don’t you? You want it.”
“Come on, Luc.” That orgasm growing so big, the best orgasm ever, was just out of reach.
With both hands he lifted her skirt up over her ass, running those callused fingers over the naked curves, the lace edge of her thong. Oh God, yes, she thought, listening for the unzip of his zipper, waiting for the thick blunt edge of his dick.
“That’s not right, Tara.”
He spanked her, the flat of his hand against the top edge of her ass, and she cried out in surprise, jerking away from him. “What the hell, Luc?”
She didn’t get far with his strong arms around her, and as the sting faded, she found herself burning even hotter. Her mind wasted with lust. “Please—”
“What did I ask you to say, Tara?”
She closed her eyes and pushed her head back against his shoulder, her hand reaching between them to cup him. “Yes, Luc, I like it like this.”
The sound of his zipper was loud in the silence. The tearing of the condom package echoed through her body.
“Hurry,” she gasped, leaning forward against the table. And then he was there, so hard, so high, she could feel him in the back of her throat.
There was no way she could keep him at arm’s length now.
Not when he’d just touched her heart.
It didn’t work. She was farther away than ever. The chill in his gut turned the sweat on his body to ice. Picking her way through the shadows, gathering up her clothes and clutching them to her chest, she looked like a thief.
Someone he’d never met before.
That sex had turned them into strangers.
“You should get dressed,” she said, zipping up her skirt.
He leaned up on one elbow, muscles and shadows coiling over him like living animals.
“I feel like maybe you should put some money on the table before you go.”
“This isn’t any different than any other time we’ve had sex.”
He pushed a hand over his face, through his hair. He had nothing left now, just the truth, and he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope that was going to work. But what the hell, he had a couple of seconds left on the clock on an empty net. “Coming home from the hospital. That was different.”
It was. Her great unguarded moment. Before she called out the dogs.
“No, it wasn’t, you just want to believe otherwise. I told you not to make this into something more. None of this is real, Luc. Even my name is fake. I made it up. I made up all of this and you’ve just forgotten that.”
Halfway through her little speech, he stood and started getting dressed as if the clothes were trying to rob him. He shoved his legs through his pants, ripped a button on his shirt in his haste.
“Listen to yourself. You’re making a life, Tara. Building something. Just because it’s yours doesn’t mean it’s bad. Or false. Or any less real than someone else’s life.”
She stared at him, that blank look he knew meant she was absorbing something, testing its weight before tossing it back in his face. Before taking a sledgehammer to what was left of his heart.
“I think it’s best if we just end this now, don’t you? Before anyone gets hurt.”
Now he was just getting pissed.
“I can see through your bullshit, Tara. You’re not fooling me with this tough-girl act. You want to walk away, fine. Walk away, but be honest with me. I deserve that much.”
“You’re going to get off this ranch, Luc, and you’re going to get back to your life and you’re going to realize this—” She lifted her hand, waved it between them as if she could encompass all that had happened the last week. The hospital and the secrets they’d whispered into and across each other’s skin.
“This wasn’t real. I’m a substitute for hockey. And a pretty bad one at that. I’m nothing to build a life with.”
“Give me some credit, Tara. I’m not a child. I know the difference between hockey and love.”
The word shattered the room and she stepped back, leaning against her desk, his eyes pinning her there, daring her to move. Daring her to look away.
“I love you, Tara Jean.”
There it was. His endgame. There was nothing after this and he watched her, his heart folding itself into origami.
Once, as a girl, she’d fallen off the top of a swing set and she’d lain there, the small pebbles of the playground digging into her cheek, gasping and sucking air like a fish in the bottom of a boat.
This moment felt like that.
“You should leave,” she finally said. “You should go now. Get off this ranch before you lose any more of your mind.”
“I can’t get off the ranch. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. Not without you.”
The will. He was stuck here for his sister’s sake for four more months.
Four more months. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay here with him and his love that wasn’t real. She wasn’t strong enough to resist him. And she’d fall. Hard. And then when the four months were over and he went on his way, she’d be destroyed. Ruined.
She stood still at the edge of a decision she’d made a thousand times in the past. It was harder this time, because what she was turning away was so precious. So rare. But in the end, the old habits reached up out of her past to support her, and it wasn’t all that hard to just turn her head away from what she wanted.
“You can take care of Victoria?” she asked. “Jacob? In case Dennis comes back around?” She had every intention of making sure that didn’t happen, but Luc would be a good backup plan.
He stepped toward her, her arms in his hands before she could flinch away. She bit back a gasp at his touch, the heat of him. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Tara? I can’t—”
“I’m going to leave.”
“What? Why?”
“Because that is what I do, Luc. I leave.”
“What about the Nordstrom deal?”
“If you’re so interested, you go to the meeting.” She reached behind her and grabbed the sketch of the boot, that symbol of all the financial freedom she’d always wanted. But the truth was, no financial freedom was worth the pain love inevitably brought.
“What about Dennis?”
“I have that protection order.”
“Don’t do this, Tara. I love you. You. All of you.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Luc,” she snapped. “You barely know me.”
“Then tell me, Tara. Right now. Tell me what it is I don’t know about you. What is so unloveable about you, and you let me be the judge of whether or not my feelings are real. Trust me that much.”
“I should just go.”
“Yeah, and I’ll just follow you, Tara. Screw the will and my sister. I want you. I want to be with you and if you don’t want to be with me, you need to tell me why, and enough of this bullshit about hockey.”
She met his eyes and steeled herself. She was always the instrument of her own downfall—this would be no different.
“When I was a kid, before I conned that first old man—”
“Mr. Beanfang.”
That he remembered was somehow sweet. As if he’d memorized her poisonous song, unaware that it was going to poison him too.
“I was fifteen and mad at my mom because she kept bringing these assholes into our lives and they ruined … they ruined everything. And Grant … he liked me. My mom knew it. And she didn’t do anything. Ever. She looked
the other way, told me I was imagining things. That I was jealous. That I was a spoiled brat who didn’t want her to be happy. But she knew it was the truth. So on my sixteenth birthday … I didn’t say no.”
“Oh my God—”
“It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t sexy. Or fun. It didn’t make me a grown-up. And then my mother, when I told her, when I came to her crying and bleeding … she kicked me out of the house. No money. No clothes. No car. Nothing. I slept at a friend’s house for a few nights, but then … then I met Dennis.”
“Sweetheart, Tara.” His hands ran over her face like a river, like water trying to change the shape of the stones in its banks. “You were a kid. And your mother … your mother should have protected you.”
“But I hurt her, don’t you get it? I loved her and I hurt her. She loved me and she betrayed me. Your father loved you and look how he treated you. Look at what Victoria’s husband did to her. That’s love, Luc—it’s handing someone the knife to stab you in the back.”
She shook her head, stepping backward toward the door.
“You want me to love you, but all I ever do is hurt people. And you might think you love me, but you don’t. No one ever has.”
She turned and opened the door but he shut it again, his hand on the wood in front of her face. “Don’t give up like this, Tara,” he breathed, his head pressed into the back of hers, a weight that would drown her if she let it. “Don’t walk out that door. We can talk—”
He wouldn’t let her leave, so she would have to make him be the one to walk away.
“Talk?” she asked, hating him. Hating herself. “That’s not what we do, Luc.”
She took off her shirt, one button at a time. Her breasts without the bra glowed in the moonlight. It took him a second to realize what she was doing and he looked up in her eyes. Naked love and disappointment fought there.
“Don’t do this,” he whispered.
She ignored both and shrugged out of the shirt. The air was cold, his gaze colder, as disappointment and love were eaten by anger.
“Come on, Luc.” She leaned back against the desk. “Maybe I can still earn that bonus. I’ve got tricks I haven’t even—”
Can't Buy Me Love Page 27