The Tycoon

by Molly O'Keefe

  I was watching that hummingbird like it was my job.

  “And I offer you a husband who will do everything in his power to give you want you want in this life.”

  Except love. And maybe that was okay. Maybe…that was better.

  The silence between us throbbed. And it was more than I could actually process. He was offering me what I’d always wanted. What I’d dreamed of five years ago.

  “That’s all?” I asked, trying to be flip. Trying to pretend I wasn’t rattled down to my core. I glanced at him and my breath caught.

  He sat there, so still but he was…burning.

  “You’ll have me. And you’ll have sex, just the way you like it. Because, Ronnie, I know all the ways you like it.”

  I remembered with white-hot clarity his fingertips on the back of my legs. The insides of my elbows. I remembered the way his sweat tasted. And his come.

  I used to lie in bed after sex, torn between laughing and crying, because it was like my whole self had been thrown open to the world. Like I was just feeling everything I could possibly feel.

  It had been heady and exciting.

  And I missed it. That was the wild truth of it. I missed feeling so much.

  But I couldn’t just forget what feeling that much had cost me.

  “I’m willing to negotiate any part of this situation you want. I’ll concede every point, but I won’t listen to you pretend that you don’t want what we had. Or that you don’t remember.” His voice was thick and low. Dark.

  I cleared my throat, gathered the pieces of myself into something I could hold onto. “Of course, I do. The sex was amazing. But the truth is, Clayton, I can’t imagine being that vulnerable with you again.”

  I watched the words register on his face and I saw him realize how deep the scars were. He took a step back and those dirty, sexy memories withered and blew away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Me, too. But I’m not sure that will change anything.”

  He stood up from the rocking chair and held out his hand to me. I ignored it with all my strength.

  “Cards on the table,” he said. “That was your edict. So…let’s get all our cards on the table. Let’s see if what we had is still there.”

  I couldn’t imagine doing what he asked. I wasn’t that brave. That foolish. That reckless.

  “Please,” he said.

  And somehow those words were the weight that shifted the balance. I put my hand in his and made the leap.

  I was numb and buzzing all at the same time and he kept pulling me until our bodies touched. Just a little. Teasing, small sips of contact. He inhaled and his belly touched mine. I inhaled and my breasts touched his chest.

  I couldn’t look at him. The vulnerability was too much.

  “You don’t feel this?” he asked.

  “Nope.” Lying protected me. Lying was a wall between us.

  “You’re breaking your own rules, Ronnie.”

  Damn.

  “Veronica.”

  He laughed and I felt it, the rise of his chest against mine.

  “No lying. Your rules.” I turned my face away and he only pulled me closer. “Tell me if you don’t feel this.” I was silent. If I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t lying. “Ronnie,” he breathed and I swallowed a moan. “I’m going to kiss you.”

  “I…” The thought fizzled out between my brain and my tongue.

  “Will you let me?”

  I licked my lips, sure I was going to say no. But I nodded.

  Yes. I nodded yes.

  “Words, Ronnie. I need the words.”

  “Just kiss me.”

  And then his lips were on mine. Thick and soft. A heartbreak of a kiss.

  And he kissed me slow. Carefully. Like a memory he was trying to coax back into reality, and it worked. This kiss was even more powerful for having been absent for five years. Clayton’s kiss was like no other kiss I’d ever had. Other kisses were weak and tame. Flimsy.

  Clayton kissed me like he wanted to consume me.

  I tasted his breath. His mouth. Him. His tongue touched a corner of my lips and I gasped with the electric shock of it. The thrill. He took the moment and pulled me closer; his tongue swept inside my mouth and the kiss went on and on. And on.

  Yes, I felt my body connecting to itself in a way it hadn’t in a very long time. Yes. I’d missed this. I wanted this.

  I stepped back, breaking the kiss. I stepped back again, and then again, until he was no longer touching me and my brain, which had short circuited at the beginning of the kiss, blinked back on.

  “You’re so sure that will work?” I asked, trying bravado (but not very well).

  “I think it already has.”

  He sounded smug and cocky, and I shook my head. There was no way it would be that easy. That I was that easy.

  “Listen,” he said. “We announce our engagement, and the day after Dylan’s deadline to return we get married and claim the estate.”

  “That’s…six months.”

  “I can wait.”

  “What happens if I call off the engagement?” I asked. “Will you take back the money for my sisters? The foundation?”

  “It can’t be real between us if you’re planning your escape.”

  “You’d really take the money back?”

  “You’re the one who said no lying. This is real or it’s not.” We watched each other for a long time.

  “This is crazy,” I breathed.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I’ve been waiting five long years to get you back, Ronnie. I won’t let you go again.”

  With those words blowing holes through me, he left, and I just stood there on my mother’s porch, touching my lips and wondering if I’d lost my mind.

  Because when he said those words, it felt like he was choosing me.

  And I was seriously considering this.

  11

  VERONICA

  For a while, when I first moved into my apartment before I rented the house in Austin, I’d go running. At night.

  I know. I know. Dangerous. But my head was just so…loud…for a while. And I hated running with the fire of a thousand suns. But I found myself putting my shoes on and walking. Somehow that wasn’t enough, so I’d run a few steps. And then a few more. And then I’d stop, hand braced against the closest lamppost, trying to convince my lungs to work.

  And then I’d run some more.

  For a few months—six, maybe—I was actually a runner.

  And it helped. It cleared my head. It doped me up on endorphins and made me feel like I might just survive my heartache. My humiliation.

  Two days after Clayton left the ranch I found myself up in my room, putting together something I could run in. My threadbare yoga pants, a T-shirt, and my crappy three-year-old runners were the best I could come up with and then I was out the front door. Running around the long driveway, out to the feeder road. And then back when it felt too far. But somehow it wasn’t enough. And I did it again.

  And again.

  I wanted to call Bea, tell her what was happening and have her talk some sense into me, but that wasn’t how our relationship worked. Besides, her plate was full. And she would know that I was considering Clayton’s offer partly because of her, and she would hate being the catalyst for that kind of sacrifice.

  So I didn’t call her.

  Because…maybe it wasn’t a sacrifice. A life of security for my sisters, fundamentally satisfying work, and children…oh, and don’t forget the sex. It didn’t actually sound like a hardship.

  Who needed love when we had a mutually beneficial agreement?

  And orgasms.

  On my third loop, Trudy was outside sitting on the steps. She handed me a glass of water.

  “You okay?”

  “No.”

  “Is the running helping?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And I ran again. One more time. My lungs screamed. My legs burned. My belly jiggled. Just so I could get myself t
o this decision I didn’t want to make. Just so I could run some of the fear away. Run myself down to something basic. Something…ready. And brave, maybe.

  I had to remind myself that I was capable. That I could control the anxiety I was feeling.

  You don’t have to love him.

  I staggered to a stop. Trudy was still there and I collapsed beside her.

  “So?” she asked. “Feel better?”

  “Maybe?”

  “Well, if running didn’t help,” she said, “let’s see if cheese will.”

  “Oh.” I stood up behind her. “Cheese always helps.”

  I can do this.

  He can’t hurt me again.

  I called Clayton the next night.

  “Hello Ronnie,” he said, his voice warm with a timbre I didn’t want to hear. Or acknowledge. But my body did. My body heard that pitch in his voice and vibrated like he’d hit a tuning fork only my sex drive could hear. “I was getting worried I might not hear from you.”

  Cool it, I told myself.

  “I’ll meet you tomorrow in Dallas,” I said. “What time?’

  “Well, I suppose that depends on what your answer is.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if the answer is no, you could meet me in my office.”

  “And if the answer is yes?”

  “I’ll make you dinner at my condo.”

  “What if the answer is…maybe?”

  “I’ll still make you dinner at my condo.”

  “Make me dinner?” I couldn’t even imagine.

  “I thought that would be…different. From last time. If you’d rather go out, or…”

  The hesitation in his voice was like a crowbar against my armor, finding that weak spot and digging in. “No. It’s fine.” It was sweet and romantic as hell. “I’ll meet you at your condo.”

  His laughter was dark and rich and…satisfied.

  I hung up and went for another run.

  He cannot hurt me.

  The Dallas skyline was like honeycomb in the twilight sky. Beautiful and glowing. I used to love the view of the city at night. Watching it from the backseat of my father’s limo as we drove from the ranch into the city for that night’s tedious social events. We’d show up at the opera or the art museum, get our pictures taken, and then get shuffled back into cars, without even getting to try the appetizers. We’d get cheeseburgers on the way home, carefully trying not to drip ketchup down our fancy clothes. And it was fun enough that it almost erased the sting of the King family reality.

  My sisters and I were just props in our father’s life.

  When I graduated high school, I moved away. Packed up my little Toyota and headed for a new life at college. And the second I left Jennifer started working on Bea like it was her job, and the fireworks were extraordinary. Bea ran away. Twice. Sabrina showed up at my dorm in tears on numerous occasions. By the middle of freshman year, it just seemed smart to move home.

  The right thing to do for everyone’s sake.

  I wondered if my life would have been different if I had moved away and stayed away. If I’d found a nice boy at college, a poli-sci major who played intermural flag football or something.

  I wondered if I would have been satisfied by that life.

  Because driving to see Clayton, even as fucked up as all of this was—I still buzzed. I felt alive inside my skin in a way I hadn’t felt for five years. That was the effect of Clayton. And it sucked that only he made me feel this way.

  When I exited off the highway, the papers in the passenger seat started sliding toward the floor and I put my hand down on them so they wouldn’t end up all over the place. I’d had a contract made up. Of sorts. The rules we’d agreed on plus the details of the trust that I needed him to set up for my sisters.

  And the foundation. Finance, accounting, investing classes, and clubs in area high schools—but only for girls. And scholarships for those girls to go on to college. Special programs for single mothers and women entrepreneurs.

  I was demanding three million dollars from King Industries with the agreement that he would donate more annually.

  If he was going to buy me, this time around the price was going to be steep.

  And that thought—as strange as it was—made me feel better. More in control.

  The GPS system directed me to Clayton’s building, though I didn’t need it. Somehow, I knew the way, like I knew every Taylor Swift song, by heart.

  Using the new code Clayton texted me, I parked in the underground lot in his building. And then, using another code he’d sent, I got into the exclusive elevator that only went up to the penthouse.

  Five years ago, he’d had a regular unit in this building. And I wanted to find a kernel of something grandiose and ridiculous in this move to the top floor and mock him for it.

  But the truth was, I’d watched Clayton work for my father. And Clayton worked hard. There were dozens of cancelled dates in our months together. Plenty of times I sat alone at a table waiting for him after he called to say he was running late.

  He had been sorry and I understood. Success took work. It had been something I admired about him.

  I realized, as the elevator shot me up into the sky, how much time he’d spent with me five years ago. How hard he must have worked to catch up on the things he’d missed when he was with me.

  Part of me was pleased it cost him.

  Part of me was flattered that he’d made the effort.

  For the land, you idiot. And the business.

  But…that didn’t feel quite right anymore. I believed what he told me the other day. That he hadn’t done it for the money. Or, at least, not entirely.

  He’d done it to save me from my father and James Court. But also because he’d thought he could have it all without consequences. Was that worse? Or better?

  The elevator doors binged open and I was standing in a small hallway right outside an open door.

  Clayton was there, dressed in a sweater and jeans. He had no shoes on. His socks were gray and light-blue stripes. I counted the stripes on each foot—four light blue, three gray—instead of looking into his face.

  Am I doing this?

  I wanted to make some kind of casual statement in my own jeans and my tall boots. The green sweater that made me feel so good.

  But maybe he was making the same statement.

  We should be comfortable around each other this time. We should be ourselves.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hey.” I was trying not to feel shy. Trying to feel bold. And confident. But failing. It was easy to have a theory about how I was going to behave when I was around him. It was harder to put it into practice.

  “Come on in,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  I was starving. All that stupid running.

  The penthouse was stunning. All glass and night sky. A kitchen along one wall with a long granite counter for casual meals. A formal dining table behind it. A fireplace and low couches on the other side of the expansive room. A big-screen television over the fireplace. A hallway to my left, shadowy and lined with closed doors. The whole space was tasteful and masculine and comfortable.

  Nothing like his old condo. Which had been cold and austere. Much like his old office. He’d turned over a new leaf in the last five years and I wondered why. A woman seemed most likely and I loathed the thought of that. Another woman leaving her mark all over him. The jealousy caught me off guard.

  “You’ve moved up,” I said, and he took my loose coat, hanging it on a hook beside the front door. His coat was there, too, and a couple of sets of keys. The hooks were his touch.

  He had a weird thing for them. It made no sense in the grander scheme of Clayton Rorick. It had been one of the things I’d fixated on five years ago. Great proof of his humanness.

  You know where everything is, that way, he’d said.

  Clayton even had art on the walls now. Photographs of hands and waves. Bright red apples in a tree. It was all really pretty.<
br />
  “It’s lovely. Did you hire a…decorator?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Oh…you just did this yourself?”

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Yes. I saw your old place and your old office.”

  “My old condo and office were decorated by a professional.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “The designer told me that was what good taste looked like.” He shrugged. “I believed him.”

  “So…” I turned around slowly. “This is all you?”

  “You think it’s ugly?”

  That question was a surprise, but I tried not to show it. I worked so hard not to show it that I didn’t say anything and the words sat square and awkward between us.

  My opinion mattered? Was that what he was saying?

  “It’s lovely,” I said and he smiled.

  “I’m glad you like it.” He was so sincere. Earnest. Like my approval was something he’d been after. Flustered, I looked away from him.

  On the counter in the kitchen were an open bottle of wine and a cutting board with cheese on it.

  Not. Fair.

  “Go ahead,” he said and pointed to a glass sitting by the stove. “I already started.”

  “What are you making?” The air smelled amazing. Like juicy red meat and garlic and spices.

  “I seem to remember you had a weakness for short ribs.”

  “I did. I mean…I do.”

  “Well, we’re having short ribs.”

  He remembered and was making my favorite. This wasn’t the right start, or it wasn’t the start I’d been expecting. I wanted something a little colder. More businesslike. Something I could control.

  I put the agreement on the counter and tried to ignore the cheese. Cheese was a slippery slope. I’d start there and end up at the bottom of that bottle of wine. “This is all the terms we agreed to. Plus details regarding my sister’s debt and the trusts. And the foundation. Once you have a look—”