“I’m asking if it can even be made right.”
Lola glanced down at her hands, laced in her lap. Her knuckles were white from pressing her palms together. With a deep breath, she relaxed her fingers and looked up at him. Not a single muscle on her face moved until finally, she blinked. “Yes. If you want that.”
“I’m missing something here,” Beau said. “You were irate this morning. You should be broken.”
“Should be?” Lola asked, raising an eyebrow. “If I’m not, does that mean you failed?”
He opened his mouth. Did it? Did Beau have his power back if he hadn’t actually hurt her as much as he’d thought? There was no outcome to this where they both won. “No, I didn’t fail. You’re hurt, angry, confused. You want to know why I did this.”
“Yes, all of that’s true. That doesn’t mean I don’t still l—,” she hesitated but continued to look him in the eye, “care about you.”
Beau was suddenly warm in his suit. It’d been so long since he’d slept, he could almost convince himself he’d misheard what she’d been about to say. He didn’t doubt she loved him still—that didn’t change overnight. But love was anger and hurt and demanding the truth. He didn’t want this person, who was turning a blind eye. He wanted more, because when she loved him—that was power.
“Do you remember Hank Walken?” Beau asked.
Lola’s jaw shifted left then right. “How do you know Hank Walken?”
“He works for me.”
“He’s slime.”
“That’s why I keep him around.” Walken had done things for Beau he couldn’t have done for himself. Reaching for a dream was nice, but those who got there had to grab it by the throat, kill or be killed. Sometimes, it wasn’t pretty, what had to be done. “He’ll do anything for a buck. Like make a fake offer on Hey Joe.”
“It wasn’t fake. He was going to turn it into a rooftop bar. A lounge with—with celebrities, and…” They stared at each other, Beau watching the realization hit. “That was never going to happen?”
“Not on my watch. Hey Joe is a dump. Wasn’t worth my time.” Beau brushed Lola’s hair over her shoulder. “My time, my money—they were better spent on other things.”
“Were they? You’re such a savvy businessman? By my calculation, you lost big time on this deal. If you pit Walken against me and Johnny, then you knew Johnny and I would have to come back to you with a higher counteroffer for the first night. That would put you in a bidding war with yourself.”
Beau nodded. It was, by far, the most careless he’d ever been with his money, and that hadn’t been easy. But it’d almost been unavoidable, the seed of the idea planted early, maybe even on the sidewalk before they’d spoken.
“Walken put pressure on you to make a decision,” Beau said. “Johnny could justify anything because he’d never survive without Hey Joe. I knew that. More importantly, though, you knew it.”
“So instead of five hundred thousand, which was already more than what Hey Joe was worth, you drove the price up to a million.”
“No, actually. My offer was always a million.”
Her nostrils flared, but he could see she still didn’t understand. “It was five hundred. Trust me, a girl doesn’t forget the first time someone assigns her a dollar amount.”
“It was always a million.” Beau sniffed. He’d wanted to protect her in the hotel room that morning with Brigitte’s text, but instead she’d wanted the truth. That’s what he’d give her.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve dealt with many Johnnys in my life, and I knew he’d come back with a counteroffer. If I could get you to consider five hundred, there was no way you’d turn down twice that.”
Lola jutted her chin out, the cogs turning in her mind as she pieced the puzzle together. “You lowballed us. I knew I was being manipulated, but this is something else.”
“It’s basic negotiation,” Beau said. “Getting you into my bed was no different than any other business transaction. It should bring you some comfort to know it wasn’t all personal.”
“Comfort?” Lola snapped, jumping up from her stool. “You can’t treat people that way—commodities to be traded and moved around however suits you.” Her white cheeks were tinted pink, and the spark in her eyes had returned.
It reminded Beau of the first night when they’d argued, moments before he’d turned her around and fucked her against the hotel room window. Beau’s blood also rushed a little quicker. “I treat people how they allow me to treat them,” he said slowly. “You seem to forget I never forced you into a single thing.”
“Exactly. You made me ask for these things, beg for them. Fuck you.” She snatched her purse and turned away. “This isn’t worth it.”
Beau refrained from grabbing her arm like he wanted. They weren’t finished until he said they were, and he wasn’t ready to walk away yet. Especially after a comment he didn’t understand. “What isn’t worth it?”
Lola turned back and came right up under his chin. “After the first night, Johnny and I thought we had the bar, but we were in over our heads. What about that?”
“You agreed to buy something you couldn’t afford. At the end of the day, that’s why you took the second offer.”
“But you knew all along that would happen. You made it so I’d have no choice but to accept your second offer.” She smirked. “It’s a shame you weren’t confident enough in your abilities alone.”
“Oh, I was,” Beau said. “Nobody comes as hard as you did and doesn’t crawl back for seconds. Or thirds…”
Lola raised her hand to slap him, but he caught her wrist before she could. “You’re heartless,” she spat, breathing hard. Her hair fell over one eye as she struggled to get her arm back. “There’s nothing there, where your heart should be—just a big, fat dollar sign.”
He loved the way she tried to take him on, every time she did it. Too much. He was getting hard, and he had a weakness for her—the combination of the two was like poison to his control. “Keep pushing my buttons. See what it gets you.”
“I couldn’t be any worse off than I am right now.” She jerked her entire body, and he released her so she stumbled backward.
“No?” he asked. “Let’s go, then. What you need is a good, hard spanking for your behavior tonight and an even better orgasm to ease the sting.”
She gaped, her mouth opening wider, presumably to tell him off, but nothing came. She snapped her jaw shut. “That’s all it ever was to you.”
He couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question.
The lines around her eyes faded as she unwrinkled her nose. Her tone evened out. “Sex. Revenge. Fuck me, because I fucked you first.”
He’d seen this look on her face before—losing her struggle to submit. It’d been the first time he’d brought her to his hotel and made her crawl to him. Lola had become so much more than a conquest that night—she’d fulfilled Beau’s need for the impossible challenge he’d been looking for ever since he’d sold his first company. Beau was just as turned on now as he had been then.
“I have one last question,” Lola said. “After that, if you want me to leave, I will.”
Beau raised his eyebrows. If he wanted her to leave? She’d been in the middle of storming off, but she hadn’t yet. And the longer she stayed, the less he wanted her to leave. More and more, he needed to take her upstairs and have the night they were never supposed to have.
“Was any of it real?” she asked.
Beau stared at her, almost angered by the question. He had told her repeatedly that it was real, both while it was happening and after the fact. How many times could he say it? Despite manipulating her, he’d never once lied to get her there. Lying would’ve been cheating to win, and Beau never cheated. He played ugly, but he played fair.
“Everything was real, every detail I shared with you. I never lied about my past or my family. Not about my feelings. If you hadn’t read that text this morning, you would’ve gone home, broken up
with Johnny, and I would’ve been here waiting for you when you got back.” Beau was breathing hard, but the admission came easily. His time with Lola had been so limited, he’d had to learn how to open up fast. Without that, he never would’ve had a shot at getting her to love him. Now, his honesty felt natural.
She searched his eyes. “The stars?” she asked quietly. “Why did you drive me up Mulholland Drive? Where did that fit into your plan?”
Beau’s shoulders tensed. As they’d climbed the Santa Monica Mountains in his convertible, he’d glanced over at Lola. Her head had been tilted back to see the stars better, her hands cupped over her hair, loose strands flying around her face. She’d looked back at him right before he’d returned his eyes to the road.
Having her look at him that way—it’d been part of the plan. But the way it’d made him feel hadn’t. Could he have possibly stopped that feeling, though? Earlier that night, he’d been inside her where nobody else had been. Her body had melted like butter underneath him, the last of her walls coming down. She’d trusted him, and she was his. He’d known it then. They’d always had an expiration date, but sudden and deep panic had hit him in the chest. He couldn’t discard her, and he couldn’t keep her.
“Mulholland was a moment of weakness on my part,” Beau said carefully. “I thought it would make you happy.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Was it planned?” Her eyes dropped to his chest, and she closed them. “And the gas station?”
“What do you mean, the gas station?”
Lola was quiet as the question hung between them. Her insinuation became clear, and Beau would’ve laughed at the absurdity of it if it didn’t feel like such a punch in the gut. “You’re asking if I planned that?”
She opened her eyes. “You could’ve.”
Beau rubbed his forehead hard. “You think I hired a man to rob us at gunpoint,” he said evenly. The memory alone made his heart pound as if he were standing there again, completely helpless.
“I—”
“Hired him to scare the shit out of you. To put his hands on you.”
“You’ve done worse.”
She angled away from him a little, but he grabbed her shoulders, brought her close to look her straight in the eye. “I have never done worse than that. If you’d’ve let me, I would’ve gone after him. I would’ve hunted that motherfucker down and killed him for putting you in that position.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said suddenly, her voice cracking. She bit her lip when her chin wobbled. “How do you do it?”
He released her immediately, stunned. Just the threat of her crying struck him, reminded him of how she’d broken down in his lap after the mugging and told him she loved him. She rarely showed vulnerability, that’d been clear to him within moments of meeting her. How many times had she cried since that morning? On her way home from the hotel? When she’d found out about Johnny and Amanda?
“How do I do what?” he asked.
“Turn everything off. Teach me how. If you can’t love me, teach me how not to love you.”
Beau’s chest tightened. Lola was strong and stubborn. She wasn’t this girl standing in front of him, submitting to her pain. Fighters, like Beau and Lola, turned sorrow into strength. He didn’t know how to handle her as a girl whose heart he’d broken.
“I don’t turn anything off.” Beau’s hands flexed in and out of balls. It took so little for her to turn him in a circle. His instincts about her were always changing, and that felt like losing control. “Do you think I liked watching you leave this morning? You never even gave me a chance to explain.”
“Leaving was a mistake,” she said bluntly but backed away.
Beau automatically stepped forward. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted her to admit that.
“Or was coming here a mistake?” she continued. “I don’t know, Beau. Should I not have come? Do you want me to leave? Tell me what to do.”
Beau looked down at her. Her face was open, just like it’d been the night before when she’d trusted him with the biggest decision of her life. “I love you. I love him. Tell me what to do, Beau. I’ll do it.”
Glenn Churchill had painted a picture of love for Beau—taking precious hours from his work to do absolutely nothing with Lola. Nothing but enjoy her company. Maybe they went to a coffee shop with friends, maybe they stayed in bed half the day. Not just a few times, but every weekend. Could he and Lola ever be that couple? The hurdle before them was massive.
“We aren’t supposed to be together,” Beau said.
Lola chewed her bottom lip. She stared at him, but she seemed lost in thought. “Okay. All right.” After a brief hesitation, she turned around.
“Lola. Hang on.” Beau rubbed the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes, but he knew she was walking out. It was always going to end. It’d already gone on longer than it should’ve. Beau had never been good at ignoring his gut, though, and against all odds, it was telling him to go after her.
He crossed the room, strode through the lobby and caught up with her in the elevator bank, where she was waiting with her arms crossed.
“You didn’t let me finish,” Beau said.
She didn’t even blink as she stared down the elevator doors.
“We’re not supposed to be together. I don’t see how it could ever work.”
“Then let me go back to my room. I’ll find a new hotel in the morning—or maybe I’ll just go home. Either way, you won’t see me again.”
“I don’t want that.” Beau didn’t like talking to her profile, but she avoided his eyes. “Come upstairs with me.”
She exhaled a short laugh. “Upstairs? To your room? You must think I was born yesterday.”
Beau raised his palms as if not to spook her. He might, if he didn’t tread carefully. He regretted that he’d made a pass at her earlier. She suffered, because of him, and he was no longer sure he wanted that. “I don’t think that, but it feels wrong for you to be here in my hotel and not with me.”
She opened her mouth, but he continued before she could interrupt.
“I have a guest room. You can sleep there tonight, and after we’ve both gotten some rest, we can continue this talk.”
The elevator arrived. Lola boarded it before the doors were even all the way open and hit a button.
He followed. “Lola.”
She looked at him. “What?”
The doors closed. They were alone now—him, with Lola. He knew her, knew how to handle her, how to get her to respond. It was instinctual. “You’re not going back to your room tonight.”
“I see. Suddenly, you’ve decided you want me, and I’m just supposed to obey?”
“Neither of us knows what we want,” he said. “But we both know you’re not ready to walk away forever. Neither am I.”
She readjusted her arms and tapped one gentle finger in sync with each ding of a passing floor.
“What do you need?” he asked. “Just to agree to come for tonight?”
She turned to face him without hesitating. “I need you to make me a promise. No matter what happens, no matter how good or bad it feels between us, no sex. I can’t sleep with you right now. I’m too confused. I need to feel—safe…again.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t just mean tonight. No, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but if it lasts a minute past tomorrow morning,” she paused, “you can’t touch me until I come to you and tell you I’m ready.”
Beau sighed. He was exhausted—he’d have to be to agree to that. He would’ve said anything to get her up there so he could go to bed, though. Because he wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing she was in the next room.
It wouldn’t be easy. Lola’s power over him wouldn’t go away just because he wished it would. That was becoming obvious.
“You have my word.”
Lola looked at him a second longer and turned back toward the elevator doors. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come.”
&nbs
p; It wasn’t until they were walking to his room that he realized they’d never even stopped at the eleventh floor. When she’d gotten on the elevator before him, she’d pushed the button to go to the sixteenth.
13
Lying on her back, with her hands folded over her naked stomach, Lola stared up at the dark ceiling of Beau’s guestroom. Beau’d kept his promise and shown her to the opposite side of the suite without so much as a handshake. From the dark circles under his eyes, she guessed he hadn’t slept since well before she’d left him that morning.
She was tired too, but her thoughts were coming fast. Lola was far from the master Beau was. She hadn’t had as much time to plot as he had, and she’d stumbled and faltered her way through their interaction tonight. He’d riled her. She’d almost walked away. It’d been risky, threatening to leave, but she was still here. And she wasn’t ready to give in yet—she could learn this game.
She reviewed the evening with careful attention to detail—like his anger when she’d questioned his authenticity. It was most uncomfortable to turn the magnifying glass inward, though, to figure out what about Beau derailed her. She’d almost broken down learning the nuances of his layered plan.
She shouldn’t have been surprised about Hank Walken’s involvement—she might’ve figured it out if she’d given it enough thought. But the extent and depth of Beau’s reach scared her. When Sean, the doting bartender, had turned from confident to cowering, Lola had realized how alone she was in this. Nobody could take Beau on, because there was nobody Beau’s money couldn’t buy.
Lola took a deep, meditative breath and closed her eyes, but not because she was going to sleep. She assumed somewhere out there, a star was shooting across the night sky. She made a wish—that Beau should suffer from his love the way she had. That she would be the first to bring him to his knees for what he’d done.
She had no choice but to return to a place she didn’t want to. She had to be the Lola he’d fallen for in the middle of the night. The girl he’d touched as if she’d belonged to him rather than someone else. The girl who’d looked up at the stars and wondered how long ago her feelings for Johnny had begun to change. Who’d stepped in front of a gun for a man she hardly knew but one she knew she wasn’t prepared to live without.
Explicitly Yours Series Page 39