by Maisey Yates
“What the hell? What the actual hell. I don’t even...” She heard her phone ring in her purse on the floorboard of the car. “This rant will continue in a moment.” She bent down and pulled her phone from the side pocket of her bag. “Katy Michaels, Life’s a Party, how can I help—”
“Katy, this is Alexandra.” Her boss. Oh, great.
“Hi,” she said.
“I’m really sorry to have to do this, but we received another complaint regarding your performance at the Treffen event. With all the media attention Jason Treffen is getting right now, there’s simply no way mistakes like this can be tolerated. I’m afraid we’re going to have to terminate you. Effective immediately.”
“What?”
“I am sorry, Katy. You’re very nice to have around the office, but events like these are very demanding and they simply aren’t for everyone. I’ll have the contents of your desk waiting at reception. There is no need to come upstairs.”
And with that, her boss hung up. Her ex-boss.
“You...” She twisted in her seat as best she could while belted in. “You utter bastard! You just cost me my job!”
“And now you’re in dire financial straits. I guess you take my help or my father’s.”
“What’s the difference between you and your father?” she spat.
“I won’t whore you out to my friends. I think that’s a pretty substantial difference.”
“Look, the dominant-male thing was hot in bed, but it’s jerky in real life, just so you know.”
“This isn’t about being dominant. This is about keeping you safe.”
“In that case, can I use the safe word?”
“No,” he snapped. “I didn’t protect Sarah. I failed. I will not fail when it comes to protecting you. Do you understand? If I have to put you under lock and key until my father is behind bars, I will do it. Because I will not have your blood on my hands.”
“If anything happens, my blood will be on me,” she said. “I make my own choices.”
He shook his head. “No. Sorry. You don’t. Not right now. Because you might know what it’s like to grieve your sister, but I don’t think you have any idea what it’s like to know you could have stopped it. I was here, Katy. I was here and I did nothing. I didn’t see it. I see the danger now. I see it coming. I see what could happen to you. You’re not going to end up staining the sidewalks of New York because of your pride. I can’t let it happen.”
She tried to take a breath, tried to breathe around the knot of grief in her chest. The anger she felt. At him for making her lose her job. At him for letting Sarah die. Just...mainly at him. “You don’t get to control what I do,” she said. “I know how to keep myself safe. If I find anything that you need to know, then I’ll call you. Put it in my phone.” She handed her phone to him and waited while he punched his number in and saved it. “But I’m not moving into your place. That’s ridiculous.”
“You are going to do this,” he said, his voice low, rough.
She leaned in, her heart thundering hard. “Are you going to grab me by my hair and drag me back to your penthouse?”
“If I did, would you come?” he asked, letting the double entendre hang between them.
“You’re disgusting.”
“It wasn’t disgusting to you the other night.”
“Tell your driver to take me home. West 79th.”
He punched the intercom button. “West 79th.” He moved his hand away from the call button. “There, I did.”
“Thanks. You’re a gem,” she said, every word dipped in a thick coating of sarcasm.
They spent the rest of the drive in silence, maneuvering through the nightmare traffic at a pace that made Katy sweat. She was used to taking the subway and not dealing with roads, which seemed to have all the driving laws of a demolition derby.
She looked out the window and saw a side mirror from a neighboring vehicle so close that she could have rolled down the window and touched it.
Worrying about a collision was a lot easier than worrying about Austin, her job loss and the possibility of Jason Treffen coming to sell her into sexual slavery.
When they pulled up to her apartment, she got out and slammed the door behind her without saying anything to Austin.
She heard his door open and she turned, just as he stood up out of the car and looked at her over the top of it. The impact of his eyes meeting hers hadn’t lessened since that first time. Not rage, not finding out he was a Treffen, not knowing what he looked like naked—nothing had stolen any of the heat that burned between them. “I’m serious, Katy. Call me if you need something. Call me if you hear from Jason.”
She looked away. She had to. “I will. On that I’m going to work with you. I’m just not moving in with you. And now...I have no job, so if I end up on the street...”
“You’ll come live with me. You could stop posturing and just come with me now.”
“Here’s a posture for you, Treffen,” she said, throwing up her middle finger at him. Her younger brother would be so proud. Then she turned and walked down the steps that led to the lower level of the town house she shared with her roommate, Leah.
She slammed the door behind her and locked every lock before heading upstairs, trying to ignore the building panic. She had no cushion for this. No savings. She’d been so focused on landing the account for Treffen, Smith and Howell that she’d happily gone on a “trial period” pay grade, taking a cut from when she’d been working the lower-level accounts as an assistant.
As a result, at this very moment, she was two months behind on rent, and now unemployed.
Her roommate was not going to be happy. Not in the least.
“Leah!” she called.
“I’m in my room.”
“Leah,” Katy said, coming to the doorway of her roommate’s tiny bedroom. The whole town house was small. And old. And it stole about three quarters of their monthly income. But such was Manhattan. “You aren’t going to believe what just happened.”
Leah knew nothing about Sarah. Or Jason Treffen. Or her night with Austin. They weren’t all that close. But they’d met during Katy’s brief stint waitressing, and when she’d found out Leah had needed a roommate, Katy had jumped at the opportunity to get out of her studio apartment in a very seedy part of town.
“What?” Leah asked, sitting up, her blond hair falling over her shoulders in a frizzy halo.
“I got fired.”
“What?” Leah’s jaw dropped. “Do you get severance? How much severance will you get? What about rent?”
Well, that was the last question she wanted to be asked, because there was no easy answer for that, and she was already treading on thin ice. And she knew it.
“I don’t...know.”
“You have to find out, Katy. I can’t pay for any more rent on my own. I barely make what we owe in rent every month.”
“I know. But I mean...I’ve been buying food.”
“Ramen isn’t equal to putting a roof over our heads!”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll find another job.”
“When? And how long until you get paid?”
“I don’t—”
“If we miss even once you know Mrs. Czarnecki is going to throw us out on our butts.”
“I know,” she said, thinking of their thin, pinch-faced landlady. Yes, she would indeed evict them as quickly as possible. Eviction might be a complex process, but the older woman had honed it into a fine art.
“Affordable” Manhattan housing was hard to come by, and it was competitive. That meant the moment she booted someone for missing a payment, she had five new applicants beating down her door, just dying to give her first and last month’s rent.
“I’m sorry but...Katy, you’re going to have to go. Logically, there’s no way you can get a job that pays well enough to cover your share, plus what you owe me, in the amount of time we’ll need you to. I can’t cover for you anymore. I just can’t. This is... It’s been a while coming.”
“We are,” Leah said, looking almost sympathetic for a moment, before shrugging. “But I’ve ditched friends for a lot less than a good apartment in Manhattan. And I know another girl who will come room here who has a great job. It’s my name on the lease, and I’m the one that has to make sure it’s covered.”
“Leah...”
“I’m sorry. You’re a great roommate, and you never take the food with my name on it, which I really do appreciate. I’ve never even caught you stealing a Kiss from my candy jar. But I have to cover myself here.”
“I don’t...I don’t even know what to say.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something. I’ll give you a week.”
“Don’t bother,” she said, turning and storming out of her ex-friend’s room. “I hope whoever takes my place offers you thirty pieces of silver!” she shouted back.
“What?”
“Read the Bible!”
She stormed down the hall and into her room, slamming the door shut behind her.
Un-freaking-believable. She was being turned out onto the streets by the woman she’d lived with for the past eight months. Not that it should surprise her, since, in many ways, nice as Leah was, she was kind of a weirdo. Labeled food and all.
And fine, fine, Katy had missed rent for two months. Which was lame, and she knew it, but she was singularly focused on roasting Jason Treffen over an open fire like a chestnut. ’Twas the season and all of that.
If she and Leah were better friends, the betrayal would hurt her feelings. As it was, it just pissed her off. And this was New York for you.
Or rather, this was life for you. At least for her.
Her own parents would have sold her for a bag of dope if the offer had ever materialized. Lucky for her, it hadn’t.
She didn’t have time to job-search and apartment-search. She was so close to taking down Treffen. So close to getting her revenge. To getting justice. And now this. All of this!
Screw Austin Treffen. And not in a good way.
She pulled her phone out and looked up the number he’d entered, her fingers shaking. This was a win for him, and she hated that. But if it ended up being a loss for his father, then nothing else really mattered.
“Get your aristocratic butt back here, Treffen,” she said when he picked up. “Bring a car big enough to accommodate my things.”
“I can do you one better. I’ll send movers.”
“I can’t afford movers,” she said. “I’m out of a job. I wonder why that is?”
“You might not be able to afford movers, but I can. And now you’re under my protection. You might as well enjoy it.”
“Oh, Austin, I’m sure I’ll feel a lot of things while I’m ‘under your protection,’ but I doubt enjoyment will be one of them.” She hit the end-call button on the phone and sat down on her bed, her hands shaking. All of her was starting to shake.
In the past few days, everything in her life had changed.
She’d finally slept with a man. And it had proved that all those shadowy, fleeting desires of hers were very much real. That there was another half to them. Someone who fit into her strangeness like a very weird puzzle piece.
She’d discovered that what she wanted couldn’t be wrong, because there was a match to her needs.
Then she’d discovered that man was the son of her mortal enemy. And she’d lost her job. Lost her home.
She’d looked Jason Treffen dead in the eyes. The man who was responsible for her sister’s death. She’d spoken to him. Been in his office.
So many things had changed in the past few days but that was the most important.
And that was what she had to remember. That no matter how much it felt like a loss to let Austin do this to her, it was a small part of a very big picture.
She would use this, use him, use the information he was getting and his muscle, to help get to Jason.
She’d had her night off. And it had been blissful, until she’d been smacked with the reality of it all.
Now it was time to get back to work. What she wanted didn’t matter. It never had.
All that mattered was doing what was right. She wouldn’t be distracted again. She wouldn’t be giving in to her desire to let go again, either. Not until all of this was finished.
So if Austin thought she was just going to jump back into his bed again, he was going to be disappointed.
Me, too! Her body shouted at her and she ignored it.
It was one thing to sleep with a stranger. It was another to sleep with the man who had failed her sister in the way that he had done.
He might be her ally in this, but at the end of the day, he’d played a role in Sarah’s downfall. She would work with him, but they would never be friends.
She would never forgive him for what he had done. And nothing would change that.
* * *
Austin felt a vague sort of triumph as he watched the movers bring the boxes into his penthouse.
Vague because it was battling with a sense of disquiet at the thought of sharing his space with this woman for an indefinite amount of time.
But he had to protect her. He had to. It was like some raging, primitive urge. Maybe Sarah’s ghost possessing him. Or maybe it was just the guilt from the past, piling on with the regret he felt over having unleashed his darkest passions on the last woman on earth he should have ever touched.
The problem was, when he looked at her, he still wanted her. When he saw that brown hair, coiled into a bun at the base of her neck, he wanted to unravel it again. Pull it hard, until she cried out from the pleasure and pain. And that brought him back to what it was like to have her sweet red lips on his—
He cut off that line of thinking.
She was currently standing in his kitchen, in a pencil skirt and prim blouse, her arms folded beneath her breasts and her shoulders curved like she wanted to collapse in on herself.
Her expression, on the other hand, was much more confrontational than her posture.
“I imagine this is larger than your place on 79th?” he asked.
“It’s larger than any place I’ve ever lived ever, but the only reason that matters is that I’ll be less likely to run into you.”
“You don’t seem to like me very much.”
“Shall I list your offenses? I don’t see why I should need to. You’re a smart man. College-educated. A lawyer. I barely graduated high school, so it doesn’t seem like I should understand anything you don’t. All things considered, you should be able to state why I don’t like you with perfect clarity.”
“In point of fact, I know my offenses in this life,” he said, leaning back against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “I could put together a comprehensive case and see myself damned for all eternity.”
“I might find that entertaining,” she said.
“Don’t worry, the devil is saving me a seat in hell already. I don’t need to wait for my day in court.”
“Then why act surprised about me not liking you?”
“It’s just that you did like me once.”
“No. I wanted you. I didn’t know you.”
“True enough. But I want you to know that in terms of...in terms of what passed between us that night...I don’t expect anything like that to happen again. In fact, I don’t want it to. You’re staying here and you’re under my protection. And the last thing I want is for you to think that I asked you to come here so that I could seduce you, or so that I could take advantage of you. Because while I’m not a spotless lamb, I truly have no desire to be my father. I pour a lot of money into advocating for women who have been harassed. Into really helping them.”
“That’s good to know,” she said.
One of the movers walked in through the door, a small box in his hands. His foot caught the carpet and he pitched forward, dropping the box, the top bursting open
and spilling the contents onto the marble. A highly polished wooden jewelry box hit the tile and went into three pieces that skidded across the floor.
“No!” The word burst out of Katy’s mouth and she dropped to her knees in front of the mess, gathering up papers, earrings and necklaces that had come out of the box. “Oh...no,” she said, as she froze and clutched a piece of the box in her hands.
“Sorry, miss,” the mover said, looking genuinely upset.
“Give us a second,” Austin said, gesturing to the door. The other man obeyed, likely just relieved Austin had decided not to tear him a new one.
If it had been valuables, who knew, he might have. But this was something more. Something deeper. And he didn’t want anyone here to witness Katy’s pain.
It was a part of protecting her. And he would protect her. In any way he could.
“What was it?” he asked, still standing across the room. She wouldn’t want him to touch her. He knew that already.
“It was Sarah’s jewelry box. It’s probably silly to be this upset about it but...” She took a sharp breath, concealing a sob. “It fell and broke into pieces. Just like she did.”
“Shit,” he breathed, and then he was on the floor next to her, holding one of the pieces. He wanted to do something more. Comfort her or something. But he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to touch her the right way.
All he knew with her was sex and control. And that wasn’t what she needed. So he just sat with her on the floor, while she stared straight ahead. There were no tears, just a blank sadness. A sort of hollow look that echoed inside of him, in all the empty places.
And there were so many.
“We can get it fixed,” he said. “It’s the lid and body and...this looks like it was a false bottom.” He picked up the middle piece and looked at the way the bottom was dangling open.
“I didn’t know it had that,” she said, frowning.
“It has something in it, too,” he said. “A picture.”
She ran her arm over her face, over her dry eyes. “There’s one here, too.”