“Pru...” he whispered.
Pru shook her head. “It’s okay. I just get a little emotional thinking about it.”
“No, it’s not okay. Come here.” He had never in his life needed to hold a woman as much as he needed to hold Pru in that moment. He drew her now-stiff body into his arms, giving her the comfort he suspected she’d been needing for a very long time.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what happened to your parents. Sorry it made you want to bury the person you used to be. But...”
He tipped her chin up, needing her to look at him when he said, “I like you. All of you. Detective Pru and Wedding Night Pru. A lot. Too much actually. And it’s driving me crazy. That’s what this is really about.”
She blinked at him. “You like me?” she repeated. Her tone was rightfully incredulous, given the things he’d said to her over the past thirteen wallets.
But he nodded anyway. “I really like you. That’s why I can’t see straight when I think about you and Gus. That’s why I spent all day trying to prove to you, and to myself, that you liked me better than you liked him.”
She gave him a watery smile. “Well, if that’s all you were looking to prove, I can tell the answer right now. I don’t like him. I could never like him the way I like you.”
As warmth flooded through his heart, Max thought that this was what hope felt like. This was how it felt to like someone and hear for certain she felt the same way.
“You like me,” he said, unable to keep a goofy smile from forming on his face.
“I like you,” she confirmed with a shaky smile of her own. “I like you a lot.”
She then snaked her hand around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss, one that tasted of the balm he’d applied to her lips.
When it was done, she gave him an apologetic smile. “But I’ve got another confession,” she told him. “I haven’t exactly been keeping up my end of the bargain, because the old Pru would have never let you get away with this.”
As if to exemplify exactly what “this” was, Pru’s hand came around his shaft, effectively switching their positions. Her the manipulator, him unable to keep from pumping himself into her fisted hand. She paused, but only long enough to run her palm over the top of his hood. His own thrusts became sloppy then, his whole body desperate for the release he’d been denying himself these many hours.
“Pru...” he choked out as his balls began to tighten.
But she suddenly released him from her warm grip and said, “So tell me about you. What made you the person you are today?”
He shook his head, confused.
Her eyes twinkled now, wicked with triumph. “C’mon, it’s only fair. I told you about all my issues. You tell me about yours.”
So...this was what it felt like to be on the receiving end of one of his own smug stares.
Max forced himself to play it cool. Instead of pushing her on her back and finishing as he wanted, he sat up a little straighter, lounging against the bed’s headboard as if the raging erection between his legs wasn’t an issue.
“You’re the detective Cole hired to look into me,” he answered. “Why don’t you tell me? Prove you deserve the job in case I’m ever in need of a PI.”
Pru studied him for a moment, considering. Then said, “Okay, fine. Here’s my breakdown of Maxwell Benton.”
She rose up and swung her leg over both of his. Making herself right at home as she sat on his lap with the lips of her silken folds resting right against the top of his shaft.
Max bit down. It was all he could do not to come from that movement alone.
“Let’s hear it,” he said, putting a whole lot of effort into sounding as if having her in his lap wasn’t affecting him whatsoever.
“Okay,” Pru answered...before wiggling her hips on top of him.
“Pru...” he growled. His fingers dug into her waist, anchoring her into one place.
“Okay, okay!” she said with laugh. But then she looked at him, really looked at him, her face becoming serious.
“So your dad was the first person to abandon you,” she said quietly. “Then your mother left you with your grandparents, who sent you off to boarding school. So you formed a Brother Rebels Without a Cause alliance with Cole, only to have him abandon you when your grandpa pulled him out of boarding school and started grooming him to become the head of the Benton Group. And maybe that wouldn’t have been enough to seriously mess you up. But then your grandpa died when you were in college. Before you could prove to him like Cole did that you weren’t the screwup he thought you were. So you self-medicated for a long while, tomcatting around the world, ruining women before they could ruin you. And now...”
She gave him an empathetic smile. “Now you want to build a hotel. Partly to prove to Cole—who’s basically become your grandfather—that you can, but also because you want to. Because it’s in your blood and no matter what anyone else thinks, you know you’d be good at it.”
Max froze, unable to completely process her words. Every single one of which was true. How could she have read him so thoroughly? He stared up at her in wonder.
And she gave him another rueful smile. Half shrug. Half apology. “Guts and research.”
Guts and research.
Max continued to stare at her. He’d felt many things because of women. Horny. Annoyed. Challenged—at least for a little while. But he had never in his life felt the emotion that this woman had just inspired in him.
Understood. She made him feel completely understood.
“I like all of you, too, Max Benton,” she whispered.
He needed to be inside her then. Didn’t just want it or crave it, but needed it as he needed his next breath.
But he forced himself to be gentle with her. Lifted her up and angled himself, before bringing her down slow. Parting her folds as carefully as he could with his shaft.
He didn’t want to hurt her, and he worried that she was too tender for even this gentle of an entry after everything he’d done to her the night before. But then she moaned with relief when he went all the way in, making him wonder if this—him inside her—was what she’d been waiting for, too.
* * *
Something would have to be done about this, Max thought later. Lying in the dark room, stroking Pru’s soft curls as she slept with her head pressed into his shoulder. Poor woman. After what he’d put her body through, she’d barely made it through half the meal he’d had sent up before he’d had to remove the tray for fear of her passing out on top of it.
She’d fallen asleep nearly as soon as he’d tucked her head into the crook of his arm. Max was tired, too. Yet he remained awake, his mind racing.
He couldn’t let her go. Whatever this thing was between them— Max broke off the thought as the L-word began to break the surface of his sleepy mind.
No, he couldn’t let her go. Not yet.
He kissed the top of her head, thinking about the papers he’d be signing the next day. The ones that would absolve her from their marriage and allow her to divorce him without penalty.
He decided that when they woke up, the first thing he’d do was get her a huge breakfast. A substantial one that would make up for all the meals she’d missed over the past double-digit hours. Then they’d talk, really talk. About his future. Her future. And how they should be combined.
This decision made, Max finally allowed himself to fall asleep.
Chapter 22
When Max awoke next, it was to the sound of someone knocking on the door. A quiet but urgent pounding followed by Sunny’s voice saying, “Pru? Pru, are you in there?”
Pru was already out of the bed, over by the closet, hastily throwing on a maxi dress.
“Coming,” she called as she ran over to the set of dresser drawers. “Hold on.”
“Get dressed!” she whispered.
Max thought about refusing. He wanted to stay in bed with Pru. But Pru was already headed to the door, so he went along, getting out of bed and throwing on the shorts just in time to avoid being seen in his full glory by Sunny.
By the time he got his shirt on, Pru already had her arms wrapped around her best friend. At least she tried to get them all the way around Sunny. Sunny’s substantial tummy got in the way of a full bear hug.
Pru pulled back and grinned at her friend’s protruding belly. “Oh, my gosh, Twin! You’re so pregnant.”
“Who are you telling, Twin? They barely let me on the plane back from New York with this belly. I was like, really, I’m not that far along. The baby just has tall genes. I thought I might have to ask Cole to send the company jet for me.”
Max started to wonder why Pru and Sunny were calling each other “Twin.” But then he vaguely remembered something from Pru’s maid of honor speech about how the two were often mistaken for each other as the only two black dancers in the Benton Revue. And how they hadn’t made it easy for the fellow dancers by wearing the exact same style of curly extensions.
As if to confirm the memory, Sunny gave Pru’s short curls a surprised look. “You took out your extensions. I guess we don’t look so much like twins anymore.”
“End of an era.” Pru grinned, trying to finger comb her tight curls back into some semblance of a style. “Sorry my hair is so messy. I rushed to the door. Are you okay?”
Sunny looked at Pru, confused, and Max walked over to stand in the doorway behind Pru and asked, “Why were you knocking on the door like something was on fire?”
Now Sunny’s expression became apologetic. “Stupid pregnancy brain—I should have led with that. I was knocking because I wanted to talk to you first. Before Jakey got up here with the bags—”
Pru’s eyes went wide. “Wait, what do mean Jakey? You didn’t bring him here, did you?”
As if to answer her frantic questions, a male voice called out, “Pru!”
Then Pru’s younger brother appeared behind Sunny. Even if Max hadn’t already met him briefly twice, he would have known who the boy was. If Pru had about six more inches of height, a heavier jaw and, what Max was guessing from the ill fit of his T-shirt, a summer’s worth of new muscle, she would have looked exactly like her younger brother.
“Jakey, what are you doing here?” Pru demanded. “You’re supposed to be at camp!”
The teen answered Pru but glared at Max as he did so. “I left camp,” he informed her, “when one of the other counselors asked me about you getting married to Max Benton in some wild nightclub video. Tell me that’s not true.”
“Jakey...” Pru clamped her mouth together. Max could almost see her mind working out an explanation that wouldn’t technically be a lie but wouldn’t blow their cover story either.
This current situation wasn’t how Max had envisioned breaking the news to Pru’s brother. He’d thought maybe they’d do this over tea or something at Nora’s house when the young man got back from camp. But apparently this was happening now.
He stepped up and put an arm around Pru’s shoulders. “Hey, Jake, man, I’m Max. Nice to meet you.”
The teenager glared at him with the kind of prejudgment that would have served an old biddy four times his age. “I know who you are. Everybody knows how you do in Vegas.”
He turned back to Pru. “Which is why I know you didn’t really marry this guy, Pru. The video was fake, right? Like some kind of viral stunt ad or something for the Benton? Because he’s way worse than all the stuck-up rich guys at my high school put together.”
“Ah, come on,” Max said, seriously offended. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough about you to be sure my sister wouldn’t ever go out with a guy like you. Especially not without introducing you to me first. Not unless...”
Jake’s eyes suddenly went wide and he turned back to his sister. “Is he paying you? Pru, is that it? Did he pay you to marry him?”
Pru tugged on his arm. “Jake, you’re making a scene,” she whispered. “Can you please just come inside so we can talk about this?”
Jake shook his head, refusing to be tugged inside, away from a now equally wide-eyed Sunny. “He is paying you, but why would you take money from him? Why would you...?”
Jake trailed off, answering the question before either Pru or Max had time to come up with a reasonable explanation. “It’s because of BIT, isn’t it? You’re doing this for me.”
The best thing Pru could have done at that moment would have been to deny it. To say to her brother, “No, of course not,” and reiterate their cover story. That they’d fallen hard for each other in a matter of weeks and gotten married in a fit of heady romance.
But Max had called it right when he’d taken a gamble on Pru that first night with the wallets. She’d do a lot of things to solve her case and keep her promises. But he saw in those moments of silence that she didn’t lie. Especially to her brother.
“Oh, my gosh,” Sunny, who was still in the doorway, whispered. “Is this why you haven’t returned any of my calls?” she asked. “Because you fake married Max and didn’t want to tell me?”
Pru shook her head, her voice little more than a broken whisper when she said, “I didn’t want to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to hurt either of you. I just... I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.”
“I can’t believe this!” Jake nearly yelled.
He pushed into the room, past his sister in order to grab Max by the front of his shirt and shove him into the nearest wall. “You paid my sister to fake marry you, and you made her...?”
He didn’t finish that sentence. Just let his eyes scan the bed with its seriously rumpled sheets, before raising his fist, as if to tell Max what would happen if he didn’t like his answer.
If it had been anyone else, Max would have baited him into following through. Goaded him into throwing the first punch, which he would have easily ducked before reversing their positions and showing the guy exactly how to land a good face punch.
But Jake wasn’t anyone. He was Pru’s brother. And Max really must have been out of his mind over this woman, because instead of showing Jake what real fighters did when you slammed them into walls, he raised his hands and said, “Jake, I know you’re mad. But I’ve never paid for sex, and I’m not going to go into the details with you. You need to trust that I would never force your sister to do anything she didn’t want to do with me in bed.”
Jake screwed up his face, his raised fist balling up even tighter. “Why would I trust anything that came out your mouth? My sister would never let a guy like you touch her. I went to school with guys like you. They made fun of me for being poor. We hate guys like you. A rich guy like you in a Lambo killed my parents. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if Pru hadn’t proved the guy had been texting when it happened.”
Max looked at Pru, who hadn’t told him this part of the story, and his heart went out to her once again. He could only imagine the kind of guilt she must have felt over her parents’ death as she went about solving the case of what happened to them herself.
“Pru...” he said, instinctively reaching for her.
But Jakey slammed him back into the wall. “She would never give somebody like you the time of day, and she damn sure wouldn’t marry you for real without running it by me first.”
“Jakey.” Pru appeared behind her brother, placing placating hands on his shoulders. “Please, I know what this looks like, but I made this decision for a reason, and I know what’s best for you and me. You’ve got to trust me.”
Pru’s words had an effect on Jake, but not the one she’d
probably intended. He let go of Max in order to turn on her.
“Trust you?” he repeated. “Why should I trust you? Especially after you did this?”
Pru took a step back, covering her mouth with her hand. “Jakey...” she said, her voice filled with hurt.
“No, don’t talk to me,” he spat out, his face screwed up with disgust. “Just take me home. All I want to do is forget any of this ever happened. I can barely look at you.”
“You can barely look at her?” Max repeated, grabbing a hold of Jake’s shoulder and spinning him around. “Are you kidding me?”
“Max, no!” Pru said.
Max ignored her, his eyes focused on Jake. “After everything she’s done for you? After everything she’s sacrificed? You think you have the right to judge her for any decision she makes?”
Jake didn’t back down. “I suggest you get out of my face, man.” Then he looked over Max’s shoulder at Pru to sneer, “I can’t believe you let yourself get mixed up with this guy. It’s like the way you were before Mom and Dad died all over again.”
Max didn’t have to look at Pru to know that Jake might as well have taken out a knife and stabbed her.
With deliberate calm, he grabbed the young man by the front of his T-shirt and slammed him into the same wall he’d slammed Max against. Jake immediately tried to struggle free, but Max easily kept him there.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard Pru at his back, demanding he let her brother go, but Max stayed fully focused on Jake.
“Listen, dude, it’s time for you to start showing your sister a little more respect,” Max informed the younger man. “Yeah, she married me because she needed money to help you. She did that for you, and that means you don’t get to judge her. In fact, the only words you should be saying to her right now are ‘Thank you. Thank you for raising me, thank you for taking me on all those stupid camping trips, thank you for doing whatever it took to make my dreams come true.’ That’s all you should be saying to your sister now.”
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