by Tia Siren
These were the moments that made it hard to see Luke as any other man. He was the type of man haunted by demons who lashed out at anyone or anything. She also had a feeling he didn’t just sleep with anyone. Ever.
Her heart skipped at the thought.
It’s just an arrangement, Paige. She forced her eyes to close, trying to drift back to sleep with Luke’s strong body curled up against hers in a protective gesture. It’s just a business deal for us both.
Chapter Ten
Luke
Luke felt a warm body curled up next to him when the sound of the snow plow stirred him back from a drunk but surprisingly peaceful sleep. A pair of soft and shapely legs were tangled with his own beneath the blanket. His arm was curled over a slender waist.
Luke forced his eyes open and stared at the back of Paige’s head as snippets from the night before replayed in his mind. He had kissed Paige out frustration after dinner. They had argued vehemently in her room, too, before passion had taken ahold of them both. He had been so close to having her. He could still remember the feeling of Paige’s thighs gripping his hips, the cotton of her underwear rubbing against him.
He hardened just thinking about it. He was surely going to explode if he didn’t find a way to get Paige’s defenses down.
And lying in bed with her, her curled up on her side and only wearing a large sleeping shirt, didn’t help anything.
Lifting his arm slowly so as not to stir her, Luke let that hand slip beneath the hemline of her shirt. A strong back and warm skin greeted his fingertips as he traced the bumps of her spine with a painful longing. Of all the women in the world, this one was the perfect one, but she refused to let him be the one place he wanted to be.
It hit him hard then why he had come stumbling back down the hallway drunk. It hadn’t been over the nightmare of his father. It had been because he’d craved that sense of comfort he found in Paige’s presence at all times.
Luke swallowed thickly at the realization. He had to get himself in check before he let things get out of control in this area that was foreign to him. Falling in love was not on the agenda. Staying married was not on the agenda either, and he had a feeling there was a part of Paige that hoped they would remain that way.
I’m going to break her heart by doing this.
For a moment, though, he savored the intimate feeling of Paige’s warm body curled against him as she slept on peacefully, unaware of the torment raging inside him.
He untangled his legs from Paige’s slowly and then slipped out of bed. He ghosted his side and then tucked the sheets and blankets back up over Paige’s shoulder before he left the room to return to his own for a shower. The entire lodge was motionless, as he expected at such an early hour.
Father down the hallway, though, he heard the kitchen staff over the bubbling of freshly brewing coffee as they prepared for breakfast.
His room was still toasty thanks to the now-smoldering fire he had made in the fireplace. The whiskey bottle and glass were still on the table where he had left them the night before. He realized it was a right damn miracle that he hadn’t done something irrationally stupid when he saw the level of the amber liquid. He needed to slow it down a bit. His head even ached from it.
There were five missed phone calls from Alicia, too, when he checked his phone.
“Who is this bitch I see you with all over the papers and tabloids?” she demanded in one voice mail. “This was your big and grand loophole and plan to get your inheritance? What sort of bastard are you?”
“The worse one,” Luke answered, and tossed his phone onto the table with a frustrated sigh.
He let the hot shower water soak every aching muscle in his body. When he finished, he heard the rest of the lodge stirring awake as he walked into the kitchen. Toby was sitting at the breakfast bar with snowflakes dusting his broad shoulders.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he said cynically. “Coffee?”
“Yes,” Luke said, grimacing at the headache throbbing in his temples. “I need some Tylenol too.”
He sat down on the breakfast bar stool next to Toby as one of the kitchen staffers poured a cup of coffee and handed him two Tylenol. He gulped them down with a hot swish of coffee.
“Where is everyone at?” Luke asked, setting his mug down on the countertop. “Did my father’s friends leave yet?”
“Yes. They plowed the roads and left while you were in the shower.”
“What about Paige?”
Toby frowned at him. “She didn’t get up and leave with them, if that’s what you are wondering.”
“That was what I was wondering.” He felt the weight of Toby’s stare on him as he took another gulp of coffee.
“You weren’t in your room this morning,” Toby said slowly. “Please tell me that you two—”
“We didn’t,” Luke cut in, shaking his head. “Nothing happened between us last night. I just—”
He had no explanation for what had prompted him to go straight to Paige’s room for comfort after a nightmare he couldn’t even remember. It had made sense to him at the time.
And she hadn’t kicked him out either. They had slept curled around each other all night long without waking once until the snow blowers.
“Nothing happened,” he repeated again. “That’s all I can think of to tell you.”
“Well, whatever is going on between you two is working. Your father’s friends seem to think that you and Paige have some connection that is once in a lifetime.”
“I’m sure Peter will love to hear that. They only wanted to eat and drink here to see if my relationship with Paige was real.”
“And you made it real by disappearing for a good portion of the night with her. Here.” Toby scooted a pile of stapled papers across the countertop to him. “These are the questions you and Paige need to go over this week.”
Luke flipped through the questions as he gulped down his coffee quickly. He raised his mug to ask for more when the kitchen door pushed open.
Paige froze when she caught sight of him sitting next to Toby at the breakfast bar. Her brown locks were damp from a shower, and she was back in her normal attire of leggings, boots, and a loose gray sweater. Their eyes met. His chest clenched when Paige approached them after getting herself a cup of coffee.
She didn’t want to talk about last night, or at least not a good portion of it. They needed to go over the questions, though, if they had to meet with Peter in a week. Ignoring the awkward tension between them, Luke scooted over onto another stool to give her a place to sit. He cleared his throat when images from the night before replayed in his mind.
“These are the questions we have to go over,” he said, handing Paige a copy. “We should go over them on our way back to New York.”
She glanced down at the questions. “Can we do this some other time? I really do have a lot of homework to do on the plane trip back.”
“We should do them today,” Luke said. “I don’t want Peter finding some hole between us.”
“Fine,” Paige said shortly. “I’m going to have my coffee in the study. Is that okay with you?”
He didn’t know what to make of her abrupt change of attitude. Paige slipped off her stool with the papers in hand, leaving the kitchen just as quickly as she had entered it. Guilt lodged in his stomach when Toby looked at him with a sigh.
“I know you don’t want to hear this—”
“I don’t,” Luke snapped, grabbing his coffee as well. “I need to talk with her. I did and said some shit last night that wasn’t right.”
“Whiskey makes you a mean son of a bitch,” Toby said, shaking his head. “I’m telling you that you need to cut that shit down.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Luke said.
His hands were shaking as he walked down to his father’s old study. It was his study now, but he found himself raising a hand out of habit to knock. Not that it had ever mattered. There had been too many times in Luke’s life that he burst into his father’s study t
o find him passed out over his desk, in his chair, and even on the floor.
Paige was standing in front of one of the windows that overlooked the back part of the lodge. She turned to look at him as he closed the door behind himself.
“I wanted to talk to you alone,” he said. “About last night—”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” Paige said abruptly. “Let’s just forget about it, okay? You were drunk, and I was upset. Things were said, and we did things we shouldn’t have done.”
“What’s wrong with being close to someone?” Luke asked.
He ran a gaze along his father’s study with a mixture of bitter feelings. A fine layer of dust had covered the bookshelves, and he had a feeling if he pulled out certain books, he’d fine empty shooter bottles—most likely full and unopened ones too.
“I never said there was,” Paige said. She glanced around as well. “Was this your father’s office?”
Luke nodded.
“If you think my drinking is bad, pull out a few books to see what my father used to hide from the rest of the world.”
Paige set her mug of coffee and the papers down on the desk. She pulled out a few books, and three plastic shooter bottles fell to her feet. Sadness filled her eyes as she pushed the books back onto the shelf.
“Do you want to be like your father?”
“No,” Luke said adamantly. “I don’t want to be like him.”
“Not even the rich billionaire part of it?”
“Maybe that part of it isn’t so bad. The other part, not so much.”
Paige gave him a piercing look. “You do realize that you are walking in those same footsteps, right?”
That dark and painful part of him gave a jolt just thinking of all the ways he had turned out exactly like Roderick Turner. They both enjoyed the bottle too much. His heart and insides hurt every single time he woke with the bitter taste of vomit and repulsion in the back his mouth. It was the same feeling that had pushed him to sex. At least that gave him a better feeling than whiskey.
“You need some help,” Paige said. “I can—”
“I don’t need any help. Try being me for a day, and then you’ll understand why I drink.”
“All I’m asking is for you to tone it down. None of this is going to work if you are going to be a fall-down drunk.”
She retrieved her coffee and the papers. “I’ll see you in the car to head back to the city. I’ll study these questions for the plane ride there.”
She left him standing there motionlessly in the center of his nightmares. The money, the wealth, the power, it had caused all the Turner men to fall. It took a different amount of time for each, but it happened eventually.
Luke reached out to smudge dust off one of the bookshelves. Pulling a book free, he caught a full shooter bottle of amber liquid. He didn’t hesitate in twisting the cap off to let the liquid burn the back of his throat.
It wasn’t his time to fall just yet.
****
“We seriously have to answer all these questions?” Paige asked. She flipped through a packet of questions that Toby had given them earlier.
“Yes,” Toby said, looking up at them both in exasperation. “What’s the problem?”
Luke shrugged his shoulders as he reclined in his seat. He glanced out the plane window at the blur of colors below.
“Some of these questions are a bit personal,” Paige said. “More personal than what Luke really needs to know about me.”
“If you don’t answer them, you’re gambling with Peter.” Toby reached forward to tap her packet. “I know he’ll be asking these types of questions. So, ask Luke a question, he’ll give you an answer, and you do the same.”
Luke grinned when Paige, irritated, looked over at him.
“Fine,” she said. “Where were born?”
“Bismarck, North Dakota,” he responded. “You?”
“Portland, Oregon. We moved to Wyoming when my grandpa passed away when I was two years old to take care of the farm.”
“What do your parents do on the farm?” Luke asked. It wasn’t a question on the paper; he was genuinely curious. He didn’t plan on meeting them, though, despite what Paige thought.
“They raise cows to be shipped out for meat,” Paige replied, flipping through the packet. “Do you have any siblings?”
“No. You?”
“No. What are your goals for the next five years?”
“I’m tapping into the gold mining business,” Luke said, folding his hands behind his head. “Or at least, I hope to if I can get my inheritance.”
“That’s what you plan to do with your money? Make more of it?”
He tensed at her baffled tone. “What’s wrong with making more money?”
“You already have an abundance of it,” Paige said. “Do you honestly need more?”
“Everyone always needs money, sweetheart.” He ignored the cynical look she shot him. “What about you? What are your goals? Be a famous painter in New York City?”
“That’s the plan,” she said. “I’d like to have my own exhibit.”
Luke’s eyes landed on her sketchbook on the airplane tray next to him. “I still haven’t seen any of your work.”
“That’s because I won’t show you anything yet,” she said, grabbing and holding her sketchbook possessively when she followed his line of sight. “If you’re that curious, you can see my finished pieces by the end of the spring semester.”
“Right.”
“Favorite food?”
“Italian or Greek.” His head throbbed painfully. He needed another drink to curtail the headache. “Can I order a drink before we continue?”
“You said you were going to slow it down,” Paige said harshly. “What’s the problem?”
“I have a headache,” he said, and, miffed by her attitude, he grabbed her sketchbook from her hands to flip through it despite her protests. “I want to see where two hundred thousand dollars of my money is going.”
“Don’t look at them,” Paige said, clawing at her sketchbook. “Nothing is finished.”
He easily stretched out an arm to keep her back as he glanced through the sketchbook with interest. She had talent. He would give Paige that credit. Many of her sketches appeared to be done. They were mostly of Wyoming’s rugged landscape and what he assumed was her childhood home. She was close to her parents, too, judging from the tender sketch of them holding hands.
Envy rushed through him. At the end of their arrangement, she would go back to a loving family in Wyoming while he would return to a business. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had been embraced with love.
His attention shifted to where Paige’s hand rested on his upper thigh from her trying to retrieve her sketchbook. Realizing where it was, Paige quickly withdrew it before he could comment on it.
“You’re talented,” Luke said, closing the sketchbook. He handed it back to her. “You’re going to do well in this area if you stick to it.”
“I have two hundred thousand dollars of your money,” she said, tucking her sketchbook back in her satchel. “You’d hope that I’d stick to it now.”
“Good point,” Luke said, chuckling.
On of impulse, he reached his hand out to rest on Paige’s, which was on the armrest between them. She tensed, but she didn’t pull away as their plane descended for their approach into New York.
They landed twenty minutes later to much warmer fall weather. The trees and shrubbery around the city had started to change, but it didn’t compare to the cold and early snowfall of North Dakota. The sound of usual traffic filled Luke’s ears as they waited in the airport terminal for his driver to pull up.
It wasn’t until they were piled into the SUV that Toby turned to look at them with a frown.
“What is going on between you two?” he asked.
Paige looked up from her phone in surprise at the question. She looked over at Luke, who shrugged his shoulders.
“What do you mean by that?�
�
“Something has shifted between you two,” Toby said, looking back and forth between them. “I don’t know how to explain it, but something has shifted. I can see it.”
“How so?” Paige asked.
Toby’s eyes went to where their hands were clasped loosely between them. “Because you’re holding hands without any cameras around to prove your point.”
Luke let go of Paige’s hand just as quickly as she let go of his. He ran a hand through his hair in agitation when he realized that Toby was right. Something had shifted between them over the weekend.
He mentally flicked over the past weekend. What changed? He couldn’t pick a certain event with confidence. There was no, “That’s it!” type of moment that had happened over the weekend.
Although, having Paige’s hands on him intimately was still a vivid memory he planned on acting upon again.
“Nothing has changed,” Luke said, giving Toby a warning glare when he looked at them skeptically. “Don’t make shit into a big deal like you always do.”
Toby snorted indelicately. “When do I ever do that?”
“All the time. You do it all the damn time.”
They pulled up to the curb of Paige’s freshman apartment. Luke immediately spotted two reporters, the same two who followed him all the time, standing on the corner. He glowered at them. “How did they figure out where Paige’s apartment is?”
“What?” Paige asked, glancing over her shoulder to where Luke’s gaze was directed. Her face paled at the sight of them. “Are they are seriously waiting for me?”
Their cameras were pointed at the SUV, poised and ready for her to get out with Luke.
“She said she was an NYU student at that first event,” Toby said. “It was only a matter of time before they figured it out. I’m sure someone said that Paige’s apartment is here.”