But if that is what Nick wants, raw and real, then raw and real means he’s willing to let me see all those hidden pieces of himself I try to paint. And if he lets me see his, I’ll need, even want, to show him mine. But I’m not sure I can take that risk, even with him. Even if I want to. And I do. I want to trust Nick. Maybe I can. Maybe he can handle all of me. Maybe I need to know before I get any further in this. Or maybe not. Maybe I just need to enjoy him while I can.
CHAPTER THREE
Faith
Maybe I will enjoy him while I can.
Or maybe I can’t enjoy him past today.
Because I have secrets that I hold close to my chest, the ones I try not to think about, to deny even to myself, and at least one of them, the one that stirs guilt in me, leads to the winery. And Nick Rogers is not the kind of man, or attorney, to leave a stone unturned. That man will wade into the muddy, crocodile-infested waters of my family secrets, and kill the crocodile. Which is good and bad. Good because I need that kind of attorney. Bad because I really care about this man and I haven’t been honest with him about who and what I am. But how could I be? We were two strangers who crossed paths and chose to stay on one.
I down the whiskey-laden coffee like it’s a shot, because Nick’s right. I need it, and the fact that he knows that I need it suggests that he’s already been diving into those muddy waters. But he hasn’t found the crocodiles or he wouldn’t be offering me hot baths. Then again, he gave me whiskey. I glance at the tub and walk to the shower, eager to just get dressed and pack, so I’m ready to leave if things go south. Moving quickly, I step under a spray of warm water in no time, when the buzz of the Baileys hits me, numbing my brain. Numb feels pretty darn good right now, too, just like the water, and while I am in a rush to get downstairs, I am not in a rush to say goodbye, and I find myself lavishing in Nick’s shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, rather than my own.
Soon after, I stand at Nick’s sink, in Nick’s house, feeling incredibly comfortable in the alpha domain, of a man who might have his head in the mouth of my crocodiles. I apply my makeup and dry and flat-iron my hair, while, of course, stuffing my face with croissants. Because why wouldn’t you stuff your face with loads of calories when you’re pretty certain the alpha man of the house won’t be seeing you naked again after this talk? Once I’ve packed on five pounds, I spray on Nick’s cologne, because he smells better than me, and I’m obviously feeling a bit more clearheaded, because I’m not vowing to eat carrot sticks, rice cakes, and nothing else tomorrow. Which is me lying to myself, the way I feel like I lie to the world. And I really hate carrot sticks and lies, I think, and part of me just wants to confess all to Nick, and see if he can handle it.
I think I will. I’ll confess all.
Or not.
I make my way to Nick’s large walk-in closet, where I’ve hung my clothes, the neat, organized way his clothes are lined up exactly as I expect of a dominant control freak. Exactly as Macom’s always were. There are similarities in the two men that I only just now am acknowledging, though on some level I’ve known they existed. But Nick is not Macom. Not even close to Macom, and it’s an insult to him that I even think of them in the same box. And damn it, all I’m doing is justifying reasons to walk away when I get downstairs, and I know it. I shove my own nonsense away and get dressed, choosing black jeans and a lacy top, I pair with knee highs, and lace up black boots. And when I’m done, I don’t let myself pack my bag. Instead, I retrieve my coffee mug and after a quick path through the bedroom, I’m traveling down Nick’s glass and steel stairwell, toward the lower level of his home. The high ceilings and long, clean lines of the entire structure, as well as the pale hardwood floors, as sleek and sexy as the man—everything in this house screams sex and power, like the man who owns it. I’m quite certain everything about my demeanor right now screams of guilt.
I step into the living area, a white rectangular island dividing the two rooms. And the man who is power and sex sits at one of the four gray leather barstools on either side of it, paperwork and a MacBook sitting in front of him. His eyes meet mine, his keen and intelligent, too intelligent for my own good, and I remind myself: I have attorney-client privilege. I’m protected, and Nick just told me himself that he’s no saint. If he knows what I’ve done, he didn’t exactly go cold and brutal on me. If anyone can handle the truth, he can. If anyone can protect me, he can. Of course, if anyone can destroy me, he can as well. And so, I have to decide, right here and now: Can I trust Nick Rogers?
CHAPTER FOUR
Nick
Faith rounds the corner looking so damn good in a pair of snug jeans, with some sort of lace top that hugs her breasts, and that makes me wish my hands were hugging them instead. And for just a moment, I contemplate marching her back upstairs, stripping her naked and fucking her one, two, or maybe ten times while having this conversation. Or perhaps before and after. But the problem with fucking is that it makes everything better while you’re doing it, even lies, and I don’t want to feel better about my lies, or invite her to spin any of her own. Not that I think Faith lies. I came looking for a liar and a killer, and all I found was a liar: me. But today is not about lies. It’s about the facts as I laid them out in my head while she slept last night.
“How was the coffee?” I ask, as she steps to the opposite side of the island and sets her cup down, my gaze finding her delicate little hands—talented, gifted hands, her nude nails somehow simple, yet elegant. I don’t notice women’s hands. But then, other women are not her, nor are they talented with a paintbrush, and Faith most definitely is talented.
She turns her cup upside down. “It’s empty and dry. And as for how it was. It was strong enough to make me stuff my face with croissants and weak enough to have to devour three thousand calories worth of croissants to return me to sanity.”
“Well then,” I say. “Let’s make you another cup.”
I start to move away and she catches my hand, and I don’t remember ever feeling a woman’s touch like I do Faith’s. Like a punch in the chest, I feel it go straight to my balls, which, to a man, might just be the perfect contradiction. “I don’t want to be impaired when we talk,” she says, her pale, pink-painted lips tightening, as she adds, “Tiger,” my legal nickname. “You’ll rip out your opponent’s throat, right?”
I turn my hand over and close it around hers. “Your Tiger, sweetheart,” I say, sensing the apprehension in her. “And the only throats I’m going to rip out are those of your enemies. You know that, right?”
“I do, actually,” she says, her eyes meeting mine. “I know, and I needed someone on my side, and suddenly you were just there. Fate, I guess, if you believe in that kind of thing, and I’m not sure I’ve told you how lucky that feels.”
“Then why are your nails digging into my hand?” I ask, while guilt over the fate that I created jabs at me like a blunt, rusty blade, trying to bleed me dry.
“I’m sorry,” she says, softening her grip on my palm. “Your ‘we need to talk’ clearly has me uptight. Maybe I do need that Baileys.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” I say. “I keep a bottle of scotch in my office. Sometimes you need to take the edge off.”
“But you’re Tiger,” she says. “Confident. Arrogant and—”
“Sexy as fuck?” I supply, trying to get her to ease up a little.
And my feisty, amazing woman doesn’t disappoint, smacking me down with, “Are you?” she quips back, making a soft sexy sound that has my cock twitching, before she adds, “I hadn’t noticed, but surely someone as confident—scratch that—as cocky as you doesn’t need a drink to take the edge off.”
“Sweetheart, I prefer my moves, even the ones that require teeth, to be calculated, which is why taking the edge off serves me, and my clients, well. So, what do you say? One more cup?”
“I don’t hold my tongue when I drink,” she warns.
“Hold your tongue with the rest of the world,” I say, “not with me.” I grab the p
ot of coffee from the counter behind me, fill both of our mugs halfway, and then top them off with Baileys. “Let’s go to the living room.”
She nods, and we both pick up our mugs and head in that direction, and yes, I watch the sway of her heart-shaped ass, because she has a fucking amazing ass in those jeans. It, like her breasts, would be even more amazing in my hands. “What’s that saying?” she asks, as we sit down on the couch and angle toward each other. “Loose lips—something?”
“Sink ships,” I supply, and fuck, I need to get my head back in this conversation where it belongs. “And so does letting your attorney, and the man you’re spending every naked moment possible with, get sideswiped,” I add.
“Because being naked with you comes with rules?”
“Yes,” I say. “Like I don’t want you to fuck anyone else but me, but that’s another conversation. For now, we stay on topic, which is your business and legal affairs. And I can’t protect you, or help you get what you really want, if you don’t speak frankly with me.”
“The same goes for you,” she says. “I don’t want you to fuck anyone but me, and be frank with me. Treat me like your other clients. Don’t talk around things, because that makes me uptight. And I’m not some delicate flower.”
“First, no other woman could get my attention, and as for you not being a delicate flower, believe me, sweetheart. You’ve made me well aware of that fact.”
“And yet I got softened up with Baileys and croissants. Is that a service you’re providing your other clients?”
“Sweetheart, I have clients I’d pour a bottle of whiskey down to either shut them up or get them talking. The croissants, however, and the fuck after this conversation, I reserve for you.”
“You’re still not getting to the point,” she says. “Thus all the bedroom talk. It’s a distraction.”
“Actually, it’s not.”
“So I’ll just get to the point for you,” she continues as if I haven’t spoken, before sipping the coffee and setting the cup down on the granite coffee table in front of us.
“Okay then,” I say, taking a drink before setting my cup down as well. “What’s the point?”
“I need to write the bank a check for the sixty thousand dollars I got paid for my art last night. And yes, that sucks in some ways, but in another it doesn’t. My art allows me to get out of this mess.”
I move to sit on the coffee table in front of her, not quite ready to spark the anger sure to follow once she learns that I’ve paid off that note. “That money won’t save the winery.”
She pales instantly. “Oh God. Did I already lose the winery? Did the bank already take it?”
“Of course not,” I say, my hands settling on her knees. “I’m your attorney, remember?”
“I know that, but you weren’t until a few days ago.”
“I’m your attorney,” I repeat, “and I’m not going to let that happen.”
“But why would you even have to fight the bank at all at this point? The money should be the end of the bank’s involvement in my affairs. They can’t hold up probate if the debt is up to date. Right?”
“Correct,” I say. “Based on the documents that you’ve shown me.”
“Implying there’s something I haven’t shown you?”
“Easy, sweetheart,” I say softly. “Implying there’s more that you don’t have.”
“Wouldn’t they have to give that to my attorney?”
“Yes. But your attorney has to be smart enough to ask for everything, rather than assume he has it. And since I’ve talked to the bank and they’re playing hardball, they could be bluffing, but they didn’t back off when they heard my name. Thus why I’m of the strong opinion that your father, or your mother, signed documents that gives the bank rights that I don’t know they have. Any idea what that document might be?”
“None. No idea. That would have required trust and communication from my mother I simply never had.” Bitterness etches her tone, cold in that way that tells me the chill didn’t happen overnight, but then, I knew that already. “But regardless of what legal document was signed,” she adds, “what’s the end game here? If I sold the winery, the net after that note, and all debt, would be seven to eight million. I know that’s a lot of money, but enough for the bank to go to this much trouble?”
“It’s not a lot of trouble to intimidate you into handing it over, and when you have a limp-dicked attorney allowing it to happen.”
“Nick!”
“I tell it like it is, sweetheart. If you haven’t gotten that by now, it’s time to wake up and see the Tiger roaring in your face.”
“Frank is not a limp-dicked attorney. He’s just old.”
I arch a brow. “And your point? Or was that my point you were making?”
“I assume your point is you’re not him.”
“No one knows that better than you, sweetheart,” I say, handing her the coffee and preparing her for what comes next. “Drink.”
She holds up a hand. “No. I need to know what’s happening here. If the bank takes us to court, then you just do your Tiger routine, rip their throat out, and it’s over, right?”
“They want to have the property evaluated.”
“What? Why? Can they do that, and again, why?”
“That crop destruction you had last year could lead them to believe the value is now below that of the note.”
“That’s simply not the case,” she says. “I don’t believe that. I hope not. But let’s just say it is—then what? Does that allow them to call the note due in full?”
“Not according to the documents I’ve seen and read.”
“But we think there are other documents,” she supplies, following where I’ve been leading.
“Exactly,” I say. “And again. They could very well be bluffing, but we just won’t know until they choose to show their hand or until we get to court. But the good news here is that my involvement alone tells them that they can’t push you into a rash decision.”
“And the bad?”
“It may take me getting in front of a judge to find out what we’re up against.”
“Which will be when?”
“If the bank has a leg to stand on, they won’t be afraid of a judge, which means—”
“Right away,” she says. “And if they don’t, they’ll stall. How long can they do that?”
“A few weeks at most, and that’s if everything works against me, and I won’t let that happen. But they’re in this deep. They will try to force you to crack under the pressure. In the meantime, we’ll prepare to hit back, and hard.”
“What about me paying down the debt? Why wouldn’t I do that?”
I steel myself for her reaction, and set down her mug that I’m still holding. “Because I paid the past-due amount and six months in advance.”
She blanches and holds her hands up. “I think I misheard you. I need to pay six months in advance? That’s double what I have in the bank.”
“I paid it, Faith.”
“No,” she says.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Get it back,” she says fiercely. “Tell them you want it back. I’m not taking your money.”
“They will and they did. It’s done, and by cashier’s check.”
“I’m not taking your money, Nick,” she says, her tone absolute. “Thank you. I mean that and those words feel too small for what you’ve done, but you don’t know me well enough to do this. And even if you did, I don’t want charity.”
“It’s not charity. It’s a gift that I want nothing in exchange for. And as I’ve asked before, when do I know enough, Faith? I can fuck you all I want, but I can’t give a damn? Because I give a damn. I get it. It’s early. It’s new. But it is what it is, and I can’t change that.”
She presses her hands to her face, and I can see them tremble, as they did last night when she found out that she’d earned sixty thousand dollars on her art. And I don’t kno
w how it’s possible, but I know this woman in a way that defies the time we’ve been together. I reach for her hands and pull them between us. “I’m alone in this world too. You know that, right?”
“You don’t seem alone.”
“Why? Because I’m foul-mouthed, cocky as you say, and sexy as fuck?”
“Nick,” she whispers, no laugh this time.
“I know that we are new to each other. I know it feels like you could count on me and then I’ll be gone, but I’m not going to be. Even if you decide you don’t want to be us anymore, I’m your friend. I will remain your friend. And I don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones I have, I take care of. Okay?”
“The money—”
“Is not a big deal to me. I know that feels big to you, but it’s not a lot to me. I’ve done well for myself, but my bastard of a father was rich as fuck and now I have his money. And I’d like to do more than a few good things with it.”
“How much was the check you wrote?”
“A hundred and twenty thousand.”
“Nick,” she breathes out. “You can’t—”
“I already did.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“I just told you. I have a lot of money.”
“It’s a lot of money,” she repeats.
I grab the notepad on the table, write down my bank balance, and show it to her. “That’s how much I have in the bank.”
Her lips part in shock. “That isn’t even comprehensible to real people. Did you—Are there too many zeroes on that number?”
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