by Shayla Black
Instantly, her face closes up. I grit my teeth, mentally berating myself. That question was too much, too fast. Damn, I need to be more patient.
“That’s a terrible thing to ask.”
“Sorry. It was just random,” I lie. “I’m usually better at this, but it’s been a long day.”
“Then why don’t we end it?”
I take a risk and grab her hand. “Please. I’m enjoying my time with you. Would you rather have another question?”
“No, it’s fine.” She waves me away. “I need to stop making assumptions and being insecure.”
“About what?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “You asked me about stealing. I’d rather drink.”
Because she’s guilty and she doesn’t want to admit it?
“Living dangerously?” I taunt.
“That’s one way of looking at it. Bottoms up.” She lifts her wine and downs the entire glass in seconds.
Coupled with her almost nonexistent dinner, I wonder how much longer before she’s feeling the alcohol.
As soon as she sets the empty glass down, sinks back to the cushions, and shoots me a slightly unfocused glance, I have my answer. The booze is hitting her. Now we might get someplace.
“What did you steal?” I whisper conspiratorially.
“I never said I stole anything.”
“You drank to avoid answering me.”
“Which means I’m not talking about it.”
I slip into flirt mode. It’s not conscious. I can’t help but want to flirt with her. “Did you steal someone’s heart?”
Instantly, she scoffs. “I wish. I’ve never really been in a relationship. I always put work first—and I was fine with that. Hell, I was great with that since my dad was my only real example of what marriage was. If that was supposed to be happiness, I wanted no part of it.”
“Never?”
She shakes her head.
“You’ve never been anyone’s girlfriend?” I can’t fathom that. She’s beautiful and obviously smart and surprisingly easy to be around.
“In high school, I was the age of an average freshman when I was a senior. The upperclassmen ignored me. The underclassmen were intimidated by me. When I got to college, all the guys referred to me as jailbait. No one wanted anything to do with me.” She shrugs. “As soon as I finished my MBA, my dad put me to work. I wasn’t about to date clients and I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to meet other men. I didn’t have any girlfriends I could go barhopping with, either. And online dating never held any appeal. Besides, I was too busy.”
“But you’ve had sex?”
“Yes.” She glares at me.
I want to know how old she was, who with, why she gave her V-card to someone she didn’t even have a relationship with. But my last too-fast question taught me that I need to slow down. So I’ll keep a lid on my curiosity—for now.
“What about you?”
“I’ve had sex,” I assure her, tongue-in-cheek.
“A lot of it, I’m sure. You’re smooth. You look like the kind of guy who knows what to do with a woman. One of my first thoughts when I saw you was of your hands.”
“My hands?”
“They look capable of stroking a woman and making her very happy.”
Okay, that’s the booze talking, but it’s interesting to know that she’s thought about me, even in passing, as more than a friend.
“Oh, yeah. What else did you think?”
“Hey, it’s my turn to ask you a question. And since you sneaked in a few extras, you can answer me. Ever been someone’s boyfriend?”
“Not since high school, but yeah.”
“Why not since then? Why not now? Did something happen to swear you off relationships?”
Good question, one I haven’t given much thought, to be honest. “No, nothing happened except I got busy with work and figured I had all kinds of time to find the right woman. And I want what my parents had. They were married for twenty-eight years, and I never saw two people more in love. A couple of my buddies put a ring on the first piece of steady ass they got, and now they barely talk to their wives because they have nothing in common and they’re miserable. I want more.”
She nods slowly. “I want what all my siblings have. I didn’t know that until I saw the way they care and compromise. They tease and help each other and share everything.” She sighs. “But I’ll never find that. I grew up warped and I’m not sure I’m wired for relationships. Damn it, how did we end up talking about me again? No.” She shakes her head. “Drink or dare. Who was your first girlfriend?”
“Well, if you mean the very first one, that would be Reah, whom I met in church camp when I was thirteen.” I lean in and whisper, “We kissed behind a tree when we were supposed to be working on a camp production about the Nativity story. Then we got caught…and we both got sent home. My mom was pissed. That was a running theme during my teen years. But if you mean my first semi-serious girlfriend, the first one I had sex with, Demi and I dated our entire sophomore year. Over the summer, she took Driver’s Ed and ended up falling for some douche of a football player from our rival school and broke up with me. I was pretty crushed for a while.”
“But you rebounded, I take it?”
“Yeah, I did. With one of Demi’s friends, Catherine. That was ugly for a while, but a couple of months into our junior year, I figured out I was dating her as a fuck you to Demi and let her go. I dated another girl while I was a senior, but when she got accepted to a college on the other side of the country and I decided to move to North Dakota to tackle a whole new way of life, we decided mutually to end things.” I shrug. “That’s it. She was my last ‘girlfriend.’ Now it’s my turn. Who was your first sexual partner?”
“That’s personal!” she protests, her voice slurred, her eyes glazed.
She’s definitely well on her way to drunk.
“All our conversation tonight has been pretty personal, don’t you think? I’m not asking you to share anything I haven’t shared myself.” I brush my mouth against her ear and have to restrain myself from letting my lips linger on her neck. “Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”
As I pull back, her eyes are closed. She shivers delicately. Am I getting to her? Is she thinking about having a relationship—sexual or otherwise—with me?
I shouldn’t like that thought. But suddenly I’m hard as hell, so I do.
Bethany shakes her head. “I’d rather drink again.”
“You passed on the last two Drink-or-Dare questions. The rule is that you can’t pass on three in a row.”
“You’re making that up.”
Totally. But I manage to keep a straight face. “Seriously, you have to answer…”
She frowns. “Fine. His name was Dalton. I was twenty and fresh out of grad school. My father set us up.”
The tense way she’s suddenly holding her body tells me it wasn’t good. “Did you like it at all?”
“No.”
Her answer is so quick and sharp, I’m worried. “Did he hurt you?”
She takes a long time answering. “Doesn’t the first time always hurt?”
That isn’t what I asked, and now I’m downright suspicious. “Did he force you?”
“No.”
But something about the way she utters the word tells me it wasn’t exactly her choice, either. I’m dying to know what the hell happened, but even as I sit beside her, Bethany starts pulling into her shell and putting distance between us.
I squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry if I brought up bad memories.”
“Not your fault. You didn’t know. I just…try not to think about it.”
“We all have those moments in life we’d rather not remember.”
Like my dad dying on my living room floor and me being wholly unable to save him.
Fuck. I need to get my head back in the game.
Still, the next thing that comes out of my mouth is way flirtier than it should be. “Have you ever foun
d a lover who made you feel good?”
Bethany extracts her hand from mine, tosses back another glass of wine, then crosses her arms around her middle. “I’m passing on that question. Can we talk about something else?”
“You know what, sweetheart? We don’t have to talk at all. Come here.”
I extend my arm to curl it around her shoulders before easing her close. She’s stiff, but she doesn’t protest, merely sits beside me in oddly companionable silence as I drink the rest of my beer.
To my surprise, she lays her head on my shoulder with a tired sigh.
“You okay, Beth?”
“Yeah.”
That’s good. As much as I need the information and I wonder constantly if she’s guilty, I feel so reluctant to hurt her. Or believe the worst about her. What seemed like such an open-and-shut case of criminal activity when I was packing my suitcase in LA to hunt her down in Maui now feels a lot less obvious.
Is there any chance the scheme to steal all their clients’ money was purely her father’s? That she somehow didn’t know? Or am I hoping so because she’s shown me her fragile side and I feel this irrational urge to protect her, even as I’m dying to take her to bed?
I don’t know.
Still, I can’t stop myself from opening my big mouth. “Sex should never hurt, sweetheart. It should only make you feel like the goddess you are. And if you’ve never found the right man to prove that to you…I’m here if you want me.”
Silence.
Is she trying to decide what to say to me? How she feels about my offer? Is she shocked? Upset? Or intrigued?
After a few dozen tense seconds slide by, I risk a peek at her face—and realize she’s fallen asleep.
Damn…
When I look up, I realize that everyone else has gone to bed. The lanai is empty. The house is dark. We’re totally alone. And I don’t want to leave Bethany’s side, so I curl her closer, lay my head back, and shut my eyes.
Slowly, I become aware of sunbeams dancing on my lids. My neck is bent at an odd angle and propped against something hard. I try to move, but I’m too damn stiff to do anything but wince. On the plus side, someone soft—definitely a woman—is curled up beside me, her head on my chest. My arm wraps around her small waist as I press her to my side. At the feel of her, my morning wood becomes more than automatic and nothing less than insistent.
I risk opening one eye, my fuzzy brain scrambling to remember who the hell I spent the night with and where. The sound of the waves crashing on the nearby beach registers at the same time I look down to find Bethany plastered against me. We’re still on the lanai, where we apparently spent all night cuddled together. And even though the sun is up, I’m in no hurry to let her go.
Except…I’m wondering if getting so cozy with her is a giant tactical mistake.
On the surface, I should be pissed at myself for sleeping with the enemy. After all, when I boarded the plane to Maui, I had no doubt Bethany Banks was guilty and needed to pay. Now, nothing is that simple or obvious anymore. Nothing is black and white. She’s human. She’s real. She’s been abandoned, ostracized, and hurt. Some people might use that as a justification not to care about anyone else—and as a rationale to commit crimes. It’s still possible Bethany did that. But the stories she shared about herself and the compassion she showed me last night after hearing about my mom…
Fuck, I’m torn. Who is she really?
I study her as if staring will answer my question. All I see is her pale hair tumbling from its messy bun in a silken cascade down to her plush breasts. Dark lashes lay curled against her rosy cheeks. Soft lips are gently parted in slumber. Her face looks so at peace, she appears guileless, like a sweetly mussed female, not a criminal mastermind.
Appearances can be deceiving.
Still, the Bethany I’m coming to know seems too human to treat hardworking people so inhumanely by scamming them out of their every last dime. For the first time, I’m giving serious consideration to the possibility that she might truly be innocent.
I don’t like this indecisive gray area. My head keeps telling my libido to back the fuck down and stop trying to make it okay to want a criminal. My gut tells my head to stop being so quick to judge.
It’s frustrating to be this unsure what to think.
Maybe it’s time to examine the facts again. I first convicted her mentally because she was my dad’s financial advisor. It seemed logical that she knew where his money had gone and how it had been stolen. But the feds arrested and charged Barclay Reed, not Bethany. She admitted last night that she’d recently encountered her dad’s “unpleasant side,” even admitting she’d made excuses for him. Yes, in the context of his wandering penis, not clients’ financial transactions. Did she really mean both? I don’t know.
It’s possible Bethany was Reed’s accomplice and that she escaped jail time because she’s a cooperating witness. If so, that doesn’t change anything. Helping to commit a crime still makes her responsible. But I keep wondering if she, too, was somehow duped by her father’s scheme.
No clue.
And I’m right back to the beginning of this argument with myself.
Beside me, Bethany stirs, rolling toward the sun as her lashes flutter open. She turns to me, brows knit in confusion before her eyes flare wide with a gasp. “We spent the night out here?”
“Looks that way. I only figured that out when I woke up a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, my god. I had too much wine. I never get drunk and—”
“It’s okay.” I cut into her panic. “You were tired, it was New Year’s, and I twisted your arm into playing that drinking game. How much do you remember?”
“Some…”
Does she recall telling me about her first lover? About the first thing she thought when she looked at me?
“Don’t worry. You didn’t embarrass yourself.”
“If you have to assure me of that, I probably did.” She winces.
“You hungover?”
“No, thank goodness. And I know you’re not because you barely drank. Have you seen anyone else this morning?”
“Not a soul.”
She cocks her head as if she’s listening for sounds from inside. “The house seems awfully quiet this morning. I wonder where everyone went… Do you want coffee?”
As she rises to her feet, I follow suit, scowling when she won’t meet my gaze. Is she embarrassed that she spent all night pressed against me? Does she suspect on some level how personal last night was?
“Sure. That would be great.”
Without even thinking, I drop my hand to the small of her back and guide her inside. She bustles away from me, almost running for the kitchen.
Yes, she knows exactly how personal last night was. She’s feeling cautious again. Her walls are up.
As she turns on the coffeemaker and retrieves a pair of mugs from the cabinet, she looks decidedly nervous. I lean against the island and regard her with a considering stare. “Beth, in case you’re wondering, we spent last night together platonically. I’m not going to jump on you this morning.”
“I never said you were.”
“But you act as if you’re worried I might.”
She retrieves the cream and sugar. “It’s just…I don’t make a habit of spending the night with anyone. Maybe waking up next to someone you’ve only known a few days is normal for you. For me, it’s not.”
I wonder how much sex she’s actually had beyond Dalton the First, who apparently sucked in bed. Is it possible her experiences have been few and far between?
As sexy as she is, that possibility blows my mind.
“It’s not normal for me, either,” I admit. “But this isn’t a big deal. We’re friends.”
“We are.”
The quick snap of her agreement makes me think she’s also thought about us being more. My cock perks up again at the thought.
Ignoring it, I lean closer and murmur softly, “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, I promise.�
�
She shoots a skittish glance my way. I see the wary question in her eyes.
But what if I do?
“Thanks.” She turns her focus to the brewing java instead. “I’m sorry. I’m handling this badly. I’m not a morning person, especially before coffee.”
“And you’re not looking for someone right now. Neither am I.”
But the suggestion is between us now. I know we both feel it.
Her face softens. “Clint, it’s not you.”
“No worries. After coffee, I’ll leave you to enjoy your day off.”
I’ll use the time to regroup and figure out how to approach her from a different angle, one that skirts the sexual tension brewing between us. I don’t have a choice.
“No rush.” She hands me a cup of steaming joe, then sets about making her own.
After a few sips in the awkward silence, she sets her mug down and scans the bottom floor of the house. “Hello? Anyone home?”
No answer.
“Maybe Maxon is at the office and Keeley went somewhere?” I suggest.
“It’s New Year’s Day. He and Griff both planned to take the day off. Keeley isn’t going much of anywhere these days since she keeps having labor pains.”
I shrug. “Did they text you? Leave you a note?”
“Good question.” She goes in search of her purse and retrieves her phone. “Oh, they’re at the birthing center! Keeley’s water broke at six this morning. They want me to come when I wake up so I can be there when their daughter is born and I become an aunt again. That’s so sweet.” Tears fill her eyes.
There’s no faking how genuinely touched she is that they included her.
“Finish your coffee, and I’ll take you where you need to go.”
“It’s your day off…” And she clearly hates to impose.
“It’s okay. This is more important than random sightseeing.”
“Let me grab a quick shower and… There’s an outdoor facility if you want one, too. I can get you a towel. Maxon has some clothes you can borrow.”