The Pleasure Contract

by Caitlin Crews

  It’s time to live, not hide, she told herself. At last.

  And maybe it was inevitable, then, that when she made it to the door of her walkup, she heard a car door open behind her, then slam shut. Something about the sound made her turn, and like magic, he was there.

  As if she’d conjured him up, the way she had night after night tucked up in her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house.

  But this time, he was real.

  Lachlan Drummond. The man she knew so well and didn’t know at all.

  And if she wasn’t mistaken, he was in a temper.

  She was surprised to find her own—so long shoved aside and buried beneath research or sedate smiles—surge to life.

  “Lachlan.” She ordered herself to hold on to the mellow, happy feeling that a little taste of her long-forgotten childhood summers had brought out in her. Not to jump straight into the conclusions she’d reached after her week at her parents’ house. A week of remembering who she’d been long before she’d decided to become Dr. March. A week of reconnecting with the real Bristol, not the persona she’d apparently created to spite Indy. A week where she’d been a whole lot more than this man’s clause. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow, when she’d intended to put an end to this.

  Before it swallowed her whole.

  Lachlan took the distance between his car, parked illegally at the curb, and her front door like a challenge, moving fast and low.

  And the look in his blue eyes made her breath catch.

  The way it always did, but this was worse. This was something much different than drowning.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT HAD BEEN a very long week.

  Lachlan had been forced to face some things about himself that he couldn’t say he liked. He was not accustomed to being kept waiting. He had driven down from Vermont the following day in a self-congratulatory haze of purpose and determination, at last, and had gone straight to Bristol’s apartment to tell her all about it.

  But she was nowhere to be found.

  He’d tried both of the phone numbers he had for her, repeatedly, but they always went straight to voice mail. Until he was forced to conclude that she’d actually...switched her phone off. Both her phones. And unless she had hunkered down and never turned on a light that night he’d come back from Vermont, she was not holed up in that apartment of hers.

  That was when he came to the unpleasant realization that for all the details he knew about her, all the facts laid out in a thousand files and all the time they’d spent together naked or at public events, it was possible he didn’t really know her at all. Sex was telling. It was a tool—but it wasn’t a personality. And cold, hard facts weren’t alive and contradictory and capable of making unpredictable decisions.

  Facts told him only that. Facts.

  They didn’t let him predict what Bristol might do when she wasn’t following his schedule.

  When she wasn’t in the box he’d made her inhabit.

  And once that got into him it rubbed viciously, like sand in his shoe, until he could think of nothing else.

  Bristol was the only one of the women he’d ever dated in his own particular fashion who he’d never suspected of acting like someone she wasn’t. And yet it had never occurred to him that the fact she wasn’t acting like the rest had...didn’t mean he knew any more than what she’d shown him.

  And he had himself to blame for that, not her.

  Lachlan was the one who’d set up this system, never imagining that he would also be the one to tear it down because it didn’t work any longer. He understood he had no one to blame but himself—but he needed her to come home so he could burn that contract she’d signed and start over.

  He’d had to talk himself down from engaging in any truly desperate behavior—like staking out her apartment. The only reason he’d come here tonight was because this was the last day of her week’s break. And he’d rationalized that, having allowed her the privacy he could grudgingly accept she was entitled to this whole long week, it made sense to come over and make sure she actually planned to return to the job.

  So he could fire her and offer her something else entirely.

  Lachlan was trying his best to ignore the voice inside him that told him it was all too possible that Bristol was done with him, little as he wanted to accept that. Given that she had also distinguished herself by being the only woman who had ever wanted the break he insisted upon.

  He was inside out.

  Lachlan had been contemplating the depths to which he’d fallen and what that made him when he’d seen her swing around the corner. Charging down the street as if she was anyone, as anonymous as anyone else in New York.

  As if she’d never been his.

  It...rankled.

  “Where have I been?” she asked. And she laughed. At him, he was fairly sure, but he couldn’t care about that. Not when she was laughing again. Because he could lose himself in Bristol’s laughter. “On a vacation. You know this.”

  “Where?”

  He recognized that her whole face had been open in a way it normally wasn’t when it changed. When she disappeared, right in front of him.

  “I don’t remember agreeing to share my private life with you, Lachlan,” she said, her voice cool and her eyes distant. That distance he couldn’t stand. “My body, sure. But my private life was never part of the deal.”

  “Fuck the deal,” he growled.

  And for a moment, all she did was study him. But not the way he had grown accustomed to her doing. This reminded him, again, of the woman who had turned up to dinner with him that first night. The woman who’d walked out of his panel. The woman who wasn’t convinced by him or this process or anything else.

  The woman who wasn’t his in any conceivable way.

  “Is this really a conversation you want to have on my doorstep?” she asked in that cool tone that he’d used to like, surely. It had made her seem so...containable. Now he wanted to blow it up. “Were you lurking in your car, waiting for a confrontation? Because as far as I’m aware, I’m not required to deal with you until tomorrow.”

  “Is that all this is to you?” he demanded, feeling unhinged. Off-balance and completely outside himself. “A requirement?”

  “Yes,” she said, but her voice was too matter-of-fact. Her eyes too dark. “As laid out in the documents you insisted we sign.”

  “Bristol,” he said, trying to pull himself back together. Trying to remember that he wasn’t his father, just as Catriona had said. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel. It wasn’t the feeling that was the issue, it was the execution. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t about contracts. I think...”

  Her face was so perfect it made his heart skip a beat. Wherever she’d been, she’d spent time in the sun and it made her eyes seem brighter. Her cheeks were rosy and she’d burned her nose. Her dark hair looked careless, tossed back in a messy bun.

  She wasn’t dressed to impress a soul and he had never seen anything more beautiful.

  He doubted it could exist.

  “I don’t think,” he corrected himself before she could say anything. Because he needed to say the words that had been charging through him this whole week. He needed her to hear them. “I know.”

  “Lachlan,” she began, her tone far too measured.

  And he had to get it out. He had to say it. “I’m in love with you.”

  For a moment then, he felt suspended in thin air. New York City was on one side, and perfect, beautiful Bristol was on the other, and the wire that stretched out between the two was hope. A wild, heart-pounding hope.

  But when she smiled, it was sad. She reached over and brushed her fingers over his jaw, and he had the terrible, sickening feeling that what he saw in her eyes then wa
s pity.

  “Oh, Lachlan,” she said softly. “No. You’re not.”

  And that sounded like finality.

  All he could do was stare.

  Bristol sighed, then fumbled in the bag over her shoulder, eventually pulling out her keys.

  “You’d better come in, I guess,” she said as she shoved the door open with her shoulder, which was not exactly the profession of joy and delight he’d imagined repeatedly over the course of this long week without her.

  He followed her as she led him up three sets of stairs to that minuscule apartment he remembered too well. It had gotten no bigger since he’d last seen it.

  Inside, she flicked on the lights. She tossed her bag on the counter that separated the tiny kitchen from the tiny living room, kicked off her shoes, and only then turned to face him. With her arms crossed and a look on her face that did not make that wire of hope inside him gleam.

  Lachlan stayed where he was, with his back almost against the door, because he was entirely too tense. And he thought that if he moved any closer to her, he’d take it upon himself to remind her just why it was they were perfect for each other.

  Over and over again.

  Which he was guessing she would not welcome in her current mood.

  “You look murderous,” she pointed out. “Is that how this is going to go?”

  “I’m not my parents,” he managed to bite out.

  She had the grace to look shamed by that. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.”

  But that didn’t make it any better. “You can’t really believe that I go around telling people I love them. Maybe you do believe that, but I don’t. I’ve never said that to a woman before in my life.”

  Her smile was almost...bland, and he knew that meant she was getting ready to strike. “I understand that when you say things like that, Lachlan, it’s meant as a very great compliment. And I appreciate that, I do. But I’m not particularly interested in winning the grand prize here.”

  Somehow, as he’d driven back down from Vermont with his sister’s words in his head, and spent this whole week imagining how this would go, it had never been...this.

  “Bristol—”

  “You don’t love me,” she said, very distinctly, and there was nothing bland about her now. “You can’t. We’ve never really been together, have we? You hired me and it’s not the same thing. Which you should know, because that’s why you do it.”

  “That might be how it started, but it’s not where we are now.”

  “Maybe it’s not where you are now.” She shook her head. “But then, you’re not the one who’s had a role to play this whole time.”

  He didn’t like that. Especially when he’d been so sure she was the one who hadn’t been acting at all. He ran a hand over his face and tried to get his bearings. “Where were you this past week?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “In Ohio. With my parents, not that it’s any of your business. Note that I’m not asking what you were up to.”

  “You could. I went up to my sister’s place in Vermont, then came back to the city. To wait for you.”

  “I didn’t ask, Lachlan.” And he could hear the edge in her voice. The way it raked over him. “Because that exceeds the limits of our arrangement, remember? It’s not supposed to be personal.”

  “Then let’s change it.”

  “You’re proving my point.”

  It would take him two steps, maybe three, to cross the room and get his hands on her, but he didn’t do it. Because her fists were on her hips, her eyes were blazing, and even though he had the presence of mind to understand that this was not going well for him, he couldn’t help but find this version of Bristol even more beautiful. He’d never seen it before.

  And as he thought that, he realized he’d never heard her voice raised before, either. Surely he shouldn’t find that...exhilarating.

  Confusing, maybe, but he couldn’t deny that underneath the uncertainty there was nothing but adrenaline.

  And that same need that had gripped him from the first moment he’d seen her on that video.

  “I don’t understand your point,” he said when he was sure he could sound far more calm and rational than he felt. “Why is it so impossible that I might have fallen in love with you? I liked you from the start. It’s why I—”

  “Hired me? Yes, I know.” She looked around the small space as if she was trying to conjure up an answer from the walls. “And I took your offer because I had no idea what else to do with myself.”

  He tamped down on his own temper. “I’m not often a last resort. I’ll admit, I almost enjoy the novelty.”

  “I’m an academic, not an escort,” Bristol shot back at him. “Though I have a lot more respect for escorts than I did before. I don’t know how they do it because I’m not built for it.”

  “The flattery might kill me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with what you do or the women you do it with. I’m not sorry I tried it.” She blew out a breath. “But it’s obviously not where my talents lie.”

  “Then don’t do it anymore,” Lachlan gritted out. “This is a perfect opportunity to shift into something else.”

  “You mean renegotiate?” But she was shaking her head as she asked that question, which he supposed was an answer. If not the one he wanted. “I mean, congratulations, Lachlan. You’re not bored for once in one of these relationships. The relationships you make sure can only and ever be boring, according to your very strict rules.”

  “They were boring because they weren’t you.”

  Again, she shook her head, something a little too angry to be pity on her face. But it was close enough to sting.

  “If it wasn’t me, it would eventually be someone else,” Bristol said. Dismissively. “Because you’re not actually in love. How could you be? You make all the rules. You have staff to make sure there’s always distance between you and the woman currently playing the part of your girlfriend. All the conversations we have are about you. All the sex we have is about you.”

  That blow landed. Hard.

  “You might not love me back, Bristol,” he gritted out. “But don’t stand here in front of me and pretend you haven’t enjoyed every single second we’ve spent naked together. Because I know better.”

  “And you think that’s all there is, don’t you?” She let out a sound that might have been a laugh, but not a happy one. “Naked feels a lot like vulnerability, Lachlan. But it’s not. Not if sex is the only place you show it.”

  He didn’t like that, but he couldn’t let himself get caught up in how much he didn’t like it. Not when there was so much at stake.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  She laughed again, and it sounded even less happy than before. “I have spent so much time trying to answer that question. But it turns out it was right in front of me all the time. I want everything.”

  “You’re in luck, then. Because I can give it to you.”

  “Can you?” He saw that she was trembling, slightly, and wanted to go to her—but the fierce look on her face stopped him. “This isn’t a transaction, I’m afraid. I don’t want to be in a box. I don’t want contracts and rules. I want to be a whole person, and we both know that’s not something you value.”

  Lachlan felt winded. “Bristol—”

  “I quit, Lachlan,” she hurled at him. “Effective immediately.”

  It was meant as a blow, he could see that. And it landed.

  But he could take a hit.

  He stayed where he was, studying her. He watched as her belligerent chin lowered. As the fists on her hips relaxed.

  “You’re looking at me like you didn’t hear me,” she said, and she sounded...less sure, suddenly.

  Lachlan didn’t want her less sure of herself. He wanted her to be every part of herself, whatever that was.
/>   She’d said she wanted everything. Well, so did he.

  “I accept your resignation,” he said.

  Bristol blinked. Then cleared her throat. “Well. Okay. Good.”

  “I’ll have my attorneys initiate the termination protocol.” Lachlan pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent a series of texts. He waited a moment for a response, then nodded. “Our contracted relationship is over.”

  He could see the way she swallowed. Hard.

  “All right. That’s done, then.” She flushed. “I’ll confess I don’t know the appropriate thing to say when ending something like this. Uh...thanks?”

  Lachlan moved then. He crossed the room and stood before her. And waited.

  Slowly, she looked up at him. Slower still, her eyes dilated, telling him that whatever her reasons were for wanting to end things with him, it wasn’t because the greedy longing between them was gone.

  She swayed slightly toward him, because their bodies were that attuned to each other now, but caught herself.

  “Is this...” Bristol straightened her shoulders. “Are you saying goodbye?”

  Lachlan reached down and took her hands in his. She let him, and when he laced their fingers together, a small sound shuddered out of her.

  He thought of his sister and Ben holding hands in all that summer light. He thought about intimacy and how he’d always assumed that any hint of it was a slippery slide to a plane plummeting from the sky.

  But Bristol was holding on to him. Her pretty face was tipped up toward his and there was no trace of distance.

  And he wanted to tell her all of this. He wanted to tell her what he’d learned and what she meant to him. He wanted her to know all the ways he needed her in his life. He wanted and wanted, but as she’d said already, all they’d talked about so far was him.

  “Do you have a favorite restaurant in this neighborhood?” he asked.

  She blinked, and he watched that brain of hers start working. “There’s a Vietnamese place on the next block that’s amazing. Why? Did making declarations and dissolving contracts work up an appetite?”