Bad Boyfriend: Billionaire’s Club #7

by Elise Faber

  Hence, Sorry. No.

  So she either—

  And dammit, she flung her cell onto the bed and stormed to the closet, thinking that her life over the last few days had been filled with way too many eithers and ultimatums.

  She either drove him or lied.

  She either offered her heart up to potentially be shredded by Tanner or she let him go.

  She either put aside how much he’d hurt her nine years ago or she ruined her brother’s wedding.

  She either sucked it up and pretended everything was fine . . . or—

  What else could she do?

  Kelsey had had plenty of experience with pretending things were fine.

  This would be just another day. Her fingers moved across her cell’s screen.

  Be in the lobby by four.

  Thank God for Molly’s and their perfectly caramelized walnuts.

  Those nuts in her mouth were the only thing getting her through this day—yes, insert snort there—but the point was that Molly’s fabulous salad was distracting her from what was coming in T-minus one hour.

  Sighing, she closed her paperback and started gathering her things.

  She needed to change before Tanner showed up, to put herself together in a way that would allow her mom to miss that she was falling apart inside.

  Though, with the wedding rapidly approaching and Devon’s baby newly born into the world and altogether adorable, Kels’s mom was missing plenty these days.

  Still, she didn’t need to slip up and get on the radar.

  These were dark, dark days.

  Potential motherly intervention before, during (or truthfully, after) Bas’s long-awaited wedding—complete with the giant cake and seat covers and white poofy dress—wasn’t something Kelsey wanted to deal with.

  And more importantly, she wasn’t going to mess up a single detail of her brother’s big day.

  Bas had waited a long time to be happy, and Rachel had been put through the wringer. Rachel’s ex-husband was—or had been—a creep of the worst kind. He’d abused her repeatedly then had come after her in California when she’d tried to divorce him. Plus, her mom had left, her father was cruel and mostly absentee, and her grandparents, who’d basically raised her, had treated her like garbage. Things had worked out in the end, but Rachel had suffered in the process, spending a good deal of her life trying to escape her past.

  Hmm. Kind of like Tanner and his escape act.

  Not that his childhood was anything when compared to Rachel’s, but he’d been obviously neglected and not a priority to his parents in the least. That had to leave scars.

  Kels wondered if that was a Scott family trait, finding partners that were wounded and needed rescuing.

  It wasn’t like their lives growing up had been bump free or all sunshine and rainbows, but they’d had two parents who’d loved them, a steady home, food on the table. That was a lot more than most.

  But also maybe that made her and her brothers choose lovers who hadn’t had it as good.

  Share the wealth of good.

  She snorted.

  Might as well don a crown and hold a fairy princess wand. She didn’t wield that sort of power, couldn’t change someone or make their past better. She was just a girl, living her life, and trying not to fuck up too much.

  Still, it did bear some pondering, that Scott tendency to rescue.

  Dev had rescued his wife, Becca. Or at least, he’d helped her out when she’d been in a tough spot and quite literally had protected her from some creep who’d been trying to hurt her.

  Bas had rescued Rachel, though she’d resent the term and say the rescuing was mutual. Which it was. But according to Heather, Rachel’s boss, Rach had been shut down and scared and hurting, with Sebastian as the only one to penetrate those layers of heavy, steel armor around her heart.

  And Tanner.

  When she was eighteen, she’d thought she might be enough to fill that hole inside him.

  But in dramatic, teenage-broken-heart fashion, she’d been proven wrong.

  Painfully wrong.

  Ugh.

  Enough.

  She shoved her book into her purse, left a tip on the table, and bustled out of the restaurant. Twenty minutes later, she’d swapped her comfy leggings for jeans, her sneakers for flats, her scarf for a jumble of necklaces.

  No primping.

  As in, she wasn’t going to allow herself to put any more effort into her appearance than she normally would for a visit to her parents’ by resisting the urge to glam it up and shove in Tanner’s nose exactly what he’d been missing out on Wednesday.

  But she’d already shown him everything, and look how that had turned out.

  So instead, Kels did the bare minimum, made sure she had a playlist on her phone—no way was she making the mistake of not filling the silence in her car this time. Then she grabbed her purse, jacket, and keys and headed for the door.

  The knock greeted her just as she arrived.

  “Fuck,” she muttered, having no idea that Tanner was saying the exact same thing on the other side of the door.

  Ten

  Tanner

  “Fuck,” Tanner muttered after he’d knocked, trying to resist the urge to shove his hand through his hair.

  He was equal parts convinced this was the stupidest thing he’d ever done and also maybe the smartest.

  Kelsey was—

  The door opened, and his breath caught.

  Absolutely beautiful.

  He could almost imagine that this was a real date, that he hadn’t fucked her over twice and that they were making a real go of this.

  If she hadn’t looked like she wanted to kill him.

  Blue eyes sparked with annoyance, and Tan was probably kidding himself, but he could have sworn there was a trace of heat in her expression. If it had been present and not a figment of his imagination, then it was gone in a millisecond, a tight mask of annoyance locked in place over her face.

  Still beautiful, even when furious.

  She didn’t say anything, just stepped out, closed and locked the door, then headed for the elevator.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Nothing.

  “Good talk,” he couldn’t resist saying.

  Kels spun around so fast that her ponytail smacked her in the face. “What did you say?”

  He caught the ends and rubbed them between his fingers, and fuck, that simple touch was enough for him to remember.

  Hairs tangling over his face as she slept sprawled across his chest, tendrils escaping her ponytail as she’d sat across the table from him working on some multiple-page proof, long strands damp from the shower and smelling like roses.

  Roses she still smelled like.

  Kelsey jumped back, wrenching her hair from his fingers, the ends catching in a way that had to be painful. Her wince of discomfort made him feel like even more of a shitbag.

  “Don’t touch,” she snapped, wrenching back around in a way that made him wince, or at the very least, worry for her spine.

  Yet, even furious, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  And for a man like him, one who’d seen more breathtaking landmarks in just a few years than people saw in their entire lifetimes, that wasn’t easy to do.

  It wasn’t bullshit either.

  Her brown eyes rivaled the desert sand of the Sahara, her hair as lush and thick as the foliage in the jungles of the Amazon. Kels’s skin was softer than the merino wool he’d touched in New Zealand, her scent more delicate than the roses he’d photographed in the Queen’s garden in England. She was . . . well, putting aside his pathetic rambling, Kelsey had always been with him.

  As he’d gone through his memory cards, deleting most of what he’d shot, only saving the couple that might be good enough for publication—even though he was technically retired, old habits died hard. But then as he had studied the photographs from the cemetery, witnessing the love and devotion on the man’s face all over again, feeling thos
e same emotions pulse in his heart when he thought of Kelsey, Tan had come to the realization that no matter how far he’d traveled, she had always been in his heart.

  So, he’d decided to go with option three.

  He was going to keep her.

  The thought of fucking things up with her still terrified him. He didn’t know how to do something good, but he also didn’t know how to be in this world and not have Kelsey. And he’d take on any of the Scotts who had a problem with that, whether it was Devon or Sebastian or Grant or Megan. He’d prove to them that he could make her happy.

  He just had to figure out how to convince Kels to let him.

  Figures, he’d already dug himself a giant hole in that department.

  Back stiff as a board, she jabbed at the elevator button. Repeatedly.

  Tan held on to his hope. The no touching thing, the irritation in his presence, the purposeful ignoring . . . all of those were good things. Well, not good exactly, because he’d prefer to go back to Wednesday and make a different choice, but those emotions also meant Kelsey was still feeling something for him.

  Annoyance was just a hairsbreadth away from makeup sex.

  Yeah, sure it was. But makeup sex or not, she felt something, and so that meant he wasn’t going to give up.

  Of course, annoyance was also very close to dead-to-her, and so Tanner needed to make sure he didn’t fuck things up further.

  Internally sighing, he followed Kels to the elevator, purposefully standing very close, but also not touching. Yes, he was an asshole. Yes, he planned on pushing that very boundary. No, he wouldn’t cross the line she’d drawn without her asking him to. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t soak up as much of her as possible, starting with the scent that had been imprinted on his senses.

  “Did you just sniff me?” She turned slightly, ponytail whipping around again, though this time it slapped him in the cheek.

  Play it cool.

  “Hmm?” he asked.

  “Did you—”

  The elevator doors opened with a ding, and Tan hurried in front of Kels, partly to ensure the metal panels didn’t close on her, but mostly to avoid having to answer her question.

  He pressed the button for the garage. “You coming?”

  Her nose wrinkled, but she stepped onto the elevator, positioning herself with her back to the corner.

  The one furthest from him.

  Yeah. She felt something. He just had to convince her doing something about that something was worth it.

  They rode down to the garage in silence, but she surprised him by handing over the keys as they approached her car. “I can’t stand driving,” she told him. “And you might as well make yourself useful.”

  “Putting me to work?”

  “I should put you somewhere,” she muttered, plunking herself down in the passenger’s side and reaching for the seat belt.

  He beat her to it, grabbing the buckle and stretching it over her lap. Her breath hitched and because he’d purposefully put himself as close as possible without actually touching, he felt those warm puffs of air on his neck.

  Hot. Damp.

  Fuck.

  Now he felt it somewhere else.

  He closed his eyes, struggling to call up some control. Him taking option three (his keeping Kelsey . . . permanently) didn’t mean he could just waltz back into her life and fuck it up more than he’d already done. He needed to move slow, to move with caution. To show her he knew he’d fucked up, but that he wasn’t going to do it again.

  To prove that he wasn’t going to hurt her again.

  Kissing her senseless and then tossing her in the backseat to ravage her like a teenager on prom night wouldn’t prove anything.

  So he sucked in a breath, braced himself against the dizziness that came from having so much of her intoxicating scent in his nose, and buckled her seat belt.

  The click was gunshot loud in the quiet garage.

  Tanner blinked, started to shake his head to clear it.

  Fingers in his hair, along his jaw.

  He shuddered. The hand on his face shook.

  His eyes swung to the side, saw her brown ones were clouded with desire. Lush, pink lips parted. “Tan—”

  A car alarm went off, making them both jump.

  Then the fingers slipped away, tucked back into the safety of Kelsey’s lap. He shifted, straightening out of her sedan, and trying to remember that he was not going to ravish her in the backseat.

  Swallowing, he retreated a step and closed the car door.

  He’d been looking forward to the drive initially, thinking it would be a good start to him proving himself.

  Now he was thinking that two-plus hours trapped in a metal box with Kelsey was going to be hell on his self-control and his plan to win her back.

  Hell he probably deserved.

  Hell he was going to soak up as precious anyway.

  Because it was Kelsey. It was him.

  It was them.

  And he wasn’t going to waste a them moment.

  Not ever again.

  Eleven

  Kelsey

  Sebastian knew.

  She didn’t know how she knew that, but the prickling between her shoulder blades that had been her constant companion since they’d walked into her parents’ place told her that the jig was up.

  At least with one brother.

  Which meant that it was soon going to be up with the other.

  Sighing, she picked up another dish and began to rinse it in the sink. Her mom had cooked, normally a treat in and of itself, but because Tanner was there, she’d also baked. And that was a gift from God herself.

  She set the plate on the drying rack then moved to the next, scooping up a piece of pie crust from the apple crumble her mom had baked before she began rinsing.

  Probably not the most sanitary, but that crust was like gold.

  It couldn’t go waste.

  There was a reason she’d offered to do the dishes, and it wasn’t just because it was an effective way to get out from under Bas’s intent stare. It also was because the leftovers became hers.

  Cue evil laughter.

  That crust? Hers. The spoonful of homemade ice cream Devon didn’t finish? Hers. Also, eating to soothe her feelings. No way that could go wrong. Especially when it involved her mom’s—

  “You always did have a sweet tooth.”

  Kels shivered. Tan had snuck up on her just as she’d shoved the spoon in her mouth, so it took her a moment to fumble out an answer.

  “Y-you shouldn’t be here.”

  A stuttering response, and yet an absolutely perfect one for the situation.

  After Wednesday, after the scene nine years before, he shouldn’t be in her space.

  He’d had his chance, he’d blown it, and she was done.

  But then he leaned back against the doorframe, smiled his rueful smile, and her stomach did a little flip. “Dev and Bas are arguing about who the Gold should pick up in the draft, and your dad has chimed in with lots of thoughts.”

  Kels bit the inside of her cheek and turned back to the dishes. “I’m guessing you didn’t watch much hockey while you were traveling.”

  A chuckle. “Not so much.”

  “I followed Dev’s career,” he continued, “Which reminds me, I haven’t teased him about being the Sexiest Man of the Month or whatever his title was.”

  “Year,” she corrected, rinsing another plate before eyeing the next. The one that was committing a crime against people who loved baked goods. Three-quarters of the slice of lemon cream her mom had also baked was just sitting innocently in the corner. Probably Becca’s, since she was on a quest to lose the quote-unquote baby weight.

  Meanwhile, Kelsey thought her sister-in-law had never looked more beautiful.

  Also, she was going to eat that slice of pie, even if it made her sick.

  “You should go do that,” she said. “Dev hasn’t gotten his share of sibling smack talk of late.”

  “Is t
hat what I am?” Tanner’s voice was closer. “A sibling?”

  Typically, her impulsivity was her downfall. This case was no different. “It’s all you’re ever going to be,” she blurted. “It’s all you’ll ever let yourself be.”

  Silence.

  Stupid. Why had she taken the conversation there?

  It had all been going, well, not exactly fine but now—

  A fork appeared in front of her face.

  “Eat the pie.” Tanner reached across her and picked up the plate.

  “What?”

  He handed it to her. “You want it.” A soft murmur. “You should have everything you want, even if people are scared they won’t be able to give you all you deserve.”

  “People?”

  “Me.”

  “Scared?”

  Tanner speared a bite of pie and lifted it to her mouth. She hesitated, then her lips parted and the tangy-sweet hit her tongue.

  “Scared,” he confirmed. “Then. Now. But I’ve been thinking”—she snorted, and he grinned but continuing talking—“scared isn’t always bad, not when scared can be a means to make a person give a shit.” He touched her cheek. “And I give a shit about you, Kels. Always have.”

  Probably not the most romantic sentiment ever spoken, but his tone made up for it. And his eyes, too, sincerity pouring from the chocolate depths.

  She swallowed, set the plate down. “I—”

  “You guys done?” Bas asked, sticking his head in through the doorway. “We’re starting a new Monopoly game since Tanner’s home.”

  Kelsey groaned. “God, no. That’s a horrible idea.”

  “You’re only saying that because you thought you were going to win the last one.”

  “I was going to win it.” She’d been kicking the entire family’s butts.

  Bas just shrugged and said, “We have to start fresh so Tanner can join.”

  “Oh,” Tan said, eager to remove himself from the Monopoly war. And no joke, it was a war because her family took their board games seriously. “I—”

  Bas didn’t dispute further. “Hurry up with the dishes. Game’s on in five.”

  She plunked her hands on her hips. “Bas—”