She smiles, and I know that’s as far as she’s going to take that conversation. Another reason why I like her. She knows when to leave something alone.
“You got the dress sorted yet?”
“Funnily enough, yes. That was one of the first things to be finalized.”
“Any clues?”
I give her a slight smirk and shake my head. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Spoilsport. Come on. Just one tiny hint. What color is it?”
“Off-white. Leaning more toward ivory.”
“Long? Short? Are we going all-out meringue or more classy than that?”
“I’m not answering anything else without my lawyer present.”
“And here he is.”
I turn to see Evan saunter into the kitchen, all casual and handsome with his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up.
“We got a problem here, ladies?”
He grins at me first, then Jess, who just stands up and rolls her eyes. She loves Evan really, she just doesn’t fall for his ridiculous charm. “I’m outta here. I’ve got a meeting at the courthouse then a late evening deposition, so, I’d better go get organized. See you guys later.”
Evan looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
“She’s been trying to get wedding dress details out of me.”
He slips an arm around my waist and pulls me against him, his mouth close to my ear as he speaks. “I’d rather you married me naked.”
“In your dreams, Mr. King.”
He pulls back from me and throws me a wink. “Frequently, Ms. Burrows.”
I push him away, we’re in public here and I’m still slightly uncomfortable with these open displays of affection between me and the boss; a named partner. I don’t think he cares anymore, but I kind of do.
“You here for a reason?” I ask him.
He digs his hands in his pockets and grins at me again. “Honeymoon.”
“What about it?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I get a choice?”
He raises his eyebrows and he senses the slight strain this wedding is putting on me. “Come here. Come on.” He jerks his head back toward himself and I sigh quietly as I step back into his arms. “What’s up?”
I start playing with his tie, and he kisses the top of my head and pulls me closer and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so safe. I really do think he loves me, I know he loves me, and I love him right back.
“I’m just not used to all the… I don’t know, Evan. It’s just…”
“Do you want to scale it back?”
I look up into his eyes, and he’s still smiling. “Can we do that?”
“You want a smaller wedding, baby, then that’s what we’ll have.”
I feel my shoulders almost sag with relief. “Thank you! The thought of some huge wedding was just – I was losing sleep.”
He laughs quietly and kisses me quickly. “I just want to marry you, Lola. I don’t care how or where we do it, I just want to marry you.”
I cup his cheek and bring him down for another kiss. “Sometimes I really do wonder if you’re real.”
He throws me another grin and drops his hand to my ass, squeezing it gently as he winks again. “Oh, I’m real, baby. I’m so goddamn real you ain’t gonna believe it.”
I laugh as he steps back and leaves the kitchen, and I watch as he strides through the library, the heads of those female associates working in there turning as he walks. And he’s mine. Evan King is all mine.
Evan King.
Lola Burrows.
Together. Forever…?
Evan
“Are you sure about this, Evan?”
I look up as Dana walks into my office, closing the door behind her, although she needn’t have bothered. Lola isn’t at her desk, she’s in the copy room. I’ve just sent her there.
“Sure about what? If you’re talking about that last amendment I made to the Foster case…”
“I’m not talking about the Foster case. I’m talking about you and Lola.”
I throw down my pen and stand up, coming out from behind my desk. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”
“I think it is. You’re a named partner, she’s your secretary…”
“And when did this become a problem?”
“It didn’t. It hasn’t…”
“Well, it sounds like it has. You got something to say, Dana, just say it. I haven’t got time for your shit right now.”
“Can you be sure she isn’t still in love with Mike Carrington?”
I narrow my eyes and fold my arms and I hold her gaze, I don’t let mine waver, not in the slightest. “She isn’t.”
“I just don’t want to see you hurt, Evan.”
“I’m not going to get hurt.”
“And you really do love her, huh?”
“Look, Dana, like I said before, I haven’t got time for your shit…”
“You and love don’t mix, remember?”
“I think we’re getting along real fine now. How are you doing on that score?”
“Me and Jack are no more. I ended it, last week. It just wasn’t working out for us.”
I raise an eyebrow but I keep my gaze steady. “And I’m sorry to hear that. But that doesn’t excuse you barging in here to question my relationship with Lola.”
“Did we really give us a chance, Evan?”
“What?” I can’t help laughing, this is crazy! “You need to leave, Dana. Now. We never even existed, not really.”
“Because we didn’t even try to cut through the crap our families instilled in us. But we’re past all that now. We have the law firm, our law firm. We have success in spades, Jesus, we are one of New York’s most respected power couples…”
“We aren’t a couple, Dana.”
“But what if we were? Could you imagine how powerful we could be then? Together in every sense of the word…”
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
She walks over to me, but I keep her at arm’s length, I’m not doing this. I don’t want to do this, I don’t even know what the hell this is. But my resistance doesn’t seem to deter her.
“What if we tried again, Evan? Me, and you. Running this place like the couple we could’ve been; should’ve been.”
“I’m in love with Lola, are you listening to me? So this, whatever the hell it is, you need to leave it alone. You and me would never have worked, not like that. We only work like this.”
“Because we never gave anything else a chance.”
“Neither of us wanted that, Dana. Not then. And nothing’s changed now.”
She takes a step back, and she looks at me, right into my eyes. “Think of the message it would send out, Evan. You, and me…”
“Never gonna happen, sweetheart. And I don’t know what you’ve been drinking over lunch but you need to get back to being the Dana I know because this one, she is freaking me the hell out.”
She smiles and starts backing off toward the door, turning her head only briefly as Lola returns to her desk.
“I told her you loved her because she wasn’t me.”
“Damn right.”
“But I don’t think that’s true.”
“Jesus, Dana, I don’t have time for this crap…”
“You only think you love her, when in reality she’s nothing more than a smokescreen; a distraction. She still loves Mike, and somewhere deep inside I think you still love me…”
“I never loved you, Dana.”
“Didn’t you?”
She turns and leaves, just like that, and I wait to see if she says anything to Lola, but she doesn’t. She just throws her a smile and heads back to her own office, leaving me more than a little confused.
“Everything okay?”
I look up as Lola walks in, all blonde hair and blue eyes and everything I want. I love this woman with every beat of my fucked up heart. And whatever Dana was doing just there; everything she said, she’s wrong.
“Everything’s fine, baby.”
“You sure?” She cocks her head to one side and looks right at me. “Only, you seem a little distracted. What did Dana want?”
“She wants to give us – me and her – another try.”
I’m putting it out there, I’m making this shit real because it needs dealing with. But Lola’s expression is understandably confused.
“She…? I don’t…”
“She thinks you’re still in love with Mike.”
I keep my eyes locked on hers, but her gaze is all over the place. “I… I’m not in love with Mike, not anymore… Evan, I…”
“And she thinks I’m still in love with her.”
She sits down on the edge of the couch but I stay where I am, leaning back against my desk.
“I thought you… You said you were never in love with her, Evan.”
“And I don’t think I was. What’s she’s doing, Lola – it’s a power move. Dana Cavendish sees something she can’t have, and she wants it. That’s who she is, that’s what she does. But she doesn’t really want me in that way, she’s incapable of that, it’s quite obvious now. She wants me – wants us because she thinks it could benefit her.”
“But, she – I still don’t understand… She already had you…”
“And it was fucked up, Lola, you know that. What she’s seeing now is a chance to become even more powerful than she already is by making me weaker. We were brought up to believe that any kind of emotion made you weak, and while I’ve realized that’s actually bullshit, Dana still thinks it’s true, no matter what she might tell people. She can’t do it, Lola. She can’t love anyone because she’s too busy loving this. And she thought I was the same, I thought I was the same, but I’m not. I’m not like that, not anymore. I was, but you – you showed me that I really can have it all and that’s terrifying, for someone like me. And I am scared, baby. I am so scared, of all of this, and she senses that. Dana knows that, because she thinks she knows me. I don’t think she believed I was ever capable of falling in love just because she couldn’t do it. And for a while I didn’t think I could, didn’t think I’d ever want to fall in love. But I did. I wanted you, Lola. I love you. Yes, I love this, I worked goddamn hard, for this. But this isn’t everything. Not anymore.”
She looks at me with those crazy-blue eyes and there are tears behind them, I can see them, and I can also see she’s desperately trying to keep them from falling.
“I’m not in love with Mike, Evan.”
“But you were.”
“Yes, I was, and you know I was. But I couldn’t go there again.”
“Did you want to? Even for a second, after you came to me? Did you want to?”
She stares at me, and those tears are escaping now, they’re falling slowly down her beautiful face, but my heart isn’t breaking. It’s just getting ready to accept what I know I have to do. What I know has to happen.
“I need an answer, baby.”
“I wanted to.”
“But you chose me.”
“I love you.”
“Not back then you didn’t. You loved him.”
She stands up, and her expression hardens, she’s not crying anymore. “What the hell is this, Evan?”
“You loved him, yet you chose me.”
She shakes her head as she backs away toward the door. “I’m not doing this, here. I’m not doing this at all. Marry me, don’t marry me, I’m throwing that ball right there into your court. But don’t play mind games, Evan. Don’t do that. Just because your fucked up past is messing with your head doesn’t mean it has to mess with mine, too.”
Lola
He must’ve practically sprinted after me because I’m no sooner through the door of the file room than he’s there too, right behind me.
“You really want to do this, Evan?”
He kicks the door shut and locks it behind him. “You loved him, yet you chose me.”
I walk over to him, my eyes locked with his. “Okay. You want to do this? Let’s do this. I wanted to try again, with Mike. I wanted that like I have never wanted anything before in my entire fucking life. He hurt me, so bad, and yet, all the denials, the fighting it; fucking you to try and forget him – I was wasting my time. Because I still loved him. And I was always going to take that second chance, if it happened. And it might even have worked out, y’know? If it hadn’t been for you. You were always there, you see. Wearing me down, day after day, every day. And I let it happen. I let you get to me, let you crawl under my skin and stay there, even when I thought me and Mike were okay again. I let you happen. So, yes, I loved him. But I obviously didn’t love him enough. Because I chose you. You gave me no choice.”
He laughs, and I take another step forward and I slap him hard, and he grabs my wrist and holds it tight, his eyes burning into mine as he slams me back against the wall. His mouth crashes down onto mine, his fingers still grasping my wrist tight as he kisses me, and I fall against him, I’m giving in, I can’t stop myself. I loved Mike, but I want Evan, I need Evan. Like I said, he gave me no choice.
He lets go of my wrist and pushes my dress up over my thighs, tugging down my panties and I’m putting up no fight. There’s no point, I want this just as much as he does, so when he thrusts into me I feel like all I’m doing is getting a shot of that crazy drug I can’t say no to.
I loved Mike.
I chose Evan.
He gave me no choice.
There’s always a choice.
I just have to hope I’ve made the right one…
Thirty-Five
Evan
“Still here? Aren’t you getting married tomorrow?”
Dana doesn’t even look up from her desk as I walk into her office. “Are we good, Dana?”
This time she does look up, and she smiles, and I’m taking it as genuine. It reaches her eyes anyway so, yeah. She really isn’t as cold as she’d like people to think she is.
“We’re good.”
I sit down on her couch and she gets up from behind her desk and joins me.
“But I meant what I said, Evan. You and me, together, just like we used to be…”
“And look how that turned out first time around, huh?”
“We got this place, didn’t we? We started out as junior associates, worked our way up, and now it’s ours. All that mess in between, didn’t it just make us stronger?”
I look down at my hands clasped together in my lap. “Maybe it did, but there’s no way I’m going back there.”
“Isn’t that what Lola said about Mike Carrington?”
I glance up, and our eyes lock. “And look what happened when she tried to go back. Didn’t work out so good, did it? Because she doesn’t want him anymore.”
“You know that for sure, do you?”
I don’t answer that. I don’t need to. Me and Lola are fine. “We’ll always be partners, Dana. You and me. You know that.”
She smiles again, and I know she hates losing just as much as I do, but sometimes you’ve got to accept that, maybe, sometimes, it’s just something you’ve got to suck up and take.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Evan?”
I nod, and I return her smile because I know exactly what I’m doing. “I love her, Dana. I allowed those feelings in, finally, so, yeah. I love her.”
“And you’re still sure? That marrying her is the right thing to do?”
I laugh, and I look back down at my hands; at the still-empty space on the third finger of my left hand where, tomorrow, there’ll be a wedding ring. “I don’t even have to question it, Dana.”
“Does she?”
I look back up, and my eyes once more meet hers. But I don’t answer her. Again, I don’t need to. “Are you coming tomorrow? I know we’ve scaled the whole thing back a bit, but, you were never taken off the guest list.”
“I’ll be there.”
I smile again, and I’m still not sure what’s going on with this woman; what she really wants from her lif
e, but I think she needs more than this. More than Cavendish King. I realized that, I thought she had, too.
“Okay. Well, I’d better get back to the office.”
“Evan, it’s late. Go home.”
“I’ve still got some work to do before I can even think about that, Dana.”
“The Foster case?”
“The Foster case.”
“Let me do that for you. I’m up to speed on everything, and I really don’t have anything to rush home to.”
I stand up and make for the door. “Neither do I. Lola’s with Kat tonight. At our apartment. She wanted to do this the traditional way, y’know? Not see me until tomorrow. So, I’m spending the night at the hotel.”
Dana stands up too and comes over to me, reaching out to unnecessarily straighten my jacket collar. “Look, why don’t we take the files back to my place and work on them together? We can order take-out, open a bottle of wine…”
I take hold of her wrist and pull her hand away from me, pushing her gently back. “Thanks, Dana, but I think I’ll be fine finishing off what I need to do here before I head back to the hotel.”
She holds up her hands, and her expression seems genuinely apologetic. “I’m sorry, Evan, I just… I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I just can’t give up without a fight, huh?”
“Maybe you just need to know when to let go.”
She smiles again, and folds her arms. “Go home. I’ll finish up whatever needs doing here, you’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
I look at her, and I can’t help smiling, too. “Thank you. But like I said, I’ll be fine finishing up myself.”
“Stubborn as ever.”
“You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Lola’s a very lucky woman, Evan. I hope she knows that.”
“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”
I’ve got a big day tomorrow; we’ve got a big day, tomorrow.
Me, and Lola…
Lola
“You sure Eric doesn’t mind you staying here tonight?”
“Lola, he’s fine. We’re not joined at the hip, y’know. He does allow me out every now and again. Which is more than I can say for you and the gorgeous Mr. King.”
Lawfully His (A Dirty Business Novel Book 1) Page 29
