“Yes. With immediate effect.”
Nodding once, she turned to head for the door. Max would see it. Yes, he would. But, he’d hate her by then. Losing him once was bad enough, now she had to do it again, and this time it would be for good.
Teddy wasted no time in assigning her space in the house. So, after learning that Max had returned to the office, Tally got to work packing her things and moving them. She had taken everything of hers from Max’s suite, and had decided it would be best to wait for him there to let him know what was going on. But, he arrived before her and must have got back to his room while she was in her new space, arranging her things.
Because it was while she was walking down the hallway, back toward his suite that Max came out through the door she’d been heading for. Tally didn’t expect him to be back from the office already. The sight of his rigid form and his face set in anger made her stall.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Max asked when he caught sight of her. “All of your shit’s gone from our room.”
Though she hadn’t expected to see him yet, she had known this confrontation was inevitable. Grateful for small mercies, she was pleased it was taking place outside the suite rather than within it.
“I was just coming to talk to you.”
But, he wasn’t in the mood to be accommodating. She could tell by looking at him that he was gearing up for a fight, which was the last thing they needed. “Oh, this shit will be good,” he said, folding his arms and widening his stance. “Come on, give me the bullshit.”
Stopping in front of him, she kept a respectful distance, something neither of them usually did. “You can have sex with me any time you want,” she said, catching her fist in her opposite palm and giving it a squeeze. “But, I won’t be sleeping in your room anymore.”
“What the fuck is—”
“I tried to tell you that there would be resistance to us and you wouldn’t listen,” she said, doing her best not to raise her voice.
This corridor turned into perpendicular corridors at either end. Anyone could loiter just around the corner out of sight and hear every word.
“So, this is him… this is Stretton because of last night?” he said, like he was amping up to do something. “Because you called me, he thinks he can take you away from me?”
While Teddy might have instigated this change, Tally had always known it would come to this. “No, this is me.”
His brows twitched, like he couldn’t quite figure that out. “You don’t want to be with me? Is that what you’re trying to sell? ‘Cause I won’t believe it.”
Sometimes he just couldn’t see what was right in front of his face. It infuriated her that she had to keep repeating herself. “I told you it would be like this, Max. I told you.”
He snatched her hand. “Then grab whatever shit you need, we’re getting out of here.”
Tugging her hand back, she wanted to scream out loud. “It’s not as simple as that! God, Max! Why do you make me spell it out every time! You’re bound by the contracts you signed at SC. Just like I am. We’re in this now. There is no getting out.”
“Then we should be together,” he argued. “If we’re here and stuck, we should be stuck together.”
And that broke her heart. Her hands fell to her sides. “We are, Max,” she murmured. “We’re stuck… together. We’re not together because we want to be, we’re together because we have to be; because a piece of paper dictates everything about us… I’m your mistress. Your whore. I’m not the Tallulah you fell in love with; I’m a body to warm your bed for as long as you need me.”
Softening, he moved in close, sliding a hand to her face. “Baby, it could never be like that between us… You need some distance, I’ll respect that. But don’t let them punish us for being us.”
Pushing his hand from her face, she stepped away. Just the fact that he didn’t pursue her told her that they’d changed him already. Her Max wouldn’t let her push him away, he’d pick her up or pin her to something, but this guy was just, there, a shadow of the dynamic man he’d once been.
“It is gone, Max. We tried it your way, we tried to ignore the rules, but they caught up with us… This is it now, the best we’ll ever have.”
“I love you, Tal,” he said.
She began to back away. “And I’ll cherish that love forever,” she said. The pain in her chest made her eyes narrow. “But don’t say that to me again here. I don’t want to hear those words from the lips of Max Stretton… Coming to you at night, sharing my body with you, that’s not love… not like we had. So, don’t say it anymore, Max. Use me for pleasure, but don’t ask me for anything else. If you ever loved me, give me at least that dignity.”
Turning around to walk away from him was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. It was possibly harder than losing him the first time.
She’d go to him when she had to. She’d do her duty. But her heart was in Max Flynn’s apartment and she wouldn’t let anyone confuse that for this.
Tally was a good girl, or she would be until her contract was up. By then, they would have nothing left.
TWENTY-TWO
Max had thought that her sparkle was gone. But it wasn’t gone at all. He was watching her, and she was more vibrant than she’d been in weeks. The sparkle wasn’t gone; it just wasn’t for him anymore.
Inside the lobby of the Stretton fucking Chemicals building that had become the bane of his goddamn life, he was looking through the glass front to the coffee cart on the curb outside.
He hadn’t meant to spy; he wasn’t some creepy fucking perv. All he’d wanted was some coffee and a minute of fucking peace without projections and potential ROIs being thrown in his face.
All the work was bullshit. In the first weeks, he’d wanted to jack it in every second. Hoping he was making her proud was the only thing that kept him from telling Teddy to go fuck himself or putting one of Stretton’s minions through the wall.
Getting her back, having her in his bed again had been a dream. But he hadn’t been able to keep her there.
Curling his fingers into fists, he watched her take a bite from the muffin that the Sean fucker offered her mouth. Sean touched her lip, probably collecting some crumbs that he then sucked onto his own tongue.
She was glittering. Laughing and chattering. Happy.
She didn’t come to him every night. In fact, she had come to him less and less over the last month. After telling him not to love her and walking away from him in the hallway outside his suite, a gulf had grown between them. Every day he hoped something would change, that it would get better, but he was realizing now that a month was a long time and things weren’t going to get better. Any time he tried to tell her how he felt, she’d put a hand to his mouth or kiss him. She didn’t want to hear it.
That stuck in his craw. Who had the fucking right to tell him not to love her? She was his fucking dream, his life, his woman.
But, he had to ask himself. If she was his, why was she out there connecting with another man on a level deeper than he’d had her at in weeks?
It had been days since she’d come to his room. Maybe as much as a week. He missed her, craved her, but it wasn’t the same. He couldn’t fucking figure it out, couldn’t figure out what had changed or why she was so cold towards him.
“You’re a lucky man,” Teddy said. Glancing away from his view of what was going on in the street beyond those thick glass doors, Max saw Teddy coming up at his side, taking in the same scene he’d been observing. “She’s a vision.”
“If that woman belonged to me, I would be,” he murmured. “But that’s not the woman who comes to me.”
Teddy sighed a sound that could have been disappointment. But Max was too focused on Tally touching Sean’s face with her delicate fingertips that had once been reserved for him.
A hand landed on his shoulder and he recoiled, almost lashing out at its owner and causing Teddy to hold up both hands and step back.
Much as he didn’t like it,
Max had gotten used to the way these soft, business bastards liked to pat each other on the back and fondle each other’s balls. It was all about sucking up. Brown nosing wasn’t something he’d ever been good at, but most of the time he was on the receiving end, not that he gave a fuck about who was basically offering to suck his cock week to week.
Turning back to his vision, his frown got deeper. The thing he’d cared about more than anything was out there. But she was so different to the woman who’d been getting into bed with him that he almost couldn’t remember what it was like to taste her.
His Tally was vivacious and voracious. She’d been a wet dream every minute even in the early days when she’d been meek and unsure… when she was sober anyway. Drunk she was a wildcat and always had been.
That wildcat, who he could see glimpses of out there with Sean, wasn’t accessible to him anymore. He wanted her back. Goddamnit, all he wanted to do was make his woman proud.
“It’s not for everyone,” Teddy said. “This life puts pressure on us all. Some people aren’t cut out for it, even if their role is minor.”
Tally could handle pressure; she could handle anything if she had the drive to do it. And her role wasn’t minor, not her role in his life. Even when they weren’t next to each other she was his driving force.
This fucker, his father and all his cronies owed Max’s presence to the woman out there. He couldn’t figure out, if he was supposed to be so great, why they weren’t more grateful to her.
“She’s more than you’ll ever understand,” Max hissed the words.
Each day he could get through if he just did the task set in front of him… and remembered not to swear. Other than that, he felt like himself. He was being himself. So, why was she pulling away from him?
“Do you know what this affair showed me?” Teddy asked, patting him again. “From the very beginning, it made me see that you have foresight. Tallulah Taylor is efficient and, yes, she is attractive. But, she doesn’t have the blow away beauty or flashy figure that we come across so frequently. I had no idea she could be so mesmerizing…” He leaned in closer. “Maybe if I had, I’d have taken her to my own bed, long before you found her.”
Throwing Teddy’s arm from his shoulder, Max spun around fast, his fist balled, ready to swing. “You—”
“Now, we don’t want to make a show in the lobby, do we, son?” Teddy said, taking a step back and raising his hands.
There was a time when Max would have hit him just for calling him son. Where had that instinct gone? When had he stopped feeling like he should stand up for himself and for Tally?
It hit him hard when he realized that he wasn’t the same person anymore. He wasn’t himself. They had changed him, and he hadn’t even seen it coming. Figuring that out helped him to figure Tally out. She’d told him she didn’t want a rich, influential man. At the time, he’d been damn sure he’d never be like these fuckers she’d been talking about. But now… he didn’t know who the hell he was.
“She deserves more.”
The probing glint in Teddy’s eye was almost curious. “You cared about her.”
Max almost laughed right in his face. He didn’t know how it wasn’t obvious to every schmuck he walked by that she was his whole world and the only thing that mattered. Tally was all that he had left of what he’d once been. Without her, he’d be lost.
The air around him seemed to get thinner. He pulled at his tie. His tie! When the fuck did putting on a tie every day become his normal and why the fuck had he let it happen?
“You have no idea,” Max growled.
Teddy exhaled and became sympathetic. “That’s a shame. A real shame, son. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Max said and leaped forward. “If you even think about taking her from me—”
“Me?” Teddy said, all innocence as he laid a hand on his chest. “No, of course not, son, but… you know this life is eating her up. You can see it from here.” Moving in a quarter turn, he opened his hand to the vision of Tally and Sean still out there laughing together. “That’s the woman she’s supposed to be. Free and joyous. Living the way she is, at your mercy, waiting for your call every minute, unable to make decisions for herself… that’s not who she is… It pains me to know how she’ll come to resent you. How she’ll never be able to love you like this.”
Resent him. Funny, that was exactly the line that Tally had tried to sell him. Max hadn’t believed it then and didn’t want to believe it now. But, he couldn’t say that he didn’t believe it. From the minute she’d come into his life, that tempting pouty mouth and her red-riding-hood eyes had snagged him. He knew that hook wouldn’t ever go anywhere, and he had thought she felt the same about him.
Guess not.
It wasn’t fair to judge her, she’d probably seen the changes in him that he’d missed. He wasn’t the Max she’d fallen in love with anymore. Just like she’d foreseen, he was a different man. In the back of that limo that time she’d cried because he wasn’t in his dirty jeans and scuffed-to-fuck jacket, she’d wailed about how she didn’t like him in the tux with the smooth jaw.
But, he hadn’t listened. He’d listened, but he hadn’t heard her. Because while he was trying to tell her everything would be fine if they just pretended to ignore all the changes, she’d been screaming at him that the changes were shattering what they’d built.
He hadn’t talked to any of his friends since the Fitzpatrick’s debacle. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched a ballgame or listened to a band play live in a club. He sure hadn’t spent a weekend locked up with his girl or gone trawling for the bagels she liked just to make her happy.
“You could cut the crap and get rid of the damn contract,” Max said, snapping a glare to his father.
“I could,” Teddy said, slipping a hand in his pocket. “But, would it make a difference? This is your life now, son. You, here, with me, building the business. This is your future… You’re not the man you were when you and Tallulah met… It seems to me she’s faced that reality… Why are you refusing to do the same?”
Because facing that reality meant admitting that Tallulah had been right all along. She’d been straight with him, he couldn’t deny that. She’d told him that she didn’t want to be with one of the beanpole crew and he’d become one of them.
Starched and upright, he still followed her rules and played up the bored and mean thing; most of the time because he was bored. But, she’d told him to embrace this life for all the street rats out there who would kill for a chance like this.
For the first time in his life, Max had prospects. He didn’t have to worry about money and he had respect everywhere he went, even when he didn’t deserve it.
The cost for that was more than just his old life and friendships, those things were carrying on without him. Even though he missed them, they were still there, and weren’t suffering without him. The cost for his security was Tally’s happiness. It was her. She was the cost.
By keeping her in his bed and in his life, he was being selfish in letting her pay that price. That wasn’t what her man should do, her man should protect her. He should sacrifice for her. Max could take the burden from her and pay the price himself… by giving her the freedom she wanted.
Admitting to himself that there was a chance she didn’t want to be with him anymore was difficult. It fucking tore him up. But, his girl was hurting, and the Max he was wouldn’t ever have tolerated that.
Aware now of the truth of where they were, he vowed to use the next time he saw her as a test. If he could see her smile, feel her warmth the way he used to, he’d fight to keep them together. But, if that light was gone, and he couldn’t see anything of the sparkle she’d once exuded for him, he’d have to let her go.
TWENTY-THREE
Tally didn’t even bother to do anything fancy with her hair or her makeup. She knew that she was supposed to splurge on expensive lingerie and arrange herself in a seductive pose, but she wasn’t good at performing like that.
Other mistresses, Teddy’s mistresses, played it coy and simpered. But, it just wasn’t in Tally to be that frivolous and shallow for the sake of it.
When she went into Max’s bedroom, she could hear the shower running from beyond the closet. Unfastening her robe to hang it on the back of the door, Tally took the small tube from her pocket and crossed to slip into the bed, tucking the tube under her pillow as she did.
Lying there beneath his sheets, she thought about the paperwork she had to finish and how eager she was to get it done so she could get an early night. This had been a long week for her; she’d taken on more household duties and that involved more administrative stuff, but she was happy with the routine that allowed her to avoid the office.
This was just another part of that routine. She could really have done without having to do this today, but it had been a week since she’d last come to his room, and she didn’t want anyone to have cause to say that she wasn’t fulfilling her duty.
Movement by the closet made her turn her head on the pillow; she was pleased to see Max come out in only a towel. Good. They didn’t have to deal with the removal of clothes and that stuff which just took up more time.
“Come over here,” she said, shifting up the bed a little and stuffing the pillow under her head.
He started around the bed to head for his side. “I didn’t know you were visiting today.”
She pushed onto her elbows. “If it’s inconvenient, I can leave,” she said, pointing a finger toward the door and sort of hoping he’d dismiss her, so she could get on with her work.
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