by Anne Martin
I blinked at him. I was going to throw up. “One of your degrees is in Psychology. You really were psycho-analyzing me that whole time. I’m going to be sick.”
He shrugged. “I can’t help that and you are the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.”
“You mean most messed up?”
He laughed, loud and hard. “Difficult. The first time I saw you in Vegas, do you remember me introducing myself to you? I looked very nice, very rich, very available.”
I stared at him. There had been something in the midst of too many drinks. “At the Flamingo? You’re the snob who asked me if I wanted a ride in your helicopter? I don’t ride. I drive.”
He grinned at me. “You remember me?”
“Billionaire’s don’t hit on me every day, particularly ones with such excellent diction. How did you lose it?”
He shrugged. “I just talk as though I always have a swollen mouth full of loose teeth.”
“And the women?”
He blinked at me. “What about them?”
“Why the man-whore thing? Why become that kind of Horse?”
He hesitated. He was thinking about whether or not he should lie. I wouldn’t be able to tell what was truth and lie. He was the best liar I’d ever met.
He shrugged. “That was more rumor and reputation than reality. I’m not saying that I’m a nun, and some years were more lively than others, but in the last year or so, I’ve been letting that part slide.”
“Wait, you’re not a man-whore? You’re saying that you haven’t had a woman in your black bed of sin in over a year?”
“It’s fascinating, becoming something that women objectify the way so many men objectify women. I wrote a whole thesis on it.”
“You’re completely insane.”
“I have a therapist. He might agree with you.”
I shook my head and took a shaky breath. This wasn’t possible. “You’re a stalker? You’ve been following me for years?”
He exhaled and shook his head. “A stalker? I knew Nix before you did. You moved into my hotel. You, the girl who saved my life when I was an idiot kid who thought he could race cars because he was rich and therefore the best at everything, kept showing up in my life. It was like you were stalking me, so you could shove me into a fountain and mess up my expensive Italian suit, or blatantly snub me every chance you got. I respect you, Trix. I can’t help that, not when you walked through flames for me, not when you proved that not everyone could be bought. Generosity mixed with honor? I couldn’t forget you. I would have been ungrateful if I had. I wasn’t obsessed, just happy that someone in the world like you existed.”
I stared at him. He was the boy I’d saved so long ago. I hadn’t thought about it, just done what I could because that was my nightmare, being trapped in a car and burned alive. I’d had to keep my hands wrapped for a few weeks after that, but I hadn’t done it for money. Davy Van-B needed to learn that lesson, that money couldn’t buy everything. He’d learned it. If he couldn’t use money, he could get it with lies and manipulation. What did he want?
“You could have told me.”
“And you wouldn’t have trusted me like you don’t trust me now. Money rubs you wrong.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to thank you, take you out for dinner, tell you the impact you made on my life, but you couldn’t believe that someone would respect and admire you that much. You do have issues, Trixie. I know who you are, and what you are, and it’s beyond price, better than anything else in this world, but if you can’t believe that you’re worth loving, how can anything I say matter?”
I shook my head. This person, Horse, who should have been safe, easy, casual was quickly turning into something far too terrifying. “We should get an annulment.”
He smiled. It was not a nice smile. That was the smile before he smashed someone’s face in. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. We’ve been married too long, and you’re having my baby.” He kept his voice gentle, but I wasn’t fooled by men with soft voices. My dad was like that. My mom usually had her way, but if he put his foot down, it was over.
I stared at him. “Don’t tell me that you were blondie in a wig.”
His mouth twisted. “No. I’m not Richard. I do know him. His family is almost as well-connected as mine.”
“Well-connected, that’s another word for rich.”
“Yes. Let’s skip to the end.”
“I thought annulment was the end. Divorce?”
He shrugged, but it felt fake, forced, casual movement when he felt anything but. “If you apply for a divorce, I’ll contest it, and I will keep the case in court until after you’ve had the baby. Legally, you and the child are under my protection. That’s not going to stop until after the birth for you, and the baby, until he’s eighteen. I suggest you get used to the idea of staying married to me for the rest of the term. Otherwise, you’re just throwing away your hard-earned cash to the vulture lawyers. You have a nice pile. You should be able to start a pretty garage, a modest track, and a little adobe cottage just right for the two of you. I have some realty suggestions if you’d like me to send them to you.”
“You have realty suggestions? Did you plan this whole thing out? You did! You knew you wouldn’t be able to play him forever, the incredible, sweet, relatable person that I thought was my friend. Did it last longer than you thought it would? Will you make a thesis out of it? Will you give me free therapy on your freaking couch?” I was hissing because I didn’t want my mom to hear, but tears were so close, either tears or violence. I wanted to his beautiful mouth and then kiss him until his mouth bled.
He bit his bottom lip, frowning while his eyes shone with concern. He grabbed my arms and searched my face, lips trembling. “It’s not a game to me. Don’t you understand? That nice gentleman who knocked you up has an even nicer father who wants any evidence of his son’s indiscretion to vanish. The dick is headed into politics and engaged to a very appropriate girl. You don’t understand how these things are. If it’s my child, no one will touch him, or you. Otherwise, you’ll be in an ‘accident’ when you least expect it. I shouldn’t have taken you with lies between us, but I had to protect you from that world, from the kind of people who call emptiness freedom, who don’t have to pay for consequences. I knew that I would pay for the lies, Trix. You’ll never let me get away with anything. I love that about you. I love so much about you. Everything except for the way you’re going to push me away when you’re the only one in my life who’s ever given me a firm foundation. Without you, I’m going to fall. I love you. I need you.” He shook his head. “But that’s not what this is about. You need me, even if you don’t like it. That’s the world you’re justified in hating. I’m going to protect you and the baby with my name. It’s not negotiable. You saved me without asking me if I wanted you to. I’m saving you.” He placed his hands gently over my stomach. “Until he’s eighteen, he’ll be under my protection. I’ll give you your divorce after he’s born. But he’ll still legally be my responsibility. Do you understand, Trix? You can fight this, but I’m going to win. It’s the debt that I owe to you, and I’m paying it. If you’d cashed the check, you wouldn’t have the burden of my gratitude.”
I stared at him. His hands were still on my belly. I wanted more than anything to walk into his chest and make him hold me until everything was all right. Of course I did. He was a master of psychology. Literally.
It was getting hard for me to breathe. Everything was getting close and I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I gasped and covered my belly with my hands. He helped me to lie down, putting my feet up, brushing my hair off my forehead.
“Are you okay, Trixie?”
I stared at him, the beautiful, beautiful man who had hidden himself behind those muscles and sex appeal. “You know Richard’s family? Do you know the man who assaulted me?”
He swallowed. “The girl, Michelle, the one whom I got pregnant, she was everything you aren’t, but I thought I was in
love with her. My father paid her off. The same guy who snatched you, he got to her, convinced her to take the cash and end the baby. It’s not like she came from poverty. She lived in the neighborhood, but he convinced her that she wasn’t ready for the responsibility of taking care of someone else, as though she wouldn’t have had a few nannies. You were street racing to help pay off the family debt when you were thirteen. You never flinched from responsibility. You never would.”
I stared up at him. He was still touching my face, hands in my hair. “This is really what this is? You want to set your past straight, paying me back for saving your life, and saving my baby when you couldn’t save yours?”
He exhaled and nodded. “That’s the root of it. You don’t have to live with me, but you’ll be protected twenty-four seven. I’m not risking you or the baby.”
I exhaled. Maybe he did feel like he owed me. If this whole thing had taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t hold my own against his masterful manipulations. That’s how rich people were, money and education so they could make more money they didn’t need. His motivation almost made sense.
“All right. We’ll talk about divorce after I have the baby.”
He exhaled suddenly and pulled me into his arms, pressing his lips against my forehead. He smelled like my dad’s gym, like family. I let him hold me like that for a long time. I didn’t sob, but hot tears welled up and rolled down my nose. Horse, the baby, us, we’d felt so real.
Chapter 14
Horse Demon a.k.a. Nathaniel David VanBuren
Trix was very reasonable about the whole thing. That worried me. She agreed to stay with me in Vegas until I could arrange for a bodyguard. She gave me twenty-four hours. After that, she was back in her little OCD apartment. I didn’t have her followed because she took Barb with her wherever she went. I intentionally hired a woman bodyguard who had five kids. Her husband stayed home with them.
Barb didn’t report anything about her because she was Trixie’s bodyguard, not my spy. I made certain that she understood that. She just looked at me like I was an idiot if I thought she was anyone’s spy.
My team was moderately happy to see me. I ran them hard the week before the cage fight. The three hundred was coming up and that cage fight would set the tone.
I missed her. I slept in the black bed because the pillow smelled like her shampoo. I’d known that it wouldn’t end well, but Trixie infected me with a sort of madness. She always had from the first time I’d seen the scowling butterball perched on the back of her car. Some girls walked by, tossing their hair, and one of the twelve-year-old racers yelled something about ‘nice rack,’ and Trix moved like a blur, knocking the kid a good two feet back then she punched him, yelling that if he wanted to disrespect a girl, he should start with her.
It was memorable. She didn’t mind if anyone called her fat, or insulted her driving, although no one did, because she was incredible, but disrespect a girl and she would kill you. I’d taken private boxing lessons in our home gym since I was five. It was a gentleman’s sport, at least that’s what my dad said, but I took to it. Racing was my rebellion the summer after my mom died and my dad didn’t want to see me, so he sent me to a prissy camp with other privileged children. I bribed my personal valet, yes, I had a valet, to take me to the little New Jersey track instead, holing up in a seedy hotel. It was the best track in the country and not too far from the camp and home. It was the best summer of my life all the way up the burning end.
At any rate, seeing Trix, incredibly fast in spite of her weight, take out the older boy using perfect technique, I was impressed. I thought that we could be friends, but she didn’t like my money. No one did, but at least most of them would let me buy them stuff. Not her. She couldn’t ever be bought.
Michelle said that everyone could be bought, but she was wrong. After that whole mess, I went back to Jersey to see if my improved manners could make an impression. In Patty’s garage, a voluptuous girl with loads of curls was bent over a tire, showing her exquisitely curved end, which several guys were ogling very obviously. I immediately discounted her as a pretty face, at least a pretty end. Then she’d stood up and smiled at me. I nodded at her and felt contempt for a girl who had obviously paid to have so much added to her body just so she could get a reaction out of every man who saw her. It was a power game. I knew that game. Not that I wasn’t affected, but I was better than a purely physiological reaction.
She asked if I needed help with my car, and I shook my head while I looked around, trying to find the fat, short-haired, butch Trixie. She was real, someone who couldn’t be bought.
When the racing started, I went out to the finish line. I could recognize her driving. She was so smooth, subtle. She let the others pull ahead because she liked to thread between them with surgical precision. At the end of the race, the door opened, long legs came out beneath cut-off shorts, and then that body, the hair, the face, the voluptuous goddess who I’d held in contempt as superficial.
When she walked by with that smile, I’d said, “Good race,” like an idiot. How had the androgynous fat kid turned metamorphosed into a goddess?
She’d smiled at me, but then the smile faded as she glanced at the guy to my left, and her eyes went hard. She walked up to me and grabbed my shirt, yanked me down and kissed me.
I’d never been kissed like that. She pulled back, dragged me by the hand to the depths of the garage and then let me go. She’d crossed her arms and stared at me.
“Look, just stay here for a few minutes, okay? I was using you to make someone jealous. I’m such an idiot.” She ran a hand through her hair then turned to the car with its hood open and started working on the engine.
I swallowed and stood there for a long time before I figured out something to say. “Your ex-boyfriend?”
She’d laughed. “No. I don’t do boyfriends.”
“Girlfriend?”
She shot me a look. “How would kissing you make a girl jealous? I’m sorry. I don’t know if you’re dating. Are you?”
I cleared my throat. “No. I’m not dating. If you wanted to kiss me or date me, that would be cool.”
She’d given me a look, shock and then horror. “Oh. No. I’m sorry. I’m such a witch. I was just using you. I don’t like you. I don’t know you. I’m not going to get to know you. This whole thing was nothing. I don’t do meaningful. So, um, I totally used you. Is there a girl you want to make jealous?”
I’d felt more embarrassed and idiotic than ever before. What had happened to the girl who wouldn’t compromise her ideals? My voice was hard, but I’d smiled. “Tit for tat? How about you give me a twenty for my work. It’s always important to get paid for the work you do.”
She’d looked startled and then smirked. “I don’t know, twenty bucks seems like a lot for one little kiss.”
“We could try again. I could play the part much better with some warning, particularly if you paid me first. Cash.”
She’d tilted her head to the side while that smile became positively devilish. “If I were going to pay you, I’d expect a rehearsal. I want to get my money’s worth.”
I walked over to her, pulled her into my arms and kissed her. I was so angry, so confused and aroused, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing; I just did it. I touched her any way I wanted to and she returned the favor.
“What’s going on? Is this one of your clients, Trix?”
Trixie pulled back like she’d been slapped. The anger that washed over her features was terrifying, and that was before she smiled at me. “Hey sugar. I’ll meet you later, huh?” She ran her hand over my face, down my shirt and into my waistband.
I opened my mouth and she kissed me, hard and hungry before she pulled away and went back to the car she was working on.
It was only as I walked, reeling, to the parking lot that I found the twenty she’d tucked into my pants. There hadn’t been a later. She left that night to race somewhere else, Brazil probably. If there was a terrifyingly dangerous race, s
he was in it, winning. She disappeared for awhile and I’d mostly forgotten about her.
I’d started fighting at night, going to Harvard during the day. Nix was in my same boat with money that didn’t fill the hunger. I knew he was money, he knew I was. There were tells, and it was early in the game.
We were both determined to build our own destinies. My dad hated it. That’s part of why I loved it so much. Going to classes with a swollen face made me feel like I was someone real. Maybe someone Trix wouldn’t dismiss as a nothing.
When I ran into her again, she was in Vegas. No one went there for anything other than money, but she was racing and picking up other jobs, to save up for the assault vehicle to join the team Nix was creating.
The first time I went to Vegas, it was for business. I wasn’t sporting any bruises. I recognized Trix when I saw her drinking in a bar and some guy was rubbing against her like she wasn’t better than that. Would she put up with it? No. She broke his hand, didn’t even seem to notice, just left him screaming on his knees as she walked past him, then tripped and almost fell into a fountain. Naturally, I caught her.
The night had been warm, smelling of flowers while the stars spun above us. She was in my hands, her arms anyway. I let go once it looked like she wouldn’t fall over.
“Thanks,” she said with a flirty smile.
“My pleasure. You’re very drunk. You should get back to your hotel before you do something even more regrettable than falling into a fountain.”
“Like you? I don’t think I’d regret it very much.” She’d run her hand over my chest down to my pants, reminding me of the twenty.
I stepped away from her. “Maybe another time. When you aren’t inebriated.”
“Oooh, big words. And a gentlemanly manner. Are you rich?”
I stared at her. “Very. Do you want a ride in my helicopter?”
She’d shoved me into the fountain. I’d come up sputtering, my Italian suit completely ruined. I could still see her silhouetted above me, one foot on the rim of the fountain.
