Model Behavior
Page 11
She didn’t say a word, just gazed into his glittering eyes, spellbound by desire.
“You always find your way back to me, love. You always have.” He lifted her hand then, bringing her fingers to his lips and pressing a soft kiss against the digits. “I think maybe it’s time for number seven.”
“Which one?” she asked, her voice distant. “Mine, or yours?”
“As it turns out, they’re one and the same.”
She grew perfectly still, all the sensations of the past twenty-four hours hitting her at once. She’d known this moment was coming. Before he’d pulled out the napkin, before he’d buried his face between her legs, before he’d brought her to this apartment full of nothing but a single feather-down bed, she’d known.
She could try to run from a love like theirs, but the world had only so many places to hide.
“No. Don’t.” Her breath came short and fast, panic overriding her senses in a whirl of blackness. “Please, Ben. Don’t quit your job. Don’t sell your company. Find a way out of it—I’m begging you.” Number seven. Give up your real estate developing business. I won’t compete with your job for your affection.
His smile turned sad. “Oh, sure. Now you’re willing to beg.”
She choked on a sob. “That’s not funny.”
“Livvie, I’m sorry.” He reached into the briefcase to pull out another file, and she had no choice but to take it. Even though it contained only a few dozen pages, it felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. “I know it’s probably too late now, but I honestly had no idea what it was you were asking me for the night you made that list. I thought you were just afraid to lose your job and your freedom, that you wanted me to prove my devotion before you’d be willing to give me a chance.”
She looked a question at him.
“I started all this the very next day. Consolidating my assets, planning my attack, tracking your migration. I bought real estate in every single city you’ve ever been to, thinking I could woo you with office buildings and housing developments.”
Her question still wasn’t answered, so she opened the file and lifted the first page. It took her a moment to scan the writing and make sense of the legalese, a task made more difficult by the spinning of her head. She was no expert, but it looked to her as if Ben’s entire company now belonged to someone named Olivia Meyers. National holdings, stocks and bonds, a map of international locales that matched her butterfly migration.
Ben drew closer. “See? I was hoping you’d let me keep running the company, even if it was in your name and you owned all the assets. That way, you could keep modeling for as long as you wanted. I wouldn’t have always been able to travel alongside you, but there’s enough overlap that we could have made it work. Two weeks apart at a time instead of two months. Lots of weekends away together.”
“Who is Olivia Meyers?”
“Ah. Yes. I thought we’d get to that.”
Her voice grew dangerous. “Who is Olivia Meyers?”
“To be fair, you were a lot less antagonistic about this in my head. You fought at first, yes, but you started coming around by about number five.”
“Who is Olivia Meyers?”
He sighed. “You might want to look inside the jewelry box now.”
She walked on unsteady legs to grab her purse from the living room, where the lone tampon, ID card, residual pepper and the jewelry box remained. If she thought the contract file felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, then that box weighed a ton.
She flipped the lid.
“Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah.” Ben approached her from behind, close enough to touch but without making actual contact. She could feel his warm breath on her neck, wisps of her hair fluttering. “In hindsight, I think I might have been a tad overconfident.”
Livvie laughed. It wasn’t the least bit funny, this diamond ring the size of a grape, a proposal that hinged on her acceptance of Ben’s name and his company holdings and what she assumed was a lifetime of complete subservience. But still, she laughed. Only a man as cocksure as Benjamin Meyers would ever think something like this could work.
And only a man as determined and generous and incredible as her best friend would even try.
She laughed harder, wiping tears from her eyes. “You are such an asshole.”
“I know.”
“I’m not marrying you.”
“I think I figured that out by now.”
“And I don’t want your stupid company.”
“It’s a very nice company.”
She knew it was. It was work that gave him an excuse to see the world, work he enjoyed getting up to do every day. It was also work he’d dedicated quite a bit of his life to. Yet he was willing to hand it off to her for no reason other than her decision, made three years ago, that it was the one thing that would keep her safe from her feelings for him.
He wasn’t the only one who’d been a tad overconfident.
“Here.” She closed the lid and held the box out. “I’ll trade you for that contract.”
He opened his mouth to argue but thought the better of it at the last minute. After lifting the ring from the palm of her hand, he hesitated only a moment before giving her the papers in its place. She promptly ripped them in half.
“There.” She released a relieved sigh. “That feels better.”
“So what now?” he asked as he watched the pages flutter to the ground. “Is this where we go back to being friends again?”
Friends. That word, that concept, that relationship she’d been so sure was enough to make her happy. What an idiot she’d been. It wasn’t Ben’s friendship that had kept her going all those years—it was his unquestioning devotion, the way he always showed up when and where she needed him most. It was the fact that even when he dated other women, he never once made her feel as if she’d been replaced.
Because he loved her. That whole time, it had been his love she cherished, not his friendship. And he’d never said a word to scare her away, never demanded she give anything she was too much of a coward to offer.
She was still a coward, even now. Only instead of fearing a lifetime in his arms, she feared what would happen if those arms were someday not there to hold her. She wanted to be held. More than her freedom, more than her career, more than this mistaken belief that sex and power were always linked, she just wanted to be held.
And she knew exactly who she wanted to do it.
“I think we both know going back to friends isn’t possible.” She turned to face him, this man she hated so much, this man she loved even more. God, he was so annoying—all the more so because he was right. They were good together. They belonged together. They always had.
“Do you really have businesses in all the major fashion capitals now?” she asked.
“Yes.” He took a step closer, drawn to her like a moth—or a butterfly. Who even knew anymore? “My financial adviser thinks I’m insane, but I could easily align my schedule to suit yours now. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a good start.”
“And there are no more secret contracts or hidden lists I need to worry about?”
“I kept a note you wrote me once about making dinner plans. Does that count?”
She had to smile. “No. I still have the origami birds. I kept them all this time.”
He read all the meaning she intended in that statement—that she’d crossed the line with him five years ago, even if she hadn’t been ready to admit it yet, that the only possible ending to this day was the pair of them entwined in one another’s arms.
This was probably what happened when you dated your best friend. All those things you didn’t say—you couldn’t say—were understood on a much deeper level.
How dangerous. How delicious.
With a groan, Ben strode forward, cupp
ing her face in his hands, staring down at her as if he never wanted to let her go. “Ask me, Livvie,” he said. “It’s my turn to beg. Please ask.”
She didn’t hesitate this time. “Is it an animal, vegetable or mineral?”
“Animal.”
“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
“It’s no bigger than the palm of my hand.”
She kissed him. “It’s a monarch butterfly, and you’re an unoriginal bastard.”
“You finally learned how to play the game,” he said, kissing her right back.
“I’ve always known how to play,” she countered. “I just wasn’t ready yet.”
“And now?”
She nodded. Maybe it was a mistake, and maybe it was risking too much, and maybe her heart would never be the same again, but she loved him. She always had.
“And it’s only seven twenty-two.” Ben pulled away with a smug grin, his confidence returned with a vengeance. “I have over an hour to spare before my time is up. I wonder what we could possibly do to entertain ourselves?”
She had a few ideas—and she was pretty sure he did, too. Without wasting another minute of the lifetime she planned to spend with this man, on the road and in the air, fighting and fucking along the way, she fell into his waiting embrace.
It felt an awful lot like coming home.
* * * * *
About the Author
Tamara Morgan is a contemporary romance author of humorous, heartfelt stories with flawed heroes and heroines designed to get your hackles up and make your heart melt.
Her long-lived affinity for romance novels survived a BA in English literature, after which time she discovered it was much more fun to create stories than analyze the life out of them. She lives with her husband and daughter in the Inland Northwest, where the summers are hot, the winters are cold and coffee is available on every street corner.
Also by Tamara Morgan
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ISBN-13: 9781460349243
Model Behavior
Copyright © 2015 by Tamara Morgan
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