I laugh, thinking of the other times she’s looked at me that way. Her looks make me hard, too.
“I usually don’t let girls get all touchy-feely with me in public, so if you do, that will send a strong message to the powers-that-be.”
“Dreamy eyes and grabby hands it is,” she says.
“And kissing,” I say. “I think we’ll need some of that. Remember that salacious kiss at the pizza place?”
She tries to hide her smile. Yeah, she remembers it, alright.
“Some of those will do,” I say.
I think I see her cheeks pink up, but the sun is setting so I can’t be sure. One thing I am sure of is that she’s nervous. Her hands are fidgety. I put a hand on top of them to calm her. “You don’t have to worry, Aspen. It’s basically just a big dinner party.”
“When are you going to get it through that thick skull of yours that I don’t live in your world? To you this may be just a dinner party. To me, it’s a bunch of high-priced suits and their plastic wives who will be judging me into next week. We may be pretending, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care what people think of me.”
“Everybody loves you. Haven’t you been reading the articles?”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t do that anymore. I just know what Bass and Denver and some friends from school tell me.”
“Well, it’s all good. You are the proverbial girl next door. You’re exactly what I needed you to be. Everything is perfect.”
She shifts uncomfortably as she stares at my hand on top of hers. “Yeah, we’re the perfect couple, aren’t we?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. I’ll just be glad when this is all over.”
I get a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. “When what is all over, tonight or our arrangement?”
“Tonight,” she says.
Another strange feeling washes over me. I think it might be relief.
The car comes to a stop. I squeeze her hand when I see all the people pouring into the venue past the photographers on the red carpet.
Aspen’s eyes go wide. “You didn’t say anything about a red carpet. Oh, my God, is that Jennifer Lawrence over there?”
“Come on. We’ve been photographed a hundred times by now. And you look terrific. Just think of all the great things they’ll say about what a hot couple we are.”
She turns to me and gives me a hard stare. “Is that all you care about? How hot we look together?”
“All I care about is saving my job, Aspen. And if us looking hot together makes that happen, then yes.” I reach up and run my thumb across her pouty lips. “Now paint a smile on those lips and earn your paycheck.”
She looks at me. I can tell she wants to argue, but she doesn’t. She inhales deeply and blows out a breath so long and slow I can practically see the tension leave her body. “Fine,” she says. “I’m going to be the best damn girlfriend money can buy.”
“That’s the spirit,” I say, just as an attendant opens the car door for us to get out.
We make our way up the red carpet and stop several times to pose for photographers. For one picture, Aspen leans into me and puts her hand inside my tux jacket, right over my heart. I look down at her and smile. Damn, she’s good. This will make for one hell of a picture.
Luckily for Aspen, we’re seated at a large table with Brady and Rylee. Caden and Murphy are across the room with some other teammates. Rylee helps when people come by and ask questions about Aspen and me. She gushes about how cute a couple we are and how perfect we are for each other.
By the time dinner is over, we’ve become the talk of the benefit. And when the dance floor opens up, I pull Aspen onto it so everyone can see us dance.
“Isn’t this a little over the top?” she asks when I dance as close as I can get to her without being overly indecent.
“They’re eating it up,” I say. “See that guy over there with the bald head by the bar? He’s my manager. He hates me. And I’m sure he hates this. Us. I’m sure it’s why he hasn’t introduced himself to you like everyone else has. He’s been watching us closely all night.”
“And he makes the decisions?” she asks.
“He and Jason, the team owner who you met before dinner. Jason has the final say, which is good, because if it were only up to Rick, I’d be long gone by now.”
I feel a tap on my back and turn around to see Rick standing behind me.
“Mind if I cut in?” he asks. “I haven’t had the chance to meet your lovely date.”
I don’t miss the fact that his words are dripping with resentment and sarcasm.
Aspen shakes her head just enough to let me know she doesn’t want to dance with him. But I step aside anyway. She’s got this. And maybe this is exactly what I need to get him off my back.
“Okay, but I can’t stand being away from her for too long.”
He laughs disingenuously. “I don’t blame you.”
I back away and watch the two of them dance and talk. I even see Rick laugh a few times. She’s charming him. It’s goddamn perfect.
Then halfway through the song, Conner cuts in and dances with Aspen. Then Spencer. Then Benham. I feel myself getting angrier by the minute watching Aspen laugh with all of them. I can’t seem to help myself when I storm forward and push Benham out of the way. I hold up my hand and stop Cole, who looks like he was going to be next in line.
“That’s it for dancing with my girl,” I growl at them. “She’s all mine for the rest of the night.”
Aspen giggles as Benham and Cole back away. “Wow, you are getting good at this. You’re very convincing as the jealous boyfriend.”
I narrow my eyes at her, wondering what the hell she’s talking about. “The press needs to be taking pictures of us, not you with them.”
She lunges forward and into my arms. Then she whispers, “Dance with me, Tom Sawyer.”
The drinks she had at dinner are definitely kicking in. She presses herself against me and I put an arm around her to pull her even closer. I’m not much of a dancer, but with her I don’t even have to try to be. It’s like we move together in a way I’ve never moved with anyone else. Then again, I don’t dance much. Not like this anyway.
“Is that a gun in your pocket?” she jokes, looking down between us.
“Well, what do you expect when you’re grinding yourself against me?”
Amusement dances in her eyes. Then I look at her lips. Her cherry-red lips that I’ve been wanting to kiss all night. I don’t even look around to see if any cameras are pointed at us when I lean down and capture her mouth with mine.
She tastes good. She looks good. She feels good. My mind goes crazy thinking back to the night I had her. She has no idea that she’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted more than once. And the thought of it makes me even harder. If I don’t pull away, I’m bound to throw her against the nearest wall.
“Is everything okay?” she asks when I take a step back.
“Yeah.” I put my hands back on her waist, trying to keep some distance between us. “I just need to think of something other than your lips for a minute or I can’t promise I won’t take you into the back hallway and have my way with you.”
She follows my eyes down to the front of my trousers and laughs. When her eyes find mine again, she’s blushing. And she bites her bottom lip. Holy fuck that’s sexy.
I raise my eyebrows at her. “It can be arranged, you know, you and me finding a dark hallway to get it on.”
“While that might just be the most romantic proposition I’ve ever gotten, I think I’ll pass,” she says sarcastically.
“Come on, Aspen. Do I really have to go five more months? You can’t tell me dancing like this with me doesn’t do anything to you. I can tell it does. We’re both adults here. Why can’t we just let it happen? It’s clear we’re hot for each other.”
“Let it happen?” she says bitterly. “Sawyer, you’re paying me to give you fuck-me eyes. You’re paying me to kiss you and grind aga
inst you on the dance floor. I’m not letting you pay me to sleep with you.”
“What if I fire you and then re-hire you again tomorrow – then could we have sex?”
Her jaw drops. “No, then we could not have sex. You’re crazy.”
She tries to pull away, but I pull her back towards me. “Fine. But you’d better talk about something to get my mind off it. I’ve got a painful boner going on thanks to you.”
“Okay, let’s talk about my graduation next week.”
“Your graduation? What about it?”
“You’re planning on coming, aren’t you? It’s Saturday night.”
“Why would I do that?”
Her luscious cherry lips turn into a sour pucker. “You’re kidding, right? You need to come to my graduation, Sawyer. It’s what any boyfriend would do.”
“But it’s a night off. I have other plans.”
The truth is, I totally forgot about her graduation and I had made plans to go see Danny since we have an early game that day.
“Plans? What plans?”
“I don’t have to tell you everything I do, Aspen.”
“With the girl at the beach?”
I roll my eyes. “There is no girl at the beach.”
She steps back, releasing my hold on her. “Maybe I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe I don’t care what you believe.”
“You can be a real asshole, you know that?”
“Hey, you two,” Rylee says, coming up next to us. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were bickering like an old married couple.”
“What?” Aspen and I both say to her at the same time.
She laughs. Then she waves her hand at our surroundings. “Do you really want everyone to see you fighting? What are you arguing about anyway?”
“He doesn’t want to come to my graduation,” Aspen says.
“She doesn’t want to sleep with me,” I tell her. “Even though she clearly wants to.”
Rylee shakes her head and then drags us off the dance floor behind her. “First off, you have to go to her graduation, Sawyer. It’ll be good for you to make an appearance at something in her life. And second, are you out of your mind asking her to sleep with you? It’s against the terms of your contract and it would ruin everything you have going. Do you really want to do that?”
“I just thought—”
“You just thought you’d get a quick lay like you always do. Well, you can’t think like that anymore.” She motions to my pants. “Now go splash cold water on your face before you hurt someone with that thing.”
She hooks elbows with Aspen and they head off in the other direction, Aspen looking over her shoulder at me with a triumphant stare. The woman is infuriating sometimes. I don’t see what the big fucking deal is. We’re two consenting adults. Why can’t we sleep together and still have a professional relationship? Hell, even my lawyer was able to handle it.
I stumble down the hallway to the bathroom, aware that maybe I should stick to water for the rest of the evening. The wine was flowing freely at dinner. Mostly because the more you drink, the more zeros you’re likely to write on the check before the evening is out.
Just before I make it to the bathroom, I get pulled aside into a dim hallway.
A blonde woman, with breasts that are overflowing from her dress, backs me into a corner. “Sawyer Mills, I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” she says, jumping up onto me so I have no choice but to catch her.
Her lips crash down on mine. She tastes of vodka and cigarettes – not nearly as good as Aspen tasted. I try to put her down, but her legs clasp onto me like a vice.
“The women’s bathroom locks,” she says. “Want to join me for a quickie?”
I look at her for a few seconds too long. Long enough for her to think I’m contemplating it. Long enough for me to think I’m contemplating it. I mean, in all fairness, it has been a long time for me. Over a month in fact. Can I really be expected to be celibate that long? Can any man?
But then I focus on her face, taking in her smeared lipstick and fake eyelashes, and I want to kick myself for even thinking about it. And the reason I want to kick myself is not because of the contract or my job. The reason I want to kick myself is because she’s not Aspen. And in this moment, I realize I don’t want to sleep with anyone who isn’t her. And the realization guts me. It guts me because having Aspen isn’t in the cards. Truly having any woman isn’t in the cards. Not for me anyway. And I wonder if being with the one woman I want but can never have is a cruel twist of fate.
“Get off me,” I say to the woman.
Then someone walks around the corner and almost runs into us. “I’m sorry, I was looking for the—”
Aspen’s eyes go wide when she sees me holding a woman in a compromising position. She looks from the woman back to me, just shaking her head.
“It’s not what you think,” I say, trying again to put the woman down. Once I have her off me, I reach out for Aspen. “She jumped up on me. It’s nothing.”
She looks at the woman. “Yeah, I can see that,” she says. “The nothingness is written all over her face.”
She turns to walk away, but I grab her arm and pull her back. “She’s nobody,” I say.
Aspen shakes her head at me and I think I see her eyes get glassy. “And that’s exactly why you’re an asshole.” She rips her arm out of my hand. “We’re done. This is done. You can go to hell.”
Aspen turns and runs down another hallway. The woman grabs me and holds me back. “Let her go. I’m here and willing.”
“Just stop,” I say, removing her hand from me.
The woman calls out after me as I race down the hallway and open all the doors to try and find Aspen. But she’s gone. One of the doors leads to the outside and I can just make out the bottom of her dress as she pulls it into a cab and shuts the door.
Chapter Twenty
Aspen
I put down the phone, still angry over what Sarah told me. But I know she’s right. The contract specifically states ‘if he was found to have had sexual relations with another woman.’ I was stupid not to amend it to cover all activity including kissing and whatever else Sawyer and the skank were doing last weekend.
I look at the tabloid magazines sitting on my coffee table. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. It makes me out to be just another one of his throwaways. ‘Trouble in Paradise,’ one headline reads. ‘It was only a matter of time,’ boasts another.
Nobody got a picture of Sawyer and the woman I saw him with, but that doesn’t matter. They’re posting old pictures of him and random women to make it look like I’ve been getting played all along. I can’t even count how many of my classmates and friends have called to console me over our breakup.
But the thing is, when it comes down to it, I had to admit to myself that I was jealous. That I’ve fallen for a guy who isn’t capable of being with one woman. And even if he were, he wouldn’t choose the one he hired to play a part.
My ridiculous fantasy of him becoming that guy I met the first night, of him falling for me the way I’ve fallen for him, of the two of us living happily-ever-after – it’s all a silly dream. One I know I’ve been fighting since day one.
I don’t even know how it happened. He’s not that great of a guy if I’m being honest. He’s self-centered. He has no idea how to treat a woman. And his arrogance knows no bounds. Why would he think he wouldn’t have to go to my graduation? It’s ludicrous.
I’ve read his texts and emails a dozen times. Each one seemed more desperate. He claimed he was cornered by that woman. That she came on to him and it had just happened when I ran into them. He practically begged me to let him come over. He did come over, but I had Bass turn him away.
But the memory of that woman and her smeared lipstick. And the reality that he’d just said he wanted to find a dark hallway and have sex with me. It all adds up to the fact that he’s an arrogant liar. Maybe he’s been sleeping around all along but has just been
very discreet about it.
“Come on, beautiful, you can’t be late for your own graduation,” Bass says, looking all handsome in his dress shirt and tie. “And I told Brooke we’d pick her up on the way.”
“She really likes you,” I say.
He nods. “Yeah, I know.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You don’t like her? She’s very pretty. And nice. She’s the only one of my classmates who hasn’t tried to get something out of this whole deal of my friendship with a famous baseball player.”
“She got courtside seats,” he reminds me.
“But she didn’t ask for them.”
“So, there’s still a deal?” he asks.
I look at the ground. “Yeah. Technically, he didn’t violate the contract.”
“I’m still not sure why you’re so pissed, Penny. You’ve been moping around the apartment all week. You should be excited. You’re graduating. You’re getting a shit-ton of money. You can go to grad school. And Denver will stay out of prison.” He sees me staring at the tabloid on the table. He runs a hand through his hair. “Shit. You’ve fallen for the guy, haven’t you? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
I shrug and try to swallow the tears that threaten to fall.
“Mother fucker,” he says, going over to sit on the couch.
He looks mad. Really mad. But more than that, he looks hurt.
“You know it can’t happen, don’t you?” he asks. “The guy is a womanizer. If you didn’t know that before last weekend, you do now. He begged you to sleep with him and when you said no, he grabbed the next person in line. He’s not worth it, Aspen. He’s not worth your thoughts, your time, and especially not your tears.” He stands up and wipes his thumb under my eye to catch one that’s fallen.
I shake my head. “I don’t know how it happened, Bass. It just did. I don’t want to like the guy. And when we’re apart, I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t. But when we’re together, something about us just clicks. The way he looks at me, touches me.”
Stealing Sawyer Page 16
