Can't Buy Me Love

by Rin Daniels

  The date Kat was supposed to pay for, and didn’t actually get to eat. Adam had steamrolled right over her, leaving money with the waitress for food they didn’t even get to eat.

  Part of her preened, a selfish little voice that insisted there was nothing wrong with a man spending money on her.

  The rest of her didn’t like the feeling.

  She could take advantage of him. She didn’t want to.

  Which was why she’d stopped for take-out, feeling more than a little out of place in her dress, and eaten half of it in the car. At least she wasn’t still hungry, even if her mouth kept salivating at the thought of those abandoned Portofino dishes. Next time, she thought.

  And next time, she’d pay before Adam got the chance.

  Next time?

  Okay, so maybe she was counting on a second date.

  If the thought made her feel giddy, she tamped it down before she did something stupid. Like conga dance in the front yard.

  Kat wrestled the old car door open, shut it gently behind her. Heels hanging from one hand, she padded barefoot to the front door. Without dancing.

  The house remained dark as she made her way up the stoop. The door was unlocked, which gave her pause but didn’t surprise her. For a woman intimately familiar with criminal behaviors, Barbara didn’t remember the little things—like locking doors or putting her jewelry away.

  The living room was empty. So was the kitchen. The house remained quiet as she locked the door behind her, and made her way to her own bedroom.

  She peeled off her dress, pulled on her pajamas, brushed out her hair and fell into bed. Her body hummed, happily buzzed on more than just a glass of wine. If Adam was a drug, she’d gladly take more of him.

  Poor guy. She only got the vaguest sense of what happened, but going back to work didn’t seem like her idea of a good time.

  He was some kind of boss, obviously. That made sense. He probably headed some huge division within his company, being his dad’s son and all. She wondered if most billionaires went back to work after hours when things went awry. She always assumed they hired people to fix everything for them.

  Did that make Adam Laramie an exception or the rule?

  Kat nestled into her pillow, replaying the events of the night.

  Next time, would he let her order for herself?

  Would they even make it to dessert?

  She expected to remain awake, to mull over the night, but Kat was more tired than she thought. She fell asleep, wrapped around her pillow, and slept like the dead until the phone she’d set on the nightstand buzzed the next morning.

  Sunlight streamed around the curtains by her bed.

  A text from Nadine, asking about her date. She peered at it blearily.

  Past eleven.

  That was late. Later even than her mom, who didn’t usually wake up before ten.

  Which reminded her. When did Barbara get home?

  Yawning, she jotted off a vague reply, promised to call. Her eyes crossed with the effort. God, she felt good. Bleary, but good.

  Her stomach growled as Kat rolled out of bed. The house was still suspiciously silent. The bathroom was cool and steam-free, no sign of a recent shower. She pinned her bangs back and washed her face of last night’s traces. A tender spot on her neck made her blush all over again as her fingers brushed across it.

  Adam Laramie had given her a hickey. When? A vague memory of his mouth against her neck while she came apart in his arms filled her mind.

  Oh. Yeah. That seemed about right.

  She dabbed makeup on the red spot just by her collar bone. It wouldn’t escape the sharp eyes of her mother, but if she was careful with her shirts, she’d be able to hide it until it faded.

  And in the meantime, she got to walk around with a sign that she’d shared a sexy moment with Adam.

  Kinky. And a little bit disconcerting.

  By the time she made it down the stairs, she didn’t know what to expect. And like a guilty kid, she froze as her mother’s blonde head rose from the magazine she leafed through.

  Barbara, wrapped in her customary kimono, greeted her with a wan smile. “Good morning, Katherine. How was your night?”

  “Um.” Don’t blush. “Fine.”

  “Oh, come on.” She gestured, a flutter of folded paper she held in one hand, and set the magazine pages-down. “You’re allowed your own life.”

  That didn’t sound right.

  Kat’s head tilted. “It was...nice.” What a fail term for it. It was spectacular. Sexy. Utterly mind-blowing.

  She was possibly ruined for life.

  And this was just after a frantic moment pinned against a brick wall. Maybe there was something seriously wrong with her.

  “That’s great,” her mom said. She stood, her mouth tilted up but her eyes worried. The circles underneath looked deeper today. Didn’t she sleep?

  “Let me get you some coffee,” Barbara began, but Kat caught her mother’s arm and turned her before she could pass in the hall.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  The woman’s gaze settled on the front of Kat’s bunny-patterned T-shirt. “I should make coffee.”

  Kat’s frown only pulled at the dull ache she hadn’t realized thrummed in her head.

  A thousand what-ifs tangled in her head.

  What if her dad had called from jail, even though he always said he never would? I’ll be out in six years, max. Don’t worry about me, girls.

  But then, he’d known how much they relied on him. How much his wife adored him.

  Maybe she’d called him. Told him about Kat’s plans. Wait, what if her mom had another money problem?

  What if this was nothing at all, and Barbara was just feeling lonely?

  God, she hadn’t thought of that. Kat had never brought up dating to her mom, never suggested she was inclined. She’d never even really had friends to hang out with until Nadine.

  What if Barbara took last night as a sign that Kat was going to abandon her, too? Just like everyone else.

  Man, that made her feel terrible.

  “Come on,” she said gently. “I’ll make the coffee.” She led the way to the kitchen. Her mom took a seat at the table, the papers clutched in her hands, and sighed so loudly that Kat couldn’t help but roll her eyes a little bit.

  Genuine or not, her mom appreciated drama the way Kat appreciated a good exit.

  It was a family thing, maybe.

  Kat scooped the grocery store brand grounds into the coffee filter and set the machine to brew. “Now,” she said, pulling two mugs from the peeling cabinet. She set them by the machine. “What’s so depressing that you look like you stayed up half the night pacing?”

  “I didn’t stay up all night,” her mom protested, but gave in at Kat’s lifted eyebrow. “I just... Well, look.”

  Kat took the folded papers she handed over. They’d been creased a few times, like Barbara had read and re-read them. Hitching her faded sweatpants up, Kat perched on the other chair and unfolded the letters.

  Two of them, each bearing a different letterhead.

  The verbiage didn’t differ all that much. Loans denied. Vague reasoning. No offer to locate a co-signer.

  There would be no money coming.

  Kat’s throat closed around a sudden, suffocating knot of anxiety. “You opened my mail.”

  “Only because they’d come from the banks.” Barbara got up to pour the coffee—a concession that told more about her worry than anything else. Usually, Kat served. Especially the coffee.

  The one thing they all had in common, every last Harris, was a habit of drinking coffee without cream. Drink bad coffee black, Jack Harris always insisted, and you can eat anything, drink anything, anywhere.

  That mattered, those days nobody was sure where the next hot meal would come from.

  “I was trying to come up with other ways to get money,” Barbara confessed, setting an old ceramic mug in front of Kat.

  “Join the club,” Kat sighed, and then
regretted it when her mother failed to respond with her usual acerbic wit. She looked up to find Barbara looking down at her own mug, clasped tightly between her hands.

  Her nails had been painted a brilliant sunset pink. Acrylics. Nothing less for Barbara Harris.

  Yoga class, huh?

  “Well,” Barbara continued, a hedging word if Kat had ever heard one. “After class, I was feeling kind of out of sorts, so I went walking downtown. Cleared my head.” She plucked an envelope from the pile she’d clutched. “Here, sweetie. It’s not much, but maybe it’ll help.”

  “Mom.” Kat frowned. She didn’t get the connection. “Is this the money dad gave you?”

  “No,” she replied, looking away. “I sold some jewelry.”

  By instinct, Kat’s gaze went to her mom’s throat. The gleam of gold there relieved her in ways she couldn’t explain. The locket meant less than nothing to Kat, but she still couldn’t help it.

  It was, all things considered, the only tie she had left to her brother. She suspected her mom felt the same way.

  “Just a few pieces,” Barbara added, pushing the envelope at her. “It’s not a lot.”

  Kat wordlessly took the envelope, peeled it open to count a few bills inside. It wasn’t a lot, not really. A few hundred.

  But maybe it’d buy some time from Wallace & Roane.

  What’s the catch? The words hovered on the tip of her tongue.

  She swallowed them. “Thanks, Mom,” she said quietly.

  “I was thinking,” Barbara continued, rotating her mug like a child who couldn’t sit still. “What if I just gave you everything else your dad gave me?”

  “No,” Kat said, quickly cutting off the stream of generosity before it led somewhere dangerous. She didn’t know if she should be suspicious or if she should feel any more guilty than she already did—couldn’t decide what kind of awful daughter that made her. “You’ve done enough, Mom, it’s okay. Keep your money, you’ll need it if things go bad.”

  Her mom managed a laugh. “You mean things could get worse?”

  Harris optimism tended towards the sarcastic.

  Kat wanted to put her head down on the table. Instead, she sipped at the bitter liquid in her cup, set the envelope down on the table, and tried to think about the next move.

  Wallace & Roane wouldn’t wait forever, and aside from a propensity to leave politely threatening letters and hunt her down in public venues, she didn’t know about their methods—or ethics. They could very well start laying down some hurt. Would a couple hundred buy them some leeway?

  Hollywood movies or not, people got twitchy about money. Especially about money in bulk. Twenty thousand dollars may be small change to a man like Adam Laramie, but to her—and to most financial firms—it represented a hell of a payday.

  Adam.

  He could make it all go away. She could beg him nicely enough, explain everything and, if she had to, get down on her knees—albeit in an entirely different way than she’d hoped to.

  But even as the thought it, her heart and mind joined in shouting her down.

  She didn’t need his money. Didn’t want it.

  She would not make the same mistakes she made back then. She was an all-new woman now.

  Very carefully, she folded up the rejection letters and tucked them with the envelope of money. “Okay,” she said, aiming for cheerful.

  Her mother’s eyebrows rose, manicured slashes colored by her usual beauty regimen.

  “This isn’t the end of the world,” Kat continued. She smiled at her mother’s stare, pale green skepticism over the rim of her black mug. “This should buy us a little time. Thank you.”

  “What do we do if it doesn’t?”

  “We can find another way.”

  “Do you have a kidney you don’t need?” Barbara asked dubiously.

  Only half a joke. The black market organ trade was alive and well, and she had very little doubt that someone in her father’s list of contacts knew how to finagle a buyer.

  She wasn’t that desperate.

  “No,” she said, setting her mug down. “But I can squeeze some money out of an investor.”

  “For what?”

  Kat wished her mother’s cloud of doubt didn’t sting quite so much.

  She took a deep breath. Then, on the exhale, said quickly, “I’ll find someone who wants to go into partnership for the salon.”

  Her mother’s eyebrows knotted. “That—”

  “If I offer a reasonable buy-in,” Kat said over her, forging on as the knot in her chest sharpened to near-pain, “I can take half the money I’d set aside for the salon and give it to the loan sharks. It won’t be all of it, but it’s a chunk.”

  “But that doesn’t—”

  “It’s okay,” she cut in again. “Really.” Kat couldn’t bear to listen to her mother’s protest. Whether it fell in Kat’s favor or not, encouraged her to remain a solo act or sell out for more, she didn’t want to listen.

  No matter the consequences, she was afraid she’d dig in, hold on to her dream and wait. Buy her own lie that everything would find a way without sacrifice.

  Harrises didn’t sacrifice, as a rule.

  But she couldn’t live on luck.

  “It’ll take me longer to get solid profits,” she said, frowning down into the ink-dark coffee. She’d made it a little too strong for the sale blend. “We’d wait a little longer before we could really be comfortable, but the initial investment should buy us the time we need to start making payments.”

  And it would take from Kat the ability to operate independently. She’d have an equal partner at the best—at worst, she’d be a lesser collaborator in her own salon. It depended on how much money a prospective partner would want to offer, and what they wanted in return.

  And she needed someone interested in such a thing.

  No small chore, not when she was already struggling to build a client list.

  Barbara leaned against the counter, her mouth pursed in a line that drew grooves on either side. “You’re pinning everything on the success of this salon, Katherine.”

  “I know.” What else could she do?

  Her mother gestured with her cup. “Have you considered that eighty percent of independent businesses fail in the first year?”

  A shaft of pain splintered in her chest. Kat sighed. “If it does,” she pointed out, “that first year will help clear out your debt.”

  Her mother’s frown tightened. “I can just sell more of my jewelry.”

  “It’s fine,” Kat snapped, surprising even herself. Then, as the words slapped the air between them, she pushed away from the table, taking her mug with her. “Thank you, Mom, but it’s fine. I’m going. I have things to do today.”

  Barbara let her go in silence.

  Relief and guilt and resentment tangled up inside her as Kat made her way up the creaking stairs and into her small bedroom. The bed took up most of the space, and a dresser ate up what was left. She didn’t have a lot of room for clutter.

  She closed the door behind her, set the mug down on the bare dresser top, and fought the tightening tension at her temples. She couldn’t cry now. If she did, she might lose whatever determination she had to see this through.

  Her mother had finally broken down and sold some jewelry. Most of what Barbara owned was fashion jewelry, but she’d picked up some finer pieces over the years. Kat didn’t know how many she’d sold off already.

  She’d done her part to bring in some money. Maybe it wasn’t enough, but it was more than Kat had expected. Now it was her turn.

  This wasn’t the end of the world. Kat was sure of it. So she’d have to find a partner. It wasn’t like she was the only independent business owner to do it.

  Others had made it. She could, too. Regardless of what obstacles stood in her way, this was Kat’s dream. She was a big girl, more than mature enough to handle setbacks like this.

  She flopped back on the bed and wished she was back in that hotel room they’d almost
gotten, snuggled up to Adam’s warm, lean back. At least then, she could have enjoyed the contentment she’d felt for a little while longer.

  Then again...what was stopping her?

  She reached under her pillow and felt around before she found the small card. Adam’s name, slightly raised against her fingertips, brought a smile to her lips.

  Was it Friday? It was. Would he be working?

  Of course. He had that meeting today. But how early? Before or after lunch?

  She wondered if he took lunch breaks.

  Forget ice cream and a drink. What she needed now was a little bit of Laramie charm.

  * * *

  The photos filling up his monitor were dark, colored black and blue thanks to the camera’s nighttime filter. Given the slightly grainy quality, Adam would guess a smartphone.

  Given the subject matter, the contents of the email they came with didn’t surprise him.

  He was going to have to end it with Kat.

  Whatever it was.

  Jordan’s fingers drummed on the surface of his tablet. “It came through your general email early this morning,” he said, his face and voice level. No judgment. That wasn’t his job.

  Adam appreciated that.

  Right under the inappropriate and incredibly stupid crack of jealousy.

  Jordan had seen the photos. Seen her, the curve of her hip as she clung to Adam’s waist with her long, long legs pale from the filter and bare. Kat’s expression, smudged somewhat thanks to the lighting, radiated raw pleasure.

  So much so that Adam’s hands twitched against the desk. His body hummed a hungry note bordering on obsessive.

  Somebody had caught them in that back corridor. Caught them, photographed them, and knew enough about him to send them as blackmail material.

  But not enough to know his private email.

  Jordan’s gaze dropped to his handheld computer, and the file he held under it. “I wiped it from the server, but we have no way of knowing how many copies are out there. Or whether the, erm, young lady in question is aware of it.”

  “By that, you mean behind it.” His voice barely undercut a growl.

  Jordan wisely said nothing.

  Damn it. He’d known better. He knew exactly what kind of family she came from. What if she’d set this up herself? Threw herself at him until he lost his mind and thought pinning her up against a wall in public was such a good idea?