by Stella Rhys
Damn it. Why was it so fucking impossible to resist him when he was already touching me?
“Fine,” I caved, breathing out in frustration at myself. “But if you break the deal and I screw this meeting up, Lukas, I’ll put you in the emergency room.”
“Shit. Is that right?”
“No. But in all likelihood, I will hate you,” I said, pushing past him to go into the living room. “I’ll probably nosedive into panic about my career and go another three years without sex. And this time, I’ll blame it on you.”
“Jesus Christ,” Lukas laughed. “No knocking then. Four days of quiet.”
“Starting now,” I added, gathering his clothes from the living room floor. Returning to the kitchen, I thrust the pile in his arms and pushed him swiftly toward the door. “That should be it. Now you gotta go.”
“You’re not going to let me get dressed first?” he grinned down at me.
“You can afford a three-second walk of shame.”
“Fine. But you don’t get to look at my ass on my way out.”
“Yeah, well I don’t want to,” I said, my laugh dangerously close to a giggle. Then before the bastard could charm me any further, I opened the door and pushed him right out.
12
LUKAS
There was a stupid grin on my face as I pushed through the revolving doors of Hoult Tower. I was an hour late for work but I wasn’t thinking about it. It was still a good morning – even despite the promise I’d just made to Lia.
Four days. No contact.
It sounded like hell already but the last thing I wanted was to be another asshole on that woman’s shit list. I wasn’t done with her yet. I’d gotten more than a good taste of her last night but I wanted more.
I wanted to touch and feel her again but I also just wanted to see her. I wanted to see her nail that meeting. It was partially self-serving since I knew I had no chance of taking her out again if she didn’t get the deal, but I also wanted to see the girl catch a break already. She was probably fucking adorable with a giant smile on her face and nothing to worry about. And as far as I could tell, she deserved it.
“Jesus. Someone got laid last night.”
I smirked before even turning to confirm Julian following me into the elevator. I watched as he hit ‘door close’ while making eye contact with some poor bastard running toward us to get in.
“See, these are the mornings that I hate working in your building. There’s nothing worse than starting your day with a smug billionaire.”
“I’m just noting the good mood you’re obviously in.”
“Right.”
“You look like you just got named prom queen.”
“Fuck off,” I laughed.
Julian faced forward with a grin. “Hey, doesn’t hurt to chip a little ice off your heart. Pretty soon you could be like Emmett – stupid and happy. Like a Golden Retriever.”
“Shoot me if I ever get as chipper as him.”
“You have my word,” Julian said, straightening the knot on his tie. “I take it you’re seeing her tonight?”
“Lia?”
“Who else would I be talking about? She’s all that’s been coming out of your mouth lately. It’s fucking bizarre.”
“Well, you’ve seen her.”
“I have. She’s hot,” Julian said. I laughed in surprise. It was a two-word admission but coming from Julian, it was a miracle. In terms of dating, my standards were high but his were astronomical. Borderline offensive. In all fairness, he harbored a pretty inhuman addiction to work so as far as women went, only the one percent had a shot at tempting him out of the office. He sucked a breath between his teeth and shook his head to make it clear that Lia fell within that group. “You’re just lucky you saw her first.”
“Again, fuck off. And don’t ask me about her till the end of the week. She has to write up a proposal for some big meeting on Friday so I’m barred from distracting her in any way till then.”
Julian looked impressed. “Damn. Really does sound like my kind of woman.”
“If I catch you looking at her, I’ll kill you.”
“It’s already like that? I’m surprised. You’re usually so eager to pass them off to Emmett after one night. To keep them from calling you, correct?”
The doors opened to two women who smiled shyly at us. I had no doubt they’d eavesdrop but I still lowered my voice. “There are different rules with this one. Neither of you are to ever go near her. Regardless of how it goes between us.”
Julian cocked an eyebrow. “So she’s on the untouchable list.”
“Sure.”
“I thought only Emmett kept one of those. It’s such a romantic, middle school girl notion,” he smiled. “Guess you’re both getting soft.”
“There’s a chance. Being even a little happy will do that to you. You should try it sometime.”
“Fuck off,” Julian laughed as the doors opened on my floor. “Get to work, asshole. You’re unbelievably late.”
I smirked. “I’ll meet you at The Pike at seven.”
The girls in the elevator giggled as I walked out of the elevator and down the marble hall that led to the glass doors of The Hendricks Group. A few weeks ago, the lettering behind reception still read Hendricks-Cameron. Now, I could hardly remember what that looked like. If only I could get rid of Cam as easily as I got rid of his name on the company.
Fucking hell.
“Is that him on the phone?” I asked the new girl upon walking through the front doors. She nodded, visibly rattled in her chair as she watched Noelle, who’d clearly just taken over the call for her.
“I mean it, Cam,” Noelle spoke low but clearly. “You can call from however many numbers you want but if you threaten Ashleigh again, I’ll personally go to the police and – ” She cut off when she spotted me motioning for her to put him through. Holding her hand over the receiver, she hissed at me. “Are you serious? You haven’t talked to him in a month, Luke, and it’s not like he’s gotten rational since. Just hold off for a bit.”
“I can handle it today. Put him through.”
I heard her heave a sigh before I closed my office door behind me. Talking to Cam for the first time since the buyout was probably the best way to kill a good mood but I wasn’t going to let him harass my staff another day so seating myself behind my desk, I took a breath. He fed off my anger so I wasn’t going to give him any. I’d already ripped him several new assholes the last time we spoke so today, I strained the emotion from my voice before picking up the phone.
“Cam.”
There was a long pause. It was like he couldn’t believe he’d finally gotten through.
“Fucking coward,” he finally hissed, sounding already unhinged. “You fucking piece of shit. You really think you’re going to get away with this? What the hell do you expect me to do with this contract? Huh? How am I supposed to get back on my feet?”
I tried not to laugh.
“You did this to yourself, Cam. I gave you ample time to read the terms. If you disliked them so much, maybe you shouldn’t have signed.”
I’d deliberately taken his legs out from under him with that contract. With the help of Julian’s artfully cunning attorneys, I’d designed it to specifically confuse my former partner – to make him only see the dollar signs. I said the buyout price would be cut in half if he didn’t sign within forty-eight hours, so he did and in the process, he unknowingly forfeited his right to speak to any former clients or employees. All athletes in the tri-state area were off the table, too, and he was to wait twelve months before setting up a new business. In that time, I planned to have him blacklisted by everyone in real estate.
Apparently, he’d only just caught on.
“You’re fucking unbelievable, Hendricks.” I could actually hear the spittle flying out of Cam’s mouth as he snarled into the phone. “I have my lawyers on this so you should know that unless you decide to get fucking smart and void this contract, I’m suing you.”
“I’ve had my countersuit ready for a long time, so by all means. Sue.”
He held the phone away and gave a long, comical growl. It sounded like something out of a goddamned Disney movie and if I didn’t know better, I’d laugh. But I did know Cam and I knew that sound generally preceded some sort of low blow – some cheap, last-ditch effort to piss me off. And I was prepared for it. It made my blood fucking boil, but I was prepared to hear him talk about Tess. About how he’d probably laughed behind her back while tricking her all those years. About how he toyed with her, treated her like his own personal doll – his “plaything,” as he liked to call it.
But to my surprise, he went in another direction.
“I could’ve pressed charges the day you put me in the hospital. But I didn’t.”
“I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I had you on camera admitting to multiple felonies.”
He ignored me. “It was two on one that day. You and Pretty Boy against me.”
“If you count Julian holding me back as two against one, then there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Fuck you. You know who’d be really proud of you for resorting to bullying?” he sneered. “That little princess of yours.”
“Trust me, Tess was more than happy to hear that I handed your ass to you.”
“I’m not talking about Tess. I’m talking about Wyatt.”
The blood drained from my face. I gripped the receiver and the room instantly spun at the mention of his name. Motherfucker. My heart slammed against my chest as Cam laughed at my silence.
“You know I’m right. Good thing the kid didn’t live to see you become the bully that used to torture him,” Cam sneered with delight. “By the way, what is it today? The Nineteenth? Shit, we’re exactly a week away from the day he decided to – ”
I hung up.
Rather, I slammed the phone down so hard both girls jumped in their seats outside. My heart was beating so fast I could barely see. I rose to my feet, my mind racing as I started out of my office with no direction in mind.
“Stop,” Noelle hissed, pushing me back in as I flung open the door. “Lukas, breathe. Sit down and just breathe.”
“I’ll breathe outside. There’s air.”
She ignored me and sat me down on my couch, standing over me with her hands on her hips.
“Nice try but I’m not going to let you find him and break the rest of his limbs. You’re not going to jail over Cam, okay?” she muttered, pushing back her blonde hair. “And not to say I told you so, but I did say you should wait till after the Twenty-Third to talk to him. You know your head’s just… better once that day passes.”
“You’re right.” I nodded vacantly. “My fault.”
“Don’t do that with me.”
“Do what?”
“Act all calm and collected when I know you aren’t. Whether you like to admit it or not, I’m one of the few people you can actually talk to about this shit,” Noelle said. “I’m one of the few people who knows everything about you – you, Tess, Wyatt and your stupid fucking parents.”
I glanced up at her. She wasn’t wrong. Noelle had grown up with us in Miami, right next door to our dysfunctional house. She knew the ins and outs of our family – every crack in our dark and broken history.
Of course, she also used that knowledge to get in my bed.
She knew when I was at my weakest and she knew when to pounce. It was cheap and ugly and precisely why I preferred to keep a distance from most. If knowing my past meant securing some permanent spot in my heart then I wanted the fewest number of people in the know.
“I don’t want or need to talk about this, Noelle. I never do and you know that.”
“I do. But if you’re ever going to open up to someone, shouldn’t it be me?” she asked, sitting across from me on the glass table. “And fine, even if you don’t open up to me, at least let me be the one who makes you feel good. I don’t like when you let someone else have that job,” she pouted in a baby voice. But she dropped the cute act fast when I let several seconds pass without saying anything. “Are you seeing that girl?”
“What girl?”
“The one who came in looking for her key.”
“Whether or not I am is not your business.”
Noelle scoffed. “I beg to differ.”
“How so?”
“Because you’re my business, Lukas.” Noelle glared at me. “I put time into you. I’ve always been there for you. In case you forgot, when you left for college, I was the one who had to listen to Tess’s crazy ass crying all the time, talking about all the shit your parents were putting them through. When you were here starting the company, I was in Philly helping your sister drive Wyatt to school if she was too fucking sad to get out of bed,” she hissed mockingly. “I am the closest thing to a girlfriend that you have ever had, that you’ll ever have and I’ll always know you better than any slut you’re fucking, including the neighbor, so don’t try to push me out of your life because I deserve to be here. I earned my spot here.”
My jaw was tight as I stared at Noelle. Zero to sixty. It was her specialty. Ignoring her fiery stare, I got up and returned to my desk, noting that it was too early to call even Emmett for a drink.
“You’ve known me most of my life, Noelle. That’s true,” I said once I resumed my seat. “And I’m grateful you were often there for Tess but make no mistake, there’s no debt here. From what I understood, you were kind to my sister because you were her friend – not because you looked forward to me owing you for the rest of my life. I might’ve felt like I did at one point but I don’t anymore.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Because it’s bullshit,” I fired back. “First off, you begged to help with Tess’s depression. When I moved them to Philly, you begged me to move you there, too, so I could pay you to help around the house,” I said heatedly. “All that aside, only a horrible person would take advantage of someone they were there for during a hard time. Are you telling me you’re that person?”
“I’m telling you you’re a fucking prick,” Noelle snapped, getting up and storming out. I watched her then grab her purse and jacket from reception and march right into the elevators, either taking a break or flat-out leaving for the day. It wasn’t something any other employee dared to do but I’d set a bad precedent for Noelle from the start.
She was a special case because like Cam, she’d been a part of my life when it was nothing – when I was a college kid struggling with classes, custody and a plan for what the future would be.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to remember what Lia had told me barely a few hours ago. Something about bad people doing good things. But I was too fired up to put my thoughts together so breathing deep, I tried to at least remind myself that this had started out a good day. It had actually been my best morning in a long time and I’d be foolish to pretend it didn’t have to do with my neighbor.
“Idiot,” I cursed myself as I stared at the ceiling.
Four fucking days.
After last night, I knew it’d be hard. Thanks to this morning, it was about to be torture.
13
LIA
I probably looked like a mess but rule one of lockdown mode was never look in the mirror. It was always too startling.
“Goddammit,” Sara mumbled to herself, still typing away at her office. “Fuck this stupid printer. If this printer had a life, I would end it.”
I laughed. She was still at work and we weren’t really having an active conversation – I just had her on speaker for company. It’d been too long since I’d had contact with another human being. At this point, I’d gone almost seventy-two hours without leaving my apartment. The last time I’d done that was a year ago, when I got my first big order: four hundred hand-painted truffles, each pair individually wrapped to serve as souvenirs for a June Magazine Christmas party. June was the publication Sara wrote for and she’d busted her ass to get me the job over the big company they usually
hired. It was a huge opportunity and since it was a last-minute gig, I wound up working nonstop for three days and eating nothing but boiled eggs and trail mix for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was exhausting, kind of gross and probably not great for my health so I swore to never do it again.
Yet here I was, doing exactly that to get this business plan written.
“Why the fuck do I need yellow ink to print a black and white document?” Sara whispered furiously as I cleared off my kitchen counter, laying out my chocolate, cream, colored cocoa butter and molds. “And why do they turn the heat up so high in this damned office?”
“I don’t know. Take your pants off?”
“I don’t work from home, Lia, so I can’t show up to work every morning without my pants on. Not everyone’s as lucky as you.”
True. I was literally too busy to put pants on the past three days. All I wore was a T-shirt and pajama shorts while buckling down and making that business plan my bitch. The first day of lockdown mode had gone toward writing up an overview of my company. Yesterday had gone toward mapping out industry, customer and competitor analysis. Today, I’d written up my entire marketing plan and having just completed that, I was rewarding myself by relaxing with some cooking before bed.
“Lia. Tell me what you’re making so I don’t rage-quit my job right now,” Sara said, tossing something across her desk. It sounded like her mouse.
“I’ve got lavender truffles on deck.”
“I want that. In my face. What do you use? Real lavender?”
“Mm-hm. The flower heads are steeping in the cream right now, so they’ll be infused in the ganache.”
“Ugh, you little slut. That sounds so good,” Sara muttered, back to typing furiously. “I need like, four pounds of chocolate to calm me down right now. I’m so cranky.”
“Go find your fuck buddy,” I grinned. “That usually helps you get rid of the crankiness.”
“Yeah, I would’ve done that already but it’s eight o’clock and he went home two hours ago, like a normal person,” Sara said, drumming her fingers against her desk with that restless energy of hers. “Hey, maybe I should invite the overnight custodian to be my other fuck buddy. That way I could have a day shift one and a night shift one.”
