“Wait! What about my jacket?” But the bouncer had already disappeared back in side.
When I looked back Josh was bent over, one hand braced on the building to steady himself. “Damn. You just got us kicked out.” He laughed drunkenly.
“I’m so sorry to throw a wrench in your social life.” I crossed my arms across my chest and leaned against the building, still fuming.
He groaned. “I was going to get laid tonight, Ava. That girl was a sure thing.” He ran his eyes down my body while he wove on his feet. “You know, you and I never—”
I leveled him with a stare. “Not in a million years.”
“The ground’s spinning right now,” he mumbled.
“Tell me this.” I pointed a finger at him and narrowed my eyes, my other hand still braced on the building for balance. “Did you take the picture or did you get someone to take it?”
Josh shrugged. “Course I didn’t take it. But I knew someone was gonna be there. It wasn’t a big deal to get it and share it with the right people.”
“So you screwed over your best friend for nothing.” The realization did more to sober me than two hours of mainlining water could.
“It’s not nothing, Ava. Shit. When you’re not a Townsend, you have to color outside the lines to get what you want. Nate might have a good heart, but he’s still some rich kid who does whatever the fuck he wants and gets away with it.”
As an assertive woman and reigning president of the Nate Townsend fan club, I did the only thing possible.
I pulled my fist back and slammed it into Josh’s face as hard as I could.
“What the—?” He touched his nose. “You crazy bitch! I’m bleeding!”
I couldn’t see any blood, but my hand was starting to seriously hurt …
The police car parked at the curb hadn’t been on my radar until an officer stepped out of the car with a purposeful look on her face. My eyes widened. “Oh shit.”
Lex and Jordan came running out of the bar just as my hands were tugged behind my back. The cold metal on my wrists killed my buzz even more.
“Ava? What the hell is going on?” Jordan demanded.
“I have no idea!”
The female officer started to push me into the backseat of the car.
“Are you fucking serious?” Lex was vibrating with anger, but not at me. “She’s a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet!” she shouted at the officer. “I’ll be right there,” she told me, running around to peer in the window of the car. Her voice was muted through the closed window. “Don’t do anything reckless—er, anything else reckless. I’ll send John down.”
In a whirlwind of fluorescent lighting and fine print I was taken to the station, written up, and fingerprinted. Thirty minutes later I found myself in a concrete cube.
This was not how I’d thought tonight would go down.
I eyed up my cell mate. She was taller than me, like most of the world, but skinny. Her hair had seen better days.
Fuck. I was behind actual bars. I walked up to them, feeling them in my hands. It would’ve been cool if I hadn’t been so freaked out.
Mom would freak when she heard about this. Dylan had been busted for drugs in high school, but by Dad and not the cops. Dad’s gambling issues were bad but not illegal. My closest call was as an accomplice to stealing a street sign when I was twelve. As far as I knew, I was the only Cameron to actually land myself in jail. It would be the new reigning achievement in the Cameron Family Hall of Shame.
Minutes dragged by. The officers had taken my purse and phone so I didn’t have anything to do. No apps or celebrity gossip sites.
I called out. “Excuse me? What’s going on?” A telltale sensation crept up. It always happened when I got nervous. “Can I use a bathroom?”
A stern woman with a clipboard appeared. She eyed me like she wasn’t about to be impressed with anything coming out of my mouth. “Just cool your heels.”
I walk back to the bench and sat gingerly on it. I was in jail, my hand was really starting to hurt, and I had to pee like a racehorse.
The other woman looked over at me. “You hooking?” she asked in a low voice when the policewoman had gone.
“Am I—what?” I glanced down at my clothes. My skirt was pretty short, but my top was DVF. I sighed. “No. I hit a guy.”
She nodded knowingly. “Bet the asshole deserved it.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the cinder wall of the cell. “Pretty sure he did.”
Just as I was reconciling myself to this fate, a voice cut through the din of the police station. “Yes, the paperwork is here. He’s not pressing charges. It was a misunderstanding.”
Impossible. I was definitely hearing things.
I rushed to the bars to try and see down the hall.
Nothing. I sank back to sit on the floor.
This was the last time I was going out, getting drunk, and hitting some guy. I’d learned my lesson. My hand, which was aching every time blood flowed to it, agreed with me.
Then the most perfect shoes in the world appeared. Black leather. Italian.
And I forgot the pain.
I dragged my eyes upward from the shoes, my breath catching when our gazes connected.
It wasn’t even a contest. Nate looked a million times more put together than me in one of his best suits. Which seemed bizarre, since it was one in the morning. But the moment his eyes locked on mine, I couldn’t have cared less what he was wearing.
I pulled myself up to standing. “Am I hallucinating? It’s been so long. No water, no food …” I held my hand in front of my face to see if it was moving.
“How long has she been in here?” he asked curtly over his shoulder.
“About forty-five minutes.”
Nate turned back to me. Coughed.
“I don’t have a watch,” I said defensively. “But that’s not the point. What are you even doing here?”
“Lex called me.”
This wasn’t adding up. I blame it on the booze. “Don’t you live in the Midwest now?”
“I flew home yesterday. I’d let Lex know I was coming back this weekend because—” he shrugged “—I guess I hoped she’d tell me I still had a shot. She seemed to think I did.
“My phone was off tonight but I woke up when Jordan pounded on my door. Then on the way down here I played your voicemail. It was pretty unreal. Even if you were drunker than a socialite on her twenty-first birthday.” Nate looked into me with those blue eyes. “Did you mean what you said?”
I nodded. But there was something else I needed to get out. “Nate, Josh was the one who leaked the photo. I’m so sorry.”
His face set in a grim expression. “Shit. I’ll deal with it. Later.”
My nerves started to ease for the first time in the month since he’d gone. “Nate? I’m so fucking glad you came.”
He reached through the bars to take my hand. “Me too,” he murmured.
“Me too.” We both turned to look at the woman behind me.
“Get me out of here,” I whispered.
“You got it.”
The police woman came back to discharge me. Once the door was open I sank, grateful, into Nate’s familiar arms.
The other woman from the cell piped up. “You her pimp?” she asked Nate.
The corner of Nate’s mouth twitched.
“Just say yes,” I muttered. We walked out, me leaning on him. My first breath outside felt like the best one I’d taken in my entire life.
“So you hit Josh,” Nate asked as we walked to his car. His voice held a smidge of admiration.
I nodded. “I am president of the Nate Townsend fan club,” I replied.
“The what?” He looked confused.
“Don’t worry about it, Superman.” I flexed my fingers, making a face as my knuckles burned.
“How’s your hand?” he asked, taking it to inspect before he opened the car door for me.
A giant sigh whooshed out. “Honestly, Nate? It hurts like a fu
cker. I don’t know how guys can do this all the time.”
He chuckled, and the sound made up for the pain in my hand and then some. “Me either.”
Chapter 35
Nate
I flicked on the pot lighting in my kitchen. It cast soft beams into the darkness.
I was grateful I still had the apartment for another month before I had to decide what to do with it.
“What are you doing?” Ava demanded when she emerged from the washroom. She was silhouetted in the light.
I shut the freezer door. “Getting ice for your hand.” I held up a bag of peas.
She crossed to me with a familiar look in her eyes. One I’d imagined a hundred times in the last month.
My gaze fell to her lips.
“We should talk,” I started. That was what I’d wanted this weekend. To talk to her, to have a shot at working this out so I could stop being so fucking miserable.
Ava nodded. “We should talk.” But her expression was saying something else. She reached me and took the bag out of my hand, dropping it on the floor without losing eye contact.
“You don’t want to,” I guessed.
“It’s four am, Nate,” she whispered, and her voice sent heat down my spine. “Just tell me one thing. Did you come back for me?”
I nodded silently.
She made a sound in her throat. “Good. We can talk about the rest later.”
Ava pulled my mouth down to hers. I didn’t put up a fight.
I’d gone weeks without her. The first week was spent second-guessing my decision. The next was spent throwing myself into work, reminding myself why I was in Minneapolis. Hoping it would keep me from lying awake at night, which I did, and forgetting Alexis’s words, which I didn’t. The third week was spent wondering if the silence meant she’d found someone else. I’d finally given in and called Alexis, sweating bullets while I waited for her to tell me what I needed to hear.
“Dammit, Suit, I missed you.” Ava gasped between kisses. My hands ran over her body, feeling her breasts through her top, smoothing down her sides to her ass through the skirt, and it felt like coming home in more ways than one. Nothing had ever felt as good, as right, as she did.
“Call me Nate,” I muttered.
“What?” Ava pulled back, dazed. Her eyes were shining.
I brushed my thumb possessively over her lower lip. “I’m in love with you and I want you to call me by my name when you look at me like that.”
She melted. “Done.”
I wanted to show her. Not just with my words, but with my body. To worship her so she was without an instant of doubt that she was what I needed. Wanted. I hoisted her up on the counter and pushed her back so she was lying down, bunched her skirt up around her waist and breathed in her smell.
Fuck, it’d been too long. Our chemistry had always been off the charts, but it wasn’t just that. It hurt not to talk to her, touch her, love her. Her crazy mouth. Her passion. Her caring.
I licked a long line through her panties and she moaned. Then I pulled the scrap of fabric to the side and tasted her. It was all I could do not to devour her.
Ava’s hands fisted in my hair as she bucked to meet my mouth, letting out a long moan. My tongue never relented, stroking then sucking. My fingers slid into her wet heat and I groaned at the feel of her.
I lifted my head for a moment to look at her. I wiped my mouth on my shirtsleeve but never stopped stroking. “It’s been torture, being away from you,” I murmured. “It feels like every second of every day I’m thinking about you.”
“Nate, I should have listened. You’re too important to me to—” I fused my mouth on her until she cried out as she came.
It wasn’t enough. I had four weeks to forget.
I pulled her off the counter, supporting her as she landed on shaky legs.
“Bedroom.” Ava looked up at me, eyes wide and knowing.
“Yes.”
We tripped backward toward the room and she got her hands on me, undoing my belt and my pants and reaching inside. I hissed out a breath through my teeth.
“Fuck, kitten.”
“Too far, Nate. Screw the bedroom.”
The best words in the English language.
She pushed me down and followed me to the carpet. I rolled over so she was under me, then worked off my pants and shorts.
“Dammit, did you get bigger?” she muttered.
I fought a grin as I buried myself in her.
Then there was no room for jokes. I couldn’t hold back and we were sprinting, panting, for the end.
~
An hour after I broke her out of jail, Ava and I lay on the carpet. My arm was around her and I gazed into her green eyes.
How the hell did I leave this girl?
“That was …” I groaned.
“Mhmm,” she purred in response, curling tighter into me. “Can you say it?”
My brain was still rebooting. “Say what?”
“You know.” She hit me.
“That I love you? I don’t know. You didn’t say it back.” I squinted at her.
“Try me again,” she insisted.
“I love you, Ava. I’m in love with you.”
“I love you,” she whispered. Damn if my heart didn’t explode hearing her say the words.
“Steals-your-breath, strips-you-bare, indie-makeout love?” I teased.
“Fuck yeah.”
I groaned and stroked a hand down her hair, breathing her in. “I missed you so damn much. I could barely work.”
She pressed her lips to my chest. “Lex and Jordan were ready to put me down. I think they thought I’d never recover.”
“Well, I’m glad to be back.”
Ava pushed off me to look down into my eyes. “When you told me about the move, and that you didn’t tell your dad, I was afraid it meant I was losing you. I didn’t trust you. Or trust us.”
“I know. And you were right. I should’ve said no, or talked to you about it. It was stupid and unfair to assume you’d just go along with it. But I guess I never had anything that meant that much to me before and I didn’t know what to do with it. I wanted to protect you. And us.”
“So what happens now?”
I knew what she meant. “I have a lead on a job.” My fingers stroked her arm. I couldn’t stop touching her in case she vanished again. “Ty has an in with a firm here. They know my father and aren’t his biggest fans. They’re willing to take a chance on me. I’m trying them out.”
Ava frowned. “Do you really want to do that? What about your dad’s campaign?”
I shook my head. “I won’t say anything against him. And if he asks me, I’ll even speak for him. But I don’t want to practice at Townsend Price. It’s too much like being under his thumb. I want to make a difference and do it in my own name. And I can do that, while being a lawyer.”
“I’m so glad.”
“I have to go to Minneapolis next week.” She stiffened and my arms tightened around her. “Just to tie up some loose ends. I’ll be back next weekend for good. We should take a holiday. Get away from the drama. Just you and me.”
Ava sighed as she traced circles on my chest. “Damn, that sounds perfect. Once the lawsuit is gone.”
I groaned. I’d all but forgotten about it with everything else.
“Our court date is next week,” Ava reminded me. “If this takes a while to decide, we could be spending as much in legal fees. I wish you could just represent us, Nate.”
I shook my head. “I wish I could too. But there’s got to be something I can do.”
Chapter 36
Ava
I walked to the counter at Lindy’s and ordered coffee for two.
“Thanks for meeting me.”
The short man with gray-blond hair eyed me suspiciously. “My lawyer advised me against it. You’ve got fifteen minutes. What did you want to say that we couldn’t discuss with him?”
It was Monday morning. Our court date was Wednesday. We had two days
to get this straightened out if we wanted to avoid going in front of a judge. And I was desperately hoping to do just that.
I motioned to a table by the window, and we sat. I pulled out the file folder Nate and I had spent all weekend putting together. None of the information was from Nate’s time representing Bryson. Just some old-fashioned research—which it turned out my boyfriend was damned good at.
I slid the file across the table.
Lindy dropped over our coffee and I smiled at her. Bryson frowned.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded, opening the folder.
“I don’t know,” I said innocently, turning back to him. “But it looks like this contract, which I got from a Jennifer Marvin and Co., says that for the last five years you haven’t even been producing your own designs. You’ve been subcontracting them.”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s not illegal.”
“No. Except that you haven’t told anyone. Which means you want to keep it quiet. Probably because people wouldn’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for designs that aren’t even yours.” I cocked my head. “Funny thing. Wasn’t Jennifer Marvin and Co. sued for infringing on copyright?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re a meddling amateur,” he hissed.
“True. And I’m nowhere near as good at keeping things quiet as you are, Mr. Bryson. Don’t you think the judge will be interested to find this out? I don’t know much about the law, but if I were in his shoes, I’d at least want to know about all this.” I thought about it a moment. “What kind of shoes do judges wear?”
Bryson was glaring at me like I was dirt under his shoe. But instead of just loathing, I could see the fear in his gaze. “What do you want. Money?”
I shook my head. “Drop the suit.”
He looked incredulous. “That’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want. All I want. I’m not here to expose you, unless I have to. Make your designs. We just want to be able to make ours.”
Bryson laughed sardonically. “Good luck. The industry isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You make one skirt and think your star’s on the rise. It’s not easy. One day you’re in and the next you’re garbage.”
Stripped (Travesty Book 2) Page 24
