Don't Let Me Go

by Rin Daniels

Nadine paused mid-scrawl, her gaze flicking up to him. “What?”

  “On your date.”

  Her eyes widened, then lowered to the strip of white. Ew, creeper. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, giggling because it’d be less offensive than gagging. “Lucas likes to surprise me.” She all but slammed the pen down on the counter as the guy’s smile edged into something closer to a leer. “We’re done, right? No more loan?”

  “You want a copy?”

  “No,” she said, turning away.

  A dull thud rocked the counter. She jumped as he cursed, looked back to find him half-bent, shoulder rolling like he was rubbing his leg. “Take it,” he managed, teeth bared. “But keep it hidden somewhere safe, just in case.”

  Nadine stared at him, at the innocent beige front desk, and what little she could see of the patchy carpet behind it. “Uh… Fine.” She took the paper he all but threw at her. Her mouth pursed. “What was that sound?”

  His brown eyes flicked left. “Office cat.”

  Okay, then. Creeper factor upped to eleven. Nadine smiled, nodded like she totally got it, and made her escape while she could.

  * * *

  Five feet and four inches of suicide by blonde strolled out of the office, and the back of Lucas Bourdin’s skull hit the front desk with a rattling thud. He covered his face with one hand and didn’t have to look to know Johnny was laughing his ass off.

  “I should have punched you harder,” Lucas muttered into his palm.

  He’d had just enough time to duck beneath the front desk when Nadine came storming through wearing wide-eyed innocence and hell-bent determination. The fact he’d rocked an elbow into Johnny’s foot on the way down had only made everything worse. His butt hurt. His elbow hurt.

  His head hurt.

  “Already going to bruise,” his partner replied, not even trying to hide his amusement. “But then, you’re an MMA fighter, right?”

  She’d used his name for her mythical boyfriend, but it didn’t bother him. He’d known her too long to buy in to what was obviously a measure of self-protection. No girl with half a brain strolled into a loan shark office without some kind of security.

  What bothered him was that he’d heard his name on her lips in the same context as ‘boyfriend’ and his entire being perked up like a goddamn terrier.

  Johnny whistled when Lucas groaned. “What the hell was that, anyway?” his partner asked.

  That’s what he wanted to know. But Lucas didn’t know how to get answers from her without asking them, and asking them would make Nadine suspicious. Of everything. “Don’t know.”

  “What?” Johnny’s voice took on a breathy falsetto. “But aren’t you her boyfriend, Lucas?”

  “Shut up.”

  A fresh bout of laughter scraped over Lucas's nerves. Gouging his eyes out, he figured, would do him no favors. “This time, I will punch you in the mouth,” he warned good-naturedly, dropping his hands to deliberately not smile at the chortling man.

  Johnny made an effort, at least. “Okay, okay. Did you know your rich girl was attached to the Harris account?”

  Lucas didn’t know. He should have, but he didn’t. That kind of thing should have been noted—if for no other reason than because every avenue that led to money got processed with an account. If a debtor skipped, those avenues were paid a visit.

  The fact that this particular avenue stemmed from big blue eyes and a mouth he’d sworn never to explore infuriated him.

  Then again, if anyone could afford to pay off the Harris account, it was a Sherwood.

  “No,” he said shortly.

  Johnny huffed out a sigh. “Okay. Well, it’s no big deal.” He offered a hand. “At least it’s paid. She didn’t even check the interest.”

  Lucas took it, wincing. “I can’t believe she paid by credit. What the hell is she thinking?”

  “What, she thinks?”

  “Shut up,” Lucas said again. “Did you up the interest?”

  “And risk you climbing down my throat?” his partner asked evenly, lifting a thick black eyebrow. “You must think I’m stupid.”

  “Most of the time,” Lucas said readily.

  “Asshole.”

  Lucas wanted to laugh, but hell if he could. He wavered between outright fury and long-term resignation, which was par for the course when it came to Nadine Sherwood.

  “So,” Johnny said, waving the credit slip at him. “What were you saying about the future and money?” He whistled the Twilight Zone music, like Lucas was some sort of fortune teller.

  Ha. Much to Lucas's chagrin, he hadn’t been angling towards a paid off loan. He wasn’t even sure a closed account would help the subject he really wanted to bring up.

  There were days when he’d swear the universe was out to get him. He’d spent all of this one trying to figure out a way to bring up the future to his partner in crime. He’d rolled through several intros.

  None of them had felt right.

  Just when he’d thought to blurt it all out, Nadine rolled into the office like a small blonde hurricane. Had he been even a second slower, she would have strolled right in to find him manning the loan shark office like he belonged—and the worst part of it was that he did. This was his job, his real job. The one he’d never told her about.

  The second of his two secrets.

  His heart twisted in his chest. “It’s a gift,” he managed.

  “Hell of a gift to have. That account is closed, then,” Johnny said, writing a note on a small legal pad. He jerked a thumb back at the abandoned cubicles behind them. “I’ll go enter it into the computer. We gonna make a second offer to the Harris broad?”

  Lucas shook his head, adjusting the collar of his skewed Henley. “She’s skipped town.”

  “No shit.”

  “Word is,” Lucas said as the cellphone by his foot thrummed. He nudged it with a foot, flipping it over to see the name on the screen. Nadine. Surprise, surprise. “Left her kid with the debt.”

  He should have known about Nadine’s interest in the Harrises. Had she ever said?

  Was it one of those times he’d tuned her out?

  No way. He would have clued in if she’d ever mentioned Katherine Harris. If she had, he’d have moved heaven and earth to waive the account. Buried it so deep, no one would ever find it again. Eating the cost was nothing compared to what would happen if Nadine found out what he did for a living. Risking jail was the least of his worries.

  Watching disappointment well into those blue eyes would kill him.

  He bent and picked up the vibrating phone, running a thumb over the old clamshell device. He’d dropped it in his graceless flail to get out of sight, but it was tougher than most of the smartphones everybody else had converted to.

  “Oh, hey,” Johnny said with mock surprise, “is that your girlfriend now?”

  Ignoring the other man’s weighty stare, he flipped it open. “Guess what?” he snapped into it. “I’m still busy.”

  It didn’t matter how many times he heard it. Nadine had the kind of voice rich old men would pay by the minute to hear on a phone line. Despite the ache in his head, the throb in his elbow, his body responded to it. A freaking terrier, he thought again, scraping his fingers along his whisker-roughened jaw.

  When it came to her, he wasn’t any better.

  As usual, she wasted no time ignoring him. “I’m coming over.”

  Johnny pushed away from the desk, crooning an off-key rendition of some stupid pop song. The chorus cracked.

  Lucas cupped the mouthpiece before his partner’s idiocy trickled over into the line. “Nadine, do you have a hearing problem or is it just me you don’t listen to?”

  “If I listened to you,” she replied lightly, “I’d never see you again.”

  “Ever wonder why?” As soon as the words seared into the line, Lucas wanted them back.

  This wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her problem. The first of his secrets, the one that reminded him exactly what he was worth, wasn’t her r
esponsibility.

  She didn’t know about the night he’d watched Mr. Sherwood write a check to his parents in return for a promise to keep their teenage son from associating with pretty, popular, perfect Nadine.

  Moving across town forced him to change schools, change bus lines. Change everything. It should have been the end of it, but nobody had asked pretty, popular, perfect Nadine what she wanted. Seven years later, and she still found reasons to come around—even if she didn’t tell her parents.

  Even if she played havoc with him.

  He wouldn’t tell her. Not then, not now, not ever. She loved her parents. The fact that they’d put a price on his family’s pride, his worth, wasn’t her problem. Far as he could tell, they only wanted the best for her.

  Lucas Bourdin was never going to be that.

  He’d just…suffer. Forever. Or at least until he’d managed to pull together enough savings to start a new life somewhere else. Somewhere without the stigma of the wrong side of the tracks, without the shackle of Sherwood money around his throat.

  Without every day lived like a criminal.

  “I wondered,” she replied, but with none of the hurt he’d expected. Instead, her tone turned husky. Teasing. “I just assumed my presence overloaded your manly sensibilities.”

  He was overloaded, all right, but sensible had nothing to do with it.

  Moving away, starting over, also meant a life without Nadine’s endless, innocent torment—her breathy voice in his ear. Her smile.

  If he was lucky, even a little, the aching images of her hand down his pants and the dreams of her hot tongue against his skin would fade.

  Goddamn, he was tired of beating off to a high school fantasy.

  His dick didn’t agree. It never did. Lucas stifled a curse. “Seriously, Nadine, I’m—”

  “Busy, I know,” she cut in, huffing out a little laugh. “But, okay, joking aside, my car’s shaking.”

  “Shaking how?”

  “Like a lot.” She made a little sound that he knew was supposed to be pitiful. “What if I get stranded? I’d have to walk home, and I don’t think my feet would last in these shoes.”

  Low blow, and she knew it. He may be wise to her tricks, but he was every bit a sucker for them. He checked his watch, scowling. “Fine. Bring it around at four. Vibration can mean a symptom of something deeper.”

  “Boy, does it,” she returned, with an odd note to her sunshine voice he didn’t recognize. Before he could ask, she added, “I’ll bring dinner, okay? You get the beer.” Typical Nadine, she didn’t linger to say goodbye. She never did. The line went dead in his ear.

  Johnny’s heavy footsteps punctuated the silence left behind. “Girl’s got you whipped.”

  “Dude, don’t.” Lucas snapped the phone close and slid it into his pocket. “I need to cut out early.”

  “You going to chew her out for coming here?”

  “And how,” Lucas asked, scowling at his smug partner, “am I supposed to do that?”

  “I can think of a few ways,” Johnny retorted, but waved it away before Lucas's scowl turned any blacker. “Relax. We scored a payday.” He clapped Lucas on the shoulder with a weighty hand. “Pops would be proud.”

  Yeah. He probably would. Mario Aresco was a man who’d lived a life with no regrets, always surrounded by family. His personality could power the world, and he’d raised his son to do whatever it took to get a job done. Johnny did that, all right. He was good at it. And like his dad, he always put family first. When the Arescos had taken Lucas in, they’d treated him like one of their own.

  He owed them a lot. So much so that when Mario’s health deteriorated, Lucas had stepped in to help Johnny balance the business.

  And that made it all the harder to cut and run. How the hell could he explain that he wanted out?

  Lucas dragged a hand through his hair, pulling it back away from his forehead. “Close up at five. Your mom wants you home for dinner.”

  “Yeah, I’ll balance the books first.” Johnny leaned against the counter, watching Lucas stride through the shabby waiting area. “You know, Pops would be the first to point out that your girl’s worth a hell of lot.”

  His heart slammed. Lucas’s fingers cramped around the doorknob. Chill, he thought, swallowing down an immediate surge of crackling fury.

  Johnny didn’t mean anything by it—it was just business. Money was good for business. Wallace & Roane’s margins weren’t so wide that they could afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  But Nadine Sherwood was off-fucking-limits.

  He opened the door, shooting a flat, wry smile back at his partner. “Trust me, bro. Nobody can afford her.”

  “You sure you aren’t window shopping?”

  Lucas’s smile faded. He wanted to deny it, to argue, to retort something that would absolve him of everything—the wants, the fantasies, the lies. Instead, as it tangled on his tongue, all he could do was flip his partner a steady middle finger.

  Another snort followed him out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE TOOK THE fastest shower she’d ever taken in her life. It took longer to cross her ensuite bathroom than it did to soap the sweat off her skin. After she dried off, she ran a hand up her leg, made a face, and took a second, longer shower just to shave her legs.

  Not that she hadn’t done just that earlier this morning, but it had been a full day. Hair grew in a day, right?

  “This isn’t a problem,” she told her steam-shrouded reflection as she dried off for the second time. “I’ve got this. I can stop this thing whenever I want to.”

  But who would want to?

  This was it. Her grand plan. In her head, she’d stroll into Lucas Bourdin’s garage—all smooth, suntanned skin and fuck-me heels—and he’d fall at her feet. He’d beg her to give him a chance.

  Maybe he wouldn’t admit that he was an idiot, but Nadine was feeling forgiving. She wouldn’t remind him of all the chances he’d missed. Or when he’d thanked her for being his friend, that time behind the bleachers of their sophomore year—the year he’d moved across town and entered a different school.

  She should have kissed him then.

  By the time Nadine had styled her hair in bouncy beach waves, applied just enough make-up to give her a pretty in pink complexion, wiped off the make-up and tried again for a smoldering eye, tried on three outfits—eventually settling on a slick black pencil skirt and a Saint Laurent polkadot crew-neck—and spent a full twenty minutes debating shoes, she was about sick of her own nerves.

  Part of her wanted to call Kat—not just to reassure her about the loan, but also to get her opinion. Problem with that was time. If she stopped to talk, she’d be late to her own seduction attempt.

  And if she was late, she’d talk herself out of the whole thing.

  It wasn’t like she was meeting up with a stranger for a blind date. She knew Lucas.

  He’d seen her in sweatpants, for God’s sake. Sure, they were designer, and she’d found as many reasons as she could to shake the JUICY imprinted across her butt in his general direction…

  “Oh, God.” She crouched in the middle of her bedroom, her lipstick red heels clutched in her hands. Her heart pounded against the acid welling up a tide of nerves and crippling self-doubt.

  He had seen her in sweatpants. And with morning-hair when she didn’t want to bother styling it before swimming practice, freshman year.

  And without makeup, that time she borrowed his couch for a rom-com movie binge-watch after Stephen Hedley dumped her just before senior prom.

  He’d seen her in every incarnation possible except naked, and now that she wanted to show him that, Nadine wanted to throw up.

  What if he couldn’t look past the elbows and knees she’d been as a kid?

  What if he laughed?

  A gentle chime whispered through Nadine’s fracturing mental processes. On its heels, her mother’s voice crackled in the intercom wired through the house. “Nadine, honey, can you come to the kitchen?
”

  She flinched. “Coming,” she called. Just what she didn’t want—a visit with her mom before she threw herself at the bad boy her mom had always warned her against.

  Nadine smothered a laugh before the two-way intercom picked it up. The system was designed to be relatively hands-free, which meant there was a period of time after it clicked on when it picked up every sound. The Sherwood home was big enough that the intercom system saved a lot of shouting, but she’d been caught more than once by the two-way.

  She’d learned to lean a pillow against the receiver when she wanted some alone time. And to reserve alone time for late at night.

  She slipped her feet into the bright red shoes, buckled them in place, and cast a last glance at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror adorning a full wall of her walk-in closet. She took a deep breath. The black and white polkadots gave her a playful air, while the slim fit of her pencil skirt hugged the curve of her waist and full hips like a second skin.

  She’d apply red lipstick after she left the house, for that extra dash of visible maneater.

  The invisible maneater portion would set Lucas's friend-zone on fire. With the heels, the lips and the scarlet red lace lingerie she’d picked out just for him, he’d never know what hit him.

  “Va-voom,” she muttered, made a face, and turned her back on herself before she lost her nerve entirely.

  According to the pink clock on her bedroom wall, she had exactly twenty minutes to talk to her mom and get out. She’d have to stop for an order of Larry’s Chicken, and—oh, God. She froze in her door, gripping the frame.

  Lucas would take one look at her outfit and know it wasn’t her usual chicken-eating attire.

  Should she change?

  Nadine turned, stared at her open closet door.

  “No,” she told herself. Then, sterner, “No way, chick, it’s go-time.” Go hard, or go home. And hard was definitely the idea.

  Swallowing down her fluttered anxiety, Nadine left her spacious bedroom and made her way through the sprawling Sherwood complex.

  The house was a mansion. Nadine had grown up in it, but there were days when she wandered through the high, vaulted ceilings and Better Homes and Gardens interiors and felt like a stranger. Her mother had a decorator’s itch with none of the style, so she routinely hired new interior designers to remodel everything. This month, the rooms all sported a beach house theme, with sand and ocean and sailboat motifs everywhere.