“You should get some sleep yourself.”
“Not an answer.”
“I can get them up now if it’s that important.”
Has he not been fucking paying attention? “It’s that important.”
He picks up the phone. I don’t miss the eye roll. I don’t care.
An hour later, three lawyers are in the boardroom with me, listening to the entire clusterfuck tale of my investigatory role when I was here last, how I was found out by John Glandsworth while he was sleeping with my fiancée, accused of spying on the government, and run out of the country with my tail between my legs because of my family name.
“And why wasn’t this…taken care of two years ago when the dust-up occurred?” one of them asks me.
A dust-up. I was a fucking spy, and because of my family’s wealth, it’s no big deal. “I didn’t want any favors from my father.”
From the corner of the room, where he’s been writing on his tablet, Jeff snorts. “But from your brother…”
I didn’t want to owe him, either. “Desperate times and all that.”
“I can’t believe all it took to bring you back into the family fold was a woman.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m back in the fold.”
“Then why did I summon Mayfair family solicitors—”
The lead lawyer cleared his throat. “Barrister.”
“Whatever,” Jeff waves his hand, and it reminds me painfully, blindingly of Ali talking about the different words the Brits use for things.
She’d been having such a good time. All her guards were down. She’d thought she’d flown halfway around the globe and away from her toxic family, and when she wasn’t looking, my own toxic history hissed in her face.
I’d wanted to protect her, and I ended up hurting her terribly.
“Fine. I owe you one. Now can we get this over with? I need to get to the airport.”
By mid-morning, I’ve signed a dozen legal documents and arranged to put my flat up for sale again. This time, an agency will deal with all the details, and coordinate with a solicitor in the legal firm’s offices.
Jeff promises his assistant will keep him apprised of everything so I don’t need to think about it again, and asks me to have lunch with him again in New York sometime soon. “You owe me,” he reminds me.
“Lunch it is.” The promise rolls off my tongue more smoothly than I expect. Maybe these baby steps of leaning on him for help are actually working to bridge a connection again. Terrible to think that it’s easier because the old man has passed on, but that might just be the truth.
Too complicated a truth to worry about now, though.
I’ve got a plane to catch.
A woman to find.
And a fight to finish.
BOOTY CALL
part four
WASHINGTON, AGAIN
—twenty-seven—
Alison
It takes Scott three days to talk his way past Cole and Hailey. By the time he does, he’s pissed. “Ali!” he hollers as he stomps into their living room. “Get your ass out here and stop hiding from me.”
“I’m not hiding,” I snap as I slide out of their guest room, although yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. “I just didn’t want to see you.”
I’m not ready for this, but he’s made his point. He’s not going away until we hash this out more than what I yelled at him in the street outside his flat.
I flush with embarrassment at the memory of how I acted. I’m not proud of having let his ex get under my skin like that.
And despite my anger, and my regret, my first reaction when I catch sight of him is my heart leaping into my throat.
He looks like hell. He hasn’t shaved. Probably hasn’t slept, either.
He looks like he needs a hug, and Cole sure as shit isn’t going to give him one. My brother-in-law is standing toe-to-toe with Scott—so he’s been allowed in, but he’s on a short leash.
I’m not going to give him a hug, either, I don’t think, but I don’t need a pit bull protecting me either.
“Cole, can you give us the room?”
He gives me a surprised look and I shrug. I might not be happy with the guy, but he’s not going to hurt me.
I settle on the couch and gesture to the chair across from me. He takes it, his gaze wary at my sudden adoption of social niceties. “What? I went to finishing school.”
“I know,” he said slowly, a faint hint of a smirk curling at the corner of his lips. It’s maddening how much I like his face. I don’t want to like any part of him, but especially not the part that lied to me and won me over. And the part that watched me, carefully, learning me inside out when I wasn’t given the same privilege. “But you hate that part of yourself, and glory in being a little inappropriate. Or, when pissed off, a lot inappropriate.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Pissed off for a legit reason.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“What do you want, Scott?”
“I want to talk. Air what needs to be aired, and get this behind us.”
“So talk.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “What do you want to know?”
I huff a frustrated breath. “How am I supposed to know that? How about the complete, unvarnished truth of who you are?”
“That’s complicated.”
“Well, it turns out I’m not that complicated. So…nice knowing you.”
“Whoa, wait.” He holds out his hands, palms up, fingers spread. “Stop making snap, rash decisions like that.”
I frown, adrenaline ricocheting through my body. I try to ignore the fight or flight reflex pressing hard against my ribcage from the inside out. “This isn’t going to work if you tell me how to be.”
“How will it work?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it will, if we figure out a way?” It’s so easy to hear hope in his voice. To listen to the matching voice streaming through my mind, chanting that I can trust him and if I just crawl into his lap, it’ll all be okay.
I can’t trust that voice.
I can’t trust him.
I shake my head. “I didn’t mean to promise that. I don’t know.”
He moves forward, settling right on the edge of his chair. He’s fisting his hands so tightly his knuckles are white. “I don’t want to push you, Ali.”
I stare at his hands and my frown deepens. “I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re barely holding yourself back from grabbing me and shaking me and telling me I’m wrong.”
He makes a frustrated sound but doesn’t deny it. He gets a point for not denying it.
I stand up. “Come back tomorrow. Bring cupcakes.”
— —
He brings a half-dozen chocolate cupcakes.
I look in the box and burst out laughing. Hailey leans closer, then looks up in confusion. “Ali doesn’t like chocolate.”
I nod, my gaze locked on Scott’s the whole time. “And Scott doesn’t like to be told what to do.”
He stares right back. “But I’m here.”
I shrug. “Tomorrow, bring me lemon ones and we’ll talk.”
— —
There are three lemon cupcakes the next day, and we sit on the couch together, the cupcakes between us, for nearly an hour.
His beard is getting pretty long. I want to rub my hand over it and find out if it’s soft or prickly. I can’t decide which I’d rather.
I settle for asking about the “work” he didn’t get to do in England.
“My brother…” he trailed off. “Do you know I have two brothers?”
I do now. I’ve done the complete Google search on him I should have done months ago. “Yeah.”
“Jeff extended the use of Mayfair attorneys to me. I was already using them on this end to smooth over some immigration difficulties I was having, so…basically I took advantage of having them at my disposal and they’re going to…”
“To….what?”
He looks at me like I’
m an idiot.
I throw my hands in the air. “I don’t know what you do, Scott! You’re not just a bodyguard, remember? All mysterious and shit?”
He has the good graces to look chagrined at least. “Right. It’s…complicated.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, great.”
“What do you want from me?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Maybe what I want is something you can’t give me.”
We fall into a frustrated silence for a bit, then he asks me about my project. I’ve done fuck all on it, but I let myself talk about my plans. It’s not a real conversation, but it’s something.
When we fall silent again, I twist so I’m looking at him more full-on, and I tuck my feet under my butt.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
“No. Yes.” It’s actually a pretty hot day out there, but I’m suddenly chilled.
He passes me a soft blanket from the end of the couch. Our fingers brush against each other briefly and my heart hammers against my chest, like, let me out of here, because my rightful place is over there. I ignore it and wrap the blanket around myself, but from the stricken look on Scott’s face, he’s having a similar reaction.
Well, then we’re both fucked, aren’t we?
I’m suddenly snappish. I pin a hard stare on him. “What do you want?”
He answers terrifyingly quickly. “I want you back.”
My mouth goes dry. “That scares the living daylights out of me.”
He nods, the corners of his mouth turning down.
“I think…I’m just too young, you know? I’m not meant to…” Fall in love, that’s what I want to say here, but I can’t. I can’t show him that again. I did once, in England. I yelled it in anger, and now he’s latched on to it like it might be the thing that brings us back together.
It’s not.
“I’m not meant to get attached yet. And that I did, and it went badly…that’s a poor reflection on me.”
He shakes his head. “No. I ended up being your worst nightmare, and that was preventable. It won’t happen again.”
I know it won’t. I’ll never risk it again. “Thank you for bringing me cupcakes,” I say quietly. “Two days in a row, even.”
“My pleasure.”
“You should go now.”
It takes him a minute to realize I’m dismissing him. “No. Don’t do this.”
“It’s not you…” I say, trailing off, but it is. He’s too much for me. Too old, too serious, and carrying too much baggage. “It’s just that I can’t handle all that a relationship would demand.”
He glares at me. “Now who’s the liar?”
I jut my chin out at him. “Get out.”
“This isn’t over.”
“Of course it is. Not everything happens at your beck and call.”
He scowls at me. “No. It happens at yours.”
“Screw you.”
His arm snaps out and he strokes my cheek, then rubs his thumb across my lower lip. “Anytime you want, babe. Anytime you want.”
—twenty-eight—
Scott
When I leave Ali that afternoon, I mean to go home. But I swing past The Horus Group offices and Wilson’s doing his creepy stalker thing again. Jason growls at him that it’s inappropriate and Tag suggests we all go out for a liquid lunch.
This is how we wind up weaving down Connecticut Ave right around the time that everyone else is leaving work. We’re probably taking up too much space on the sidewalk, but who’s going to tell us to get out of the way?
We really just need to get to the other side of Dupont Circle. Then we can dump ourselves on the Metro and head home to our beds.
Except Wilson. He claims he’s going back to the office.
Lunatic.
“I don’t even want to work anymore,” I say out loud, to nobody in particular.
A woman walking buy snorts. “Of course you don’t,” she mutters.
“Hey!” I call, spinning around. “I served this country!”
“Shut up,” someone else says, and I’m going to make another smart remark when I realize it was Jason. He’s shaking his head at me. “Don’t use that as an excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse,” I mumble. Fuck, I’m wasted. And it’s not true that I don’t want to work. I do. I just don’t know what I want to do, exactly. “It’s a fact.”
“It’s also a fact that leaving the navy was your own free fucking choice, asshole, so get over yourself.”
He’s got me there.
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“We should eat something,” Tag says, rubbing his stomach. “Steak, maybe.”
The hostess at the steakhouse we go into gives us a dubious look, but she seats us in a booth in the back, and by the time we’ve eaten senator-sized dinners, we’re all more or less sober. Not driving sober, but good to make it to the subway station.
I’m just upright enough to think that texting Ali is a good idea. Nobody else is sober enough to stop me.
S: I miss you.
She doesn’t reply. I stare at our messages all night, and for the next week, until I get drunk again with Wilson and delete the entire history.
I still miss her like fucking mad. But she doesn’t miss me at all, and that’s all there is to it.
Can’t get blood from a stone.
Can’t get love from a broken girl.
I know there’s something wrong with that thinking, but I’m too wound around the axle to see it any other way.
—twenty-nine—
Alison
S: I miss you.
I read this text message every single morning and every single night for two weeks.
It breaks my heart every single time, because my fingers ache to tap out the truth. I miss you, too. I don’t send anything, though, because the rest of the problem—that I really can’t handle how much he wants from me, how much I feel for him despite myself—remains true.
Every night, my body betrays me by dreaming of him. Erotic, filthy imaginings. Sometimes it’s what we did together. Sometimes it’s even more depraved acts we never got to. He ties me down and works me up until I’m begging him to take my ass. He spanks me until my bottom is black and blue. He makes me blow him in public.
That’s the most recurring dream, the public humiliation, and I’m sure a therapist would have a field day with my guilt for exploding at him in London, and how far my dream self is willing to go to make that up to him.
I’m more fascinated by the disturbing reality that my real self isn’t willing to do much at all.
When my thoughts wander in that direction, I force myself to get to work on my research. What’s done is done, and if I’m really that brutal, then I can be matter-of-factly mind-over-matter about it and move on.
It’s an early morning in June when he texts next.
S: Shameful admission: I deleted the history of our text messages.
I gasp when I read that. And where nothing else before worked, this has me firing back a reply before I think about it.
A: Oh no. Whatever will you wank off to now?
S: Secret videos I took of you. Sleeping. Other things.
I laugh out loud. It fades to a bittersweet sigh when I realize that, yeah, that’s definitely just a joke, and not for a second do I feel any panic about the implied threat.
A: If you ever want to see any of the dirty texts I sent you, I’ve still got the complete record
S: Is that a sideways booty call?
A: You want it to be?
S: No
S: Do you want it to be?
A: Maybe
As soon as I send it, I’m squirming in my chair. Damn it. That was not how that was supposed to go.
But it was still pretty hot.
S: Let me know if it gets desperate over there
A: That’s selfless of you
S: Your orgasms have always been my top priority
He’s kidding.
I’m kidding.
— —
Another week goes by, with a few more text exchanges. And I never intend to actually suggest he come over, until I’m up late one night and the squirming in my chair gets to the point where I’m thinking about heading to bed with my phone.
Damn it. If I’m going to do that, I might as well invite him over.
This is a terrible idea.
Definitely a mistake.
A: You busy?
His response takes just long enough that I start to worry about where he is at ten thirty at night.
S: Depends.
A: Wanna come over?
—thirty—
Scott
I have no idea why I’m letting her suck me back in.
I know she doesn’t want anything other than ex-sex, and I’m gonna be pissed about this at some point down the road.
It doesn’t stop me from heading over to her place anyway.
When she opens the door, it’s a punch in the gut how great she looks. She’s wearing sweatpants, low on her hips, and a girly t-shirt that skims her curves. Casual and fuckable and perfect.
“You summoned me?” I stalk past her before she gives me an answer.
Behind me, she lets the door swing shut. “Is that how it’s going to be?”
I pace into her kitchen. The overhead light is off, but the hanging pendants over the peninsula are on, casting warm light on the center of the room that quickly fades to dark corners.
It’s quiet and intimate, and I have to fight to keep my angry edge. It would be so easy to just let this happen.
I roll up my shirt sleeves as I turn to look at her. I catch her eyeing up my forearms and I flex those muscles for her. “So where do you want to fuck?”
Booty Call Page 13
