Vegas, Baby

by Theodora Taylor

Only to stop short when she found Cole Benton waiting outside her apartment door!

  Chapter 13

  Cole had almost given up on Sunny returning to her apartment. The Mercedes hadn’t been there when he arrived at her door, and he’d had no idea if she’d decided to stay there or with the friend she’d come to the salon with—Prudence Washington, who apparently was also a Benton Girl.

  But just as he’d been about to call Agnes and tell her to dredge up this Prudence Washington’s address, Sunny pulled up in his car. Then climbed out with a satisfied little smile on her face, like she’d gotten away with something.

  But that smile fell away as soon as she saw him...and what he was standing next to.

  “Is that? Is that an eviction notice?” she nearly screeched, looking at the neon-colored piece of paper posted on her door.

  “Name your terms, Sunny,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “How did you...?” She went to the door and tugged on the large lock that now resided around its knob. “And you locked me out, too? I’ve never missed a rent check in my life. This is so illegal.”

  Cole shrugged, liking that she was the one now miserable because of something he’d done, as opposed to vice versa.

  “I told you I didn’t want you living here.”

  “Yeah, and so what?” Sunny answered. “I’m a grown woman, Cole, I can do what I want. You don’t own me.”

  “Maybe not, but I own this building.”

  “What!”

  “I put in an offer. The owner took it. He’s evicting you.”

  “What? You can’t do that! There are tenant laws. And besides, who does that? Who goes and buys someone’s building just so I can’t live in it?”

  Cole had been asking himself the same thing all morning, as he’d set the deal up, but he kept his tone set on bored when he answered, “Regardless. That’s the situation. And you might be right about the tenant laws, but it’s going to take you a while to get a court date.”

  Sunny stared at him for a few hot seconds, and then she started back toward the car.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded.

  She didn’t answer, just kept on walking.

  “Don’t make me buy your friend Prudence’s building, too,” he called after her. “She has a brother who needs to be in that district, I hear, and she can’t afford to fight me in court when she gets her eviction notice.”

  That brought Sunny up short, and she turned around with a fierce glare. God, she was beautiful angry. Cole had never seen anything like it.

  “You wouldn’t,” she said.

  “I told you last night that you wouldn’t like what I did if you said no,” he answered. “Now unless you want me to buy Prudence’s building, too, you’ll stop this and—”

  She didn’t let him finish. “And what?” she asked. “Submit? Is that what you want? To own me like I’m one of your cars?”

  He removed the space between them in just two strides and grabbed onto her arm. “You know what I want, and you want it, too. You’re the one playing crazy games with my head. Responding to me the way you did, then disappearing when I asked you to share my bed.”

  “You didn’t ask me, you commanded me. Like a complete psycho. And now you’re evicting me and threatening my friend. How did you expect this to go? Do women usually respond to these tactics?”

  “I don’t know, Sunny,” he answered coldly. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever had to manipulate back into my bed. You seem bent on not only denying me but also denying yourself. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, bulging her eyes out at him. “Maybe because you’re a psycho?”

  Cole didn’t love being called a psycho by the woman he wanted in his bed, but this time he didn’t take the bait. “A psycho you said you wanted last night in that hotel room. And what was that you said in the limo about me being ‘really freaking handsome’?”

  To his great satisfaction, the self-righteous indignation drained out of her face and was replaced by a series of flustered expressions before she spluttered, “Last night was a mistake. One of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. I tried to tell you it was a mistake then, but you wouldn’t let me.”

  Her words hit him like an arrow through the heart, lethal and unexpected. And for a moment, just a moment, he let his guard down. But a moment was all it took.

  Her eyes widened as her expression went from annoyed to concerned. “Cole? Cole, are you all right?”

  He turned away from her, giving her his back.

  “Cole?” he heard her say behind him.

  He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t answer her. Breathe. Don’t act. Don’t speak until you’ve got yourself under control, he told himself.

  He hadn’t had to give himself this particular instruction in a while. Years. But there was something about Sunny, something that made the self-control he’d started taking for granted a real struggle.

  She was right. This had been a mistake.

  He turned back around, his mask fully in place, but he refused to look at Sunny. It was too dangerous for him. “I’ll have the lock removed. Meanwhile call Agnes. Tell her I said to set you up in whatever room you want at The Benton. I’ll see you tomorrow for our dinner.”

  He started to go back to his car, but she surprised him by catching his arm.

  “Let me go, Sunny,” he said, keeping his voice monotone.

  But she didn’t let him go. “Something just happened. Something I said got to you, really got to you. Tell me what it was.”

  “Let me go, Sunny,” he repeated.

  “No, look at me, Cole.”

  He kept his head carefully turned away. “No.”

  “That’s surprising,” she answered, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type of guy who couldn’t look someone in the eye.”

  Of course he couldn’t let her challenge go unanswered. It just wasn’t in his nature. He turned back around, drew himself up and made himself look at her.

  But dammit, her eyes...they were no longer blazing with fury. Now they were soft with pity. Like he was some kind of stray she’d found in the street. “I don’t need your pity,” he said.

  She just shrugged. “Well, too bad. You’ve got it. Now do you want to talk about what’s got you so shook up?”

  “No,” he said, his voice a final answer.

  They stood there in silence while he waited for her to give up and let go of his arm, but instead she gripped it even tighter. Then she pressed her lips together and said the last thing he would have expected at that moment. “Okay, I have your terms.”

  Chapter 14

  What just happened? Seriously, what just happened? One minute Sunny had been two seconds away from calling the police on Cole Benton, pretty damn sure she’d unintentionally gotten tangled up with a stone-cold psycho. And the next, she was offering him the terms he’d been demanding since Sunday.

  Two minutes ago, she would have said, for sure, Cole was the crazier person in this scenario, but now she didn’t know if it was him or her.

  It had been the look on his face after she yelled having sex with him had been a mistake. He’d just looked so...hurt. Truly hurt. Like she had kicked him somewhere down deep.

  And now she just had to know what made a man like Cole Benton look like that.

  She was definitely the crazier one in this scenario, and Cole was looking down at her as if he knew it, too.

  “You’re serious?” he said.

  She nodded. “You want terms, and I’ve got them. Were you serious about honoring whatever I requested?”

  “Mostly,” he answered. “If you requested controlling ownership of my business, I’d have to negotiate you down to a few shares.”

  Sunny felt her eyes crinkle with amusement. “Why d
o I get the feeling that’s your version of a joke?”

  He didn’t smile back, just stood there, staring down on at her. Like a hawk.

  And she felt more than a little preylike. “My terms aren’t negotiable, but they are reasonable.”

  He squinted in that Clint Eastwood way of his. “Define reasonable.”

  “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I hope you believe me when I say I’m not a greedy person. I’d never ask you for anything you couldn’t give, or anything I didn’t think you were capable of giving.”

  “If I agree to honor these ‘reasonable’ terms of yours, you’ll agree to not only share my bed, but also to never purposefully fall out of communication with me or disappear without telling me where you are?” His shrewd eyes roamed over her as if he were trying to scan her mind. Trying to figure her out.

  Sunny was pinged by a pinprick of guilt. He honestly seemed upset by her ignoring him all day. Not just peeved, but unsettled. “Yes, I guess I can promise that,” she answered.

  Still he continued to scan her, his eyes going up and down over her face. “This isn’t how I usually do business,” he told her.

  “Me, either, because once again, I’m not a hooker, and I don’t consider relationships to be business transactions. But obviously you do, so I’m putting this in ‘terms’ you can understand,” she told him, not bothering to disguise how little she thought of the idea. “If it was up to me, I’d call it ‘setting boundaries for our relationship going forward.’”

  He frowned, and chose that moment to finally take his arm back. “Fine, I pre-agree to your terms.”

  “Seriously?” she said not hiding her surprise. “Without even hearing what they are?”

  “Yes, seriously,” he answered.

  Sunny found herself having to take a deep breath, a really deep breath “Okay if you want me to sleep with you, I’m going to need three things.” She held up her index finger. “One, you can’t threaten my friends. It’s not nice and I don’t want to have to worry about them every time I do or say something you don’t like. This side deal is between you and me and everybody else gets left out of it. No punishing them to get to me.”

  He folded his arms. “Fine,” he huffed. “But if you don’t do or say anything I don’t like, then punishments won’t be an issue.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you want somebody who won’t ever do or say anything you don’t like, then you can just go ahead and get an escort, which let me remind you again, I’m not.”

  “I said, fine,” he said, looking irritated. “What’s your two of three?”

  “Two,” she said, uncurling her middle finger to join the index. “You can’t be horrible to me anymore.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t think I was being horrible to you. In fact, it seemed like just the opposite last night in the hotel room.”

  She felt her cheeks warm. For having such an icy exterior, the man sure knew how to make a girl blush. But still she insisted. “You’ve got to at least try to be nice to me. That’s all I’m asking, that you try your best to be nice.”

  “How do I know when I’m not being...nice?” He said the last word as if it put a bad taste in his mouth.

  “I’ll let you know,” she assured him.

  Was that a glint of amusement in Cole Benton’s eyes? It flitted in and out so fast, she wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it.

  “Fine. I’ll try to be nice. And you’ll let me know if I’m in violation of your terms.”

  Somehow he made the phrase violation of your terms sound way sexier than it should have.

  “What’s your number three?” he asked, and this time she could clearly see a smile playing around on his lips.

  But Sunny uncurled her ring finger, anyway. “Three!” she said. “You’ve got to talk to me. This clamming up when I ask you a question isn’t going to cut it.”

  Cole’s amused look disappeared. “I’m not a talker,” he said.

  “Well, I am,” she answered. “And if you want to do this with me, you’ve got to get cool with talking to me. You know, communication?”

  Maybe he didn’t know, because he was looking at her as though she had just used a completely foreign word.

  “Communicate? It’s this thing that people who aren’t in psycho relationships do?” she explained

  “Yes, I had a therapist when I was a kid. I know what communication is,” he answered, his voice flat. “But it’s not something I’m comfortable with. For example, what happened earlier. That’s not something I can talk with you about. I don’t talk about that.”

  All sorts of questions came to Sunny’s mind, including why he had needed a therapist when he was younger? And why couldn’t he talk about what just happened?

  Though she did realize that she was asking a lot of him after only a few days of knowing each other. “That’s cool. You don’t have to talk about it, but do your best when I ask you about your stuff, okay?”

  “Okay,” he answered and he held out his hand to her. “I’ll do my best, and we have a deal.”

  It was a statement, not a question, and it sent a ripple of fear through Sunny’s heart, filling her with hesitation. Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to pretend to be Cole Benton’s girlfriend, and also share his bed?

  After a few moments of hesitation, she found herself shaking his hand. “We have a deal,” she told him. Then she grimaced. “But we’ll have to wait to make it official. I got waxed today.”

  Chapter 15

  If Sunny thought negotiating a no-strings-attached summer fling with Cole Benton had been weird, it was nowhere near as awkward as what came next.

  They drove back in separate cars, plenty of time for Sunny to go back and forth with herself, wondering what the hell she was doing and why she was doing it. Would Cole even keep up his side of the bargain? And what would she do if he didn’t? The thoughts and what-ifs kept piling up in her head like a horrific car wreck, and by the time she got into Cole’s private elevator, she was about ready to call the whole thing off. Tell him she’d changed her mind.

  The elevator doors whispered open inside his penthouse, and there was Cole, tie now off, the top buttons of his shirt undone, hair askew, as though he’d run his hand through it several times while waiting for her to arrive.

  He immediately pulled her to him and kissed her...and...and what had Sunny been planning to do as soon as she got to the penthouse? She melted into him, suddenly unable to remember.

  “Don’t change your mind,” he commanded. Then as if remembering their conversation from earlier he added the most terse “Please” she’d ever heard.

  “Okay,” Sunny said, wondering if he had a mind scrambler somewhere on his body, because she never seemed to be able to think straight when she was in his presence. Especially when he touched her.

  “Tonight separate bedrooms. I don’t think I can—” He broke off, and a shadow fell over his face. “I’ve already had enough self-control fails today. I’d rather not add another one to the list.”

  Sunny wondered if she’d ever get used to how angry Cole seemed to feel about the whole situation. Most guys would love getting an NSA relationship, especially one with a woman who was guaranteed to leave at the end of the summer, no harm, no foul. Also, he had gotten nearly exactly what he’d asked for. But the further he got with her, the angrier it seemed to make him.

  Still, it was nice to know she wasn’t the only one overwhelmed by this situation. Obviously she was getting to him like he was getting to her.

  “Okay,” she agreed quietly. “I’ll go back to the room I stayed in before.”

  He took another step back from her, as if he had to physically restrain himself from jumping on her right there in the living room. Maybe he did? Sunny thought to herself, feeling weirdly complimented
by the possibility.

  “On weekdays I work from six to nine, then I go down to our main restaurant for breakfast. My way of assuring that the staff is at their best every day.”

  Sunny grinned. “Also, yum, breakfast.”

  “You should join me.”

  Sunny looked down at the capri yoga pants and tank top she wore. “This is all I have to wear right now. Somebody locked all my clothes up inside my apartment.”

  “I’ll have Agnes send something up,” Cole answered, sounding the slightest bit amused.

  “Thank you,” she said, sensing it would be useless to argue with him. Luckily this was Vegas where anything could be gotten at any time of the night, so at least she knew she wouldn’t be putting poor Agnes out more than she already had.

  * * *

  She didn’t expect to wake up to a living room filled with boxes and wardrobe bags all emblazoned with the names of stores she’d never step foot in because she knew she couldn’t afford anything they were selling. The sight was enough to jolt her awake, no first-thing morning coffee needed.

  And after a casual inventory of the items, she saw that it wasn’t just stuff for her to wear when she was out and about with Cole. There were also exercise clothes, jeans, loungewear and underwear, lots and lots of underwear. Enough bra and panty sets to stock an entire Victoria’s Secret fashion show, including silk teddies. Sunny’s cheeks went into total burn mode

  “The clothes are too much,” she told Agnes when Cole’s assistant called to get her breakfast order. Apparently Cole didn’t like to waste even the time it took to put in an in-person order. “I won’t be needing most of this stuff. Can I just pick out a couple of things to get me through until my apartment gets unlocked and send the rest back?”

  “If Mr. Benton approves that request, I’ll be happy to arrange that for you.”

  Sunny twisted her mouth, seeing exactly what Agnes did there. “But there’s like no way he’d approve it, right?”

  “It’s not my place to speak for Mr. Benton, but no, I highly doubt it.” She could tell Agnes was laughing at her on the other end of the call.