He passes the first door, the door, and looks back at me. “Yes.”
“Are you always this hospitable?” It just falls out, my mind all over the place, no matter how hard I’m trying to convince him otherwise. My job as a police officer taught me how to be calm in the face of seriously fraught situations. How to maintain my cool. It’s all lost on me now.
“I’m very hospitable,” he replies, and I laugh under my breath without thought as he comes to a stop at another door, looking back at me. Good grief, his eyes are like bottomless pits of sinfulness. Magnets. He takes the handle, but he doesn’t open it. “Are you sensing a bit of tension between us?” he asks huskily.
“Yes.” I don’t lie. I’m too old to play games.
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Are you usually so awkward?”
“No. Never.” I’m really not, and I just unwittingly admitted that I’m feeling uncomfortable.
“So, it really is just me?”
“Yes, it’s you.” I give him a sarcastic smile. “Does that make you happy?” I sense it does.
“No, it makes me curious.”
“Why?”
His eyes fall down my body, and he takes his time taking me in. “It makes me curious,” he whispers, returning his eyes to mine. I’m immediately hypnotized by him. Spellbound. “Because I can’t figure out if you dislike me.” A beat. A blatant beat for impact. “Or want to fuck me.”
My lips part, a little in shock, and, God help me, a lot with desire. “And I can’t figure out if you’re purposely trying to make me feel uncomfortable, or whether you’re a natural asshole.”
He smiles. That’s wicked too. “A bit of both.”
I cock my head, entranced, as he opens the door and gestures me inside. I force my feet to move, passing him, feeling his shrewd stare follow me into the room. More floor-to-ceiling glass, though only on one wall. The couch could seat eight people with ease. The small kitchen in the corner is equipped with a glass fridge, a Nespresso machine, and glass-fronted cupboards with matching glass cups and saucers. His desk is more a conference table—again, glass—and his chair sits between that and the window. One of the three walls is covered in dozens of TVs. You could live in his office, and it tells me all I need to know about James Kelly. He’s a workaholic. It’s no wonder he’s fairly anti-social. I bet he’s holed up in here most of the time when he’s not at work. Or performing an extraordinary fuck for some man to watch.
I take in the two plastered walls—large walls—and look to the ceiling. It’s scattered with dozens of tiny spotlights. I grimace. That’ll be a bitch to paint.
“What’s the verdict?” he asks, cocking a leg and sitting on the conference table.
“It’s a week’s work.” I wander over to one of the walls and run my palm across the paint. Smooth. Only a couple of holes to fill from where picture hooks have been. “The ceiling will be a pain with all those lights to cut in around.” I look up, as does he. “A thousand.”
“No, I think there’s only two hundred,” he replies, his eyes dancing across the spotlights.
I smile to myself, admiring his throat. “Dollars,” I clarify. “Excluding paint.”
His head drops. “A thousand? To paint two walls and a ceiling?”
“They’re big walls and a very annoying ceiling.” I’ll have a seriously bad neck by the time I’m done intricately cutting in around all those lights. One hundred dollars will probably be spent on a chiropractor. Plus, my inner mind is probably trying to put him off. Trying to lose the job. I shouldn’t spend any more time here than I have to, and I don’t need to spend a minute. Then why are you still here?
Clearly because I’m too fucking curious. Or bored.
James shakes his head. “You’re ripping me off. I could do it myself on a weekend.”
I take a sip of my beer and hold it out to him. He takes it, if a little tentatively. “Then enjoy,” I say, turning on my bare feet and leaving his office, feeling the pressure of his presence lifting from my shoulders the farther I walk away from him. I take the stairs, slipping my flip-flops on as I hit the bottom. I don’t think I could spend another minute in this glass box with that glass man, let alone a whole week. He’s sharp. Cutting.
Transparent?
I wander into the elevator when the doors open and turn, slowly lifting my eyes. He’s made it to the bottom of the stairs.
And he just stares at me.
And despite wanting to look away, his eyes refuse to release me from their hold. His teeth latch on to his bottom lip. His hands go to the hem of his T-shirt. And he turns, pulling it up as he pads on bare feet to the kitchen.
I swallow and rest my weight on a hand against the mirror, my eyes darting across the vast expanse of his sharp back.
And the angry, deep, monstrous scar that blankets every inch of it.
7
JAMES
What the fuck am I thinking? I slump down on the couch, my eyes rooted on the elevator, my beer discarded and replaced with something hard. I neck the straight vodka and gasp. I knew what I was doing. When I arranged for some company prior to Beau Hayley arriving, I knew exactly what I was doing.
I was creating an obstacle. Making sure she hates me because she should. But with each update Goldie sends me on Beau Hayley, my intrigue grows. And those calls? Her voice? Something inside of me kicked, and I was fucked if I could ignore it.
Damaged.
Broken.
Hopeless.
Everything I once was is emblazoned over every inch of that woman. And my attraction? That caught me off guard. Her clear, fair complexion. Her messy blonde waves. Her dark, dark eyes. She moves with grace and purpose, and yet I’ve never seen someone look so obviously heavy and lost before. Contempt for life. I’ve never seen demons displayed so clearly on someone’s skin.
Except when I look in the mirror.
“Fuck me,” I murmur, rubbing at my forehead. I pull my mobile out and wake up the screen. Beau Hayley’s face fills it.
Beautifully toxic.
She doesn’t want to be here anymore.
And I can make that happen.
Do us both a favor.
8
BEAU
“I feel like I’m sleeping in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol,” Dexter mutters as he drops his holster on the chaise that’s adorned with regal peacocks.
I dunk my brush in the can and load it with more paint, balancing on top of my ladder to reach the corner. “She loves it.”
“Of course she does. It looks like Barbie puked up all over it. Don’t let her see you playing gymnastics like that.”
“I’m as safe as houses.” I swipe my brush with accuracy along the wall where it meets the ceiling, getting as perfect a line as I can with my new brush. “Terrible,” I mutter, pulling back and inspecting.
“Looks perfect to me.”
“All done,” I declare, jumping down and setting my can on the drop cloth. Perfect. What the fuck is perfect, anyway? “They’ve discontinued my favorite brush.” I’ve searched Google and come up with nothing. I curl my lip at my substitute brush as I toss it in the can of paint. “Where is she?” I ask, just as Aunt Zinnea bursts through the door looking harassed, her body encased in a floor-length red velvet gown.