Then I turn and walk out, leaving her cuffed to the chair.
36
BEAU
He’s gone, and I’m left alone, still restrained, in more bedlam than I was before. The sound of the music is almost haunting. So sad. And despite James taking me to paradise, my mood matches the solemn echoes of the soloist who’s currently singing to the heavens.
I zone out, disappear completely from this box, from the opera house, from life itself. And I walk through every minute of my time since I first heard his voice. Then saw him. Has the universe finally delivered my savior? One wrong phone number, and here we are? It feels too convenient.
The song is finished, another has begun, and the stage setting has changed. I look over my shoulder to the door. Where is he? As if forgetting I’m restrained, I shift my hands, wincing when the metal rubs into my sore flesh. I’m going nowhere, unless I want to open the existing wounds on my wrists. Was that his plan?
I return my attention to the stage, my options limited, and I watch, allowing myself to become captivated by the story playing out before me. I’m serenaded by another performance, and with each minute that passes, I become increasingly worried about where the hell James could be.
I’m just considering the merits of calling for an usher when the door opens and James strides in. He doesn’t look like he’s cooled off. In fact, he looks angrier.
“We’re leaving.” He dips behind me, and a few moments later, my hands are free.
“It’s not finished,” I say, looking at the stage, rubbing at my sore flesh.
“Neither am I.”
My hand is taken, and I’m pulled up. He spends a few moments checking my wrists. “You fought the bonds,” he whispers, stroking over my skin, looking into my eyes. “Never fight the bond, Beau.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to reply, turning me and resting his hand on my hip, leading me out.
Bond.
Never fight the bond.
At a loss for words, I let him guide me to the elevator in silence. We travel down in silence. Walk through the lobby in silence. But our bodies are screaming. I look up at him, seeing his focus set firmly forward, his face cut with so many emotions.
Stress. Anger. Craving.
We cross the deserted lobby, and I look over my shoulder, feeling eyes on me. The usher who met us when we arrived is observing us quietly, and what he’s undoubtedly assuming bothers me. So I consciously smile, leaning into James, resting my head on his arm, a silent message to the worried man that I’m fine.
I’m not fine.
I don’t know what happened in that box. I don’t know what James’s point was. That I’m a fool for attempting to walk away? For fighting the bond? He could be right, because now, as he marches us out of the opera house to finish what he started in private, the thought of walking away is inconceivable. I’m alive.
I return my focus forward but quickly shoot my eyes back when something catches my attention, exiting the ladies’.
What?
She looks left and right, pulling in her suit jacket with one hand. Because the other is holding a case. The same case she collected from James’s glass apartment. I frown, just as she spots us by the door, my body slowing automatically. Her face noticeably drops, and then she walks swiftly through a nearby door, and I watch her disappear, coming to a stop, making James halt too.
“Beau?”
The door closes. She’s gone. “Goldie,” I murmur, turning my gaze onto James. “I saw Goldie.”
He looks across the lobby. “Goldie?”
“Yes.” My arm lifts, pointing to the door. “She left through that door.” It’s only now I notice the sign above it saying “Restricted Access.”
“You must be mistaken.” He claims my hand, and I glance up at him, cautious and really fucking suspicious. I’m not mistaken. She looked me right in the eye and made a very speedy exit, but something tells me that information would be wasted on him. He left me alone in that box, handcuffed to a chair, for over twenty minutes. Men don’t take that long in the restroom. What’s going on?
As James leads me away from the opera house, I realize he never said he was using the restroom, I just assumed. So if he wasn’t, then what was he doing? My mind’s spinning.
Why the fuck was he with Goldie when he asked me to the opera, played me into submission, and then left me? And what the hell was in that briefcase? I’m too fucking curious for my own good.
Who are you, James Kelly?
37
JAMES
I’ve fucked up. Leaving before the opera ended was a monumental fuck-up, and Goldie is about to go psycho on my arse. Beau seems to make me consistently fuck up. Shit.
I played her claims down. Told her she was mistaken about seeing Goldie. She wasn’t buying it. Wouldn’t have even if she wasn’t hailed the most exciting thing to enter the training academy in years. And that’s my problem. I keep neglecting to remember that Beau Hayley was on course to become one of the FBI’s best agents. She’s Jaz Hayley’s daughter after all.
I killed a man tonight. Put a bullet clean through his corrupt skull. I’m not concerned that I might get caught. I’m concerned Beau will figure it out, and that begs the fucking question why I even bought her here.
The answer is hard to admit.
I can’t let her out of my sight, but more than that, I don’t want to. Close. I need her close. I want her close. I want every pain she shoulders, every hate-filled thought she has. And I want to free her from it all. It’s fucked up, considering I’m the reason she’s here in the first place. Totally fucking fucked-up.
I put Beau in the passenger seat and reply to Goldie’s earlier message as I round the back of the car.
Get me all the details. I’ll call you ASAP.
I get in my car and glance across to Beau. She vehemently looks away, staring out of the window. I need to get her talking. Get her comfortable. Make her want to share. So then when I spill my fucked-up truths, maybe she won’t be as shocked.
And maybe I’m a fucking dickhead.
38
BEAU
When we arrive back at James’s apartment, my mind hasn’t quieted down, and James and I still haven’t murmured a word to each other. He’s still brooding, I’m still fucking curious, and Goldie is at the desk in the foyer, her head down as we pass. I drill holes into her, willing her to look up, to face me. She doesn’t. And James doesn’t even bother asking if she was at the opera house this evening. Because he knows she was.
Curiosity. Suspiciousness. I don’t want to feel either, but it’s the lost cop in me. Or is it simply James?
I’m put in the elevator, and as it carries us to James’s glass box, he starts unraveling the knot of his tie, staring forward. I can’t deny the bang between my legs. Or my shortness of breath. Even moody, he’s stunning. Even when he’s not touching me, anticipation is churning my stomach. Even feeling enormously uncertain, I still want him.
The doors open, but neither of us exit, and he slowly drags his tie from around his neck, still staring forward. “Take off your dress,” he says quietly, starting to roll the material of his tie into a tight coil, his focus never wavering from the space before him.