She half yawned, half groaned my name. “You know I have to work.”
Reaching for the metal nameplate, I polished it with the sleeve of my white dress shirt and moved it to the center of my desk. “I was thinking I’d swing by the cantina for a drink before you get off. I don’t like you closing all alone that late, especially with the crime in that part of town. I can walk you to your car and come over afterward.”
“Brody…”
“Come on, Eden,” I argued, determined to win my case. “Do you have a better offer?” I held my breath as silence filled the line. Drumming my fingers on the arm of my chair, I waited for her response, only to be met with the typical stubbornness that kept me wondering why I kept coming back to a woman who opened her legs to me but kept her heart and mind closed.
“Fine.” She reluctantly gave in, her sigh holding much more meaning than simple agreeability. That sigh was deadly. That sigh meant for the first hour after arriving at her townhouse, I’d need to cover my dick with a pillow and watch all sharp objects with a keen eye.
After disconnecting the call, I stared at the phone in my hand, flipping it over and over until the screen became foggy with fingerprints. I had no fucking idea what Eden Lachey and I were doing, but it wasn’t a normal relationship that had any future—regardless of what I wanted. Eden had made that painfully clear on multiple occasions. After four months of sleeping together, I’d been the fucking girl in the relationship, wanting exclusivity and some sort of commitment out of her.
All I’d gotten was an eye roll and a warning to stop being a little bitch.
I lived in marked unreality when it came to Eden. I should’ve known better than to get involved with a friend’s ex, but I’d known the woman before the scorn. She hadn’t always been hardened. Once upon a time, Eden Lachey was rather demure, although she’d deny it with her dying breath. Somewhere underneath that cracked shell the woman who used to love to laugh and try to tell a bad joke still existed. For some reason, I seemed determined to find her. Something inside of me cared about her, even though the Eden that wore a perpetual scowl these days swore she was dead and gone.
She could argue with me and be pissed all she wanted. Until I won, I’d enjoy hatefucks while we battled. What was the worst that could happen? Great sex?
“Mr. Harcourt?” My heart rate sped up as my assistant’s voice boomed unexpectedly from the desk phone intercom.
Pressing the two-way button on the phone, I dropped my phone in my pocket. “Yes, Nancy, what is it?”
“The jury has reached a verdict in the Salinas case, sir.”
I raised an eyebrow. Already? Jesus. I’d expected them to reconvene for at least a few days. This could go either way for me depending on how sympathetic the women on the jury were to the tears that man had managed to squeeze out on the stand.
Fucking tears. Gets women every time.
Straightening the knot in my tie, I hit the button again. “I’ll be right there.”
With both palms flat against my desk, I stood over it, sweat beading on my forehead. One verdict. One man’s life hung in the balance, and once his fate was sealed, I could end this miserable week and not think about mine.
Chapter Four
Eden
Staring at the bare white walls of my bedroom, I held onto my pillow as the same thought ran in my head for over an hour. No one got ahead in life by bucking the system. I never bought into that crap, although Dad drilled it into my head my whole childhood.
I suppose my vehement dislike for rules played a role in the clusterfuck I awoke to as my steady friend-with-benefits faced the opposite direction in my bed. Forcing myself to remain quiet, I squinted the eye not squished into my pillow to verify I wasn’t dreaming or, even worse, still drunk.
Nope—sober as a judge.
After meeting me at work as he promised, the lump of man snored softly as if he had every right to occupy my sheets in the daylight. His dirty blond hair twisted haphazardly behind his head, which I assumed was from a repeated invasion of my impatient fingers.
Hell if I remember.
It must’ve been good though, because his back looked like an exotic trash panda nailed him. One corner of my mouth lifted in amusement but quickly faded as my hands dove for the alarm clock.
9:00 a.m.
“Shit!” I gathered as many discarded pieces of clothing as I could find and pulled them on, not caring if my shirt was backward or my shorts were buttoned incorrectly. They wouldn’t be on long anyway.
The lump on my bed grunted as a ball of his clothes hit him in the face with laser accuracy. “Babe,” he mumbled, shaking his jeans off his cheek and burying his head into the pillow. “Why’re you up so damn early on a Saturday? Go back to sleep.”
This shit wouldn’t do. He knew the rules.
This time his cell phone bounced off his forehead. “Jesus!” He shot straight up, rubbing the red mark it left behind.
I shrugged and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom, turning on the shower full blast. When I reentered my room, he sat up glaring at me, but he’d at least put on his pants.
Good boy.
“Now that I’ve got your attention,” I said, collecting his shoes and depositing them on the foot of the bed, “I’m going to shower, and you can get the hell out.”
He stared at me with a blank look. “You’re kicking me out?”
“Nothing gets by you, does it?”
I was being a bitch, maybe more so than necessary. But I had no illusions about what had happened last night or in the past few months. I wasn’t an idealistic teenage dreamer who held onto some fantasy of love and happily ever after. I’d lived life enough to know happily ever after existed only in fairy tales and cheesy rom-com movies.
Once you’ve danced close enough to the fire to get licked by the flames, you learned to adapt to the darkness.
He grasped my arm in a firm hold, smirking as if he didn’t believe me. “C’mon, let’s hit round two. I’ll even get you there first.”
What he got were his car keys flung right between his eyes.
“Fuck!” His head snapped back against the headboard with a thud. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
For the first time since waking, a conflicted smile broke across my cheeks, and a twinge of regret pulled at my stomach. Turning away, I paused at the bathroom door and glanced over my shoulder. “I know,” I said, the corners of my mouth gravitating downward.
“What’s wrong with you, Eden?”
My mind drifted as I closed the bathroom door. “Everything.”
“I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again—yadda-yadda—you know the drill.” I tore through the back door, throwing the dusty brown apron over my head in the middle of my usual apology.
“I know that look.” Nash shook his head as I double wrapped the tie around my waist.
Furrowing my brows, I busied myself unpacking the new shipment of paint thinners that had arrived during the morning delivery. “What look? I don’t have a look. There’s no look.”
Well, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all.
“Uh-huh.” My brother smirked, his trademark platinum blond hair falling in a chunk over his left eye. He leaned in front of me, pressing his hands over the box I frantically emptied. “That, dear sister, is the freshly-fucked look. It’s a blinking neon light all over your face.”