Chapter 10

TEN

BASH

I stared at Rowe, chest heaving and heart squeezing painfully.

Had the man just confessed to being a fast-food thief? Was I experiencing oxygen deprivation? Was this how death by epic orgasm happened?

If so, that would explain a lot of things. For example, why my heart was trying to convince my brain that what I’d just experienced with Rowe was something way bigger and more life-altering than an orgasm.

“Repeat that?” I said, trying to make sense of his words.

Rowe covered his face with both hands like he was trying to conceal his blush, but it wasn’t working. “That wasn’t what I meant to say,” he groaned.

I leaned up on one elbow and brushed his damp hair away from his forehead before I could remind myself that being sweet and schmoopy was not a good idea, and then I pulled one hand away from his face.

He peered up at me, flushed and wild-eyed, sexy as hell and so damn sweet.

I wanted to devour him. To keep him in my bed for days with nothing available to him but the touch of my hands and lips, food fed to him from my fingers and tongue, and water only taken in furtive sips in the shower while I plastered him against the wall and fucked him long and hard into the cold tiles.

The fact that I could envision all of this with perfect clarity suggested my response to him was about ten notches past insanity levels, so I forced myself to shove those feels deep into a box in the back of my brain.

I cleared my throat. “Are you… are you trying to tell me you’re hungry?” I asked, still not sure why he was talking about burritos. “Do you want me to order something?”

“No! I meant…” He sighed and shook his head slightly. “You know what? Yes. Yes I’m hungry. I didn’t eat much dinner because I was too busy talking. Thank you, and please.”

I heaved myself out of bed and reached for the phone on the nightstand to call room service, ordering a variety of desserts and snacks. While I did, Rowe sat up in bed with his hands in his lap and very pointedly didn’t look at me.

“Thirty minutes,” I told him after I hung up the phone. “Want to shower before they get here?”

He nodded, summoning a brief smile as he hopped out of bed.

I could tell his nerves were returning as the afterglow wore off, and part of me wanted to scoop him up in my arms and reassure him. Fortunately, the rest of me was far more wary.

Now that Rowe knew I was wealthy and had the connections he needed to get his project seen, how long before he forgot our agreement and started dropping hints about his mysterious project? How long before he started manipulating the connection between us in order to get what he wanted?

I’d seen it happen over and over again—to Dev with his family, to Silas with Justin… hell, even to me, every time my parents reminded me what I owed to the Dayne name. With connection came the poisonous creep of expectations. The deeper the connection, the deeper that poison would spread… and the more pain it would cause when things inevitably went bad.

I liked Rowe a lot—a remarkable amount, really, for a man I’d known twenty-four hours, who’d lied to me nearly the entire time—and I admired his strength and resilience, too. It was no wonder I wanted to be close to him. But I couldn’t afford to have any illusions that the outcome with him would be different. In fact, knowing his story with his sister, knowing how desperate he was to get his project made, it seemed even more inevitable.

The smart thing to do would be to hold him at arm’s length.

But when Rowe leaped out of bed and headed to the second bedroom to take his shower—after tangling his foot in the bedsheets and doing a hop-slide-shimmy that had no right to be as sexy as it was—I couldn’t help watching him walk away… and wanting to snatch him back.

If he thinks he’s spending the remainder of the night in the other room, he’s mistaken , I thought to myself. I wanted him at arm’s length, figuratively but not literally.

I cleaned up as quickly as I could before putting on a pair of joggers and a comfortable T-shirt. When I made my way to the main room to wait for the food, Rowe was already walking out of the other bedroom wearing similar comfortable clothes, running his fingers through his wet hair until the strands fell back into their tumble of curls.

“You’ll never believe it,” he announced, “but I found Sterling Chase’s suitcase on the bed in the other room, and his clothes fit me perfectly.”

I laughed. The shy smile on Rowe’s face was worth the huffy, disapproving texts I’d gotten from Kenji when I’d asked him to coordinate the clothing. “ Seriously? We’re buying him a wardrobe now? You don’t even know his size, Bash!” But it turned out, as with so many things regarding Rowe Prince, I had known, though I couldn’t say exactly how.

“I’m glad,” I said gruffly, trying to ignore the strange, proprietary feeling that swamped me when I saw him wearing those clothes. “You want a drink?”

“Sure.” He shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot. “Uh. I don’t know what happens now? I mean, not just because I’ve never, you know, done that with a guy, but also, like, what is the protocol for when you’ve lied to a guy about who you are, and he lied about being your personal assistant, and then he takes you to the most beautiful hotel, and then you tell him all your secrets and way too much about your family?”

Damn it. How was I to keep him at arm’s length when every nervous word he babbled was a lasso pulling me to him more tightly?

“Definitely starting with a drink is the right thing.” I feigned an easy grin and squatted in front of the minibar to grab a beer for each of us, trying to think of a topic that was light and casual. Something bland that wouldn’t lead to any more interesting revelations. “So, Rowe, do your, uh… do your parents have curly hair?”

If Rowe thought that was a fucking ridiculous question, he was far too nice to say so.

He touched a hand to his curls and gave me a grateful smile as I handed him one of the beers. “Yeah. At least, my mom does. Daisy did, too, but she hated it. And I… well.” He cleared his throat and blushed rosily. “I have a love-hate relationship with my hair, thanks to the picture incident.”

Picture incident? “What’s that mean?” I demanded, intrigued against my will.

Rowe shook his head again insistently. “Nope. Can’t tell you. See, I was kinda hoping to have sex with you again before the night is over, and if I tell you, that dream will die.”

“Rowe?” I whispered. “There is not a single question about whether we will have sex again tonight. I promise.”

He swallowed hard. “Do you pinky promise?”

I laughed out loud. Jesus , this guy. This stupid attraction was welcome to fade any minute now. Any minute. “Yes. Pinky promise.”

He sighed, certain I’d doomed us both. “When I was a toddler, I was kinda blond, and my hair was so curly. Like, little corkscrew ringlets? And I was a bit… chubby. You know, before I grew into my full height?” He straightened his five-and-a-half-foot frame and tried to look imposing.

“Right,” I agreed gravely. I could envision this perfectly.

“And my mom… I cannot believe I’m telling you this… she took me to get my picture done at the mall, and the photographer dressed me up in, like, wings and a diaper thing? And my mom insisted on hanging the photo in the living room, and she… callsmeherlilbabycupid .” He downed half the beer in one gulp. “So! Let’s talk about other things. Sexy things. O-or polo, my new favorite sport. Aren’t horses wonderful?”

“Wait,” I said, unable to help the delighted smile breaking over my face. “Wait, wait, wait. Your mother dressed you in wings? She calls you her little baby cupid? Present tense?”

“Shush.” He clapped a hand over my mouth. “Not important. I blame the picture lady at the mall. And Daisy, who encouraged my mom to keep the picture up—”

I dragged his hand away. “Is the picture still there?”

“No. Maybe.” He swallowed. “Yes. Why?”

“Just curious.” I took a casual sip of beer. “And also filled with the sudden need to go to Indiana and begin a collection of Cupid-inspired artwork.”

To my surprise, he laughed out loud. “Yeah, right. Like you’d ever go to Linden. You wouldn’t last a day.”

“Excuse you?” I moved closer until I was standing right in front of him. “I have traveled around the world. I think I could survive rural Indiana.”

The research Kenji had done on Rowe suggested that his father worked at a chemical plant and his mother was a receptionist for an excavation contractor. The difference in our upbringings was night and day, but I was confident I could charm his parents.

“Linden doesn’t have a single restaurant with tablecloths.” He tilted his head back so he could look up at me defiantly. “There’s one stoplight. One bar. One tiny grocery store. Closest decent hairstylist is thirty minutes away.” He lifted a hand to brush a strand of hair off my forehead before snatching his hand away like he’d touched a flame. “There are no endowments or galas. No polo fields. Folks who are well-off there only have to work one job, but lots work two. My parents need my help so they can pay off their house and retire someday.” He shrugged. “Not your kind of place, that’s all I’m saying.”

I wanted to argue with this. To tell him that I’d been to lots of different places, and not just on exotic vacations—Landry had grown up with less than nothing; Silas, Zane, and Dev with only slightly more—but being familiar with it didn’t mean I’d experienced it. Didn’t mean that I knew at all what it had been like for him to grow up in a town like that.

“Isn’t Purdue University nearby?”

Rowe took a sip of his beer and nodded. “Sure. I’ve gone there a couple of times to, uh… you know, try to hook up or whatever.” His cheeks turned a delicious shade of pink.

“ Try ? Why didn’t you succeed? I would think a college town would be a fairly good place for hookups,” I said carefully, trying to ignore the feral banshee inside of me who suddenly wanted to kill every Boilermaker on the planet.

“Maybe it would have, but I kept chickening out,” he said softly. “The only thing I knew about those guys was what their abs looked like in a Grindr picture, and all I could picture was my broken body thrown into an empty oil barrel and tossed into the Wabash River.”

“Wow.” I bit my lip. “Does that… happen a lot in Indiana?”

His eyes lit with amusement. “Well, no. But only because people like me remain ever vigilant and don’t allow ourselves to get distracted by lusty hookups, you see?”

“I do see.” I nodded slowly. “You’re right. I wouldn’t last a single day.” I gave in to the temptation and raised my free hand to bracket one of Rowe’s lean hips, then lowered my head to nibble at his lower lip. “If you were anywhere nearby, I’d be far, far too distracted.”

Rowe’s breath caught. I set our beer bottles on a side table, then did what I’d been longing to do since the moment he stepped into the room—I grasped the back of his damp curls and pulled him in for a hard kiss. “You’re fucking irresistible,” I murmured against his mouth, the words coming out like an accusation.

When I pulled back, Rowe’s eyes were a little glassy, the same way they’d been earlier during sex. The front of his joggers tented out, and his neck was mottled again.

I was in trouble with this guy. I wanted him again, and it had only been fifteen minutes since I’d had him the first time. Men did not tie me into knots like this. Not ever. I’d always been way more interested in what I could do with my life than who I could do. But with Rowe… it was like my brain was covered by a thousand stickers of him and then covered with a permanent top coat that would make removal completely impossible.

“More,” Rowe begged, grabbing the front of my T-shirt. “Please.” But before I could agree and rush him back to the bedroom, there was a knock at the door.

“Hold that thought.” I opened the door so the staff could deliver our snacks and perform their turndown service. It felt like they were all moving with exaggerated underwater slowness, but I told myself that was a good thing.

Arm’s length, Sebastian. Light and easy.

But when the last of the room attendants left a few minutes later, my arousal hadn’t let up in the slightest.

“Come eat,” I suggested, gesturing toward the array of desserts, wines, and snacks that had been laid out for us. “I can’t have you fainting on me.”

“Fainting,” he scoffed. He puffed his chest out. “I’ll have you know I reached level six on Gym Joe’s YouTube Bulk-Up challenge.”

“I… don’t know what that means,” I said, but when he passed in front of me to get to the table, I couldn’t help reaching my hands under his shirt to feel the muscles of his abs and chest… and if my thumbs happened to brush across his nipples, then so be it.

“It’s… uh…” His breathing increased as his nipples hardened. “It’s…”

I leaned in to kiss his ear before stepping away. “Eat,” I repeated. “Then you can tell me more about it.”

After I pulled back, he wobbled for a moment before seeming to snap out of it and reaching for the snacks. I poured myself a glass of wine, handed him his beer, and led him to the sofa, where we resumed our seats from earlier.

Between bites of a fruit tart, Rowe told me more about how he motivated himself through his workout videos, and I found myself promising I’d try one. And he told me about his adventures as the Burrito Bandito… which made me laugh so hard I snorted wine through my nose for the first time in my life.

“It’s actually really fun,” he admitted, crunching a handful of rosemary sea salt mixed nuts. “The tips aren’t great, but it’s nice to know you’ve brightened someone’s lunch break with a little song and dance. I might even miss it a little when I’m back in Linden in a couple months.”

“So why go back?” I asked lightly. “I mean, couldn’t you stay—?”

“No way. I’m barely making ends meet here, even sleeping on Joey’s futon. I couldn’t afford to rent a tux last night, which was why I was wearing Joey’s.”

“The bunny tux was your cousin’s?”

“Better than his stripper tux, or so I’m told.” Rowe grinned. “Anyway, I told you, I have to go back to Linden so I can help my folks. They don’t have much money, and my job at Bobby’s Tech Barn pays pretty well. And it’s fun, too, in a way.”

“So you’re interested in technology, then?” I asked, unable to stop myself from edging closer to the topics I’d promised to avoid.

Rowe snorted. “Nah. I’m the opposite of a tech geek. But I don’t need to be. Most of our customers are sweet grandmas who don’t remember how to get into their email and clueless middle-aged guys who thought they knew what they were doing but ended up downloading a bunch of viruses while trying to stream movies. Bobby and some of the other techs get impatient with them, but I know what it’s like to be technologically challenged and learn things as you go.”

He set his empty beer bottle on the side table, licked the last bits of salt off his fingers, and scooted closer so our knees touched. “Okay, enough. I feel like you know way too much about me now,” he teased. “All the mystery is gone.”

I’d hoped that would be true. Instead, I felt like we’d barely skimmed the surface, and I had a thousand more burning questions about him and the way he saw the world. This attraction was definitely not going away.

“What about you?” Rowe asked. “What was it like where you grew up? Who’s got the unfortunate photos of you in their living room?”

I propped my feet on the coffee table. “Daynes don’t take silly photos, Rowe,” I said mock-severely. But as to the rest… it was hard to talk about the privations of growing up incredibly wealthy after hearing about Rowe’s childhood.

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” I said finally. “I had a very privileged upbringing. My parents both come from old money. My dad’s great-grandfather founded a lumber company that put sawmills all across the Midwest—”

“Dayne Lumber,” Rowe said, putting it together. “Holy fuck. Dayne Lumber has been around since Jesus’s time.”

“Slightly longer.” I reached for a handful of nuts, more for the distraction than because I was hungry. “My family doesn’t deal with any of the day-to-day operations anymore, though. My parents socialize and travel and donate money to many, many different causes they know little about. I take my work seriously and spend a lot of time in the office. I prefer to be more hands-on with the things I’m involved in.”

Rowe’s nod made the light from the lamp glint off his curls. “So what do you do for work, exactly, other than having a seat on the board at Sterling Chase?”

I hesitated over how much of a connection I wanted to reveal, and Rowe immediately tried to backtrack. “Are we getting too close to things we shouldn’t talk about?”

We were. We definitely were. But I plunged right ahead anyway, like I was hang-gliding off a cliff.

“It’s not really a secret. I work closely with some of Sterling Chase’s clients to support and nurture early business ideas,” I admitted. “Fledgling entrepreneurs need a lot of help to get their businesses off the ground, as you know. I help them find money and connections, to hone their ideas. I meet with their developers, match them to the right resources, mentor their leaders, note places where their progress is lagging, and find ways to help them improve their processes to help bring their projects to market.”

“Ah.”

I could tell Rowe knew exactly what I was describing since he was one of the people who needed money and connections. I braced myself for him to cut in excitedly and give me his own pitch, despite our agreement, or to give me puppy dog eyes and reiterate how badly he needed me to fulfill my promise and give him contacts, preferably now . I was mellow enough, charmed enough, I’d probably even go along with it. But he didn’t do either of those things. Instead, he shifted his weight, settling more deeply into the sofa, and nodded again, encouraging me to continue.

My stomach swooped again, harder this time.

“It’s a lot of work. I feel a huge responsibility to the people I’m helping, obviously. I want the best for them, to respect their goals and vision. And then, of course, there’s my responsibility to uphold the Sterling Chase brand. To make sure that all the financial dealings are fair while keeping an eye on costs and profit margins. It means a lot of long hours, but I enjoy it.” I hesitated, then said honestly, “At least… most of the time.”

“Shit,” Rowe murmured, almost to himself. “Profit margins.”

“Well, yeah. Obviously, that’s not the company’s highest priority—” I broke off, thinking of Austin. “Or not the only high priority, anyway.”

“But Sterling Chase probably signs the projects that have the strongest potential for profitability because it’s a for-profit company.” Rowe shook his head ruefully. “Don’t mind me. I’m just realizing how little I know about the business aspect of business, that’s all. It’s a little embarrassing how naive I’ve been. I’m so excited about my project and its potential impact on people that I didn’t understand why the folks at these development companies weren’t getting excited, too. I didn’t really think about how much work is involved on the back end. Of course a company only wants to invest their money in something if it’ll make them money.”

“That’s not entirely correct,” I argued, stung by Rowe’s easy acceptance of this as a normal business practice and more by the fact that I couldn’t really argue with him. “The projects Sterling Chase has green-lit recently have been more commercial, I suppose. But money isn’t my goal. The projects I get involved with personally are the ones that are the most challenging and which have the highest impact on people’s lives. That’s what I find rewarding.”

“But…” Rowe wrinkled his nose in thought. “If you’re saying you pick your projects from the ones Sterling Chase already green-lit, but Sterling Chase focuses on things that are commercial and profitable, doesn’t that mean the ones you’re working on are gonna be the most profitable and not necessarily the most rewarding, just by default?” He grimaced. “Sorry, maybe I’m misunderstanding the whole thing.”

Or maybe I was.

His words hit me in a way I hadn’t considered before. I thought about how much less passionate I’d been lately towards my work.

“Well, shit.” I sat forward, my hands on my knees.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Should we not be talking about this—?”

“No. Not that. I’m just having a revelation.” I laughed weakly. “For months now, or maybe even years, I’ve noticed myself getting restless. Bored. I’m dedicated to the projects I’m working on, and they are challenging, and I do enjoy them, but they don’t hold my attention the way they once did. So I started throwing myself into other stuff, too—adventure sports, travel to far-off places—and even that hasn’t been working anymore. So I started taking on more projects, poking my nose into ones I’m not even supposed to be involved in, which annoys the fuck out of Sterling Chase’s head of development, looking for a challenge…”

Rowe continued to munch on the snack mix and take sips of his beer like he hadn’t quietly set off a chain of small earthquakes in my brain. “Okay. And?”

And this one simple conversation over snacks, with a guy who didn’t understand business at all, had shone a bright light on why . Because Austin picked the projects, and Austin didn’t take risks.

“And you just helped me realize that’s not enough for me. I need to make a change. I need to be working on bigger stuff. Ideas that are more important to me, personally.” I grabbed his face with two hands and pulled him in for an impulsive kiss. “And now I feel like I’ve been naive.”

For people like Austin—and my father—profitability was about numbers. But my own definition skewed slightly from theirs in a way that I couldn’t fully explain… or hadn’t been able to, until right now, when Rowe had helped me put it all together. It was about knowing the investment of my time and energy would yield something I could be proud of.

I wasn’t sure exactly what that would look like, practically speaking, but it felt like I was finally looking in the right direction.

He gave me a hesitant smile and settled in against my side. “Well, good. I bet work’s way more satisfying when you know in your heart that the project is worthwhile, right? I mean, it is for me.”

“Yes. Definitely. And to be fair, it’s not like most of the stuff Sterling Chase is working on currently isn’t also great. Not everything is the CaffApp—” I gave him a side-eyed look that made him laugh out loud.

“Is there a TeaApp in the works, too?” he teased. “A CocoaApp?”

“No, Sassypants,” I growled, poking his side. “One of the projects Sterling Chase is working on right now is amazing. Very tied in to the ETC program.”

“Really?” He lifted his head, and his excited eyes met mine. “Okay, that’s legitimately great because I know for a fact that there’s so much more that can be done with emergency services. You know I… Ah…” He blinked and shook his head, his smile dimming a fraction. “I’m really pleased Sterling Chase is working on that.”

I wondered at his change in attitude, but I decided not to call him on it. He was probably thinking of his sister. “The project was developed by one of our own employees, which makes it even more exciting, on a personal level.”

“And does that mean only Sterling Chase will profit?”

I snorted. “Sterling Chase will make bank, yes.” I didn’t explain that this meant only me and the others on the board and that none of us were particularly money-motivated anymore.

Rowe’s mischievous grin was like sunshine breaking through clouds. “Well, this Sterling Chase is very proud of you for making me a profit, my boy,” he said, pulling out his drawling Sterling voice.

I spluttered out a laugh. “Oh, thank you so much, sir.” I reached over to pull his bare feet into my lap. “Does this mean I get a prize?”

Rowe yelped and laughed as he nearly spilled the snack bowl. He quickly hugged it to his chest and leaned his head back on the arm of the sofa.

“Sterling Chase might buy you a new polo pony… after I splash out with some undercarriage lights for my old Corolla and some new Anchor-Hocking casserole-ware for my mother, of course.”

I let out a low whistle. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous right there. And you could always pick your dad up a six-pack of the fancy stuff while you’re at it.”

“Budweiser instead of Pabst?” His eyes danced. “That’s a bridge too far, Bash. Way too expensive.”

I tickled the bottom of his foot until we were both sprawled against each other, breathless with laughter, smiling sappily.

“You’re a really great guy, Bash,” he said softly. “Not everyone wants to do the right thing the way you do.”

Hearing those words from him meant a lot. Way too much for someone I’d known for less than a day.

“What would you do, if you had money?” I asked without thinking. “If you won the lottery, let’s say. Enough to fund your own project idea, with a ton left over after.”

I’d expected Rowe to smile or laugh, but instead, he frowned seriously, like the very idea was insane. “I don’t know. Not worth thinking about, really.”

“Isn’t it? You’d take care of your parents, right? And then what?”

He hesitated, not as though he didn’t know the answer, but as though he wasn’t sure he should share it. “This is going to sound ridiculous.”

“Nobody’s dream is ridiculous,” I said softly. Hell, it was the tenet of my life’s purpose.

“I like decorating houses.” Rowe studied the half-empty beer bottle on the table like it might contain the secrets of the universe. “I haven’t actually done it, other than my own family’s house, which doesn’t really count since we didn’t have a budget worth shit. But…” He darted a glance at me like he was making sure I wasn’t going to make fun of him, then went on. “I’ve studied it so much, and I have hundreds of notebooks full of sketches. Bobby gave me a good deal on a used iPad, and I downloaded design software onto it. It’s my favorite thing to make up a room in the software and then decorate it. I have hundreds of Pinterest boards for my made-up clients. So, yeah, I’d design beautiful spaces for people if I could do anything I wanted. And not just rich people, either, because everyone deserves to enjoy their home.”

Ugh . How was it that every word this man spoke made him more attractive? Somehow, every unexpected answer just made me want to know more.

“Would you ever want to share some of your designs?”

He glanced up at me, and I saw his cheeks were flushed again, hopefully from excitement rather than insecurity. “With you? They’re probably horrible compared to the things you’ve seen. I’m sure your house was decorated by a big New York stylist.”

It was true, but that didn’t mean I loved it. “Well, I have… more than one place, actually. But my Hamptons house was done by a big New York stylist, and I hate it. The entire thing is done in modern minimalism.”

Rowe’s fingers twitched. “Oh. Yeah. The Hamptons is the beach, right? You don’t seem like the kind of person to want something so reserved. Especially for a place you’re meant to relax in.”

I imagined taking Rowe to my beach house and showing him around. Getting him naked and holding him in the swimming pool at night. Taking him to my big bed and making love to him in front of the giant windows overlooking the ocean at night.

The idea should have been ludicrous—I rarely had guests in my space, let alone hookups—but instead, it stuck in my brain.

“True,” I agreed, taking another sip of beer to distract myself from mentally calculating how quickly Kenji could arrange a helicopter to fly us to Southampton. “Do you suppose the designer realized I’m not great at relaxing?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You’re doing a pretty good job of it right now.” He laid a hand on my stomach, and the warmth of him stole through my shirt and into my skin. “All those things you invented about Sterling Chase… the mountain climbing, the polo playing, the adventuring. That’s you. The stuff you did.”

I nodded.

“So… were you supposed to be climbing that mountain this weekend?”

“I was. My parents asked me to attend the gala to represent the Daynes, so I changed my plans.” I darted him a look. “Poor Bubbles must be there all alone, pining for me.”

Rowe’s eyes crinkled, but he bit down on his lip, stopping his smile. “Are you disappointed you missed it?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, obviously . Instead, I found myself admitting, “Not a single bit. If I’d been in Borneo, I would have missed meeting the Sterling Chase. And I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that for the world.”

His smile lit up his face, enough to make me yank him by the legs even closer and dive on top of him to kiss his adorable mouth again. Snack mix and empty glasses went flying all over the place… and the sound of his delighted laughter had the same effect on my heart.

We have until tomorrow , I told myself. Maybe this thing will burn itself out, and then I’ll cut the sexy liar loose .

As I shoved his shirt over his head and nipped at his full lips, I ignored the little voice in the back of my head suggesting Rowe wasn’t the only Prince of Lies in the room.