20. Cole

She could have been hurt.

My eyes dropped to the gun sticking out of the waistband of the guy who"d been intending to "party" with Sunny, whether she accepted his invitation or not. There were no cameras at Lobo"s warehouse. That made it the perfect place for men to take advantage—prey on the vulnerable.

I retrieved the gun out of the guy"s waistband—a six-shooter with the serial number filed off. I emptied the bullet chamber, and as each round hit the asphalt with a hard plink, I thought of all the things that could have happened to Sunny if I hadn"t shown up in time.

If I hadn"t spotted her in the distance just as I was pulling my car onto the dirt field the venue called a parking lot.

He"d been chasing after her by the time I drove to her and exited the car.

He"d been reaching out to grab ahold of her arm when I ran up on him.

If I"d gotten there even a second later...

If I hadn"t knocked him out before he could pull that gun to threaten her. Or worse.

I looked up from the now-empty bullet chamber to Sunny, who stood there in wide-eyed shock. Probably realizing all the things I just did.

That there are worse predators than me in this City of Sin.

"Get in the car," I commanded between clenched teeth.

To her credit, she didn"t fight me. Just ducked her head and quickly scurried into the passenger side of the Jag I"d left parked sideways in the dirt.

We drove back to the Benton in dead silence.

And Sunny wisely didn"t say a word when we pulled into the private garage and took my elevator back up to the penthouse.

As soon as we walked through the door, she bent down to pull the heels she"d been wearing all night off her feet. But I walked straight to the kitchen counter, where the contract still lay, and bit out, "Name your terms."

She let out a full-body sigh as she straightened up, her heels hanging from two fingers. "Wow, Cole, seriously?"

"That"s been your problem since we met," I informed her. "You continuously fail to grasp how serious I am."

I set the contract back on the counter, plopped a monogrammed pen on top of it, and repeated, "Name your terms, Sunny."

"Okay, so we"re doing this." Sunny gave me a weary shake of her head, as if she couldn"t be more disappointed in me. "We"re having this fight after the night I just had—the night you just put me through."

"The night you put yourself through," I shot back, baring my teeth. "You were supposed to come home with me after that dinner. Instead, you ran off and made me fetch you?—"

"Fetch me?" Her eyes flared wide with outrage. "Like a dog, you mean. You think I"m some dog—some sex doll that you own?"

"Like a fiancée! A fiancée I"m sworn to protect until this deal is done," I roared back at her. "What were you thinking? Ditching me to run back to somebody who left you vulnerable to an attack?"

"Run back to who?" Sunny had the temerity to shake her head at me, like she had no idea who I was talking about.

"Your fighter ex? The guy you went to instead of coming home to me?"

"First of all, this isn"t my home," Sunny insisted. "This is the prison you set up for me after locking me out of the hotel room I rightfully requested and having my landlord evict me—I mean, who does that? You forced poor Vinny to break at least ten different tenant laws."

"It doesn"t matter how your creepy landlord feels about the situation." I shrugged. A small, miserable part of me was soothed that she appeared almost as upset as I'd felt when I realized she"d gone to support her ex in a fight. "I told you I didn't want you living here."

"Yeah, you did, and so what?" Sunny answered. "I'm a grown woman, Cole. I can do what I want. You don't own me."

Not yet, I thought darkly before returning to the subject. "You are in violation of the Conduct part of your NDA. In what universe do you think it"s okay to be seen out in public with your ex-boyfriend?"

"The universe where he wasn"t my real boyfriend!"

I stopped. Crooked my head. Then jutted my chin forward to ask, "What?"

"You aren't my first fake dating situation, okay?" Sunny folded her arms defensively."When Tony was still on the amateur circuit, he used me as a beard for years to cover up his real relationship with Cherenity."

I stared at her.

"Cherenity is a drag queen. She hosts the?—"

"I know who she is." I furrowed my brow but admitted, "We"ve been thinking about poaching her for a Drag Bingo scheme similar to the one we run at the Benton New Orleans."

"Oh, that"s a wonderful idea!" Sunny"s face lit up. "She and Tony could use the money. He"s thinking about retiring soon, and I know he wants to adopt. But wait, would she still be able to sing? Because it would be a shame not to use that voice of hers?—"

I raised my hand to stop her right there. "So what you"re trying to tell me is that you lied to my grandmother about your boyfriend, too. In fact, you didn"t truly have a boyfriend before me."

"Well, you"re not truly my boyfriend, either," she pointed out carefully. "And yes, I had a major boyfriend before you. Two years ago. He was super nice and charitable. We actually met while he was campaigning outside of Trader Joe's on behalf of a local homeless shelter. But eventually, he decided the optics of him dating a showgirl weren"t great, and he dumped me, um..."

She raised her eyes to the ceiling to calculate. "Yeah, I guess that would be over two years ago now."

So, Rich Harrison is the real ex, I noted to myself. Moreover,"You"ve been fake dating a gay boxer, and you haven"t had sex in two years?"

"Yes, goodbye sex two and a half years ago," she confirmed. "And both Tony and his real partner prefer the term queer since Cherenity uses she/her pronouns."

"How much did he pay you?" I demanded, head spinning. "How much did this guy pay you to spend two years of your life pretending to be his girlfriend?"

She jerked her chin back. "Tony"s my friend."

I stared back at her blankly.

"That means I would never charge to help him be with the real love of his life, who, you know, has a really amazing set of pipes and lets Pru and me into the Mimosa Drag Brunch for free. Actually, maybe don"t poach her. Pru will kill me if she finds out I"m the reason we suddenly have to pay for bottomless mimosas and drag the next time we go."

I narrowed my eyes at her, assessing her in a new light, given everything I"d just learned. "So, this is what you do? Let everyone else in your life use and take advantage of you, but when I ask you toname your terms for a contract…A contract that would give us—both of us—everything we want from this apparently second fake relationship you are refusing to get paid for, you run all over Vegas to escape actually getting renumerated for your efforts."

"This isn"t about getting paid." She shook her head wearily. "I can"t enter into the kind of relationship you"re asking for?"

"Why not?"

"I just can"t."

"Why not?" I repeated, refusing to take that vague no for an answer. Could she truly not see the sound reason in my proposed arrangement? "This contract makes sense. For both of us."

"Okay, it"s late, and I really don"t have the energy to fight with you." Sunny dismissed my reasonable argument with a wave of the heels in her hand. "Thank you for saving me in the parking lot. I really do appreciate it—though, you might want to talk to your bestie about better security for those fights. I"m going to bed, and tomorrow, I"ll be out of your hair."

She started to walk away.

"Where do you think you can go that I won"t shut you out of?" I asked, throwing my words like sharpened icicles into her back.

She stopped short but didn"t answer. That was okay. She didn"t have to.

"I already made sure your bestie was occupied tonight. What do you think I"ll do if she tries to offer you shelter?"

Sunny"s shoulders tightened, letting me know that my words hit their target.

"She has a brother who needs to be in that particular district, right? At least, that"s what my source in HR told me. Something about a teen ward with special needs? Hopefully, she"s saved up enough money for the court fight when she gets her eviction notice."

"You wouldn't!"

Sunny turned around with a fierce glare. God, she was beautiful angry. I had never seen anything like it.

But... "You should be aware after tonight that it"s not a great idea to put anything past me. Especially when a contract is on the line. Now, unless you want to drag Prudence into this, too, you'll stop fighting this thing between us and?—"

"And what?" she demanded before I could finish. "Submit? Is that what you want? To own me like I'm one of your cars?"

"You know what I want, and you want it, too."I removed the space between us in just two strides."You're the one playing games with my head. Responding to me the way you did, then running away."

"I am not playing games with you. You"re the one who plays games. I can"t even beat Pru"s little brother—the one you"re threatening to get your way—at checkers! And you know what? You"re the one who ran away. I"m the one who"s two years' worth of horny. I asked you to keep going, and you said, "Here, first sign this! Who does that?"

"I asked you to sign a contract making the terms of our relationship clear."

"Then you rendered me homeless and jobless within twenty-four hours of me telling you no the first time. Like a complete psycho! And now you"re threatening my innocent friend and her even more innocent brother?" Sunny shook her head at me."I mean, how did you even expect this to go? Do women usually respond to these tactics?"

"I don't know, Sunny," I answered coldly. "You're the only woman I've ever had to manipulate 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 me. "Maybe because you're a psycho?"

I didn't love being called a psycho by the woman I wanted in my bed. Twice.

But Ikept my voice detached as I reminded her, "A psycho you said you wanted tonight in that hotel room. And what was that you said in the car about me being‘really freaking handsome'?"

To my great satisfaction, the self-righteous indignation drained out of her face and was replaced by a flustered expression before she spluttered, "The hotel room was amistake. One of the worst mistakes I've ever made. I see that now."

Her words hit me like an arrow through the heart, lethal and unexpected.

"You were a mistake. The worst mistake I ever made!"

For a moment, just a moment, I let my guard down, the ice mask I always wore cracking. But a moment was all it took.

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

I turned away from her, giving her my back.

"Cole?" I heard her say behind me.

I didn't answer her. Couldn't answer her. Breathe. Don't move. Don't speak until you've got yourself under control.

I hadn't had to give myself this particular instruction in a while. Years. But there was something about Sunny—something that made the self-control I'd started to take for granted a no-longer-certain thing.

"You"re right." I turned back around, my mask fully in place, but I refused to look at Sunny. That would be too dangerous for me. "This was a mistake. Call Agnes. Tell her I said to set you up in whatever room you want at the Benton."

"Call Agnes?" she repeated. "Cole, it"s one in the morning. What"s going on with you?"

My chest was constricting painfully, the past blending in with the present, echoing the word mistake, mistake, mistake.

"Cole?" Sunny"s voice was threaded with worry.

She was right. Maybe they both were. I was a complete psycho. A mistake.

"I"m going to bed. Agnes will contact you about the next time we need to make a public appearance."

With that, I headed for the stairs. I needed to get away from the memories. From her.

But Sunny caught my arm when I tried to pass by.

"Let me go," I said, barely managing to keep my voice level.

"Something just happened." She gripped my arm even tighter. "Something I said got to you—like, triggered you. Tell me what it was."

"Let me go, Sunny," I repeated.

"No, look at me, Cole."

I kept my head carefully turned away. "No."

"That's surprising," she answered, her voice laced with faux confusion. "I wouldn't have pegged you as the type of guy who couldn't look someone in the eye."

Apparently, I wasn"t the only one adept at finding just the right words to manipulate my target.

Of course, I couldn't let her challenge go unanswered. I clenched my jaw, straightened to my full height, and made myself look down my nose at her.

But dammit, her eyes….They were no longer blazing with fury. No, they were soft with concern. Like I was some kind of stray she'd found on the street.

"I don't need your pity," I told her.

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," I said, my voice a final answer.

We stood there in silence while I waited for her to give up and let go of my arm. But instead, she clamped her lips together—then said the last thing I would have expected.

"Okay, I have your terms. If you still want me to sign that other contract, I will."