9. Cole

Shit.

Shit. Goddamnit. Fuck.

I"d almost had Sunny. I could tell she was seriously considering my sex-contract offer after I pulled her out of that rat trap of an apartment.

Not going to lie. The possibility of taking her to bed had erased most of my second thoughts about my unprecedented invitation to let a woman live with me, and my mouth had watered with images of me stripping her out of that tank top and sweatshirt combo after she named her terms and conditions. I could already see myself sucking, tasting, touching her everywhere. The promise of getting my good deed rewarded had dangled like a carrot between us—only to get yanked away with Juliet"s arrival.

I cursed myself three different ways for completely forgetting about the standing date with my latest agreement, Juliet Davies, a Vegas heiress who was biding her time as an event coordinator while she waited for her real estate billionaire father to kick the bucket. Then I cursed Juliet for walking into my home unannounced.

"Who gave you the code to my penthouse?" I demanded, stepping forward to block Sunny from her view.

Juliet"s wide smile became confused. "Oh, I... I"d been up here with you so often that I guess I memorized the code when I saw you punching it in."

She just happened to memorize my 12-digit password after a handful of visits? Yeah, right.

I returned to business mode to deal with this uninvited guest problem so I could return to laying the side contract groundwork with Sunny.

"I am no longer in need of our arrangement," I informed Juliet, straightening to my full height. "You may go now."

"I may go now?" Juliet repeated. "Six weeks, and you"re just dismissing me like that? On my birthday?"

Now she was claiming it was her birthday?

Should I threaten to sic security on her? Or should I just covertly text my shadow cartel team to deal with her?

Pro for threatening: She might give up this charade and leave.

Con for threatening: In my experience, Vegas heiresses could be batshit crazy—a mix of entitlement and never quite feeling like they fit in anywhere else in the world outside the neon gild of Sin City. A threat might actually escalate the situation and end with me having to call in my special team anyway.

But even if they took her downstairs in my private elevator, having a hysterical real estate heiress dragged out of the Benton naked might cause a scene. The city hosted millions of tourists a year, but our Vegas society was small. Everyone knew and did business with everyone else. It would only take one employee seeing Juliet getting thrown out like a bag of garbage to start rumors that would make things awkward at tomorrow"s CEO of the Year dinner.

"Who is she?" Juliet snarled, striding forward and craning her head to look around me. As if she were my longtime girlfriend, not a convenient arrangement we"d both agreed to fit into our busy schedules.

A moment ago, she"d been down for a threesome. Now her face was livid as she demanded to know, "Who is the man-stealing bitch you"ve suddenly decided to replace me with?"

"Don"t call her that." My hackles rose without warning on Sunny"s behalf. "You will not call her that. Not unless you want to have every tourist in the lobby watch you be thrown out of the Benton in nothing but that coat."

My threat obviously hit its mark because Juliet backed down, holding up both hands.

"I wasn"t trying to insult her, Cole. I was just trying to understand how you could replace me so easily and without a word of warning." Her voice became shaky with tears. "On my birthday!"

Jesus Christ.

"Either party may terminate this contract at any time with an oral or written announcement—that's what the agreement we both signed said in clear terms. I don't have to give you any warning before ending this arrang—" I started to point out.

Only to have Sunny suddenly dart around me. "Oh, my goodness. I am so sorry you found out about Cole and me this way!"

Before I could stop her, Sunny rushed to Juliet and put an arm around the smaller woman"s shoulder, somehow comforting her and smoothly leading her toward the front door at the same time. "I hope you can see by the way he"s treating you on your birthday that he is not worth any of this upset. Believe me…"

That was the last thing I heard clearly before the two women walked out of earshot, their voices dropping low.

I hung back, watching Sunny escort Juliet to the penthouse door and open it for her.

However, she didn"t shove Juliet through the newly opened space the way I would have if I were in the same position. Instead, they continued to talk quietly together. Well, Juliet talked and talked and talked. Sunny mostly nodded while tying her coat closed for her.

"It"s not really my birthday...." Juliet suddenly wailed loudly enough for me to hear in the kitchen area. "I just wanted to hurt him like he hurt me!"

Suspicion confirmed. I regarded the tearful heiress with a hardened heart. I knew she was lying from the start.

But Sunny just continued nodding sympathetically and produced several tissues out of nowhere.

The two women looked nothing alike, but somehow they appeared to be the best of friends. Sunny spoke in a low, quiet voice while they both dabbed at Juliet"s tears.

"You"re right!" Juliet said, loudly enough for me to hear. "You"re so right. Cole Benton isn"t shit. Thank you!"

My mouth nearly fell open when, instead of forcing me to call security, Juliet gave Sunny a tight hug and left of her own accord without so much as a backward look toward me.

"You"ve got my number!" Sunny stood inside the open door, waving as her new best friend headed toward the elevator. "Call or text me if you forget anything I told you."

I was more than a little impressed by the time Sunny finally closed the door to my penthouse.

"You handled that situation well," I told her when she rejoined me in the kitchen—sans the suddenly clingy heiress. "You"re already a much better pretend fiancée than I imagined when my grandmother put me up to this."

Instead of accepting my compliment, Sunny glared at me. "Every word I told Julie was true."

She shook her head at me, her big brown eyes full of disappointment. "That was cruel, Cole. The way you treated someone you"d been intimate with..."

I scoffed. "Six, maybe seven times, tops."

"Cruel and uncalled for," she insisted, continuing on as if my defense meant nothing. "Decent people don"t treat other people like that. And I"m going to pray Juliet really heard what I said about you not being worth the pain and heartbreak."

"You were a mistake!" My mother"s voice rushed at me from the past without warning. "All this pain. All this heartbreak! This is all your fault! And you"re not worth it."

I stilled in the present. To keep myself from flinching as both my mother"s words and those of the angry woman standing in front of me sliced through my ice like a diamond blade.

Sunny isn't anyone truly important, I reminded myself, icing over the unexpected rise of my emotions. She was a pawn. A convenient chess piece in my game. One that I wouldn"t mind fucking, sure. But wishing to fuck someone—some pawn—was no reason to allow it to hurt you.

"Are you done, little thief?" I asked. "Or would you like to judge me some more before you lay your head down in the rat-free room I"m providing?"

That did it. Sunny wasn"t nearly as good at masking her emotions as I was.

Shevisibly flinched, then lowered her hypocritical head.

"Okay, let"s agree to disagree," she muttered. "And we"ll just forget about the other thing."

The other thing—the side contract she"d no longer be signing—practically ticked on the counter like a parallel universe metronome, reminding me of what might have been.

"I, um, actually need the code to your apartment, too," she said into my regretful silence. "So I can come and go when you"re not here."

I dully recited the twelve digits on my keypad while kicking myself for not remembering to text Juliet that our standing sex date was over. "It"s my grandparents" birthdays, if you forget. The original Coleridge"s, followed by Nora"s."

Her expression softened a bit at the mention of Nora. "Oh, I used to use my grandma"s birthday for everything, too. Even to unlock my phone."

The bittersweet note in her voice made me prod. "But not anymore?"

"No." A shadow darkened her expression. "Not anymore."

She glanced away, her face taking on a sharpness that didn"t suit her pretty features. "Am I sleeping on the couch, or is there a guest bedroom?"

"You can have the guest bedroom upstairs," I answered after a few beats of decision. "It"s right next to?—"

"Great, I"ll find it myself." Sunny turned and grabbed her trash bag before I could finish directing her—not to the downstairs guest suite I usually used for my standing dates, but to the temporary bedroom space I"d been planning to turn into an office when I found the time. In nearly five years, I hadn"t found even a couple of spare hours to do much outside of work.

Not until today, when I"d magically made the time to get fake engaged to an unwitting pawn who appeared to no longer be interested in an additional consensual agreement to enjoy no-strings-attached sex on the side while I pulled off my real plan.

With a clenched jaw, I watched Sunny disappear up the stairs.

Needless to say, the night did not end the way I"d wanted it to when I brought my strangely alluring fake fiancée home to live with me.