Chapter Thirteen

Not good.

Not good at all.

Let me rephrase—very good. Too good. The kind of good you want to bottle up and save for a rainy day.

There was a first time for everything. Apparently, this was my first time finger-fucking my ward.

I’d never messed with a client before. Prided myself in the cool and collected way I handled my assignments, even when some of the most gorgeous, glamorous women on earth fell at my feet, begging for a joy ride.

In the end, the one who managed to get her way was the unassuming Hallie Thorne.

She was pretty enough, but nowhere near as eye-catching as many other women who’d tried—and failed—to lure me into temptation.

What made Brat ruthlessly alluring was her hostile individuality. Like a cornered, rabid animal, she fought, even without teeth and claws. She didn’t give up on herself, even if, in her own eyes, she was unworthy.

It was that fine line between her defenselessness and slyness that did it for me. She was a contradiction. A tender-souled belle who didn’t mind walking all over Max’s future with her pointy stilettos just to make a point. An exiled Eve. A weird, mixed-breed creature.

Someone like me.

Which reminded me. I wasn’t going to sack Max.

Poor asshat was a pawn in our screwed-up game. But I was going to make him sweat buckets and ensure Hallie Thorne was off-limits for him.

As for playing with America’s former First Daughter’s pussy juices, well, that was a one-off. I was fairly certain Brat wouldn’t rat us out to her parents. Admitting she got frisky with the help would serve as more ammo against her, and they already had plenty to work with.

The next morning, I woke up knowing I had to avoid her until I got my mind straight and my cock under control. Next time I saw her, I had to sit her down and explain there would be no more nothings between us.

I grabbed my phone from my nightstand. The screen flashed with Tom’s name.

Not in this lifetime.

Not that any part of me considered confiding in him about my transgressions last night. But Tom was usually the bearer of bad news, and I needed two cups of coffee before dealing with his ass.

I rejected the call, sat upright, and phoned Max. He answered before the dial tone started.

“Boss!” he greeted anxiously. “Listen, I haven’t slept all night. I just wanted to say—”

“I don’t give a crap about what you want to say.” I jammed my feet into my slippers, sauntering to the closet. “Only reason your ass is not sacked and you’re not on an economy flight back to Los Angeles right now is because we’re overworked and understaffed. You are not to touch the ward again, Maxwell.”

“I know, I know.” His voice reeked of desperation. I wondered how high on the psychopath scale I’d score. I did not even feel remotely hypocritical for this transgression. “I never meant for the lines to blur this way. I was just…I mean, she was just…”

“A bag of issues and pert tits.” I flung the closet open, choosing dark gray slacks and a pale blue dress shirt. “Even if she wasn’t hot, it still wouldn’t be okay to fondle her.”

“Absolutely. You have my word. Never again.” There was a pause. “I understand if you want to reassign me.”

Reassigning him would be the right thing to do. But that would show Hallie that I gave a shit, that I was jealous, and that was false advertising.

“You’ll take the day shift with her today,” I announced, knowing damn well that Brat was going to be devastated to see Max on her case after last night. This would be the ultimate rejection. “I have business to attend to.”

“In Dallas?” He sounded surprised. “Okay. You can trust me, boss. I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.” I slipped a cufflink through the inside of the cuff. “Because I’ll kill you if you do.”

As soon as Max showed up at the suite, I slipped outside. Hallie was still asleep. I took the Bugatti and drove out to Plano, a sleepy Dallas suburb where people traded their souls for kidney-shaped pools.

The Bugatti was a spur-of-the-moment rental. A reminder that Hallie Thorne hadn’t dug deep into my skin. All of her environmental work and mumbo-jumbo about global warming did my head in. I needed to remind myself that I liked fast cars, meat, and private jets.

I parked in front of a gray-stoned McMansion overlooking a golf course and a lake. Carefully trimmed shrubs and a white picket fence surrounded the property, and baby toys littered the front lawn. The whole damn nine yards.

“You son of a gun, Law.” I shook my head, rounding the Bugatti and knocking on the door. A young woman with bloodshot eyes flung the door open, holding a mostly naked baby with rolls where his elbows and knees should be.

“You Ransom?” she asked, then yawned.

“To my dismay, yes.”

She shoved the baby into my hands. “Lawrence is upstairs, finishing a call. You can come in. I need to jump in the shower. This little nugget just threw up all over me.”

She turned around and left. I frowned at the baby, who frowned back at me. His expression said, don’t ask me. You guys are the adults here.

“Your mother is a nutcase,” I said, unsurprised. Lawrence had always had pedestrian taste when it came to the fairer sex.

I treaded inside, taking in the full bourgeois-conversion to which my good friend had succumbed.

Even though Law didn’t want for himself the same lifestyle chosen by Tom and me, we remained close. He was our big brother, in all the ways that mattered, and it never occurred to me to miss out on seeing him during my time in Texas.

I crouched down to place the tiny human onto a play mat shaped like a cloud when I heard a gruff voice emerging from the marbled stairway.

“You should get one of those.”

I straightened my spine. “The play mat or the baby?”

“Baby.”

“Not into pets.” I patted my hands clean, turning around to eyeball my friend. Lawrence was a six foot four behemoth of a man, with a bushy black beard and raven eyes to match.

He clapped my shoulder. “I see you’ve met Stassia and Emmanuel.”

“Up close and personal.” I sauntered into his trendy white kitchen, popping the fridge open. I was met with mountains of puree pouches and prepacked meals.

This was a mistake. I couldn’t ask this guy for advice. He was too far gone into Family Land.

“Don’t look so horrified. Beer’s in the garage cooler.” Lawrence closed the fridge’s door in my face. “Stassia should be down any minute. We can sit there. More private.”

We waited for Stassia to emerge from the quickest shower ever recorded. Once excused, we retired to the garage, where we popped beers and sat in front of a huge flat screen TV, tuning in to a baseball game.

“What brings you here?” Lawrence took a pull of his beer. “And please spare me the you-missed-me bullshit. We see each other exactly two times a year—both when I’m in Chicago for business.”

Law was a sports agent and did very well for himself.

“I’ve got a job in your neck of the woods.” I scratched my stubble.

“You travel all around the US and never made it to suburbia.” Law chuckled. “Whenever you show up, it’s because you wanna talk.”

Other than Lawrence, I never talked to anyone about anything. Tom was great, too, but he was too geographically close to me.

Looking around, I shrugged. “Your place is depressing.”

“Spill it out, then, sonny boy, and get outta here.”

No point in postponing why I’d come here. I needed to get my ass kicked.

“I made a boo-boo.”

“How big?”

“A wound shot?” I rubbed at my forehead, frustrated.

“Juicy.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’m listening.”

“I almost fucked the ward yesterday.”

Lawrence’s face broke into a huge grin. “That’s great news, buddy.”

Had he lost his grasp of the English language?

“Did you hear what I said?” I sat back, my leg jerking impatiently. “I nearly fucked my entire operation, and an almost-underage girl in the process.”

“It’s the first time you ever lost control.” Lawrence toasted the air with his beer. “She must be special.”

“She’s special, all right. A special kind of nightmare,” I muttered.

His eyes widened with delight. He created a square with his fingers, aiming them at me. “That’s a Kodak moment if I’ve ever seen one. Ransom Lockwood, enamored. Looks like she’s giving you hell, too. I already like her.”

“She’s a child,” I spat out, as if it was Lawrence who stuck his finger into Brat yesterday, not me.

“How young are we talking here? Twenty-five? Twenty-three?”

I averted my gaze to his parked Chevy Suburban.

“Dayum!” Lawrence cackled, enjoying the show. “Eighteen?”

“No, you gross ass. Twenty-one.”

He whistled. “Rules are meant to be broken.”

“So are your bones, if you keep making light of it.” I peeled the label off the sweaty beer bottle, wondering if Max had adhered to my warning and kept his hands to himself today. I would tear him limb from limb if he crossed the line again.

“What’s with you? It’s not like you to get your panties in a twist about a woman.” Law turned off the TV, swiveling toward me. “Truth is, I’m kind of relieved someone managed to penetrate the surface with you. I was starting to worry your ass would never settle down. Nothing gets to you.”

“Beer does.” I raised the empty bottle in my hand. “Grab me another one.”

Law leaned down, seizing another beer from the cooler and hurling it my way. I caught it mid-air.

“And settling down is not an option. No woman can handle this much bullshit.” I pointed at myself.

“And yet, you’re here.” Law quirked a brow. “If you got it all figured out, why’re you asking for advice?”

“It’s hard to stay away from her.” I rubbed at my stubble-shadowed chin. “Her dad is the former president of the United States, and he’s about to help me reel in the big fish if he’s satisfied with my work. Which, my guess is he wouldn’t be, if his daughter is full of my cum.”

Not to mention all the other ways I wanted to play with her, now that I knew she was game.

“Business ain’t everything.” Law tsked. “You deserve happiness.”

I smiled bitterly. “A good lay doesn’t equal happiness.”

“A good woman does.”

“She’s no good, and barely a woman.”

“Now you’re just acting like a bastard because you’re angry someone managed to make you feel not-miserable for the first time in your shit-ass life.”

Law’s eyebrows collapsed. He looked at me so intensely, for a moment, I got ready to punch him in case he tried to hug me.

“You know it’s not our fault, right? What happened with Moruzzi.”

“I know that,” I gritted out. I meant every word. I didn’t feel regret nor shame. Whatever happened—happened. It was out of my control.

“What happened with Kozlov in L.A…. that wasn’t your fault, either.”

See, here, I begged to differ.

I should have never told Law about that. It was a slip of the tongue. Something I’d confessed one very drunken night.

“Whose fault was it, then?” I downed my second beer.

“Sometimes bad things happen and it’s no one’s fault.”

“Well, part of this job is in L.A., and let’s just say the Russians didn’t forget about me.”

“Can you blame them? You made yourself a lot of enemies before you went solo with Tom. Including our time in Chicago. We were reckless. We made a name for ourselves. You made some mistakes. One of them with a very bad person. Question is—are you ready to change, Ransom? Are you ready to grow up?”

I knew what he wanted me to say. That yes, I was ready. And yes, the string of fast cars and fast women got old. But the truth was, I was still the same asshole. Miserable and incapable of having feelings for anyone. Except for maybe an unhealthy little fascination with a woman I worked for.

“This is useless. I’m not you. I’m not Tom. I’m not built for this.”

I stood up, dumping my two empty beers into a can on my way to the door. Then I stopped. Turned around, frowned, and returned to the trash, picking up both of the beer bottles.

“Where’s your recycling bin?” I asked.

“In the kitchen, under the sink.”

I carried the beer bottles into his house and put them in recycling on my way out.

On the drive back to Dallas, Tom called again. I couldn’t put him off any longer. Especially considering he’d tried me throughout the day yesterday, too, but I’d been busy conducting job interviews with a few people who’d flown in from Austin.

I ended that day sucking Princess Thorne’s pussy juices from my fingers while masturbating into the sheets like a fourteen-year-old.

“What’d you have for me?” I popped gum as I swiped the phone screen.

“I need some help,” Tom used his friendly tone, which meant I wasn’t going to like this.

“The app store is the blue square with the A on it.” I rubbed my eyes. When he wanted something, it was usually technology related.

“Let me rephrase, I have a professional request.” Tom cleared his throat. “You need to keep Miss Thorne in Texas. Or, more specifically, anywhere but in Los Angeles.”

“And why’s that?” I clutched the steering wheel in a death grip, asking, even though I already knew the answer.

“A little birdie told me Kozlov has a real hard-on for you and he’s aware that you were working in the area.”

“Remind me who said it was a good idea to send me back to Los Angeles?” My jaw ticked.

“Mine,” Tom admitted. “I didn’t think they’d know or care. It’s been years.”

I hit a traffic light. Stopped. Closed my eyes, shaking my head. Goddammit…

“Look.” I was about to lie. It would be the first time I’d lied to Tom. Up until now, I only omitted the truth from him once in a while. “I’ve been keeping an eye. The coast is clear. Maybe your source is wrong.”

What the fuck was I doing? Why was I hanging on to this assignment?

“Appreciate it,” Tom said shortly. “Still, I would feel better if y’all stayed in Texas for a bit longer to throw off the scent.”

“I can’t tell her what to do forever.”

More specifically, she now had leverage over me, and I couldn’t treat her like a rag doll. The princess and I were partners in crime, and I knew she’d use what happened yesterday against me.

“Just try to stall her, all right? I’m sure they’ll lose interest in a week or two.” Tom sounded distracted. “Course, there’s another option.”

“Enlighten me.”

“We can outsource this assignment. Get someone else to watch her. We might lose Thorne’s support, but we’d keep her safe. It’d be better for everyone.”

Not for me.

“I started the job, and I’ll finish it,” I bit out, hanging up the phone in his face.