Chapter 12
By morning, they were both physically exhausted. Riley woke to the sound of Gray’s slow, even breathing. She turned her head and looked at his face. In sleep he looked his own age, and it occurred to her that when he was awake he seemed older than he was. He was world-weary; that was the expression that described him best, and she felt a small pulse of emotion that sent a little skittering of fear down her spine as she thought of it.
She had to leave. It was over, and her commercial flight was scheduled to depart the airport in just a few hours. Her body ached from the wonderful sex they’d had. She wanted it to stay with her forever.
Still, she had a decision to make. She could be on that plane, or she could stay for a while longer. Maybe see if there really was something between them or if it was just a simple summer fling. One of the perks of being the Teeter kid was that she didn’t have to worry about clocking in right on time; she could show up for work when she wanted to, and she could even extend her vacation if she felt like it. Her father would not like it, of course, but he could be talked into almost anything if she tried hard enough. The one thing he’d never be talked into, though, was accepting her love—or whatever it was—for Grayson.
Guilt stung her deep within. She knew there was no way she could put off going home. Even if she wasn’t going to be taken seriously, she had to take her responsibilities seriously. Still, the thought of staying with Gray was so very, very tempting.
She slid out of bed, determined to order some breakfast and enjoy it in bed with him. Until the absolute very last second that she had to leave, she wanted to spend every moment, every breath with him. She reached for the phone to call room service, but Gray’s voice stopped her.
“Riley?”
She turned and looked at him as he sat up, wearing an expression that terrified her. She set the phone back into its cradle, her breakfast order forgotten. “Yeah?”
He got out of bed and stood there, naked and blinking. “I really need to talk to you. It’s important, and I should’ve told you already.”
Her hand instantly clutched her throat, and she found her pulse beating far too fast below her fingertips. “About what?”
He turned around. “I’m the owner’s son, Riley. My dad owns this place.”
What?! She was sure she heard him wrong, so she asked him to repeat himself. “What did you just say?”
Gray, still naked, with that tanned, magnificent toned body of his, practically shone in the light coming in from the windows. “I had to tell you, Riley. And there’s more…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know how, and I don’t wanna say it, but I just… I have to.”
Her face paled as she pondered all the worst-case scenarios. Her eyes went from the windows to his face, and her heart slammed into her ribs. “What is it…?” she said, her voice barely a squeak.
Grayson swallowed hard. “Um, well, see, my dad is gonna ask if you’ve talked to yours yet.”
“Huh?” she said, confused. “About what? Us? Why would I?”
Grayson sighed and ran a finger through his hair as his shoulders slumped. “Look, my dad wants yours to invest in the new resort.”
“Why would my dad do that?”
“For one, it’s a good deal, but for two… Well, Dad thinks I told you about it, so…”
No! He has to be joking, she thought as horror snaked into her body. “Wait. You told your dad you talked to me about a business deal, with my father? Am I getting that right?”
Grayson gave her a sheepish grin. “Yeah, it was stupid… the idea…and I’m so sorry.”
Riley still did not get it. “I don’t… What are you trying to say here, Gray? I mean, what are you really trying to say?”
“My family owns this resort. I’m not just the bartender. I’m the owner’s son.”
“I got that,” she said, blinking. She didn’t understand why he had lied to her. Was he afraid I’d try to use him for money or something? Try to get a free room? She was all too familiar with how people without money treated people with it.
“I know who you are, too, Riley, who your dad is. My father’s going to be waiting at the front desk when you check out. He’s hoping I convinced you to talk to your dad.”
Shocked, she backed away from him. She was baffled at the deception. First, he’d failed to tell her who he was, and all along he knew about her familial connections, too. It really made no sense at all. Confused and unhappy, she muttered, “What the hell?” She looked at the bed and then at him. Had he just slept with her to get to her father?
Gray moved and grabbed his shorts, not putting them on yet. “I’m saying I lied to my dad. I had to. He just wouldn’t stop. Riley, I don’t want you to get involved in any of this. It’s stupid. Dad made a dumb move and got screwed over by the guy he chose to handle our cash. We’re…in trouble.”
She held up her hands. “Whoa. Slow down. I’m confused. You aren’t making much sense, or else I’m just not following you.”
“Okay…” He waited, trying to let her run through what he’d told her.
Riley stared at his lean ass and legs, his narrow waist and muscular back and shoulders. Heat raced along her skin. Damn, he makes me hot, even now. Being around him when he was nude left her unable to think at all. “You know who I am?” she asked in an aching whisper. She wanted him to say no, that she had heard him wrong, that he had no idea that she was Riley Teeter, the daughter of one of the country’s richest men, the protected, spoiled child of a political candidate.
“I do, and I’m sorry for not telling you that.”
“And what about the rest of what you just said?”
His voice was low and strained as he explained, “I told my dad I talked to you about that deal. I had to. It was the only way I could get him to back off and leave us alone, to leave you alone.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, as he’d never mentioned any deal to her at all. “What deal? You never mentioned a deal, my dad, or any of this, Gray.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that, but you’ve gotta tell me what the hell you’re really trying to say.” With every second, she grew more nervous. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good. One idea did form in her head, but she didn’t want to imagine it and certainly didn’t want to embrace it. The idea was awful, and she quickly pushed it down.
“My dad wanted me to spend time with you so I could get you to ask your dad to be an investor,” he said, still not turning around.
Is he just ashamed, or is he just trying to let me get a good look at that hot ass of his so I’ll forget everything else and agree to go along with it? When she could speak again, she said with an obvious crack in her voice, “You used me?” She didn’t want to sound so hurt, but she couldn’t help it. The picture was becoming clear, and she didn’t like what she saw.
He turned around, and his cock jutted up at a slight angle. His legs, powerful and capable of pinning her in place on the mattress, came toward her. “No, Riley. I did not use you, because I did not ask you to talk to your dad. I never would have done that.”
“Oh? Sounds like you’re doing it now!”
She still found it almost impossible to think with him walking around like that, with that cock and that body that drove her so crazy moving toward her. It was too hard to clear her head, too hard to think when all she could hear was the sound of her own voice ringing deep in her head, telling her he’d used her, telling her Gray was no better than the rest of the men she knew, all those selfish men who wanted to date her just because her dad was rich and powerful. There was no way to shut that voice up either; it just kept yammering away in her skull, insisting that she hear it, even if she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to listen, no matter how true it was.
She took a few steps back. “Stay away from me, Gray. I mean it. Stay far, far away from me.” She glanced over at her sundress, hanging off the side of a chair. She grabbed it and slid it on, ignoring the fact that she was nude beneath it. She didn’t want to be totally naked, not next to him, as he could far too easily take control of her body. “How dare you,” she whispered.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, Riley. Fuck, I tried my best to stay away from you. My plan was to say you wouldn’t let me anywhere near you, and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing about that. I planned to just leave you alone, without ever talking to you, much less start something with you.”
She thrust a finger into his chest, stopping him in his tracks. “You should have stuck to that plan.”
“C’mon, Riley! You chased me down.”
She couldn’t believe he said that, that he was trying to blame her, to say she had somehow forced him to use her and sleep with her. “If you thought I was chasing you, you didn’t have to stop running! How dare you insinuate that I somehow did this! That it’s my fault you and your dear old dad cooked up some plot for you to fuck me into agreeing to have my father invest in this place? For that matter, why didn’t you ask me, Gray? Oh, wait. Let me guess. You two are only gunning straight for the top of the Teeter chain! You don’t need me. You need my dad and his money. You never even stopped to think that maybe I have money of my own, because you’re sure it wouldn’t be enough. You’re both a couple of greedy sons-of-bitches!”
He shook his head. “Riley, I didn’t ask you to invest for the same reason I didn’t ask you to mention it to your dad. I didn’t want to ask you.”
“But you’re asking now! You fucked me, and now you’re trying to fuck me over!”
“I’m not!” he said, shooting a hand out and gripping her upper arm.
Riley yanked her arm out of his grasp and glared at him. “The hell you aren’t!”
“The hell I am! I’m only asking you to say your dad isn’t interested in investing, just so I don’t catch hell from my own father. I love my dad, Riley, and I do care about this business of ours, but I was not willing to use you to keep us afloat. Honestly, we’re not even at that place yet.”
“What? We aren’t at a place where you feel okay using me? Gee, how nice of you to acknowledge that.” The sarcasm was strong in her voice, but the hurt in her heart was a lot stronger. It ate at her like acid, corroding everything she thought she knew about herself and Gray, about them as a couple. All the dreams she had, those stupid little fantasies of a perfect life with a great guy, one who made her feel free and even a little wild, just crumbled beneath her feet, leaving her feeling as adrift and scared as she did when he tossed her into the sea.
Gray took a long breath, and his eyes were full of pain. “Please don’t twist this into something it’s not, Riley,” he begged. “I know people have tried to use you before, and I know how much it hurt you. I’d never do that, Riley. I know you’re mad, and I’m sure you won’t believe me right now, but I swear you’ve got it wrong. Just hear me out, and I swear it’ll all make sense. You’ll see that I didn’t do what you think, what you’re accusing me of. I’d never do that, not to you.”
She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t. He’d been acting weird on the boat and after, and when they made love that last time, it was as if he would never see her again. The sheer intensity of that lovemaking spoke volumes. He knew it was over. They both knew that. Tears burned her eyelids but she blinked them back, and all her misery came out in a verbal gush. “So you were only with me because your dad wants mine to invest in the family business? Nice, Grayson. That’s real fucking nice. I should have never even talked to you. I had a feeling about you the second I met you, that you were some kind of sleazy asshole. I just didn’t know how big an asshole you really are. I swear you should come with a warning label, because you’re toxic as fuck and twice as deadly.” She had been dealing with a lot of intense feelings lately, courtesy of Gray, but the hurt now paled in comparison to the rage. She was angrier than she had ever been in her entire life. He had fooled her, and she had to wonder if any of what they shared was real. How much of it was just bullshit, so his father could use our affair to get a pocketful of dough from mine?
“It isn’t like that. I stayed away from you because I didn’t want any part of that. I still don’t. You don’t even have to tell your dad about the deal if you don’t want to.”
“Rest assured he won’t hear anything about any of this,” she said. Her hackles rose as she glared at him. “How dare you even… Fuck you, Grayson! I mean it. Fuck you! And I don’t mean that literally, because you will never—and I do mean never—see me naked ever again in your entire sorry life! Damn, how could I be so stupid? You’re nothing but a gigolo, a dick-for-hire. You deserve all those herpes-infested, silicon barflies who bat their eyelashes at you all day!”
His face flickered with deep hurt, but she didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, she’d only spoken the bitter truth. He had bedded her with motives beyond selfish, and, worse, his entire family had egged it on. Shame filled her. What kind of family does that? What kind of freaky-ass shit do they talk about anyway? They seemed so reasonable, but openly urging someone to sleep with a potential investor’s daughter was just nasty, sick, and dirty. That was exactly how she felt, too. Everything sweet, wonderful, and exciting was gone, displaced by anger and shame, and even worse emotions. She wanted to walk away, but now she was afraid her little escapade was going to cost her parents. She had to tell them what he had done, just in case the jerk and his equally jerky family tried to blackmail them, leveraging their important public opinion against them.
How in the hell could he be so twisted? she raged. Worse, how did I not see it? I should have known he was just in it for my family name, not who I really am. He was crazy, but he was really no crazier than all the things she’d done with him, things she’d done willingly at that. God, we stripped and swam naked in the ocean, had sex on the boat and in that alley and… Shit, what if there are pictures or something? What if they turn it into a scandal, threaten Dad into investing? She knew he would never forgive her, and his entire political dream could come crashing down because of what she had done. As she thought about that, the sick feeling in the pit of Riley’s stomach grew deeper and wider.
“Riley, I never agreed to do this,” Gray said again. “I didn’t want to.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t,” she spat as the wounds just kept bleeding. “No way did you want me. I get it.”
Gray’s hands came up. “That’s not what I meant at all. You know that.”
“No? It sure sounds like it,” she said, then snatched her bags out of the closet and began to fill them, tossing things in without bothering to fold or even look at them.
“Stop,” Gray pleaded, tugging her elbow gently.
She quickly shook him off like a pesky fly. “No. I’m going. And put your fucking shorts on!”
“Damn it, Riley!”
“Leave me alone!” The pain was too close to the surface, but she refused to cry in front of him. “Get out of my room, Grayson. In fact, get out of my life. I don’t need or want you around me.”
The last of her things landed in a messy heap in the suitcases, and she hurriedly zipped them. She stormed to the door, wondering how it had all come tumbling down so fast. The only thing she was sure of was that everything had crashed and burned, taking her heart with it like the dedicated captain of a sinking ship.
“Riley!” Gray desperately tried again.
“No!” she scoffed, not willing to say more than one more syllable to him.
Sweating, and yanking her suitcases behind her, Riley opened the door and ran down the hall. She took the steps, tossing her suitcases over the side so they landed on the concrete below. Her feet carried her down the steps in the blur, to a waiting cab.
The startled driver looked at her like she’d lost her mind when she grabbed her bags and heaved them at him.
“I need to get to the airport right now!” she cried.
By the time Riley climbed into the cab, Gray had made it down. His hair was still mussed from their lovemaking, and his clothes were askew.
She flipped him the bird as the cab drove out of the gates of the resort and headed for the airport.
Just like that, it was over. She’d rebelled, dared to go on a little adventure, and all it had left her with was a broken heart and shattered dream. Her confidence was beyond destroyed, and even Webster or Roget couldn’t have come up with enough words to describe how she felt in that moment.
He had lied to her. He’d never cared for her at all. Anger and misery swallowed her whole, and she made a quick decision. Never again. Never again will I risk everything for another person, never in my entire life. Gray had broken her heart, her spirit, and possibly her father’s reputation and bank account, and because of him she would never, ever open herself like that again.