Chapter 27

Beckett

I waited on the other side of the road, my phone in my hand and my gaze fixed to the front doors of the building. She wouldn’t even speak to me. She wouldn’t even reply to a single thing I’d said.

It was the same silent treatment I’d given her years ago, when I’d walked right out of her life and never come back.

Maybe I deserved this shit for what I’d put her through. If it’d felt like this, I understood her anger. Each second she was in there was a second too long.

Goldschmidt and Warburton, attorneys at law. That had to mean she’d been served the custody papers, and that our little stunt, which had admittedly fallen through, had failed spectacularly.

Her freeloader family was on the job, and Penny would be the payoff.

I sat down on one of the benches slightly removed from the sidewalk and cupped my phone between my palms. My mind worked on everything that’d taken place in the past couple weeks.

She wouldn’t talk to me. She hadn’t told me to fuck off, but she wouldn’t talk.

If she wouldn’t listen, I’d have to show her without words.

I unlocked my phone screen and called the dreaded number. The one I’d never thought I’d call in this context.

I pressed the phone to my ear and sat back against the wooden slats, draped my arm over the top of the bench, rested my ankle on my knee and watched those glass front doors.

Why hasn’t she come out yet? It’s a longass meeting and that means it’s—

“Cooper Investments. How may I help you?” The receptionist was suitably upbeat. She was probably an intern and got the coffee wrong most days. “Hello? This is Cooper Investments, how may I be of service to you?”

I ground my teeth. A cabbie laid on the horn down the road, and I blocked my other ear.

“This is Beckett Price,” I said, arrogance leaking into my tone. “Put me through to Cooper.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Price, but I can’t just—” There was a scuffle of movement and then the voice on the other end of the line changed. “Mr. Price, how are you this afternoon?” It was a different woman, this one terse and definitely not an intern.

“I’d be better if your receptionist didn’t sound like she was about to break into song. Put me through to Cooper. Now.”

“Apologies, Mr. Price. She’s new. Sir, give me one moment, please.” The equally upbeat and endlessly annoying melody pumped through the speaker of my phone, and I lifted it from my ear as I waited, still obsessing over the glass doors and the woman inside that building.

This thing with Cooper? It was just the first step. After this, I’d, fuck it, I’d have to find them and make them squeal like the two little piggies they were.

“Mr. Price?” The terse chick came back on the line, and I rammed the phone to my ear.

“Yeah.”

“Please hold for Mr. Cooper.”

“Fine.”

Another tune jaunted through the speaker, and I shifted both feet to the gritty sidewalk and tapped my heels. Not in time with the music or anything, just out of frustration.

The tune clicked off again. “This is Cooper.” His gravelly voice instantly pissed me off, but I didn’t have a choice here. This was my now or never.

“And this is Price,” I replied.

“Well, well, well, didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again, buddy. I thought you were sulking after our little call the other day.”

Man, this was the ultimate fucking humiliation, but it had to be done. Cooper had said our rivalry was friendly, but that was a lie. I’d never liked this fucker. Grudgingly respected him, yeah, but never liked him.

“To what do I owe this extreme pleasure?” Cooper purred.

I envisioned throat-punching him so hard he choked on his own blood. “Pleasure, maybe. We’ll see. I need you to buy my business.”

Deathly silence.

I watched the door. It opened, and a man exited, walking with his cell glued to his ear. No Olivia, not yet.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I either just hallucinated or had an aneurysm,” Cooper said, at last, sounding breathless. Actually breathless.

That was how much this business meant to him. How he felt about Cooper Investments was how I felt about Olivia. Then again, he probably didn’t want to fuck his business. The intern, yeah, but the brick and mortar, not so much.

“You heard me correctly,” I said. “I want you to buy me out. At a good price. You can assimilate Price Capital into your business and do with it what you will.”

“What the hell, Price? Why?”

“Because some things in life are more important than work.”

“Name one,” he replied.

I sucked my teeth. “Never mind. I’ll sell to someone else.”

“No, no, no. I’ll buy you out, but we’ll have to meet in person to discuss this.” He was positively gleeful about it. “We’ll get the lawyers involved, of course.”

“Whatever it takes,” I said. “This is something I have to do.”

Cooper exhaled. “Man, as much as I love the thought of owning Price Capital, I have to ask.”

“Ask what?”

“Are you sure about this? Because once the deal goes through, there’s no going back.”

The front door of the lawyer’s building opened, and Olivia walked out, pushing Penny’s stroller.

“I’m sure,” I said. “My assistant will set it up.” I hung up and launched off the bench, checked the coast was clear, then crossed the street and walked up beside my woman. My woman? She wasn’t yet. She would be.

“How did it go?” I asked.

Olivia pressed those puffy lips together and didn’t release them, as if she had to physically hold back from talking to me. Penny, on the other hand, turned in her stroller and waved at me. “Beck poo, back ‘gain!”

“Yes, honey. I’m here. I’ll be here as much as I can be.”

O stiffened and quickened her pace. We weren’t far from her apartment. We didn’t have much time.

“We need to talk,” I said, again, and she ignored me, true to form. “Olivia, tell me what happened in there.”

But she was totally gummed up, and the next fifteen minutes passed in utter silence as we weaved between foot traffic on the way back to her apartment. I didn’t leave her side. I couldn’t if I’d wanted to.

I needed this information to make things right between us. For all three of us.

The front doors of Olivia’s apartment building waxed into view, and I placed my hand on her wrist again.

Her steps faltered, but she kept walking.

“Wait,” I said. “O, you’ve got to speak to me. You’re killing me here. Don’t you see what this is doing to me?”

“Doing to you?” she snapped, at last, standing directly in front of the brick-faced building and its concrete steps. Olivia lowered that musical voice and squeezed her eyes shut for the briefest moment then opened them again. “I’m killing you? Are you kidding?”

“No, of course not.”

“I’m not the one who walked away seven years ago, and I’m not the one who goes out drinking and clubbing and kissing other people.”

“You know that was bull,” I said. “You know that.” But her anger was far better than the alternative: steely, cold silence.

“You knew that you didn’t want anything more than s-e-x,” she said, spelling it out for Penny’s sake, “when you came to see us here for the first time. And you knew how I felt, too. I made the dumb choice to go with it, anyway, so, you know what? This is partly my fault. I accept that, but I can’t accept you coming around here pretending that you care.”

“I do—I do care,” I said and placed my hand on the back of her neck. “I do care. That’s what this is all about. Olivia, I’ll do anything for you.”

Her eyes bugged out, and her knuckles whitened on Penny’s stroller. She was beautiful even when she was freaked. She’d pulled her blonde hair into a high ponytail that swished almost to her shoulders, and she wore no makeup as far as I could tell.

Clean, flawless. I couldn’t want her more. On every level.

“I care more than you know,” I said and massaged the nape of her neck with my thumb.

“Don’t lie.”

“You don’t have to believe me. Just believe that I care and that I want to see both you and Penny happy.”

She shook her head and looked up at the apartment building, then stepped forward and shrugged off my touch.

“Just tell me what’s going on and how I can help.”

“You can’t help,” she said.

“Did you get served?” I had to be relentless.

She rolled her lips together, extra slow. “Yes. At last. I’m sure you gathered as much from the fact that I went to see my lawyer.” Olivia swallowed. “There’s nothing you can do about this, Beckett. I have to deal with it on my own.”

“Have you heard from them?” I asked. “You know who I mean.”

“Yes.”

“What did they say?”

“George just repeated more of the same. They’re not giving in. In fact, he wanted me to give her up without going to court,” she said, and gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve got to go, Beckett. Penny needs her nap.”

“Olivia—”

She shook her head, more emphatically this time. “No,” she said. “No. I don’t want to hear whatever it is you have to say anymore. OK? I need space. I need to be left alone to deal with this.” And with that, she trudged off toward her building and entered it.

I watched her until she disappeared from sight, her hips swaying, hair swishing with the rhythm.

Still tall, beautiful, slender, but so much more than what I’d seen her as in the beginning. Fuck, I’d been blind.

And my blindness had led her to shut her own eyes, too.

Now, I’d have to force them open again.

I ripped my cell out of my pocket again and started walking, dialing the number I’d had on my speed dial for years.

Richie picked up after two rings. “Big boss, what’s happening? Haven’t heard from you in ages.”

“All good, man. How are you? How’s Rusty?”

Richie was Rusty’s brother. Another of my dark contacts from the time I’d been locked up. In fact, during that short stint in prison, it was Richie who I’d befriended, and he’d introduced me to Rusty right after I got out.

“Rusty, well, he is what he is, man. You know how it is.”

I didn’t bother dissecting that. “I need your services again,” I said.

“You want me to track down your momma?”

“No,” I replied. He’d found her location years ago, and I’d paid him and never done anything with the information. Likely, she’d moved since then. “I need you to find someone else for me. And I need you to get as much dirt as possible on them.”

“Them? There’s more than one chump?”

“There’s two,” I replied.

“Twice the trouble is twice the money.”

“Money’s not a problem,” I said. “I’ll quadruple your rate. I want you to find these fuckers, and I want you to get me enough dirt on them to drive them into the ground, all right?”

“Right.”

“And we’re keeping this strictly off the record.” What Richie did wasn’t exactly “private investigation.” He was a shark, and he was a criminal, and he had always been my last resort. I’d tried to keep things civilized. Emotionally disconnected. But it was too late for that now.

If I wanted to get Olivia back, then I’d have to do whatever it took to make that happen.

“No problemo, big boss. You gonna give me the names of these fuckers? It’d be a good start.”

I strode down the street, past pedestrians, alongside the now steady stream of afternoon traffic and hesitated once. Olivia was good and pure. She’d never allow this to happen.

But I wasn’t anything like her.

I’d do whatever it took. Whatever the price.

“George and Nicki Abbott.”

“I got you, boss.” Richie hung up. I pictured him downing the last of his beer and slipping on a shirt, covering the broad shoulders that had earned him the nickname “refrigerator,” that and the amount of food he stored away.

Olivia’s aunt and uncle would piss their pants once they laid eyes on him.