Shani
My mouth was dry and my head was throbbing and I sure as shit didn’t intend to get out of this warm bed to answer the inconsiderate asshole with the nerve to pound on my door at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.
“Who the fuck is that?” West grumbled, pulling me into his arms.
He wasn’t supposed to spend the night. And cuddling? Definitely not part of the deal. But after four rounds last night, I couldn’t very well kick him out. I figured I at least owed him breakfast for his … efforts.
“I don’t know, but I’m…” I sat up, listening to the sound of a key in the lock. “Shit. It must be Troy. He’s the only one with a key.”
“Why the hell does he have a key to your place?”
I shushed him as I jumped out of bed and dashed across the room to get my robe off the hook on the back of my door. “Just give me two seconds, Troy,” I called. “Be right with you.” I shot West a warning look as I whispered, “Stay in here.”
“Fuck that,” he said, throwing back the covers.
Oh no. I did not need this shit today. My ex-boyfriend and best friend had hated each other ever since Troy found out West owned a strip club. He claimed Troy and his brother were no better than the pimps on the street, helping women sell their bodies to turn a fast buck.
I knew there was no point arguing with West, so I ran out to the living room before Troy could make his way down the hall.
“Hey,” he said, glancing at the two empty glasses on the tables. “Please tell me you didn’t do what you threatened to do last night.”
He knew all about my plan to hook up with West. We were best friends. We told each other everything.
“This isn’t a good time.”
“Don’t tell me that asshole’s still here.”
“He is.” West smirked in the doorway of my bedroom, wearing only his jeans, his belt hanging open. “Good to see you too, Troy.”
“Go fuck yourself, Travis.”
West laughed. “Somebody’s in a bad mood this morning. Guess you didn’t get any last night, huh?”
Troy advanced on him. “Listen to me, you miserable piece of shit. If you got her drunk and took advantage of her—”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said, getting between them. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d broken up a fight between two angry, burly men, but without my baton, I was at a disadvantage. “I invited West here.” I gave Troy a pointed look while planting my hands on his chest and forcing him to take a step back. “And you know why. You also know he didn’t take advantage of me because I wanted this.”
“I don’t believe this.” Troy ran his hands through his hair, tugging on the short dark-blond strands. “I can’t believe you actually went through with this. I thought you’d come to your senses.”
“You know how much I want a baby,” I said, crossing my arms.
“But why with him?” His explosion of temper stunned me. “Why not with me?”
“Hey!” West shouted, stepping in front of me. “Back the fuck off. Don’t talk to her like that!” He poked Troy’s chest. “It’s none of your goddamn business who she sleeps with!”
I should have known giving Troy my spare key would come back to bite me in the ass someday. Let someone get too close and they think they have the right to tell you how to live your life.
“Look,” I said to Troy, trying to calm a situation that was quickly spiralling out of control. “I know how much you care about me, but—”
“I love you, Shani!”
“Get the hell out of here!” West demanded, crossing to the door. “Now!”
“Who the hell are you to kick me out?” Troy asked, crossing his arms and planting his feet. “This is Shani’s apartment. If she wants me to leave, she’ll ask.”
Ugh! I hated being put in this position, but Troy wasn’t giving me much choice. I couldn’t let him stay. After what happened between West and me last night, beyond the sex, we needed to talk.
“I’m sorry,” I said, curling my hand around my friend’s arm, “but I really think you should go. I’ll call you later, okay?”
He closed his eyes before he folded me in his arms.
“She’s not wearing any goddamn clothes,” West growled. “Take your hands off her and get out before I kick your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Troy snarled, releasing me.
I grabbed West’s hand and hauled him away from the door so Troy could leave without their paths crossing.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded as the door closed.
“What?” He looked like he honestly had no idea what I was so upset about.
Men! They really were clueless sometimes. “That pissing contest I just witnessed.”
“That asshole is in love with you,” West said, stalking to the kitchen. “He just admitted as much.”
I watched him move around my small kitchen as though he owned the place: making coffee, taking out the skillet and setting it on the stove, getting eggs out of the fridge and bread out of the cupboard. It was a little unnerving that he still remembered where I kept everything.
“He said he loved me,” I said, crossing my arms while I watched him work. If a man insisted on making breakfast for me, who was I to argue? “Not that he was in love with me. There’s a difference. I love him too, but I’m not in love with him.”
He rolled his eyes as though I was being naïve. “Do you think he would have gotten as upset as he did if he wasn’t in love with you?”
“He’s just looking out for me.”
“You said he offered to father your baby,” he said, spraying the pan while it heated. “How did he plan to do that? With a turkey baster?”
“Shut up, dumbass.” I shoved him aside as he extracted eggs from the carton. “I can do that.”
He stood behind me, curling his arms around my body until I was surrounded by him. “Better let me do it.” He took the egg out of my hands before I could crack it. “I still like my eggs without the shells.”
“You’re such a jerk,” I said, trying not to laugh. He was right though. I had a knack for getting bits of shell in my eggs every time.
He added a few more eggs to the mix, along with some milk and seasoning, and started whipping them with a whisk.
“I don’t recall asking for scrambled,” I said, looking at him over my shoulder.
“Too bad, that’s what you’re getting.”
I shook my head, barely resisting the urge to lean back into his solid chest. Man, he was built. Muscles on top of muscles where I didn’t even know muscles were supposed to be.
He set the whisk down and planted a hand possessively over my stomach. “So you think we made a baby last night?”
I scoffed. “If we didn’t, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. You were a champ, Travis.”
He grinned before smacking my ass. “I aim to please. Now make the toast before the eggs get cold.”
“Since when do I take orders from you?”
He winked as I retrieved four slices of bread from the bag and dropped them in the toaster. “Since I have something you want.”
He actually had the audacity to grab his junk! Smug bastard.
West took the plated food into the small dining area while I poured juice and brought in our coffee. It was kind of nice, a morning-after breakfast. I hadn’t done that with a man since… West.
He buttered his toast while watching me out of the corner of his eye. “Any regrets? You know, about last night?”
“Yeah,” I said, feigning boredom as I reached for a paper napkin. “I regret that you couldn’t last longer.”
He chuckled. “You’re such a bitch.”
“That’s what you love about me.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes before I finally said, “No regrets. You?”
“Nope.” He drank his juice. “I’m ready for this. Have been for a long time.”
I nodded, thinking back to all the conversations we’d had about marriage and babies when we were a couple. He’d wanted a family. I didn’t. I didn’t think I ever would, but back then, I’d been a cop and afraid of leaving a child motherless, the way my mother had.
“Ever had a pregnancy scare?” I asked, bracing for his answer.
“No, I’m on the pill.”
I nearly spewed eggs as I covered my mouth to contain my laugh. Damn. I forgot how much fun I used to have with this man. He was the first person I’d ever dated who didn’t take himself too seriously, and I loved that about him. Liked. I liked that about him. I couldn’t afford to use the big L-word when referencing West.
“I’m serious,” I said, shoving his shoulder. “Ever thought you were going to be a daddy before?” I prayed his answer would be the one I wanted to hear. I didn’t know why it mattered, but I didn’t want to believe he hadn’t shared this with anyone else.
“You know what’s weird?” he asked, stacking scrambled eggs onto a quarter of toast before taking a bite. “We were together for two years and you never asked me this question before. Why?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t want to know then. I do now.”
“Fine, the answer’s no. You know I’m always careful about that shit.”
He’d worn condoms with me in the beginning, but we’d decided we’d enjoy it a hell of a lot more if I started taking the pill instead.
“How’s your family?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t. We weren’t a couple, so I didn’t know why we were suddenly acting like one. It would be too easy to fall into old habits with West, to pick up where we’d left off as though we hadn’t been apart for the past four years.
“They’re good.” He seemed wary but asked, “How ‘bout your sister? You still hear from her?”
I sighed. “Only when she needs money or a place to crash. But I haven’t heard from her in a while.”
“Still fighting her demons, huh?”
“And losing.” It killed me to see her thin, dirty, and exhausted, with track marks on her arms and tear streaks on her face. On the rare occasions she showed up on my doorstep, I didn’t even recognize her anymore. The sister I’d grown up with was long gone.
“Is that why you stay here?” he asked, looking around my small condo. “So she’ll be able to find you when she needs you?”
He knew me too well. Now that I was making more money than I ever had before, I could afford a house of my own, but that would mean my big sister would show up on some stranger’s doorstep and feel abandoned because the only person she’d ever been able to count on was gone.
“I guess.”
He nodded as though he got it, and I knew he did. West had friends who’d walked on the wild side and lived to tell the tale.
“Tell me about these women who work for you. You said you’re close?”
I smiled, shaking my head. “We are close. I thought when I left the force I’d never belong anywhere again, ya know? I really missed that in the beginning, that sense of belonging. So when Troy suggested I get my license and become a private investigator—”
“He suggested it?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “Figures. Always wants to be your hero, doesn’t he?”
I ignored the comment, refusing to feed his petty jealousy. “Anyhow, I wasn’t interested in insurance claims and shit like that. I’m more about empowering women. That was my job on the force, after all, trying to get women who felt they had no options off the streets.”
“Yeah, but you knew they were back on the streets turning tricks the next day.”
“Some,” I acknowledged. “But I got a chance to talk to them on the way to the station. Find out about their lives, what landed them on the streets.” I reached for my coffee after cleaning my plate. “I asked every one of them the same question—‘If you could do anything with your life, what would it be?’”
“And?” he asked, taking my empty plate and stacking it on top of his. “Did they have an answer for you?”
I’d never shared this with him before. It was too personal, and maybe I was afraid he’d laugh at me for being naïve enough to believe a brief conversation with a cop would make a difference in their lives.
“Some did,” I said. “Some were so far gone they believed it was hopeless to dream. They were only concerned about getting through the day.”
“Understandable.”
In some ways, West and I had had similar careers. He’d employed women doing what they had to survive. He got to know them, their stories, and talked himself into believing he was helping them by giving them a safe place to earn a living, even if I questioned his motives. He and his brother made a fortune running that club. But then, so did the women in their employment.
He’d once told me a lot of them were putting themselves through school or crawling out from under a mountain of debt so they could start a new life. I didn’t like it, but maybe I’d been wrong to judge. I sure as hell wasn’t perfect. I’d made some bad choices too.
“I’ve run into girls I arrested a few times. I saw them working in coffee shops or getting on a bus when I was walking down the street, and they stopped me and told me they’d stopped turning tricks because of something I said to them, so I know I made a difference in a few lives.”
He smiled as though he was proud of me. “Good for you.”
“How ‘bout you? You ever feel like you got to make a difference with the girls who worked for you?”
He stared at me as if he was trying to decide if the question was a trap. “Since when do you want to know about my experiences at the club? You hated that I co-owned that place.”
“You’re right, I did. It felt like we were on opposite teams back then. I was trying to get women selling their bodies out of that business, and you were giving them a place to make more money.” Before he could object, I said, “You can’t tell me there wasn’t more than stripping going on, West.”
“If you believed that, why didn’t you try to shut us down?”
It’s not like I hadn’t thought about it. I’d hated that place and what the constant fighting about it was doing to our relationship, but I knew how much it meant to West, so I couldn’t bring myself to take action. It was an ongoing moral dilemma—one I couldn’t live with, in the end. So I walked away and never looked back. Until now.
“If it wasn’t you guys doing it, it would have been someone else. Clubs like that aren’t illegal.” I raised an eyebrow. “But the shit that goes on in those back rooms is.”
He grinned. “You mean the lap dances? Baby, I remember you giving me a few lap dances in the back room.”
“Fuck you.” We’d done it everywhere at least a few times, including his club, which I tried not to frequent.
He smiled. “Seriously though, those women weren’t sex objects to us. They became friends. Like family even. And we did our best to protect them. We lectured them about being safe and not crossing any lines with customers.”
I believed him, but that didn’t mean he’d never looked the other way for the sake of a high-rolling customer who had a favorite dancer. “If you say so.”
“Hey, I’m serious.” He looked troubled when he said, “You know how many husbands and boyfriends I beat the shit out of when girls came in with bruises they couldn’t explain away?”
“Seriously?”
Because we’d agreed not to talk about his work or mine, since it always led to a fight, we’d clearly missed out on a huge part of each other’s lives.
“Yeah.” He curled his hand around his coffee cup, absently rubbing the handle with his thumb. “And I paid rent for girls who wanted to get out of bad situations. Even though a lot of them were making good money with us, they didn’t have a dime to show for it. They were supporting lazy bastards who didn’t want to go out to work.”
I liked knowing that he’d helped those women. Seeing this side of him made me feel like our values were more closely aligned, which was important if we planned to co-parent. The rub of learning the truth about him was that it made it harder not to fall for him all over again, which was not part of the plan.
“I even took a few girls to rehab or AA meetings when it became obvious they needed help.”
“Did they get the help they needed?” I asked, trying to keep the focus on strangers instead of the man sitting across from me.
“Some did, some didn’t.” He shrugged. “You know how it is. They have to be ready. If they’re not, there’s not a damn thing you can do.”
“Don’t I know it.” I knew he could tell I was thinking about my sister again. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to help her, but until she decided she was ready, my hands were tied. “So what’s next for you, West? Now that you’ve sold the club?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” he admitted. “I’ve got money, so I can afford to take my time.”
“Why’d you decide to sell your half of the club to your brother?”
“Honestly?” He looked me in the eye as he said, “I woke up one day and thought about what it would be like if I had kids. Would I be ashamed to tell my kid what I did for a living? When I had to admit I would, I knew it was time to get out. To do something I’d be proud of.”
“Then you have been thinking about having kids lately?”
“Not just lately,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “For a long time now. You know that.”
“And you’ve never met anyone you thought you might like to settle down with?”
“Yeah, you.”
I’d walked right into that one, and my ex had never been shy about voicing the truth. “Besides me?”
“Nope.”
The air was charged with sadness and regret, but there was something else I couldn’t define. Hope, maybe?
Time to change the subject. “You know, if you’re looking for a short-term solution, I could use a business manager.”
He laughed. “What the hell do I know about running a business like yours?”
“You know how to run a business.” Truth be told, their club made money hand over fist because West had built the most exclusive gentlemen’s club in the city, attracting wealthy and powerful men who demanded discretion. “I imagine those skills are transferrable.”
“They are.” He seemed to consider my proposal. “What do you need help with?”
“Ugh,” I said, palming my forehead. “Everything. I live for the fieldwork, which means everything else somehow falls through the cracks.”
“I think I could help you out,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Um, I couldn’t pay you anything close to what you’d been pulling in at the club, but—”
He chuckled. “I don’t need the money, sweetheart. Like I said, I’ve got plenty. I’m just looking for a new challenge.”
I wasn’t used to people helping me without an ulterior motive. In my experience, people always had an angle. “But would you do that? For nothing?”
“I didn’t say I’d do it for nothing.”
“Fine,” I said, bracing myself. “What do you want?”
“More time with the mother of my future child. A chance to get to know you better, your business, your friends… what your life is like now.”
“That’s it?” I asked, unable to hide my shock.
“That’s it.”
I bit my lip, wondering if I would be taking advantage if I took him up on his offer. “Fine, but we should set a reasonable term. Say, three months? If you can help get us on the right track, put the right systems in place, maybe I could hire an admin person to pick up where you left off. Then you could go back to doing whatever it is you plan to do next.” I wasn’t naïve enough to think a man like West, who craved challenge and excitement, would be content acting as the business manager for a small private investigations firm forever.
“Whatever you want.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin before balling it up and tossing it on the empty plate. “If you want, I can go home, shower, change, and meet you at your office later. We can go over the areas where you feel you need the most help.”
“Um, sure.” I’d planned to go into work later anyhow, but suddenly the prospect of having my ex there with me was daunting. Was I crazy to invite him back into my life? To invite him to work with me every single day for the next three months? Probably. “But we have to have a few ground rules before we start this.”
“Okay,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “What are they?”
I stood, dropping my paper napkin on the table. “Well, there’s only one really. You have to promise you won’t fall in love with me.”
He barked a laugh and smacked my ass as I slipped past him. “You should be the one promising me you won’t fall in love!”
Only one little problem… I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep.