Samara woke up to the smell of eggs burning in the kitchen. She rubbed her eyes and tried to make out the blurry red numbers of the clock on the other side of the bed. She froze when they finally came into focus. Oh my God, I am so late. On the heels of that, the truth washed over her. No, I’m not. I’m on forced vacation.
She threw back the covers and went searching for her clothes. Her panties were trashed, but she managed to find her bra.
Her pants and jacket were still in the kitchen.
She contemplated the door for a full thirty seconds before she dredged up the bravado to walk through it. Grabbing a towel or artfully draping a sheet around her body wasn’t an option. She wasn’t some demure virgin who was ashamed of being naked, and Beckett had reacquainted himself with every inch of her last night.
No, the reason she wanted something to cover her was because she wanted armor.
She and Beckett might have been on the same page last night, but they had a conversation ahead of them that might put them at odds yet again. The story of our lives.
There was nothing left to stall with. She walked out of the bedroom and down the short hall into the kitchen. It was only when she bent over to grab her pants and shirt on the floor that she realized Beckett wasn’t in the kitchen alone.
Reclaiming her cold mask was almost a relief at that point. She draped her pants over her arm. “Frank.”
Frank Evans very carefully looked only at her eyes. He lifted a coffee mug in a kind of salute. “Samara. Nice seeing you.”
“Uh…nice seeing you, too.” She tried to keep her face from heating, but there was no way she was pulling this off. Retreat gracefully…
Beckett turned from the stove and froze. “What the fuck are you doing?”
His blatant jealousy helped overcome the embarrassment of the situation. She shrugged, starting to enjoy this. “I needed my clothes. As great as last night was, you can’t keep me locked up and naked in this apartment.”
“My life would be a lot easier if I could.” His brows slammed down. “Get your ass in the room and get dressed.”
She shot a look at Frank, who seemed to find the ceiling very fascinating. “He thinks that tone is going to work with me. Not sure what kind of girls he’s dated in the past, but that’s not an acceptable way to talk to women.”
“Technically, you are one of the girls he dated in the past.”
“Frank, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life, but one night of hot sex does not count as dating.”
“I’m standing right here.” Beckett made a sound suspiciously like a growl and turned back to whatever horrific science experiment he was working on at the stove.
As fun as it was torturing him, she had absolutely no interest in standing there naked any longer than she had to. Samara headed back into the bedroom and dressed as fast as she could.
By the time she made it back to the kitchen, Frank was nowhere to be found. “You ran your friend off.”
“My friend was only here to drop that off.” Beckett nodded at the manila folder lying in the middle of the kitchen island. It had no markings on it, but she could guess what would bring Frank to Beckett’s home: evidence.
He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s get this out in the open and stop playing around, Samara. I enjoyed the fuck out of last night. We have unfinished business and I want you in my bed until we figure this shit out.”
Her heartbeat picked up even as she called herself an idiot. “By figure this shit out, you mean…”
“I mean Lydia. She’s neck deep in this mess, and I mean for her to see justice for any crimes committed.”
Lydia. Of course. He wasn’t here for Samara, and forgetting that only led to heartbreak. She wasn’t about to say that the amazing sex last night had suddenly changed her reservations about Beckett, but orgasms had a way of adding rose-tinted glasses to any situation.
There was nothing rose-tinted about theirs.
He was the CEO of Morningstar Enterprise, and he had hundreds of thousands of workers depending on him for their employment. His family was what passed for royalty in Texas. His net worth was beyond comprehension.
Samara was a woman from a tiny little house on the wrong side of town. Abandoned by her father before birth, her mother’s family wasn’t notable in any way. She made good money for a normal person, but it was like holding a plastic fork up for comparison with fancy silverware made of literal silver. They were the same as long as no one started cataloging the differences.
Which was what she had to do. She couldn’t afford to see Beckett as just the man.
But maybe I can…just for a little while. Just until this situation with Lydia is resolved.
No one has to know but Beckett and me. I’m on vacation, after all.
He was watching her too closely, making her feel like she was showing him more than she wanted to. “Be mine for the duration, Samara.”
“Okay.” She had to bend over backward and squint a little for this to seem like a good idea, but with Beckett standing before her in a pair of low-riding jeans and nothing else, it wasn’t that hard. “For the duration.”
He motioned at the stove. “Eggs?”
“Whatever is in that pan, it’s neither eggs nor edible.” She hesitated. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah, I know.” He scowled at the mess in the pan and turned off the stove. “I’ll order in breakfast, but might as well get started now.”
She retreated while he made the call. Samara explored his bathroom. It was just as tastefully decorated as the rest of the condo. A slight lean toward minimalism, which she suspected was more because he didn’t care about decorating than any love for the style. The bath was done in white on white, and the massive sunflower showerhead tempted her to get up close and personal with it. No time.
She splashed some water on her face and found a box of cheap toothbrushes in the cabinet below the sink. She considered their presence as she brushed her teeth. Did Beckett have so many overnight guests that he needed a Costco-sized box of toothbrushes to accommodate them?
Stop that. It’s none of your business.
She didn’t want it to be her business.
Samara braced her hands on the side of the sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Real talk time, Samara. Yes, you sure as hell do want it to be your business. You want for all your fears to be unfounded and for this to magically work out. You want Beckett to prioritize you over his company.
She shook her head. A fool’s dream. It didn’t matter if she liked how Beckett made her feel when they were alone together. What mattered was the choice he would make again and again. It wouldn’t be her. It couldn’t be her. CEO changeovers were no joke, and combined with Lydia’s underhanded stunts, Beckett needed to focus every bit of energy he had on his company and ensuring that it survived.
And Samara needed someone to put her first. She couldn’t be in a relationship and be a second-tier priority. She deserved better than that.
Getting ahead of yourself. Beckett said he wants you for the duration—not forever.
She scrubbed her hands over her face and finger-combed her hair. If she was smart, she would have stayed the hell away from him and this entire mess, but the pull between them was too damn strong. I am so screwed.
“Samara.”
She jumped and then silently cursed herself for jumping. “Sorry. I’m just lost in thought.”
“I can see that.” Beckett stood in the doorway, his dark eyes drinking her in. “What’s wrong? Is it the conversation we’re about to have or is it something else?”
She wanted to brush off his question and force him to focus on what really mattered—the danger Lydia presented—but instead Samara answered him honestly. “Both.”
He nodded like she’d confirmed something he already knew. “You’re still afraid I’m using you in my game against Lydia.”
“Aren’t you?”
Instead of answering directly, he crossed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. She tensed, but the heat of Beckett’s body was too tempting to fight. He smoothed a hand over her hair. “What happened last night—and every time before—had nothing to do with Lydia. That was all us. I know the situation is hardly ideal, but I’ll do everything I can to ensure you come out of this with your reputation intact.”
She wanted to believe him. She did believe him. But promising that she’d see the other side of this trouble without a scandal was different from saying she’d reach the other side with him. Samara rested her head against his chest and focused on breathing deeply for several moments.
This was not her.
She saw what she wanted and she fought hard until she achieved it. She did not waffle or bitch or whine about how life was inherently unfair. Life was unfair. It always had been. Instead of railing about how shitty that was, she should be focused on tipping the scales in her favor.
She inhaled the clean scent of him. “I never planned on this getting so complicated. You’re the absolute worst person I could be in danger of falling for.”
“That’s how it always seems to work.” His lips brushed the shell of her ear. “It’s good that you’re in danger of falling for me, because I’m already halfway there for you.”
She opened her eyes. “Don’t joke about this. I know I’m being ridiculously sentimental. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be back to normal.” With shields firmly in place.
“Samara.” He cupped her face, urging her up to meet his gaze. “I’m not joking.” He brushed a kiss against her lips. “Let me take you out on a real date. We’ll talk about anything that isn’t connected to Morningstar and Kingdom Corp. We’ll eat good food and maybe drink a little too much good wine and laugh a little too loud.”
It sounded like a perfect night. She frowned. “But shouldn’t you be working on your proposal? I know it’s three days away and you probably have everything all ironed out, but at least pretend you’re a mere mortal who has to practice before the presentation.”
Something like guilt flickered over his face, then it was gone too fast for her to be sure. Beckett shook his head. “It will hold for one night.”
She wanted so badly to say yes. Then say yes. “Yes.”
He gave her another brief kiss. “Breakfast is here. Eat with me. Tell me what made you call yesterday.”
The reminder of the suspicions she had to deliver dampened her good mood. “Okay.”
He took her hand and tugged her toward the kitchen. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. I promise. You aren’t alone, Samara.”
Beckett waited to question Samara while they ate breakfast, and then he waited some more. Her conflict was written all over her face, which was all he needed to see to know that Lydia was the reason she was there. He doubted his aunt sent Samara with false information, which meant she’d done something shitty.
He glanced at the manila folder Frank had left. It had pictures of Lydia sitting at a table with his father in what appeared to be a heated conversation. While he’d half hoped to see some evidence of her spiking his father’s drink, there was nothing as damning as that. Judging by the time stamps on the photos, they had been taken two short hours before his father died. There was no evidence of a meal, but they both had drinks at the table. It seemed to give lie to his aunt’s story, but there was nothing that couldn’t be explained away if she was creative enough.
“I think Lydia had something to do with the fire.”
Beckett froze, his mug of coffee halfway to his mouth. “What did you say?”
“Lydia.” Samara poked at her omelet. “Did you tell her about the fire?”
“She already knew.” The time for holding back information was past. He had to decide now—did he trust Samara enough to tell her everything he knew? Or was he going to keep her close while trying to dissemble? Beckett had his answer before he’d finished the thought. “She came by to see me Sunday as the fire inspector was leaving. We didn’t talk specifically about the fire for the most part—it was just more of the manipulative bullshit that the Kings are known for.”
“Beckett…you’re a King.”
He was a King, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be lumped in with all the insanity. Some of it was impossible to avoid, but that didn’t mean he had to sink to Lydia’s level. Kind of like you sank to her level when you went around the bidding process and secured the renewal of the government contract. He could argue that it was different until he was blue in the face, but it didn’t change the fact that he had pulled a shitty-ass move. “Yes, I’m a King.”
Samara seemed to chew on that for a moment. “What did the fire inspector have to say?”
“It was definitely started intentionally. If the lobby wasn’t mostly marble and steel, it would have spread a lot faster and we might not be having this conversation today. The building wasn’t locked up completely—anyone with a key could have gotten in, and that puts the suspect list at over a hundred people.” He saw the question forming and answered it. “No, to the best of my knowledge, Lydia doesn’t have a key.” Unless one of his defecting employees had passed theirs along—or allowed their key to be duplicated.
She seemed to read between the lines of what he wasn’t saying. “But several of the people she poached from you did.”
“All of them did.” There had been only a few short hours between watching Walter walk out and the fire being set, but it was entirely possible that Lydia had started poaching people earlier. Beckett had been gone for six months on his last overseas project, but his father would have informed him of any big changes—and that included changes to the executive staff. There had been none, which meant Lydia had barely waited for his father’s body to cool before she started moving in on his employees.
Samara dropped her fork and pushed to her feet. “She knew the fire was started in an employee break room off the main floor, and she acted like she knew exactly how much was—and wasn’t—destroyed. How could she know that, Beckett?”
She stalked around his couch, the very picture of fury in motion. “And when I had the audacity to question her, she removed me from the bidding project. I’ve been preparing months for the damn presentation and she just…gave it to Journey.”
Relief swamped him, guilt nipping at its heels. He had no business being glad that Samara was currently unattached to the contract he’d taken. She’d been dealt a shitty hand and even if he’d had no part of the crap that morning, he’d still acted against her best interests by making his move.
“Maybe she…” He almost suggested she’d overheard him talking with the fire investigator, but that wasn’t right. Lydia hadn’t arrived until after. “I don’t know. She’s got me so damn paranoid, I’m not sure what she is or isn’t capable of at this point. Why would she set a fire while knowing you were in the building?”
“Because ultimately I’m expendable.” She said it so matter-of-factly, as if it wasn’t surprising in the least.
“That’s bullshit. You’re not expendable. You’re a person, and you’ve been nothing but loyal to her for years.”
She shrugged with a sad smile. “Beckett, you think your aunt might have had something to do with your father’s death. Compared to orchestrating your own brother’s death, what’s potentially harming an employee?”
He walked to her and took her hands. “We don’t know anything for sure.” He didn’t know why he was arguing, only that Samara looked brittle for the first time since he’d met her and it scared the shit out of him. She’d allowed herself to be vulnerable with him when they’d had sex and immediately afterward, and she’d trusted him enough the night before to sleep in his arms and then tell him her suspicions about Lydia. None of that could have been easy for her, not with the impressive walls she kept between herself and the rest of the world.
Or just between herself and me.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she’d let him in and he wanted to keep her safe. “Quit. Even if you don’t take the job I’ve offered you, quit Kingdom Corp. If you’re really that disposable to her, then she’s not worth your loyalty.”
“It’s not that simple.” She leaned up and kissed him lightly. “And while I appreciate the offer, I’d be just as disposable working for you as I am working for her.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she countered gently. “All employees are disposable to one degree or another. I might be less so than some, but ultimately there are plenty of people out there who can do my job. That’s not even getting into the messy complications around the fact that we’re sleeping together.”
Where the fuck was this coming from? The Samara he’d known up to this point was fierce in her ambition and she’d had no problem taking credit where credit was due. The look on her face, the way she described herself—it was almost defeatist.
Anything he said would be viewed through the lens that she viewed him through—the heir to one of the biggest oil companies in the country. Someone she wasn’t sure she could relate to.
“Come away with me.”
Samara raised her eyebrows. “That’s not a solution.”
“It’s not meant to be a solution. It’s meant to be a reprieve.” He hesitated, thinking fast. “I have to take a day trip to LA. I was going to put it off, but the timing is perfect. At the very least, it will get us both out of here for a bit.” Beckett leaned down. “And if you’re willing, we can make it an overnight trip.”
Samara sighed. “It’s really not a good idea.”
“When has anything between us been a good idea?” He ran his hands down her arms. “If you stay in Houston, what will you be doing for the next twenty-four hours?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll be sitting in my apartment, driving myself crazy because I don’t know what’s going on at Kingdom Corp while I’m not there, and probably calling Journey a dozen times and annoying her with unsolicited advice about the proposal.”
There it was again, the flicker of guilt. He didn’t know if it was better or worse that she no longer helmed the bid from Kingdom Corp. I did what I had to do. Strangely enough, that didn’t make him feel like any less of a dick. Saying it was just business didn’t excuse him, either, because it wasn’t just business between him and Samara. It hadn’t been since they slept together the first time.
Samara sighed, drawing him out of his head. “I suppose there’s no legitimate reason to stay.”
He stroked her hair back from her face. “If you don’t want to—”
“No!” She flushed. “I mean, I do. It just feels…I don’t know. Decadent. Forbidden. Like a mistake waiting to happen.”
“How about an agreement—we won’t talk business for the duration of the trip.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I thought this was a business trip.”
“It is, but that just means you’ll need to entertain yourself for an hour or two while I take my meeting. The rest of my time is yours. We’ll go on that date I promised you.” While he trusted that she wasn’t fully under Lydia’s spell any longer, there were some things Beckett couldn’t leave to chance.
Samara looked like she wanted to ask for more details but finally nodded. “I’ll go. I just need to stop by my place and pack an overnight bag.”
“Perfect.” He couldn’t resist kissing her a moment longer. Not when they were so close, and not when they might as well have been holding hands on the edge of a cliff, daring each other to jump. Samara melted against him at that first contact. All he had to do was take two big steps back and he’d hit his couch and they could lose themselves in each other for a few hours.
But there was a plane to catch.
Reluctantly, he gentled his kisses until they were the barest brushing of his lips against Samara’s. Finally, finally, he lifted his head. “If we keep going like this, we’ll never make it to LA.”
“Screw LA.” She kissed his jaw. “They’re all crazy in that city.”
He chuckled. “If ever I forgot you were Texas born and raised…”
She went stiff and stepped away. “Yeah, Texas all the way down to my bones.” Her laugh sounded forced, though.
“Samara.” He waited for her to look at him. Beckett recognized the conflict lurking in her dark eyes. He’d seen it in the mirror often enough over the years. He mentally retraced what he’d said, and it all but confirmed there was some sort of familial conflict. “You can talk to me. If you want.”
She opened her mouth, seemed to reconsider, and shut it. “I’m afraid I’m horribly cliché. Daddy issues.”
He ignored the attempt at a joke. “If there’s anyone in this town who knows daddy issues, it’s me.”
“And Lydia.”
His aunt’s name fell like a stone into a still pool, the ripples washing away the rest of his feel-good from the night before. The ever-present reminder that he didn’t really have a claim on Samara. Not professionally, that was for damn sure. Not even personally, because Lydia might like to dangle Samara in front of him as some kind of distraction, but she’d lose her shit if she thought for a second that Samara actually cared for him. It would be her father choosing Nathaniel over her all over again.
He didn’t like to think what might happen then. If she’d actually gone so far as to kill his father, she wouldn’t hesitate to hurt Samara—especially if it would hurt Beckett in the process.
He bit back the demand for her to quit. Samara wouldn’t take orders from him now any more than she had a few days ago. Her independence and take-no-shit attitude were things that drew him to her, but the closer they circled, the more danger she might be in.
If Lydia had essentially kicked her out of the office for a week, it was already too late. She was tainted by her questions, by her proximity to Beckett. He couldn’t let her be hurt. He had to stop his aunt before it got that far.
Beckett took a measured breath. “If you want to talk—really talk—then I’m here. I can’t promise I won’t poke at it a little because it’s a part of you and I want to know every part of you.”
“For God’s sake.” Samara laughed, a little too high to be natural. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Coming on too strong.” He grinned and hooked her around the waist, bringing them chest to chest again. “I hate to break it to you, Samara, but I like you. A lot. If you want to tell me to get lost, I’ll respect that, but if you’re still making up your mind, I’m going to seduce the hell out of you in the meantime.”
Her strong brows came together as she frowned. “I already agreed to go to LA with you. No seduction required.”
“I’m not trying to seduce you out of your pants.” He kissed one corner of her mouth and then the other. I’m trying to seduce you out of your heart.