Chapter Eight
Bea stared down at her phone, her mouth ajar.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
What just happened?
Had she just agreed to go out for drinks with Zane?
Oh God, she had.
“Who was it?” Felicity asked from her yoga position on the floor.
Bea’s brain wasn’t functioning well enough to come up with a lie. “Um…Zane.”
Felicity’s head snapped around. “What did he want?”
“He asked me to meet him.” Bea finally came to her senses when she saw her sister’s concerned expression. “Just to discuss some minor work stuff.” Lies! “That’s all.”
Felicity raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Should I come with you?”
“If you want.” Please don’t.
Her sister let out a heavy breath and jumped to her feet. “All right, that’s it.” She pointed an accusing finger at Bea. “Sit down and explain.”
It was hard for Bea not to laugh when Felicity got all bossy like that. Her head came to the top of Bea’s shoulders. And with her small hands perched on her hips as she attempted to stare Bea down, she looked like a little kid, upset that Bea had stolen her favorite toy.
“What are you talking about?” Bea asked, avoiding eye contact.
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean, Beatrice Elizabeth Paxton. Or that I don’t know exactly what happened that night at the club. You will tell me this minute what the hell you’re thinking.”
Oh shit. She knew?
Trying to hide her guilty expression, Bea walked into the kitchen and immediately dug into the cheese danish she hadn’t let herself touch all day. What the hell. If she was going to have to listen to a lecture from her little sister, she needed some calories to deal with it.
“So, I went home with a guy,” she said. “What’s the big deal?”
Felicity threw her hands up, aghast. “The big deal is who! How could you sleep with Zane Price, of all people?”
Yep, she knew.
“I, um—”
“The man is signing some pretty big paychecks for us right now, Bea. We’re about to pay back Daddy all of the money he loaned us, and if something goes wrong with the Envision project, there goes that plan.”
She and Felicity had taken out a loan from their wealthy father when they had been trying to get Paxton Designs on its feet several years ago. Next quarter marked the end of their payments to him, if everything went according to plan, which meant that Paxton Designs would officially be in the black. For Bea, that milestone signified years of hard work finally paying off, and gaining something she valued more than anything—independence. She hadn’t realized until recently how important that was, not only in her personal life, but in her professional one, as well.
Bea grimaced. “How did you know I went home with Zane and not some other guy?”
“Gwen and I saw you two dancing. The way you were touching…” Felicity shook her head. “The next morning when I was actually sober and had a chance to think about it, I put two and two together. I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought it was just a drunken hookup. Figured you guys would move on from it and that would be that. No harm, no foul. But now he’s calling you? And you’re going out together? What the hell?”
Busted.
“First,” Bea said calmly, holding up a hand, “there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing is going to get screwed up with his account, because we both agreed it was just a one-time deal. We were drunk and horny, and we just happened to be there at the same time.”
More lies.
They’d barely had a buzz going, and their attraction had been building for months. Not that she was about to confess that to Felicity. One hissy fit a day was plenty, thank you very much. Listening to multiple hissy fits required an open bottle of…anything alcoholic.
“Anyway,” Bea continued. “We’ve agreed it won’t happen again and that we’d be totally professional at work. Don’t worry. You and I will still be able to pay Daddy back by the end of next quarter like we planned. So stop going all Freaky Felicity on me.”
Felicity didn’t look convinced. “You sure? You guys aren’t going to start dating for real, or something? Because if you start dating and then you break up, he could be the type of guy who blacklists us. He has a lot of influence out there. We can’t afford to piss him off.”
Which was exactly the reason Bea had insisted on the one-time thing.
She wanted to laugh at the idea of her and Zane dating dating, but…
She couldn’t. Because it didn’t sound as ridiculous to her now as it would have two months ago.
But she buried that thought under a layer of nonchalance. “Dating Zane? You’re kidding, right? Trust me, that was just some pent-up lust we needed to get out of our systems, nothing more. I mean, you can’t blame me. The man is seriously sexy.”
“Then what’s up with you two meeting tonight?” Felicity asked skeptically.
Bea shrugged. “Like I said. He wants to discuss some minor product placement stuff. You can come if you want.”
After a few seconds, Felicity’s shoulders fell, either in relief or defeat, Bea wasn’t sure which. “No, thanks. I’m going to pretend I believe you and not imagine the worst.”
“Hey, give me some credit,” Bea mumbled through a mouthful of cheese danish.
Felicity grabbed a fork and dug into the pastry, too. “Don’t act like your vagina hasn’t gotten us into trouble before.”
“Name one time.”
“The time we were pledging for the sorority in college, and the head sister kicked us out because you had slept with her boyfriend.”
“They were broken up at the time and she had cheated on him. Besides, those girls were all bitches, anyway. I did us a favor.”
Felicity went blithely on. “Then there was Courtney’s wedding—”
“Don’t you dare bring up Courtney’s wedding. That wasn’t my fault.”
She leveled Bea with a look. “You had slept with the groom and the best man! They were brothers!”
“Years before, in college!” Bea said with a huff. “Am I supposed to apologize for every guy I’ve ever slept with? You make me sound like a slut. I slept with the younger brother an entire year after I’d slept with the older one. Plus, I’d dated the younger one for six months. Had I known he was the groom, I never would have agreed to be a damn bridesmaid.”
“And then there was that other—”
“Nope, that’s it,” Bea cut her off, walking out of the room. “We’re done. I have to go get ready.”
“Good,” Felicity replied happily. “I assume I’ve made my point.”
Only too well. Admittedly, Bea’s affairs did occasionally land her in a pile of awkward.
“Just…” Bea stopped and looked back at her sister. Felicity’s forehead was creased with worry. “Just watch yourself, okay? And I don’t just mean because of the business, all right?”
“What exactly do you mean?”
Felicity swiped her hand across her forehead and sighed. “I see how you guys butt heads at work. And I also see that you don’t always seem to mind it. I think you kind of like fighting with Zane.”
Bea’s head reared back as those words hit her.
That was so completely…not true. Wasn’t it?
“Are you high?” Bea asked incredulously. “What in the world makes you think I actually enjoy how crazy that man drives me?”
Felicity narrowed her eyes. “Because it presents a challenge. It makes things interesting, which you like. All I’m saying is that I’ve seen how excited you can get over a guy’s personality, and you totally miss out on some of the red flags. You get caught up in the whirlwind and you…lose yourself.”
Bea frowned, her heart sinking. Felicity’d had to go and remind her of him. The one person in Bea’s past she wished like hell she could forget.
“You think I don’t know that?” she said in a harsh tone. “I experienced the backlash of that whirlwind firsthand. I know the costs of ignoring red flags. It’s not like I’m going to repeat the same mistakes I made when I was a naive teenager.”
Felicity’s eyes softened. “I know you won’t,” she said quietly. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”
Bea had to swallow down her emotions. Long-forgotten memories were threatening to climb to the surface and ruin her night. “I’m not going to get hurt, because Zane and I are not getting involved with each other. We’ve already put the sex behind us and moved on. It’s back to business as usual.”
It took her a second, but Felicity eventually nodded. “Okay.”
“Are we done being sentimental now?” Bea needed to lighten the mood immediately. Her heart couldn’t handle more heavy at the moment.
Felicity rolled her eyes. “Yes.” She waved her hand in Bea’s direction. “Go fight with our seriously sexy boss. But nothing more.”
Bea winked and headed for her bedroom. “I’ll go slip on my chastity belt now,” she called over her shoulder.
The whole conversation had brought into sharp realization the biggest reason she could not get involved with Zane, even if it was just sex. She didn’t want or need any future complications because of a horny decision. No matter how talented he was with that mouth—and he was very, very talented—she could not sleep with him again. The stakes were too high.
Both professionally and personally.
She didn’t want the future of their business resting on her vagina.
Not to mention what putting her faith in the wrong man again could do to her heart.