I love you,” he whispered, kissing her cheeks. His lips stopped each tear before they fell from her face. He’d always promised that he’d stop her tears, never be the cause of them.
And she had believed him.
Who wouldn’t?
His rock-hard body felt like granite beneath her hands as he moved inside her, each kiss a promise, each caress a memory burned into her soul. They were forever. It would always be Nik and B.
Always.
She shattered beneath him as his mouth fused to hers and his hands grabbed her hips. He drove into her once more before he fell next to her and sighed. “I’m sorry—we’ll get pregnant, I promise.”
“Or die trying?”
He shrugged, offering her a sly smile. “So we’ll buy stock in Gatorade once I have my trust fund.”
Brant reached for her again.
She met him halfway.
Mouths fused.
Tongues tangled.
“Round two?” he whispered.
“Yes!” A sense of dread washed over her as he slipped away. What the hell? “Brant! Brant!” She reached for him but she wasn’t fast enough, and he disappeared into thin air as she clutched the white sheets and then burst into tears.
Alone. In her apartment. Without Brant.
She should have been used to it by now. She wasn’t.
Be brave, Nadine Titus had told her the night of the auction, squeezing her hand until Nikki thought it was going to fall off.
With a sob, she turned into her pillow and let the tears fall freely—she hated pity, hated thinking about the past, but ever since bidding on that man at the auction, ever since having to mail back every damn check he sent to her, she’d been dreaming of him.
Most of the dreams were sad.
Most of them left her emotionally spent, but she needed to allow herself to cry.
Damn him for being so unreasonable! Did he think it was easy for her? To blindly walk into that auction with her head held high? Did he think she did it out of desperation? Guilt? No. She’d been given no choice. Nadine Titus, owner of Azul, the boutique hotel she worked at, had done a little digging and decided that the only woman capable of straightening out Brant Wellington—
—was her.
Add that to the fact that Nadine wasn’t a woman you said no to, especially after she dropped several hints that it would be in Nikki’s best interest to bid on Brant at the auction if she wanted to keep her job.
All she had to do was show up. And so she had. And what had that gotten her?
Nothing but more heartbreak and another reminder of all the reasons things hadn’t worked out with Brant in the first place.
He was a self-absorbed asshole.
He wasn’t always.
She punched her pillow and laid her head back down. Reminders were everywhere; whether her eyes were opened or closed, she still saw his face even if she couldn’t actually see.
Loneliness washed over her. On the outside, things looked great, but on the inside, on nights like this, when she allowed herself to cry—and be bluntly honest with herself—she was heartbroken, angry.
Then again, that was what happened when you fell in love with your soul mate. It was rare that you ever got that piece of yourself back again.
And most days, she didn’t want it back—not unless Brant came groveling with it. And considering he kept chucking money in her face so she’d disappear, she highly doubted that would ever happen.
It wasn’t even her money.
It was bribe money from Nadine Titus, to get him to, what? Reconcile? And he’d taken one look at it and rejected the money, rejected her, rejected everything.
A shudder wracked through her body.
She’d always been optimistic.
Happy.
But on nights like this it was hard to be optimistic when the hollow ache might as well be a giant chasm in her chest.
Two more tears.
One.
“Done.” Nikki breathed out a shaky exhale. “No more tears.”
“Brave,” she repeated, fighting for sleep the rest of the night.
* * *
As far as Mondays went, Nikki’s was quickly going to hell. Another one of the masseuses had up and quit, leaving her with two extra clients. Her feet ached, and she was starving.
“Should have packed a protein bar.” Her stomach grumbled as she quickly washed the almond oil from her hands and dried them off. Five minutes. She had five minutes until her next client.
Please, God, let it be a nice elderly gentleman. Her day had started with an NFL rookie, only to be followed by a guy who used to fight for the UFC. Then again, what did she expect? That was the type of clientele Azul catered to.
“Nikki?” A rap of knuckles sounded across her door, followed by a swift breeze as it opened.
She quickly turned to the sound. “Cole?”
No matter how hard she tried to get her tired eyes to focus on the blur of colors in front of her, it never happened, and she ended up getting headaches. Sometimes it was just easier to keep her eyes closed or put on sunglasses and pretend that she was a movie star—given her size they’d probably just assume she was on Disney Kids or something else equally as embarrassing for a twenty-four-year-old woman.
“Don’t hate me.” He moved toward her, his gait slow.
“I’m not going to like this conversation, am I?”
“If I mention key words like chocolate and wine you might.”
She smirked. “That doesn’t work on me anymore. You can’t just randomly interject words in a sentence that don’t make sense just to calm me down.”
“Wine.” His raspy voice dipped. “Hot…” He paused. “Cake.”
“Cole.” She tapped her foot. “Seriously, just four minutes; I have to make it all the way down the hall.”
“I’ll give you a piggyback ride.”
Her lips twitched as she imagined him carrying her down the hall in front of the staff. They’d seen worse from Cole but still she’d always tried to keep it as professional as possible at work, much to Cole’s dismay. “You’re my boss.”
“Also your best friend and knight in shining armor. Why don’t you just marry me and get it over with?”
“Probably because this is the first time you’ve proposed today, and you still haven’t brought me food.”
He was always fake-proposing and a completely harmless flirt when let loose on the female population.
“So you’re saying if I bring you pasta?”
“I may think about it.”
“And then reject me?”
“Pretty much.”
His laugh was deep, infectious, and she knew firsthand from the rest of the staff that the guy was drop-dead gorgeous, like John Stamos’s long-lost twin. Sometimes it was more fun imagining what he looked like then actually seeing him—at least that was what she told herself when the pity parties started, but she did a good job of looking at the bright side.
Like the fact that she was alive.
Bright side.
Plus, she had a great job, a best friend who was also her boss, and look! A marriage proposal. Things were looking up.
“Three minutes,” she reminded him.
“Sometimes,” he whispered, a hard edge to his voice, “I wonder what goes through that head of yours when you get that lost expression…and other times, I don’t want to know, because I wonder if you’re thinking of him, and that just makes me want to commit a crime.”
Unwelcome tears blurred her vision further as she jerked her head away. One bottle of wine was all it had taken for Cole to pry out every piece of Brant information. “That was four years ago. I know that’s not what you came in here to talk about.”
Sometimes she hated how much he knew about her past—and how desperately he always seemed to want to fix it.
“Oh?”
“Cole.” Her voice caught. “Out with it.”
“Sara had a few clients I didn’t see on the schedule this morning. I think they were late additions, and with Nadine Titus arriving later this afternoon, we can’t risk moving them around and having them complain.” He paused. “So I’m going to need you to stay a little late.”
“I’m starving.”
“So you’ll stay?”
“If you bring me food and cut the appointments short enough to give me time to pee and eat, then yes. This isn’t prison, Cole, I need to be able to eat!”
“And pee. Don’t forget basic human functions.”
She smirked. “You know I can never say no to you anyway.”
“And yet, you do.” He took a step toward her. “And quite often. If I were any other man I’d stop asking and cut my losses.”
“Please, you get enough ass without adding mine into the mix. Plus there’s that whole pesky employee-relationship rule.” He was standing so close she could feel his body heat.
“Oh, that one.” He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure I’ve already broken that one numerous times.”
“We know, Cole. All of us. The entire staff.” She groaned into her hands. “Please tell me that’s not why Sara quit.”
“Sara? Of course not. I think she just hated the hours.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
Between our celebrity clientele and the buzz surrounding the hotel being bought out, lunch breaks had become a thing of the past.
“It will get better. The people from Titus have promised that they’ll not only keep all the staff but double our employees and take a good, hard look at our bonus structures. I know it’s hard now, but things are looking up. I mean, it could be worse, we could have the opposite problem and be going under, right?”
She hung her head. “Yes.”
“Thank you.” He reached for her hand and squeezed. “And I promise I’ll bring you food, all right? Even prisoners get a phone call.”
“So I get a phone call too, now? Wow, what kind of establishment is this? Best. Job. Ever.”
“Shhh, you’ll ruin my reputation as a hard-ass. Now, go massage the hell out of that NFL player in there.”
Nikki ground her teeth. “Why can’t they send me a soccer player?”
Cole laughed and ushered her toward the door, looping her arm in his as he led her down the hall and away from all major catastrophes. He always found time to help her to her next client even though she had the hallways memorized—it was the restaurants at the resort that gave her grief: all the tables, chairs, glassware.
Shivering, she suppressed the memory of the last time she’d attempted to go to dinner on her own, only to run into the buffet and end up with spinach in her hair—but hey, at least it wasn’t between her teeth.
See? Silver lining.
Optimism.
“He’s huge,” Cole whispered once they stopped at the door. The sound of him grabbing the clipboard had her straightening her back for another grueling workout with her hands. Clients had to fill out forms for legal purposes, but she much preferred having a discussion about their needs, not just because she couldn’t see the chicken scratch but because it seemed more personal. “No injuries or allergies.” Paper rustled. “And he’s had a massage every day since his arrival a week ago. See? Easy. Oh also, he’s three hundred pounds of muscle, so have fun with that.”
She elbowed him in the ribs and knocked on the door. “Are you ready?”
“Thanks, Nikki, I owe you,” Cole whispered before sauntering off. The man didn’t know how to walk in straight lines, couldn’t if he tried. A part of her wondered if Cole did it for her—refused to walk straight and nearly ran his body into walls.
She sighed.
Too bad he was her best friend.
Too bad her heart was still broken.
Too bad even if it was whole—it would still completely belong to someone else. Even if that someone else didn’t even really exist anymore.
“Ready!” a deep voice called from inside.
Quietly, she closed the door behind her and tried to mentally prepare herself.
It was always a bad idea to dig up the past during a massage. It wasn’t fair to the clients; they didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her anger—and strangling the man in front of her was probably a good way to get fired.
Or sent to prison.
“Where would you like me to focus our session?” she asked in a soothing voice as she slowly ran her hands up and down the sheet, pressing her palms against his skin.
“Hurt my back in the last game of the season, so if you could fix that I’d love you forever.” His southern drawl was thick. “I think my IT band is ready to snap too, but that’s nothing new.”
Nikki took a deep breath and ran her hands down the man’s back. A violent memory surged forward the minute her fingers came into contact with his warm skin.
Hands. His hands on her body.
His hips. Driving into her.
“Miss?” the guy grunted.
“Sorry.” She shook her head and rubbed the oil down, massaging it into his skin.
There was something very wrong with the fact that for years she’d been able to exhume him from her daily thoughts—he was her past, not her future.
Maybe it was the hours. The stress. The rejection.
A man who didn’t even care that she existed was prying his way into her only safe place—her job.
And instead of leave her wanting or sad, it pissed her off.
She dug her fingers, massaged, kneaded, and the more she thought about the power Brant had over her, the deeper she dug, until a bead of sweat ran down her temple.
Done.
She was done.
Brant Wellington could go to hell for all she cared.