Chapter Ten
Brandon stared at her like he had all the time in the world to convince her to believe his stories. His confidence mocked her and she tried to get her bearings. Hope bloomed in her chest that maybe, just maybe there was an explanation that could glue the shattered pieces of their lives back together.
Looking at him now, so close and so comforting, she wanted to believe he could fix this, fix them. His French blue dress shirt had long ago been open at the collar, but he slowly unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled them back to his elbows. His black slacks bunched around his narrow hips as he sat in front of her, staring at her as if sizing up an opponent.
His dark gaze held her in place, fixed on her as if he knew just how close she was to throwing in the towel. He seemed to see right through her bravado, like he could sense all her weaknesses and wouldn’t stop until he’d exploited every single one.
Funny, how simply staring at someone’s eyes could make your stomach pitch and roll, your heart skitter around your chest and make you doubt everything you’d built your anger upon.
“I think I’ve changed my mind.” Megan silently praised herself that the panic didn’t break her even tone.
“No, you’re just realizing you’re wrong about me.” He shrugged and spread his hands out. “You’ve been asking me for answers for weeks. I’m going to give them to you.”
But he wasn’t. He was trying to convince her to see things his way. Since it was far rosier than her version, she was tempted.
Being tempted around Brandon was a bad idea. She forced herself to think about her mother and wonder if this was why she never tried to break free. Had she let the shadow of doubt excuse obvious indiscretions? Megan couldn’t let herself be fooled the same way.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. The scent of his cologne swirled around her, and she took in a deep breath on instinct, which only served to intoxicate her more. Why did he have to be so handsome and smell so good? It made keeping her perspective darned near impossible.
He gave her a slow smile that lit naughty lights in his eyes. He was so close that their knees were nearly touching. All he had to do was shift a certain way and that familiar spark would spiral through her body. She sat still in quiet anticipation, wondering how to keep her composure.
“I’ve been buying stock in Carlton International for years.”
Megan blinked, her dirty mind getting whiplash from his businesslike words. “Why?”
“Because I figured your dad would divide everything equally when he died. I wanted you to have the option of majority.”
“But it’s not as if…” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and tried to find the right words. She wanted to ask so many things, but didn’t have the courage to say them outright. “Our relationship wasn’t public knowledge, so why were you concerned about the future of my family’s business? We were fun and clandestine. There wasn’t a future for us, just a present.”
“We are fun, but you’re rewriting history if you think our relationship is some fly-by-night affair. No, we didn’t share everything with the world, but we’ve been together for a very long time. We weren’t talking marriage until last year, but we never once talked about ending things.”
Megan leaned back onto the cushions, needing to get a little more space from the truth. She’d always tried not to think about the future of her relationship with Brandon. Things worked as they were, and she couldn’t wrap her head around a life without him, so she’d maintained the status quo. They’d outlasted all of her friends’ relationships, but she always thought it was because the element of secrecy kept things hot between them.
“I collected the stock over the years, but a few months ago a large offering came out. I snagged it, and then started wondering why it was available in the first place. We investigated, and things at Carlton started to look shady. Some of the subsidiaries weren’t doing well, but instead of consolidating, the company was looking to expand with an express hotel chain.”
Megan pulled the spoon through the ice cream and lifted a scoop to her mouth. She let the flavors melt and blend, keeping her mouth full so she wouldn’t be tempted to tell Brandon she didn’t care one iota about why he took over Carlton International. She cared why he didn’t tell her he was doing it.
“Since we had the stock, we could look at the financials. There was really only three days between when I was cautiously curious, until I knew he’d made some bad choices, and embezzlement was one of them. A lot of shareholders were involved, and I didn’t alert you to my suspicions because I couldn’t risk him being tipped off.”
“You didn’t trust me.” A problem ice cream and excuses couldn’t fix, nothing could.
“He’s your father.” Brandon shrugged. “I would have protected mine.”
She pointed the spoon at him, sugar-fueled confidence making her brave. “But if you were really as serious about a future with me as you are pretending to be, you would have trusted me with that decision rather than making it for me. You would have tried to protect me rather than your investment.”
He winced and rubbed his hand along the dark stubble forming along his jaw. “I thought I had, Meg. I checked to make sure the trust funds were completely free of the business and they were. I had no way of knowing that he’d bled those dry, too.”
“And I didn’t know to check because you never said a thing about it.” She dug a pistachio from its ice-cream prison. “If you’d warned me I could have saved so many things, things they auctioned off that meant much more than money. If you would have trusted me, things would be different. You’re asking me to trust you more than I trust myself, and yet you never offered me the same kind of respect.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He placed his hand on her bare knee and a shock of something hot and reckless bolted through her.
He was firmly in the wrong here, and yet, strangely enough, it didn’t diminish the attraction she felt when looking into his soulful brown gaze. He opened his mouth to speak again, but a rapid knock on the door stole their attention.
Brandon stood and pointed at her. “I’m putting both this conversation and your ice-cream eating on pause.”
As he made his way to the entry Megan stared down at the softening spumoni and swirled her spoon through the colors. Growing up, her favorite Italian restaurant ended every meal with a dish of spumoni ice cream. It usually comforted her, brought back memories of her grandfather’s fourth wife, Maria, who introduced them to the best Bolognese in Beverly Hills. Maria had loved being a grandmother, and they’d all loved her for the five years she put up with Grandfather’s penchant for the cleaning staff.
Megan took a bite, letting the chocolate and cherry melt against her tongue as she tried to make out the muffled conversation. She was four bites in before he returned with a plain white box.
“Do you ever listen?” He smiled down at her, the smile he used whenever she’d been waiting for him in nothing but his sheets after he’d worked late.
She shored up her defenses, determined not to fall victim to believing lies to better her life. “What’s that? The ashes of another company you’ve raided?”
“I reallocate resources, Megan. I’m not some pirate.” He lifted the lid off the box before carrying it to the ottoman and placing it beside him as he sat. “It’s what was left from the apartment.”
The ice cream curdled in her stomach and she set the carton on the end table. “What do you mean, what was left?”
“I had them save anything that wasn’t damaged.”
“The police?” Her hands were shaking so she folded them together in her lap.
“No, the cleaning service.”
“You hired someone to clean up the mess?”
“I wasn’t about to let you do it, and your esteemed property management company had a twenty-four-hour eviction notice on your apartment door this morning.”
“They threw me out?” She blinked slowly, trying to wrap her head around why they would do such a thing. She’d been a model tenant. For them to toss her out on the street after she’d been victimized was beyond anything she could imagine. Her stomach churned and her eyes grew heavy as she registered another experience of how people preyed on the powerless.
“They’re slum lords. Scruples aren’t their thing.” He reached into the box.
Megan tried to put aside her disappointment and despair and furrowed her brow, trying to connect the dots but coming up short. “How do you know what was on my door?”
She watched as Brandon’s expression changed from cool confidence to indecision. She’d rarely seen him lose his sheen of certainty, and the change alarmed her.
“Did you have the apartment under surveillance?”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me guess, you can explain.” She snatched the box away from him, troubled by how light it was.
“You weren’t safe there. Obviously.”
“So you had me watched?” She swallowed hard, afraid she might throw up. Maybe all this manipulation and emotional warfare was just a means to an end for him. Maybe she was just a pawn in a game he was playing, necessary for now, but easily cast aside once she’d served her purpose. “Do you actually care what happens to me or are you just looking for my father? Are you trying to use me as bait to lure him out?”
“You weren’t under surveillance, just protection. They never stopped you from doing anything, but they would have stopped anyone else from hurting you.”
Megan didn’t fail to notice how he skirted her other two questions. He had the wrong daughter if he wanted to catch her father’s attention.
“Are they watching me now?”
“No.”
“Is that why you say I can’t leave the hotel?”
“If you go, will you come back?”
She peered into the box, not able to answer his question. It depended on so many things, like how this conversation ended.
He pushed his hands through his hair, the tousled chaos achingly familiar to what it looked like after she’d been running her hands through it during sex. Which was not good. She needed to keep her anger burning higher than her attraction to him so she wouldn’t be taken in by whatever excuse he had for making out with Gemma Ryan in the hallway.
“Do you understand that I didn’t steal your family’s business?”
She looked up at him. “Do you understand that your business dealings weren’t altogether altruistic? You want to play the Robin Hood here, and I’m the wrong audience.”
“I wanted to help you.”
“No, you wanted to play the hero and give me controlling interest the first time my sisters and I disagreed about something. But that wouldn’t have happened. I don’t want to run a hotel empire, Briana does. Ava and I would have supported whatever decisions she made because this is what she’s studied, what she’d done internships to learn. If you would have asked me, I would have told you not to bother.”
“Wow.” He sat back, his shoulders drooping slightly.
“I don’t care about making money the way you do. Until I didn’t have any, I never really thought about money at all. I’ve cared about this.” She pulled out her great-grandmother’s Bible which she’d kept under the air mattress. She’d never been religious, but turning the thin pages and seeing the family tree written inside had calmed her. “My great-grandmother had nothing when she started taking in boarders so that she could keep her son fed.”
“That’s why I thought you would want the company, because of how proud you’ve always been of what she accomplished.”
Megan shook her head and pulled another book from the box. “What she accomplished was having a very enterprising son who turned a collection of small hotels into a conglomerate. Have you ever read my grandfather’s autobiography?”
Brandon took the paperback from her. “I can’t say that I have.”
“Neither had I. The book is in every nightstand of our hotels, right there with the Bible. That copy is technically yours. I stole it from the Hollywood Carlton. I figured I knew him, so I knew the story. It turns out this—” Megan swirled her hand around the room, “—this was never part of my great-grandmother’s dream. She just wanted to be an example of how a woman can be in a bad situation and make something good come of it. He was the one who wanted to live in Beverly Hills and have all the things he dreamed about as a child.”
Brandon nodded, staring down at the book in his hands.
“If you had only invested in Carlton International for me, you would have told me from the start. You would have told me things looked shady. You would have told me to watch my back. Instead, I’m trying to stay upright in the middle of a hurricane and you’ll barely admit it’s raining. I don’t need you to save me. I can take care of myself. Maybe not to your standards, but I’ll be okay.” For the first time in a very long while, she knew she would be.
“You talk about yourself in the singular, as if you’re alone in this world, and you’re not. What you do affects me, too.”
“But I am single, Brandon.”
“Like hell you are.”
Megan closed her eyes and tried to draw on strength from somewhere, anywhere, because this was the part that mattered, the part that had her wondering if a soul could bleed to death.
Her eyes felt heavy and her throat ached. A part of her wanted to run far and fast before he said something that would send a pain so sharp and scything through her that she might never recover. She took a long, cool breath and opened her eyes.
“Seeing you with Gemma shattered every expectation I had of you.” She swallowed over the lump in her throat, fighting to stay above the tears threatening to rain down. “I still have a hard time thinking that my Brand—” she brought her hand to her chest and fisted her sweater in her hand, “—the man I run to when everything comes undone, that he is you.”
“I’m still me.” He reached for her, but she jumped back as if his touch burned.
“I don’t think so. But go ahead and explain to me how what I saw wasn’t what it looked like. Tell me Gemma didn’t really kiss you, that she didn’t come here to have sex with you.” She lifted her chin and prayed there was an answer she could live with.
“I can’t.”
His words hit her like a bullet. If she’d been standing, she would have fallen over. There had been a thin thread of doubt holding her up for all these months, and he’d just cut it, leaving her to tumble like a marionette without her strings.
…
Brandon cringed as her face fell. He wished he could rewind their lives and look up that day with Gemma and see Megan. If he would have explained right then, maybe she’d have believed him.
“We’re done here.” Megan stood and smoothed her hands along the skirt of her dress. “Are you really going to try and keep my dog?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t bring that whore back here again. The world would end up talking about all the things your crazy ex-girlfriend did to you both.”
“I told you nothing happened.” Her jealousy shouldn’t be a turn-on. It was adolescent and crazy, but it also meant she wasn’t as ready to write them off as over and done as she claimed.
“I watched something happen, so you need to change your tune.”
“Megan, you know how I feel about you. What do you want me to say? It was an awkward kiss. There wasn’t any passion behind it, so I didn’t feel the need to be dramatic in telling her nothing would happen. We talked about it, she left, end of story.”
“You’re lying to my face.” She shook her head slowly. “You know, your mother asked me today if there was any explanation you could give that I could live with. This isn’t it.”
“You told my mother? God, Megan, you’re like a tiger caught in a trap, lashing out at everyone who gets close enough to help you. What am I supposed to say to her?”
“Maybe you’ll trust her with the truth.” Megan spun on her heel, and stalked to the spare room. Both dogs followed her inside.
…
Megan stepped back from the mirror and wished that she had sluttier clothes. She’d always veered towards tailored and classic because the cuts tended to hide figure flaws. Now that she needed a good hoochie dress, all she had were choices fit for charity functions, which was probably where she’d worn them last.
The strapless purple silk dress she wore had been sexier when she’d had more going on up top to fill it out. Still, the beaded band along her waist and the short skirt were enough to catch a man’s eye. If not, the stilettos and bare legs would help.
Her heart twisted in her chest at what she was about to do, or at least make Brandon think she was about to do. She wasn’t ready to start trying on other men, but she wanted him to feel how raw jealousy could rub, wanted to know if he’d even be jealous.
She tucked her phone and the key card to Brandon’s penthouse in a sequined handbag and palmed the one she’d gotten from his mother this afternoon. There was no way she was going to simply allow herself to be trapped in Brandon’s home. Her great-grandmother hadn’t risen out of adversity by staying still. She’d tried everything she could think of to break free. And so would Megan, no matter how devious.
With her shoulders back and head held high, she stalked out of the spare room and straight to the front door. She didn’t look for Brandon, but felt his stare heavy on her just the same.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he bellowed, his steps torrential behind her.
She pulled open the door, not surprised when his hand reached in front of her to close it with a thud. She turned, wishing being this close to him didn’t remind her of being in his arms. Of how often they’d been in this very position and how it had always ended up before.
She lifted her chin and smiled sweetly. “I need some fun.”
“You can have fun right here.” His gaze dripped down her body and she barely reined in the desire to shiver.
“I need more fun than you can provide. It might be hard to find a man who hasn’t been with Gemma, but I’m up to the task.”
“Don’t say something you don’t mean.”
“Oh, I mean it. And after a few drinks I’m not going to care who I have fun with, provided I don’t leave the hotel. That was your caveat, right? I won’t be followed as long as I don’t leave the premises?”
“You’re not going anywhere.” He stepped closer, until she was pressed against the door and had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“What’s the matter, Brandon? Don’t you trust me? Oh, that’s right, you never have. I’m going to go down to the nightclub, and I’m going to have a good time and I’m not going to think about how crazy you are being.”
“If you want to go to the club, I’ll take you.”
“Why, do you want to watch?” She licked her lips and saw the sparks in his dark eyes, his nostrils flare in anger. Discovering he had such a strong dominant streak still thrilled her, even now when indulging it would scatter her thoughts.
“Do you hear yourself, Megan?”
“Do you? You’re holding me prisoner and using my dog as a hostage. You’re having me followed and feeding me lie after lie. I don’t want to be with you anymore. Get that through your head and let me go.”
His hands wrapped around her arms and lifted her off her feet. His body pressed hers to the door, his thighs against hers keeping her from kicking him. A flash of heat swept up her body to rocket around her chest like a pinwheel in the middle of a windstorm.
She’d always found the way he took control sexy and edgy. It had fueled her fantasies for so long she barely had the ability to turn her head when he leaned in to kiss her.
Her skin was sizzling, her body was humming and try as she might to convince herself it was just a well-learned reaction, she wanted him. And he knew it.
Maybe he could hear her heartbeat or decode the short pants of her breath. Maybe he felt the heat radiating off her body or sensed the fire he kindled inside of her. He licked her neck from her shoulder to her chin and her body cried out for his touch.
“You want me,” he rasped against her ear.
“Yes,” she moaned before rising above the fog of lust. “I mean no. Not anymore.”
His hand moved between them, up her bare thigh to cup her sex. “Are you sure?”
When his fingers slipped beneath the elastic of her panties, she gripped at his shoulders, but didn’t stop him as his talented fingers touched her core. He knew exactly how she liked to be touched, exactly where to stroke and dip.
“It feels like you want me.”
She hummed a response because words were failing her at the moment. She obviously wanted him, but she wanted more of him than he’d ever be willing to give.
“Megan.” His hot breath tickled against her neck. “Say it, say you want me.”
“I want—” was all she managed to get out before the hard, solid slide of his body plunged deep within her and stole her breath. She wrapped her legs around his back and her arms around his shoulders and hung on as he thrust pleasure upon her body. She’d expected a reaction from him, but not something so primal, so fierce it was all she could do to keep from crying out as he pistoned in and out of her.
She rolled her hips against him and found the right angle to launch into oblivion. Orgasm washed over her with splintering ferocity. She clawed at his skin, pushing her fingers beneath his shirt as the waves of sensation slammed against her, each one deeper than the last. She felt him shudder, the hard planes of the door pressing into her back as he leaned forward and spilled himself within her.
They both panted like marathon runners just past the finish line, trying to find some semblance of the control they’d both lost. Brandon found it first, closing his thumb and forefinger around her chin and tilting her face to look up at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but confusion washed over his features before he brought his lips to hers.
His kiss was a tangle of passion that went beyond lust, beyond desire, and was so potent that she was washed in the staggering awareness that this was exactly where she belonged.
An amazing elation followed by the cold hard truth of reality. Panic battled with desperation as she forced herself to break the kiss, to break the connection between them.
She pushed against him and he slipped out of her, letting her wobbly legs slide to the floor. She fixed her panties and her dress, not at all surprised by how little the previous moment showed on her. They’d found themselves in the same clench countless times. She tried to tell herself that’s all this was, just a replay of an old bad habit.
She wiped her mouth and bent to grab her purse and the key card that had fallen from her hands and her notice. She used to love the way he could make reality fade, and now she feared she’d become addicted to his brand of drug. She stood and noticed that he too appeared as if nothing had happened.
“That was really stupid, Brandon.”
“I think it’s the smartest thing either of us have done all day.”
“I’m not on the pill, you jackass. Or was that the point, were you trying the oldest trick in the book to tether me to you?”
She knew by the way he blanched it hadn’t occurred to him. She took advantage of the shock on his face to open the door and make her escape.
…
Brandon shook his head to dispel the worry and grabbed his wallet and phone from the entry table. He pulled open the door, expecting to see Megan waiting for the elevator. No such luck.
He pressed the button, surprised when it opened instantly. She must have taken the stairs in an effort to avoid him, knowing he would follow. He checked the stairway, but hearing nothing he opted for the elevator.
He leaned back against the mirrored wall as the car descended three flights to the floor holding the hotel’s restaurant and nightclub. The private elevator opened into the restaurant waiting area, still crowded with people waiting for a chance to get a table with views of Hollywood stars, or at least Hollywood from the windowed walls surrounding the restaurant.
He made his way to the pulsing bass beat of the nightclub, nodding absently at a few people who tried to wave him over. He was on a mission to find Megan and drag her back home before she found her way into some real trouble. He’d toss her over his shoulder if necessary.
His pulse raced as he scanned the bar and dance floor, unable to find her in the swarm of bodies. After forty-five minutes of searching, including a trip to both of the VIP lounges, he still couldn’t find her. As he stalked back to the elevator, he called the security team that was supposed to be watching her.
“She hasn’t left the building and her car is still secure in the garage,” the bodyguard claimed.
But Brandon knew Megan was resourceful and had practically grown up in this hotel. If anyone knew how to escape unnoticed, it would be her.
There was no way to gauge how desperate she was. Would she go to one of her former friends who had been so cold to her last night? Did she have cab fare to make it to one of the Carlton Houses? Would she try and take the bus at this time of night?
Anger and panic and terror slammed against him, making his pulse pound in his brain. He’d been able to protect her last night, but what if she slipped into harm’s way again? What if she did get pregnant and he never saw her again?
“Find Megan. Now.”