The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan (25 page)

“Fine, send her here at noon.”

“Declan!” Onyx protested. “You’re being unreasonable.” She looked at the driver. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

She closed the door and turned to Declan putting her hands around his neck.

“Sir, I’ve worked as a waitress at a truck stop for the last six years. If that man makes a pass at me, I know how to handle it, including but not limited to kneeing him in the balls. I will do absolutely nothing that could nullify our arrangement, sir. I need you.”

Declan gave her a hard look. “You need me and I want you. It’s hardly flattering to know if I had no money, you wouldn’t be interested.”

She reached up and put one hand on his unshaven face, her eyes darting between his full lips and gray-green eyes. “Don’t be so sure I’m only interested in your money. The timing is all wrong for me. My whole world is upside down right now, and I certainly wasn’t looking for a man. But I liked what we did last night.”

“Did you? Everything?” He grinned widely at her, his knowing smile full of sexy promise.

She couldn’t help the smile that grew in response. She felt suddenly shy. “It surprised the hell out of me, but yeah. I’ve been hoping all morning we would do it again.”

A slow smile grew on Declan’s lips revealing his straight white teeth. “Yeah, you’re about as subtle as a sledgehammer. After I get off work tomorrow, I’ll take care of you. Maybe we’ll even have something to celebrate.”

Her face fell. She wasn’t sure she was ready to have sex. She still felt a little overwhelmed by what they did the night before.

“Woo hoo, Tuesday,” she said not knowing how to tell him she was nervous.

“Go get your protein shake and your cards.”

“And my phone.”

She retrieved her purse and put all the precious items inside then reached for the tall glass of greenish gray liquid. “Why is it that color?” she asked.

“I put a handful of spinach in it. You won’t even notice.”

Nyxie gave him a dubious look, but lifted the glass to her lips and drank. She didn’t sip it as he might have expected but chugged down the whole thing in one long drink.

“Whew, I didn’t think I was going to make it. I wasn’t expecting it to be so thick.”

“You didn’t have to guzzle it,” he said with wry humor. “You could’ve taken it with you.”

“Oh, it just seems rude to eat and drink in someone else’s car.”

She wrinkled up her nose at the empty glass then took it to the sink to wash. But as she began looking for dish soap he’d took the glass from her and put in the dishwasher next to his disassembled glass pitcher from his blender.

“You didn’t have breakfast?” she asked.

“Ah, you do care,” he said. “I had a shake before my run.”

Her expression became serious as she realized he thought she was just using him to get her kids back. It may have started that way, but it was more than that now. “I do care, sir. I care a lot.”

His impassive expression didn’t waver. “You need to get going if you’re going to get it all done today.”

One awkward moment passed as he waited to see if she’d hug him. When she didn’t initiate it, he did and she rewarded him by putting her arms around his waist.

“Do you need anything while I’m out?”

“Yeah, I want a big pretzel.”

“A big pretzel?”

“Yeah. Love those. You get one, too.”

She doubted he ate pretzels at all, but just wanted to make sure she ate a snack while burning calories at the mall.

“Anything else?”

“Go to Victoria’s Secret first. After you buy a weeks’ worth of bras, put one on. I’ll feel better knowing if any dressing rooms have security surveillance that no one is seeing you without one.”

Onyx’s brows lowered as she tried to decide if he was serious. “They don’t do that, do they? They don’t spy on you while you’re changing?”

He shrugged. “Supposedly, the places that do, only have female security guards watch their women’s dressing rooms.”

“I promise, I will.”

As Declan walked her out to the small limo, the chauffeur stopped leaning against the car and opened the door for her. Before she could get in, Declan stopped her and kissed her passionately, the driver barely a foot away. Nyxie knew Declan was claiming her in front of a male he saw as a rival, but she couldn’t help but feel his passion and need in the kiss. His hand moved into her hair just above the scruff of her neck. He fisted his hand, pulling her hair momentarily making her moan softly into his mouth. God, she loved it when he did that. It felt so primal and so domineering.

When he broke off the kiss, she noticed his breathing had quickened slightly.

“Give me your key ring.”

He removed his house key from his key fob and put it on hers. It struck him as odd that an adult only had one key—now two.

Nyxie climbed in and sat next to the door. He stared in, waiting. “Buckle your seatbelt, baby. You’re every bit as mortal as Princess Di.” Declan handed the driver the itinerary and closed her in.

“There’s a slight change to the itinerary. After DPS, I need you to take her to the bank at 50th and University—lobby, not the drive thru and then you can go pick up the other passengers.”

25

The female limo driver dropped Nyxie off at the hospital at 5:45 in the afternoon. She couldn’t wait to see Declan to show him the new Nyxie. Shopping with Joseph and his friend Treshaun had been a blast, although she nearly died of embarrassment when Joseph ripped her two-page shopping list out of her hands and began reading it out loud.

“
Victoria’s Secret: minimum seven to ten sets of matching panties/bras, cotton panties only, no thongs, no black, no red or other dark colors and absolutely no animal prints. Whites, nudes and pastels, preferable. Also, two or three sports bras.
” he read. “
Please, get one bra/panty set white and lacy with a pair of thigh-high stockings with lacy tops, set aside for Tuesday.
” Joseph laughed. “He put Tuesday in quotes. Is that some sort of code for sex?”

Nyxie turned bright red and didn’t know how to avoid their persistent badgering and finally confessed it was code for taking her virginity.

The two men stared at her like they’d never seen a virgin before. Joseph moved over into the seat next to her. “Are you sure you want to give it up to Declan Stryker? He such a fucking control freak,” he asked shaking the two-page shopping list at her.

The driver put his arm on the back of his seat and turned slightly. “You should’ve seen the tantrum he threw over me showing up instead of the female driver he requested,” the chauffeur said. “The man obviously has jealousy issues. Sweetie, everyone around you is seeing red flags. Why aren’t you?”

“My relationship is none of your business,” she said pushing the button to close off the driver from the rest of the car. “Declan is protective, not jealous. He’s a doctor. It’s his nature to think of safety.”

Even to her ears the excuse sounded lame.

Joseph made a snort. “Well, we know one thing that isn’t on that list. Blinders.”

“No disrespect, Joseph, but fuck off and mind your own business. Dr. Stryker is paying a lawy
er a lot of money to help me regain custody of my kids. He’s buying me a computer and helping me get on my feet. If he wants to call the shots, guess what, I’m going to let him. I can put up with a lot of bullshit—let me rephrase that—I will put up with all the bullshit he can throw at me to get what he’s giving me.”

Joseph just laughed. “Girlfriend, I was all worried about you, now I’m thinking you’re a real man-eater.”

“You’ve got yourself a sugar daddy,” Treshaun said. “Maybe we should feel sorry for him.”

“It’s not like that either
,” she protested folding up the paper and putting it in her purse.

“Whatever,” Joseph said holding one hand out as if he was about to join Diana Ross singing
Stop in the Name of Love
. “You’ve got his credit card and a shopping list as long as your arm.” He rolled his eyes and giggled lightheartedly as he turned to his friend. “Ms. Thang here needs a makeover. Where do we start?”

“Burn the T-shirt, honey.”

They took her to a day spa where she was on the receiving end of
The Works
. Joseph, Treshaun and the hairdresser insisted a pixie cut would play up her waifish looks, but Nyxie knew Declan liked to grab her long hair so she only allowed him to cut the length from her waist to her shoulder blades. The stylist used a razor to cut long layers into her thick black mane, taking away much of the bulk that always made her face looked disproportionately small. Since the spa didn’t sell any makeup, they took her to a place that did. The woman gave her a full consultation from skin care to applying makeup, selling her a plethora of products.

When they came out, Joanie, the other chauffeur, had arrived and Nyxie took a picture of the drivers exchanging keys and sent it off to Declan.

After lunch, they hit the mall and a handful of boutiques. At the mall, Treshaun went ahead making selections for her to try on as soon as she walked through the door.

At 3:30, Joseph, having worked overnight, begged off from exhaustion and Nyxie figured she had pretty much everything on the list covered, so they piled back into the town car with her bundles.

After they dropped the men off at Joseph’s apartment, Nyxie asked the woman to drive to Chimera Flats. That morning at the DPS, Nyxie learned she didn’t need her birth certificate to get her license; she could get it with her Social Security card and W-2 or school report card. She thought about asking Declan if it was all right to take the car to Chimera Flats, but decided his free time was too precious to waste running her errands.

They arrived at DPS at 4:45 and Nyxie decided she’d take her chances and attempt the written test to get her permit. When she was fifteen, she found a copy of the Drivers’ Handbook on the floor of the high school and had studied it even though to her a license had been a pipedream.

She was surprised at how little the handbook changed in the past few years and studied it to refresh her memory as they traveled to and from Chimera Flats. Her grin told the limo driver all she needed to know when Nyxie emerged. She had aced the test and now had her permit. She held out the keys to Nyxie. “Wanna drive?”

Nyxie just laughed. “No, thanks. I
just want to drop all this off and spend the rest of the day with my brother in the hospital.”

Within a few minutes, Nyxie and the chauffeur were carrying her many parcels into the house. She hung up the clothes which came on hangers; folded the rest and placed them in the larger of two suitcases Declan included in the shopping list. She changed into a gauzy white maxi sundress with a pink cardigan and a pair of white gladiator sandals, and then packed her new overnight bag.

“Seriously,” the driver said when Nyxie reentered the car. “I could teach you to drive if you don’t want to take a driver’s ed. class with a bunch of sixteen-year-olds. I taught my little sister and a friend of hers last year.

Nyxie felt all of her insecurities bubbling to the surface. “I’m not going to be easy to teach.
We didn’t have a car growing up so all that stuff kids pick up watching their folks drive, I’m going to have to learn from scratch.”

“Not a problem. Pay me b
y the hour. The longer it takes, the more money I make.”

“I’ll talk to my friend about it. He’s the one who would have to pay for it.”

The woman stretched her arm behind her to hand Nyxie a business card. “Take my number and let me know.”

Nyxie couldn’t wait to show her temporary permit to Declan—she felt like a teenager with theirs—she supposed the feeling was universal.

Usually when she sat with Cody, she held his hand and touched his face and told him she loved him, but today she was certain she’d jabber nonstop. She was feeling more than a little guilty for having been away for so long—she’d never been away from him longer than a work shift in his whole life. And now while he lay unconscious, she’d been away nearly twenty-four hours.

When she arrived in the SICU, Cody was gone bed and all. She wasn’t too alarmed. They had taken him for brain scans several times and she assumed that’s where he’d gone.

“Where’s Cody?” she asked Rachel who sat at the nurses' station.

Rachel gave her a condescending glare as she answered. “We were given word about twenty minutes ago that he was in recovery. He should be back anytime now.”

“Recovery? He had surgery today?”

“Why else would he be in recovery?”

Onyx felt sick as if her giant pretzel was tying her stomach in knots. “That son of a bitch,” she said tossing Declan’s pretzel in the trash and digging in her purse for her phone. “I’m going to kill him.”

When he answered her call,
“Dr. Stryker,” she knew he was not alone, but she didn’t care.