Can't Buy Me Love (11 page)

Her grief was
worse than she’d thought it would be. She’d prepared for something bittersweet. But this pain was hard and sharp—glass she couldn’t swallow.

“Crying over all your lost millions?” Luc looked disreputable, with his hair mussed and his tie pulled loose, like a dangerous man in a cologne ad.

“Don’t forget the cows.”

“Of course,” he agreed magnanimously. He looked around at the studio like it was a curiosity, a freak show at a circus, and not a very good one.

And she wanted to be cool about it. Untouched. As controlled as he was. But she couldn’t.

“Get the hell out of here, Luc,” she snapped, unable to muster up anything more cutting to say.

“Should I call you Tara Jean or Jane? I mean, frankly, you’re not like any Jane I’ve ever met.”

“Out.”

“Tara Jean it is.”

“I’m not kidding, Luc. Leave. Now.”

“Wish I could, Tara Jean.” He stepped farther into her workshop. “But I have been sent to fetch you.”

Get up
, she told herself, trying to rally.
This man is invading your kingdom. Tell him where to go. Show him how tough you are
.

But she couldn’t even be bothered to clean up the candy wrappers that littered her desk.

“What is this place?” he asked, walking along the big table toward the rack of clothes.

“None of your business.”

“Honey, if you want to fight, you’re going to have to try harder than that.”

See?
she told herself.
Even the heartless bastard is telling you to pull on your big-girl panties and get on with it
.

He reached out to touch the fringed pink skirt, and the demon shook in anger.

“Don’t touch that!” She found herself on her feet, her hands clenched into fists at her side.

“That’s better.” His smile was loose, suspicious.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you drunk?”

He drained the last of the liquor in his glass. “I am.”

“That’s disgusting. Your daddy was buried—”

“Yes, he was. And I was there.” He walked down the long aisle toward her desk. And maybe it was because she was dehydrated and sick to her stomach from grief and candy, but the look in his eyes made her feel painfully unsafe.

It was her lack of armor. Christ, she didn’t even have on a push-up bra. Or lipstick. How could a girl feel tough without lipstick?

“The question is,” he stopped in front of her old metal desk, “where were
you
?”

Hiding, mostly. But he didn’t need to know that.

It was perfectly clear what she’d been doing. Crying and binge eating. Grief took her to some ugly places. So she didn’t say anything and a slow, lazy smile split his generous lips, revealing those white, white teeth.

If she was any other woman, she might have been turned on.

“Do you have anything to drink around here?” He held up his empty glass.

“No.”

“No?”

She stared at him.

“Funny, you seem like the kind of girl who likes a wine cooler in the morning.”

A few years and another lifetime ago, he wouldn’t have been wrong. Jane Simmons had been a drinker. Among other things.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing to her desk, where the sketch of the pink boot that Nordstrom was considering was covered in candy wrappers.

“A boot.”

He shuddered dramatically. “Good thing I didn’t agree to Dad’s marketing scheme. I never would have lived down wearing pink boots.”

“These aren’t the boots he wanted you to wear, you idiot.” The insult tasted good on her lips—salty and strong—and she got a boost from it. “These are my boots. And this is my workshop and I would appreciate it if you would leave. Now.”

He blinked up at her, and it would be so much more comfortable for her if she could just tell herself that he was stupid. A dumb hockey player. A shitty son. A nobody.

But his eyes blazed with intelligence and her skin woke up under his gaze like it was the touch of a lover. The warmth spread over her body, stirring parts of her that hadn’t felt warmth in years.

It stung. Hurt. And she hated it. Hated him for making her feel it.

“You design for Baker Leather?”

See?
she told herself.
Not dumb at all
.

She swallowed and nodded, feeling stupidly as if him knowing this piece of her story left her a little more naked, more vulnerable.

His grin was wolfish. Mean. He hooked a thumb at the cream bustier behind him. “This the prostitute line?”

She didn’t even bother to defend herself, to cry protestations. She’d learned long ago that no one listened.

“Go away.”

“If I leave, I have to take you with me,” he said, turning away. “You don’t look like you’re eager to hear the lawyers. And I’m in no hurry.”

She sat back down and helped herself to a Riesen, even though her teeth hurt from all the sugar.

“You’re in no hurry to see what your daddy left you?” She talked while she chewed. The caramel centers in these damn things just about pulled out her fillings. But that was why she liked them; they punished her while she ate them.

He appeared to be in deep contemplation of the tailor dummy in the maligned cream leather bustier. “Can’t say that I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’ve got a lot of money,” he said. “More than him, probably. I don’t need any more.”

“Then why’d you come rushing down here when it all got threatened?” She smiled, sitting back in her ratty shirt as if it were silk and lace. He might feign indifference, but he was a man like any other. And men liked her. “Or was it that picture we sent?”

His fingertip touched the thin leather strap of the bustier, tracing along the top, and it looked so damn big. Masculine.

Her skin shook. Too much sugar, she told herself, pushing the bag of candy back into the desk.

“I think a better question is why you’re in here crying instead of in the house trying to get what would have been yours if Lyle hadn’t died so soon.”

“So soon? Are you kidding? That man hung on longer than anyone expected, just so he could get a look at you and your sister again.”

His deep hazel eyes watched her and she tilted her chin, unbowed.

“I wish you were wrong,” he murmured.

She sat back, stunned by his lack of armor. The humanity he’d revealed behind the mask. It wasn’t grief, but it wasn’t cold anger, and that was surprising.

She had no inclination to appease his grief or guilt or whatever it was that was making him drink on the day of his father’s funeral, but she wanted to defend Lyle.

His scheming, for all the pain it caused, had been hatched from a pure place.

“Your daddy loved you,” she whispered.

His smile was so bitter it was as if he’d bitten into a rotten nut.

“He had a shit way of showing it. On my end it felt like anger and hate most of the time. The rest of the time it just felt like ownership.”

The air conditioner clicked on, a gunshot in the silence. It was redeeming, somehow, that he not only understood his father, but was saddened by it all.

That he wasn’t a glacier all the way through wasn’t anything she wanted to know about him. She didn’t want to understand him, or feel empathy for his complicated pain.

“Is that why you’re drinking your way through the day?” She tucked her feet up under her legs. “You’re all choked by regret? Wishing you could go back and do it all differently?”

“Hell no,” he said. “I’m drinking because it’s a damn party.”

He looked down at his empty tumbler and up at the thin, fragile glass of her greenhouse as if he could already see the arc. The smash and rain of glass all over her work.

Danger crackled. His muscles, thick and heavy—masculine
in the extreme—bunched under his fine white shirt.

She held her breath, held hostage by the moment—the grief and anger had a knife to both their throats.

But then, he closed his eyes, and his shoulders relaxed. As if he’d put out the fuse, the moment was gone. Controlled.

She sucked in a deep breath. Ice Man, indeed.

“We should go,” he said, turning away. “They’re waiting on us.”

“Go on.” She kicked her legs off her chair and pulled herself up to her desk as if she were about to apply her nose to the grindstone, when really she was going to Hoover as much sugar and comfort as she could the second he was gone. “I’m working.”

“You’re worried about Maman?”

Perceptive bastard.

She ran her tongue over her fuzzy teeth, felt the puffy skin on her face without having to touch it. She was a bona-fide mess and those women in there—the regal Celeste and the heartbroken Victoria—would turn their noses so high up in the air, they’d get dizzy.

You’ve been judged by better than them
, she reminded herself.

“No.”

“You should be,” he said with a wolfish, messy smile. “She’s gonna eat you alive.”

Lord, the man was pushing her buttons.

“Then let’s go.” She stood, jamming her feet into her ragged bunny slippers.

She stepped out from behind the desk and suffered Luc’s slow perusal.

He stepped closer. Closer again. Until she couldn’t take a deep breath without her breasts touching the wide white plains of his chest. Her brain fizzed and popped. Her skin screamed at his nearness.

It hurt. And it was the kind of pain she remembered, back when she felt things. Like poisonous heady desire. The kind of pain that felt good, like a summer night so hot it melted your reason down to instinct.

A deer in the headlights, she didn’t even see his hand come up, couldn’t brace for it. His touch against the corner of her mouth was electricity and her skin, every inch of her body, was water. The heat of his flesh, the calluses on the tips of his fingers, pulsed through her. Pooled in her stomach.

She gasped. Flinched. Her carefully constructed life cracked and hunger flooded in.

“Chocolate,” he breathed and then licked his thumb.

Lust was an avalanche through her body, eradicating villages and people. Little skiers minding their business.

She stepped away, breaking the contact, and her mind jerked out of pause right into fast forward.

A million years ago, men and the way they could make her feel were her favorite candy. The best kind of sweetness. But no longer. That woman was gone. Never to be seen again.

She was stronger than desire. Tougher than want. She wouldn’t be brought down by a man again.

Never. Again.

“I keep wondering who the hell you are. Jane Simmons? Tara Jean Sweet? I never get any closer to an answer.”

“I could ask you the same thing. Wayne.” She pulled herself up by her spine. By her muscle and sinew.

His smile was feral and calculating. A predator sizing up his prey. “Depending on how things go in the den, I might be your worst nightmare.”

That was better. She was safer with anger. More comfortable with hate.

“Then let’s go.”

Victoria traced her
fingers around Jacob’s palm, over and over again. When he was sick in the hospital and she had to wear a hazmat suit just to sit by his side, this was what she’d do. She’d draw hearts and smiley faces. Numbers and letters. She’d spell her name on his skin, a map to bring him back to her.

The tension in the den was sickening, and if it weren’t for Jacob telling Celeste scene for scene about the
Iron Man
movie he’d watched against Victoria’s better judgment, it would be intolerable.

A powder keg.

As it was, Victoria had to stomach Queen Celeste smiling down at Jacob as if he were just another part of her kingdom.

He’s mine
, she wanted to hiss and yank him away. But Jacob liked Celeste. And Celeste was kind to Jacob in her own way. As if he were a dog, but her favorite dog.

And Victoria was so nervous she could throw up, so having Jacob distracted worked in her favor.

How much do I need?
she kept wondering. It wasn’t as though she needed to live the way she had lived with Joel. That kind of money had been a false security of the worst kind. But she needed to take care of Jacob. School. College. Medical bills. A modest home.

The door to the den opened and Luc walked in, smiling as if he’d just heard the best joke. Victoria might
have written that off to Luc being a jolly drunk, but at his heels was Tara Jean.

Looking like death warmed over.

Laughter, surprised and unchecked, bubbled out of her throat and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Celeste glanced sideways at Victoria with a wicked little smile on her million-dollar mouth.

For a second, all those differences between them—that Victoria was the daughter of Lyle’s mistress, that Celeste hated her, that she hated Celeste—all of them were gone. Two women, in a glance, sharing a joke at another women’s expense—it was a female language born thousands of years ago.

But Tara Jean lifted her chin and sailed past them to go stand next to Eli Turnbull, and the moment popped.

Eli lifted an arm over Tara Jean’s shoulders and pulled her to his side. Tara Jean curled up there. Safe. Protected.