Night After Night (20 page)

Pushing aside her sudden craving for more than just chocolate, she offered Sean a smile that would, she hoped, encourage him to open up to her. “What was your childhood like?”

Sean frowned at Zoe’s unexpected question and the genuine interest glimmering in her eyes. Just a moment ago the air in the living room had been thick with the erotic memories of what had transpired between them this morning and everything that
hadn’t.
While he was grateful for a change in topic, he wasn’t thrilled about the subject she’d chosen. He wasn’t comfortable talking about himself, especially his past and childhood.

“Why does it matter?” he asked, unable to mask the reluctance in his voice.

She shifted on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her and turning so that she was facing him straight on. “It couldn’t have been easy, having your mother die when you were twelve. Were your parents married at the time?”

God, Sean so didn’t want to have this too-personal discussion with Zoe. He didn’t come from a conventional family, nor did he have a traditional kind of upbringing. Far from it. He’d been raised by a con man and turned into one himself. He had a criminal record that would never be erased, mistakes he’d made that could never be forgiven, and his father was serving a fifteen-year term in prison for investment fraud. There was nothing pleasant about Sean’s youth or the man he’d been shaped into because of his father’s lifestyle.

She was waiting patiently for Sean to respond. Her expression was soft, caring, and kind. He didn’t deserve any of it. Zoe Russo was much too good for him, and she didn’t have the good sense to keep her distance from a man who was all wrong for her, in so many ways. This morning’s tryst proved as much, that she was opening herself up to him and setting herself up for heartache in the end.

As much as he wanted to get up and walk away from the dreaded conversation, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to get the truth out in the open, all of it, and show her exactly what kind of man he was. And if Zoe was smart, which he knew she was, she’d shore up those walls to protect her own emotions and leave with her heart intact once they found her father and the case was over.

“My mother and father never married.” Sean saw the immediate surprise widening Zoe’s eyes and knew this was just the beginning of the shocking details he was about to share. “In fact, for the first twelve years of my life I only saw my father occasionally. My mother and I lived in Henderson, where she was a waitress at a coffee shop, and my father preferred the excitement and opportunities available for him in Las Vegas. When Casey came around, he always came bearing gifts for the both of us, as if that could make up for his absence.”

And for Anna it had been enough. Sean, not so much. When he was a child, all he’d wanted was for the three of them to be a real family, which included a mother and father who were married, lived under the same roof, and spent time together like normal families.

“That must have been difficult,” Zoe said quietly.

Sean’s lips tightened as he remembered those old days and how much he’d resented his father. As a kid, Sean had been painfully aware of how much his mother loved Casey, and despite his wandering ways, Anna had always believed that one day he’d change and settle down. But what she never knew was that Casey loved the thrill and excitement of being a hustler, a man who always looked forward to the next con. And he’d never give that up for anything or anyone.

“When I was twelve, my mother was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer. It was so invasive that within months she was gone,” he said, feeling that familiar tightness in his chest whenever he thought of his mother’s quick passing. “My father wasn’t there when she died, and I was sent straight into foster care until he showed up a few weeks later to claim me.”

Compassion softened Zoe’s features. “I can’t even imagine what that was like for you.”

It had been hell for the twelve-year-old boy he’d been. He’d felt so lost and alone, and the time he’d spent in foster care believing he’d been completely abandoned had only cultivated his anger and bitterness toward his father. But at least Casey
had
shown up, instead of leaving Sean to the state’s foster system. That was more than he’d expected his absentee father to do.

“I came to live here in Vegas with my father, who had absolutely no idea what to do with a defiant, rebellious kid with a huge chip on his shoulder,” Sean went on. “So, he did the only thing a seasoned con man knew how to do. He taught his kid the tricks of the trade and recruited him to help whenever he needed it.”

Zoe stared at Sean, her expression appalled. “He made you con people?”

She sounded so incredulous and looked so outraged on his behalf. While it would have been so easy to pin all the blame on his father for corrupting him, Sean had been genuinely intrigued by Casey’s lifestyle and what he did for a living. At twelve, Sean had been drawn into his dad’s world of cons and scams and eventually embraced it because it was the one thing that bonded him and his father. And even after Sean was old enough to realize that what Casey did was wrong, by then he’d been hooked, too—and was equally good as his father in using his charm and wit to his advantage.

“My father didn’t force me to do anything, Zoe,” he finally said, and looked her in the eye, knowing the next part of his story was going to change everything between them. As well as make her realize that he wasn’t the kind of man she should pin her hopes on. “Even after I knew better, I didn’t stop. A part of me liked the thrill and excitement of a good con. Just like my father did.”

“Oh.” The one word was spoken with shock.

Yeah,
oh.
And that wasn’t even the worst of his offenses.

He leaned forward on the sofa cushion, clasped his hands between his spread legs, and tried to relax his clenched jaw. “I’d just turned eighteen when my father was arrested, along with yours, for investment fraud.”

“Did you know about the Ponzi scheme?” she asked before Sean could continue.

“No.” He shook his head. “When I asked my father what he was doing, he’d only tell me that he was working on something big and he didn’t want me involved.” At the time Sean had been annoyed that his father had excluded him, but in hindsight he’d wondered if his dad hadn’t been trying to protect him somehow, just in case something went wrong—as it had.

“You already know what happened at the trial,” he said, knowing it was unnecessary to rehash those details. “Right before my father was carted off to prison he looked at me in the courtroom and told me not to make the same mistakes that he had, to go and make something of my life and make him proud.”

She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, her gaze curious. “And did you do as he asked?”

“For a while. After realizing my father was going to spend fifteen years of his life in jail, I knew I didn’t want to end up like him. I wanted to change, and I tried to. I went to college for a business degree while working nights and weekends as a bartender. But when I graduated and I was faced with a load of student loans, I felt overwhelmed financially. Even with a degree, it was difficult to find a decent-paying corporate job, and I kept falling further and further behind on my payments.”

He dragged his fingers through his hair and released a deep breath that did nothing to ease the growing pressure in his chest. “One evening while I was working a double shift at the bar, I ran into one of my dad’s old partners who was looking for someone to help him seal the deal on a con he’d already set up with a wealthy house wife looking to make a quick buck. Derrick offered me thirty percent of the take and all I had to do was back up the guy and convince the woman that the investment was a legitimate deal. It was quick, easy money, and the temptation was too great for me to resist.”

When he was quiet for too long, Zoe finally prompted him. “What happened?” she asked.

He forced himself to finish the story, to relive the dark, unpleasant memories that still haunted him and probably always would. “The con went down as planned, except shortly after, the woman’s husband found out about the missing money from their savings account and beat the shit out of his wife for losing it to a scam. The woman was so badly beaten that she ended up in the hospital, and when the police got involved they found out about the con and both Derrick and I were arrested for fraud.”

Stomach churning with dread, he cast a glance at Zoe, certain he’d accomplished the feat of completely alienating her. Her fingers were pressed to her lips, but instead of the outrage he’d been expecting to see, her eyes were filled with a sadness and grief that wrenched at his heart.

He glanced away and swallowed hard. “At the trial, I found out that the woman had invested all of their savings in hopes of making some big money so she could finally leave her manipulative, abusive asshole of a husband and get a divorce. And knowing that I was partly responsible for those bruises on her face, her shattered jaw and broken arm…it had literally destroyed me to know that I put someone’s life in danger like that.”

Even now, so many years later, the thought leadened his conscience with guilt. And the only thing that made living with what he’d done the least bit bearable was the fact that he’d had Caleb check into the woman’s whereabouts and he had discovered she was divorced from the abusive prick and was now living in South Carolina, where she’d grown up. She’d recently married her high school sweetheart and they’d just had a baby girl. Judging by the investigative reports, the woman appeared happy and healthy. Most important, she’d moved on and put her tumultuous past behind her.

Sean wished he could do the same. “I was sentenced to three years in county prison, rightly so, and was released after eight months for good behavior,” he went on. “I was fortunate enough that the judge on the case was so lenient and saw something in me worth redeeming. He was also good friends with Caleb and set me up with a job interview with him as a bartender at the Onyx, and I was lucky enough that Caleb gave me a second chance when not many employers would have hired an ex-convict.”

“Caleb believed in you, that you’d changed,” Zoe said softly. “And he obviously trusted you enough that he eventually hired you on for The Reliance Group.”

“Yes, and I don’t
ever
want to let him down,” Sean said adamantly.

She propped her chin on knee, her gaze much too perceptive. “Like you let your father down?”

Sean blinked at her, shocked that she’d managed to so accurately tap into one of his deepest regrets. All Casey O’Brien had wanted was for his son to turn his life around, to be a better person than his old man had been. Instead, Sean had done the exact opposite and now had a criminal record to show for his stupidity.

Yeah, he’d disappointed his father, in so many ways. Sean had been so ashamed by his own time in prison after promising his father he’d change that he’d never told Casey what had happened with that last con or about his own incarceration. Instead, over the years he kept his sporadic visits with his father in prison brief, the conversation light and superficial because Sean couldn’t handle the guilt when his father praised him for being an honest, hardworking man.

He had a lot to make up for when it came to his father, and for Sean, catching Grant Russo and putting him away was a start to earning Casey O’Brien’s pride and respect.

But in the meantime, Sean had Zoe staring at him, waiting for some kind of response to her comment. “I’ve let a lot of people down in my lifetime, Zoe,” he said, his voice gruff. “And I’ve hurt a lot more with my selfish actions.” And ultimately he was afraid of hurting and disappointing her, too.

Without thinking, Zoe reached out and touched Sean’s shoulder in a gentle, caring caress, and he stiffened against the bit of tenderness she’d tried to extend to him. She wasn’t a psychic by any stretch of the imagination, but Zoe could practically read Sean’s mind—as well as feel his physical withdrawal from her. She hated feeling like an outsider when all she wanted was to offer him the comfort and understanding he seemed to need so badly after spilling so much about his painful past, but it was obvious that he wasn’t ready to accept any compassion, or concession, for the choices he’d made.

“Sean…we all make mistakes, some worse than others,” she said, hoping her words would break through that burden of blame he still carried around and give him some kind of emotional relief. “But I do believe that everyone has the ability to change for the better, like you have. And despite what you think, you
are
a good, decent, honorable man, in every way that counts.”

He shook his head in denial. “You’re foolish to believe that.”

Clearly, he still judged himself harshly, still saw himself as the con man he’d once been, instead of the trustworthy, respectable man he’d become. The man she saw when she looked at him, when she was with him.

“I’ll admit that things between us haven’t been ideal, far from it, but neither is this situation with my father,” she pointed out. “But through it all, you’ve been there for me, whenever I needed you. And I know you’d never deliberately hurt me.”

She trusted him with her life.

The thought came without hesitation or filters, and she knew it to be true. This man, despite what he’d done in the past, was someone who would never let her down. He was the kind of man she could rely on to keep her safe and protected, always.

She knew it and believed it.

Zoe’s heart beat fast and hard in her chest as their gazes held, suspended by the silence in the room and the sudden awareness swirling between them. More than ever, she wanted to experience how good the two of them could be
together.
And not just foreplay this time. No, this time she wanted it all—to feel his strong, muscular body sliding over hers, his thick erection stroking hard and deep as he pushed them both toward the peak of a breathless climax.

Having sex with Sean wasn’t a decision she made lightly or casually. Her desire for him was strong and undeniable, as it had been from the beginning, but it was the growing emotional connection to him that changed all the rules for her.