A Million Guilty Pleasures: Million Dollar Duet (20 page)

It was her death grip on my face that forced me to look at
her. Black mascara streaked down her cheeks and her eyes were puffy, wide—like she was trying to get me to see something she knew, but I wasn’t quite grasping. “He knows, Noah. He knows everything.”

I froze, stiff as a twelve-point buck that had just heard a twig snap in an otherwise still forest.

“What …” My voice was caught in my throat and I had to clear it before I could go on. “What does he know? What are you saying, Lanie?”

“Everything. He knows about the auction, the contract, how much you paid for me, everything.”

I clenched my teeth together and breathed deeply through my nose. “I don’t care. He’s not getting away with this shit.” I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and started to dial.

“Who are you calling?”

“The police.”

She shook her head back and forth frantically and put her hand over the phone. “No, Noah, please. You’ll lose everything.”

“Nothing is more important than you! Nothing!” I snapped, and she flinched at my words. I hadn’t meant to take it out on her, but I was just so fucking irate.

I gathered her into my arms and held her to my chest, stroking her hair as I kissed her forehead over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, rocking her back and forth. I pulled back and cupped her face in my hands, trying to get through to her. “Lanie, baby, he put his hands on you …”

Lanie pulled my hands from her face and held them in her lap. “I know what he did, but he didn’t get to really hurt me because you stopped him, Noah. You stopped him.”

Dear God, she was trying to comfort me. “He put his fucking hands on you, and I can’t … I just can’t.” I could feel the vise around my heart squeeze tighter. I dropped my gaze, no longer able to look into the innocent face of the woman I had failed.

Lanie pushed her fingers through the hair at my temples and lifted my chin so that I had to look at her again. “You listen to me, Noah Crawford. This was not your fault. There was no way you could’ve known he would do that, so don’t you dare start blaming yourself.”

I started to protest, but she put her finger over my lips to silence me. “I’m fine. But if we call the police, everyone will know—and my parents can’t deal with something like this, Noah. My mom just had a heart transplant. Do you really think she could handle knowing what almost happened to me? And my father would kill him. You’ll lose your company, my father will be in prison, and that, along with knowing what I did, would probably make the heart transplant my mother received be all for nothing. I can’t do that to them. No, we have to be smart about this.”

Delaine Talbot never ceased to amaze me. In the face of the unspeakable evil that had befallen her, she was still thinking about everyone else. Never had a more selfless person existed in this fucked-up thing we called life. I didn’t deserve her.

And of course, she was right. As much as it pained me to let David go, I knew we had to regroup and figure out what to do.

“Okay,” I relented with a helpless sigh. “We’ll do it your way.”

I took her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, content on
just having that. But when I tried to pull away, she climbed into my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck, her lips melting against mine. It wasn’t a kiss that was meant to go further. It was simply a kiss that conveyed the love that we shared, the love that even that coward David Stone couldn’t tarnish.

Later that evening, we were in the entertainment room, not really watching the outrageously expensive television that was playing
Lord of the Rings
. I was aware that knowing every line to the movie probably made me a geek, but so the fuck what? It calmed me down, even if it didn’t take my mind off things entirely. That would be an impossible task.

I was wearing a pair of pajama bottoms that I happened to keep around the house in case I had visitors, and Lanie was perched in my lap, freshly showered, wearing nothing but another one of my white button-downs and smelling like the allure of sex. The actual deed itself couldn’t have been further from my mind, though. Okay, to be honest, it was playing at the edge of my thoughts because that was what she did to me, but I would never act on it.

As much as she was trying to be a real trouper, acting like what had happened with that assfucker hadn’t affected her, I knew that wasn’t the truth. But I wasn’t going to press her on the subject. She would talk about it if she wanted, and I would listen and offer as much support as I could. Until then, any contact we had of the sexual nature would be by her initiation alone.

“So he said he had access to the contract?” I asked. We were
still trying to figure out what the fuck to do about the situation Stone had created for us.

“Yeah, but I don’t get that,” she said, lost in thought. “You ripped up your copy of the contract, and my copy is still in with my things. So where did he get it? Do you think he could’ve broken in here and made a copy or something?”

“Not likely,” I answered, my fingers casually rubbing circles on her bare thigh.

The telephone rang beside us, interrupting our little brain-storming session, and I answered it. Dez was on the other end of the line, and she asked me to put her on speakerphone so she could talk to both me and Lanie at the same time. It was odd, but nothing seemed normal in our world anymore.

“You’re on. What’s up?”

“Hey, Lanes,” she said in greeting to Lanie. The dull thump of bass music was in the background. She must have been at work. “So I finally figured out where I’ve seen that piece of man meat that was in your office today.”

“Wait a minute, what?” I asked, confused.

“David,” Lanie answered for her. “She saw David in your office earlier and thought she recognized him.”

Well, wasn’t that just an interesting tidbit of information?

“Where do you know him from?” Lanie asked.

“Right here at the club,” Dez answered. “Every now and then he comes in after hours. I’ve seen him when I’ve stayed late to clean up or, um, meet that night’s Mr. Perfect. But never mind that. Your boy sneaks right in the back entrance and disappears into Scott’s office downstairs. It’s usually a while before he leaves, but he’s always toting a little white dust with him when he does.”

“White dust, as in cocaine? Stone’s snorting?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d always played around with recreational drugs when we were younger. I’d assumed that was all it ever had been.

Dez snorted. “That dude’s so thick into it, a big, fluffy cloud probably pops out of his ass every time he farts.”

Lanie rolled her eyes even though Dez couldn’t see her. “Dez, I don’t think it quite works that way.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying. And I know you just rolled your eyes, bitch.”

Lanie giggled, the sound like music to my ears.

And then it hit me like a fucking lightning bolt. “Scott.”

“What?” Lanie asked, confused.

“Scott would have a copy of the contract as well. After all, he was the broker in the deal. Shit!” I pulled at my hair and let my head fall back with a frustrated growl. “I should’ve known that rat bastard would pull something like this. It’s all about the bottom line for him. I’m sure that if David waved enough cash in front of his face, he’d turn over his copy of the contract in a heartbeat. I didn’t have the slightest inkling they even knew of each other.”

“I really hate him!” The words burst out of Lanie’s mouth.

“Um, hello?” Dez said, reminding us she was still on the line. “What the hell are you two going on about?”

I looked at Lanie, searching her face to see if she wanted me to make something up. It hadn’t dawned on me that she and I were still the only ones who knew about what had transpired earlier that day.

Without taking her eyes from mine, Lanie set her chin in quiet determination and spoke. “David Stone knows about the contract between Noah and me. He made that fact quite clear
when he showed up here today and tried to get me to ride off into the sunset with him after helping him take Noah for everything he has.”

Dez gasped on the other end of the line.

“Oh, it gets worse. When I turned down his advances and kneed him in the balls for calling me a whore, he decided getting heavy-handed with me would be a good idea.”

“He did what?”
Dez’s voice was shrill with shock. “That son of a goat-cock-sucking whore! I swear to God, I’m going to rip his nuts off with my bare hands and shove them down his throat. And then I’m going to introduce him to my friend Chavez, a big, burly-ass Mexican who’s done hard time at Oswald State, aka Oz, and has no qualms whatsoever about ass-raping another dude just for the fun of it. I hear Chavez has eaten so many Naga Viper peppers that his semen is literally liquid acid. He just might be the reincarnation of Beelzebub, but he’s always been good to me, and I’m pretty sure I can get him to do me a favor. Of course that means I’ll owe him one, but for you—”

“Dez, stop,” Lanie said. I personally thought Dez was on to something and wanted her to set the wheels in motion, but Lanie apparently disagreed. “First of all, Oz isn’t a real place. It was a television series. Second of all, we’re not going to stoop to his level. We need to figure out what to do, so I need you to get serious and focus.”

“You thought I was joking?” Dez asked, but Lanie ignored her.

“Wait a minute,” I said, putting the facts together. “Stone said he had access to the contract, right? Not that he actually had it?”

“Right, and …?”

The answer was simple enough. Money talked. “I’ll pay Scott a visit and offer him more money than David was willing to pay for it. Then he wouldn’t have any proof. We can sweep his legs out from under him.”

“Hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not going to work,” Dez interjected.

“Why not?” I was a bit peeved at the halt order.

“Think what you want of Scott, but he’s a shrewd businessman. You had him pegged when you said it’s all about the bottom line for him, but think about it. Selling that contract to you doesn’t make good business sense. He’d be getting rid of the only leverage he has to make sure you don’t run off at the mouth about a business that thrives only because the discretion is so thick. There’s no way he’s going to hand that contract over to you. However, my gut tells me he won’t hand it over to David, either.”

“No offense, but I’m not sure I want to let the future of Scarlet Lotus be determined by a gut feeling,” I told her.

“Noah, put yourself in Scott’s shoes.” Dez almost sounded condescending. “If word got around that he let a confidential contract like that leak out, not only would he lose his business in a massive raid, but no one would trust him with a deal of any sort again. Not to mention there’s no telling how many hits would be put out on the man just because there would be the potential risk that he would leak identities in an attempt to bargain with the feds. You were there, Crawford. You saw the caliber of people he deals with. They’re some ruthless mofos. Would you risk it?”

She had a point. Lots of points, really.

“So how do you think David is planning on getting a copy of the contract for himself, then?” Lanie asked.

“I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say he’s planning on stealing it.”

“Okay, then we just need to beat him to it,” I said, squeezing Lanie’s thigh triumphantly as she smiled down at me.

“Not you,” Dez said. Seriously, she was getting on my nerves with the way she kept throwing up the red lights. “You walk in here and Scott is going to know something’s up. I’ll do it, but I can’t do it alone. Lanie, get your shit together and meet me at Foreplay when it closes. I’ll let you in.”

“No way in hell is that going to happen!” I protested. “I’m not letting her do it, Dez. We’ll have to figure out another way.”

Lanie turned my head toward her and leaned forward. The first three buttons of the shirt she was wearing—my shirt—were open, and her breasts were looming like a carrot dangling in front of a horse’s face. When she tilted my chin up, her lips hovered over mine, enticing me with the sweetness of her breath. “Noah, there’s no other way. We have to do this. I’ll slip in quietly, Dez and I will get the contract as soon as Scott leaves, and I’ll be back in your bed before you even notice I’m gone.”

“What if he tries to—” I started, but was interrupted when Lanie swept her tongue inside my mouth to lightly flick at my own before pulling back.

“He won’t even be there. Besides, Dez will keep me safe.”

I was under Lanie’s spell and closed the fraction of the distance between our lips to tug on her bottom one with my teeth. “Safe and sound?” I asked, my voice sounding less and less like I was the dominant male in the equation.

She pressed even closer to me and shifted her ass over my cock. “Safe and sound. I promise.”

Damn, but the woman knew how to weaken my resolve.

Lanie put her hand over mine on her thigh and slowly started to move it over her creamy skin until it was under the hem of her shirt. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should stop her, but all that was shot to hell when she pushed my hand further until my fingertips skimmed the soft folds between her legs.