After a moment, I pulled reluctantly away. “I should probably change before we go.”
“No,” he said, as he reached for some napkins and cleaned us both up. “Keep the skirt and the panties on.”
“Really?”
“I like it,” he said. “I like knowing you’re freshly fucked. That just a few minutes ago your legs were wide and I was deep inside you. I like you sitting there in your little work outfit looking all proper, and knowing that I’m the reason your panties are damp. It reminds me that you’re mine. At least for a few more days.”
“I am yours,” I said.
I always will be.
I didn’t say the last part aloud, but he knew it. How could he not? Hadn’t I learned that Evan Black knew me better than anyone?
“I’m serious,” Kat said, holding up her third beer. “I think the two of you should go skydiving.”
I glanced at Evan, who was clearly amused by my very drunk friend.
“And why would we want to do that?” Evan asked.
“Well,” Kat said, leaning across the table with a very serious expression. “In case you hadn’t noticed, our little Angie is a bit of a thrillseeker.”
“No,” Evan said, his voice laced with mock surprise.
“It’s true.” Kat nodded a few times too many, as if she was trying to mimic a bobble-head doll. “And you need to make sure that she gets it out of her system, because once she moves to D.C., she’s going to be boring as shit.
Daddy issues,
” she added, in a mock whisper. “It’s true. Honest.”
“What’s true is that you are taking a taxi home,” I said, forcing myself to smile and sound lighthearted when I really wanted to strangle my friend. My move was barreling down on me, and I didn’t want to be reminded of it, thank you very much. Even more, I didn’t want Evan reminded of it.
“Are you suggesting I’m drunk?”
“Not suggesting at all. Flat-out stating.”
“Drunk or not,” Evan said, “I think your friend has a great idea. Shall I arrange for a skydiving session?”
“Don’t you dare.”
“And here I thought you wanted to fly.”
Beneath the table, I cupped my hand over his cock and smiled sweetly. “That’s what I have you for,” I said. My voice was a tease, but I meant every word.
In the interest of public decorum, I started to move my hand away, but he pressed his hand over mine, holding my palm firmly in place. He met my eyes, his amused, and I couldn’t help but grin.
“The lady makes a good point,” Evan said, and I had to laugh. I wasn’t the only one who got off on the thrill.
“She has
so
got you wrapped around her little finger,” Kat said.
“She does,” Evan agreed cheerfully, and Kat flashed me a brilliant, approving smile.
“So where’s Cole?” I asked as Kat signaled to a waitress for another round of drinks. “It’s almost eight-thirty.”
“I’ve texted him twice,” Evan said. “No answer.”
We’d arrived only ten minutes late thanks to Evan’s ability to maneuver the Thunderbird at incredibly fast and unsafe speeds. But there’d been no need to hurry. Cole was still MIA, and Flynn had gotten stuck covering another shift, and so the hour he’d planned to take off to hang with us now had him behind the bar working his ass off. And when he wasn’t running around mixing drinks, he was occupied by a woman who looked to be in her early forties, and who kept calling him over to talk to her.
Kat had noticed her first and pointed her out to me. Now we’d both been eyeing the action, trying to figure out who she was to Flynn. I guessed she was no one—just a woman looking to get laid by the cute bartender. Probably recently divorced. Probably had a crappy day at work.
“I think she’s looking to fool around while her husband’s out of town,” Kat said when we’d gone to the ladies’ room together.
“I hope not. The last thing Flynn needs is a pissed-off husband poking around.”
Whoever she was, she was keeping Flynn busy. He’d only made it to our table once, and that was just to introduce himself to Evan. I was hopeful that when Cole showed up the second bartender would have made it in to work, and Flynn could take a break.
“There he is,” Evan said, looking toward the entrance. Then he pushed back his chair and stood. “Something’s wrong.”
Since I was a head shorter than Evan, I couldn’t see Cole’s approach until I stood as well. The moment I did, I knew that Evan was right. Cole was like a storm of muscle moving toward us, his expression thunderous. Even his usually kind eyes flashed with fury that he wasn’t bothering to conceal.
“What the fuck?” Evan asked, obviously as baffled as I was.
Cole cast one look my way. “Sorry, baby girl. I need him for a few.” He pointed at Evan. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, but Cole was already walking away, and Evan was moving fast behind him, his phone out and at his ear.
“What the fuck?” Kat said.
“Business stuff, I guess. Evan said there was some shit going down with one of their California ventures.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I was worried and Larry’s warning and Kevin’s voice was ringing in my ears.
They’d been gone about five minutes when Flynn came over and sat down at our table. “Where’d they go?”
“Parking lot, I think.” I looked over and saw that the cougar was gone. “Lose your friend?”
“Fuck her,” Flynn said.
Kat laughed. “That’s what we thought you had planned. What happened?”
“It’s like a negotiation,” Flynn said. “We couldn’t come to terms.”
“More business shit,” I said, then swallowed the last sip of my cabernet as Flynn and Kat laughed. “Another round?”
“Hell, yes,” Flynn said, as he signaled for one of the waitresses. “I’m off work for a full thirty-six hours.”
I’d finished two more glasses of wine and was feeling the effects of it by the time Evan came back. Cole wasn’t with him, and I watched the disappointment play across Kat’s face, becoming all the more pronounced when Evan refused to explain why Cole was blowing us off. “Work stuff,” he said, which was hardly a satisfactory explanation.
What was worse was the way he was distracted for the rest of the evening. He was nice to my friends, saying the right stuff, laughing at their jokes, buying rounds of drinks. But he felt absent somehow. I put up with it until we left, but in the car, I demanded answers. “What’s going on, Evan?”
“Business,” he said. He stopped at an intersection, and shot me a sideways look. “It’ll blow over.”
“So what’s the trouble?”
“Problems,” he said. “At Destiny.”
I licked my lips, remembering his red, raw knuckles. “That guy? Larry? Are the girls okay?”
He focused on the road. “They’re fine. It’s being dealt with.”
I could tell he was getting irritated, but I pressed on anyway. “So is this a legitimate business thing? Or should I be worried that the FBI is going to swoop down on you?”
He yanked the wheel to the left even as he slammed on the brakes. I squealed, the sound of my voice matching the sound of the tires as he careened into a parking lot and killed the engine. “What the fuck, Lina?”
I gaped at him.
“Seriously,” he demanded. “What the fuck?”
I shook my head. “What’s going on, Evan? Did Cole hit you on the head? Because your mood has turned on a dime here, and I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re taking it out on me.”
“Are you staying?”
“Staying?” I repeated, because I was completely confused now.
“Are you staying in Chicago, or are you heading off to Washington in just over a week?”
“I—” I licked my lips. “I just want to close this distance, Evan. Cole burst in and you ran off with him, and when you came back, it was like you were lost behind a wall. And I get that. There’s stuff you can’t talk about—stuff we both know about but that we’ve been avoiding, and it’s my fault, too, because I’ve been skirting around the edge, as well.” I sucked in a breath, not sure if my pounding pulse was because of my words or the lingering result of his reckless driving. “I don’t want evasions anymore. I don’t want stories or allegories or what-ifs. I want you, Evan. I want the real you.”
I was spilling out my heart to him, watching his face, searching for softness, for acceptance, for relief.
Instead, all I saw were hard lines and angles. I saw regret, too, and it sent cold prickles of fear through me.
He turned away, his attention focused on some point outside the front windshield. “I want that, too,” he finally said.
I exhaled in relief and waited for him to say more. To tell me the truth. To finally let me see what was underneath the knight’s armor.
But that wasn’t what he said.
“Are you staying in Chicago?” he repeated, this time speaking very slowly and very clearly. “Or are you heading off to Washington in a week?”
“Dammit, Evan,” I shouted, losing all patience now. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
He continued to face forward, but his voice had the same edge that I was feeling. “Answer the question.”
“I—yes,” I snapped. “You know I have a job. And in a few days, I’ll even have a place to live.”
He put the car back into gear and pulled out onto the street. I sat frozen, certain that we’d just crossed some line in the sand that I hadn’t even realized he’d drawn. When we reached my condo, he passed the valet stand and pulled to the curb. He sat silently, and it took me a second to realize he was waiting for me to get out.
“What the fuck, Evan?”
“You’re not being true to yourself, Lina,” he said, turning to face me. “Don’t expect more from me than you’re willing to give yourself.”
eighteen
You’re not being true to yourself.
For the rest of the night and into the next day, his words ran through my head over and over, like some horrible children’s ditty that had turned into a pernicious earworm.
You’re not being true to yourself.
At first I was pissed. I paced and I drank and I managed not to throw things, but only because I liked all the things that were in Jahn’s condo, and I’d already sacrificed one coffee cup to Evan Black.
So I worked off my anger by burning calories, stalking wildly around the condo, muttering to myself like a madwoman and making up some pretty damn fine curses in the process.
You’re not being true to yourself.
Then I sat. And I tried to watch television in order to drown out the annoying little voice that kept popping into my head, telling me that he was right.
But the voice was too loud and I couldn’t concentrate. Not on CNN, not on streaming episodes of
Buffy.
Not even on the fine figure of Gordon Ramsay cursing out all those little chef wannabes.
You’re not being true to yourself.
Goddamn Evan Black.
He was right.
He was right, but I was scared to change. I’d been living my life under someone else’s terms for so long that I wasn’t sure I knew how to do anything else. For that matter, I wasn’t sure I knew how to be me.
Dear god, I’d made a mess of it. My parents hadn’t lost just one daughter, they’d lost two. Because they didn’t even know Angelina, not anymore. I’d been trying so hard to be Gracie for them that I’d completely buried their youngest daughter.
You’re not being true to yourself.
Yeah, wasn’t that the understatement of the year? And it had only taken falling in love to make me finally see it.
“Ms. Raine?”
I was on the patio, standing by the glass barrier, looking out over the lake, though I wasn’t really seeing it. Now I turned in response to Peterson’s voice. “Yes?”
“Can I bring you anything? You should eat some lunch.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You didn’t have breakfast.” He paused. “Is there something I can help you with, perhaps?”
“No.” He couldn’t help me, and I was having one hell of a time helping myself. For that matter, I was having a hell of a time getting my head on straight.
I knew what I wanted—I wanted to stay. I wanted Evan. I wanted to work for the foundation.
I wanted to be true to myself. But I was scared of stepping off the path I’d paved for myself. And I was terrified of disappointing my parents.
There was only one person I knew who could help me. Only one person who could hold me tight and keep me firmly safe while I took the kind of risk that I was thinking about taking.
I needed to jump—and I knew with absolute certainty that I could only do that if Evan was beside me.
“Peterson,” I called, turning around and catching him before he moved efficiently back inside. “Wait. There is something you can do for me.”
“Whatever you need, Ms. Raine.”
“I need a car.”
The driver took me to Evan’s downtown office first, but unless his secretary was covering for him, he wasn’t there.
I tried the boat next, and didn’t find him there, either.
“Shall I take you back home, miss?”
“No,” I said sharply. I pulled out my cell phone and almost dialed. But I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to tell me to stay away. “We’re going to Destiny,” I said, then settled back for the ride.
I hoped like hell he was there, because if he wasn’t, I was all out of ideas. And while I had reached the point of begging Cole for help, I really didn’t want to go that route unless it was absolutely necessary.
I didn’t see Evan’s car as we drove up, but I also didn’t have a full view of the rear parking lot. I thanked the driver and, since I was all about the power of positive thinking, I told him not to wait. Then I stepped inside, paid my cover—this time to a petite brunette—and pushed through the doors into the main room.
It looked just the same as it had before. The girls were still dancing. The men were still watching. Everything seemed exactly the same as it had been the last time I’d been here. The only thing that had changed was me.
“I know you.”
I glanced up to see a familiar blonde in a tiny miniskirt and nothing else.
It took me a second, but I finally recognized her as the girl who’d worked the entrance my last time here. “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Evan.”
“Again?”
“Excuse me?”
She shrugged. “He’s in a meeting right now,” the girl said, and I silently cheered. At least he was somewhere on the premises.