Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
BECKETT
F or the first time in his memory, Beckett’s mind wasn’t on work. The numbers on the screen in front of him held exactly zero interest, and the longer he stared at them, the less sense they made.
Switching over to his email, he clicked on one that Sonja had flagged for him to read. Nothing pressing, but it gave him something to do other than sit at his desk and obsess over Ruby and her wide brown eyes with that hint of mischief in them.
Had she heeded his wishes last night and kept her hands off that pretty pussy of hers? Had she lain awake as he had, staring at the ceiling and wishing she’d been just a little less naughty so she could have gotten an orgasm out of the deal?
The thought of her lying awake thinking of him was a double-edged sword. It appeased the darker parts of him, those parts ruled totally by instinct and need, to think he might have any claim on her when she wasn’t with him.
The Daddy side of him, however, worried. She worked two jobs that he knew of and if she was opening the coffee shop she likely had to be there exceptionally early.
Was she getting enough sleep? Was she working at Club BDE because she needed the money or just for the discount? Either way, maybe he should talk to Braden about making sure she wasn’t closing up at the club when she had work in the morning.
Not your place. Not your concern.
Right. Because Ruby wasn’t his, and he had no intention of keeping her. Which meant he needed to keep his distance, at least emotionally, regardless of the deal he’d made with Holden.
Feeling antsy, he pushed away from his desk and stalked toward the door to his office. Sonja looked up as he stepped out into the waiting area that housed her desk and a handful of chairs for visitors. “Everything all right, sir?”
“Yes.” He could hear the bite in his voice, but Sonja didn’t so much as blink. Which only made him feel like an even bigger asshole.
“Sorry,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “Late night, rough morning. You know how it goes.”
“Do you need me to reschedule your afternoon?” Without even glancing at the computer, she ran through his schedule. “Your two o’clock with the board can’t be moved but everything else is flexible.”
“No, I’m fine. I’m just going to take a walk, but I’ll be back for my next meeting.”
“Sounds good.”
Fresh air. He just needed some fresh air to get Ruby out of his head for a bit.
Laughter rang out as he stepped out of the elevator into the main lobby, and he had the fleeting thought that he must need that fresh air more than he realized because he could swear it sounded like?—
“Ruby?”
The woman standing at the guard station whipped around, her dark eyes going round in her suddenly pale face. “Beckett? What the hell are you doing here?”
Amusement burned away some of the restlessness of his day as he approached her. “Well, seeing as how I own the building, I’m not sure where else you’d expect me to be.”
Most women, upon realizing he was much, much richer than they’d expected, practically threw themselves at his feet.
Not Ruby.
Annoyance flickered in her eyes right before she rolled them up toward the ceiling. “Of course you own the fucking building. That’s just my luck.”
Instinct overrode all common sense and he reached for her, capturing her chin between his fingers and forcing her gaze to lock with his. “Is there a problem, little girl?”
“Yes. But it’s my problem. Please let me go.”
He didn’t want to. It surprised him, even after having her invade his every thought since he’d walked away from her the night before, how hard it was to pull his hand away. “Come upstairs and we’ll talk about whatever’s bothering you.”
“I’m working.”
And that was when he finally noticed the plastic bag in her hand and the lanyard around her neck stamped with the logo of a well-known food delivery service.
“But you work at the coffee shop.”
Jesus Christ, could you be any more of a dumbass?
The answer was ‘No’, if the look on Ruby’s face was any indication.
“And I do this. Do you have a problem with that?”
Yes. He had a big fucking problem with the idea that she might be running herself ragged just to make ends meet. With the thought of her driving around, too exhausted to focus on her surroundings.
Memories crowded in on him, threatened to smother him if he didn’t put them back in the box where they belonged. It had been happening more and more since Silver’s attack, and Ruby seemed to trigger them more than anyone or anything else. And as he struggled to push the memories, the pain back down, everything in him physically ached to scoop her up in his arms, to carry her back to his house and keep her there, safe and cared for.
But she wasn’t his , as he’d spent the entire morning reminding himself. And he had damn good reasons for not making her his. The biggest and most important of all being that she didn’t strike him as the type of woman to be satisfied with the restrictions he would want—no, need —to place on her for his own peace of mind.
“No,” he finally managed to answer her when it felt like he could breathe again. “Of course I don’t have a problem with it. I was just surprised to see you.”
“Yeah, well, same.”
The annoyance he’d seen in her eyes was there in her voice, as well. It was too tight, too flat, not all like what he was used to hearing from her. “You don’t sound surprised. You sound pissed.”
“I’m not. I’m just busy.”
Liar. Now that he’d picked up on her aggravation, he could see it in the way she held her shoulders, the way she was clenching her jaw.
If they’d been in a scene, he would have had plenty of ways to force the truth out of her. But not only was it highly inappropriate to bend her over and spank her gorgeous ass in the middle of his crowded lobby, he had no right. No right to touch her, but more, he had no right to the truth, to her inner thoughts and emotions.
That was for her Daddy, not some casual play partner.
So even though it was physically painful to do so, he took a step backward and forced a smile. “All right. I’ll leave you to it, then. See you later, Ruby Red.”
Turning on his heel, he strode back to the elevator, fighting with every fucking step the urge to turn back around and claim her.
Ruby wasn’t his. And that was exactly how it needed to be.
Beckett
If he’d thought he couldn’t get Ruby out of his head before, it was nothing compared to the level of obsession that consumed him after their run-in downstairs. And the more he thought about her, the more he worried about her. And the more he worried, the more irritated he became.
By the time he made it home, he might as well have had one of those black clouds hanging over his head, like in the cartoons.
That black cloud was not helped in the least by the buzzing of his phone with a message from Ice letting him know he was on his way to Beckett’s for their regularly scheduled workout session.
Fuck.
He was tempted to beg off. The phone was already in his hand, and he wanted nothing more than to text Ice back and let him know he was taking the day off.
But he’d never skipped a workout, other than that one time a few years ago when he’d had the flu and even his personal trainer had told him to keep his ass in bed. If he told Ice he wasn’t feeling it today, Ice would just come over anyway to fuss over him.
And as much as he loved his friend, he didn’t want or need a Daddy, thank you very much.
Better to just get it out of the way. Maybe if he was lucky, the endorphins from the workout would help take his mind off a certain auburn-haired beauty.
He was just coming back downstairs after changing into a pair of loose shorts and sneakers when the front door opened. Ice, dressed in a similar outfit but with the addition of a black hoodie, stepped inside and grinned. “Ready to let me whip your ass?”
“You aren’t whipping anything. And close the damn door, I already pay a fortune to heat this fucking house, I don’t need to heat the outside, too.”
Eyebrows raising, Ice nudged the door shut behind him and shifted the gym bag on his shoulder. “What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Nothing. Are you here to work out or talk shit?”
Tilting his head to the side, Ice pretended to think about it. “Both. Definitely both.”
“Whatever.” Without bothering to wait around for Ice to hassle him about being a dick, Beckett turned on his heel and headed for the stairs down to his basement gym.
Ice followed, wisely keeping his mouth shut as they each chose a treadmill.
Cardio wasn’t Beckett’s favorite thing by a long shot, but today he was actually looking forward to a good, hard run. Beside him, Ice’s music blared out from his headphones and not for the first time Beckett wondered how the fuck he hadn’t completely destroyed his hearing between his actual concerts and the ones he held for himself during their workouts.
Popping his own ear buds in, Beckett picked a random workout mix and turned on his machine.
And as he ran, his mind drifted back to Ruby, the way it had been all fucking day.
Was she still working? Or was she home, preparing for her shift at BDE? Had she gotten a chance to rest between jobs? Was she thinking about him and the promise he’d made her last night? Was she still pissed about… whatever it was she’d seemed so pissed about when he’d seen her at lunch?
That was a sticking point, he was willing to admit. She’d seemed fine at the coffee shop, and no matter how many times he ran that interaction over and over in his head, he couldn’t pinpoint anything he’d said or done that could have pissed her off.
He was so stuck on it, in fact, even his usual runner’s high wasn’t enough to get her out of his head. Neither was the brutal weight-lifting routine he and Ice went through together afterwards.
Which left him in a still decidedly pissy mood when they racked the weights and headed back upstairs.
Ice gave him enough time to drain a bottle of water and get his breathing somewhat back under control before he pounced. “So. Gonna tell me what’s eating you?”
“Just a day.”
Tipping his own water bottle to his lips, Ice raised a brow and sipped. “This ‘day’ you had wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain red-headed bartender, would it?”
“Maybe.” Fuck it. He might as well just come clean. Ice was like a dog with a bone when he got a whiff of something. “I went by the coffee shop she works at this morning.”
“And she was… not happy to see you?”
“That’s the thing.” Frustration burned under Beckett’s skin as he turned to pace the kitchen. “She seemed fine at the shop this morning. We talked, flirted a little. Then I saw her again at lunch because apparently two jobs aren’t enough for her and she runs deliveries for one of those fucking food apps and she was making a delivery to our building. And she was like a completely different person.”
“What did you do to piss her off?”
The question, and the ease with which it rolled from his best friend’s tongue, did nothing to soothe his irritation. “Nothing! I swear, Ice, I’ve gone over it a hundred times in my head and I have no fucking clue what I did to piss her off. And she’s been under my goddamn skin all day.”
Eyes narrowed, Ice took another sip of his water. “Define ‘all day’.”
The request stopped Beckett in his tracks. “What?”
“You said she’s been under your skin ‘all day’. Do you mean just since you saw her at lunch? Or before that?”
“From the moment I got out of bed. Notice I didn’t say the moment I woke up since I didn’t actually get any sleep last night because she was under my skin then, too.” It was humiliating to admit it, but if he couldn’t tell Ice, then he couldn’t tell anyone and he was starting to feel like he might spontaneously combust if he didn’t talk it out.
“Beckett…” Ice hesitated, clearly weighing his words. “Have you stopped to consider that you might have dropped pretty fucking hard after your scene last night?”
“No. I don’t drop.” Never had, not even when he’d first gotten into the scene.
“Uh-huh. When was the last time you played with someone you were actually invested in?”
“I’m not invested.” But the words rang hollow, even to his own ears.
Because he was invested, for the first time in a very long time, as much as he didn’t want to be. The last time he’d felt anything like this for a woman, she’d been in his house, in his bed every single night.
Then she’d been gone, and after that, he’d never let his emotions get involved when he played. It was about the release, the rush that came from having a willing woman at his feet. Occasionally it was about the sex, too, but even that he’d kept carefully separated from his emotions.
Until Ruby.
“Fuck.”
“There it is.” Draining the last of his water, Ice set the bottle down on the counter and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Are you supposed to be meeting Ruby tonight?”
“She’s working tonight but I told her I’d see her there.”
“All right.” Ice nodded as he tapped out a message. “Braden will let her know you won’t be around until later and then he’ll be on his way over with dinner. And Holden, most likely.”
“I don’t need you to baby me, Ice. And I promised Ruby I’d be there.”
Tucking his phone back in his pocket, Ice pinned him with those dark, serious eyes and Braden knew he wasn’t leaving his house without a fight. “You care about her?”
That was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one. “I don’t know how I feel about her yet.”
“But you feel something ,” Ice pressed.
He couldn’t really argue that. “Yeah. Yeah, I feel something.”
“Then trust me on this. Take some time for you. If she matters, then you’re going to want to take care of her. And you can’t pour from an empty cup, my friend.”
A fair enough point, and one he likely would have made himself if the situation had been reversed. “What’s Braden picking up for dinner?”
Ice’s smirk said he knew he’d won even if Beckett refused to actually say so. “I sent him to that little Thai place you like downtown.”
Glancing at the clock on his microwave, Beckett did the math in his head. Even if he took an hour for himself, he could be at the club well before Ruby’s shift ended. And, if he played his cards right, he could talk Braden into letting her off early or at least giving her a longer break so they could have a chat. “All right. A quick dinner and then we’re going to the club.”
“Deal.”