Chapter 8
EIGHT
STORM
S hae just punched me in the face.
Hard.
And all I can do is smile.
Because anger like that? It means she still feels something.
Sure, she’s just hauled off and punched me dead in the mouth, but I don’t focus on that.
I focus on the fact that her being so angry at me that she’d resort to physical violence means one thing: She still cares.
She feels something for me, because if she’d moved on or only felt apathy, she would have greeted me with polite coolness, not a fist to the face.
What her hit telegraphs with stunning clarity is she has deep, hot emotions for me, and that has me on the fucking moon.
“Liv!” her assistant shouts, and that causes me to frown. Liv? Since when does she go by Liv?
Shae hisses through her teeth and shakes her right hand, taking a step back but not removing her hot gaze from my face.
Damn, my cheeks hurt from how wide I’m grinning like a maniac.
The assistant rushes over to Shae, and the love of my life sucks her teeth and looks at her hand. It doesn’t look like it’s swelling from my vantage point, although I’ll have to teach her to throw a better punch.
When the assistant reaches Shae’s side, it must shake her out of whatever rage spiral she’s engaging with in her brain because she hisses with stunning clarity, “Get. Out.”
No one in the room moves, but I hear a snort—from Axel, no doubt—which causes Shae to blink several times in rapid succession.
“Sure, Shae,” I say, my voice bright. “Axel, Riale, why don’t you escort Miss… I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.” I direct the last part to the assistant.
“Melissa,” she blurts out, then rolls her lips inward with a side-glance to her boss. Shae’s face is like stone.
“Melissa. Axel, Riale, why don’t you and Miss Melissa go down to grab coffee for us?”
“ Coffee ? If you don’t get the fuck —” Shae chokes off the rest of her sentence.
I give my most charming grin to Melissa, and she blushes. Shae must clock her cheeks pinkening, because she spins on the girl and shouts, “You’re fired!”
I grimace while Melissa drops her hands, her iPad clacking to the floor.
“What? Ms. Riv?—”
“Why the fuck would you schedule a meeting with this person ? You should— How the fuck— Just get the hell out of my office!” she screams, spitting each word as if she were chewing on shit.
“B-but, Ms. Rivers! You emailed me last night and asked me to?—”
“Everyone get the fuck out!” Her voice starts to edge toward shrill, and I track movement past the glass where a few heads pop up over cubicles.
I turn toward Riale and Axel, tipping my chin to signal them to get lost and take the assistant with them.
Melissa, Riale, and Axel file out of the room, and I follow them to the door, shutting it with near silence.
Shae groans and pulls back the chair at the head of the table. With a shuddering breath, she drops her head into her hands with her elbows on the glossy surface.
It takes her ten full seconds to look up, and she jumps, then scowls, when she realizes I didn’t go with the others.
“That demand included you, too, Storm,” she snaps. And I spread my hands out, signaling I come in peace.
Well…something like that. Thinking about Lakeland and all the shit he’s dragged Shae into has the burn in my chest starting up again.
I reach the chair nearest her, and she bites her lip as if she wants to stop herself from strangling me with her words.
“You and I need to talk. It’s serious,” I say. When a flicker of something—fear?—passes over her face, I feel like setting shit on fire.
“You don’t have to be scared, Shae, but there are things happening, and you need to be aware of them. I’ll fix it, though, if you’ll work with me.”
Her laugh starts out small, just a humored hum that turns into a hacking cackle. She rolls back from the table, bending over at the waist to catch her breath with her head between her pantsuit-clad legs.
“Whew!” she shouts, sitting back up so fast that her straight hair whips across her face and some of the strands stick to her glossy red lips.
“You’re gonna fix ‘it.’ Storm? Really. How kind of you!” She wipes beneath her eyes, catching the dark-tinted moisture pooling above her cheeks. “You’re a fucking joke. Get out of my office.”
I inhale slowly to the count of three and exhale to the same cadence. She’s upset, and understandably so, and I need to stay calm here.
Especially since she isn’t calm.
“Sweetness—”
“Do you have a fucking death wish? Melissa!” She shouts for her assistant and then growls, pressing against her temples. “Fuck, I fired Melissa. Goddamn it, I fucking fired Melissa.”
She mutters to herself with her eyes closed and the skin on her face gripped between her fingers.
“Shae.”
“Why…are you… still …here?” she murmurs, still with her eyes closed, as if shutting me out of her field of vision can make me go away. “What business or information could you possibly need to talk to me about?”
At that, her head snaps up, her eyes wide. There goes that fearful look again. She opens her mouth and closes it a few times before I speak.
My heart kicks against my ribs when her fear shifts into something sharper—rage burning through her confusion like gasoline poured onto dry brush.
I barely register the movement before she lunges, her hand slicing through the air, aiming straight for my face.
This time, I'm ready.
I catch her wrist mid-flight, holding her small, furious hand inches from my jaw.
For a moment, we just…breathe.
Her chest rises and falls with each shallow inhale, her wrist flexing in my grasp like she’s deciding whether to fight or surrender.
God, she's beautiful.
Before she can wrench away, I lift her wrist closer, dragging in her scent like a man starved.
Citrus fruit and honey with a hint of smoke.
“Damn,” I murmur, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “You still smell good.”
Her body jerks like I slapped her instead of complimenting her.
For a flickering second, her eyes glaze over, and she looks down, her mouth trembling as if she might cry.
It kills me—not being able to gather her close, kiss her forehead, whisper I’ve got her now, and I’ll never let anything touch her again.
But when she lifts her head, the vulnerability is gone, erased so fast it almost feels like a hallucination.
This Liv sits in front of me now, not Shae.
Polished. Cold. Unshakeable.
“You have sixty seconds to state your business,” she says, her voice clipped and lethal, her wrist still caught in my hand like a tether I’m too stubborn to release.
“The problem has to do with your business.”
“My business?” She delivers this line with zero emotion, almost robotic.
I release her and reach for the encrypted tablet I placed on the other side of the table prior to Shae’s arrival.
“Yes, and the Keystone acquisition.”
“The Keystone acquisition?”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”
“I—” Shae clears her throat and shakes her head. “What the hell does your little Boy Scout project have to do with me? You’re wasting my time.”
“It has everything to do with you, Sweetness.”
“Don’t call me that!” she shouts, leaning forward so abruptly that one of the buttons on her top pops open, showing the edge of the black lacy bra I saw her prancing around her condo in this morning.
“Don’t ever call me that, Storm.” Her face hardens, and I catch a glimpse of the powerful CEO I’ve heard she’s become.
“Understood,” I grind out, breathing her in. “But here’s the problem. The company I’ve been following is connected to the one you’re about to buy.”
Her brows furrow, and she snatches the iPad from my hand when I extend it out to her.
Her finger glides up the screen several times, and I lock in on the elegant stretch of her index finger—the red nails trimmed into neat, short ovals.
The info on her screen isn’t falsified, but rather, manipulated. Axel put together the dossier in Shae’s hands. Once she sees the blood money she’s about to roll around in, she’ll back out.
It only makes sense.
“Where did you get this information?” she asks, not looking up from the screen.
“Unimportant,” I reply.
“I say what’s important when it comes to my company,” she throws back, and hell if I don’t get hotter when she drops that bossy command on the table.
Yes, ma’am.
I clear my throat to focus, really focus, on what Shae needs to know.
Bypassing her question, I lay the horrors out for her. Real horrors.
“The people connected to Keystone are in some seriously deviant shit. Human trafficking, drugs, weapons of war?—”
“What? What are you?—”
“If you touch Keystone, if you buy it, you’ll find yourself connected to some shit you never thought you’d have to deal with.”
This part, also, isn’t a lie.
Shae stares at me hard, her mouth pressed together. I’d think she was completely unaffected by the news if not for the way the skin around her eyes tightens, and she loses some of her color.
After a tense stare-off, she says, “I don’t believe you.”
I look at her hard, battling back my frustration.
“I thought you’d say that,” I reply. Nodding in her direction, I say, “Keep the tablet. Go through the files. There’s a number there for Axel—he’s the one who found all the information and can hel?—”
She drops the tablet on the table.
“What the fuck do you want, Storm? Why are you really here?”
There’s so much anger projecting from her right now that I have to bite back a grimace.
“Shae…it’s been so long. Too long,” I say truthfully, speaking from my heart. “And I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” she rushes to add, leaning forward again in her seat and placing her hand over her chest. “You didn’t hurt me, Storm. You couldn’t hurt me. Not then and not now.”
I pull out every one of her tells, counting up the lies.
“We promised never to lie to each other, Shae,” I reply, my voice low. And there it is: another crack.
“That’s funny coming from the biggest liar I know,” she shoots back.
A slight bead of moisture in her left eye, but it disappears as soon as it appears.
“What do you want?” she repeats, her voice sounding tired, exhausted. She closes her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back into the padded leather chair.
“I want to help you get out of this mess unscathed.”
“Oh, really?” she asks, the sarcasm dripping from her words so violently it feels like a physical thing despite the slight crack in her voice.
“Yes. I have a plan, but I’ll need you to agree quickly. We have to move fast to head all of this off and keep you safe. Will you hear me out?”
God, I want to touch her. I want to hold her. I want to draw her close to me and get more of the familiar fruity scent that’s now crossed with something new—something harder, darker.
Shae winds her hand in the air, telling me to get on with it. I smirk but straighten to prepare myself for her reaction.
“I want you to drop the Keystone deal and let the other buyer have it.”