Chapter 40. Maxim
MAXIM
Last night did not go well.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t for Lennix to bring a damn date.
Not just a date, but a relationship apparently.
One where they go on service projects and build wells together and generally make the world a better place.
I grudgingly admit Wallace Murrow is not a bad guy.
Not at all. I made sure of that when they dated before, but they’re back together?
In the decade we’ve been apart, I took heart in the fact that Nix never dated any one guy for long.
Wallace was the longest relationship I knew about, and for her to go back to him?
I stepped back before. The wounds were fresh. Her anger still burned hot, and she’d ignored every attempt I made to contact her. Not to mention I was in the fight of my life trying to save my company, but a lot of time has passed. We’re both in different places now, and I’m done waiting.
I’m not sure how serious she and Murrow are, and…
this makes no sense, but I don’t know if I buy it.
There’s something missing with them. I’d never felt anything like the hot, addictive urgency that surged between Lennix and me, and I haven’t experienced it since.
I guess I wanted to believe she hadn’t either.
Maybe that is just the arrogant part of me—which I freely admit is a good portion of my personality.
Whatever I expected, it bothers me that she isn’t available.
How’d Grim miss that? His security firm was one of the smartest investments I ever made. It pays dividends that have nothing to do with profit. Information is often just as valuable, and Grim deals information like a king pen.
After the last argument with my father, I continued seeking answers on climate change but also turned my attention to doing what Cades do best: building a fortune.
What really exploded the coffers was innovation.
Finding inventors interested in creating the things we use every day more sustainably.
Not just sports bras and clothing, but tiny parts in electric cars that I now hold a patent on to make that entire industry more efficient.
Grim has, through the years, kept loose tabs on Lennix for me. That wasn’t hard. Her star in the political world rose steadily and spectacularly, which didn’t surprise me at all.
What do I want from Lennix? To know if my memory tricked me and she wasn’t as fantastic as I remember?
Do I need that reassurance to move forward?
I can’t call this love, the near-obsessive burn in my gut when I think of her, when I saw her last night.
She was a candle lit and extinguished too quickly, but the smoke of what we had has endured, lingering in the air all these years.
I wouldn’t call it love, but it’s something I’ve never found elsewhere, and I need to know if I could have it again.
If I could have her again.
I’m not famous, generally speaking. There are no squealing girls or awestruck fans when I venture out, but in certain circles I’m well known.
DC would be one of those circles, especially with my brother rising the way he has.
I pull the brim of my Astros cap a little lower and adjust my sunglasses.
When I enter the Royal, the LeDetroit Park coffee shop where, according to my sources, Lennix has breakfast each morning, I don’t cause even a ripple of interest.
She’s seated at a table tucked into a back corner.
Sunlight shines golden on her high cheekbones.
She’s reading, her dark brows bunched, and she chews on her bottom lip.
I stand there for a second watching her.
It feels good to simply be able to look at her again.
She reaches for the steaming teacup beside her and takes a sip.
“Morning,” I say.
“Shit.” She startles, hissing at the burn and tugging her bottom lip. She sets down her steaming cup of tea and aims a look caffeinated with impatience up at me. “Good morning. Too much to hope this is a coincidence?”
I crook a half-grin and nod to the empty seat across from her. “Can I sit?”
“I mean, you went to all this trouble to find me.”
I sit and lay my sunglasses and hat on the table. “Not too much to figure out since you eat breakfast here every day.”
“It’s creepy that you know that.”
“One man’s creepy is another man’s determination.”
“A new business venture for you. Inspirational quotes for stalkers.” She pushes away the untouched croissant in front of her. “Print that over an ocean scene. It’ll be gorgeous on the wall of some Peeping Tom.”
“Nice one.” I chuckle and sink lower into the seat. “This could have been avoided if you’d just talked to me last night.”
She glances up from under a sweep of midnight lashes but slides her gaze away, out the window to the people passing by. There was a time when this woman’s body begged for mine, and now she’ll barely look at me.
“I didn’t think we had anything to discuss,” she says, eyes still trained outside, voice pitched to a level of indifference. “I’m assuming Owen told you my conditions for accepting the job.”
“You mean that Kimba is my handler?” I infuse some amusement into the words, but I didn’t find it funny when Owen told me. I still don’t.
“Your contact.” She looks at me directly. “It’s not unusual for us to divide responsibilities.”
“Is it unusual to have slept with your clients?”
Her eyes and mouth pinch at the corners. That’s what I wanted—the fire I know is there, not these cold ashes she’s giving me.
“This is exactly why I didn’t think we should work together,” she says.
“Because you’re scared? Or would Wally not like it?”
“I’m not scared, and it’s Wallace . Please stay out of my relationship.”
“Your relationship.” I stretch the word out as if examining it syllable by syllable. “So when did you and Wallace start seeing each other?”
Back then, Grim reported that they were dating, but it wasn’t clear when they started.
“The first time it was not too long after college graduation,” she answers.
I tense at her words. “Were you seeing him when I came to the campaign office in Oklahoma?”
“No.” She clears her throat. “What happened that day was a mistake, but it never would have happened if I’d been in a committed relationship.”
“So you like to think.”
“I know so. I would never cheat on Wallace.” Truth rings in her voice, and I’m even less sure of what’s going on between them.
“If there’s a point, could you make it?” She asks, glancing at the slim watch on her wrist. “I need to get to the office.”
“You obviously believe my brother can win,” I say, lowering my voice and glancing around. Owen hasn’t announced yet, and this city is crawling with eyes and ears.
“I believe he will win. I wouldn’t have taken him on if I didn’t believe that.”
“But he’s a Cade. Same blood. Same last name. Same father as mine.”
“You still don’t get it?” She leans forward, holding my eyes in a steely stare. “Who knows if I would have gotten over who your father was? You didn’t give me the chance to decide. You did to me what they always do.”
She tilts her chin up to a proud angle. “You thought you knew best and decided for me. You took away my choices, let me get involved that deeply with you knowing how I felt about your father and Cade Energy. You deliberately withheld the truth to get what you wanted.”
“I should have handled it differently,” I admit through tight lips. “You have no idea how many times I wish I had told you from the start, but I didn’t.”
“You lied.”
“Yes, I think that’s been well established over the ten years you’ve held it against me.”
“You think I’ve been pining for you? I haven’t.”
That grates because I can’t count how many times I’ve rolled over in some bed in some city and remembered her hair spilled on my pillow.
Imagined I could smell the sheets again after the first time we made love, a heady blend of our bodies together and the subtle perfume that kissed her neck.
Every time I see a windmill I remember her low, sweet laughing voice calling me Doc Quixote as she rode a bicycle ahead of me.
“If you want to tell yourself what we had was nothing special,” I say, “then lies must not bother you as much as you say they do. I can’t lie to you, but it’s okay for you to lie to yourself?”
“It’s not like that.”
“We both had our own agendas, dreams, and goals. It’s good we took time apart to pursue everything we wanted.
” I reach for her hand resting near her tea, lacing our fingers together.
“But I told you I would come back for you. I never forgot you, Nix. And I always hoped there would be a time when we could repair things between us.”
“You shouldn’t have come back.” She pulls her hand away, fixes her eyes on her tea. “Not for that. Not for me. If you’re really here to help your brother, I’ve laid out my terms, and we can both help elect him. If you’re back for me, you’ll be disappointed.”
“I’m back for both, and I don’t intend to be disappointed by either outcome.”
Her eyes flash, gunpowder gray and just as explosive, when they meet mine. “I told Owen I won’t work with you.”
Last night, Lennix committed her entire team to Owen’s campaign. Kimba won’t let them pass on an opportunity this good. The stakes are too high for a personal wrinkle like a past relationship to get in the way. Owen’s in.
And so am I.
“Do you really think I came back for the thrill of working with you on a campaign?” I chuckle. “I don’t give a damn who ‘handles’ me on the trail. What’s happening between us is completely separate from Owen’s bid for the presidency.”
“Nothing’s happening between us.”
“Damn, I just got back.” I fake an exasperated sigh. “Give me some time. I’m going as fast as I can.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. I told Owen—”
“I know what you told Owen, and I’m more than happy to have Kimba as my contact. What the hell does that have to do with us?”
She frowns. “You agreed to the conditions.”
“I did, but your conditions said nothing about what I do outside the campaign.”
“Bastard,” she says, her tone calm, her eyes flaring.
“We both know my father. I’m not a bastard. Asshole, yes. Prick, may—”
“What do you want?”
“The same thing I wanted ten years ago.” I soften my tone. “A chance with you.”
“Why?”
“Because no one else has done what you did for me. Not before you and not since. I want to see if what we had, what we should have had, is still there.”
“It’s not.”
“Liar.” Her lips part like she’s about to speak, but I don’t let her get that far. “I felt it last night. I feel it now. Since you value the truth so much, tell me you don’t.”
The muscles tense beneath her clear golden-brown skin, disrupting the fine line of her jaw. “Wallace and I—”
“Yeah, how do I get rid of him?” I ask abruptly.
“You’re asking how to get rid of my boyfriend?” Dark brows wing over the scorn in her eyes. “You don’t.”
“Do us all a favor. When he asks you to marry him, just let him down easy.”
“He hasn’t—”
“He will, and when he does, tell him no.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because.”
“This isn’t second grade, Maxim. ‘Because’ isn’t a sound or compelling argument.”
“Because me . Better?”
“Your arrogance is truly astounding.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Not a compliment.”
“I make my own compliments. How does it feel knowing you could bring a man like me to my knees?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be on your knees, too. Should I tell you what you’ll be doing when you’re down there? Or do you remember?”
I lean forward a little, lower my voice.
“Do you ever think about how it felt to have my cock in your mouth, Nix?”
“Stop.” She grinds the word out, not looking at me, her fingers trembling around her teacup.
“To know that in that moment, I was completely at your mercy. That I belonged to you.”
“I don’t—”
“Because I think about you like that all the time. I want you like that again. Every night. Naked in bed and completely mine.”
“In what world could you possibly think I would belong to you?”
“In the one we make together.”
When I say it, whatever guard she had in place slips.
Just for a second, and I see something in her eyes that tells me I’m not crazy.
That tells me I’m not wasting my time. That tells me there’s more to her resistance than Wallace and our past and my mistakes and lies.
I don’t know what’s behind that guard, but I’ll be damned if I stop pursuing her until I do.
“You did this on purpose,” she finally says. “Waited until the whole team was in place and we’d officially signed with Owen to show your hand.”
“Yes.”
“Because you think I want to win so badly I won’t back out?”
“No, because now you believe in Owen and you won’t let the inconvenient fact that I want you derail his candidacy.”
“You’re right. You’re not worth me giving up on someone who can advance my causes.” A bitter, brittle smile appears on her lips and then shatters. “But if you think you get a second chance, you don’t.”
She stands, and so do I. I don’t bother being discreet with the glance I rake over her in the bright-red dress molded to her body from shoulder to hip, tracking the curve of her thigh.
Her stilettos bring her to my nose. I tease her scent out from all the others wafting through the coffeehouse.
Hers is spicy, studded with sage and honey.
I want to pull her onto my lap, bury my face in the curve of her neck like I did once before. Nibble at the silky skin until she trembles against me. I’d do indecent things to her in broad daylight if I thought I could get away with it.
She moves to walk around me, and I gently grasp her elbow. The contact with her skin affects me. She’s a jolt of electricity, and my body is a live wire, struck by the power she probably doesn’t even know or care that she holds over me.
“It’s a shame you’ll set your resentment aside long enough to elect a Cade,” I say, “but can’t find it in yourself to forgive one.”
She flicks a glance from my hand on her elbow and up to me. “No, I don’t forgive you, and you can’t make me. You can’t will me to.”
“I’ve spent the last ten years getting what I want, not because I’m a Cade but because I work harder than everyone else.
I keep working after everyone else has gone home.
I take risks no one else even considers.
I don’t give up on seemingly lost causes.
When I want something, really want something, I’ll do whatever I have to until I have it. ”
The strengths of her resistance and mine collide. No one looking would know this charming coffee shop is actually a battlefield and our weapons are drawn.
“I know I can’t will you to give me another chance, but remember this, Nix.” I bend my head so close my breath stirs her hair and her scent stirs my pulse. “The harder I have to work for something, the harder I take it.”