Chapter Twenty-Two
“And that’s all that happened.” Chloe finished telling me about her night.
Which recapped some of what Beck had reported over the phone while I drove us back to Chloe’s.
Now we were in her apartment, the clothes I’d folded still on the coffee table, and she was on the couch, heels abandoned but the skintight leopard-print pants still on.
I was back in the leather chair I’d sat in the first time I was in her apartment, doing my best to control my temper.
Those pants would be coming off soon and going in the fucking trash.
Earlier when I saw her pull them out of a shopping bag, I thought they were butt ugly.
She came out of her bedroom wearing them with her makeup done in full eighties vixen—which she explained by telling me it was rock-chick night, something I didn’t understand but didn’t ask for clarification about because I was too busy explaining to my dick that now was not the time to fuck her against the wall.
When she slipped on her spiked heels, I damn near lost the battle.
Knowing she’d worn those pants to work and that motherfucker Sterling had gotten an eyeful of her fantastic ass in them, they were toast. And the shirt—which was oversize, belted at her waist, and not skimpy by any stretch, was joining the pants.
Beckett carefully and unhappily informed me, the shirt had slipped over her shoulder, revealing her bra, and from Sterling’s vantage point, he’d gotten a good look at my woman’s tits.
It was Beckett’s estimation that if Sterling wasn’t interested before, he was very interested now.
After Chloe filled in some of the things that Beckett didn’t hear and the way she felt when Sterling was staring at her, there was no guessing—Chloe had landed on Sterling’s radar with a huge fucking ping.
“Ryan?”
“Give me a second, baby.”
In an effort to calm down before I said something stupid, I quickly went back over the rest of what Beck had reported.
Suffice to say, Sterling liked Beck and after their meeting had asked him to the Vault to have drinks with Victor Wolfe, Edmund Pike, Henry Graves, and a woman called Chantilly.
The men worked at Summit Jets, all executives.
Beck couldn’t be sure after one meeting if these men were Sterling’s inner circle—however, they were obviously trusted.
He was also pretty sure the woman, Chantilly, no last name, was in porn.
By his account she was all over him, and at the end of the night, he practically had to physically push her way.
Could’ve been a test to see how Beck responded to a beautiful woman, or it could’ve been Sterling just liked keeping company with porn stars. Or she could’ve been his for the night and he didn’t mind sharing.
What Sterling didn’t know was even when Beck wasn’t undercover, forward women were not his thing.
In the rare—and I mean extremely rare, if memory served, Beck had only been to the Plank twice since he’d live at the ranch—instances he’d turned down all advances by women, then shared he did not like to be prey.
“Poppy said Muriel was using her phone?” I asked.
“Yeah. And when Poppy went to the ladies’ room in the back under the fake errand of using mouthwash, I told you she tried to make a call, and it failed.”
“Satellite phone,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“The cell phone jammer doesn’t affect satellite phones. Either she has control of the jammer or she’s using a satellite phone.”
“I told you that Poppy picked up on it before I did, but she was acting . . .” Chloe trailed off.
“Not strange, but different. She’s not a friendly boss like you guys.
But not rude either. More like no nonsense.
But when she told me to let her know if I needed anything, it felt like she almost meant it, and not like if I needed help with the table. ”
We’d be digging deeper into Muriel, but the issue with that was, it would be done by following her, since her background check came up squeaky clean—too clean if you asked me.
“How about we hit the sack, and you can tell me more about how friendly I am.”
“I didn’t say you were friendly,” Chloe contradicted. “I said you guys—that is, collectively—are friendly bosses.”
It was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it.
It wasn’t time to get into anything heavy.
I didn’t want to think or talk any more about the Vault or Sterling Blackwell.
And more than once, Chloe had referenced being exhausted, and she’d proved that true by falling asleep on the couch the last time I was here. I didn’t want a repeat of that.
“Time for bed, baby.”
With her head resting on the back of the couch, body slumped, she looked around her apartment before her eyes landed on me.
“We should’ve stayed at your house. This place is depressing.”
She’d get no argument from me.
“We can go to my house if you want.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“And?”
“You’ve been sitting in your truck all night writing down license plate numbers, waiting for me to get off work.” She told me something I knew, since I’d been the one sitting in my truck taking down license plate numbers, which was boring as shit but not exhausting.
It was Chloe who’d been on her feet all night slinging drinks, getting hit on by a slimy motherfucker who’d soon get a lesson in manners.
“So?”
Chloe’s expression softened and her eyes turned lazy. Both of which were gorgeous but somehow concerning.
I watched the intensity shift in her eyes when she softly inquired, “You’d drive us to your house at three o’clock in the morning if I asked?”
I felt the muscles in my neck contract, understanding my answer to this question was important to her, just not understanding why.
“Yes, Chloe. My house is fifteen minutes away. But even if it wasn’t, I’d take you home if that’s where you wanted to be.”
Her eyes drifted closed, like my answer had caused her pain.
“I believe that,” she whispered, but it was more like I read her lips than heard the words.
“You wanna go back to my place?” I asked.
Her eyes popped open, and she shook her head.
“This isn’t me,” she murmured.
“What’s not?”
“Today . . . yesterday . . . the attitude. I give you shit for having a personality disorder while I’m guilty of the same. I think in the last forty-eight hours you’ve met seventeen Chloes.”
She blew out a breath and scrubbed her hands over her face.
It wasn’t seventeen—more like three—but I thought now was not the time to quibble.
“You have a lot going on,” I reminded her, and immediately wished I’d kept my trap shut when her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s too much.” Her voice was all wrong—meek and timid, laced with pain.
“Chloe.”
“It’s just all too much,” she semirepeated. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend I’m okay. Pretend I’m strong and the weight of my life isn’t drowning me. I’m a total fraud on the verge of a mental breakdown. No, scratch that—I’m officially in the throes of an epic meltdown, and I don’t know how to pull myself out of it.”
And I was adding to that stress. It was time to regroup and stop this stupid-ass bickering.
The last thing she needed right now was me being a demanding asshole.
Honey.
She needed honey.
“Being strong—”
With a shake of her head along with a hand waving me off, she interrupted. “Please don’t recite some lame maxim about being stronger than I think I am—because first, I’m not, and second, if you spout out something unoriginal, I’ll think less of you.”
There she was.
Now that was Chloe.
“Good news for you is I don’t know what the fuck a maxim is,” I teased. “But if you don’t need words, tell me—what you do need?”
“A week’s paid vacation and seventy-nine hours of uninterrupted sleep.”
“Done.”
She blinked—slowly at first, then rapidly. It took Chloe a few beats to respond, but in those seconds her expression telegraphed every thought—suspicion, confusion, wariness, and fatigue.
And I’d been a relentless prick to her.
Yeah, it was time to pivot and do what I should’ve done a long-ass time ago.
“I can’t afford to take a week off of work and I don’t accept handouts, remember?”
The stubborn was inching its way through her forlorn posture. If I didn’t play this right, I’d be back up shit’s creek.
“It’s not a handout, it’s vacation time you earned.”
“I don’t get vacation time,” she rightly told me.
“You do now. And before you argue, all employees will now get three days’ paid vacation after working at the Plank for six months, and a week after a year.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then glared at me. I took her silence as an opportunity to push out the chair, move around the coffee table, and scoop her off the couch.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you to bed.”
“Ryan—”
I stopped moving, tightened my arm under her legs, and shifted so she was fitted against my chest.
“No more arguing. We’re calling a truce.”
“A truce? What kind of truce?”
“The kind where I try my best to stop being a bossy dick and you try to understand why I’m struggling with this situation.
The kind where you understand that not every gesture is a handout, and I try to remember how I’d feel if someone was trying to help me when my pride was on the line.
The kind where we both stop pretending we haven’t been waiting a really long time for this to happen, and enjoy it instead of both of us building walls to protect ourselves. ”
“In other words, behave like adults,” she muttered miserably.
Her eyes dropped to my lips before they slowly journeyed back to mine.
“I’ll accept the terms of your truce if you promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You try really, really hard to remember how you’d feel if someone was trying to offer you help you didn’t want. I get not all help is a handout. But it’s important to me that I can take care of myself.”
“I was serious about the vacation pay. We have a good, loyal, hardworking team—we should be offering benefits.”
She looked skeptical for a moment, but the expression quickly ebbed.
“Okay,” she agreed.
“One more thing.”
“You’re already pushing the bounds of our treaty,” she grumbled but did it through a smile.
“We’re not hiding.”
“Ryan—”
“Baby, did you miss the part about both of us waiting a really long fucking time for this to happen? I don’t know why you never made your move, but I know why I didn’t.
And now I’m telling you, I would not be standing in your apartment holding you, having this conversation if I wasn’t serious about exploring what we have.
And straight up, you’ve starred in a lot of fantasies over the last year.
I thought about fucking you in every position imaginable.
But yesterday and last night wouldn’t have happened either if I didn’t know where I wanted this to go.
I do not want a secret fuck buddy or friends with benefits or a casual relationship that includes us seeing other people. This is me and you out in the open.”
“Okay, you have a deal.”
I was not a man who romanticized moments. I didn’t have crazy, fanciful ideas about love. But right then, holding Chloe, her staring up at me with her eyes glossy, making the hazel sparkle, her lips parted, a sweet soft expression on her pretty face, I knew this was it.
I’d never kiss another woman.
I’d never take another woman to my bed.
I’d never love another woman.
Only Chloe.
She was the one.