Chapter 12
NICKEL AND DIMED (HOLDEN)
I’ve never been this restless on duty before.
Every time I stop moving, I can’t stand still for more than a few seconds before there’s hellfire in my knees. Ironically, the only fix is to keep going.
Press the fuck on.
Round and round this big old house I know like the back of my hand.
It’s not the hint of arthritic damage or whatever the fuck that’s bothering me. It’s something deeper, not rooted in flesh and bone.
I scrub under my eyes, trying to bleach Cleo’s kiss from my brain.
She’s lodged there like a splinter, a thorn no amount of rubbing will ever get out.
I head downstairs to the basement to check the vault. Everything’s in order.
I glance at the camera system on my phone before heading back upstairs. No disturbances whatsoever.
Aside from us, the lawyer, Fairfax, and a few of his overseas contacts, no one else knows this thing exists.
I wish we could keep it that way. It’s starting to feel like a fucking curse in gold and jewels that can fit in your hands.
Without it, none of this shit would be happening. We never would’ve had to share a bed or find out how my tongue chases hers.
I could’ve walked away from this job a sane man, saved up for Kit’s college, and looked after my parents.
Fuck this complication. Fuck everything about it.
Even now, I can feel Cleo’s pliant softness against me.
The mesmerizing heat of her tongue.
The way she whimpered in my mouth.
My cock jerks, remembering how it felt to wake up beside her and how I reacted when she threw herself at me like a sexy little cannonball.
I didn’t know she thought of me in that way.
In another life, it might be flattering. In this one, it’s agony, and it makes this situation vastly harder to navigate.
Nothing’s ever fucking simple.
I make another round through the house because I can’t do anything else to quiet the itching burn that runs to my bones.
Especially when I stop and stare at her bedroom door. Inside, it’s silent, the door too thick to hear her snoring.
Surely, she’s asleep now. Hell, I should be, too.
It’s late after a full day embarrassing ourselves. Almost early morning and I need to get back to Kit as soon as I can.
Only, if I turn in now, I’ll just resign myself to a different torture. The dungeon where I lie there thinking of all the dark, twisted ways I could’ve ruined Cleo Blackthorn.
My cock would remind me how long it’s been since I tasted a woman.
Months. Years.
Fucking years since I’ve repressed my animal instincts in exchange for an everyday life as a dad and a professional.
And, of course, the first person to kiss me in who knows how damn long just had to be the barely legal granddaughter of my dead boss.
No, not barely legal, I remind myself.
She’s twenty-three years old.
An adult in every sense.
Old enough to know what she wants and to look out for herself. It’s not like she isn’t old enough to drink. She’s old enough to do everything, including fixate on an older man with too many problems.
Old enough to blow me to kingdom come.
Snarling, I turn around and stomp back downstairs before I give in to my temptation to peek inside her room and see if she still snores when she’s comfortable in a familiar bed.
Does she nest against her pillows the same way she snuggled against me?
My mind flashes with an image, those skimpy pajama shorts stretched across her ass. The long, toned line of her legs.
The softest belly—red fucking meat for any man who wants to make a woman shake—and that hazy, sex-drunk look in her eyes that doesn’t match her starving artist persona.
Good looks run in the Blackthorn family like gold. She could’ve been a model if she wanted. To kiss me, she must’ve been diseased, struck with temporary insanity.
Can’t fathom why else she’d—
Stop, you braying fucking donkey.
Stop thinking about it now before you dig your grave deeper.
Nothing feels more impossible.
When I finally crawl into bed, there’s faint light outside the windows.
I’m too exhausted and pissed off to do anything except pass out into an unsatisfying sleep.
I oversleep.
Big fat surprise.
When I pry my eyes open again, it’s midmorning, and I should’ve been up almost two hours ago.
So much for my run today.
I run through the shower instead and change before heading down, not remotely ready to start the day. My brain feels like it’s been rolled in beach sand.
Cleo’s up already.
I hear her voice as I reach the bottom of the stairs, coming from the library. It sounds like she’s on the phone, speaking softly, every word a little strained.
That protective urge I’ve never managed to dim around her flares back to life. I head to the open door, pushing an ear against the wood as I listen in.
“Oh, yes. Right,” she says tightly.
Silence.
These doors are damnably thick.
There’s no way to hear what the other person says, but I listen harder anyway. The other person, it’s a toss-up between Fairfax and her father.
From what little I know, her old man’s an expert at making her sound disappointed. Like she’s hanging on to her composure by a thread.
None of my business, I know.
Still, it takes everything not to barge in and figure out what’s wrong so I can fix it.
Leftover dad instincts, I guess. Even if my interest in her feels anything but fatherly.
Being away from Kit for this long, I don’t know what to do with myself, and it blurs into my job.
Then she gasps.
I tense.
More silence.
Fuckity.
Dead, sickly silence, the kind where she’s barely breathing. I imagine her frozen with wide, glassy eyes, staring into space, shell-shocked.
“I see,” she whispers after a long pause. “This is just… it’s a lot. I’ll have to think about it. Okay, yeah. Bye.”
Screw it.
I push the cracked door open just in time to see her phone drop into her lap as she stares off into the distance.
She looks pale this morning. Tired shadows hang around her eyes, hair pinned up in a tight bun, legs underneath her as she perches in a big armchair.
Her gaze snaps to me and her brows knit together.
“Let me guess, you were eavesdropping?” She squints at me.
“Yes.” No point in lying. I sink into the chair next to her, even though all I want to do is pace the room. “Who called? You sounded deflated.”
She exhales, massaging her temples the way she does when she’s overwhelmed.
“That was Fairfax. He just called to tell me that none of the letters with the egg have a signature that could be authenticated back to anyone important.”
Damn.
I knew some shit was coming, knew this guy was bad news, but this sits in my gut like a cold rock.
“The documents were written by understudies. That doesn’t necessarily make it a forgery or anything, but he said it makes them harder to insure against destruction or theft. That could be a problem if it goes on the market.”
“A fucking insurance issue? Are you kidding?” I sit up straighter, bracing my hands on my knees. “Bullshit. What did you tell him?”
“I’m not stupid, Holden.”
“Never said you were, Nile. None of this sits right with me.”
“Calm down! He came back with an ‘adjusted offer,’ he called it.” She toys with the hem of her shirt. I catch a flash of her belly and force myself to look away. “Ten million dollars even. Supposedly fair for the issues with the paperwork.”
“Not fair,” I bite off. “You thought it could go for three times that, maybe more.”
She smiles weakly. “He called it a favor. He’s willing to buy and take on the risk for a piece with less than gold-standard authentication. He said it almost never happens.”
“By throwing you scraps. He planned this,” I growl. I’m speaking from the gut with no proof. “It’s worth a lot more. Watch him find whatever proof he needs later on and flip it for a lot more.”
“Holden, don’t. Ten million dollars is… it’s still a ton. More than enough to get me a nice studio almost anywhere I want.”
“It’s a rip-off. Frankly, he’s trying to fuck you over.” I bite my tongue, ignoring the flash of surprise on her face.
Wrong words.
“It’s a ticket out of this mess, back to our lives. Don’t you want that?”
“Of course I do. I’d love to wrap this up, but not if it means—” I sigh, raking a hand over my face, suppressing an eruption. “It’s your decision, Cleo.”
“Yep. And you should understand there’s more than money at stake. If we can get something reasonable and get on with our lives, why wouldn’t we take it? The day it’s gone, you get your inheritance. This won’t be your problem anymore.”
That doesn’t make it better.
I sit back in the chair, all the breath leaving my body. I have no words, hating that she’s settling for convenience.
“Holden, you heard me. Don’t look at me like that.
” She stares at me, wary. “No amount of money can buy time. That’s what we have to think about here.
The more time we spend fighting this, chasing better offers, the longer it’ll take to close this out.
Isn’t time just as valuable? Don’t you want to get back to your family? ”
“Obviously. That’s not the point. It’s the principle of the thing. Leonidas put that first.” I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach. “This is your future, Cleo. I’m not him and I can’t tell you what to do. The old man trusted you.”
“It’s your future, too. And it’s just easier this way.
I don’t even know how I’d fight it if I wanted to.
What would we do, scour the earth looking for those papers?
” When she looks at me again, the sadness in her indigo eyes almost knocks me flat.
“The sooner we finish, the better. I think you know that, even if you don’t want to agree. ”
When she stands, I don’t follow.
I can hear the words she’s not saying like a rattling whisper in my ear. The sooner this ends, the faster we can forget what almost happened.
We can stop worrying about stupid accidental kisses and dumber mistakes.
And fuck, I hate to admit she’s right.
I hate that I’m even a factor in this right down to my core.