Theo didn’t grace Lawrence with a reply before turning. His eyes found mine as we walked, the cold air making my overheated body feel better despite the goosebumps that formed from the way his gaze bored into me. “What did I tell you about drinking at these?”
I couldn’t answer him. He swore again.
I tried saying something, but he just quieted me, yanking open a door before carefully draping me on cool leather seats. I didn’t remember what happened after that except drifting off to the familiar and easing scent of tobacco and cologne.
Chapter Two
Theo
The last thing my dick should have done was get hard when I stepped back from pulling my comforter over Della’s sleeping form, but it became suffocated behind the zipper of my slacks as soon as I saw her curl into my sheets, knowing she’d smell like me.
“Fuck,” I grumbled, closing the door behind me. As much as I wanted to make sure she was okay, I didn’t need to watch her sleep before going to the fucking master bathroom and rubbing out a permanent hard on that appeared whenever she was around.
Dropping into the leather chair in my home office on the other end of the house I won during my divorce, I scrubbed a palm down my face and eyed the tumbler of amber liquid left abandoned when I got the call. I wanted to drain it, pour another one, and dive back into the work still sprawled across my otherwise organized desk. Unfortunately, the reason why that was a bad idea was sleeping in my bed.
Somebody had drugged her drink, I was sure of it. And her own friend, the one she told me countless times always protected her when they were out, couldn’t even keep his dick in his pants long enough to make sure she was good. Blood boiled under my skin thinking about the pretty boy who she shared a past with—one I wasn’t stupid enough to believe was just platonic. I’d seen the way he stared at her ass when she swiveled those goddamn hips she grew into. She didn’t seem to know people like him watched, but they did. It wasn’t always because of her past like she assumed, it was out of desire and it pissed me off.
She’d denied ever getting involved with Pretty Boy, the McKinley kid, for years. I’d known better than to believe it because they were always pushed together by Sophie. I didn’t give a shit if she thought they made a cute couple, it was only a matter of time before the kid wanted to start pushing his luck with her. I was a teenage boy once too and knew what my dick wanted. Anybody with eyes could see that would happen between them at some point.
“Fuck,” I repeated, gripping the nearest manilla folder and studying the contents to shove the thought out of my head. I didn’t want to think about who Della had been involved with in the past. I knew for a fact it wasn’t many people at all. Pretty Boy was definitely one, and maybe the Phelps kid who hung around her a few summers before her father’s arrest. The only good thing that came from that was the Phelps family and their kid, who I didn’t care enough about to remember the name of, left Della alone when news broke because they didn’t want to be involved with anybody that had the Saint James last name. I’d seen what it did to Della, but I couldn’t get myself to care because it meant I didn’t have to threaten some asshole over how they treated her.
Focusing on work helped, it always did. Not just because of Della, but life. The divorce. The drama. The gossip. Then the trial. I dove into what I did best—making money. I hardly made friends in my line of work because that wasn’t what I set out to do. Most people I encountered only wanted to use me for my bank account anyway, so it wasn’t worth it. Anthony had been the only true friend I trusted, and not even what he’d done wavered that.
Work was the same bullshit, different day as I stared at the files. Numbers in black that had more zeros than most people saw in their lifetime and names of millionaires attached that I knew for a fact were too full of themselves for their own good. Most days, I liked my job.