up the stairs.
“I’m so sorry. Perhaps it would be best for you to stay somewhere else tonight. But I have a suite of rooms at the St. Regis. The road between here and there is clear, and I’ll have our driver take you over,” he says to the crowd, but he doesn’t look at me. “I’ll go make arrangements.” And then without another word, he turns and leaves the room.
NEED
HAYES
“I’m sorry about last night,” I say as soon as I walk into my bedroom. Confidence is halfway out of bed and stills mid-motion. She wraps the sheet around her bare body and sits back down, her profile to me as she stares ahead for a beat and then turns to face me.
Her eyes are flat and cold, and I could kick my own ass for the way I behaved.
“For what? For not warning me that your stepmother had no clue I was coming? Or for not warning me that she’s a lunatic who’s fucking packing heat?”
I groan silently, guilt gnawing at my gut. “Tesoro—”
“Or,” she cuts in, her voice hard as nails, “is it because after she pulled a gun on me, my best friend, her family, and small children, you promptly disappeared and haven’t been heard from since?” she asks.
“I’m sorry. I needed to clear my head. I went for a drive. Yesterday was intense, and I meant to come back, but I passed out in my car and just woke up,” I tell her. I don’t tell her that I drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels and then threw it all up before I passed out. She looks like she’s ready to murder me.
“This is not what I expected when I came to visit, Hayes,” she says, and my stomach sinks. That goddamn Eliza and her crazy ass antics yesterday.
“I know. The storm threw everything off. Going out to get your friends …” She drops her head into her hands and falls back onto the pillows. Her sheet falls, revealing her perfect, spilling-out-of-my-hands, marshmallow-soft, pink-nippled breasts. And like an addict whose poison is being served up to him on a silver platter, I start walking.
“Thank you for that,” she groans. “Good Lord. What the hell? This trip …” She sighs just as I get to her side of the bed.
I stare down at the goddess in my bed. This nymph who has me under her control. She’s like nothing else I’ve ever known. Brave, kind, honest, funny, sexy, and so fucking brilliant. She’s the catch of the century, and she’s mine.
For now.
I close my eyes at the stab of pain in my chest that accompanies that thought.
There’s something that happens when I see things through Confidence’s eyes. She reveals my blind spots, and while I’m glad to know the places where I was failing in the basic human decency department, what will that mirror reveal when she holds it up to my family. So far, it’s revealed dysfunction and division. I’m afraid that when she leaves here in a couple of days, she’ll think less of me, and I’ll think less of me, too. I want to sanitize everything. To hide the ugly. But I’m going to be asking a lot of her. She needs to see exactly what she’s getting into. I just have to hope that when it’s over, she’ll still want me and all of the baggage I come with. And if she does, I hope it’s not because she thinks my money will make up for it.
I feel guilty for having that last thought. She’s nothing like that, and I know if I end up sleeping under the 610 Freeway, she’d be sleeping with me. I love her. She loves me. I want to show her that I can take care of her more than just financially.
“King,” she calls softly. Her hand comes up to grab mine, and I finally look at her face. She’s the most radiant woman. She’s got this peace about her that’s there even when she loses her cool.
“Yes?” I ask and trace one of her pretty nipples with the pad of my thumb. She sighs and smiles. Her eyes fall to half-mast as her nipple stiffens under my touch.
“Yesterday was crazy. Everyone was on edge because of the weather. But, I wish we could press the reset button on all of this.” She sighs. I push aside the thought that the weather had nothing to do with Eliza’s behavior.
“Come on, I need a shower; I need to eat