Shameless - Sybil Bartel Page 0,17
I just wanted to get back to my penthouse, sleep in my own bed, and figure out what the hell my next step was. Because as much I used to crave the never-ending party that accompanied the life I grew up in, I was over it.
I didn’t even want a line of coke. I just wanted my bed.
And something that felt real.
Something more than a stupid purpose. More than that idiotic dream I’d had as a kid of picking up a guitar and amazing my dad with some kind of hidden talent. One that made him look at me how he looked at every new act he discovered and love me like he seemed to love them.
How fucking cliché.
The poor little rich girl wanting to impress her daddy.
SHE STOPPED TALKING.
Fucking hell. An hour ago in the damn restaurant, I’d wanted to eat my meal in peace. Now I was sweating the fact she wasn’t saying a damn word.
Over a decade of being a Force Recon Marine, and this was the shit that was finally going to get under my skin? Wondering what the fuck a woman was thinking because she wasn’t speaking to me?
Not even a woman.
A goddamn teenager.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I glanced at her for the fifth time in the past half hour. Hood up, her face was still plastered to the window.
I lost patience. “Hey.” I needed to see her eyes. “Look at me,” I ordered.
“No.”
Goddamn it. If she was Cara or any of the other women I’d fucked over the years, I would’ve grabbed her chin and brought her eyes to me. “Don’t make me pull over, princess.”
Letting out a snort, she didn’t look my way. “Now I’m princess again?”
“Your short-term memory shot?”
She spun on me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
There they were. Her baby blues, still full of fire. I quickly scanned for other shit. Shit I’d seen too many times downrange in other brothers. “You told me not to call you Summer, and princess pisses you off. Should I stick to sweetheart?” I winked just to hit paydirt.
As if on cue, her cheeks flamed. “Screw you.”
“That’s what I was looking for,” I admitted.
“What? Someone to tell you to fuck off?” She turned back toward the window. “I would think you’d be used to it by now with your winning personality.”
I didn’t give a fuck what she said, she was talking again. “You didn’t ask where we’re going.”
“Does it matter? It’s not like I have a say in it.”
“No, it doesn’t, and you’re right, you don’t.” I was driving this train wreck.
“So what’s the point of even bringing it up? Are you that desperate to talk to me now? You barely spoke all through lunch. You were too busy decimating your steak and acting like I was nothing more than an annoyance. You couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
Sparing her a glance, wondering how the hell she’d read me like that, I said more than I should. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
“Seriously?” she asked, indignant. “You think that’s what I’m worried about? Your stupid, crazy ex who’s not an ex but is married to the mob like some bad TV show?” She threw her hands up. “I just want to go home. Is that too much to ask?”
Pissed she was putting all of this on me, I tossed it back on her. “Then next time, don’t throw your name around when you don’t know who the hell I’m talking to.”
“Next time,” she mimicked in a scathing tone. “Don’t hold your phone out like it’s open season, and I won’t have to.” Violently turning away from me, she yanked my sweatshirt tighter around her huge tits.
“Christ,” I muttered. “Arguing with a nineteen-year-old.” I’d sunk to a new low.
“Client,” she seethed. “That’s client to you.”
“Who’s paying the bills, sweetheart?” It sure as fuck wasn’t her. “You got a job?”
“If I tell you to fuck off, will you leave me on the side of the road?”
“Why don’t you try it and find out.” Maybe I’d spank the fuck out of her for sport.
Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, her gaze cut to mine. “Fuck. You.”
Almost past an exit, I yanked the wheel, cut across two lanes, and braked hard.
Thrown against her seat belt, her hands braced on the dash, and she screeched, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Gunning it down the exit ramp, I took a hard turn onto an empty county road and spied what I needed. Pulling into an abandoned gas station with