ARROGANT PLAYBOY (20 page)

But when I turn to silence her,
she’s gone.

BECKHAM

“Here you go.” Odessa places a
white plastic sack on my desk Monday morning.

Examining the kit, I read the
fine print on the back as she stands before me, fidgeting.

“If you go online, you can pay
a fee and upgrade to a rush order,” she says. “Just a quick swab of both your
mouths, mail it off, pay the fee, and you should have your answer in less than
two weeks.”

“Thank you.” I put the box back
in the sack and slip my hands in my pockets, eyes dragging the length of her
and catching a small twitch in her fingers. “What’s all this?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re shaking.” I hope to God
she’s not being all jittery because we fucked last night and she decided all of
a sudden to develop fucking feelings for me.

“I ran into Annelise last
night,” she says. “For the third time in three weeks.”

My brows furrow. The name isn’t
ringing a bell. “Annelise?”

“Yes.” She puts force into the
word, as if that would help me to remember. “Annelise. Your Annelise.”

I chuckle. “I don’t have an
Annelise.”

Odessa glances to the left,
scratching the corner of her mouth. “She sure knows you. She knows where you
work. Where you live. She knew my name two weeks ago. Said you’d told her about
me.”

My brows rise. “I haven’t told
anyone about you.”

Besides Xavier, but I’m not
telling her that. She’ll think I like her or some shit.

I sink down in my chair,
resting my chin in my hand. The lack of sleep lately hasn’t done much for my
short-term memory. I mentioned Odessa to Xavier a couple weeks ago, but he
doesn’t know any Annelieses that I’m aware of. Pretty sure the girl he went
home with that night was named Hayley or Heather or Harper.

“She came in here my first day,
brought you lunch but you’d left,” she says.

“She came in here?” I lean
forward.

“Okay, now
you’re
freaking me
out
.”
Odessa slumps into a guest chair. “She came in here looking for you. And then I
bumped into her the next week when I went out to get coffee. She cried when I
told her she needed to get over you.”

“Whoa, whoa.” I lift my hand.
“I have no clue who you’re fucking talking about. Some woman walked in here,
bringing me lunch, and then you talked to her about me and she cried?”

This is some Eva-level shit.

“Yeah,” she says, eyes wide.
“And I ran into her last night, at the pharmacy. She saw me buying the kit.”

My hands rake the sides of my
head, nails digging into my scalp.

“What does she look like?” I
ask, my heart thundering as my suspicion grows.

Odessa winces, glancing up at
the ceiling. “She’s pretty. Short blonde hair. Platinum. Big blue eyes. Lots of
makeup. Well-dressed. The second time I saw her, she was wearing this diamond
lotus pendant on her collar.”

“Mother fucker.”

“What?” Odessa’s hand flies to
her chest. “Who is she, Beck?”

“Her name isn’t Annelise.” My
teeth grind, and I swallow the ball in my throat. “It’s Sophie Glass, my
ex-fiancé.”

“This woman is obsessed with
you.” Her hands tremble in her lap. “She called you a monster. Followed me
around the pharmacy. I thought maybe she was some one-night stand who took
things too far. You’d mentioned you’d had stalkers before.”

“Yeah.” I huff.

“She said she knew the baby
wasn’t yours.”

My lips rub together, and I
grab the stress ball next to my monitor, clenching it in my fist until it’s reduced
to nothing. A minute later, I stand.

“Where are you going?” She
grips the arms of her chair, pushing herself up.

I don’t answer. Anger fills my
head, preventing me from speaking even if I wanted to. It’s one thing to follow
me around. It’s another thing to stalk my female employees.

But it’s something else
altogether for Sophie to bring my fucking daughter into this.

***

“You have a lot of goddamn
nerve.”

Sophie stands outside her
apartment, which happens to be the penthouse suite of her father’s Lotus Hotel
in the Meatpacking District.

“Beckham.” Her finger trails
along her collarbone as she paints a slow smile on her red lips. “To what do I
owe the pleasure?”

I push past her, slamming the
door. Seething. My neck clenches and my body’s on fire. My blood hasn’t boiled
this hot since the night I walked in on Sophie with that washed up actor.

“It’s good to see you again.”
She saunters to her mini bar, pulling out a crystal tumbler and a bottle of
Scotch. “May I offer you a drink? You look like you could use one. Then again,
I always enjoyed seeing you all worked up. Mm. Such a turn on.”

I throttle my breathing. I need
to think clearly because the message I have for her today needs to be crystal
fucking clear.

Sophie Glass was the first
woman who ever broke my heart, at least by standard definition. I hate that she
wears that title. It should’ve gone to someone more worthy. Someone with actual
blood in her veins and not money, vodka, and self-serving intentions.

“Baby’s cute,” she says,
handing me a drink. I don’t accept it. She shrugs and puts it aside. “No need
to be rude, Beckham.”

She sashays to her sofa,
slinking down and picking up a martini glass from the coaster. It’s a little
early for a drink but Sophie Glass has never paid attention to things that
matter like time and responsibilities and self-discipline.

“I still have our engagement
announcement,” she muses. “Framed too. Daddy never did get over losing the son
he always wanted. God forbid he leaves his empire in my hands someday.”

Losing Howard Glass as a future
father-in-law was quite the blow, but I’ll be damned if I tell her that.

“I always wondered what our
baby would’ve looked like.” Her manicured nail traces the outline of a
sequin-striped pillow better suited for the bedroom of a thirteen year old
girl. “I feel like it would’ve been a boy. Mother’s intuition I guess.”

“Don’t fucking go there,
Sophie.” My shoulders pull tight, fists flexing and clenching.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t
picture you as a family man,” she laughs. “Now would that be kismet? Or karma?”

I’d never hit a woman, but it
doesn’t stop me from conjuring up an image in my head of my fingers wrapped
around Sophie’s porcelain throat, smashing her up against the wall.

“You fucking bitch.”

“I hold you responsible.” She
points at me, her smile swapping out for a glare. “You should know that.”

“Still delusional after all
these years.”

Her lips twist back into a
smirk. “Not delusional. We just remember things differently.”

“No, Sophie. You remember
things the way you want to. That way you don’t have to take responsibility for
the horrendous choices you made.”

“When you tell your fiancé you
think you might be pregnant, and he freaks out and goes on a rampage about how
he never wanted children and how he’s not capable of being a father, what’s a
girl to do?” Her eyes glass but it’s only temporary. “I didn’t want to lose
you, Beckham. I did what I had to do.”

“You don’t go out and get a
fucking abortion, Sophie.” The throbbing in my head is only outdone by the
painful tensing of my jaw.

She uncrosses her legs, drawing
them up on the sofa and reaching for her martini glass.

“You stormed out that night. I
didn’t hear from you for a week. I had to fix the problem.” Her words are lined
in defense, but her argument is thin. “You came back to me after that, did you
not?”

“Like a fucking moron, yes.” My
voice is a low growl. “Don’t think a day goes by when I don’t regret it.”

She rolls her eyes. “Men act
like they have it so hard. You think it was easy for me to walk into a clinic,
a scarf wrapped around my face, and lie on a table and get our baby sucked out
of me?”

My stomach balls. “I never
asked you to get an abortion, Sophie.”

“You didn’t have to. You made
it clear you didn’t want to be a father. I granted your little wish because I fucking
loved you. How many women would do that for you, Beckham?”

The searing pain in my chest
intensifies when I think of never knowing my innocent child.

“I was scared, Sophie. I needed
space. I needed to process everything.”

“You were
weak
,” she spits her words. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted
you. You were weak and I could break you over and over. Mold you into whatever
I needed. You were lost when I found you. A tragically handsome, broken soul.
Couldn’t let that go to waste. I showed you what it felt like to be desired,
and I made you into everything you ever wanted to be.”

It’s true. She showed me desire
like I’d never felt before. All along it was desire, not love. It was hard to
tell the difference when I’d never felt anything that’d rendered me so
powerless.

Sophie knew how to bring me to
my knees, offering me the world on a silver platter. She held my heart in her
teeth for years, breaking me time and again until I finally snapped.

“I didn’t come here to rehash
the past with you.” My arms cross. “Came to tell you to stay the fuck away from
me, my family, and Odessa.”

She cocks her head, resting it
on her hand and sinking back into her overstuffed sofa. “That’s cute. You’re
all protective. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Tell me, Beckham. I get why
you’re protective of the baby, but why the girl?” She takes a swill of her
drink. “You afraid I’ll tell her the truth about you? About your past and that
sick-as-fuck cult you were raised in and how you were used in those rituals
where the church elders would fuck you in the ass?”

Her head tosses back. She’s
pure fucking evil in a pale pink twin set.

My face pinches, my chest
heaving. I charge at her and see a hint of terror in her blue eyes for the
first time.

“You stay away from me and my
family. You don’t speak of us. You don’t follow us. You don’t so much as
fucking think of us. We don’t exist to you. You’re dead to us.” My face is
inches from hers. It’s all I can do not to strangle the psychotic bitch. “If I
hear you’re bothering Odessa, if I see you anywhere, I swear to God, Sophie,
I’ll go straight to your father and tell him the real reason we ended it.”

Her face pales. She’s frozen.

“You and I both know the
substance abuse clause your father put in your trust is ironclad. He’ll disown
you
and
disinherit you if he knows
you so much as tried a single fucking illegal drug.” I don’t need to remind
her. She’s well aware.

She swallows, and I storm out
before I do anything stupid. Sophie fucking Glass is not worth it. My
priorities have shifted. My concerns lie elsewhere. I don’t want to fight
dirty, but when it comes to protecting the only thing that matters to me, I’ll
do what I have to and not think twice.

ODESSA

I find an empty park bench in
Central Park and finish my pretzel-and-coffee lunch, composing my thoughts
before I call my parents. It’s time to tell them about Jeremiah: that it’s
officially over.

For good.

My fingers shake as I dial my
father’s cell phone. He deserves to hear everything from me now, not secondhand
through Mom.

“Hey, baby cakes!” His voice is
a whistle, breathless.

“Hey, Dad.” I can’t help but
smile when I hear his voice, though it disappears when I remember I’m seconds
away from breaking the poor man’s heart.

“Good to hear from you,” he
says. “I was getting worried. Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m doing well.
Really happy.”

“I saw Jeremiah’s TV show the
other day. You didn’t tell us the season started two weeks ago,” he says. “Trying
to play catch up with the reruns. It’s a good show. Your mom made his southern
fried chicken last night for dinner.”

“Daddy, you’re not supposed to
be eating that kind of stuff.”

“Everybody’s going to die
someday, right?”

I hate when he downplays his health.
Cracking jokes isn’t going to make his chronic illnesses disappear.

“Your mother told me you and
Jeremiah were going through a bit of a cooling off period,” he says. Leave it
to my mother to put a delicate spin on some heavy news. Two years ago when my
brother and his wife were having marital issues, my father damn near had a
heart attack when he heard they’d legally separated. “Everything okay?”

I rake my hand along my leg and
reposition myself. Attempting to find comfort on a wooden park bench is pretty
much impossible.

“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I know
you liked him a lot, but I don’t want to marry him anymore. We ended things.
For good.”

My face pinches as I wait for
his reaction, fingers crossed that this news doesn’t land him in the hospital.

“You still there?” I ask. The
raspy breathing on the other end tells me he is, but I need him to say
something. Anything.

“Back in high school,” he says.
“I dated this girl. Marian Tisdale. She was incredible. Smile like you wouldn’t
believe. Captain of the cheerleading squad. Hottest girl in school. We went off
to college together, and I thought I was going to spend my life with this girl.
I loved her more than anything.”

I press the phone hard against
my ear. My father never speaks of life before my mom, and we all assumed that
he didn’t exist until she came into his life.

“Just before the wedding,” he
says. “She got cold feet. Said she couldn’t marry me because there were too
many other options out there and what if she made the wrong choice? I was the
only guy she’d ever loved.”

His tone is laced in
melancholy, and my heart breaks for the younger version of my father.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I think my father took it
harder than anyone,” he says. “Told me I’d never meet anyone as perfect for me
as Marian Tisdale. And for years, I believed him.”

I know how that feels.

“And then one day, I’m working
at my father’s deli and he announces that he hired some Bloom girl to pick up
some hours on the second shift. A daughter of his buddy’s from the next town
over.”

My heart warms.

“In walks your mother.” I can
hear the smile in his hoarse words. “Never looked back after that.”

“Aw,” I sigh. “I knew you met
at grandpa’s deli, but I’d never heard about Marian.”

“That’s because Marian is
irrelevant,” he says. “Life didn’t matter until your mother. She’s my best
friend. The girl who stuck by my side despite the fact that I didn’t deserve
her. Still don’t deserve her. But thirty-five years later, she’s not going
anywhere. You need someone who’ll stick with you when life gets hard. Really
hard. Because it will. It always does.”

I nod, knowing he can’t see me.
My words are lodged somewhere in my throat.

“Look. I liked Jeremiah.
Emphasis on
liked
. If things got hard
and Jeremiah bailed on you, he doesn’t deserve you,” Dad says. “And I wouldn’t
be able to live with myself if I knew you were only staying with him because
you wanted to make me happy.”

I clutch at my heart,
desperately wishing we’d have had this talk weeks ago.

“Thanks, Dad.” A lungful of
fresh air reinvigorates me. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll see you and Mom
in a couple weeks, okay? I’m flying back for Mother’s Day.”

“All right, baby cakes. Love
you.”

***

“You’re back.” I linger in
Beckham’s office doorway. His cheeks are sunken, his eyes darker than before.
He stormed off earlier without saying a word. “You talk to Sophie?”

“Yep.” He glares at the
computer screen, punching his keyboard.

“Get everything sorted out?” I
shouldn’t pry, but then again, the woman was stalking me, so I have a right to ask.

“She’ll leave you alone from
now on.”

That’s all I get?

“What’d she say?” I step into
his office. His eyes snap toward me, crawling up me from head to toe as if I’m
not welcome in here.

“The details are none of your
concern, Odessa.”

“No, it is. She was following
me.”

“And I told you she wouldn’t be
a problem any longer. What part of that did you not understand?” He slams his
keyboard tray back into his desk, slowly rising.

“What the hell is your
problem?” My arms lock against my chest, and my hip cocks sideways. “Is any of
this about last night?”

It has to be. Nothing else
makes sense. Maybe he still loves Sophie and he hates himself for screwing me
last night? I’m grasping at straws here but I need to understand what changed.

“Why would any of
this
be about last night?” A single
eyebrow lifts.

My jaw slacks, the words
sputtering in my mind. “Maybe you still have feelings for her?”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“Maybe you’re upset that I’m a
bigger part of your life than you ever wanted me to be. Maybe you don’t know
how to deal with that emotionally, so you shut down.”

He charges around the desk,
coming closer until we’re face to face. He doesn’t intimidate me, and I refuse
to back down.

“Thanks for the psychoanalysis,
but it won’t be necessary.” His calm tone is delivered with controlled force.

“You don’t have to be so hard
all the time,” I say. “You’re nothing but edges. If you’d soften up once in a
while…”

“Not everyone lives in a little
glass bubble where the sun always shines and life never gets real.” He huffs,
his stormy eyes grazing my lips. “Must be fucking nice to always have shit
figured out, Odessa. But I’m working on mine, so how about you worry about your
own for once?”

“Why are you doing this?”

I search his eyes for a hint of
anything that might tell me this friendship, whatever we have, is salvageable
because I know what I saw back in Utah. He’s a good person. He has a good
heart. This man seething in front of me is about to snap, and he needs someone
there to pick up the pieces when he does.

“Push me away all you want,” I
say. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

“Is that a threat or a
promise?”

“Both.”

“You’re a damn fool,” he
growls.

“Likewise.” I stand tall. “You
need me. You need me and you hate the hell out of that fact. You’d be a fool to
let me walk away, but lucky for you, I’m not going to.”

“I’m not capable of giving you
the things you need.” His words offer an angry apology.

“It’s not about
me
, Beckham. It’s not about what
I
need.” Our eyes lock. I’m never
letting go. At least not until he hears me out. “You told me once everyone’s in
it for themselves. But you were wrong because if that were the case, I’d have
walked away from you a long time ago. You’re right. You’re not what I need. But
you
need
me
. And I’m going to be there for you because that’s what friends
do.”

He says nothing, his chest
rising and falling.

“And like it or not, we’re
friends.” I press my pointer finger into his heart. “Deny it all you want,
but–”

A flash in his eyes precedes
the grip he takes around my wrist, yanking me against his rigid body before I
have a chance to protest.

“We passed
friends
a long time ago, don’t you think?”

I’m locked against him, his
hands twisted in my hair and his lips silencing mine with a crushing kiss. My
tongue dances with his. I’m caught between wanting to breathe and wanting to
exist purely in this moment.

His hands fall to my waist, and
he spins me around, stepping toward me until I fall back onto his desk. Leaning
forward, he clears the space behind me, shoving his stapler aside. A cup of
pens scatters on the floor, but his focus is on me. Beckham’s fingers work the
button of my pants followed by the zipper, and within seconds my pants are
tossed aside and my panties are ripped in two.

His mouth smashes mine, and he
takes my bottom lip between his teeth as my hands work his belt. The heat in my
body soars each time my fingers graze across the hardness beneath his layers.

The second he’s free and
sheathed, he hoists my thighs around his hips, plowing his swollen cock into me
like the whole fucking free world depends on it.
 

Beckham’s painfully delicious
thrusts build a warm friction. With my fingers tangled in his dark hair,
tugging and pulling, I widen my legs and welcome every generous inch of him.

Every plunge.

Every push.

Every prod.

But sex with Beckham is the
perfect guilty pleasure. Carnal and uncomplicated. Exactly the way it should
be.

His hand gropes my breast over
my blouse, and I spot the longing in his eyes to be naked, touching all of me.
He needs that closeness he so stubbornly tries to deny himself.

My ankles dig into his tight
ass, pushing him deeper inside me as his thrusts quicken. The build-up washes
over me as my nails claw his back. Warm spurts fill me, and his face tenses and
relaxes as he unloads everything he has into me.

When it’s over, we don’t speak
about it. We don’t need to. It is what it is.