Let It Snow (74 page)

“Take care of me?” She pointed to herself just in case he’d forgotten whom he was dealing with. You claim you want to take care of me now, but you can’t grasp that being with you makes me worse off.”

“Why don’t you stop and think for just a moment.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to think. You think I haven’t thought about this again and again for the past eight years since you left for college? You keep breaking my heart and you act like you don’t know it, but you’re an intelligent man. Goddammit, Max.” She pounded the table and didn’t care if people watched. “You fucked me—were my first—then went to college and said
nothing
to me for years. Didn’t call. Didn’t email. Didn’t send up a smoke signal or send a messenger pigeon—
nothing
. To me, that doesn’t say undying love and devotion. That doesn’t say to me that I was yours.”

He sipped his whisky tonic and stared at her over the glass.

The fucking nerve of him.

“Say something.” Her knee bobbed angrily. She crossed her arms over her chest and drummed her fingers on her biceps. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You
are
wrong, Giselle. You have no idea how wrong you are.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Just saying it doesn’t make it so.”

“You’re obviously trying to sabotage this evening. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

Am I doing that?
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and gnawed.
Doesn’t matter, anyway. Nothing’s going to change.

“Every time things get too serious between us for your comfort, you throw out some roadblock to push me away. But if we’re going to go there and that talk, then let’s lay it all out, honey.” He leaned his forearms onto his thighs and leveled a cold stare at her. “Were you chaste in all that time I was gone?”

“Was I—
what
?” The question seemed to be from completely out of the blue, and it surprised her enough to still her bobbing knee. “Of course I wasn’t. Why would I have been? You didn’t leave here expecting commitment, and I didn’t offer you one. For God’s sake, we were eighteen.”

“Right. We were eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. And so on.” He nodded sardonically. “And did you feel anything for those other men? Feel guilty about being with them? Think that every one of them was a mistake?”

“What? No! I…” She let her words trail off.
No to which question?
He was confusing her. Setting a trap she’d never find her way out of.

His closed-off expression dared her to lie to him, but she couldn’t.

Her knee started bobbing again. She didn’t know what the right answer was. Only the truth. “Did I feel anything for them? Some of them. Did I feel guilty for being with them?” Her quick glance at his face revealed a mien devoid of emotion. The Dom face.

Is there a right answer? What does he want to hear?
She didn’t want to hurt him, even if the reverse wasn’t true.

“I—no, I didn’t feel guilty,” she said. “I had no reason to. So, no, I didn’t think they were all mistakes. Some were. Most, though, I don’t feel that way about.”

“I see.” His voice was flat and
very
un-Max, Dom or not.

“Do you? It sounds like you’re disappointed in you and me have no right to be. When you came back, you didn’t seek me out. You bumped into me accidentally here at the hotel. You always knew where I was. Mama never moved. I was easy to find, so cut the bullshit. If you wanted me, you knew how to get to me. I’m sorry that your Catholic guilt made you feel like a shitty boyfriend, but you weren’t my boyfriend.”

“That’s how
I
felt during those years, Giselle. Like I’d fucked up. Like I’d cheated, when it wasn’t true.”

Her heart seemed to stop for a moment. She put a hand over it and found it was beating as always, but faster.

“So tell me this, honey. Tell me the truth. If I were your boyfriend back then, and we were still together now, what would you do to me, huh?” The tan in his cheeks gave way to a red color Giselle could count on two hands the times she’d ever seen, and those had all been during high school. The Max she knew now didn’t get flustered, and his sudden broodiness discomfited her.

“Would you dump me because you can’t accept what I do for a living? Keep using it as an excuse so you don’t have to form a meaningful connection to me?”

The rage came back. The scary rage that seem to trigger very bad behavior.

She pinched her forearm again and again. No way she was going to zone out this time. She needed to be in the here and now. “That is
not
fair, Max.”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to throw low blows, and I’m simply playing by the rules you seem to be making up as you go along. You’ve never been good with rules, have you?”

“Know what?” She tossed her napkin onto the table and pushed back from the table. “I can’t even. You don’t know what’s my head or what makes me tick, so fuck this. Fuck you, and have a merry fucking Christmas wherever you end up. Hopefully you won’t be in a hospital with a bunch of bullets in your backside like two years ago.”

She slipped away before he could reach for her, because he always did.

She wasn’t going to sit there and let him wound her under the guise of tough love. The way she saw it was that most of her problems were because of him in the first place. She’d started her day spiraling out of control because of him, and being at The Den in his company was only making the unstable relationship between her brain and heart worse.

She never knew which to listen to. Her brain was unreliable and her heart didn’t seem to know what was good for it.

“If there is a God, there’ll be a cab outside.”

“Henri, I fucked up. I tried to get her to just fucking capitulate, but…I think the attempt backfired of me.” Max leaned onto the other man’s desk and his gaze fell on the tic in Henri’s jaw.

Shit. Not good.

Max knew that tic all too well.

Henri said nothing for a long while. Just stared, and worked his jaw side to side. After a couple of minutes, he picked up his silver letter opener and balanced it on its point. “Maxell, listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you.”

“I doubt I’ll like hearing it, but I’m listening.”

“Good.” He turned the letter opener around a few times and rubbed the small hole it’d made on his desk calendar. “If you cause me to lose a long-standing employee I will beat the hell out of you and tell the cops the devil made me do it. As this is New Orleans, they might just believe it and let me off easy.”

Max flopped onto the club chair in the corner and blew his hair out of his eyes. “Fuck. I gotta say I’m not so pleased to be one of the few people in your inner circle right about now.”

“Make it up to me, then. Do you know how much staff turnover there is in this business?”

“Approximately.”

“Then you know our quality of service depends heavily on us having tenured, experienced staff, and I try to hold onto mine—especially the ones who work during Den events. It’s a wonder she’s been here this long since she’s obviously ill suited for her job. I haven’t spent much time in Ms. Burke’s company, but I do wonder if believes she can’t do any better. I peeked in her file. Her personality profile results were…” his words trailed off and forehead furrowed.

Max had never known Henri to be the speechless sort, and wasn’t sure if him being so now was a good thing or a bad one.

“Her results were
what
, Henri?”

Henri let out a breath and set down the letter opener. “She may be your lover, but she’s my employee, and I have to respect her privacy. I don’t think it’d be appropriate to share.”

“It’s pretty cruel to leave me hanging like that given everything that’s going on with her. She never told me about her memory issues. I’ve known her for twelve fucking years, Henri. She never said a peep.”

“Perhaps she didn’t think it was important enough to bother you about. All I can say is that the results reminded me of someone I…once knew.” Henri turned toward the credenza and rubbed his chin as he rocked his desk chair.

Max didn’t push. Although he was dying to know more about that
someone
, he’d known the other man long enough Henri wasn’t the kind of man who shared tidbits about his past before he was ready. After five years in his acquaintance, Max knew enough about Henri’s personal life could fill ten small Post-it notes, and Henri counted Max as a
friend
.

“I’ll smooth things over,” Max said. “I’ll try not to let our personal shit affect her job. And I don’t know if she thinks she can’t do any better, but I do know she has always been the kind of woman who’d prefer a sure bet than to taking a chance.”

Henri tented his fingers. “Just what chance would she be taking?”

Max chuckled. “I’m not sure you’re meant to be privy to that.”

“So, that’s the game we’re playing, is it?”

“I guess it is.”

“Fair enough. Can you tell me, at least, if she’s considering employment opportunities at other hotels? Or in other industries?”

“Why? What are you going to do? Offer her a raise and dock the property damage expenses out of her newly increased pay? That reminds me. I need to write you a check.”

Henri shook his head. “Just cancel that next invoice you’ve got coming to me, and we’ll be square. And if I thought a pay increase would do the trick, I could certainly have a conversation with human resources.”

I’m going to get into such deep shit for this, but what’s a little more trouble when it comes to G? In for inch, in for a mile.
He blew his hair out of his face again, then gave up and tucked it behind his ears. “I doubt Giselle would say no to more money, but that’s not the only problem. And can I just say that I could get myself into even more trouble by even having this conversation with you right now? She’s not the kind of woman who’d want to advance because of a favor.”

“Favors make the world go round.”

“Not
her
world. She didn’t grow up like us. We’ve got privilege. We pay people to put labels on our problems, and they’re all so
normal
, but in her world, Henri, problems get buried or else doused in Tylenol and cod liver oil. Favors are a luxury. Trust me. She reminded me today just how little she wants me to do for her.”

And he’d never felt so powerless in his life. He’d become a Dom in the first place because the idea of control was exciting or him. Giselle had always made him feel completely out of sorts, and leaving for college, that had scared him. What he felt for her had been so strong; he didn’t think it was real.

So, he’d stayed away because he didn’t know how to control that wild love. And when he finally saw her again, he knew he’d been stupid to think he
could
control it. He control it, and he sure as shit couldn’t control
G
. He twined his fingers and stared at his boots.

Damn.
How do I fix this mess?

“Perhaps I can propose an offer that would cover most bases,” Henri said.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, I must say that I don’t read her to be much of a people person, though she puts on a good show when she wants to.”

“Yeah,
people-person
and G don’t belong in the same sentence ever,” Max said.

“You seem to love her in spite of it.”

“Probably because of it.” Her guardedness was what had made earning her friendship so fulfilling when they were teens. Maybe it was the same reason he’d always wanted her for his submissive, too. He had ego enough to admit he took joy in being one of the few people she really connected with.

“Do you think there’s a job at the hotel she’d be happier in?”

Max nodded. “I can’t say anything more.”

“I’ll work with that.” Henri twirled his pen between his fingers. “All the same, if this blows up in my face, then I not only heard it from you, but will say that you masterminded the entire scheme.”

“Whatever happened to your
I’m a lover, not a fighter
philosophy? Get tired of being a hotelier, you might have a career ahead of you as a special agent.”

Henri set down his pen and rocked his chair some more, keeping his cool, blue stare on Max. “Who said I wasn’t one?”

Max laughed, and stood. “I’m off to the gallows.”

“Good luck. I expect to see Ms. Burke back at work in two days and in my office first thing. If she’s not, I’ll take it personally.”

“I know you will.” Max saw himself out.

Like Max, Henri didn’t make idle threats. Given Max had learned everything he had about being a Dom from the other man, Max knew better than to try him. Henri wanted Giselle back at work, so Max needed to clean up the mess he made.

He’d spent years making it, so chances were poor that he’d be able to fix it in a night.

He’d try anyway.

* * *

Giselle stood in front of the living room window in her small apartment and brought her mug of tea up to her lips.

Rain.

Wonderful. Cold and nasty, just like my mood.

The view wasn’t much to speak of. Just an alleyway and the backside of another old house turned into an apartment building along with its small courtyard. She’d been lucky to get the French Quarter apartment, though, especially with the pittance she was able to afford for rent. She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d tolerate a roommate, and she sure as shit wasn’t moving back in with her mama. Two addlebrained Burkes under one roof?

No, thank you
.

The apartment was dated, sure, but the building it was housed in had once been elegant and stately. The pipes were creaky and the doors sometimes stuck, but the good bones were evident. And there were no
ghosts
. Contrary to what Mr. Beaudelaire believed, she wasn’t sensitive to them. Her mother was, though. Mama had said the place was blessedly free of them. Giselle figured that was worth seven hundred bucks per month.

She sighed and set the mug down on the painted-over radiator. “Might have to turn the heat on.”

It’d been sultry and warm at The Beaudelaire when she left, but not all of that was due to the hotel’s climate control. Some of that was due to Max, and figured she’d be just fine to never hear from his ass again.