Stripped Down (16 page)

“Why? Because I struggle through every day and have to do a job where I feel permanently degraded?”

“No, Blondie. No.” He turned his face toward me and, pushing hair out of my eyes, rested his gaze on me. “Because you don’t give up
despite
those things.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t make me brave, Beck. It makes me desperate and probably really stupid.”

“Cassie...”

Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could feel how hard he was looking me. How hot his incessant and unmovable stare was. More than anything, I could feel how badly he wanted to say the words he replaced with a sigh.

“Let me help you. When CiCi’s at school, come down here every day and I’ll train you behind the bar here and in Rock Solid until you can bar tend with your eyes closed. I’ll pay you every hour you’re here. We’ll work out a schedule that works with your needs instead of against it—so you only work late on weekends and vacations, and every school night, you’re home by ten thirty so CiCi doesn’t have to stay at your parents’ half the week.” This time, when he pushed hair from my face, he oh-so-softly brushed his thumb over my cheek. “You deserve more than you’re allowing yourself, Cassie. Let me make this happen for you. Let me make your life easier.”

Tears burned the backs of my eyes. This kindness, the sort I wasn’t used to, was coming from the most unlikely source. The playboy strip club owner people could write erotic novels about. The pump-and-dump asshole who deleted your number.

He had no idea what his words and his offer meant to me. And I couldn’t even tell him because tears spilled out of my eyes. I covered them with my hands and took a deep breath as I tried not to choke on the emotion. It was suffocating, this blend of relief and fear and excitement and confusion. The way the feelings threaded themselves today was overwhelmingly intense, and I could do nothing but cry as everything I’d felt over the last god knows how long balled up into a firework that exploded so vehemently through my veins that I couldn’t control a single spark of it.

Beck wrapped me in his arms, pulling me against him so my face pressed against his hard chest. My whole body trembled as he held me while I cried. I felt all the stress and frustration and helplessness from the past few months simply leave my body in each tear that rolled down my cheeks. My muscles loosened, my stomach unknotted, and my heart beat a little easier.

He had no idea how he was changing my life.

“Thank you,” I whispered, turning my face to the side and wiping under my eyes. “I’m sorry I just cried all over your shirt.”

“It’s just a shirt.”

“It’s just a shirt that has mascara stains all over its shoulder.”

Beck pulled back and peered down at his shoulder. “Does it come out in the wash?”

I sat back and met his gaze. “Ask Mia.”

He looked at me for a moment. Then his lips twitched the tiniest amount before a deep belly laugh erupted out of him. He wrapped one arm around my shoulder, kissed the side of my head, still laughing, and dug his phone out of his pocket.

“I’ll do just that.” He hit her name in his call log, hit speaker, and waited for her to answer.

“Beck, I already told you I’m not washing your underwear,” was the line she opened with. “I don’t mind helping you be an adult, but the underwear is a step too far.”

“Yes, thank you. You’ve said that a hundred times. You’ll be pleased to know I collected my boxers from the dry cleaner this morning,” he replied.

“You took your underwear to the dry cleaners?”

“Yes. I have a question for you. Does cried-in mascara come out of a white shirt? Cassie got it dirty.”

I smacked him. “It was your fault!”

“Oh god,” Mia groaned down the line. “What did you do to her?”

“I offered her a better job,” Beck said honestly.

“I’m not sure washing your underpants equals a better job, Beck. No wonder she cried .”

I giggled.

“But yes, it should. Why are you asking me anyway? I’m just going to find it in your laundry basket next week.”

“I asked her and she told me to ask you.”

A pause, and then, “Watch yourself, Beck. She’s got your number. And I don’t mean your dick size.”

Although I had that too.

“Thanks for your support, friend. I’m going now.” Beck hung up to the tune of her laughter and put his phone screen-down. “I don’t know why I put up with her crap.”

I flattened my lips into a straight line. “Because you’d have no clean clothes if you didn’t.”

“Shit. She’s right. You really do have my number.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair and stood only to hold that same hand out to me. “Come on. Go get your things. Let’s go.”

“Go?” I frowned as he grabbed my hand and pulled me up. “Go where?”

He grabbed his jacket from the back of his office chair and slung it over his shoulder, hiding the mascara smudges. “To get CiCi and celebrate your new job.”

“But...I have to work.” My brow furrowed. What was he doing?

“No, you don’t. Your previous contract is terminated immediately with the weekend’s pay, and your new one will be available at nine thirty Monday morning.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Of course I can. I own this company. I can do what I want.” He grinned, winked, and grabbed my hand again. Then he tugged me forward. “So come on. Let’s go.”

I
was learning many things about Beckett Cruz, and the number-one thing was that he really didn’t like the word no. Of course, every time I pointed it out, he said that he listened to it when it mattered.

Apparently, staying in the car while I went to collect CiCi from my parents was not one of those times.

I, meanwhile, was still stuck on the whole weekend-off thing. I couldn’t believe how quickly he’d changed my jobs and how easily he’d told me that I no longer had to strip.

He was like a hot-as-hell fairy godmother.

I still didn’t know what to think. Was it a thank-you for giving him an easy divorce? Was it a goodwill gesture on his behalf? Or did he really care about the way stripping made me feel? Did he really care about me?

Sometimes, I believed he did.

“That’s it,” Beck said, shutting the door to his Range Rover. “I’m going to ask your mom to do my front yard.”

I looked at the bright array of flowers that scattered the front yard. “Don’t. She’ll have a field day with your barren wasteland. You don’t even have cacti, and they water themselves.”

“Honestly, I’m so bad at gardening. I have a black arm, never mind a thumb. I’d probably kill cacti too.” He followed me up the path. “Maybe I’ll hold on asking her to do my yard.”

“Maybe at least until you’ve mastered cacti,” I agreed, smiling over my shoulder. “Hey... About tonight.”

“Cassie.”

“I know, I know. I’m just wondering—you said I’d been requested.”

“And they’re being advised that your daughter is sick,” he answered without batting an eyelid. “I’ve taken care of it all, babe. Don’t worry.”

“Okay.” I smiled again, knocked twice on the front door, and pushed it open. “Mom? Dad?”

“Mommy!” CiCi yelled. “I’m painting my plane!”

Wow. She had done that quick. What’s the betting Dad had abandoned his to help her?

“I brought a friend,” I said hesitantly as I stepped through the door.

Mom appeared in the kitchen doorway, her gaze barely skirting over me before it landed on Beck and she gave him a full once-over. “And this is your friend?”

“Yes, Mom,” I scolded her. Although friend was a... I didn’t know what the term was. Wrong, for sure, but still. “Mom, this is Beckett Cruz, my friend and boss. Beck, this is my mom, Debra.”

Mom’s eyebrows shot up at me, but she didn’t acknowledge me as she shook hands with Beck. Then he kissed her cheek, and she blinked.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Beckett.”

“And you, Mrs. Gallagher. I was just admiring your garden. It’s beautiful.”

Smooth. Very, very smooth. Mom loved her garden being complimented.

“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed light pink. “Thank you very much, Beckett. And please, call me Deb.”

Deb? Oh. He’d won her over.

“Is that Beck?” CiCi yelled. “Is he here? Did he bring me a chameleon yet?”

“I’m pretty sure he said he was going to look at getting himself a chameleon, not you, but yes, he’s here,” I said, walking into the front room. “Unless you mean a stuffed chameleon. Then that’s on him. I know nothing about that.”

“I might have promised a Pascal,” Beck admitted.

“Did you stipulate real or stuffed?”

“No. No, I did not.”

“Ah, you idiot. You can explain that one.” I grinned. “Dad, this is Beckett. Beck, this is my dad, Steven.”

Beck walked across the living room and shook Dad’s hand while he was sitting down. “It’s great to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Beck, look, my plane is pink!” CiCi held up her half-painted plane then stilled when she caught my eye. “Sorry. I interrupted.”

I winked at her. She was a good kid.

“Don’t worry, Ciara-bear,” Dad said. “Men can talk whenever, and that’s a dang good plane you’re painting there! Show it off!”

I rolled my eyes. He was a big kid.

“What are you doing here, girl?” he asked me as I approached him.

“Hi to you too, Daddy.” I kissed his cheek. “Do you need anything?”

“A shot of vodka and a Xanax,” he teased, winking at me. “A cup of that mint tea stuff sounds great.”

“Okay. CiCi? Beck?”

CiCi shook her head and grabbed her paintbrush, but Beck smiled.

“Coffee would be great.”

I nodded and turned. Then I stopped and had to spin back around to face him. “I have no idea how you drink your coffee.”

That smile transformed into the hint of a smirk. “Cream, one sugar.”

I muttered the instructions to myself in an attempt to commit them to memory then finally made my way into the kitchen. “Dad said he wanted a ‘cup of that mint tea stuff,’” I told Mom, turning toward the coffee machine.

“Yes, he’s obsessed with it lately.” She reached up to pull a box from the cabinet and side-eyed me, a glint in her soft, brown eyes.

I knew that look. I’d been subjected to it many times as a teenager. I knew exactly what was about to come—some comment about how nice Beck was.

“So. Beckett seems nice.”

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

“He is.” I busied myself with making his coffee.

I couldn’t make eye contact with her. That always got the truth out of me, and I couldn’t exactly admit that I’d gotten drunk with my boss, accidentally married him, and then fucked him. Twice. And, admittedly, couldn’t stop thinking about fucking him.

“He’s moved me to the bar full time,” I said in an effort to deflect away from the conversation she wanted to have. “I don’t have to work this weekend. Then, starting Monday, he’s going to train me when CiCi’s at school. That means you’ll only have to have her overnight on weekends and maybe a few evenings. And I’ll get paid a little more. Great, huh?”

“Absolutely. I know CiCi’s missing you a lot lately.”

“This makes it better.”

“But that doesn’t take away from why he’s here. Or, more interestingly, why CiCi knows him.”

No... I supposed it didn’t. I should have known better than to think I’d get away with it that easily. “He knows how much it means to me to not have to strip anymore and wanted to celebrate. He’s just...a really good friend, Mom.”

I was so going to Hell.

“Okay,” she finally said once the coffee machine had stopped running and the kettle had boiled. She lifted it off the stove and poured it into Dad’s mug. “As long as you know what you’re doing.”

No. I had no idea. But I wasn’t about to admit it. “I do. We’re just friends.”

She picked up Dad’s mug, turned, and stopped. Her lips tugged up on one side in a warm smile as she looked through the door, and when I joined her where she was standing, I saw why.

Beck was now sitting opposite CiCi at the table, a mound of silver glitter in the palm of his hand. Dad passed her the glue, and she slicked it over one wing of her pink plane, right before she handed it back. Then she pinched some glitter out of Beck’s hand and sprinkled it over the glue.

“Enough?” she asked him, looking up.

Beck wrinkled his face up. “Maybe a bit more glitter.”

She nodded resolutely and pinched more out of his palm. “Grandpa, I need more glue. On the other wing.”

Dutifully, Dad put glue on the other wing, drawing a heart out of it too. CiCi covered it with more glitter, taking pinch after pinch out of Beck’s hand. He was half covered in the stuff, from his arm to his shirt. Of course, he still had the faint hint of my mascara on his shoulder, so he looked a million miles away from the crisply put-together millionaire businessman he usually did.

He just looked like a guy.

My heart shouldn’t have skipped a beat at that realization, but damn it, it did. And it skipped hard, because the last thing I needed was to look at Beckett Cruz like he was a regular guy.

“He’s good with her, huh?” Mom asked me softly. Her voice barely reached my ears.

I took a deep breath and shakily let it out with a nod.

“And she likes him a lot.”