Taking the Score (18 page)

“Shit! And no one saw me do the spin.”

“Jesus, Gabby,” Olivia said, “stop pissing around.”

Brody caught Emma’s eye with that smile she loved—a rare Brody Kane blast of sun. Oh God, he needed to stop that, because now everything was piling up on her. The things she knew about him, the things he didn’t know about her. This dumb old heart of hers threatening to eat a hole in her chest.
Me and Emma,
he had said. Like they were a thing.

A team.

She immediately averted her eyes, because to seal their gazes would have resulted in a wordless, but terrifyingly real, exchange.

Holy wow, you are in big, big trouble here, Ems.

Chapter Eighteen

As Brody checked the fridge for champagne, his phone rang with a call from Flynn. He was tempted not to answer, especially as he had a gorgeous woman chilling on the balcony of his penthouse, but he needed something from his friend.

“Just the cock blocker I wanted to talk to,” Brody said while his eyes roved the fridge’s interior. No champagne. Unsurprising as he hadn’t had much to celebrate recently. “I need a favor.”

“No favors until I hear the details about you and Emma.”

Brody had known it was a boneheaded move to visit his sister at the Peninsula, but Flynn had wanted to “lay some groundwork for later” with one of Liv’s friends, which meant stopping in for a cocktail at their hotel room before they went on their bar crawl. Brody was trying to be a good pal, and playing wingman while your best friend fucked his way out of his misery seemed like the thing to do.

He hadn’t expected Emma to be there. Or a stripper. Or a half-eaten penis-shaped angel food cake with a large chef’s knife embedded in one of the spongy testicles.

Neither had he expected his own reaction, the roaring—and very public—uprising of his innate instinct to protect her from anyone who might criticize the choices she’d made to survive. Her response had torn the air from his lungs.

Something monumental had happened in that hotel room. They had claimed each other.

“I’m waiting…” Flynn prompted.

Brody sighed, knowing he couldn’t avoid the sordid confessional any longer.
Bless me, Flynn, for I have sinned.
Once he’d unburdened in as minimal detail as possible, Flynn asked the billion-dollar question, “So what about the strip club guy? Grigson.”

Flynn might be a gossipy, matchmaking idiot but he was also as quick as a whip and recognized the underlying problem.

“I’m expecting he’s got something up his sleeve,” Brody said. “Dollar signs in his eyes.”

“And Emma?”

The
other
billion-dollar question. What did Grigson have on her—and how far was she willing to go to escape his clutches? Memories of another woman’s betrayal seeped into his skin, but Emma was no Kerry. Emma would never try to trap him. Hell, getting her to accept his help was like trying to cuddle up to that cat of hers.

Her walls had walls. He just needed to build a better sledgehammer.

Brody blew out a breath. “I think I’m going to have to fire her.”

“And I think we already had this conversation. You can’t fire her for having that job or being a pseudo-stripper or even because she has a cat you don’t like. These are not valid reasons.”

“I can’t get any work done when she’s around.”

“
You
can’t manage your dick and
she
loses her job?”

“Well, I can hardly fire myself.”

Flynn grunted. “You have gained entry into a land of sensual taboo and come up golden. Hot assistant by day, stripper by night, all wrapped up in a sweet package. You need to lock that down and stop worryin’ about the workplace logistics.”

The man had a point. Time to nut up or shut up. It was also time to face a few cold, hard truths.

“I need you to run a background check on her. Not that a shady strip club owner’s loan operation will be on public record, but I need to know what else is going on. School, jobs, family.”

Because if Brody knew anything, it was that Emma had gone to great lengths to hide all that sass and sexiness under a prim and proper exterior. Sex kitten masked as dowdy PA. Every minute with her increased his attraction and his curiosity to know the real woman.

She and her dumb cat had insinuated themselves into his quietly ordered life. But more than that, she hadn’t flinched at a single thing he threw at her, all his filthy demands. This woman understood his needs and was able to reconcile them with her own.

There was work to be done, a woman to unravel. He didn’t know if he could be what Emma wanted…he just knew that she might be exactly what he needed.

“Look, I’ll do the check,” Flynn said, “but what if you find out somethin’ that was best buried?”

“Better I know now.” That’s what had prevented him from pushing before: the notion that her past might make him care. Before he stepped off the ledge, he had to be sure she hadn’t left a string of broke, and broken, men across the country.

Of course, this reasoning assumed he wasn’t already in so deep that a recitation of her past misdeeds could stop him now. He suspected his heart was already in play.

And that didn’t scare him as much as it should have.

Emma had always loved heights. Roller coasters and thrill rides. Living on that sweet, heart-pounding edge. So looking out over Brody’s penthouse terrace was about as much fun as she could have with her clothes on.

The city stretched out before her, its gleaming glass and steel pronouncing progress, wealth, and beauty. She loved Chicago. Would love to have stayed.

Anger bubbled in her chest at the thought of having to start over. Brody would give her the money, but then it would always be between them. It was bad enough he’d forked over that cash to keep her out of Ray’s clutches for a week. If, or when, he found out about the video, she would be a shoo-in for the Women Who Betrayed Brody club.

She was falling for him. Into him. All that strength that drew her to sink against him and hold on tight. Relying on his solidity would be too dangerous.

Giving him up was so unfair, but people like her did not do happy ever afters. She could try climbing above her station, but it seemed she was destined to stay playing at dirt level.
Too uppity
, Granny Maude had called her as a child. She’d subsisted on delusions of grandeur, the hope that merit and hard work could trump the geography of her birth. This was America, for Christ’s sake. No point blaming Daisy, either. She was as much a prisoner of her upbringing as Emma. She needed to pick her up, get her out. Run as fast as her feet could carry her.

Leave this man she loved behind to protect him.

Damn, she had to go and fall for the one man who had every reason to despise her. He just didn’t know yet all the reasons why he should.

Footsteps sounded, and a shiver of anticipation danced through her.

Please have a pimple or a cold sore. Please don’t look perfectly lickable.

She turned.
Shit.
The old top-shirt-button-undone move and a wicked grin made for her. Forget about falling, she may as well have taken a spectacular header off the sixtieth floor.

Of course he looked the same as he had an hour ago when he kissed her in front of his friends and family like she truly mattered. He smiled that heart-stopping grin that, yep, stopped her heart cold. She turned back to the city because it was the best way she could think to restart it. But it only jumped to life when he encircled her arms and caged her in his strong embrace.

“Thanks for being so cool about today,” he whispered in her ear. “My sister, her friends, even Flynn. As usual, you handled everything with your typical flair. Makes me wonder.”

“What’s that?”

“Who
are
you again?”

She smiled into the night at this little running joke between them. “Emma Strickland, PA extraordinaire, cat wrangler, and sex goddess.”

The curve of his smile against her neck sent tingles tripping across her skin. “I’m glad we’re not a secret anymore. I don’t like secrets.”

We.
Hell, if she didn’t love that a little too much. She snorted, tried to turn it into a self-deprecating laugh. “Then you’re hanging with the wrong girl.”

“Maybe you should trust me. I handled your stripper reveal so well.”

She sank back. Never had she encountered a chest as perfectly designed for leaning as Brody’s. “By giving me an anger orgasm.”

“The best kind.”

A shared chuckle warmed the space between them. They remained there, enjoying the quiet intimacy wrapping around them like the night.

“You’re a puzzle,” he murmured hotly against her ear, “and I want to work you out.”

“So your strategy is to come right out and ask me who I am?”

“It never hurts to be direct.”

Emma had always found directness overrated. “Guess you’ll just have to use your big brain to figure me out.”

She heard his loud thoughts, permutations of that quick brain running a mile a minute. “Might need something bigger than that.”

Suddenly he was no longer blanketing her in the rock-hard embrace of his body. She went to turn and he checked her with a gruff, “No.”

Her breath hitched in anticipation. Trying to interpret the sounds behind her was a new brand of torture. That
schwipp
noise? His belt removal. Soft plucks signaled shirt buttons entering a state of undone. A light
whoosh
of fabric falling to the terrace assured her this beautiful man would be naked if she turned around.

Turning around was all she could think about.

“I don’t care how good you look naked, Brody Kane, you won’t get a word out of me.” She knew it was all fun and games, but his patience at her reticence had to be wearing thin.

“Look at me.”

She did. Oh, how she did.

Her gaze strayed down his magnificent body—the lightly matted chest, the happy trail, his perfect cock already springing to life, muscular legs that tapered to…TARDIS socks?

“You’re wearing them?” Her gift. It should not be sexy, but it was, and more than a little heart-shattering.

He placed his hands on his hips, standing before her like a golden god, the winking city lights making him glow. “These socks really pissed me off, Emma. Everything about this situation”—he motioned between them—“pissed me off. Your strip-club antics, your cranky cat, your cute-awful singing, your walking around half naked in
my
T-shirt in
my
home. My perma-boner, your jealous nipples, my inability to get any work done in your presence. My inability to get any work done when
not
in your presence. Most of all, what pissed me off is that stubborn streak of yours.”

Something shifted inside her, something huge. Admitting all this couldn’t have been easy for someone as reserved as Brody. He was taking a chance here. On her.

Defenses in tatters, she could no longer resist his lie-detecting stare, not when he was standing there, naked and unafraid. She needed to be seen by him, right down to the marrow.

“What do you want to know?”

Foxy fast, he’d taken her in his arms, soothing her tremble before she even knew it was racking her body.

“Anything, Emma. Anything that will let me inside that beautiful skull of yours.”

She hauled in a breath and spoke into the warm skin of his neck. “I—I lied to get the job at Score Property. Faked my résumé.”

“Lots of people do that,” he said, no surprise in his voice. “It’s not a big deal.”

It was to her, and she didn’t want him to dismiss it as merely the standard tactics of a desperate job hunter. Daisy had moved to Chicago, following some deadbeat who treated her like shit, and Emma had swooped in to pick up the broken pieces when he screwed her over. Though Emma couldn’t leave her sister behind, she could leave her past. Become respectable.

“If you knew what trouble I’d turn out to be, you’d never have hired me.”

“I have no regrets about hiring you. You are the best assistant I’ve ever had, and the black-and-white of that résumé can’t tell me different.”

“The real résumé might make you reconsider. Education—biker bars, honky-tonks, and pool halls. Experience—a shit-ton of bad choices with men who treated me with the same low level of respect I felt for myself.”

He held her tighter. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You wanted to know. You wanted to work out the puzzle. Skills—faking it until making it, so mobile she can up sticks at a moment’s notice, no shame whatsoever—” The volume of her voice escalated in tandem with her need to make him understand. She was unworthy of his kindness and frankly, it was killing her.

“Baby,” he soothed.

She went for the kill shot. “My sister’s in rehab and my dad’s a jailbird.”

The words hung in the air like dense weighted objects waiting to crash. Her breath hung with it. He should have frozen, pushed her away, anything but what he did.

He kissed her gently on the top of her head.

Tears welled in her eyes, and she burrowed closer into the safety of all that warm skin. He was naked, yet she was the one completely and utterly exposed.

“Is your sister’s problem related to your debt problem?”

She nodded against his shoulder. “I’m supposed to take care of her. She’s three years younger than me and all our lives, I’ve been the one who cleaned her cuts, brushed her hair, read her a bedtime story. Sang stupid songs together.”

“No momma?”

“She ran out when I was eight, and Dad was in and out of prison. We lived with my grandmother, on and off, sometimes in foster care, but mostly it was just us.”

“Mostly it was you, brave girl.”

“Not brave. Just necessary.”

He tipped her chin up to face him. “Sometimes, that’s the same thing, Emma.”

“I wasn’t always there for her and she turned wild. I wanted to be free, so I didn’t see the trouble she was in until it was too late.”

Greedy Emma had resented the motherhood thrust upon her by absent relatives and negligent foster parents. She wanted to be a crazy, irresponsible teen and Daisy had paid the price. Run with the wrong crowd, flirted with catastrophe.

“You’re not your sister’s keeper. Time to start thinking of yourself, about what you need.” Her eyes met his, stark vulnerability and undeserved affection shining from them.

“That’s what got us into trouble in the first place.”

“This pride of yours, it’s admirable as all get-out, but there has to come a point in your life where you admit you need a hand. Pain might be necessary, but suffering is optional. Are you going to let me be the fucking man here and help my woman?”

My woman.
Those words seized her heart with a fierce joy. But he didn’t get it. If she accepted that money, it would always be between them. This leaden lump chaining them to her shame and debt. And Ray would want more.