Taking the Score (8 page)

“This is not your problem, Mr. Kane.”

“It’s Brody, Emma. My cock has been inside you and knows you really fucking well. I think you can call me Brody.”

A blush gathered force all over her body. He had the decency not to smirk about it.

“How much sleep have you been getting these last few weeks?”

“I’ve been at work on time and my duties haven’t suffered.” So Kevin cried constantly as if the weight of the entire world was on his little shoulders instead of Emma’s own. She hugged him tighter.

“Would you like something? Tea? Coffee? Something stronger? I don’t think I have any oolio or whatever it’s called but I can probably rustle up something.”

She nodded, glad for any excuse to send him away. To get her bearings. Surely this was happening to someone else. She was vaguely aware of Brody leaving, his footsteps echoing in the large space until the sound became fainter and fainter. The kitchen was probably in the west wing, or maybe he was summoning a team of staff to boil water and apportion the perfect number of tea leaves.

A hysterical giggle escaped her mouth.

How had it come to this? She looked down at Kevin as if he could provide an answer. For once, her emotionally disturbed cat was still, having found some strange slice of peace in her arms on a beautiful white leather sofa in the penthouse of her employer.

Who thought she was a gambling-addicted, homeless, stripper cat lady. Who had given her the best orgasm of her life and was now making her tea.

Another hitch in her throat. God, she really needed to stop laughing, but by the time she realized that, the tears were already halfway down her cheeks. Blindly, she swiped at them. Not allowed.

Not. Allowed.

Her eyelids felt like stone weights and she closed them, the perfection of that simple motion radiating peace through her beaten-down body. Just five minutes and then she’d come up with a plan. Planning was what she did best.

In five minutes, she would figure it out.

Chapter Nine

Emma awoke to deadweight on her chest, though not the one that had been crushing her heart for the last three months. This was a physical burden. Kevin was sitting on her boobs, purring like a lawnmower.

“Not now, Kev.” Gently, she set him as
ide. The purring stopped and the enormity of the silence sank in as she surveyed her unfamiliar surroundings. Where she’d slept was decidedly masculine with cool grays and green stripes. Not a guest room. His room.

His bed.

She had slept in his bed. Her loud groan echoed through acres of quiet privilege, her hands fisting with her embarrassment. These sheets…oh God, they must be at least ten thousand thread count because they were probably the softest bed linens she had ever touched.

She pulled back the covers. Hmm, just her underwear. Trying to recall the moment when she had stripped her clothes took too much energy. So many gaps. The last thing she remembered was sitting on Brody’s sofa, curled up with Kevin, as if protecting her cat could somehow shield her, while the emotion of her situation crashed over her.

Homeless. Destitute. Financially beholden to a shady businessman.

No food for her cat. Emma’s stomach growled in sympathy.

She padded over to the giant walk-in closet and opened it.
Whoa!
Brody’s office closet was amateur hour compared to what was on offer here. Tens of suits, hundreds of shirts, the order mind-boggling. She let her fingers graze the fabrics, absorbed the clear demonstration of wealth. Opening a drawer revealed black socks. Another one showed more, a plethora of evidently
professionally laundered
socks. Rich people were weird. She chose a shirt, a pale blue number, and shrugged it on, enjoying the decadent thrill that fizzed through her.

His room. His bed. His shirt.

Her gaze snagged on the bedside clock. Eight ten. Crap, late for work. She crashed out of the room and right into a tall, hard-muscled, incredible-smelling obstacle.

“You’re awake,” Brody said, rather obviously.

“I’m late.” Her hands had somehow found their way to his chest—funny how that happens—and lingered there. His hands had somehow found their way to her hips and cupped them firmly.

Hilarious.

“Late for what?”

“You have the Rikerson conference call at nine thirty, and I need to prep for the partners’ meeting at eleven, and—”

“Emma, calm down. It’s eight in the evening.”

Her fuzzy head tried to reconcile that. “I missed work this afternoon. Meetings and—”

“It’s okay. We managed. The world is still spinning on its axis.” He was holding her and smelling delicious, so she questioned the veracity of that statement. Her world was definitely in a full-on tilt to the insane side right now.

“We’re going to sit down and discuss everything and come up with a plan.”

“Mr. Kane…”

He raised an eyebrow.

“
Brody.
I will sort this out myself. I promise I will be out of your hair tonight. I just need to make a few phone calls.”

“Emma, if I know anything about you, it’s that you have already made every call you possibly could before you got to this point.” His words were stiff with logic. “You’re a ‘leave no stone unturned’ kind of girl. So tell me, who ya gonna call? Debt-busters?”

He was right. There was no one.

“You don’t have to concern yourself,” she said. “My job is to take care of your every need—”

His mouth twitched. Oh, this one was too damn sexy for his own good.

“At the office, perv.” His surprising cheekiness and her just as surprising sassy retort made her laugh. So unexpected was the sound that she cupped her mouth, not quite believing it came from her. She so needed to laugh. Shake loose that hard knot of despair in her chest.

But not yet. It felt indulgent.

“Emma, you will stay here while I work on getting you a place to live.”

“Here?” She looked around, horror replacing her inappropriate giddiness, and something else. An inkling of hope. How did he do that? Make her feel as if her problems were actually surmountable?

“Mr. Ka—Brody—I can’t afford to pay you rent”—as if that were the highest hurdle here and not the living-together-in-sexy-proximity part—“and the kind of places you’d find for me are way out of my price range. All my income has to be used for other commitments.”

“We’ll work something out. Something that doesn’t compromise this damn pride of yours.”

At her ankles, a furry ball of warm kitty-cat burrowed in at her feet.
Do it for Kevin
, a voice in her head whispered. Probably Kevin.

“Let’s get you something to eat, Emma.”

She sighed her acquiescence, too weary to put up any real resistance. Ten thousand thread count cotton and the promise of food got her every time. “Okay.”

…

Brody had expected her to resist more staunchly, but Emma had clearly decided to humor him for now. He walked ahead of her into the kitchen where he did the only thing he knew how to do in his kitchen with confidence: press the start button on the Keurig.

She sat at the kitchen island, her bare legs dangling like spears of temptation from beneath the tails of his dress shirt. “What happened to my clothes?”

“That happened,” he said, pointing a finger at the demon cat.

“I meant, how did I get undressed?”

He lowered his gaze to her legs. Realizing that was a recipe for insanity, he raised his eyes to employer-employee appropriate levels.

“The clo
thes fairies.”

“The clothes fairies?”

“Aye.” Unsure why, he’d decided to answer her with a faintly Scottish brogue. “That’s their job. To remove the clothing of tired or inebriated lasses. Sandwich?”

She nodded.

He put a mug of coffee before her along with cream and sugar on the side. He had no idea how she took her coffee. He wasn’t supposed to know.

She glanced down at the coffee and condiments. Usually she was the one bringing him coffee, so she was understandably thrown at the role reversal. This little moment encapsulated perfectly the changes that had occurred in their dynamic over the last twenty-four hours.

“And these clothes fairies…do they close their eyes?”

“Why would they close their eyes? They’re sexless, mythical beings, who are completely unaffected by a half-naked woman. They’re just doing their job.”

She stared at him like he had snakes growing out of his head. There was something about this new version of her that brought out his whimsical side. For God’s sake, conjured it out of thin air, because he was Brody Kane. Workaholic, straight arrow, miserable bastard. He did not have a whimsical side.

He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure what kind of food Kevin eats, so I had the concierge shop for a few things.” He gestured to the countertop where a collection of gourmet tinned treats was piled high in a pyramid.

She shot to a stand, almost stumbling in the process. Grace was not one of Ms. Strickland’s strengths. “You bought food for Kevin?”

“I don’t know what you’ve been feeding him, but he’s looking a bit scrawny. Could do with some fattening up.”

He wasn’t prepared for the sunshine grin that conquered her face. Just like that laugh he’d dragged from her a few moments ago, it completely transformed her demeanor. Joy suited this woman.

And then she hugged him, cleaving her soft, feminine curves to his stiff body that insisted on not taking advantage. “Thank you,” she whispered against his neck. Her hair smelled fresh and floral, and his heart squeezed at this vulnerable side to her. Too soon, she had separated from him, leaving him a curious brew of aroused and bereft.

She studied the label of one tin for a long time, and he suspected she was using the moment to compose her emotions. Giving her space, he grabbed two shallow bowls from the cupboard. A couple of minutes later, the cat was lapping at the bowl of H
2
O like it was going out of style and stuffing his face with farm-raised salmon and heirloom veggies, a meal that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a five-star restaurant menu. Emma sat cross-legged on the floor, warming her hands on a coffee cup, a beautiful expanse of thigh on offer, while she watched Kevin eat. She looked so young, just like this afternoon when he had carried her to his bed and stripped her to her underwear with one eye closed.

He was not a saint.

Tears had stained her cheeks before she fell asleep on his sofa. While he made chamomile tea and pondered why he even had chamomile tea, she had let herself lose it, but now…now she looked at peace, and he reveled in the pleasure of giving that to her. Maybe giving her more.

She fiddled with her shirt button and foreign warmth flooded his chest.
Been there, tapped that, and she was wearing his shirt.

Casting those dangerous thoughts aside, he refocused on her problem. “We need to talk about what’s happened to you. What is happen
ing
to you.”

“I made a few mistakes.”

“Right. The betting.”

A shadow fluttered across her face. Anger. Interesting.

“Yes,” she grated, “the betting.” Two spots of furious color lit high on her cheekbones. “And I got into a hole and the easiest way to pay it off was to wait tables at the club. Ray wanted the debt paid off quicker, and thought I could do it by shaking my ass. Sure showed him, right?”

She sure showed something. “So, what’s your poison?”

“My poison?”

“Horses? Hockey? Basketball? Chicken races?”

Visibly flustered, she diverted her gaze to the cat. “Oh, if it runs, bounces, or flies, I’ll bet on it.”

“What got you in such a hole? Messed up on the over/under? Screwed up on a totals bet?”

She bit down on her lip and kept her eye on the cat. “I— What does it matter? I’m never gambling again. I just need time to think. To figure it out.” She looked up at him and held up her hand. “I’m not taking your money, Brody.”

Nice play at misdirecting, but you, Ms. Strickland, have never placed a bet in your life.
“Whatever it is, you know I can take care of it.”

“And then I’m in debt to another powerful and rich man.”

He grimaced at the blow. “Are you comparing me to this Ray person?”

She waved that off. “Of course not. But robbing Peter to pay Paul isn’t going to help me. This is my problem and I’ll take care of it.”

“Goddamn it. I’m trying to help you.”

She stood, closed the gap between them, and put a hand on his chest, her touch branding through his shirt and sizzling his skin with want. “You have. Taking me in today. Feeding Kevin, though he’s not the easiest of guests. You don’t know what it’s meant to me, but I can’t stay here. As soon as I can, I’ll pay you back for what you spent for the private room at the club. And the cat food.”

Damn if he didn’t want to take his payment in kisses, in lovely strokes of her full breasts, in kneading the soft flesh of her ass, in driving inside her again and again. They had fit so well, like perfectly edged puzzle pieces. But he couldn’t indulge those dirty wants.

Because whoop-de-doo, you didn’t have to squint all that hard to see that Brody Kane and Ray Grigson were not so dissimilar after all. Both of them had homed in like predators on a woman down on her luck and taken unscrupulous advantage. He knew she wasn’t there by her own choice, despite all her ridiculous assurances about self-expression and wanting to dance. None of it had stopped him from pinning her to that wall, kissing her senseless, and plunging his cock into the sweet haven of her body.

It would not happen again, no matter how goddamn sexy she looked in his shirt.

Twenty-four hours ago, his life had been fine. He had deals to make and an annoying sister to placate and a personal assistant whom he fantasized about harmlessly. His only real concern was finding his sex mojo after six months of self-imposed celibate misery.
Congratulations, Kane, you’re back!
Mojo firmly restored, and the one woman he wanted to use it on was out of bounds. Worse, she had turned everything upside down—a homeless stripper-slash-assistant with an unhinged cat.

He intended to keep her safe. Which for a man of his wealth and influence shouldn’t have been difficult, but the biggest threat came from him. The things he wanted to do to her, the moans he wanted to suck from her. But first things first. Time to wind up his hardball.

“You can no longer work at that club. End of story.”

Stepping back, she crossed her arms over those beautiful breasts and cocked a pissy eyebrow. “I have tonight off, but tomorrow I’ll be going back in and you can’t tell me differently.”

Wanna bet?
“You won’t be going in, Emma, because I have bought you. You belong to me.”