Page 17 of Dirty Little Vow
Dash squints in a “what the fuck?” expression and I’m right there with him. He appears oblivious to everything that’s happened. I’m not sure I believe him. “When will you be back here?”
“I just finished up. I’m headed back. Why? What happened now?”
“Meet me Cupcakes and Books in fifteen minutes.” I disconnect and eye Dash. “He’s just the kind of arrogant prick who would stand in front of me and lie.”
“But will he stand in front of both of us and lie?”
“While wetting his pants,” I assure him, and text Dierk:I’m meeting Gavin in fifteen minutes at Cupcakes and Books, if he shows. Send one of your men but have him stand down until I say otherwise.
I slide my phone into my pocket. “Dierk is sending one of his men to meet us in case we need him. If we find out that Gavin’s a part of this, he might not live to see another day if I don’t have someone to intervene.”
“Amen to that, brother,” Dash replies. “Amen to that.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tyler
With Dash to my right, we walk toward the coffee shop in silence, both of us striding long and heavy, and for my part, my mood is as stormy as the weather. The day is chilly. The strong smell of rain permeates the air, the heavy, gray-stained clouds above promising a downpour, but any bad weather we might endure is nothing compared to the turbulence of my clearly unchecked emotions. For a man who is all about control, the idea that Gavin is my best next step in Bella’s return is as good as quicksand under my feet. I’m drowning in her absence, our lack of answers and options, and downright suffocating in guilt.
We pass a jewelry store where Bella often sneaks peeks at the sparkling gemstones in the window, and it’s like a stab in my gut. Her birthday is almost here, and I just bought her a necklace she’s admired from that store. If I never get to give it to her…I stop myself from going there. Iwillgive it to her. I’m just letting this walk fuck with me. And how can I not? At least several times a week, Bella makes this trip to Cupcakes and Books, as she most likely did today. Even now I scan the area, looking for her, a desperation in me that is nothing I have ever known, but everything consuming me right here, right now. Dash curses next to me, and I follow his gaze to a blonde female on the opposite side of the street, a flicker of hope filling me until I realize what he obviously already has. She’s not Bella.
We’re both praying she will step out of some quaint little store, as she would call it, and the world would be right again.
Dash’s cellphone rings and I glance over at the exact moment he eyes his screen and declines the call before shooting off a text message. “That was Allie,” he informs me, casting me side-eye.
Allie being his wife and my employee, as well as Bella’s close friend. “I’m not telling her what’s going on,” he adds. “Not yet. She’ll freak out and get in the middle of this, and I don’t need her in the line of fire. I won’t put her in danger, too.”
But I put Bella in danger.
Intentional or not, that’s the implication of the words that just came out of his mouth. The moment I crossed the taboo line with Bella—my employee, his sister—I made her a target of my enemies, the biggest of which was my father.Stillis my father. It’s as if he is reaching out of his grave and wrapping his hand around her throat, and choking the life out of me, with her.
She has always been the perfect woman who deserved better than me and my fucked-up family. I knew that. I knew, and I went there with her anyway. If I’m honest, despite three years of trying to prove myself wrong, I was always going to go there with Bella.
My mind travels back in time to the night I’d met her. She’d applied for a job as an attorney, willing to learn and take on agenting duties. My assistant had quickly figured out who her mother was or had been—the founder of Alice’s Home Shopping Network. Bella didn’t need a job. I was skeptical but intrigued. But I’d been buried in work, too buried for anything but an after-hours interview. It was almost six in the evening when Bella had arrived to meet with me, the day winding down, the office clearing out even if I was not. When my secretary announced Bella and led her into my office, I’d instinctively stood up, and the minute my eyes had landed on her, I felt the punch in my gut. There stood a petite, beautiful little blonde goddess with lush curves and sea-blue eyes, who despite her tiny stature, oozed as much pride and confidence as her CEO mother once had.
She’d enchanted me when I’d have sworn that to be an impossible task. After all, at that point in my life, I’d had my share of gorgeous women, even intelligent, gorgeous women, but they all saw me as their money ticket, their ride to comfort and a luxurious life. But Bella was different. She had her own money, a famous NASCAR driver for a father, and a mother who set the standard all women wanted to live up to in business. She didn’t need my money. She didn’t need to work. And yet, she came out fighting for the job and for her own individual success.
I can’t even remember how many late nights over the past three years she’s knocked on my door and poked her head in when no one else dared disturb me. “Can I run a negotiation by you?” she’d ask.
I came to look forward to those late evenings, but I never asked her to drinks or dinner. I never touched her. I nevercrosseda line. I wanted to, but looking back, my restraint with Bella was miraculous. That is, until my father died, and she showed up at my apartment.
It was the night that everything changed between Bella and me in ways I’m not even sure she fully understood.
Chapter Fourteen
Tyler
That night, the night that ultimately changed everything between me and Bella, I’d been coming out of my own skin, tormented by both my father’s life and death when my doorbell had rung. The next thing I’d known, there Bella was, standing at my door, trying to get me to not only let her in, but invite her to stay. And she did. She made me watch a damn chick flick and all I could do was sit there and think about stripping her naked and taking her to my bed.
Impossibly, at some point, I’d dozed off, almost as if she was as much the adrenaline in my blood as she was the salve to my soul. While I was out, she’d apparently chosen to enter my bedroom to use my bathroom. Adrenaline had surged through me with the realization that her actions were filled with intent. She knew she was pushing me, and at a time that I was standing on the edge of a cliff, barely hanging on, and trying to convince the world nothing was further from the truth.
I’d been hot and hard with a strong dose of furious, and my mind goes back to that night, reliving the confrontation that should have ended us before we started. I remember looking around the living room, the scent of her—all sweet and floral—everywhere around me while she was nowhere to be found.
I’d figured out pretty quickly she was in my bedroom, or rather, my bathroom, and the way she was tempting me, pushing me, and on the day of my father’s memorial, had sent me over the edge.
I’d stepped to the door and knocked, the thundering of my fist on the wood no match for the pounding in my chest or the throbbing of my cock. The door had swung open, and Bella had appeared, still fully dressed. Not that I expected her to be naked or in lingerie, but there had been no doubt that night she’d meant to tempt me. The sexual tension between us by that point—and well before that night—had been palpable, and there was no easy way for me to do the right thing in the state of mind I’d been in. The truth is, the mix of disappointment and relief I’d felt had not been pleasant nor had it done anything to eliminate my anger, but rather spiked it right over the top.
I’d come at her hard and fast. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”