Bounty (67 page)

“
W
ow
, you look like shit.” It probably isn’t the best way to open a conversation, but Evelyn has surprised me. I was expecting the door to be answered by the same made-up, well-dressed woman that I saw both at the bar and the office. Instead, Evelyn is dressed in sweatpants and an old baggy shirt that almost completely hides the sumptuous figure that I know she’s got under it. Worse yet is her face. Her makeup looks like she’s about to go audition for the job of the sad clown at the circus. Her mascara is as thick under her eyes as a pro football player, and there are long streaks of it dried down along her cheeks. Her lipstick is smudged all around her lips, as well. She’s also obviously shocked to see me. If her eyes get any wider, they might roll right out of the sockets.

“Wh… What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I don’t doubt that, which is why I was surprised you had them send me right up. I assumed you would have seen me on the security cam. Place like this must have a feed directly into your TV from the lobby, no?”

Evelyn glances back behind her for a moment and I can see a TV back there, but it’s off. She turns back to look at me, still seemingly out of sorts.

“I was expecting… I ordered dinner. I thought you were them.”

“Ah. Well, no thanks, I’m heading to the club right after this.”

She looks at me, confused for a moment, then gets the joke but doesn’t seem to appreciate it. I see the familiar fire return to her eyes, finally.

“What do you want, Bash? Or Sebastian. Or whatever the hell you want to be called right now.”

“Bash is fine. I’m headed to the club.” As I’m wearing my leather and cut, I assumed that was obvious. “You going to invite me in, or what?” I’m feeling a bit conspicuous standing in the hallway outside of her apartment, especially given the security they have going on downstairs. I know that guard was as surprised as I was when Evelyn told him to pass me right through, no questions asked. I probably don’t fit the profile of her typical gentleman caller.

The look on Evelyn’s face shifts again, and for a moment, she almost looks worried. She glances over my shoulder and hesitates before finally stepping back with a little nod. Her dark raccoon eyes are watching me carefully.

“Been crying?” I ask as I walk through to her living room. It’s a nice apartment. Not surprising, given what I’m sure Edward was paying her. EAs to men like him don’t come cheap. Especially when you’re fucking them. Still, without that salary, how much longer can she afford this place?

“Crying? Why would you—”

“Your eyes.” I say, without turning back to face her. The view from her apartment is impressive. I can even see the Piston tower from here. When I finally do turn, I’m amused to see her wiping at her makeup with a tissue as she stares at the dark circles in a mirror near the front door.

“Listen, I won’t stay long. I just dropped by to see if you’ve reconsidered my offer. I would have called, but you only had your cell phone number listed, and I think that may have been the one you left floating in a beer glass at Axle’s on Saturday.”

“Why would I have reconsidered?” She stops what she’s doing, smudged tissue in hand, and looks back over to me. “Was my ‘no’ not clear enough?”

There’s that spunk that I find so appealing. Even looking as she does, it’s not hard to see the beauty underneath. I was exaggerating quite a bit when I said she looked like shit. I can’t imagine her ever not looking sexy, even disheveled as she is now. It’s a bit disappointing that she doesn’t seem at all happy to see me. Or does she have more control over her emotions than I suspect? If anything, she looked scared of me at first. Now she’s back to looking pissed off.

“Do you enjoy this view?” I ask, gesturing toward the window behind me. I don’t bother waiting for an answer. “A view like this… a place like this… I can’t imagine it’s cheap. How much longer can you afford to live here without a job? How many more offers are you getting? From what I hear, Edward hasn’t stopped slinging shit your way at every business and company within his wide reach. Even if you manage to apply somewhere that he hasn’t gotten to yet, he’ll hear about it. And he’ll come down hard. Most companies can’t take that kind of pressure.”

“Except the big, bad Bash, is that it? You’re the only one man enough to stand up to him?”

“What little business we’ve done with VI, we can afford to lose. I don’t intimidate easily. Most companies just wouldn’t think you worth the fight.”

That seems to take the wind out of Evelyn’s sails a bit harder than I meant. She bites her lip and takes a deep, steadying breath before responding, but she’s quieter now. “And why do
you
? Why do
you
care? Because we had sex? You don’t strike me as the type to feel like he owes a girl anything just because she fucks him. Or is it that you think that by hiring me, I’m going to be your personal sex slave?”

I can’t help but smile at both the memories of fucking Evelyn, and the way those words sound coming out of her lips. I like when she talks about fucking me. “You’re right. I don’t feel like I owe you a damn thing. And this has nothing to do with how well you can suck dick, or whether you’re going to be giving me lunchtime quickies in the board room.”

“Good, because that’s never going to happen.”

“Sucking my dick, or the quickies?” I’m grinning again as she rolls her eyes.

“Are we done here? I’m expecting my dinner any minute, and you must have some major crime spree to plan.”

I grab the edges of my cut, pulling on them tensely. I know the look that my leather evokes in people, and I’ve always appreciated that shield. It keeps most people away. Today it’s only making things more difficult. “I told you the other day, you don’t know who or what I am. You only know what you think you see.”

“Right, of course. You’re just a poor, misunderstood, millionaire biker. Well, we all have problems. Try having the goddamn CEO of a massive, global company spread lies about you all over the city. You know how I spent my day today? Being laughed at in an interview where the only question that even remotely related to the job was when they asked whether or not I was hired at VI before or after I started sleeping with Edward.”

Her fire is blazing now, and she’s literally shaking with anger. “That’s what’s happening to me right now.
Me
. Someone who has tried to live her life by the book, and with honesty and integrity. Who the hell knows what stories Edward is telling people? What type of twisted bullshit. But go ahead, Bash. Why don’t you tell me why the lies that you tell about yourself, on a daily basis, has led to you being so misunderstood? Tell me why you deserve anyone’s sympathy.”

She’s angry, and she has a right to be. Not at me, although I know I haven’t done a lot to endear myself to her, but at her shitty situation. Edward Stonewall breaks down people and companies all the time, but those are in a business setting where you can argue that it isn’t personal. What he’s doing now, to her, is very personal.

Evelyn knows enough about me already that there is little point in holding back, so I decide not to avoid her question this time. “I don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy,” I say, walking over to her couch and plopping down. I’m tempted to tell her to sit, but I don’t want to order her around in her own apartment. Instead, I just wait and she slowly walks to a chair and sits down on her own.

“I wasn’t asking for it. I just told you that you don’t know who I am, and you only see what you think you see. That isn’t me arguing that I’m misunderstood. That perception is by design.”

“What do you mean?” She raises an eyebrow above one of the black smears. She only made them worse when she started to try and clean them and then stopped. Her eyes are a green today, almost an emerald color, shining brighter than they have in the past. Gorgeous. “Whose design?”

“Mine. What you and everyone else sees is Bash, a hard-drinking, hard-living, motorcycle thug that no one would ever think to tie to corporate America. I’ve been there since almost the beginning. Even though some of the members have changed over the years, and I’m not as close to them as I could be because of the secrets I keep, I still think of them as family. The closest thing I have to a family, anyway. But they’re a troubled family.”

“I’m still waiting to hear the part where you’re something other than what I see. So far, none of this is a surprise.”

I narrow my eyes. I’m not used to a woman talking to me like this, and I’m not sure if it makes me horny or angry. I can’t imagine Jez ever taking a sarcastic tone with me, but I’ve never been as attracted to Jez as I am to Evelyn. My hunger for her goes deeper than a physical desire, and it’s as confusing as it is annoying, so it needs to be pushed aside. I don’t let things like that distract me. Distractions take your eye off the ball and lead to mistakes, and I can’t afford mistakes. The fact that she found out about both sides of my life was an unfortunate coincidence, but unavoidable, from my perspective. I don’t have to make it worse by falling for her.

“The part that you don’t see is internal to the club. The Chrome Soldiers were never a violent club, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t up to no good. Or even that we wouldn’t bring violence, if it was necessary. But we did what needed to be done for everyone to earn a living and so that everyone around knew not to fuck with us. But times change.

“As I started to build my company, I realized that the two worlds could never mix. But at the same time, I had success that I wanted to share with my crew. I wanted them to be successful and, if possible, put them on a path that would allow them to not have to do the shit that we do in order to make a living. Not because I was some goody fucking two-shoes, all of a sudden, but because I didn’t want to see my boys end up in prison or dead. No matter how small-time we were, things have a way of escalating in our world. That means that those two final destinations are part of our general retirement scenario.”

I have her attention now.

“So I started to do shit for them. I arranged for a ‘heist’ of a shipment of fancy electronics. You know, televisions, sound systems, you name it. Enough for everyone in the club to deck their houses out in the best shit. In reality, everything was completely paid for and the crew just thought they made a lucky score. Then I arranged for us to fall into some legitimate businesses. Places the guys can work at and earn a real living, instead of having to pull jobs all of the time and risk getting sent away. Businesses I personally bought, but let them think we acquired in ways they’d find more suitable. It’s a slow migration, but I mean to make these guys all go legit eventually.”
Kicking and screaming, for many of them.

“Even at the office, as Sebastian, I have a carefully cultivated image. Clean cut, mid-level executive, keeps to himself at the office. Aside from the board, barely anyone there even knows my name. Many of the other executives haven’t a clue what I do. Most of them think that I’m related in some way to Hans, which explains why I have a job at all, and why I’m often talking to him in his office alone. It’s a rumor I started myself.”

Evelyn is shaking her head. “This is all so crazy to me. But okay, fine. You’re a complex man living a complex life, and maybe you aren’t a criminal. At least, not anymore. Fine. But that still doesn’t answer the question of why you’re here. What do you want from me? Why do you care if I come and work for you? There are a million EAs, and none of them come with the baggage I’m coming with.”

My fingers curl into the leather of my jacket, pressing hard against my thigh, and I tilt my head down to stare at my whitening knuckles. I had a very clear reason about why I needed to hire Evelyn when I showed up at her door. I wanted to keep an eye on her. Make sure my secrets stay safe. But I know now that isn’t the issue. I’m a good enough judge of character to know she isn’t going to be looking to profit off of my secrets, even if I walk out of her life right now and never look back. And that reason would never get her to agree to come work for me.

There’s only one thing I can say that has a chance of convincing her.

The truth.

“There’s no one in the world that knows the truth about both sides of my life. Keeping that secret on my own is… hard. And I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

“Alone,” she says. Her voice is quiet, but the word resonates in my head as if it’s echoing inside of the Grand Canyon.

“Alone,” I agree. I didn’t realize it until I was talking. Until I was finally admitting what I’ve been doing for the past decade. It was only then that I realized how much of a relief it was to tell someone. How much of a relief it would be to finally not have to hide it from at least one person in my life. But even so, I’m still not convinced as to whether her coming to work for me would be the best idea I ever had, or the biggest mistake of my life.

“Okay.”

When I finally look up at her, I notice that she’s moved off of the chair and is now standing right in front of me with a little smile on her face. I raise my eyebrow, confused for a moment at what she’s agreeing to.

“Okay, I’ll come and work for you,” she clarifies. “I’ll be your EA.”

I stand as well, coming up almost a full head taller than she is, and look down at her face, lifting one of my hands and placing it on the side of her cheek as I brush against the mascara that is still lining her face.

“I’ll work for you,” she says with a serious look, although she makes no move to push my hand away. “But I promised myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes that I made with Edward. I can’t sleep with my boss again.”

“Then it’s a good thing I don’t need you to start until tomorrow. I won’t be your boss until then.”

I dip my head down and crush my lips against hers. I feel a moment of hesitation in her response, but then she returns my kiss just as hard. My tongue just slips between her lips when a sudden knock at the door causes us to both jump back in surprise.

“The pizza,” she breathes.

“Let me take care of that…”