Can't Buy Me Love (25 page)

Was this how he was going to get in touch with her? By sending his thug?

She shut the door and looked behind her.

The hallway was empty, the house silent.

She ran quickly toward the center of the house, thinking she’d cut through the kitchen and get to the family wing and make sure they were all okay, make sure Carl
didn’t get lost in the big house and beat the shit out of the wrong woman. Or scare a little kid.

She gagged, remembering the smile on his face when he broke her ribs. His glee as she screamed.

She ran faster.

The carpet under her feet changed to tile and the kitchen appliances loomed in the shadows. She cut around the island and ran right into a solid wall of heat. Flesh under a T-shirt.

Somehow she knew it wasn’t Luc. The smell was wrong. The shape was wrong—wider and shorter. His hands as he grabbed her arms were foreign.

Carl
.

She kicked, lifting her knee toward his dick, hoping to catch him off guard. Hoping, actually, to stop any future, horrific daddy plan he might have.

“Whoa, whoa,” a deep voice said as he shifted sideways, blocking her knee. “What the hell?” She lifted her arm, his hand attached, and sunk her teeth deep into the thin flesh on top of his knuckles.

“Jesus Christ, lady, what’s going on?”

“Let me go, asshole,” she said through her teeth and he dropped her. She stepped back, out of reach. He was in shadows, his face a black blur.

“Tell Dennis I have a plan.” She continued to step backward, inching away from him.

“Dennis?”

The overhead lights flickered on and she blinked at the sudden change.

It wasn’t Carl.

The big man with the broken-down face, the thin scar connecting his lip to his ear, shaking out the hand she bit, wasn’t Carl. Her brain simply could not process this; fear and adrenaline had shorted her circuits and she could only gape at him.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My friend,” Luc said, and she whirled to see him at the doorway, his hand on the light switches. “Billy Wilkins.”

“She bit me!” Billy pointed at the perfect circle of her teeth imprinted around his knuckle.

“I’m sorry. You grabbed me. I—”

“You ran into me!”

“I thought … I thought you were someone else.”

“Luc,” the guy said, smiling a little, and his face changed. Through the scars and the hideously broken nose, something glimmered. Nothing handsome, the man was too hard used for that, but something charming. A little boy with mischief on his mind.

“You didn’t tell me I was going to have to fight women to stay here.”

“Stay here?” she asked.

“Billy is a guest.” She shrank slightly in the face of his intensity, shifting sideways, putting the corner of the island between them.

He noticed and crossed his arms, only managing to look more threatening.

“That’s great,” she said, trying to smile and knowing she’d failed. Luc’s eyebrows clashed over his beautiful eyes.

“Who did you think he was?” Luc pointed at Billy. Her mind backtracked, trying to remember what she’d said, what she’d unwittingly revealed.

“A burglar.” She knew she sounded ridiculous, but she tossed her hair over her shoulder and met Luc’s unreadable gaze. Fake it till you make it was kind of her motto.

“Stop lying,” Luc said through his teeth, and she realized he was mad. Unease, the lesser cousin to all that fear she’d just felt, climbed into her heartbeat.

“I’m not—”

He shook his head once and she fell silent, her lies giving up the fight.

“You mentioned Dennis,” he said.

Shit
.

“What the hell is going on, Tara? And you tell me the truth or you can get the hell off this ranch.”

Luc stood there a stranger to her—his loyalty firmly on the side of his sister, not that she expected anything else. Not really.

She glanced sideways at Billy and that charming little boy was gone, replaced by a gladiator. He was better backup muscle than Carl could ever dream of being and she knew when she was beat. And frankly, while she would never tell him the truth—not all of it anyway—she was very glad to hand over the protection of Victoria to someone who was better suited for the job.

“Victoria is interested in Dennis.”

“Interested?”

“Yes.”

Luc looked baffled, as if he didn’t understand the word, and she sighed. “Interested as in, wanting to get to know him better?” She lifted her eyebrows, using his words from this morning to make it clear.

“That’s ridiculous,” he laughed.

“She came into the workshop this morning to ask about him.”

“Dennis?”

She nodded, and after a long minute he sighed. “Okay.”

“No, not okay. Not at all. He’s …” She licked her lips, finding the fine line she was going to walk. “Not a good guy. Not for her. Not for anyone.”

Luc and Billy shared a quick look.

“You thought I was this Dennis guy?” Billy asked.

“A friend of his.”

Luc’s face was hard as rock and she saw all the dots
connect in his head. He understood the threat, understood exactly what she’d brought into his house.

“Yes, Dennis is the kind of man who has friends that break into people’s houses to scare them.”

She didn’t say “and worse.” She sort of thought that was a given.

“And you know him how?”

“I hardly think that’s the point.”

Luc’s eyes penetrated her chest, and she had to look away.
You’re the point
, his eyes said, but she could take care of herself. They’d covered this ground and she’d all but asked him not to care.

“You need to keep Victoria away from Dennis,” she said. “I tried to dissuade her, but …” She looked back up at Luc and saw the fear in his eyes.

“She’s so desperate,” he murmured, and she nodded.

“What about you?” Billy asked. “Does someone need to keep this Dennis guy away from you?”

Luc stared at her so hard it was as if he were reading her mind, the back of her skull, the inside of her soul.

And the words she thought she’d never say grew in her mouth like weeds, fertilized by the weakness she felt in her bones and her skin, deep in her belly. She was tired of the fight. Of Dennis. Of pretending she was tough, when all she wanted was a soft spot to lay her head and someone to talk to. Really talk to.

She was tired of being her.

She opened her mouth, the words poised to fall out, but Luc got there first.

“She can take care of herself,” he said.

It wasn’t rejection, not like what she’d done to him, but the sting pierced her chest, going all the way down to her stomach.

What did you expect?
the demon whispered.

Too much
, she thought, when she least expected it. And that in the end was always her downfall.

He stood there, staring at her, and she didn’t know what he saw when he looked at her. What truth he was looking at. Hell, she couldn’t even understand what he expected. And that, of course, made her search for the worst possible thing—because that was what was usually expected of her.

“I’ll … ah … pack my stuff.” She cleared her throat, and hated herself for her clenched hands. Her stinging sadness. “Head back to town.”

“Probably a good idea.” Luc nodded, no longer looking at her.

“Good night,” she whispered, nodding to Billy because she was too tired to do anything more, and she left without once looking back at Luc.

“
You’re going to
just let her go?” Billy asked, and Luc nodded, getting a beer out of the fridge. He didn’t want a beer, but he needed to do something with his hands. With his body. Because that woman’s naked eyes were a magnet he was going to resist if it killed him.

“She’s in trouble,” Billy said.

“I think she’s the kind of woman who is always in trouble.” He stared at the bottle, watching condensation gather under the frilled metal cap.

“Dude—”

“What?” Luc barked. “She doesn’t want me worrying about her. She made that clear.”

“That’s never stopped you before.” Billy took the beer from off the counter. He popped off the top and handed it back to him.

“If you’ve got something to say, Billy, spit it out.”

“Do you know why the guys call you Grandpa?”

The beast of his temper rattled its chains. “I can guess.”

“It has nothing to do with your age,” Billy said. “And everything to do with how you worry. About everyone. Whether they want it or not.”

“I’m team captain—”

“Right, and there’s not another team captain in the league who cares if their center has a thing for strippers! You get that, right?”

Luc forced himself not to sag against the counter, not to feel every single second of his age in the face of Billy’s assessment. Of course he understood that—this compulsion he had, no matter how much it chafed or how badly he wanted to resist it, was his own. He needed to take care of the people around him.

“You know this thing with your sister and your dad—he put all this shit together, the will, all of it—”

“You’re making me very sorry I told you about any of that.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Billy grinned and leaned past him to get his own beer. “But I’m guessing your dad knew that you wouldn’t leave your sister—”

“I was going to,” Luc insisted, realizing that as far as defenses went, that one was awful: I was going to be an asshole.

“No, you weren’t,” Billy scoffed. “You’d have found a reason to stay. Just like you’re going to find a reason to go talk to that woman.”

“Tara?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. “She doesn’t need me. She’s made that very clear.”

“She needs someone.” Billy pulled a bag of chips out of the pantry door, already at home. “I’m dumb as rock, but I can see that.”

Luc took a swig of beer, as if challenging Billy’s assessment. As if to say fuck you and fuck Tara. Fuck everyone else I need to need me. He resisted as long as he could, his hands gripping the counter as if there were one of those cartoon gale-force winds working against him, threatening to suck him right back out to Tara.

“Damnit.” He pushed the beer over to Billy and followed Tara out the door.

“Go get her, Grandpa!”

Everything fit into her purse. The negligees that had been sitting in the top drawer for weeks before Lyle died. The bunny slippers—all of it. When she walked out of here, she was taking every last scrap of lace and silk and leather she owned. And it fit inside a purse—how sad was that?

She’d put extra locks on the door of her apartment. The windows. Hell, maybe she’d move. There were fresh starts everywhere. Someone just had to be desperate enough to find them.

She swung the overstuffed hobo bag over her shoulder and turned, only to find Luc filling the door. Shadows cut across his face, leaving his eyes and lips revealed in moonlight from the window.

He was a closed book, every feature and muscle held in the kind of control she could only dream of.

Her body sighed, swooning in remembered pleasure. So weak in front of all of his strength.

“I’m leaving,” she said when the silence became too much. “You don’t need to stand here and watch me go.”

“I’m worried about you.”

Worried? About her? That was sort of a first in her life, so she gave herself a moment with the words, a breath, a heartbeat, like holding a diamond in her hand. And then she pushed them—and him—away.

“I thought I made it clear I wasn’t interested in your concern.” She shook her hair out of her eyes, meeting his gaze with every ounce of bravado and bullshit she could muster.
Don’t care!
she wanted to yell at him.
I’m the poison, I’ve always been the poison, and I will ruin this place and this family
.

“Unfortunately, Tara, I can’t lie every time I feel something I don’t want to. I can’t turn it off and I can’t pretend I’m not feeling it.”

There was no response, no flippant comeback to something so honest. It shamed her, his honesty. So she
said nothing. She just put her chin up and walked toward the door. Toward him.