She took his hand and let him lead her into the party. And the night turned out to be sexy and amazing. Magical. A fairy tale coming to life and dancing around her. But she knew when he tucked her back into the car that night, exhausted and sated, that there was no way she could stay at The Ranch for the rest of the weekend. No way she could play his submissive for that long, seeing him look at her with more than lust in his eyes, feeling more than she wanted to feel.
Her body may crave it.
But her heart wouldn’t survive it.
She couldn’t be what he wanted.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Calm your ass down. Falling for someone is a good thing, chickadee.” Sam scanned the bottom shelf of the romance section in their favorite used bookstore.
“No, it’s not. Not for me. Not right now. I’m doing that thing all over again—looking for love in all the wrong places.”
She snorted. “Should I slap a cowboy hat on you and call you Sissy?”
“This isn’t funny.”
Sam ignored her, happily humming the soundtrack of Urban Cowboy.
Tessa adjusted her stack of books before they slid from her arms. She’d gone for all horror and thrillers today. Enough with the romance. No more princes or dukes or anything in between. She needed to break this fairy-tale addiction. “And I don’t know why you’re all for this now. Weren’t you the one who sent him packing when he tracked me down to your place?”
She shrugged. “I sent him away then because I wanted to see how bad he really wanted to find you. If he’d just wanted booty call number two, he would’ve let it go at that point. The fact that he went as far as he did to find you is kind of romantic. Frankly, I’m kind of pulling for Team Kade now.”
Tessa tilted her head back, staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles and trying to talk herself out of shaking her way too optimistic best friend. “You don’t get it. I know the type of guy Kade is, how relationships are for him. It’s the whole reason I let this go beyond that first night. I knew the freaking score, and I’m getting all attached anyway.”
“You know what kind of—” Sam sat back on her heels, peering up at her with a frown. “Oh, honey, you Googled him, didn’t you?”
“Maybe a little. Aren’t those necessary dating steps these days?”
“Not if you want to actually enjoy dating.” She sighed and pushed herself up from the floor, a highlander romance tucked under her arm.
“I needed to know what his life has been like since I knew him. He’s done some amazing things with his company. But his personal life . . . well, the gossip columns call him the Time Share Bachelor. A month or two with him and a girl falls head over heels and is picking out china patterns. Then he dumps her.”
“That’s probably because—”
“It’s because he likes the chase. The challenge is in getting a girl to fall for him. So he lays it on thick, is the perfect guy, irresistible. Remember how Doug could dial up the charm?”
She shook her head. “Doug was never charming. You saw what you wanted there. This isn’t that. From everything you’ve told me about him, Kade wouldn’t be that ruthless.”
“I’m not saying Kade’s doing it with bad intentions. Maybe each time he really does think the girl could be the one. But I told you how things were for him in high school. Girls ignored him at best and teased him at worse. Think how satisfying it must be to get the most beautiful women in the city crawling after him. He can bed them, get them desperate for something real, then leave them in his wake when he gets bored. And I”—she pointed to her chest—“represent the ultimate prize in that game. The girl he wanted in high school who basically told him he wasn’t good enough.”
Sam laid her book on top of Tessa’s stack. “I think you’re taking your Intro to Psych classes too seriously.”
Tessa followed her to the next aisle. “All I’m saying is that his exes don’t go away gracefully. The main suspect in that restaurant fire is one of his former girlfriends. Batshit crazy stuff. Women fall in love with him. And God, believe me, I can see why. But then he’s on to the next. I was okay with that. I figured since I knew what I was getting into, it was fine. I didn’t want anything serious anyway. Then fast-forward a few weeks and here I am, cruising down the same goddamned path. And your head would explode if you knew some of the things we’ve done together. I should be running fast and far. He wants a real submissive, Sam. He hasn’t said that, but I know it’s more than fun for him. We went to this resort this weekend, and I saw how natural he is in that world. I’m not cut out for that. I just left a marriage where I was treated like property. Why the hell would I even want to mess with that role? How could I find that sexy? What is wrong with me?”
Sam tilted her head in sympathy. “Nothing is wrong with you, hon. Maybe you’re just as kinky as he is. Have you considered that? And you’ve been dealt a shitty hand with people in the past. That doesn’t mean that this guy is going to screw you over, too. You said it yourself, he had feelings for you back then. Maybe that never totally went away. Maybe you are different for him.”
“Or maybe as soon as he knows he’s got me, he’ll walk away. It would be kind of poetic justice considering what I did to him.” She bent down and set the teetering stack of books on the floor, then sat down next to them.
Sam sighed and sank down next to Tessa. Hopefully, no one was looking for romances by authors with Q last names because they were now blocking the whole section. “So just break it off with him then.”
“What?” She looked at Sam, wondering where her hopeless romantic of a friend had wandered off to.
“You don’t want to get hurt. I get that. But that’s the only surefire way to ensure that you don’t. Tell him you need some space right now, that you need to focus on your job and school.”
She blinked. It was the exact thing she’d been thinking she needed to do, but hearing it out loud made her chest pull tight. “I’m not even sure we have anything to really break off. We’ve never put a label on any of it. It’s just been sort of this super intense adventure.”
Sam patted Tessa’s knee then grabbed half the stack of books before standing up again. “Well, there you go. Problem solved. You can go back to focusing on your list. There’s a Mexican cooking class at Central Market next week. We should go. And I think this store has a book club we can join. You can meet some new girlfriends.”
The words turned into droning noise in her head. She managed a wan smile. “Right. Sounds great.”
“Perfect,” Sam said brightly. “Now grab the rest of those books. We’ve got to get back to work.”
Tessa hung up the phone and raised her arms above her head in victory, sending a broad smile to the man leaning in her doorway. Finally, after her shitty morning and her stress about what to do about Kade, she had some good news.
Gibson grinned back. “Got ’em?”
“Doubled his donation from last year and is going to sponsor the swag bags.”
“And the crowd goes wild,” he announced, complete with sound effects of a cheering arena. “I told you you’d get him. The guy is a hard-ass in business but he’s a softie when it comes to kids. Plus, I heard you talking to him. You could’ve charmed the watch off his wrist if you’d wanted it.”
Tessa leaned back in her chair, grinning like a cartoon character. She knew she had a long way to go. But after the drama with losing the band booking, this was definitely the biggest victory she’d had in a while. “I researched the crap out of his company, his life, and the causes he’s championed in the past. Your tip on jotting down talking points before calling was brilliant. It helped me not to stall out and have those awkward silences like I did with that guy James Alario. God, that one was awful. But with this guy, as soon as I asked him about his dogs, I was in and it became a relaxed, normal conversation.”
Gibson crossed his arms,
looking pleased. Something about the expression reminded her so much of Kade that she had to rub chill bumps from her arms. There was no blood relation between the two, and they certainly didn’t look alike with their opposite coloring. But it was obvious that the brothers had been cut from similar cloth—and mighty fine cloth it was. She was still a bit in shock that the gorgeous, confident man standing before her now used to be that angry, gangly boy who’d called her a bitch to her face when she hadn’t stood up for Kade in high school when his name had been trashed.
At the time, she’d deserved Gibson’s anger, had almost welcomed it as penance for all that had happened. But when she’d found out that Gibson was going to be her new boss, she’d been convinced that all that hate would still be there. She’d braced herself for getting fired on the first day. But instead, Gibson had been nothing but professional and helpful during her time here. If he still held any ire toward her, he’d been successful in hiding it.
“You’re good at talking to people,” Gibson said, nodding at the phone. “These bigwigs are used to people blowing smoke up their asses with all that fake flattery and fawning to get what they want. But you can tell you’re not doing that. You’re a straight-shooter and once you start talking about your charity, you’d have to have a heart of ice not to be at least a little affected by that. Hell, when I heard you talking to Mary Fielder the other day, you had me wanting to take in foster kids.”
“Hey, don’t rule it out,” she said, pointing at him. “They’re always looking for good people to help.”
He laughed. “No way, not right now anyway at least. I can barely keep a plant alive. Kade got the daddy gene. That one might’ve been left out for me. You’ve met my train wreck of a father.”
She shuddered, remembering the few brief times she’d come across Kade’s stepdad. Even in just the short glimpses, she’d sensed the poison in that man. She’d stayed with enough families over the years to pick out the evil that glimmered beneath the surface in people. Kade’s stepfather had been ripe with the stench of it. But before her mind could run away with memories, her attention snagged on something else Gibson had said. Kade got the daddy gene.
“Kade wants kids?” she asked, the idea not quite gelling with the image she had of him.
Gibson frowned, opened his mouth, then thought better of it and shut it. He pushed off the wall. “Never mind, not my place to say anything.”
That had her sitting up straighter in her seat. Gibson was the only one besides Sam who knew she was seeing Kade. “What is there to say, Gib?”
Gibson looked toward the open door, obviously debating, then gave in. He turned back to her. “Kade already has a kid, Tessa. A daughter from his first marriage.”
All air evaporated from her lungs. “What?”
Kade had mentioned a previous marriage in passing, but it hadn’t even crossed her mind to ask if there were children. And in all the time they’d had together so far, he’d never said anything about having a child.
“Don’t take offense if he hasn’t brought it up. It’s not the easiest topic for him. He’s even managed to keep it out of the press because he doesn’t want any of that attention directed at his daughter. The custody situation is messy, and he doesn’t get to see Rosalie very often. His ex has gone through a lot of trouble to limit it to only a few hours a month.”
“Why? Does she live far away?” she asked, not understanding why a mother would keep a child away from her dad if he was a good guy and wanted to participate.
Gibson shut her office door and stepped forward, bracing his hands on the chair across from her small desk. “His ex-wife had the judge in her pocket and painted Kade’s lifestyle as deviant and endangering to a child even though he, of course, would never expose Rosalie to any of that. He keeps his sex life private just like any other responsible parent. But his ex paid one of the maids from the service Kade used at the time to take pictures of a room he had upstairs at his house. It held all his kink equipment, which, of course, would look terrifying to an outsider. And she also got one of his former girlfriends to give a statement about his proclivities. You know how things can be twisted out of context. Throw out to your average person that he ties up women and beats them for enjoyment, and you’ve got people ready to burn him at the stake. The accusations and evidence did enough damage to get him only limited, supervised time with his daughter. Rosalie’s not even allowed over to his house.”
“Jesus,” Tessa said, her shoulders sagging with the knowledge.
“Yeah, he has another court date coming up, so he’s hoping for a better outcome. He’s locked down his private life. Up until you, for the last two years he’s kept things at The Ranch where everyone knows how to keep things quiet. Publicly, he’s said that he isn’t in that lifestyle. But I don’t know how far those things are going to go. People are still suspicious since he only goes out to public events with friends or his assistant.”
“They know he’s not living like a monk,” she said flatly.
“Exactly,” he said with a tired huff.
It warmed her to see how much Gibson seemed to care about his stepbrother, like he would do anything to fix it for him. Hell, she wished she could fix it. The thought of Kade being cut off from his daughter, and some little girl out there missing out on time with her dad. God, what she wouldn’t have given to have had more time with her father. Her mother had gone off the deep end with her bipolar disorder, trading her meds for drugs of another sort, right around the time her dad had gotten sick. She’d dragged Tessa to a new town and kept her from him. By the time child services had stepped in to remove her from her mother, her father had been too ill to care for her. He’d died of brain cancer three months after she’d been placed in foster care.
“There’s nothing else to do but hope?” she asked.
Gibson shrugged. “He’s got a top-notch lawyer who told him he needs to create an image of stability. Kade’s cut down on a lot of his travel and regulated his work hours. That playboy, being seen at all the hot spots version of himself is in the past. He has a room set up for Rosalie. But that judge is all 1950s values and conservatism . . .”
“Kade needs a wife and a picket fence,” she said, the words landing like rocks in her belly.
Gibson looked up with a smirk. “His house has an iron fence around it. That’d probably do. But yeah. Maybe even throw in a golden retriever because that image of the scary whip-wielding, leather-clad freak is going to be hard to overcome in court.”
She pressed her fingers to the spot between her brows, a headache forming. “And instead he’s wasting time with me.”
Gibson sat in the chair like the conversation was exhausting him. “Whatever y’all have going on is none of my business. But know that I told him he should take your relationship public, even if y’all were just doing the casual thing, and make it look more serious—even to you. But Kade’s a better guy than I am. After what you did to him, I wouldn’t have had qualms about breaking your heart back.”
Her ribs cinched and her attention snapped upward.
Gibson shook his head. “Maybe that makes me a dick, but you crushed him, Tessa, and sent him into a lion’s den with no weapon. The shit Doug did to him that night . . . he wouldn’t even talk to me about it. But I know it was more than just your average beating. Something in my brother died that night. He was in therapy for a year after he moved in with his father because everyone was so worried about him. He’d never tell you that because he thinks it makes him look weak. But you have no idea what he went through. None of us really do.”
Tears pricked her eyes between blinks, guilt raking through her with jagged force.
“I don’t have a problem with you now. I can see you’re trying to change. But whether you realize it or not, keeping your relationship secret is a selfish move, especially if you know there’s no future. You get to date Kade for whatever purpose yo
u want, you get to have a new job, you get to help your charity. It’s the same as it was in high school. Kade helping, you taking. Kade tutored you when you needed help, he gave you friendship when you hadn’t done anything to earn it, and he protected your secrets at great cost to him. And he never asked for anything back from you.”
Tessa swiped at the moisture that tracked down her cheek. With each jab she felt smaller and smaller, but he was only speaking the truth. “I know. I didn’t mean for it to be that way . . .”
“Doesn’t matter what you meant, only what is. So, if you really feel bad about it and want to make it up to him, now’s the time. Either suck up whatever consequences you might suffer and be seen on his arm or cut him loose so he can find someone who isn’t scared to be out in public with him and who isn’t opposed to the kind of relationship he wants. You two have been seeing each other a lot, so I know you’re not blind. Kade cares about you. You knew it back then and you know it now. So it’s your turn to take a hard look at your motivations. From the outside looking in, I see a girl who’s enjoying a wild adventure and is soothing her wounded pride from getting cheated on with a guy who openly adores her. I don’t see a woman willing to give herself to something real. My brother deserves better than that.”
She stared at him, words leaving her.
He pushed up from the chair and tapped the top of her desk with his palm, returning to cool business mode. “I have to get to a meeting. Give it some thought. And call me if you need any help with the rest of that potential donors list.”
He walked out without waiting for her reply, leaving her reeling. So much for speculating on whether or not Gibson still held any bad feelings toward her. He’d been better at hiding his low opinion of her than she’d thought.
But harder than fielding the barbs he’d thrown her way was wondering if he was dead-on right. Maybe she hadn’t changed at all.