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“You could have called… told me not to meet with her…”
My smile crept back up again. “Yes. I could.” I beckoned the waiter over. “But where would the amusement be in that, Miss Emmerson?”
“Amusement?” she asked, looking back toward the table as the waiter joined us.
“Another scotch,” I told him. “And whatever my companion here is drinking.”
He sidestepped to meet her eyes. “Same again?” he asked, and she nodded.
“Please.”
I waited until he was on the retreat before I spoke again.
“Rebecca Lane is a loose cannon on very dangerous ground. You’d be wise not to associate with her again.”
I felt her stare as it ploughed right into me. “She’s in love with you. I guess that makes her cannon a little looser.”
My laugh was cold. “The girl is not in love with me.”
I wasn’t expecting the strength in her tone as her words came again. “She’s in love with you. Definitely. It was obvious. You can’t fake that kind of emotion.”
In normal circumstances I’d have dismissed her reasoning with a wave of the hand and relegated her to the realms of idiocy, where I’d already relegated the vast majority of humankind.
But these were not normal circumstances. Nothing about this girl was normal circumstances.
“Stockholm Syndrome is a very real phenomenon,” I told her. “There is nothing even close to love in the way that girl feels about me. It’s fantastical projection, nothing more.”
She shrugged again. I was becoming familiar with the dainty movement in her shoulders. “If you say so.”
“I know so.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree,” she said, with the softest smile on that pretty mouth.
I had to rein in the desire to sink my teeth into her lower lip and tug until she squealed.
She was an enigma in the most dazzling of contradictions. Sure, yet uncertain. Self-assured, yet seeking solace in other’s strength. Shy, yet brave. Powerful in her own determination, yet drowning in fear.
Incredible.
The girl was incredible.
She’d be as lucrative as ten Rebecca Lanes combined.
The waiter returned with our drinks and this time I took mine from him without tossing it down in one.
“I never agree to disagree,” I told her when he was gone. “In my world it’s my way or a severe bout of punishment until you rethink your position.”
“And is this your world?” she asked, without even a hint of brat in her voice.
“Not yet,” I smirked and held up my glass to her. “But you’ll be in it soon enough.”
She finished up her first drink and took a decent swig of the next.
“How soon is soon enough?” she asked, and the desperation in her tone was palpable. “I was hoping you could tell me… a date… I need to make plans…”
“A month or more, as I already stated.”
She flinched. “I know you did. I was just hoping…” She took a breath and plastered on a smile of such fakery, I wanted to slap it right off her face. “I’ll be ready whenever you want me.”
She wasn’t expecting the way I moved. Wasn’t expecting the way I took her jaw in my grip and forced her eyes to mine.
“I know about your sister,” I said. “I know she’s scraping the dregs of existence, snorting drugs with a fuckwit loser. It’s pitiful. A sorry situation which you have no responsibility for.”
Her mouth dropped open so fucking wide I could have slipped my fingers to the back of her throat in a fucking beat. I didn’t let go of her jaw. Not even when she squirmed and raised her hands to mine.
“How did you?! How could you know?!”
“As I said, knowing everything is important in my line of business. You’d better get used to it, Miss Emmerson. Believe me, I’ll know a damn sight more by the time your sixty days are done.”
Her eyes welled. Hurt.
She was fucking hurt.
Embarrassed.
Humiliated.
I’d have licked the tears right from her eyes if we weren’t in a fucking cocktail bar.
“She needs me,” she whispered. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right for her.”
“That’s noble dedication, considering she’d undoubtedly do whatever it takes to make it to the fucking dealer’s pad while you were burning in front of her. She’d sell your soul for a decent fucking coke wrap.”
She shook her head, straining against my grip. “She’s in a bad place. She can get better. I’ll make sure she gets better.”
“Such foolish optimism,” I said. “There’s every chance it’s her who’ll make sure you get fucking worse.”
We shouldn’t be having this conversation.
Sixty-day conquest or not, this was none of my business. None of my interest.
Her druggie sister and her pitiful existence made no odds to mine.
Paige Emmerson herself made no odds to mine, other than the promise of a delicious cash injection to my offshore bank account.
Quite why I kept her in my grip with my gut flaming at the disgust of her being caught up in this shit was beyond every one of my well-accustomed sensibilities.
