Page 58 of Come A Little Closer

“Tallulah!” he called after me, but I hailed a passing taxi, my arm shooting into the air as soon as I saw it turning the corner.

The car stopped and I climbed in without so much as a backward glance. I had still owed over twenty thousand dollars in outstanding credit card debt, and I now owed that sum to my boyfriend. My boss.

“Where to, miss?” the cab driver asked as I tried wiping away the tears, but it was no use.

“The Carmichael Plantation, please,” I said miserably, new tears simply replacing those I’d wiped away.

The driver nodded and pulled off, a sympathetic grimace on his features as he glanced into the rearview mirror. “He looks pretty distressed, miss. Are you sure you don’t want to go back and talk to him?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you. Right now, I just need to get away.”

26

NIALL

On the morning of the Hallow’s Eve Festival, I arrived at the plantation feeling like a complete jerk. For the first time in a long time, I was totally unsure of what to do, and though I’d tossed and turned all night, I still hadn’t come up with a way to make it right.

When I’d decided to pay off that debt, I’d known she was going to be upset, but it’d never crossed my mind that she might think I was trying to trap or control her. I didn’t consider the sum I’d paid as a loan or any kind of debt at all.

Ultimately, I’d paid it so she could be free. Definitely not to take that freedom from her. The simple fact of it was that she’d been held back by money, and that happened to be something I had plenty of.

Twenty grand didn’t affect me at all. I’d paid more than that to charter a jet to fly out to Havana for lunch on occasion. While I understood that it was an astronomical amount of money for some, it just wasn’t the same for me. It certainly wasn’t a nominal amount I’d paid for her affections, but she wasn’t like the other women I’d dated—one of whom had turned me onto the charming little cafe in Cuba I now frequented when the mood struck.

Tallulah didn’t want my gifts or my money, or for me to charter a private jet when she felt like authentic Cuban cuisine. She only wanted me. Or at least, she had only wanted me, and if there was one thing I knew for an absolute fact, it was that I loved her.

Somewhere over the course of the last few weeks, I’d fallen for her and I wanted her to know that. It’d simply taken losing her for me to finally realize it and now I might have messed things up for good by going behind her back and paying off her stupid debt.

I sighed and moved from vendor to vendor, checking in with them as I looked for Tallulah. The falafel truck guy finally pointed me in the right direction. “Ms. Pruette? Yes, sir. I just saw her about five minutes ago at the stage. They’re frantically busy finishing up before the first concert.”

“Thank you,” I said. “The hour of the festival is fast approaching, so I’d better go find her before we get started. Good luck. I hope you sell out twice every day.”

He grinned at me. “Thank you. It’s going to be a blast. We’ve been looking forward to this for months.”

“Same here, man. Same here.” I patted him good-naturedly on the shoulder before I took off toward the stage, dodging members of the crowd that had started showing up for the concert already.

It took me a while to make my way across to where the guy had seen her, and when I finally got there, I saw he hadn’t been wrong. They truly were frantically busy with the last of the preparations. As I approached, I heard some of what was going on.

“What do you mean the speaker isn’t working?” she asked one of the sound guys, her cheeks glowing red and her brow furrowed. “We did a sound check just this morning and you assured me everything was fine.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am. We think it’s a loose connection somewhere.”

“Well, then, find it and tighten it,” she snapped, but she did it so politely that I might not have realized how aggravated she was if I hadn’t known her so well.

As the sound guy hurried away, I closed the distance between us in a few long strides and cleared my throat. “Tallulah? Can we talk for a minute?”

“Not right now,” she said quickly, barely looking at me as her gaze ran across the clipboard in her hand. “I’ll find you later, okay?”

Without another word, she hurried away. I sighed, watching her go and wishing I could go back in time and call her before I made that damn payment. But I couldn’t. Which meant I now needed a way to make her understand that I hadn’t had any ulterior motives when I’d done it.

“Trouble in paradise?” Jake asked, black sunglasses covering his eyes as he came to stand next to me. “I’m assuming she found out about the debt?”

“I told her last night,” I admitted, still watching her retreating back until she got swallowed up by the crowd. “We ended up having a bit of a fight about it. Let’s just say she didn’t take the information well.”

He grimaced. “To be honest, I didn’t think she would, but neither did you. We both knew she wouldn’t simply spread her legs with gratitude. I still think you did the right thing, but let’s be honest. It was always going to be a speedbump in the road for you two.”

“Yeah, I know. I guess I just underestimated the size of said bump,” I said, my head shaking. “She’s got it in her head that I did it so she’d be indebted to me. She’s so afraid of being boxed in by yet another controlling asshole that she’s now convinced I knew she’d owe me something if I paid it off.”

Jake thought it over, his head rocking slowly from side to side as he considered it. “Well, I mean, you did know she’d feel like she owed you now instead, right?”