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“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Will you let me make you breakfast?”
The offer made my heart skip a beat but I didn’t let it show. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because. I’m already pushing it by letting you stay for coffee.”
“What are you pushing?”
I paused for a moment then heaved a sigh. “This is supposed to be a one-night thing, Lukas,” I confessed, peering up to catch him raising an eyebrow.
“I didn’t realize.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you. I just planned on making it that way,” I said, hoping my bluntness would remind me of my mission here. Have sex. Be done. Move on. But Lukas was making that difficult for me.
“Certainly a first for me,” he smiled, studying me in the way that got my neck hot as hell. “But as much as it turns me on to think that you used me f
or sex, I’m not quite done with you here.”
“Oh, no?”
“Not even close.”
“Well, too bad it’s not up to you.”
Lukas grinned. “You’ll want me again.”
“I won’t.”
“You already do. I can see it,” he said as I shook my head. “In all seriousness, Lia, your poker face is shit. Remind me to never take you to Vegas.”
I laughed but chucked the cap of my cream at his head. “For that, you have to chug your coffee in ten seconds and leave.”
“Fuck that. I’m making your ass a French omelet,” Lukas said, rounding the counter and snorting as I tried to push him out. Oh God. My hands on his chest was always a bad idea. He was just so fucking hard it was unreal. “What are you tryin’ to do, huh?” Lukas teased, gathering my hand and holding them behind my back with one of his. Heat bloomed in my cheeks as he held me still and taunted me with kisses on my neck, pushing my robe open again and feathering them down the curve of my breast. With a low mm from his chest, he flicked his tongue over my nipple. My mouth fell open as he gave a quick suck.
But just as quickly as the moment happened, it stopped.
“Last three,” he said, taking the eggs from my fridge. “I’m using them.”
I blinked as I watched him, still recovering as he grabbed a skillet off the back burner and placed it up front. Damn it. Did that just happen? What the fuck was that? I asked myself, all hot and bothered as I watched Lukas cook for me half-naked, a Greek statue whisking eggs with a fork. I was so entranced by the knot that twitched in his forearm that I missed the first few sentences of what he was saying about Cam.
“Bored already?” Lukas laughed when he caught me. “See, I knew I shouldn’t tell you about that asshole.”
“No, tell me,” I urged. “I’m curious and you’re already making me a damned omelet so spill.”
“Fine. But you’re getting the condensed version,” Lukas said, pouring the egg over the melted butter and whisking the fork like lightning in the pan. “First things first, I started my company with Cam out of college. I needed cash fast to get out of the shit I was in. I had mouths to feed and Cam’s connections presented a huge opportunity, so I went for it,” he said, rattling his story off fast, like a business pitch. “His dad was in the NFL. His uncle was an agent for every major sport. Cam had a network of athletes. I had the drive and business savvy. I was twenty-four when I started Hendricks-Cameron and the first thing I did was target pro athletes.”
Lukas shook the skillet to gently fold the omelet. He grabbed the plate I handed him and flipped onto it a perfect, soft mound of pale golden egg. I was in awe of how quickly he’d done it but I refused to marvel because I felt like it was a trick – like he was trying to distract me from the story he was telling.
“Six years ago, I sold the biggest free agent in baseball a twenty-million dollar penthouse on the Upper West Side. Fifty-five hundred square feet with three hundred-sixty degree views of Manhattan. I had the media cover it and convinced my client to do a TV special. Made sure it mentioned my company name at least four times and from that point forward, Hendricks-Cameron became the go-to agency for New York athletes. I had more success than I knew what to do with. Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about my family anymore and the truth was that I couldn’t have done it without Cam’s connections, so…” Lukas trailed off. I could see the hollows of his cheeks flexing as he clenched his jaw for a bit. “Over the years, I let him get away with things that I shouldn’t have. I let him do more damage behind my back than I could ever dream of fixing all at once and it was my mistake for looking past the warning signs. In short, I fucked up. For a lot of people, not just me.”
I frowned. He was being vague and I wanted to pry, but I held back. “It’s not your fault,” I said.
He peered up at me with a faintly curious smile. “No?”
I shrugged. “No. It’s natural to feel like you owe the person who helped you during your darkest times. Sometimes it’s the right person who got the chance to help you and other times, it’s someone who’ll take advantage of your debt.” I heaved a big sigh as I thought about Ritchie. “I mean what can you really do about it? Bad people do good things sometimes. And it tricks you.”
