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Riley nods. “For now. Considering your club already shares the same name, it shouldn’t be too jarring a change.”
I let the veiled insult pass without challenge. “I assume this means that your connections become mine as well?”
He nods. “And vice versa.”
Again, a fair enough trade, though I’m not naive enough to assume that is where this game will end. He’s waiting for me to name yet one more term. I know the fucker’s salivating for it.
“And one more thing—You stay away from Evelyn King,” I demand. “If you so much as breathe in the same air as her, the deal is off.”
His eyes narrow, and I feel a small shred of triumph. I caught him off guard, dangling the very thing he wants before him.
How badly does he want to claim ownership over this blasted club? Badly enough, it seems. “I must admit, I didn’t think you gave a damn about anyone but yourself.” He stands, and I can’t get a read on his expression. No longer is he smirking, however.
“I suppose that’s all, then.” With that, he leans over the desk, extending his hand once again. This time, I reach across the desk to take it. We shake once—a single, jerking motion of our arms, our grips bruising. I release him first, and he starts for the door, twirling his ring around his right pinky finger. “Oh, and Bellamy? The next time you’re in the area, do visit the club again. Our clients desire to experience firsthand what your… outside perspective might bring to the table.”
There’s an insinuation lurking within those words. An insult. If my mind wasn’t still replaying the earlier phone conversation—on a bloody, sordid loop—I might have cared enough to decipher it.
“It will be interesting to see how you run things, here in America,” I say, leaving it at that.
Riley chuckles, but he doesn’t look back before stepping over the threshold of the office, and I can’t picture what his expression might be. Not that I’d give a damn to.
My mind’s eye seems capable of only displaying one image at the moment. One face—swollen pink lips, blue eyes upturned mockingly, blond hair wild from fucking.
I can still hear her voice, huskily whispered into my ear, on the verge of a climax…
Only then, as Adrian Riley approaches Ann, who eagerly offers to show him to the lobby, does the bitter reality sink in. I had Evelyn King breathless and panting for me. She told me where she was.
And like a fool, I didn’t demand she repeat the blasted address.
CHAPTER19
evie
Someone, I assume is the housekeeper, ignores the “Do not disturb” notice tacked onto my door and knocks anyway. Though, to be fair, Iamin a motel, and those signs seemed to be a dime a dozen when I scurried down the hall at midnight, right after checking in.
A rush of anger displaces any sense of embarrassment I might feel, however. Graeme Bellamy did this to me—sending me on a nomadic trip through Lower Manhattan. I can only remember a few bits and pieces, like the daze experienced right after waking from a nightmare. What will my life look like without adhering to the rigid daily schedule of Graeme Bellamy?
I have no idea. In a sick twist of irony, my severance package frees me from having to worry about finding a new flat. With the amount written on my parting check, I could go anywhere in the world. Though, in the interim, there isn’t much I can do without access to my bank account, credit cards, or any identification. Poor me. Bellamy probably expected me to show up at the Royal, begging for my belongings back.
Yeah, right.
I knew which part of the city wouldn’t give a damn about keeping things one hundred percent legal and rented a room using the hundred-dollar bill I kept at the bottom of my shoe. That left me with only about twenty bucks for food and transportation, but also led to step three of my foolproof plan. It took all the courage found in a ten-dollar bottle of whiskey before I gathered up the nerve to call him. His office seemed like neutral territory, and nothing… risqué could happen at seven in the morning via a phone call.
Boy, had I been wrong. With a few crass words, Graeme Bellamy had me breathless. Panting. Surrendered.
All without my having to leave the lumpy mattress or with him being even in the same room. Which brought me to my next point—how much of my location had the bastard discerned before hanging up? It wasn’t like I was going to stick around and find out.
“Please come back later,” I call at the door when the handle is tried for the tenth time during the tense moments after my disastrous phone call. The housekeeper says nothing before retreating down the hallway, and I finally gather the nerve to crawl from the thin mattress to pick up my jeans, and my dignity from the floor.
It feels strange wearing the same clothes as yesterday. I do my best to wash up using the complimentary toiletries supplied by the motel—a sample size of shampoo and toothpaste. My fingers attempt to comb through the tangle of my hair, but the moment they touch my scalp, it throbs. Oh, that’s right. Graeme Bellamy nearly ripped it out yesterday.
I fight back the memory by grabbing my canvas bag, shoving my feet into my shoes, and leaving the room. The housekeeper is nowhere in sight when I enter the hallway. The only witness to my escape is a man leaning against the wall a few yards down, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.
Thus, day two of my life of unemployment begins, and Graeme Bellamy can eat his heart out. I don’t think of him. At all. Not once. Not with every step, which triggers an aching throb between my thighs. Or the hours I spend in the internet café, killing time while plotting the retrieval of my personal belongings. I don’t know what makes me peek at my email account. Boredom? Or perhaps a prescient suspicion that I’ll find a message lurking there from my past employer—three of them, to be exact. The first must have come before our meeting yesterday—a rather pointed reminder to negotiate the severance. The second summarized the termination of my employment. And the third…
The title alone makes me choke on a sip of coffee—In reference to our fucking.I blink. Rub my eyes. Click out of my browser and open the window again. The message never disappears, and the wording never changes. When I finally gather the nerve to open it, its contents are relatively mild.Ms. King,the bastard had written.To retrieve your belongings, come to my office before the end of the day.That is all.
I delete it and then promptly escape back to the motel. With ten dollars to my name, I can’t afford to stay another night, not that it matters. Even sleeping under a bridge is preferable to begging Graeme Bellamy for anything. I even let myself consider the satisfaction of filing a police report as I head up to my room, intending to wait out the final moments before I’m forced to check out.
