Beg for It (28 page)

She’s tried talking to him about it, but Reese has said very little, other than to occasionally tell her there are problems with the estate. Lawyers to pay. Mortgages to settle. Back taxes to take care of. She hasn’t pressed him about any of it, though she does wonder if surely, somehow, some way, there is a way they could move into this house and stop paying rent. It might ease some of the financial burden that has started to cause such a strain in their relationship over the past few months. It might help lead them toward some kind of future.

Maybe, she thinks, watching him sort through piles of papers without looking her, maybe the trouble that seems to have crept between them has nothing to do with money.

Maybe Reese just doesn’t want to be with her, anymore.

“You know, I’m here to listen to you. If you need to talk.”

“I don’t need to talk,” he says, still without looking at her. His voice is clipped. Cold. Distant.

“Reese.” When he still won’t look, she says it again, harder. Firmer. A tone that brooks no disobedience.

He has not so much as given her a glance. “I know you get off on bossing me around and stuff, but just drop it right now, okay? I’m not in the mood.”

This, a role reversal and a tossing of her own words back in her face, stuns her so much she gets to her feet without another word. She can’t find any. A breath hisses out of her, but she presses her lips closed to cut it off.

“Just because I submit to you doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do all the time or how to live my life,” Reese says. “You don’t always know what’s best for me.”

Corinne blinks back tears. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

“Well. I do.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s all she can manage to get out, but the words taste wrong. Everything about this is wrong.

Everything between them has gone wrong, and she can’t do anything about it.

“Will you be home later?” she asks, chin lifted, words gritting out of her, because she refuses to let him see her cry.

“I’m staying here tonight.”

“And tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Reese says with a shrug. She’s never seen him be so cold; she didn’t know he was capable of it, though she shouldn’t be so surprised.

“When do you think you’ll know?” She hates herself for asking, for pressuring, but she can’t help it.

“Shit, Corinne. I have no idea, okay? I have stuff to do here.”

She nods, once, sharply. “Fine.”

Downstairs, she puts the takeout in the fridge. The sound of him in the doorway turns her in relief. He’ll apologize, they’ll talk about things…it’s going to be okay.

“Come with me,” Reese says.

Corinne crosses her arms. They’ve talked about this already. He wants to move out of Lancaster, where she’s still going to school. Where she has a job and a place to live. Where she will be working in a few months when she finishes her classes and starts with Stein and Sons, who were good enough to hire her before she got her degree.

“Where will we go?”

“Anywhere we want. Just out of this cow-shit-smelling town.”

“And what are you going to do,” Corinne says, a chill in her voice colder than the temperature outside. “Tap dance on the streets for cash? What?”

“I can get work.”

“You haven’t so far,” she says and knows she’s being cruel.

Reese could take the few steps across the frigid kitchen to take her in his arms, but he doesn’t. “If I could just get out of here—”

“What’s so bad about here?”

“Everything!” Reese’s shout echoes in the kitchen. “Everything here is shit.”

She shakes her head. “Not everything. I’m here. We’re here together.”

“I want more than this, Corinne.”

More than this. More than her. More than them.

She has nothing left to say.

He doesn’t stop her from leaving. He doesn’t call for two days. When finally she breaks down and calls him, leaving a message on the answering machine, she tells him to come to see her at the diner. It will be her last day there, she tells him. She’s going to take the next few weeks before the new job starts to get everything else in order. She’s going to be there for him, is the unspoken promise, though what she says aloud is that if he doesn’t want this to work, if he doesn’t show, then they’re over. If he doesn’t come to meet her at the diner, he should never bother to call her, ever again.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Corinne’s office door was closed.

Reese didn’t knock, but instead went to his own office and closed his. There wasn’t much for him to do here. The staff that had been in place to handle the production had been doing a great job, and the new staff he’d hired to be in charge of distribution to the new markets would be coming on before the end of the month. The two new specialists who’d take over the creation, testing, and implementation of brand-new specialty products were also due to come onboard in the next couple weeks. At this point, Stein and Sons was going to succeed or fail, and him being on-site in Lancaster was not going to make much of a difference. Not to the business, anyway. Reese thought it would make every difference in his relationship.

At the soft rap on his door, he looked up. “Come in.”

He thought it might be Sandy, but Corinne came through looking as smoothly confident as she always did. She had a stack of papers in her hands. She set them on the desk.

“Résumés for the office manager position. I thought you’d like to see them. I’ve gone ahead and had Sandy schedule the top prospects for next week, but if you want to be around for them, or if you have other suggestions…” She waited, expectant.

“No, I’m sure you’ve done a great job. You’ll be working with them, anyway. Not me.”

Her expression was neutral, but that didn’t fool him. “Right. Well, anyway, those are your copies. Feel free to shred them or whatever you’d like. I’m going to the break room. Can I get you anything?”

“You don’t have to bring my coffee, Corinne.”

She let a small smile slip through. “I know I don’t have to.”

“Corinne, will you sit?”

She did. Her hands folded in her lap. She met his gaze straight on, but somehow managed to make him feel as though she were looking past and through him, not at him.

Reese frowned. “We should talk.”

“About?”

Damn it. “About Sunday.”

“Oh, Sunday, you mean two days ago, Sunday? Two days ago since I heard from you, that Sunday?”

“Stop it,” Reese said sharply.

She sighed. “This is not the place for this.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “But I’m not going to let this go. So get your things, I’m taking you out for lunch.”

“It’s ten thirty.”

“I don’t care, we need to talk about this, and I’m not going to wait.” He stood.

She stood too. “Fine.”

* * * * *

They didn’t talk about what had happened in his apartment or in the office on the way over to the diner. Corinne had sung along with the radio though, the windows down and the wind whipping her hair into a glorious disarray. She was so beautiful it made everything inside him hurt.

He wanted this to work. He didn’t know if he could make it. He’d spent his life rebuilding businesses that were failing; sometimes, that meant breaking them apart to get at the only parts that could be saved and letting all the rest go. Sometimes, it had meant totally getting rid of everything.

Relationships were not businesses, Reese thought as he watched the woman he loved spoon sugar into her coffee.

Corinne tucked a bite of toast into her mouth and sat back in the diner booth with a sigh. “God. I can’t stuff a single more bite into my gullet, I will explode. At the very least, I’ll bust the seams of this skirt.”

“I’ll finish yours.” He was already pulling her plate toward him. He’d eaten next to nothing since she’d walked out the door of his apartment on Sunday. He was voracious now.

Watching him, Corinne let her foot nudge him again beneath the table. He chewed. Swallowed. His foot nudged hers back.

Reese wiped his mouth with a napkin and leaned forward to take both her hands in his. She didn’t curl her fingers into his grip at first, but softened after a second or so. He smiled, but she didn’t smile back.

“This might not be the place,” she began and tried to tug her hands from his, but Reese kept his grip tight enough to dissuade her.

“It’s where I met you for the first time,” he said quietly. “And it’s where you told me to meet you for the last time, but I didn’t show. I think this is exactly the place to have this talk.”

Corinne shook her head. “No. I don’t want to cry here in public.”

“I don’t want you to cry at all,” Reese said.

She studied him. Again, her grip in his eased before she turned her hands to fully link their fingers. Reese let his thumbs stroke over the backs of her hands, but said nothing. After a moment or so, Corinne withdrew her fingers from his grasp. This time, he let her.

“It’s been a long time,” she said finally. “Maybe we ought to let it go. We had our little thing, but it doesn’t mean—”

“Little thing? Let it go?” he interrupted. “Shit, no, Corinne. That’s not what I want.”

She had been the first and last woman Reese had ever gone to his knees for, but he was not the same man he’d been when they had last been together. She was not the same woman. He ran a hand through his hair, winced at how stiff it felt.

“Why did you come back here?” she demanded with a wave of her hand. “Surely there were other companies you could’ve bought. Other women you could’ve fucked. You didn’t have to…you didn’t…”

Her voice caught, and she straightened. Her eyes glistened, but she’d managed to keep the tears from falling. She shook herself, then spoke in a low tone to keep anyone around them from overhearing.

“I love the way you submit to me. Do you understand that?”

Reese swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“I like to believe…I need to believe, Reese, that you love it too.”

“I do, Corinne.”

“My question to you is, does it go beyond the bedroom?”

Reese coughed, taken aback. “I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”

“Do you want to submit to me only in the bedroom?”

Stupidly, he tried to make a joke. “Any room is fine with me.”

She didn’t laugh. “You do as I tell you to do when your cock is hard, but that’s all. Right?”

“That’s not really fair.”

“But it’s true.” She didn’t sound angry. She sounded…resigned. “If I ordered you to sell your apartment in Philadelphia, to move here, would you do it?”

“I… Shit, Corinne. I don’t know. No,” Reese said. “Is that what you want? To order me?”

“That’s the whole point. I
don’t
want to order you. I want you to choose a life with me. The way you didn’t, the first time around.” She turned her coffee mug around and around in her hands, but didn’t drink.

Reese pinched the bridge of his nose. “You want me to move here.”

“I want you to be happy,” she said quietly.

“It’s not that far, you know. We could—”

“When I hurt you,” Corinne interrupted calmly, “it’s always knowing that it’s my job to make sure it’s not too much. I have the responsibility of making sure we don’t go too far. That you’re going to be okay. When I command you, when you obey, it’s always my job to make sure I don’t ask of you what you cannot do. Do you remember?”

He did. “You might ask me to do what I think I can’t do, or what I think I don’t want to, but you won’t ask me to do what I absolutely can’t do. I remember.”

She looked sad. “It doesn’t only apply in the bedroom. We don’t need a notarized contract. I don’t ever need to put you in a collar, or on a leash. But in this relationship, whether you are naked and on your knees for me or not, it will still always be my job to make sure I don’t ask of you what you cannot do.”

“What makes you think I can’t do this?” Reese asked.

Her answer was a long, calm stare he couldn’t interpret. “I need to get back to the office.”

She was quiet in the car ride. No singing. No windows cracked to let in the breeze. When they got there, she left him behind and went into her office, closing the door firmly enough to let him know he would not be welcome to come inside.

An hour later, her resignation letter arrived via email.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Corinne had, of course, given the minimum two weeks’ notice. Four would’ve been better, but there was no way she could’ve lasted in the office with Reese. She hadn’t needed to worry. He didn’t come in to the office at all.

There’d been no going away party, no cake, no engraved watch to commemorate her service to Stein and Sons. As far as she knew, none of the previous owners even knew that she’d quit. The last she’d heard, the group of them had been planning to go on a family cruise, spending the money Reese had paid them. None of the new staff had even started. She’d promoted Sandy from secretary to office manager before she left, and the two of them had gone out for a celebratory lunch, but it had been strained and a little awkward.