Lush (2 page)

“I’ll give you a twenty percent raise over your original salary. You and your daughter would come live at my house—for appearances—all expenses paid.”

“Oh, like a frat house bed-and-breakfast. Yes, that’s exactly the environment I want my daughter raised in while her mother prostitutes herself for a twenty percent salary bump.”

“Stop using that word. That’s not what this is about and you know it.”

“All I know is that you haven’t changed one damn bit.”

She tried to go around him, but he sidestepped and she slammed into his chest. He gripped her by the arms to keep her from stumbling. Before he knew what he meant to do, he was kissing her the way he’d wanted to from the moment she’d appeared in his doorway.

His body recognized hers immediately, reacting instantly to the feel of her curves pressed up against him. She resisted at first and then it was as if her body recalled his as well, and she came at him like a bull out of a shoot, going from zero to all over him in thirty seconds or less. Goddamned if he burned hotter and brighter with her than with anyone else he’d ever been with.

He gripped her ass, bringing her fully against his growing erection. The lushness of her, the sounds she made, that thing she did with her tongue…fucking Christ. How had he gone a day without her, let alone nearly a year and a half? He turned them, pressing her between his body and the door.

They’d been in this position before. He’d taken her rough and fast, hardly thinking at all about what was on the other side of the door. He hadn’t even taken the time to pull her panties down. He’d just shoved them aside and thrust deep, needing to be inside her more than he’d needed his next breath. That need was building now, threatening to break his infamous control.

He eased back and looked down at her. Her full lips were swollen from his kisses, her eyelids heavy with desire. Her breaths came in short pants that told him she was as turned on as he was.

“I
have
changed,” he told her, whispering the words, wanting her to feel his sincerity. “This between us hasn’t. And it never will.” He stepped away from her, trying to show her the change he’d just bragged about. “But it will
always
be optional.”

She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, considering him—he hoped in a new light. “You’re the craziest son of a bitch I’ve ever met, you know that?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m just a businessman who enjoys a well-negotiated business deal.”

“Is that what you call bending your
honey
over your desk—negotiating a business deal?”

“No. That’s what I call a mistake. Because that’s what it was.”

“Call it what you like, but I don’t think you’ll ever really change, no matter how many deals you
negotiate
.” She fumbled for the knob behind her and opened the door.

He didn’t stop her. He’d done all he could to convince her. “Consider my offer, darlin’.” But he knew she wouldn’t. He’d screwed everything up by kissing her. She didn’t do well with pressure. Like an unbroken filly, you had to come at her from the side, sweet-talking and reassuring with a lump of sugar in your palm. But damn if the ride wasn’t worth all the effort.

Lucy bolted out of Cal’s office like her tail was on fire when it was her whole body that was ablaze. She wasn’t sure which was making her hotter—anger or arousal. With Cal it was always so hard to separate the two.

She marched past Felicia’s desk, down the long hall to reception, and out to the elevators.
Consider his offer.
What she was considering was getting her daddy’s Smith & Wesson and filling Cal’s lying, cheating ass full of lead. Changed. Right.

She jabbed at the elevator button. The only thing that had changed was a new little trick with his teeth he’d learned from someone
somewhere
that had her grinding against him like a sex-starved bitch in heat.
He’d
picked up new tricks in the past seventeen months whereas the only thing she’d picked up was an extra fifteen pounds of post-baby weight that wouldn’t come off.

Goddammit. She was actually tempted by his offer. She’d seriously considered it even as she’d accused him of trying to turn her into a whore. His whore. The truth was she needed the money. She needed a job with flexible hours so she could spend time with Poppy. But most of all she needed the security of living in Cal’s house so she could protect her daughter.

But she wouldn’t do it. She hadn’t stooped so low that she’d sell herself to Cal Sellers like one of his prized heifers. No way in hell.

CHAPTER TWO

Lucy pulled up to her mother’s house in Arlington, outside of Dallas. Spring was asserting itself early, scorching a path across North Texas that heated up the earth like a big ole electric blanket you couldn’t turn off.

She was late picking up her daughter. She’d had to work an extra half hour to make up the time she’d taken to go all the way to downtown Dallas to Cal’s office on what had turned out to be a fool’s errand.

A car she didn’t recognize sat in the driveway. Maybe one of her mother’s friends was here for a visit. She angled out of the driver’s seat and came up the drive instead of the walk so she could check out the car. Nothing on the seats or dash gave away anything other than it being a rental. She didn’t like this one bit. A prickling at her nape had her quickening her steps. All she could think of was getting to Poppy and making sure her daughter was okay.

She opened the door—not bothering to knock—and went right on in. Her mother came up off the couch, no doubt with a reprimand on the tip of her tongue, but Lucy didn’t give her a chance to spew it.

“Where’s Poppy?”

“That’s not the way—”

“Where’s my daughter?”
Panic crawled all over her. “Where is Poppy?”

“Right here.”

Lucy turned to see Kevin Walker, the no-good, rotten, polygamist bastard she’d thought she’d married, holding
her
daughter.

The last time she’d seen him he’d been standing over her, screaming obscenities, while she tried not to move or do anything to provoke him further. His anger was a near-tangible thing that whipped out and lashed at her, turning her handsome husband into an out-of-control monster who terrified her.

Kevin smiled as though he had every right in the world to be there. He didn’t. She had a restraining order out on him for God’s sake. He wasn’t supposed to go within five hundred feet of her home or work, but it looked like he’d found a way around that—her mother.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, trying to keep her voice even and not scream like she wanted to so she didn’t scare Poppy. “You don’t have visitation rights.”

“Well.” Her mother, Nadine, stepped forward. “I thought it would be good for Poppy to spend some time with her daddy. A girl needs her daddy.”

A girl didn’t need a lying, cheating, scary-assed bastard of a daddy. Lucy would know. Her own daddy had been just like Kevin.

“What Poppy needs,” Lucy said, walking over and prying her daughter away from Kevin, “is for Kevin to follow the rules the court set out. There’s a reason he’s not allowed to be around us,
Mother
.”

Poppy started to fuss, putting her fist in her mouth. She must’ve sensed the tension in the air. Lucy held Poppy to her and nearly gagged when she smelled Kevin’s after-shave on her baby.

“I have a right to see my child,” Kevin had the nerve to declare. “Prepare to be served. I’m taking Poppy back to Utah to live with me.”

What in the hell had she ever seen in him?
He’d been charming and she’d been hurting and then before she knew it she was standing at the front of the church next to a man she hardly knew. She’d gotten a good taste of the real him a few short hours after they’d been married. He’d accused her of looking at Cal like she should’ve been looking at him, and he’d hit her. He knew how to do it, striking where the bruises wouldn’t show.

He sure had been convincing about where the blame lay—with her. It was
her
fault he got so angry.
Her
fault she wasn’t the kind of wife he expected her to be.
Her
fault she got hurt. And she believed him. She’d burned every bridge she had by quitting her job and distancing herself from her friends, too ashamed to let them know what her life had become.

“The hell you are,” Lucy shot back. “I have the police reports and photos that will keep you from ever getting your hands on her.”

“Lucy, watch your language,” her mother admonished, her pale, watery eyes pleading. “Have some respect for your husband.” 

Nadine had been a beauty once. Lucy used to love looking at pictures of her mother before she’d married her father. Living with Larry had chewed Nadine up from the inside out. Covering for him and pretending nothing was wrong had worn away her softness, leaving behind a woman on the edge of brittle. The invisible nicks and scars from years of abuse had whittled her down to the point where Lucy hardly recognized her mother as the person in those old photos.

I could’ve been her
.
I almost was her.

“I have your mother’s blessing and a new lawyer who’s a shark. You don’t stand a chance against me.”

Lucy looked at her mother and knew what Kevin said was true. Nadine had been harping on Lucy to get back together with Kevin so that Poppy could have a real family, not a broken one. Her mother had always been the keep-the-family-together type. No matter how many times Nadine’s husband, Larry, had come home drunk reeking of perfume and alcohol, Nadine always put him to bed as if he was the long-lost king come home.

Now Kevin had charmed Nadine just the way Larry had. She didn’t see past the good looks and good manners to the soul of the man who’d nearly put her own daughter in the hospital more than once. It had taken Lucy too long to realize that by marrying Kevin she’d repeated her mother’s history. That wasn’t what she wanted for
her
daughter or for herself.

“I will fight you with everything I have in me,” Lucy swore. “You are not taking my daughter anywhere, and you are certainly not leaving the state with her.”

Kevin’s eyes went cold, and his hands balled into fists the way they always did right before he struck her. Lucy standing up to him was new, and she could tell he didn’t like it. If her mother wasn’t in the room, Lucy would be on the floor.

Poppy was sobbing now. Lucy patted her back and tried to soothe her, but her own insides were a tangled mass. She believed Kevin. He
would
take her daughter by any means, and he would make Lucy pay for her insolence.

“She’s my daughter too,” Kevin said. “You’re gone all day working. Nadine is a terrific grandma, but Poppy needs a mother. She needs to be cared for in her own home, not shuttled back and forth between caregivers. My wife—”

“And which wife would that be, hmm? Wife number one or two? Maybe it’s wife number three.”

“She doesn’t mean that, Kevin.” Nadine had the nerve to back him and not her own daughter. And then she took it further, making Lucy the bad guy here. “He’s your husband. I know you’ve gone through some rough times—”

“Rough times? He has three wives. And he beat me, mother.
Beat me
.”

Nadine worried her hands, glancing from Kevin to Lucy and back again. “Lucy, please. Listen to him. I know the two of you could work things out if you’d just be a little more understanding.”

“I’ve cleared my legal troubles. I know I wasn’t always the best husband to you, Lucy, but I love you, and I want to make it work with you. Maybe go to counseling. I want us to be a family again. I’ll do anything to get you back, Lucy. Anything.”

“You see,” Nadine continued. “He loves you.”

Lucy knew he meant it too. He would do anything to get her back, including turning her mother against her and taking her daughter from her. She’d never be free of him, free from his threats. He would keep chasing her like he’d chased her from room to room of their house, hitting and screaming at her. It would never stop.

“No.” Lucy gripped her daughter tighter. It wasn’t going to work this time. He wasn’t going to sweet-talk her into forgiving him as she’d done too many times before. “Get out.” She pointed at the door. “Get out right now!”

She’d hidden the worst from her mother, from everyone. And then she’d gotten her and her daughter out of that hellhole. She was never going back, and she sure as hell was never going to let her daughter be raised in a home like the one she grew up in.

“This is my house, and I say who stays and who goes,” Nadine said.

“Fine.” Lucy shook, her face hot, her heart racing. “I’ll leave.” She grabbed Poppy’s diaper bag from the chair and headed for the door.

“This isn’t the last of it,” Kevin threatened. “I will be back for Poppy and for you. I want my family with me, and I always get what I want, Lucy. Remember that.”

Lucy ran down the front steps as though Kevin would reach out and rip Poppy from her arms. She believed him. He’d do anything to get what he wanted.

She bundled Poppy into her car seat and then took off down the street without buckling her own belt. It wasn’t until she got to the light and checked her rearview mirror that she put her seat belt on. She almost expected to find Kevin in his car behind her. It had been more than six months since she’d seen him, and he terrified her more now than when she’d been with him. She knew what it would be like to go back. How small her and Poppy’s world would be.

There was no way she was ever going to let her daughter grow up the way she had. Walking in on her father screwing the next-door neighbor on their dining room table and the beating she’d gotten from him not to tell. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d told her mother or not. Nadine wouldn’t have believed her and would’ve punished her for lying. Lucy was always the one who paid to keep their family together.

Until the night when Lucy was fourteen and Larry had been killed in a car accident that was entirely his fault. Two other people died that night because Larry got drunk and decided to drive to see his girlfriend in Garland. After that it was just Lucy and her mother, who never really got over the loss of the husband she adored.

That was when Lucy started spending afternoons with her maternal grandma, Poppy, who she adored so much she’d named her daughter after her. Baby Poppy even had strawberry-blonde hair like her namesake.

At a light, Lucy glanced back at her daughter in her car seat. She’d fallen asleep with her finger in her mouth and tears still clinging to her eyelashes. The sight just about broke Lucy’s heart. She’d done her best to care for her precious baby and support them financially. Her best wasn’t good enough. She was faced with losing their apartment because she couldn’t afford the raise in rent next month, and she couldn’t afford to move. Kevin was back threatening to take Poppy away, and now she’d lost the only babysitter she could afford on her salary—her mother.

As if sensing Lucy was nearly to her breaking point, both the check-engine light and gas light came on at the same time. She dropped her head on the steering wheel and burst into tears.

*****

Cal poured himself a whiskey neat, propped his bare feet on his desk in his home office, and turned on the TV to the business report. He turned the volume up to drown out the rain beating against the windows. This was the way he wound down most of his days. He hadn’t been the hell-raiser the local papers accused him of being for several years now, but that didn’t mean he’d lost the title. Once pigeonholed, the press seemed to look for ways to make it stick. Especially when you were as successful and rich as Cal was.

Oh, he’d more than earned his reputation—had the tattoo on his ass to prove it—but he wasn’t that guy anymore. There’d been a time when he’d thought up ways to get in the newspaper or on TV. When his business had been as young as he was. But he knew better now, made better choices, and had grown his business empire into something he could be proud of.

The
Pleasure at Home
shopping show for adult toys had started out as a lark, a way to snub his nose at conventional business. He owned the TV station, why not put whatever he wanted on it? Over the years it had grown into a very steady, very lucrative source of income.

And that was how he’d met Lucy. He couldn’t help grinning at the memory even now. The first time he’d seen her she was tail up in an exceptionally short skirt, trying to find something under the couch on the set for
Pleasure at Home
. Rounded hips, rounded ass, and long legs that ended in stilettos. She’d popped up, flipping back her long blonde hair, holding a vibrating bullet that had slipped out of one of the products.

Pink cheeked with a wide smile, she’d stolen his breath like a mule kick to the chest. And then she’d spoken, asking him if he’d enjoyed the view. She’d called him cowboy with a wink and adjusted her skirt, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman more beautiful in his life.

After that he’d set about trying to woo her, breaking his number-one rule—he didn’t date, mess with, or sleep with his employees. Ever. But as soon as he’d laid eyes on Lucy he’d wanted to do every single one of those things with her, personal rule be damned.

It had taken nearly two years and a lot of effort, but he’d eventually won her over. The next couple of months had been the most interesting, frustrating, and exciting of his entire life. Then he’d gone and screwed everything up. He’d tried to tell her he was sorry, that it was a stupid, careless mistake, but Lucy would have nothing to do with his explanations or with him after that.

He only had himself to blame. After years of cultivating a debauched reputation and allowing the rumors about him to go unanswered, he’d paid the price and lost Lucy. When she’d stumbled into his office today, he couldn’t help but feel like maybe this was the redemption he’d earned by trying to reinvent himself ever since she’d walked out.