Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3) (21 page)

Kevin’s
silent. For a moment, I think he’s disconnected. Cat and I look
at each other, and I give a slight shrug to my shoulders. Finally, he
asks in a voice filled with icy disdain, “What is it exactly
that you want?”

Cat takes a deep
breath. “I
want a copy of the signed document that governs Samuel’s
estate, so I know what my rights are. And until such time as we can
resolve this, I want you to turn my credit cards back on so I have
something to live off until that occurs.”

My eyebrows shoot up
because I didn’t
see that coming. Cat glances at me with a questioning look, and I nod
at her in agreement of what she just asked for. My hand comes out,
and I hit the “mute” button on the phone so he can’t
hear us. “Ask for the house. Tell him you want back in and him
out.”

She shakes her head
immediately in denial and whispers, even though he can’t
hear us. “I don’t want to go there.”

Yeah…
that’s a big fucking smile taking up residence on my face right
now. I lean forward, kiss her quickly, and then unmute the call.

“Tell me where
you are,” Kevin asks. “I’ll bring it to you.”

Yeah, he isn’t
getting within twenty feet of Cat again. I lean toward the phone
slightly and say, “You can send it with a courier to 263 W.
Karns Ave, but you’re not welcome here.”

“And who is
this, if I may ask?” he says in an amused voice. “Cat
find herself a man or something?”

“I’m
your worst nightmare if you fuck her over,” I growl into the
phone, my eyes flicking up to see Cat watching me with wide eyes.

Kevin makes a
scoffing sound and laughs. “Brave
man… hiding behind a phone and won’t give his name.”

“It’s
Rand Bishop, you asshole. I just gave you my home address, and I work
at Westward Ink. You feel free to come see me whenever you want to,
and I’ll show you exactly the lengths I’m willing to go
to make sure you won’t fuck Cat over anymore.”

A moment of silence
while Kevin digests my words, and I’m
sure they’ve pissed him off royally. But he surprises me when
he says, “I’ll send a copy of the signed document over
tomorrow.”

“Bring it to
Westward Ink,” I command because it just hit me… neither
Cat nor I will be here during the day, and besides… I don’t
want him anywhere near her.

“Understood,”
he says crisply. The phone then beeps twice to indicate he’s
hung up on the other end.

“Was that
okay?” Cat asks me hesitantly, dropping the phone back in her
purse.

“You were
perfect,” I say, sliding my hand from her lower back to her ass
and giving it a small smack. I don’t do more than that,
although I’d love nothing more to drag her back to the bedroom
and muss up that perfect makeup and hair. At the least, I want to
kiss her, but not sure it’s appropriate given the nature of the
conversation that was just had.

So I keep it cool
and give her a wink. “Well,
I better get to work before Pish fires me.”

Cat snorts. I spent
the many, many hours on the road to and from Vegas telling her all
kinds of gory details about Pish. Hell, she probably knows more about
my friends and family than anyone as much as we’d
talked during that road trip, but she definitely knows what I know
about Pish.

That he’s
a pushover.

I pat my front
pocket for my keys, feel the small bulge, and turn toward the door.

“Hey,”
she says softly.

Turning back to her,
I tilt my head to wait for whatever it is she wants to say.

Please be
something good. Please be something that lets me know that I’m
not imagining some of these feelings or worse yet, that they’re
one-sided.

“I meant what
I said a minute ago,” she says, her eyes lasered onto mine so I
know she’s talking straight.

“What’s
that?” I ask, since a lot was said in the last minute or so.

“That I don’t
want to go back to the Jackson house,” she says bluntly. “I
really don’t want anything he has, but in particular, I don’t
want to go back there.”

“Bad memories
and all,” I hazard a guess, remembering just how good that felt
to hear her say she didn’t want to go back the first time.

It’s
even better the second.

“No,”
she says simply and picks up her purse. “Just better memories
here. Much, much better, and I don’t want to give that up.”

“Then don’t,”
I tell her leaning forward, grazing my lips on her cheek. “You
have a place here as long as you want it.”

I hope she reads
between the lines. I’m
not just talking a bed to sleep in, but I’m certainly not ready
to tell her that yet. While Cat’s opened up to me in amazing
ways, I can still tell that deep down, she’s going to be leery
of anything that resembles a commitment and I’m not about to
scare her off.

Cat

“There’s
way more paper than I thought there’d be,” I tell Sloane
as I pull several thick folders out of a banker’s box.

It’s
one of about forty banker’s boxes that are stacked against the
wall in the large conference room of Governor Hayes’ campaign
headquarters. Sloane and I have been diligently unpacking and
organizing it all as best we can. It’s the materials from his
last campaign for governor when he won the office in a very heated
and close race. That was three years ago, and in just over a year
from now, the citizens will be voting again on whether to keep him in
office.

And this is the
extent of my knowledge of how elections are run by a candidate.
Sloane’s
been filling me in a bit. She told me that her father used to be an
elected U.S. Senator, so she’s done campaign work before. She
also told me her dad’s a douche and she didn’t like to
talk about him, but she hoped he had perpetual sunburn from spending
all his time on a beach in Brazil with his new and much younger wife.

I didn’t
press her for any details given the acid in her voice when she said
that.

Callie was in
Cheyenne, meeting with her father to start putting together a
formalized kick off for the campaign. For my first day of work, she
left instructions for me to just help Sloane with organizing the
materials, and that seemed easy enough. I wish I had dressed a little
differently, choosing a black and white zebra-print Diane Von
Furstenberg wrap dress with nude heels. Those have been long since
kicked off and my sleeves rolled up as we pull out mailing lists,
copies of speeches, policy summaries, advertising campaigns, glossy
mailers and signs that were used. We lay them in stacks according to
subject on the large table that takes up most of the room and chatter
about inane stuff, mostly an attempt to get to know one another.

I had an amazing
time with Callie and Sloane at lunch two days ago. The margaritas
absolutely helped break the ice, but the fact that these women were
so accepting of me says so much about them, that I feel relatively
comfortable now despite my sordid past with the two men in their
lives.

“So you and
Rand, huh?” Sloane says while sitting on the floor before an
open box. She’s not looking at me but rather pulling out manila
envelopes and checking out the contents.

Just casual
conversation.

“Yeah,”
I say a little uncertainly since I really have no clue what the
nature of our relationship is. “He’s a great guy.”

“Hung like a
horse too,” Sloane says, just as casually and still focusing on
her work. She seems intent on what she’s doing and as if her
statement wasn’t anything more than an afterthought.

“Excuse me?”
I ask, stunned by her knowledge of Rand’s body parts.

She looks up at me
with a sheepish grin. “You’re
not the only one who had experience with all things wicked at The
Silo.”

“You and
Rand?”

“Me, Rand,
Logan, Bridger, and Cain,” she says, her grin getting bigger
with a slightly wistful look on her face. “All at the same
time.”

My jaw drops wide
open, and I make no move to close it. I just stare at her, my eyes
probably as big as an owl’s.
I can’t believe it. No way. Sloane looks like the poster girl
for innocence with her sweetly rounded face and cute as pie blonde
waves coming to just above her shoulder.

Just…
no way.

“Yup,”
she says with a chuckle, completely amused at my shock. “Cain
arranged it. I’m sure Rand told you all about how I was an
undercover reporter investigating The Silo and Governor Hayes. I was
playing ignorant of The Silo with Cain and he was showing me a part
of it but not really. Took me to one of the fantasy cabins and had
the guys waiting there for me.”

“Wow,” I
say as I lower myself slowly into one of the chairs that surround the
conference room tables. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
There’s a weird, low bubbling feeling that I can’t quite
place. Like my favorite toy got stolen from me on the playground by
another girl. And yet, there’s no way that’s jealousy. I
have no right or claim to be such.

“I tell you
that only to make you more at ease with me,” Sloane says. “I
know it really bothered you at lunch the other day… making
friendships with us… not sure how we’d look at you or if
we’d judge you. I hope Callie and I have both shown that we
don’t care about what happened in the past. I just told you
about Rand so you know I’ve got dirty stuff in my closet too,
but it doesn’t mean anything more than just an experience.”

I nod in
understanding. She’s
right… the knowledge that she was with Rand helps to obviate
my guilt over being with her man.

“I saw you at
The Silo once,” Sloane says, now leaning back and placing her
hands flat on the carpet behind her.

“You did?”
I cringe internally wondering exactly what she saw me doing. While
Sloane walks a bit on the wild side, I’m betting the
four-on-one she had was the wildest thing she’s ever done.
She’d probably be sick if she knew some of the things I’ve
done.

“It was after
your husband died,” Sloane says with a nod of her head. “I
was there with Cain and Bridger had told us. You were in one of the
rooms… locked in a stockade.”

A small smile comes
to my lips and my fingers come up to inadvertently touch them in
remembrance. That was a good night. It was the night I first got to
make my own choices about who I let into my body.

“You were
beautiful,” Sloane says softly, and my gaze slides to her. She
doesn’t say that in a “come on” type of way, but
rather in a respectfully deferent way. “I remember being amazed
at what strength and confidence you must have had to do that.”

“Insanity more
like it,” I mutter as I push out of the chair and walk over to
the boxes again.

“No,”
Sloane says. “I saw your face. There was pride there. And
pleasure. You owned it. It was exquisitely erotic but beautifully
inspiring. I envy you a bit.”

I turn, startled to
hear her say that. “Don’t
envy me. What you saw was a rarity. Most of my Silo experiences are
not good.”

“I suspected
as much,” Sloane says with a sympathetic smile. “And I’m
really sorry for that.”

Turning back around,
I grab the next banker’s
box and haul it down. “Well, it’s all in the past.”

“You say that
as if you almost believe it,” she says, and my eyes snap to
her.

“What do you
mean?” I ask curiously. She acts like she has insight into me
that I don’t have about myself.

“You’re
holding back with Rand.”

“I’m
not—”

“You most
definitely are,” she reprimands. “I ask about Rand and
you’re like, ‘He’s a great guy’. I call
bullshit on that.”

My eyes narrow on
her. “What
would you know?”

“I know he’s
taken you in, given you shelter, provided safety, and shielded you
from judgment. Arranged for a job, took you to Vegas, and I bet he’s
handing you orgasms like they’re candy every night, right?”

Not sure how she
knows all that, but I’m
going to guess it’s through Bridger to Woolf to Callie to her,
but regardless… she’s right about all those things.
She’s so right about them, and it makes me feel horrible that I
refuse to give them the recognition they deserve.

“Rand deserves
way better than me,” I tell her, finally voicing a fear I’ve
had from the moment he held me after I told him about all the ways in
which Samuel abused me.

Sloane cocks her
head. “How
do you figure?”

“I’ve
got nothing to offer. I’m just a woman who is good for one
thing, and I’ve been too well used for there to be anything
special about me.”

I hope that didn’t
sound too whiny because I’m just trying to call it as I see it.
But now that I’ve told her that, I stiffen my spine and hold
her gaze, knowing in my heart of hearts I just shared with her my
secret fear that’s holding me back from Rand.

He’s
much too good for me.

And I know I can’t
keep him. Once I figure out what I’m entitled to—or
not—I’m going to have to move on and let him have his
life back. Until then, I’m going to keep accepting what he’s
offering me because I guess that’s just me being selfish. I
like the feelings he provokes in me too much. I like the safety and
security and the way he makes me laugh. I’ll take it for a bit
longer, which only confirms I’m no good. I’ll end up
using him up and leaving him behind at some point.

But it’s
what’s best for him, I’m sure of it.

Sloane looks at me
skeptically. “You
totally don’t even see yourself, do you?”

“Sure I do,”
I mutter, pulling the lid off the box I just set down on the
conference room table.

I see myself in the
mirror every day, and I know exactly the kind of person looking back
at me.

My phone starts
ringing from inside my purse, and I pull it out to check Caller ID. I
try to push down the measure of annoyance that starts to rise when I
see “Trish
Lyons” on the screen.