Текст книги "ARROGANT PLAYBOY"

Автор книги: Winter Renshaw

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“Let me fuck you again.”

Chapter Twenty

ODESSA

I smell like him.

Leather and reckless intentions.

His taste still resides on my tongue hours after the fact.

Spearmint and dangerous desires.

Every inch of my body is alive. Reeling. Buzzing. Temporarily satisfied yet hardly satiated.

Beckham made everything go away.

An indulgent distraction.

I slip my key into the lock at precisely five-thirty, and the key slips right in. A metallic scent lingers in the air as if it’s just been greased. The lock clicks, and I push the door wide, my heart pounding and rightfully so.

“Hey,” I say, planted in the doorway.

Jeremiah rises from the sofa, his lips curled enough to show off the deep dimples I used to kiss in better times.

“What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” He drawls, placing his arms open wide. “What kind of question is that?”

“I called you.” I take a step inside, resting my bag on a nearby console. “You didn’t call back. You didn’t text.”

“I wanted to surprise you.” He points to the kitchen table where a handful of paper bags rest. “Good eats. From the test kitchen. I made them bag it up so I could have dinner with my fiancé tonight.”

His declaration sucks all the air from my lungs.

Fiancé?

Jeremiah’s eyes search mine, and I’m sure he’s wondering why the hell I’m not grinning ear to ear.

I’m sort of wondering the same thing…

“We’re engaged again?” My delivery is slow, enunciated, as if that could help me to understand what’s going on. “Did I miss something?”

“Do you want to be?”

I don’t know anymore.

My hesitation must concern him, because before I realize what’s going on, he’s rushing across the room and falling to his knees.

With my engagement ring delicately locked between his thumb and index finger and his blue eyes crinkling, he peers up at me. He must’ve found my ring by the bathroom sink, which makes me wonder how much of this was forethought and how much of it was a random-act-of-Jeremiah.

 “Samantha Odessa Russo, I am a foolish man. I am an idiot, and I don’t deserve you. I may have been absent the last three weeks, but my heart was right here, with you, the whole time. There’s no one else on God’s green earth better suited for me than you. I want you to be my wife, Samantha. I need you to be mine again. Will you please make me the luckiest dumb ass in all of Manhattan and agree to marry me again?”

My throat swells shut, blocking words before they have a chance to be uttered. There’s a slack in my jaw and my stomach balls so tightly I’m certain I’m going to be sick.

This is what I wanted.

“Sam, you’re making me worried here,” Jeremiah drawls, his lips pulling into a half-cocked smirk. He’s extra tan today.

I focus on his radiant blue eyes, the only part of his exterior that’s remained the same in the last year.

“You still love me, Sam, don’t you?” Jeremiah rises. “God, I can’t believe I’m asking this question.”

“Of course.” I’m certain I do if only because love isn’t something you can shut off.

He slips the ring into his pocket, before his hands glide into mine, and he threads our fingers together.

“All this champagne and fancy food I’ve been eating lately must be going to my head,” he says with a quiet chuckle. “I don’t like me without you. That guy’s an asshole. That guy thinks he’s hot shit. I can’t do this whole fame thing without you by my side, Samantha. You keep me grounded. You keep me real.”

“So you only want me back because of what I do for you?”

“God, no. No.” Jeremiah takes my face in his hands, leaning down. For a moment, I hold my breath and purse my lips. My lips are still hot and flavored with Beckham’s kiss. He deposits a kiss on my forehead, and I exhale softly. “That came out all wrong, babe. I’m sorry.”

He pulls me in, his fingers tangled in my hair. With my cheek against his chest, I hesitate before wrapping my arms around him. He feels smaller than I remember, and I don’t recognize his new cologne.

“I let my head get a little big,” he said. “That’s all. Forgot my roots for a sec. Had a talk with Mama, and she put things into perspective for me.”

“What’d she say?” I always did like Susannah Crawford. The mother of four boys, she treated me like the cherished daughter she never had.

“She told me I was a damn fool for letting you go, and that if I wasn’t careful, someone else would come along and snatch you right out from under me.” He kisses the top of my head. “It was the thought of you with another man, Sam. It hurt in ways I never could’ve imagined. Probably ‘cause I’d never thought like that before.”

There’s a weight on my chest. I draw in a deep breath but feel no air. My entire body constricts.

“I slept with someone,” I blurt, squeezing my eyes tight. “Twice.”

Jeremiah doesn’t move despite the fact that I fully expect him to push me away. It’s only after a minute that I realize I’m snug in his arms. His desperate squeeze sends an ache to my chest no amount of words can rectify.

We stand in silence. A minute passes. And another. I breathe him in, attempting to wrap myself in his energy, his warm embrace, his familiarity.

I feel nothing.

His hold loosens after a bit, and he sucks in a ragged breath. His eyes are glassy, and he wears the expression of a man falling apart at the seams and trying desperately not to let it show.

Crawford men are raised not to cry.

“It’s okay, Sam.” He pulls his shoulders back. “We weren’t together. It wasn’t cheating. You had every right to do whatever you wanted to do. I’m not going to judge you for anything.”

Really?

Well in that case, I may as well come completely clean. “The last time was a few hours ago.”

I expect him to pull away, like I’m tainted, but he stands firm, his hands capturing mine.

“Who was it?” He breathes harder. “I have to know, Sam.”

“Just some guy I met at a bar last week.”

“That you reconvened with a second time?”

“I’m also working for him. It’s a three week contract.” I wince, though I don’t know why. I don’t feel guilty. I didn’t cheat. And we’re not back together yet, so it doesn’t matter that I’m still working for Beckham. Jeremiah’s jaw tenses. All of this is so unlike him, and I can’t resist the urge to throw another tack-strip down in the road. “I’m going to Vermont with him next week for a few days. It’s a work trip.”

His eyes shut, and his tongue drags forcefully across the inside of his mouth.

“Babe, this was all my fault. All of it.” He looks at me again, his hands sliding up my hips and resting at the curve of my waist. “I sent you running into the arms of another man. I left you all alone. I blame no one but myself.”

“You’re particularly gallant today.” I trace the buttons of his shirt and offer a smile to lighten the mood. The unsettled pit in my stomach is difficult to ignore. This isn’t like him. At all.

The Jeremiah standing before me is an imposter.

“Shouldn’t you be throwing chairs and shouting?” I tease. Kind of. Back in college, he suspected me of giving my number to another guy at a party once. I’d never seen a real life Hulk until that night. Needless to say we were permanently banned from the Kappa Theta Phi house due to his destructive outburst.

He shakes his head, his fingers digging into my hips. “From now on, I’m going to be the man you deserve. The man who makes the others pale in comparison.”

He might have that one nailed already. Literally.

“I want us back,” he continues, his eyes closing. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes. Just tell me I haven’t lost you, Sam.”

Chapter Twenty-One

BECKHAM

“One sixty-two Clinton Street. Apartment four.” I verify Eva’s address to the nanny agency first thing Saturday morning. “They’re discharging tomorrow. You’ll send someone as soon as I call, correct?”

The agency director confirms my request, promises she’ll send her best available nanny, guarantees full discretion and privacy, and promises to email me the paperwork the second we hang up.

“Perfect. Thank you.” I end the call and toss my phone on the foot of my unmade bed, holding my head in my hands. My fingertips trace across my brows, pushing hard, and slide toward my pulsing temples to relieve the headache that’s going on day two.

With scattered thoughts, I hit the shower, cranking the water as hot as I can stand it. My phone rings a minute after I step out. With a towel snug around my waist, I grab the phone off the bed.

“Beckham King.”

“Mr. King, this is Anita. I’m a nurse at New York General.” Her words make my heart stop cold. “Everything’s okay, but Ms. Delgado is refusing to cooperate with staff until you sign the birth certificate, and also the baby can’t leave the hospital without a name. It’s hospital policy.”

I know Eva, and she’s not going to leave the hospital without that baby. She’ll have to name her eventually.

“Ms. Delgado is well aware of my stipulations. It’s not going to happen. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

My thumb hovers over the ‘end call’ button until I hear her say, “Wait.”

“Yes?”

She sighs into the phone. I can only imagine the unflattering thoughts running through her head. Perhaps she assumes I’m some deadbeat father. An irresponsible philanderer. A loser.

“Will someone be picking her up tomorrow? She discharges at eleven, and because of the C-section she can’t leave without another adult present to assist her.” Her once cordial tone has become unmistakably flat.

“I’m sending a nanny and a cab. I’ll call later with her name, so you can put it in Ms. Delgado’s file. She and the baby will have around the clock care for the next thirty days.”

Primarily to ensure the safety of the baby who may or may not be mine…

I should feel bad about leaving them with a difficult patient, one childishly refusing to name her own baby, but Eva is a grown woman. I won’t be strong-armed into Eva’s manipulative tactic.

“Anita?” I say. “Please remind Ms. Delgado that she is not allowed to contact me again, per the terms of the restraining order.”

Anita is silent.

“Let her know that the nanny I’ve hired will contact me if there is an emergency concerning the baby,” I add. “I’m willing to communicate directly with Eva if – and only if – she will agree to immediate paternity testing.”

The nurse clears her throat. I can almost see her rolling her eyes and slamming her pen down at her station. “Um. O-okay then.”

With that, I end her call. I don’t expect her to understand the circumstances of my decisions nor do I need her pity. Ninety-nine percent of the people I’ve met in my time are assholes hiding behind judgmental eyes, good deeds, and artificial smiles.

I don’t need them.

I don’t need anyone.

I’ll do what I always do: figure this out on my own. The number of people I care about in this world, I can count on one hand. Everyone else can fuck off.

Chapter Twenty-Two

ODESSA

“I emailed you the itinerary for our Vermont trip. I had Julie book us on a commercial flight.” They’re the first words I’ve spoken to him since Friday, when he took me against the wall of my office and then chided me for going there with him.

Like I had a choice.

Something came over me that day. Maybe it was seeing this powerful playboy in a weak moment, sensing ripe vulnerability, and craving a closeness more than words could say.

“Commercial?” He peers across his desk at me, an eyebrow cocked.

Good. He’s going to pretend like it didn’t happen too.

“I thought it might look bad if we flew in to their tiny little airport in a twenty-three million dollar private jet.” I fold my arms, suddenly defensive of my decision. “The last thing we want to do is fly into their quaint little town like a bunch of flashy high-rollers.”

He rises, slipping his hands casually into his pockets and chiding me with his signature smirk. “Well, Odessa, since you took the time to research the cost of the company’s private jet, you surely took the time to research the fuel-efficiency of a Cessna Citation X?”

“It doesn’t matter. The residents of Charity Falls will see it as Mr. Monopoly Moneybags rolling into town and forget the rest.”

“Flying commercial is actually more cost prohibitive, especially for our purposes. My jet can get to Vermont in under an hour. The hourly cost to operate our Cessna is actually half the cost of two commercial airfares,” he says. “On top of all that, we’re going to lose a full day of work traveling commercial. I wish you’d have consulted with me before making arrangements. And really, Julie should’ve known better.”

Julie tried to warn me that Beckham wouldn’t like this arrangement. I refused to listen, assuming he only flew private because he was a spoiled asshole.

“Jeez.” I tuck my hair behind my ears and swallow my pride. “I get it, Beckham. I’m sorry. I was focused on the PR aspect of this trip. Forgive me.”

My plea for forgiveness favors the sarcastic side.

“Have a good weekend?” I change the subject the second I sense the dark heat in his heavy stare. He’s looking at me the same way he did last Friday, seconds before his lips claimed mine and I gave them willingly in a state of unchartered desperate confusion.

“Are we really doing this?” He moves toward me, steady and daunting, igniting a quick swirl in my belly too rowdy to ignore.

“Doing what?” I bat my lashes. Playing dumb has never been my strong suit.

“Pretending like everything’s back to normal between us.” He’s before me now, running his hand along the side of my face before taking a strand of hair between his fingers. He lets it fall over my shoulder, his head cocked sideways.

I swallow the hardness in my throat. “We both know nothing about us was normal. We left normal back at the bar, before I sucked down a lemon drop martini and three tequila shots and came home with you.”

“You can blame the alcohol all you want, but you knew damn well you picked the only man there who could give you what you needed,” he growls. “Pretty sure I proved on Friday that I’ve still got what you need, Odessa…”

He’s right. I can’t deny any of it. But I have what he needs too. “Don’t pretend for a second you didn’t come storming into my office like some virile–”

“Odessa,” he interrupts. “I have no issue admitting that fucking you last Friday was one of the highlights of my week. All things considered.”

I can’t shake the mutual feeling. I tried all weekend.

“That why you told me I shouldn’t have let you fuck me?” For the better part of three days, I tried to simultaneously decode his comment and not let it bother me.

I failed miserably at both.

Beckham’s mouth twitches, his right dimple flashing. “Because I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off you in Vermont. Several days together, just us? Hotel. Private jet. Could get reckless, don’t you think?”

My shoulders tense as I glance up at him. My eyes snap from his sharp gaze to the window behind him.

“Jeremiah’s back.” My confession dissolves the charge in the air.

Beckham steps away, his hands rising to protest. He swallows, his lips straightening. “Well then.”

“We’re not…back together.” The overwhelming urge to clarify that fact consumes me for reasons unknown. “Not engaged. Not…”

“You don’t need to explain, Odessa.” He cuts me off, raking his palm along his five o’clock shadow. I’ve yet to see him with one, and I’m shocked it took me this long to notice it. Can’t blame him after the past few days.

“Jeremiah and me.” I continue anyway. “We have issues. There are a lot of cracks in our relationship. Hairline fractures really.”

I neglect to tell him the “hairline fractures” have taken shape in the form of recently-unveiled doubts. My doubts. And not because of Beckham. God, I’m not in love with him just because he fucked me tirelessly on a Friday afternoon.

It’s just that I forgot I could feel that way; so electric. So all-consumed. So alive.

Beckham says nothing.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” My cheeks burn.

He returns to his desk, taking his seat. The distance between us grows. I feel it.  “Because like it or not, we’re friends now.”

I force a smile that doesn’t want to be there and ignore the shattering sound my resolve makes as it falls apart. “Yeah. I guess we kind of are.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

BECKHAM

An unfamiliar number calls my cell after lunch on Tuesday. Something feels off today, and going two days without a peep from Eva was too good to be true.

I answer just before it goes to voicemail. “Beckham King.”

“Hi, Beckham, it’s Elizabeth from Smyth Nanny Brokerage.” She speaks with the sweet natured patience of a preschool teacher though I hardly hear her over the cackling and shrieking of a woman in the background and the shrill cries of a newborn.

My heart pounds against my chest. “What’s going on?”

“I was given strict instructions to contact you first, in the case of any non-life threatening emergencies.” An apology resides in her tone, but I wish she’d cut the niceties and get on with it. “Anyway, I think you need to come to Ms. Delgado’s apartment. Immediately if possible.”

“Eva put you up to this?”

“No, no,” she says. I can hear Eva yelling in the background, something in Spanish. “Ms. Delgado hasn’t slept in days. She’s ransacked her cupboards and torn the house upside down. She keeps asking for her pills – the blue ones. And she talks so fast I can hardly understand her. There’s this sort of feverish look in her eyes. She’s shaky. This morning I caught her having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. She kept saying ‘baby’ over and over, but she wasn’t talking about the baby.”

I knew Eva had issues with anxiety and dependencies on men, but I’ve never known her to have clinically psychotic episodes.

“I’m not a mental health professional, Mr. King,” she says, “but I’ve seen this once before with a past client. I think it may be postpartum psychosis. It happens. It’s rare, but this is what it looks like.”

My face pinches. I hate that I have to ask this question. “And you’re positive she’s not faking any of this?”

“I’m positive.” Elizabeth’s voice is louder now and so are the baby’s cries. I can imagine her scooping the baby into her arms, protecting her from a psychotic Eva. I should be there. I should be the one protecting her, even if she’s not mine. “She won’t hold the baby either, sir. She won’t nurse and she refuses to pump. If she’s not pacing in front of the window, she’s checking the peephole over and over. It’s like she’s paranoid or she’s waiting for someone.”

“I’m on my way.” I end the call and dash downstairs, hailing the first cab and booking it to Clinton Street.

***

I hear the baby’s cries the second I reach Eva’s floor. Taking long strides toward the end of the hall, I pound on her door. Five stiff strikes.

The door flies open. An older woman with gray hair swept back into a bun bounces the crying baby in her arms.

“Beckham?”

“Yes.” I show myself in. The place is a mess. Pillows are strewn about the living room. Scattered laundry covers the floor. The kitchen is spotless save for a few washed-and-dried baby bottles. I doubt Eva’s eaten much of anything since coming home. “Where is she?”

Elizabeth points toward Eva’s room. I take a deep breath and head back, where I find her face down in her bed, her hair knotted and tangled.

“Eva.” My presence springs her to life. She rolls to her back, her eyes adjusting as she watches me in her doorway. Her lips curl up at the corners.

She scrambles out of bed as best she can, a painful wince smeared across her face. She’s unable to get to me fast enough.

“Slow down,” I say. “You need to take it easy. You’re supposed to be resting, lying down. You had surgery, Eva. Remember?”

She smells of unwashed hair and stale clothes, and her hands frantically grasp for every inch of my body.

Eva’s lips press into my neck over and over. Between kisses she mumbles, “Mi amor, mi amor…”

I glance behind, sensing Elizabeth. Sure enough, she’s watching everything from a careful distance, the baby securely in her arms.

Eva is gone. Mentally. Her lips are moving, nonsensical gibberish filling the room. She speaks a mix of Spanish and English, none of it coherent and all of it flavored in frenzied desperation.

“Elizabeth.” I keep my voice low and calm. “I need you to look up the number for Dr. Evan Brentwood. Call his office. Tell them it’s an emergency. Give them her name. Can you do that?”

She nods, dashing down the hall with the baby in her arm and her phone in her hand.

“Eva, you need help.” I take her by the wrists and carefully lead her to the foot of her bed. She stares up at me, her dark eyes fading. I’m not sure she even sees me anymore. Her spindly body swims in her oversized clothes, preventing her from looking like someone who gave birth days ago.

For a brief moment, my heart sinks when I look at her. I wish she had a better life raft than me. Even if I wanted to be her rock, it would only set her back. She needs help, and she needs to learn to stand on her own without resorting to desperate and illegal manipulative practices.

I stare at the woman who was once dynamite in bed; the one who made me reconsider my non-fuck buddy policy and make a one-time exception.

And then I hear the baby crying again, the wails slightly muffled by the hushed sound of Elizabeth speaking into her phone. The crying stops, and the apartment is quiet for a second. Eva is still as a statue, staring ahead at her dresser and all the half-pulled drawers with clothes dripping over them.

“He’s on his way,” Elizabeth says from the doorway. There’s a tiny bottle in the baby’s mouth, and she’s sucking vigorously, crying out every so often. The nanny offers a timid shrug. “She doesn’t like the formula. She’ll get used to it though.”

“What did she name the baby?” I ask.

Elizabeth shrugs. “She refuses to tell me.”

“She refuses to tell you?”

“She claims her name is just…Baby.”

I push a burst of air through my lips. Knowing Eva, she wrote Baby on the birth certificate as a final act of defiance when the nurses told her I wouldn’t be coming back to sign anything.

Sitting with Eva until Dr. Brentwood arrives feels like an eternity, but I won’t leave her side. I don’t want her hurting herself or anyone else. She’s rocking, and I slip my arm around her to keep her from falling off the bed. I’m the only thing she has right now, or at least until I get a chance to call her friend from Baltimore again.

Thirty minutes later, her doctor shows up. I brace myself for a chiding that never comes. He rushes to her side immediately, asking questions of Elizabeth and finally myself.

“We have to commit her,” he says. “An emergency commitment requires no judicial hearings. I can call the mobile crisis team and have them here within the next hour. She’ll go back to New York General, and we can do a full evaluation there.”

Eva turns to me slowly, her eyes pleading as if she’s grasping what’s going on. She shakes her head, softly at first and then forcefully.

“I don’t want to be away from you. I can’t be away from you, mi amor. They’re going to take me away. Stay with me. I need you. I can’t live without you…” Eva grabs my shirt collar and cries into my chest, her body shuddering with each sob. “Don’t let them take me.”

Elizabeth and Dr. Brentwood exchange looks, but my concern falls with the baby. It’s as if Eva has forgotten all about her. My gut tells me all along, Baby was some kind of gimmick or tool or prop, something Eva could use to get what she wanted, which was ultimately me.

I rise, leaving Eva’s side, and take the baby from Elizabeth, tucking her in my arm like a swaddled football. There’s not a fatherly bone in my body, but out of the four of us here, I’m the best chance she’s got.

Baby is warm, and she nuzzles her face against my chest as if my arms are the most comfortable place in her new little world.

“Where’s she going to go?” I ask Dr. Brentwood. “If Eva is committed, who takes the baby?”

He draws in a sip of a breath, his hands resting calmly in his lap. “Well, Beckham, Child Services will take her into custody if there’s no other legal guardian. Did you sign the birth certificate?”

“Of course not.”

“So she’ll be temporarily placed in a foster home until Eva is able to care for her.”

“How long will that be?”

“We have no way to know that.” He pushes his glasses up, his shoulders falling slightly. He’s annoyed with me for being involved, but I don’t give a fuck.

“Where will she be? Are there foster homes in the city?”

“You won’t know where she’s placed,” he says. “Unless you’re a legal guardian. And even then, you’d have to get special permission to visit.”

I glance down at the tiny little girl sleeping peacefully in my arms. For a second, I see a part of me in her. My heart squeezes. The idea of handing her over physically pains me.

“I’ll take her.” I clear my throat, standing tall. “She can live with me. Eva listed me on the birth certificate. I’m the assumed father.”

“Beckham.” Dr. Brentwood tilts his head, placing his hand in the air to protest.

“I know you’re going to say it’s a bad idea,” I speak before he has a chance. “But I can’t ship her off like some puppy nobody wanted.”

There’s a knock at the door. Elizabeth jumps and scurries down the hall.

“You’ll need to contact a family law attorney,” Dr. Brentwood says. “They’ll have to arrange an emergency custody hearing, and you’ll have to explain to the judge why she’s better off in your care than in foster care.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

Elizabeth returns with a small team of Crisis Team workers wearing matching white polo shirts with blue hospital logos on them.

“Eva, my name is Monique.” One of the workers takes the spot next to Eva where I sat earlier. “You’re going to come with us, and we’re going to help you get better so you can take care of that little one, all right?”

Monique smiles. Eva’s mouth twists into a panicked frown. She scans the room for me, and the second she stands, Monique and Dr. Brentwood take her by the arms and lead her out the door.

The incessant wailing that ensues wakes sleeping Baby and Elizabeth rushes to my side to assist.

“It’s okay.” I bounce her gently, shushing to try and drown out her mother’s shrieks. “I’ve got you now.”

Baby quiets after a few minutes, and Eva’s screaming has disappeared. I’d look out the window, but I don’t need the image of her being strapped into a stretcher burned into my memory.

“Mr. King?” A woman in a khaki trench coat with bags under her sleepless eyes steps into the room. She wears the grayed look of a woman with a thankless job. “I’m with Child and Family Services.”

The way I see it, I have two options.

Dive headfirst.

Or run.