She whipped her head up, her eyes wide. “Excuse me?”
“I would pay you that much to come home with me right now.”
She shook her head, hard and definite. “I—”
“You’re right. That’s nothing. Five thousand.” He’d studied, intricately, the art of negotiation. He’d just used it all that week to secure his entire future. All of that went out the door for her, though. He doubted she even realized she had his balls in her hand.
But she shook her head again. “No. You’re really not much of a romantic after all, are you?”
“Yes, I am. Take it. I just made myself a shitload of money, and I can tell you, it wasn’t easy. I lost years of my life for it. People don’t come around handing it out like I am now. I’m not exaggerating.”
Her smile was close-lipped and unreadable, her blue eyes narrowed fractionally. “I believe you. But my answer is no.”
“Jesus Christ. Fifty-fucking-thousand dollars. Whatever it takes. All of that, just to say yes to me for tonight, to let me have you inch by inch, every goddamn porcelain centimeter of you. Do you have any idea what I can do to you?”
Her lashes fluttered so beautifully, so softly. She was coy. She was playing hardball, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was his yes, however he got it. He could feel her words before she even spoke—“Okay, Beau, let’s go.”
Lola was smiling, but something was off. He remembered a little earlier, he’d wanted her to make him work for it. The way she was smiling now, though, he didn’t feel like he’d earned anything.
She stilled completely. “I’m not for sale.”
“What?” he asked, leaning forward.
“I said, there isn’t enough money in Hollywood to get me to go home with you or anyone else.” She seemed to get farther away, even though she wasn’t moving. He’d beenwrong about her lashes—they didn’t flutter. They beat, leaden butterfly wings, bullets from a gun. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you since it sounds like you worked hard for it,” she said, “but even money has limits.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Beau said. “Not the kind of money I have. Don’t deny me this. I’m begging you against my every instinct—come home with me. Let me make you feel good. I won’t hurt you. I just want to bury myself inside you where I think I might belong, where I can worship you for tonight and fuck you with all the power it took me ten years to get. Can’t you give me that?”
Her face was passive. At some point, her eyes had glossed over, vacant. He doubted she’d even heard what he’d just said. “I’ll dance topless for you all night if you like,” she said. “That’s what I can give you.”
Everything in his body coiled around itself. Did she not see the lines forming around his eyes from the stress, from staying up until three o’clock every night, his retinas burning, Brigitte sleeping peacefully in the next room, the words blurring on the screen, but only a few more minutes before he would shut everything down? All that, night after night, building, destroying, adding, subtracting, fixing, rewriting, overwriting, burning, burning, burning—his eyes in his skull, his life before his eyes. How could that mean nothing to her? What wasonemore small thing—just that slippery thong sliding a little lower over her hips? Just her, afewinches closer, so his neglected cock could find home between her angelic legs?
Beau’s breath was coming too fast. He gripped his knees.
She continued to dance, slow, sexy, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“Stop,” Beau said. “Just stop.”
She stopped, looking at him. He stood up in one jerky movement.
“But you haven’t used your entire hour,” she said, turning sideways so he could pass.
He looked at her from under his eyebrows. What a fickle little kitten. His hands twitched. He was the one in charge—not her. Didn’t she know that? Did he need to show her how to bend to his will, how to be thankful for what he was offering?
Beau had the thing people fought over, dreamed of, salivated, killed and died for—and this young girl in cat ears, who was already nine-tenths naked—she didn’t give one fuck about this money that’d taken him over a third of his life to earn. She couldn’t give him this one thing on the most important day of his life.
The buttons of his dress shirt pressed against his chest with each deep inhale. Beauhad to leave before he exploded. He yanked his wallet from his jacket and left his last hundred dollars on the seat. He didn’t look back once on his way out, afraid she’d be there in the doorway—smug, superior, laughing at him.
5
Ten years later
Beau vowed this would be his last trip to Sunset Strip without his driver. He hit his brakes a little too hard when he passed a free parking spot. He twisted around and backed into it.
“You’re good at that,” said Kirk, the twenty-two-year-old in the passenger’s seat. “Parallel parking.”
“I grew up around here.” Beau straightened out his Range Rover. He put it in park and got out, brushing off his Armani suit. They knew he was wealthy, Kirk and his business partner, Nathan, but Beau didn’t want that to be anything other than background noise. That was why he’d given his driver the night off and was on his way to a rundown bar on Sunset, where he hadn’t gone for drinks in years.
The kids had been polite during dinner, but Beau didn’t want polite. Not from them. He was considering investing in their startup, and he needed to know exactly who he was dealing with.
