Page 37 of Resist

“Where’s the manager?” he asks and pounds a fist on the couch beside him.

Vaughn’s head startles. “Is there a problem?”

“Yes. Why can’t we have you all to ourselves?” he asks with a mock pout. “What if we don’t want to share you tonight?”

Vaughn laughs and winks at him. “I’m a lot to handle.”

“And I’ve got a lot to handle.”

For the briefest of seconds, my teeth grit at his lame attempt to flirt with her. No wonder I need an escort service for my clients. With lines like that, he’d never get laid.

“Good to know,” Vaughn says, patting his arm and taking his come-on in stride, “and I’m sure you’ll make one of these ladies in here happy tonight.”

We all chuckle at her comeback as she moves to the other side of the table before delivering the rest of the drinks on her tray to the women who Ken invited tonight.

Ken and his financial advisor, Gene, turn back to discussing the documents at hand, but my attention is still on Vaughn.

“Ken. Gene. Are we still partying?” a voice booms to my right.

Ken stands up immediately. “You showed!”

“Do you think I’d let you down?” The voice’s owner is blocked from my sight by Ken. “And I brought more women.”

“You can never have enough,” Ken says and steps back, giving me a clear view of the man.

“Ryker Lockhart, is that you?”

“No shit,” I say as I rise from my seat when I meet the eyes of Senator Carter Preston. His clothes are still more expensive than they should be, the women on either side of his arms definitely aren’t his wife, and they are both doing a crappy job of pretending not to be with him while secretly vying for first place in the who-will-sleep-with-the-shady-senator-tonight race. Out of duty, I reach out and shake the hand he extends. “Carter Preston. Good to see you. What’s it been? A year or two?”

He shrugs. “That’s a good sign for me. That means I’ve been winning the good fight.”

“I haven’t seen you around at The Club at all.”

“Too busy running the country,” he says and laughs. Self-righteous prick. “Ironic to run into you here, though . . . I’ve been meaning to call you.”

“Not now,” I warn, letting him know I’m on someone else’s billable hours and hoping maybe he’s lost my number. “Give me a call at my office, though.”

“Sounds good. I’d like you to meet . . .” He turns to look at the women with him and then shrugs without any apology when their names elude him, before turning his attention to Ken and Gene next to me.

It’s in that brief moment that I catch a glimpse of Vaughn from across the space. The drink she’s lifting onto the tray stops halfway from the table.

If I thought she was surprised at the sight of me sitting here, she pales visibly when she notices Carter.

The shock that flashes across her face is fleeting but not before I see it, and the minute she realizes I have, she beelines it out of the room.

What the hell was that all about?

But I can guess, and it doesn’t sit well with me.

The senator is her client. The fact that he uses an escort service doesn’t surprise me, but the notion that he’s used her eats at my mind and urges me to down my drink so that she can get me another.

Has she slept with him? Was her line saying she doesn’t sleep with clients just a bullshit excuse? Is that why she looks like she just saw a goddamn ghost?

I’m pulled into a conversation I don’t give a rat’s ass about, but it takes my mind off Vaughn, so at least there’s that. Maybe I head to the john a few times hoping to run into her in the hallway so I can talk to her. Maybe I lean over the railing and watch the club below to see if I can spot her.

And maybe I should just take what the woman beside me is more than offering with the intentional brushes of her body against mine so I can forget Vaughn. No. Not a fucking chance. I don’t need the complications that come with it.

“Do I know you?” I overhear Carter ask.