Page 50 of Resist

No fucking doubt there.

“You’re right,” I repeat. “No sex.”

Her stuttered laugh fills the line. I can all but hear her mind trying to figure out what I’m trying to pull. Mine’s right there with you, sweetheart.

But I know what I’m doing.

When Vaughn decides to sleep with me, it’s going to be because she wants to. Because she needs to. Not because of some damn contract I pushed her to fulfill just so I can have her.

“I don’t—”

“I’ll send you my schedule later. Where you need to be and when. Or I can always pick you up at your place. I’ll just need your address.”

“That’s personal.”

We’re going to get a whole lot more personal.

“What’s your last name?”

“That’s personal, too, and why does my last name matter?”

“Because who you are always matters.” I know I’ve gotten her with that one, and just like a cross-examination in court, I want to leave her with no doubt where we stand. Me in control and her wanting to take it back. “I’ll be in touch.” And without letting her respond, I end the call.

With lips pursed, I stare at my cell and try to figure out what the hell just happened. I may have just gotten in the last word, but I sure as hell don’t feel like I got the upper hand.

Questions circle in my litigator’s mind. Why does Vaughn work both jobs? What is the connection, if any, between the club Apropos and Wicked Ways? Why is she petrified of pissing off Lola if I were to follow through with my threat? What is she so intent on covering up besides the obvious illegality of the overall business?

And what the fuck happened to her? A madam who is scared of sex doesn’t quite go hand in hand.

I try to connect the dots to the questions I’d typically ask my investigator to find out for me . . . and yet I don’t pick up the phone or type an email to Stuart to have him start digging.

Standing from my chair, I skirt around my desk and walk to the wall of windows in front of me. The city buzzes. Taxis litter Park Avenue below, and the street vendors serve food to the people lining up for a quick bite to eat. Everyone on a fast-paced mission to the next meeting, the next event, the next anything—all of them moving with a definite purpose.

What the fuck are you doing, Lockhart?

Paying a woman ten grand for her company without the promise of sex? What if she never gets over whatever her issue is? What if I waste all this time chasing a woman just to be left with my dick in my hand—unserviced and unsatisfied? What if she holds me to what I just said? No sex?

I laugh—long and loud—with a shake of my head.

I wouldn’t put it past her to stand her ground simply to screw me over.

Not in the least.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Vaughn

The train’s horn is in the distance. Its hollow whistle a definite warning for anyone daring to cross its tracks.

The light is dim in our room, but I know Samantha is in here. I can hear her soft snores from where she sneaked in to lie in the big canopy bed beside me. Its shadow on the wall opposite me looks like monsters. Big, scary four-legged monsters that slink into little girls’ bedrooms, so they pretend to be asleep when the door opens.

I squeeze my eyes tight to shut out the other monsters lurking in here—real ones—and am thankful for her snores. For how she all of a sudden started wanting to creep into my room at night and sleep in my bed, even though she’s cool now and tells her friends she doesn’t like me.

But she doesn’t come every night. It’s those nights that the monsters want in more.

The horn again. Toot. Toooot.

The room lights up some as the door creaks open. Glass clinks against glass before the sound of a bottle being set on my dresser. The music is on downstairs again—the kind without words composed by the man with the white wig who played them forever ago. It’s fancy music for another party of people who talk way too much about things that make no sense: inflation rates, GDP, capital, depreciation. Things I don’t understand but that Uncle James is constantly being praised and awarded for. Boring.