Page 97 of Resist

Another stuffed animal for Lucy.

I sigh. It’s the good kind of sigh—the kind I swore I’d never emit because it’s only in stupid romance movies that women forgive and forget when men send them flowers. It’s only in romance movies that the woman tells the man she needs space, and he gives it to her. It’s only in these movies that the heroine isn’t judged when the ugly truths of her past come out.

And still . . . I sigh.

Once in the door and with the high heels off my aching feet, I set the flowers down and open the card.

Sometimes it’s the ones you wait forever for who mean the most.

I set the card down next to the other two on the counter and stare at the notes I’ve gotten from him over the past few days. A soft smile is on my lips despite being bone tired when I drop into the chair at my kitchen table. The bills I have stacked in organized piles flutter from my huff of exhaustion.

“You bastards will have to wait until tomorrow,” I mutter to them, because right now I need happy. Right now I don’t want to be frustrated or reminded of the burden I undertook to try to save my sister. Right now I just want to hear Ryker’s voice.

I pull my cell out of my purse and see the notification from my bank of a deposit being transferred to my account. The notifications pop up often—every time one of my clients transfers money to my account. I take my cut and then send the remainder to the escort they spent time with.

But the amount of this notification more than catches my eye. $20,000. I blink at it for a second as I try to recall which girls I had out tonight, and none of them were bringing in $20,000 for one client.

That’s ridiculously high. I may try to pretend I’m a big player in the escort business, but on the scale of things, I’m just getting started.

I log into my bank to check the transfer, always wary of suspicious things, always fearful this house of cards I’m holding up on a wing and a prayer will come tumbling down.

But I hesitate to click on the deposit.

A part of me already knows what I’m going to see.

R. Lockhart. $20,000 transferred to XXXX9560

A sickening feeling drops into the pit of my stomach as I stare at Ryker’s transfer. Those snapshots that have lived on repeat in my brain come charging back but this time with a skewed observation of them.

One where there was nothing shared between us. No soft moments in the bar. No belly-clenching laughs during the game. No intimate emotions as we shared and pleasured and sated each other’s bodies.

Not a single one.

Because it was just Ryker, the client, finally reaching his endgame with me, his escort.

He got precisely what he wanted. The weeks of chasing were done. He took and claimed . . . and now he’s paying me to let me know where my exact position is in all of this.

I’m furious and within minutes am back out the door, on the train, and headed to his fancy penthouse to tell him where exactly he can shove his money.

My anger doesn’t abate a single bit as I stalk my heels up to the front of his building and wait for the doorman to open it.

“Ms. Noname to see Mr. Lockhart, I presume?” he asks as his gaze flickers over his shoulder to a corner of the lobby area and then back to me. Something in his eyes is a warning I don’t want to heed, and so I push past him despite his silent protests.

My heels are loud as I cross the space. Each step more determined than the next, especially when I see the back of Ryker’s head. He’s in a tuxedo, black jacket, black tie—breathtakingly handsome—and he has one hand holding on to something.

It takes me a second to process the sight once I take a few more steps.

He’s dressed for a black-tie event. The woman he’s touching is in an emerald-green formfitting dress with her flawlessly styled auburn hair.

It may take me a moment to process what I’m seeing, but it only takes a second for Roxanne to see me, flutter her lashes, and smile in such a sickeningly sweet way.

“Vaughn. So good to see you,” she purrs, and even though his back is to me, Ryker’s whole body jolts at the sound of my name.

My feet don’t stop, though. They sound like thunder on the expensive floor as I stride across the distance. I don’t dare look in his eyes. I don’t dare show him how goddamn hurt I am right now.

First he pays me for something I thought was truly wanted between us. Something that wasn’t forced by contract.

And then he rubs my nose in the fact that I was just his hire-by-night sex by going out with Roxanne—the woman he called crazy—without batting an eye.