Provocation (Explicitly Yours 3)

Beau rubbed his forehead hard. “You think I hired a man to rob us at gunpoint,” he said evenly. The memory alone made his heart pound as if he were standing there again, completely helpless.

“I—”

“Hired him to scare the shit out of you. To put his hands on you.”

“You’ve done worse.”

She angled away from him a little, but he grabbed her shoulders, brought her close to look her straight in the eye. “I have never done worse than that. If you’d’ve let me, I would’ve gone after him. I would’ve hunted that motherfucker down and killed him for putting you in that position.”

“I don’t understand you,” she said suddenly, her voice cracking. She bit her lip when her chin wobbled. “How do you do it?”

He released her immediately, stunned. Just the threat of her crying struck him, reminded him of how she’d broken down in his lap after the mugging and told him she loved him. She rarely showed vulnerability, that’d been clear to him within moments of meeting her. How many times had she cried since that morning? On her way home from the hotel? When she’d found out about Johnny and Amanda?

“How do I do what?” he asked.

“Turn everything off. Teach me how. If you can’t love me, teach me how not to love you.”

Beau’s chest tightened. Lola was strong and stubborn. She wasn’t this girl standing in front of him, submitting to her pain. Fighters, like Beau and Lola, turned sorrow into strength. He didn’t know how to handle her as a girl whose heart he’d broken.

“I don’t turn anything off.” Beau’s hands flexed in and out of balls. It took so little for her to turn him in a circle. His instincts about her were always changing, and that felt like losing control. “Do you think I liked watching you leave this morning? You never even gave me a chance to explain.”

“Leaving was a mistake,” she said bluntly but backed away.

Beau automatically stepped forward. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted her to admit that.

“Or was coming here a mistake?” she continued. “I don’t know, Beau. Should I not have come? Do you want me to leave? Tell me what to do.”

Beau looked down at her. Her face was open, just like it’d been the night before when she’d trusted him with the biggest decision of her life. “I love you. I love him. Tell me what to do, Beau. I’ll do it.”

Glenn Churchill had painted a picture of love for Beau—taking precious hours from his work to do absolutely nothing with Lola. Nothing but enjoy her company. Maybe they went to a coffee shop with friends, maybe they stayed in bed half the day. Not just a few times, but every weekend. Could he and Lola ever be that couple? The hurdle before them was massive.

“We aren’t supposed to be together,” Beau said.

Lola chewed her bottom lip. She stared at him, but she seemed lost in thought. “Okay. All right.” After a brief hesitation, she turned around.

“Lola. Hang on.” Beau rubbed the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes, but he knew she was walking out. It was always going to end. It’d already gone on longer than it should’ve. Beau had never been good at ignoring his gut, though, and against all odds, it was telling him to go after her.

He crossed the room, strode through the lobby and caught up with her in the elevator bank, where she was waiting with her arms crossed.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Beau said.

She didn’t even blink as she stared down the elevator doors.

“We’re not supposed to be together. I don’t see how it could ever work.”

“Then let me go back to my room. I’ll find a new hotel in the morning—or maybe I’ll just go home. Either way, you won’t see me again.”

“I don’t want that.” Beau didn’t like talking to her profile, but she avoided his eyes. “Come upstairs with me.”

She exhaled a short laugh. “Upstairs? To your room? You must think I was born yesterday.”

Beau raised his palms as if not to spook her. He might, if he didn’t tread carefully. He regretted that he’d made a pass at her earlier. She suffered, because of him, and he was no longer sure he wanted that. “I don’t think that, but it feels wrong for you to be here in my hotel and not with me.”

She opened her mouth, but he continued before she could interrupt.

“I have a guest room. You can sleep there tonight, and after we’ve both gotten some rest, we can continue this talk.”

The elevator arrived. Lola boarded it before the doors were even all the way open and hit a button.

He followed. “Lola.”

She looked at him. “What?”

The doors closed. They were alone now—him, with Lola. He knew her, knew how to handle her, how to get her to respond. It was instinctual. “You’re not going back to your room tonight.”

“I see. Suddenly, you’ve decided you want me, and I’m just supposed to obey?”

“Neither of us knows what we want,” he said. “But we both know you’re not ready to walk away forever. Neither am I.”

She readjusted her arms and tapped one gentle finger in sync with each ding of a passing floor.

“What do you need?” he asked. “Just to agree to come for tonight?”

She turned to face him without hesitating. “I need you to make me a promise. No matter what happens, no matter how good or bad it feels between us, no sex. I can’t sleep with you right now. I’m too confused. I need to feel—safe…again.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t just mean tonight. No, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but if it lasts a minute past tomorrow morning,” she paused, “you can’t touch me until I come to you and tell you I’m ready.”

Beau sighed. He was exhausted—he’d have to be to agree to that. He would’ve said anything to get her up there so he could go to bed, though. Because he wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing she was in the next room.

It wouldn’t be easy. Lola’s power over him wouldn’t go away just because he wished it would. That was becoming obvious.

“You have my word.”

Lola looked at him a second longer and turned back toward the elevator doors. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come.”

&nbs

p; It wasn’t until they were walking to his room that he realized they’d never even stopped at the eleventh floor. When she’d gotten on the elevator before him, she’d pushed the button to go to the sixteenth.

13

Lying on her back, with her hands folded over her naked stomach, Lola stared up at the dark ceiling of Beau’s guestroom. Beau’d kept his promise and shown her to the opposite side of the suite without so much as a handshake. From the dark circles under his eyes, she guessed he hadn’t slept since well before she’d left him that morning.

She was tired too, but her thoughts were coming fast. Lola was far from the master Beau was. She hadn’t had as much time to plot as he had, and she’d stumbled and faltered her way through their interaction tonight. He’d riled her. She’d almost walked away. It’d been risky, threatening to leave, but she was still here. And she wasn’t ready to give in yet—she could learn this game.

She reviewed the evening with careful attention to detail—like his anger when she’d questioned his authenticity. It was most uncomfortable to turn the magnifying glass inward, though, to figure out what about Beau derailed her. She’d almost broken down learning the nuances of his layered plan.

She shouldn’t have been surprised about Hank Walken’s involvement—she might’ve figured it out if she’d given it enough thought. But the extent and depth of Beau’s reach scared her. When Sean, the doting bartender, had turned from confident to cowering, Lola had realized how alone she was in this. Nobody could take Beau on, because there was nobody Beau’s money couldn’t buy.

Lola took a deep, meditative breath and closed her eyes, but not because she was going to sleep. She assumed somewhere out there, a star was shooting across the night sky. She made a wish—that Beau should suffer from his love the way she had. That she would be the first to bring him to his knees for what he’d done.

She had no choice but to return to a place she didn’t want to. She had to be the Lola he’d fallen for in the middle of the night. The girl he’d touched as if she’d belonged to him rather than someone else. The girl who’d looked up at the stars and wondered how long ago her feelings for Johnny had begun to change. Who’d stepped in front of a gun for a man she hardly knew but one she knew she wasn’t prepared to live without.