Domination (Explicitly Yours 2)

Brigitte cooed and fluttered like a little bird. “I see you’re not worried about making a good impression on me.”

“I have no delusions about my relationship with Beau. It’s temporary, and he knows that. Therefore I have no reason to impress you.”

“Temporary,” Brigitte repeated. “You flinched at the word.”

Lola had hoped Brigitte wouldn’t catch that. She narrowed her eyes. “And you have a vivid imagination.”

“Do you love him?” she asked.

The question flustered Lola, but this time she was ready for it. Her face remained smooth. “If I do or don’t, it isn’t your business. You aren’t your brother’s keeper—or are you?”

Brigitte’s eye twitched noticeably. “What was that he called you? Ma chatte?” She said the endearment so sharply, venom might’ve sprayed off her tongue. “Do you even know what it means?”

“His cat,” Lola answered.

“Close. More like his pussy,” Brigitte said.

Lola leaned in. “Well, it is.”

“I can smell him on you.”

“That’s because we fucked on the way over.”

Brigitte’s lips paled with a tight smile. “Beau,” she called loudly over Lola’s shoulder. “We’re finished here.”

The door opened. “So are we,” Beau said from behind Lola. “We’ll be on our way then.”

“See you tomorrow night,” Brigitte said to him. “And goodbye, Lola.” She didn’t walk them out.

“Was she hard on you?” Beau asked on the way to the limo.

“I can handle her.”

“I wouldn’t have left you alone if I didn’t believe that.”

Warner already had the door open for them.

“She seems oddly protective,” Lola noted.

“She’s not actually my sister,” Beau said.

Warner sniffed. He shut the door once they were inside.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Lola said. “You neither look nor sound anything alike.”

Beau tugged on the end of his sleeve. “Would you like a drink?”

“No.”

Lola waited as he fiddled with his cufflink. His brows got heavy, as if it required great concentration. Finally he said, “I don’t talk about my family often. I prefer to keep my personal affairs—well, private.”

It’d taken Lola a few months to introduce Johnny to her mother. She loved them both, but they represented two different things for her—her past and her future. Johnny and Dina now got along better than Lola and Dina. “I understand,” Lola said. “We can talk about something else.”

“No, I…” He looked up and cleared his throat. “I want to tell you. It’s part of who I am, and I want you to know me.”

It was a step in a different direction for them—forward or backward, Lola wasn’t sure, but she’d always been curious about this side of Beau, especially right after his proposition.

“I told you when I was seventeen I went to Paris with my dad for the summer. The trip was cut short because of his car accident. That’s how he died.”

Lola covered her mouth. “While you were there?”

“Yes. And he wasn’t alone. He was with a woman he’d introduced me to as a friend earlier that summer—but as it turned out, they’d been having an affair for years. She was also killed.”

“You didn’t know about her?”

Beau shook his head slowly. “I had no idea. When I met her, she offered for her daughter, Brigitte, to show me around Paris since I didn’t know anyone my own age. Brigitte and I became friends.” He brushed his hand over his pants. The leather seat creaked as he shifted. “I found out later she knew the truth about our parents but didn’t tell me. If I’d known, I would’ve stood up to him. For my mom.”

There was irony in this information, considering how Beau was coming between Lola and Johnny. But maybe the two events were somehow related. Lola didn’t mention it. Beau was clearly outside his comfort zone, and she didn’t want him to clam up. “How’d Brigitte end up here?”

“She was born here, so she had dual citizenship even though she grew up there. She begged me to bring her back to America with me.”

“But you’d only just met. Why would she want that?”

“She just felt…alone. Nowhere to turn.” He pulled a little at his collar. “Imagine explaining to my mom about the fifteen-year-old girl I got off

the plane with.”

“She took in her husband’s lover’s kid?”

“Yes, and she didn’t deal well with it. His death and finding out about the affair sent her into a deep depression that lasted almost two years. I had just finished high school, but I couldn’t leave her like that so I lived with them. Then one day she was fine again.”

“Just like that? What changed?”

“She was better for about six months. She lost weight, bought new clothes, cooked us lavish meals. She even took a trip. I moved out and Brigitte was getting ready to graduate. Everything was great.”

“Until?”

“Until…we realized why she’d been so happy. As Brigitte’s guardian, my mom was in charge of her inheritance—and in those six months, she’d spent all of it.”

Lola’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”

“She tried to tell me we deserved that money more than Brigitte. And she’s convinced Brigitte uses me for my money as revenge against her.”

“Does she?”

“No. My mother has an active imagination.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Beau frowned. “Brigitte and I lived together for a long time before I made even a dime. Brigitte was there through all of it, for every late night. When I couldn’t see straight anymore, she pushed me forward. She believed in me, even when I was no one.”

Lola had a sinking feeling. It didn’t matter what his life was before—for Beau, money defined people. He actually believed he was nobody before it. “Where’s your mom now?”

“With her sister in Florida. We aren’t very close, but I support her how I can.”

“With money,” Lola said.

Beau pulsed his eyebrows once. “Not that she deserves it, but she’s my mother after all.”

“That’s why you said money complicates things.”

“One of the reasons.”

“I’m sorry,” Lola said.

“Everyone has things in their past to be sorry for. We can’t let it shape who we are. Right?”

She glanced at her hands on the leather seat. She supposed everyone had things to be sorry for, but she’d made peace with her past. If that were true, there wasn’t any reason why she shouldn’t be honest with Beau about the fact that she used to strip. But was there any point in telling him now and risking that he’d see her differently?