Provocation (Explicitly Yours 3)

“Yes. Goodnight.” Beau shut the car door behind him and looked up. The hotel glowed, the lobby and the rooms, like it was filled with gold. Was Lola up there? Or was she just—gone? Walking inside was like trudging through mud. He was shutting down, his body crashing without enough sleep. He was almost to the elevator when he heard, “Mr. Olivier?”

Beau stopped, turning to the man at the front desk. “Yes?”

“Your visitor’s in the lounge.”

Beau was already removing his cufflinks, sticking them in his pockets. “You’re mistaken. I’m not expecting anyone.”

“She’s been in there half an hour. She was very clear that you’d be expecting her and that she’d wait as long as necessary.”

Beau squinted in the direction of the hotel bar, then glanced at his watch. It was 10:32 P.M., half an hour after he’d told Heather he’d be back. She’d be an easy fuck, requiring little to no effort on his part—just what he’d thought he needed. Sleep sounded more appealing.

“Do me a favor? Tell her I’m not interested and that I’ve gone to bed.”

“I understand, sir.” He cleared his throat. “She’ll find someone who is. Half the staff is enamored by her.”

Beau had turned toward the elevator again, but he stopped. There was no reason someone shouldn’t be enamored by Heather—after all, she had tits for days, perky too, always a plus. But it made him think of Lola, sitting at a bar, single for the first time in almost a decade. No man in his right mind wouldn’t be enamored by her, that was for certain.

It could only be Heather waiting for him. It had to be. Yet Beau found himself turning back and heading for the lounge. He wasn’t one to ignore his instinct, and it told him it wasn’t Heather he’d find in there—but the woman who’d been firmly entrenched in his thoughts since she’d walked out of his life that morning.

9

Present day

It wasn’t even noon, and Lola had already charged seventeen hundred dollars to Beau’s credit card. She hadn’t lied to him in his foyer earlier that morning—each task on her to-do list was important, including shopping. In only weeks, she was becoming a reluctant regular on Rodeo Drive.

Beau worked long hours. Most days she met him for lunch, keeping herself fresh in his mind, but he rarely had more than a half hour to spare. So she would go to the park or to a museum or a matinee, and when she’d exhausted all those venues, Rodeo Drive welcomed her like an old friend—as long as she was carrying Beau’s black American Express.

The Burberry trench coat in her shopping bag fit her like a second skin. All designer clothing was smooth that way. Easy to wear, easy to move in. If it wasn’t, though, Beau’s tailor would come to the house, take it away and return it to her better. But this particular coat wasn’t for her. She wouldn’t wear it to feel good or to exhibit wealth. She’d wear it for Beau—to make him feel good. That was the power of a well-made piece of clothing. Even though she only needed it for one night, if she bought herself anything less than the best, it would raise questions from him—and she didn’t need questions she couldn’t answer. She was playing a role in Beau’s life, and that role was expensive.

Only three blocks constituted the main part of one the world’s most expensive shopping streets. She walked over plaques honoring fashion icons and under California’s signature palm trees, stopping in front of a high-end lingerie shop she’d been eyeing for a while.

She pulled open the glass door and descended black marble steps. Her heartbeat picked up a little. She might’ve been a woman just looking for something to please her man—or she might’ve been a woman experiencing her fantasy, three weeks in the making, coming to life.

A lady with a pinched smile approached her. “Good afternoon. What are you shop

ping for today?”

“Lingerie.”

“What kind?”

Lola touched a white silk negligee and let it slide over her palms. “The kind that does the most damage.”

The saleswoman made a noise. “I think that depends on the person wearing it.”

Lola turned around to see her smile had turned genuine. Before Lola could answer, a flash of light near the window caught her eye. She crossed the small store and picked up a black, lace corset that sparkled when the sun hit it.

The garment was embedded with hundreds of tiny, glistening gemstones. “They’re Swarovski crystals,” the saleswoman said.

Of course they were. In Beau’s hotel room, the night she’d learned the truth, Beau had said, almost accusingly, that Lola’d been covered in diamonds when he’d seen her on Cat Shoppe’s stage. He must’ve thought very highly of her as a stripper if he’d believed that. They were actually rhinestones. She’d purchased the two-piece bikini in November during a Halloween clearance sale. It’d come in a plastic zip bag. At the register, she’d grabbed a pair of cat ears to top off the outfit. Every other girl at Cat Shoppe had had a thing, and she’d needed a thing. There’d already been a couple of feline-themed strippers, but none of them had sparkled like her.

But that was then, and this was now. Now, Lola had Beau—the kind of man who appreciated extravagance. The kind who expected his stripper to wear diamonds when he put her up on his pedestal.

“I’ll take it,” Lola said, “as well as black underwear and thigh-high stockings.”

The saleswoman nodded. “Shoes?”

“I have them. Four-inch Louboutins.”

“You must be looking to deliver quite a blow.”

“Something like that.” Lola opened her purse and pulled out Beau’s weighty credit card. Before she handed it over, she paused as she was hit with an idea. “By any chance, do you carry cat ears here?”