“I don’t want you to think… It’s not that I think I’m too good for that. I mean look how we met, but if I’m going to use the money you’re giving me to change things, I want to do it right.”
He brushed my hair back from my face, cupped my cheeks in his hands, and kissed me gently again. It was sweet, warm, and all-consuming.
When he pulled back, he was looking at me like I was something to be cherished. If I hadn’t already been falling for him, I sure as hell would have fallen headlong right then.
“Let me help you,” he said, voice low and rough. “I want everything to be right for you.”
“I’m fine with you giving me contacts so I can find a job, but I won’t take charity from you. I know you think I can’t handle things because I ran away, but I—”
“I think you’re handling things the only way you could. No one should be expected to work miracles.”
“I wish I could.”
He smiled. “Come on. Let me take you to bed.”
He stripped me slowly, then devastated me with sweetness and heat as though it were his mission in life to bring me pleasure. No man had ever treated me like I mattered so much. As I drifted to sleep, I knew I would dream of things that weren’t possible.
17
Remington
Over the next few days, I spent far too many hours working, though I had Loyola’s Patisserie deliver a king cake for Henri every day. I also made time to take Henri out to dinner, once to Arnaud’s with Corbin and a man we were hoping to recruit and tonight just us at Cafe Amelie. After dinner, he’d fallen asleep in the car, and I’d carried him to bed.
As I’d undressed and showered, I thought about how I could help Henri. We hadn’t talked about it again, but I was determined to find a way to take care of his mother’s medical bills. The money didn’t matter to me. I had more than I could ever use. Why should he be forced to suffer? The system that made it impossible for him to get out of debt was the same system that had led to me betraying one of the cardinal rules of families like mine and had provided X with a secret he could hold over my head.
Bob Gayle, a man who should never have been allowed to have a medical license had taken advantage of elderly people who couldn’t afford the prescriptions they needed. We still didn’t know how many had died because of his actions, so when I had a chance to get myself out of trouble by helping the police capture him, I gave them all the evidence I’d collected in my quest to shut down Gayle’s operation.
As far as I knew, no one had figured out what I’d done until X did. If he went public with that information, it would ruin me and my family. I didn’t think he would try that. Even though X had come out as the head of a security firm, the public still had no idea what the firm actually did. I could expose him as much as he could expose me.
I had to keep everything in balance with X, with my family’s enemies, with our allies, and that took so much effort I didn’t see how I could give Henri the care he deserved. And yet, I couldn’t imagine letting him go. I climbed into bed with Henri, pulled him closer to me, and he sighed softly as I pressed my lips to the back of his neck and drew in his scent. I stayed wrapped around him as I drifted to sleep.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the buzzing of my phone woke me. I turned over to get it from the nightstand, hoping I wouldn’t disturb Henri. It was Lance. “This better be a fucking emergency.”
“I’ve got a lead. I want to share what I found.”
“You can share your shit in the morning. I’m sleeping.”
“It is morning,” Lance insisted. “It’s like four a.m.”
“You can talk to me when I’m ready to get out of bed.”
“But I’m on your porch right now.”
“No, you’re fucking not.” It was all I could do to keep my voice low. I wanted to shout at him.
“The streetlight is shining just right for me to see into your little library. Let me see if I can tell what you were reading.”
“Don’t move.” I hung up on him, slipped from the bed, pulled on a pair of sleep pants, and made my way downstairs. I saw him peering in the window. He had the nerve to wave with a big smile on his face. I wanted to punch him, but that was a common reaction for me around Lance.
I opened the door, and he just stood there with Tony on his shoulder. He really did take that damn monkey everywhere. “Why the hell did you come over here in the middle of the night?”
“Technically, it’s not the middle of the night, though I guess that depends on when you think the night starts and when it ends, but—”
I grabbed him by the front of the shirt. Tony scolded me loudly as I yanked the two of them into the house and closed the door. “It’s got to take serious work for you to be this fucking annoying.”
He shook his head. “No. It comes naturally.”
“Jesus, I need a drink.”
“Sounds good. Pour something for me too.”
I reached into the cabinet for a bottle of bourbon I kept for special occasions. This time, I was using it to prevent a special occasion—the death of my brother. “I’m not giving you anything until you tell me why the hell you thought this information was worth waking me up.”
“You
