Tangled in Tulle: Tulle and Tulips, Book 1 (6 page)

Rubbing the headache pressing against her temples she went to the elevators. How was she not supposed to love a man who filled a basket with her favorite vices and then rolled up the sleeves of his two-hundred dollar shirt to help her check inventory?

Loving him, how was she going to resist whatever else he had up his sleeve? He wouldn’t stop at candy bars.

Mitchell waved from his post at the main desk in the lobby. Sometime during the day Randy’s team had transformed the lobby into a quaint Christmas scene complete with a giant tree and a Santa throne chair. Blue Chip people worked fast, and their work reminded her she needed to get her shopping done.

Lori ignored his knowing smile and waved as she stepped into the elevator. Joining Trevor for dinner would likely nip her in the nether regions—it would certainly bring memories back just as every visit to his office had, especially the last one where he’d worn only a towel.

Please let him be dressed.

The elevator dinged its announcement of her arrival. She closed her eyes and begged any higher power tuned into her. “Please let him be dressed. Please.”

In the darkened waiting area that had been transformed into a Christmas wonderland, Gina’s computer hummed quietly while blue computer chips danced across the monitor in random dance moves—hip hop, ballroom, street, ballet. Each female chip wore a skirt made of the company name—Blue Chip Technologies.

Chuckling, she turned toward the muted light coming from Trevor’s office. A few steps later she realized it wasn’t coming from his office but was flowing in through the bathroom connecting to his private apartment.

“Crap,” she muttered.

In the office she could convince herself they were only business partners. The office held fewer memories of a personal nature. It was in bed in the apartment overlooking the ocean where she’d explored his body, lost herself in the name of a job which had turned too personal almost instantly.

At the threshold of the bathroom, with a pulsing song she couldn’t allow herself to remember coming from beyond, she almost turned back. Every time she’d gone into his apartment business had been left behind. Every personal experience had grown more intimate.

Run.

She stepped back, ready to obey her inner voice. He wouldn’t know she’d taken the coward’s approach. As long as he didn’t find out she could escape explaining why she needed to avoid him. Unless Mitchell had called to announce her.

Damn.

She moved forward.

It wasn’t the idea of Mitchell calling ahead that decided her. Rather, her own self-pride propelled her on. Living with cowardice didn’t fit in her life. It was one lesson her mother had taught, during a midnight dash toward freedom. Once safely away from her abuser, Mom had called the cops and then testified against him. The peace of mind and lack of bruises had made up for leaving her few treasured belongings behind.

Until her mom had died from pneumonia and she’d been sent into foster care. It hadn’t been a bad situation. She’d liked the family she spent her life with. They just hadn’t been
her
family, and without that connection she’d never really fit in.

No. The easy road had never been hers.

So with a raspy-voiced crooner she and Trevor had voted for on a televised talent show singing about loving arms, Lori entered the den of temptation and arousing memories.

Trevor stood behind the bar in the kitchen with a cold beer in hand and an all-too-wise grin spearing his face. He’d shed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt’s top two buttons. The sleeves were still rolled up like they’d been downstairs where he’d held dress after dress aloft with a comment on how great it might suit her. He was pushing, but the man had taste, she’d give him that. “I wondered if you would come in or leave and pretend you hadn’t been here.”

“I almost left.” The truth fell from her as easily as lies once had. The change crawled greasily along her skin. She couldn’t afford to lose the ability to lie. Some secrets needed to remain hidden.

“I’m glad you accepted the invitation. Drink?”

“To dinner only. I want to thank you for your help this afternoon.” She nodded at his beer bottle. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

“Really? I have a nice merlot.” He pulled a second bottle from the fridge. “I’ll enjoy the company even if you did feel obligated.”

“I actually prefer the beer.” It was another truth she’d never shared. Beer just wasn’t as sophisticated as a finely developed taste for wine, and only the best had been acceptable in Madame V’s eyes.

He handed over a cold bottle with narrowed eyes. “What changed?”

“Everything, and with it I won the ability to be me. Or learn what that means.” What was with her and the truths? She was only giving him reasons to believe she’d accept his proposal.

He led her to the living room area and sat his beer on the scarred table. “I always wondered what parts of yourself you held back.”

“Held back? Now that’s one I haven’t been accused of before.” She sat in the large recliner. The couch… She couldn’t sit there without recalling the things they’d done on it.

“The list is small.” He sat on the table and slid over until his knee bumped hers. “But there were moments when you seemed to be wearing an ill-fitting façade. By the way, I ordered pizza. Pepperoni and pineapple.”

She laughed. “If Madame V had ever known I ate that with you…”

“She’d have thought
I
forced it on
you
,” he finished with a flirtatious wink.

She directed the conversation away from the past and particularly away from Madame V. That topic too easily reminded her of the three-month-long assignment as a call-girl, the lies she’d told to maintain her cover and the almost deadly ending.

An hour of comfortable conversation later, with the pizza sitting between them half gone and mostly cold, Trevor grew silently reflective for several minutes. “If I ask a question will you answer it?”

“That is a question. My answer would be a suggestion that you ask a direct question.”
I’ll figure which evasion to go with.

“You’re not agreeing to give me an answer.”

“No, I’m not.” Regardless of how she still felt about him, and the relief she’d found when learning he wasn’t engaged, some answers could never be given. It was an inescapable fact of her life.

“When we were together, before, how much…” He dropped his face into his hands and dug the tips of his fingers into his scalp. “How much of what we shared was real for you?”

“Trevor,” she whispered over the pain his doubt inflicted.
String that tightrope a little higher next time.

“All the times we lay in bed or sat on this couch talking… The dreams we shared… Were those things real?”

Saying yes would lead to him asking if they were still. Saying no would break his heart, and hers. Both scenarios sat uncomfortably heavy in her shrinking chest. She really had grown into a bad liar over the last few months. “A lot has changed since those nights.”

“But not everything.” He stood, took her hand and led her to the sofa she’d avoided earlier. “You’re free of Madame V, and that life. You’ve come back to me. Something from then had to have been real.”

She couldn’t tell if it was desperation shaking his vocals or if his conviction was simply too strong to remain level.

“I can’t get into a relationship with you, Trevor.”

He tugged her down beside him, keeping her close. “We had a relationship beyond business from the start. Then and now.”

Charm sparked in his gaze, compelled her to stay focused on him. He erased the distance between them, smudged the line of her resolve. Her belly tightened low and deep. Her sex trembled.

“Trevor.”

“Then.” He kissed the left corner of her mouth. “And now.” He kissed the right. “We were never just business…” He kissed her nose. “Though I’d have paid any price to get you away from Madame V a lot sooner.” He kissed just between her eyes. “I’m damn glad you escaped.”

Escaped. Ha.
Near death with starvation, she’d been dumped in a gutter a few hours before the FBI raided Madame V’s mansion. Which of Madame’s lackeys had been her dumper would likely remain a mystery—one she didn’t care to solve now that she was safe.

“Thank you.” It sounded more like a question, but the man was messing with her mind again. Her free hand inched across her lap toward Trevor’s. Her brain held out for distance but clearly her body wasn’t interested in caution. Her brain won and stopped her hand.

“I’m proud of you, Lori, and I find myself not caring what I don’t know about you.”

You would if you knew.

He took her mouth with his and drove thought from her mind. Her body, suddenly a heated, prickly-skinned mass of need, held the controls.

The small insights he was gaining, the tiny glimpses of pieces he was putting together, made words unnecessary for him to understand why she’d avoided the couch. The hours they’d cuddled on the cushions had banished any lines. She was likely reminded of them again with their new arrangement. They’d met when he was hiring high-class escorts to attend business functions because they came with the benefit of zero drama and complications. Or they had until Lori. Rules and expectations fled where she was concerned.

Brushing his lips against hers, tasting an intriguing mix of innocence and experience, he rediscovered some of what had called him to her from the beginning. “Do you remember our first date?”

She dropped her head to the side as he trailed kisses along her neck. “We went to an awards dinner.”

“And walked through the downtown art festival.” He nibbled on the lightly protruding line at the front of her neck, the tendon running from her collar bone to her neck, a spot he knew would make her shiver.

“You kept a hand on my back.”

“You appealed to me. Your intelligence.” He slid a hand behind her, flattening it at the small of her back and holding her close. “The way you tolerated the public part of my job.” She shook a little. “Touching you, even before I’d tasted you, filled a void in me I hadn’t noticed.”

Lori sighed and moved deeper into him the way she had that first night walking, the way she had each time since. Whenever he’d touched her she’d shifted a fraction closer.

“You made being with someone easy.” No woman had ever made a relationship easy. And none had seemed to enjoy him for him without seeing the zeroes in his checkbook. Lori may see the zeroes, but more from a desire to avoid them beyond their business deal.

“You made me feel safe.” She whispered the admission almost reluctantly.

Surprise trickled along the tails of rising arousal as he nudged her back into the corner of the sofa. The biggest surprise was that he finally indentified the void she’d filled. Safety. She’d made him feel safe, just as she said he had for her.

He slipped the pearly buttons of her blouse free one at a time. “You remember the times we spent on this sofa?”

She stiffened, which told him she did remember. Each time had begun on a night he’d paid for her companionship and though they’d meant a great deal to him he hadn’t been able to take her in his bed on those nights. “Tonight is nothing like those nights, Lori.”

The smooth, lightly freckled skin peeking at him from between the part in her blouse prickled with gooseflesh. After placing a lingering kiss at the center of her breastbone, holding himself back from devouring her, he tugged her top open to uncover the silvery lace bra cupping her breasts.

“You’ve chosen to be here.” His dick jerked within his trousers, but he wasn’t rushing. “There is no business between us tonight.”

“No.” She sounded breathy, like she’d run three miles, uphill, in the cold. “No business.”

Yet she wasn’t calling it intimacy or even personal and the shadows in her sad eyes said she equated the couch with painful intimacy. He took the small allowance she granted and tasted her breasts through the elegant lace.

“I’m going to erase those memories, Lori.”

Her lids drifted down. She dropped her head to the couch, simultaneously arching into him. “Please, Trevor. Please make me forget.”

Her voice broke at the end of her plea. A tear leaked out the corner of her eye.

His heart trembled, vibrated up his chest and throat. She’d never asked him for anything more important and he refused to let her down.

He slid his hand up her back and popped her bra clasps before moving to ease the shirt off. She moaned and writhed, just little lifts of her pelvis and breasts as her body strained to be closer.

His own body tensed and coiled.

After stripping her of her bra and dropping it to the floor, he leaned back to admire her. Tracing his fingers over her, teasing and tempting, he familiarized himself again with her body. Curves and straight lines. Petite. Teasing fingers.

“I dreamed of you. Every night since I last saw you I’ve dreamt of you. Dreamt of touching you and having you beneath me.” Even the weeks he’d been in a coma he’d dreamed of her.

Her eyelids fluttered open. A few of the shadows had left. “I dreamed of you.”

The words whispered like a caress. Her quaking hand, as she raised it and rested it on his cheek, was a billowing breeze which buoyed his hopes.

With a low moan, he dropped his head and pulled a nipple into his mouth. Laving her with caresses, relishing in the feel of her hands exploring him, her fingers working his shirt buttons free, Trevor delighted in banishing the remaining shadows from her eyes. From her soul.

He explored her breasts, her tight abs, her belly button and all the skin between. On his journey back up toward her neck he noticed a narrow pucker of skin about an inch long that hadn’t been there before. Tracing the new scar first with his tongue and then with a finger he met her steady gaze.

“What happened?”

“A knife.” There was more to it, according to the vague tidbits Breck had shared, but the soft finality in her tone said not to ask for more. He wouldn’t. She would tell him when she was ready, about the scar, the captivity and her past.

With another kiss to the pink line, he continued down her body, removing her slacks and boy-short panties. He left her strappy heels on. Some fantasies never got old.