Priest. Part 18

She wasn't staying with me? f.u.c.k. "Poppy, I'm so sorry. I don't know-"

"What came over you?" she finished for me. "By the looks of it, half a bottle of Scotch. But," and here she lowered her eyes, "I guess I deserved that."

"No," I said firmly, but not very firmly because now that I'd settled into the pillow, I'd realized the room was spinning around me. "You didn't deserve anything of the sort. I feel so ashamed of myself right now, and I don't deserve you even being here. You should go."

"I'm not going," she said with the same firmness I hadn't been able to muster. "You are going to take a nap and I'm going to read a book, and when you wake up, I have a way for you to make it up to me. Okay?"

"Okay," I whispered, not sure if I deserved a chance to make it up to her or not. But also I wanted her to know why I'd been such an a.s.s, why I'd acted like such a phenomenal b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It was that stupid human desire to justify one's actions, as if I could erase the wrong of it all if only she saw my reasons.

As someone who heard people's wrongdoings and the reasons for said wrongdoings on a professional basis, I should've known better. But I was desperate for her not to hate my guts, and yes, maybe there was a tiny part of me that also wanted to shift the blame, because let's face it, she'd spent the night with Sterling and then showed up in her day-after state, and how the f.u.c.k was I supposed to react?

"I know that you were with him last night," I blurted and then held my breath, terrified that she'd confirm it and even more terrified that she'd try to deny it.

But she didn't really do either. Instead, she sighed and drew the blanket up to my chest. "I know you know," she said. "Sterling told me that he sent that picture."

And then she looked away. "I f.u.c.king hate him so much."

That heartened me a bit. Maybe last night had been s.e.x-free after all. Maybe this wasn't all an elaborate prelude to her telling me that she was leaving for Sterling.

"I didn't screw him, Tyler," she said, noticing my look.

And I believed her. Maybe it was the clear, open way she said it. Maybe it was her eyes, wide and innocent. Or maybe it was something more ephemeral than that, some spiritual connection that knew her words to be true.

Either way, I chose to believe that she was telling me the truth.

She took a deep breath. "We'll talk more when you wake up. But I didn't-nothing happened. I didn't touch him...he didn't touch me." She found my hand and squeezed it, and that squeeze was the axis on which the room drunkenly tilted. "I only want you, Father Bell."

"Wake up, sleepyhead."

The voice pierced through the smoky, smudgy veil of heavy sleep, sound waves and nerve receptors working together to rouse my brain, to coax me awake and back into the world of the sober living.

My brain wasn't having it. I rolled over, but rather than finding one of my ancient, flattened pillows, my face found bare flesh. Bare thighs. I wrapped an arm around them in an automatic gesture, burying my face in the smooth, sweet-smelling skin.

Fingers twined through my hair. "It's time to wake up."

It was the thighs more than the request, but I finally managed to force my eyes open, and once I did, I regretted it.

"Ugh," I groaned. "I feel like s.h.i.t."

"Because of the booze or because of the way you acted?"

I kept my face against Poppy's thigh. "Both," I mumbled.

"That's what I thought. Well, time to feel better. I've laid out some clothes for you on the bed."

The thighs moved away, which made me sad. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, stretching her arms as if she'd been in the same position for a long time, but she wasn't naked any longer, she was wearing a short tunic belted at the waist and gladiator sandals.

"You left," I accused.

She nodded. "I couldn't go where we're going in one of your undershirts and I certainly wasn't going to go in my dirty clothes. I was only gone for a few minutes, I promise."

I sat up slowly and took the water and Advil she offered. "Now get dressed," she said. "We have a date."

Thirty minutes later and we were pulling on the interstate in the Fiat. I was wearing dark jeans and a soft pullover sweater Sean had given me last Christmas in his continuing quest to improve my closet. It was a casual outfit-despite the sweater's ridiculous price tag-and I wondered why we were driving down to the city if not to go to someplace dressy and expensive.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Poppy didn't answer at first, checking her mirrors and craning her neck as she water-bugged through the dense Sat.u.r.day night traffic. I decided not to push her, even though the curiosity was killing me, as well as the faint, nervous worry that someone would see us out together.

Finally she said, "Someplace I've wanted to take you for a while. But first: yesterday. We need to talk about yesterday."

Yes, we did, but now that I knew she hadn't slept with Sterling, I half wanted to avoid the painful dialogue altogether. This last day and a half had shoved us roughly past the pretending phase, past the place where we could just imagine the world outside as an irrelevant storm beating ineffectively at our window, and I hated it. Because beyond that place were all the decisions and discussions that would slowly break my life apart, one piece at a time.

"So, Sterling came to my house yesterday," she said. "After he saw you."

She knew about that?

As if reading my mind, she followed up with, "Sterling loves to brag about his conquests. Business, romantic, vengeful, any kind of victory. I think he thought I'd be impressed that he's so thoroughly boxed us in with the photographic evidence of our relationship."

G.o.d. He's such a tool.

"You have to understand, I knew he'd come here eventually, and I knew that I would tell him I didn't want to be with him. But I also knew that he wouldn't accept anything less than a full, face-to-face rejection, and also I felt like I at least owed him dinner, a chance to talk everything over. I mean, we dated for years...."

"Years that he cheated on you," I muttered.

She looked over at me. The look wasn't entirely pleasant. "Anyway," she continued, her voice edged with agitation, "I agreed to drive down to the city and get dinner with him. We ended up talking so late that I fell asleep in his hotel room."

I didn't like that detail.

I didn't like that detail at all.

"But like I said," she said, "nothing happened. I dozed on his couch until morning and then his driver brought me back home. To you."

"So he knows now that you're done with him? He's leaving?"

She hesitated. "Yes?"

"Is that a question? Are you saying you don't know for sure?"

Her eyes stayed on the road. "When I left this morning, he said he understood my decision completely. He said he didn't want me to be with him unwillingly-that it mattered to him how I felt. And so he'd be stepping back."

I thought of the man I'd met yesterday, of those icy blue eyes and that calculating voice. He didn't seem like the kind of man who'd step back. He did, however, seem like the kind of man who would lie about stepping back.

"So the pictures he's taken of us...he went to all that effort to set up a potential blackmailing scheme and he's just going to give that up?"

She bit her lip, checking over her shoulder and changing lanes again. I liked the way she drove-fast, capable, with a flavor of aggression that never actually translated into anything unsafe. "I don't know," she said a bit helplessly. "He seemed so determined and so yeah-it's hard to imagine him going to all that effort just to leave, but I also don't think he'd lie about it either."

"I do," I said under my breath.

She heard. "Look, Sterling is not a saint, but it's not fair to demonize him just because he is my ex. Yes, he did bad things, but it's not like he's a psychopath. He's just a spoiled boy who's never had anyone say no to him. And I honestly don't think he'll do anything with those pictures."

Is she defending him? It felt like she was defending him, and that p.i.s.sed me off a little.

"Did he offer to return the files to you? Or even to delete them?"

"What? No. But-"

"Then I don't think he's planning on going anywhere," I said, keeping my gaze on the window, where the dusk-covered fields were slowly turning into the sprawl of the city. "He said what he knew you wanted to hear, but this isn't over, Poppy. It won't be over for him until he gets what he wants. Which is you."

Her hand slid over mine, and for a minute, I petulantly thought about ignoring it, about not lacing my fingers through hers, whether to hurt her or to show my disagreement, I wasn't sure.

G.o.d, I was being such a tool.

When I grabbed her hand, I grabbed it tight. "I'm sorry," I said. "It's just-it's like this trident pointed right at my heart. That I might lose you or lose my job-or both."

"You're not losing me," she insisted, glancing over. "And you won't lose your job. Unless you want to."

I rested my head against the cool gla.s.s of the window. And there it was...the choice. Black and white, night and day, one or the other. Poppy or G.o.d.

"Millie knows," I said out of nowhere.

I felt her hand tense in mine, and there it was again, that weird anger, because why would Millie-awesome, dependable Millie-be more worrisome than Sterling? But I took a breath and then eased it out. I refused to let this latest cascade of events drive a wedge between us.

I wouldn't allow it.

"She's not going to tell anyone," I rea.s.sured Poppy. And then I told her about what had happened to me yesterday, ultimately choosing to tell her every single thing, even my ugly, stupid thoughts, because I owed her that. I wanted to owe her that. And really, what did I have to lose? I was this close to losing everything anyway. Might as well be honest.

She listened as I told her everything, about Millie, and about Sterling's blackmail, and about how I had guessed she was with him even before he texted me, and about all the nasty, jealous feelings currently corkscrewed into my chest, and when I finished, her lips were pressed together in a red line, hiding those teeth I found so strangely s.e.xy, pulling her features into a serious expression that was somehow just as attractive.

"I know we haven't known each other long," she said. "But you never have to worry about me cheating on you. It won't happen. Period. I don't cheat."

"I didn't mean..." I struggled for the right words. "I know you, the real you, and I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me. But I also know that Sterling is more than just an ex-boyfriend to you. I know that there's something between you two that's old and powerful, and I guess that's what had me worried, not some imagined weakness in your character."

"It doesn't matter how much history is between Sterling and me. I'll never cheat on you. It's not in my nature."

I hoped that was true. I hoped it so much. But it occurred to me that there was no way I could ever be sure that she wouldn't cheat, there was no warranty for trusting someone you loved and no court where you could sue them if they ended up betraying you. Loving her, choosing to trust her with Sterling, it would make me vulnerable.

But she was already vulnerable, loving a man who wasn't actually allowed to love her back, so maybe this made us even.

To lighten the mood, I said, "I guess I understand that. Sean and Aiden even have a name for why people are the way you are; they call it the Monogamy Gene."

"The monogamy gene," she repeated. "I suppose that's about right."

I sat back. Downtown Kansas City came into view, gla.s.s and brick monoliths sc.r.a.ping against a lavender sky, the river a steel-gray snake below.

"They also used to joke I had the celibacy gene," I said. "Although now I'm not so sure." Streetlights and stoplights flashed across through car, and Poppy deftly maneuvered through the traffic to pull into the heart of the city.

"Maybe it wasn't the celibacy gene," I said, more to myself than to her. "Maybe it's just that I was always waiting for you."

She sucked in a breath and jerked the car into an alley between two buildings. Before I could ask her what she was doing, she'd put the car in park and was crawling onto my lap, which made my d.i.c.k perk up with interest.

Her lips met mine with urgency, a hot, determined hunger, and her hands were everywhere-in my hair, on my chest, pulling impatiently at the fly of my jeans.

"I love you," she breathed, over and over again, and the tension of the drive melted away. "I love you, I love you, I love you. And I'm so sorry for everything today."

I found her a.s.s under her dress and squeezed, sliding my fingers beneath her thighs to run my fingertips along the crotch of her thong, which was damp.

But before I could delve any further into this interesting new development, she pulled back, breathing hard.

"We have a big night ahead, so I don't want to ruin it by getting started early," she said with a smile. "But you don't know what you do to me when you say things like that."

"They're all true," I whispered to her. "I care about you so f.u.c.king much and I just wish-" I pulled her tight to me, her chest in my face, her p.u.s.s.y flat against my denim-clad erection. "I just wish it was like this all the time. You and me. No decisions. No problems. Just...us."

She kissed the top of my head. "Well, if it's escape you're looking for, then you'll like tonight."

At first, I thought maybe Poppy had lost her mind, because instead of going to a restaurant or a movie theater or anything remotely date-like, she pulled into an office parking garage (and I only knew it was an office because the Business Brothers worked two skysc.r.a.pers down and Aiden used to date a girl who worked here.) We walked over to the gla.s.sed-in elevator vestibule and Poppy ran a keycard over the secured door. When it clicked open, she led me to the far elevator, ran the keycard again, and we shot up to the 30th floor.

Finally, I ventured to ask. "Where are we going?"

She gave me a small smile, one of those smiles that left me transfixed by her mouth. "To my job."

I barely had time to process this before we were walking inside, before Poppy was nodding at the woman at the front desk (who was dressed in a tailored suit, as if she was working at an investment firm and not at a strip club.) Poppy pushed at the smoked gla.s.s doors, and I followed, and then we were inside the most exclusive club in this city, the place that had lured a Dartmouth MBA to stay when Wall Street couldn't.

Walls had been constructed along the perimeter of the s.p.a.ce, blocking the windows, presumably so the flashing lights wouldn't shine out during the night (and so that daylight wouldn't shine in during the day.) But there was a sizable gap between the walls and the windows, meaning any guest could take his drink and roam in between the two, gazing out at the cityscape, as several men were doing now, some of them fielding what sounded like business calls as Poppy led me past.

Here and there, the walls broke, giving me a glimpse inside the main room. Two or three women danced alone in gla.s.sed-in boxes, but several were out on the floor, and I instinctively turned my eyes away from all the exposed female flesh. Maybe I was still a priest at heart.

But then my eyes were drawn back to Poppy's short tunic and where I could see the shape of her a.s.s through the fabric.

Yeah, right.

We ducked through one of the openings and then Poppy led me inside a room.

"What are we doing?"

"My boss said I can use these rooms whenever I want. And I want to right now."

"For me?"

"For you. Now wait here," she said with a grin, and then left, closing the heavy wood door with a snick.

So these were the private rooms she'd told me about, like the one she'd f.u.c.ked Sterling in. That thought sent the now-familiar corkscrew of jealousy spiraling deeper, but then I remembered the car, her desperate I love yous. She was here...with me. Not with him.

But why did this snake of anger still slither in my belly? I hated myself for feeling it, but I couldn't chase it out, couldn't dig it out. It slunk through my veins, tickling the inside of my fingertips with the urge to-to what? Spank her a.s.s for spending time with her ex without my permission? f.u.c.k her until she grunted, until my c.o.c.k was the only thing she knew?

G.o.d, I was such a f.u.c.king Philistine.

To distract myself, I examined my surroundings. I'd never been to a strip club before, but this was admittedly much nicer than what I'd expected. There was a chair and a sofa, both leather (easily cleaned, a bitter voice thought) and a dais in the middle of the room, wide enough to host a pole and also wide enough for a dancer to dance without it.