“She seems pretty tough to me. I doubt she needs anyone watching out for her.”
“Trust me. Evan always needed someone to do that even if she thinks she doesn’t.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Twelve years is a long time. People change.”
He grunted. “No one changes that much.”
“You should let it lie, man. She obviously doesn’t want to reminisce with you and if you push it, you’re going to piss her off and risk her saying something to the doctor. Stay focused on why you’re here.”
Jace stood and stalked over to the mini-fridge to grab a beer. Yes, why he was here. That’s what he needed to concentrate on. Dr. Dan Witter could be the key to dragging Jace’s sales numbers out of the drastic decline they’d been in over the last year. Between the struggling economy and the financial hit he took from his divorce, Jace’s once thriving business was on shaky ground.
If the good doctor agreed to feature Wicked as the best adult store and website for couples on his sure to be a hit new TV show, Reignite the Flame, Jace could almost guarantee that he’d get enough of a bump in business to stabilize his current location and expand the chain.
It was make it or break it time, and make it was the only option he’d consider. He would rather die than admit to his parents that he’d fucked up yet again, that he’d made the wrong decision walking away from his lucrative financial planning job to pursue his passion.
He tipped back the beer and took a long swallow. He just needed to steer clear of Evan. That’s what he should’ve done when he was nineteen and that’s what he needed to do now. He wasn’t the guy looking out for her anymore. If there were things amiss in her life, it was none of his business. And even if he had wanted to make it his business, she’d certainly made it clear she had no intention of talking to him about it.
He turned back to Andre. “You’re right. No use dredging up the past with her anyway. I just wanted to make sure she was doing okay, and I guess she is.”
Andre sat forward, setting his feet back on the floor. “So what’s the deal with you two anyway? How do you know her? Old flame?”
Jace leaned against the wall, feeling his lack of sleep. He didn’t want to talk about this right now—or ever really—but he knew Andre would put on his police interrogator hat if he tried to brush him off. Jace drained the last of his beer. “She lived with my family for a little over a year when I was in college. She was sixteen the last time I saw her. My parents fostered her.”
“What happened at sixteen?”
“She ran away. Without a goddamned trace.” He tossed his bottle in the trash can. “Seeing her again is like seeing a ghost.”
Andre’s forehead wrinkled. “So you were her foster brother? Man, the way she was looking at you, I would’ve bet money that you two had something more than that between you.”
Jace’s stomach knotted—the word brother stirring the old guilt into a maelstrom. His gaze shifted to the sliding glass doors and the darkened beach beyond. “Yeah, well, I’m not done with the story yet.”
THREE
“Sweets, you okay in there?” Daniel tapped on her door. “We missed you at the meeting this morning.”
“I’ll be right out.” Evan twisted her arm behind her, trying to reach the zipper on the back of her sundress. She’d slept through her alarm and had woken up right when she was supposed to be in the middle of a breakfast meeting with Daniel and a potential vendor. Not good.
After one more yoga-like move, she gave up and yanked open the door, finding Daniel leaning against the wall in the hallway, tapping out a text message and looking like an Armani model in his perfectly tailored slacks and dress shirt.
“Can you help me with this?” she asked.
“Hmm?” Daniel looked up from his phone, then pushed off the wall. “Oh, sure.”
“Thanks.” She turned around and waited for him to zip up the dress. “I’m sorry about this morning. I must’ve slept through the alarm.”
“Yeah, I was going to wake you, but you were dead to the world when I peeked in. Guess we all need a lazy morning every now and then, right?”
She shot him a pointed glare over her shoulder, then turned and breezed past him into the suite’s living area.
“What?” he asked, his tone innocent. “Did I say something wrong?”
Marcus, Daniel’s business manager and boyfriend, looked up from his USA Today as she sank onto the couch across from him. He smirked. “Hey you, rough night?”
Her gaze narrowed. “I don’t know, Mr. Yes-Please-Oh-God-Just-Like-That, what do you think?”
Marcus gave her a sheepish grin. “Oh, you heard that?”
She threw a pillow at him, and he ducked behind his newspaper.