“He came up with it?”
“Yeah. It’s the sort of cheesy shit he loved.”
“But you’re not with him anymore?”
He shakes his head.
“Why?” I ask.
He laughs grimly. “Now who’s asking all the questions, Rosie?”
“I know, I know,” I say quickly. “But I’d like to know if you’ll tell me.”
He sighs again, leaning forward, laying his powerful forearms on the table. “Fine, it’s not like it’s a secret.”
Chapter Nine
Ryker
I didn’t plan on talking about Zane, but then I didn’t plan any of this. I didn’t plan on bringing her here or bantering with her or falling for her, falling like a missile smashing straight into the earth.
She watches me patiently, eyebrows raised, as though silently telling me she has all the time in the world. I’ve never felt like this before, with anyone, as though something deep inside her and deep inside me is communicating all by itself.
“I met Zane when we were both young, in our early twenties. In fact, maybe I was twenty. Your age. That seems so long ago now. Hell, it is. Two decades.”
I don’t know why I add that last part. Maybe it’s an effort to see if our age gap would bother her. But she just nods and keeps watching, keeps waiting, leaving me with the possibility that she doesn’t care about our age gap at all.
“We were both gym hounds, using the same twenty-four hour gym at all times, day or night. We ended up becoming gym buddies, and then, when I started the business, I asked him to join as a trainer. He did one hell of a good job, so I promoted him. Years went on like this until finally, I made him a business partner.”
“It sounds like you were close,” she murmurs.
My hands tighten into fists, my knuckles pushing against my skin like they’re going to burst free. I find myself wanting to roar and beat my chest and smash everything in sight.
“Why do you say that?” I snap.
But Rosie isn’t going to back down just because there’s some fire in my voice.
She narrows her eyes, staring hard. “Because of the way you were talking about him… duh.”
“Maybe we were close,” I allow. “Hell, maybe we were best friends. But Zane has too much goddamn wildness in him. At first, I thought this was just relegated to how he behaved with women—”
“How’s that?” she asks.
Am I going crazy here?
It’s the eager way she says it that makes me believe… makes me think she’s asking, not because she truly cares how Zane behaved with women but because she wants to assess how I think men should behave.
“He picked them up and used them,” I snarl, not wanting to leave any doubt about how I think a man should treat a woman. “He’d go through dozens of women every couple of months, sometimes paying them, sometimes meeting them in bars. It was seedy as fuck.”
“Some men would call that a good time.”
“I’m not one of them,” I tell her firmly, hoping she can hear the conviction in my words, my tone.
When I claim you, it’s going to be for life. No other person factors into us, Rosie. Ever.
“But these wild parts of him weren’t just about women. I learned that when I realized the bastard was ripping me off.”
She gasps. “How?”
Remembered rage surges through me, making my fists clench even tighter.
“He was cooking the books to launder money for some of his druggy pals. He was using our connections in the fitness world – he was using my goddamn gyms – to push steroids. He was stealing money directly from the company. He was doing every shitty thing you can think of short of burning the whole thing down.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, her voice just barely audible over the noise of the deli. “I can’t imagine… I have a friend, well, my adopted sister. Her name is Sadie. I can’t imagine what I’d do if she did something like that to me.”
Adopted sister?
My curiosity spikes at that but she looks at me with such eagerness in her eyes, waiting for me to go on with the story.
“What did you do?” she asks when I say nothing.
“I wanted to kill him,” I grit out. “I wanted to wring his neck. But instead, I did the right thing and turned the bastard over to the cops. I’d laid the groundwork beforehand, catching him on the gym’s security system meeting with his dealer, catching him dealing some himself. He went to prison for four years.”
She nods. “Good, that’s good.”
“Yeah, he deserved it,” I agree. “But now the motherfucker’s out and he keeps popping up in my damn life. It’s like he thinks he deserves some of the company back, even though I managed to work him – and the dealer fucks – out of every aspect of it. That was a lesson in trust, at least when it comes to business.”