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And that scared her.
She glanced at her watch. 8:50 a.m. She had ten minutes until she’d be addressing her staff. Paige was due in this afternoon and they were having a soft opening by invitation only for the other casino owners in the area and VIPs from each of the surrounding resorts.
A soft opening was a pre-grand opening that was a test run for business owners. Shelby was always nervous at this stage. But as she stood in her office and glanced into the showroom at the gilded shelves filled with unique, sexy lingerie, she felt her confidence return. After all, this was the twentieth store she’d opened.
Her staff had been handpicked and Shelby knew they’d do a fabulous job. She’d decided that tonight, after the formal grand opening, she’d tell Hayden she’d move in with him. And she vowed to talk to him about his dad. To let him know that Alan had blackmailed her into coming back.
She had chosen her clothing for the day carefully, donning the red leather bustier and thong under a long-camel colored suede skirt with a black silk shirt. She’d pulled her hair up into a loose chignon and left several tendrils of curls hanging around her face.
She wore a pair of black heels, and a small gold choker as her only jewelry aside from her watch. Her clothes looked good on her and gave her an added boost of confidence as she exited her office and entered the shop.
Her small staff was already assembled, talking quietly among themselves. Shelby’s cell phone rang.
She glanced at the number and saw that it was Hayden.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. Will you have time before the opening for a drink with me?”
The day was jam-packed with activities and last-minute details. “Sorry, I don’t think so. I’ll probably be going over something with Paige.”
“How about if I come to you?” he asked.
Nothing would make her happier. She liked that Hayden had made sure his schedule was always available to her so that she could find him whenever she wanted him. “Sure. In fact, I have a little surprise for you.”
“Yeah? Is it something I’ve been waiting for?”
She thought about it. Thought about how long they’d both been together and apart. Thought about their lives and how they’d both used work as a substitute for relationships. And thought about how this time she wasn’t leaving. “Oh, yeah.”
“Dammit, I’m on my way to a meeting but I want to come to you. Take you away from all this and just make love to you.”
“Stop it. We both have work to do.”
“I know. I’ll be by around five.”
She hung up quietly and turned to her staff. After giving them a pep talk, she walked outside the shop to observe the store, to see it from beyond the gilded gold leaf–inset doors. The window displays looked erotic and sophisticated.
“Nice job.”
Shelby froze. Slowly she turned to face an older, more jaded-looking version of Hayden. “What are you doing here?”
“Checking on my investment,” Alan MacKenzie said, putting his hand under her elbow and leading her out of the path of the foot traffic.
Shelby took a deep breath and tried to tamp down the sense of panic she felt. Everything was starting to go so well for her and Hayden. “This really isn’t a good time. You know this entire casino is wired with security cameras that record everything. I don’t want Hayden to get the wrong idea.”
“I don’t trust you to carry out our plan,” he said.
“It’s not our plan,” she said, pulling her arm away. “Not anymore. I’m not sure I can do what you wanted me to. Please, Alan, just leave this to me.”
Shelby turned away determined to leave Alan standing there. She ran into a solid chest and glanced up with a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.
“Hayden—”
“Leave her alone, Dad,” Hayden said, putting his arm around her shoulder and anchoring her to his side. “She’s here because of business, not to be bullied by you.”
Shelby was shaking and she knew that this moment was going to end badly. She should have told Hayden about his dad’s proposition before now. Why hadn’t she?
Because she’d wanted to make sure he really liked her before she dropped her bomb. Because she’d always understood that they had to have more than a great sexual bond between them. Because she knew that she needed Hayden’s love and wasn’t sure she’d had enough time to convince him that what they had would last.
“I’m not bothering her, Hay. I was congratulating her on her store. She’s come a long way from the girl we both knew.”
“Don’t say it like that, Dad. We never gave her a chance.”
Hearing Hayden defend her convinced Shelby without a doubt that she couldn’t put off the truth any longer. She had to tell him. But she didn’t want to spoil this moment. In her entire life, she’d never had anyone defend her the way Hayden was now.
Emotion choked her and she turned her face into his chest, hugging him tightly, trying to tell him without words just what that meant to her.
Hayden was glad he’d gotten down to Bêcheur d’Or as quickly as he had. He’d been in the middle of a meeting when Deacon had called him to say that he’d spotted Alan in the casino. Alan usually visited only twice a year and always caused some sort of trouble with the staff. Last fall Alan had handed out demerit cards to half of Hayden’s blackjack dealers for minor infractions, causing distress before Hayden could explain that his father had no power over casino employees.
As soon as his dad disappeared around the corner, Shelby took a few steps away from Hayden. She was pale. He’d never seen her look like this.
“Are you okay?” he asked, lifting her face toward his. There were tears in her eyes, and no matter what she said, he knew his dad had been bullying her.
She blinked and her vulnerability slowly disappeared. “It really wasn’t bad. I just know what your father thinks of me. And he makes me feel like…like I’m still a gold digger.”
He lowered his head for a kiss, tenderly tasting her mouth, showing without words what she meant to him. He pulled back before he wanted to because he knew she had a busy day. “Well, I know how my old man can be.”
Hayden rubbed the back of his neck, not sure how to explain to her about the man he’d become after she’d left. “He blames you for a lot of things, Shelby.”
“What does he blame me for?” she asked. She’d put a foot of space between them and had her arms wrapped around her waist.
“Not having grandkids.”
“I doubt you’ve been celibate since I’ve been gone. There was opportunity, right?”
“I’m not much on settling down. This business is my life. Could you imagine raising a kid here? I mean you’ve seen the kids at the center. What kind of life is that?” he asked, not sure he wanted her to say no.
“The one you had. You turned out okay.”
“I’m a workaholic adrenaline junkie.”
“Thought about this a lot?”
“Nah, one of the women I dated called me that.”
“She was probably jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Of this casino. She probably had just figured out that no woman could come between you and the Chimera. Anyway, your dad raised you here. And you two are still on speaking terms, so it can’t have been that bad.”
Normally he’d never have left his steering-committee meeting like he had, but here he was several floors away from some very highly paid men and women who were waiting for him. Especially since the dressing rooms of the revue venue had been broken into last night and a nasty note had been left for his star performer.
“No, it wasn’t. We get along okay when he minds his own damn business. He thinks he can stroll into my operation whenever he wants and give me tips. The old man still thinks casinos should be run…old school.”
Shelby laughed like he wanted her to. He reached out to toy with one of the loose waves hanging around her face. “He has the belief that he’s always right, too. He can’t believe that people can change.”
“People or you?”
“Me,” she said, sounding forlorn.
No matter what he said or did, their past would always be between them like an unacknowledged wound. The past hadn’t been healed by years of separation nor was the relationship they were building enough to wipe away the past hurt. He really stunk at relationships and had no idea how to make this right.
The only time he really felt in control around Shelby was when she was in his arms. He walked around behind her and surrounded her with his body, pulling her back against him, wrapping his arms around her waist and bending his head to whisper in her ear. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll run interference for you.”
And he meant it. The last time, he’d left Shelby on her own to deal with his dad, but now he realized he should have protected her better.
Why hadn’t he been able to see that she needed him? He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that they were dependent on each other.
Her hands crept up over his wrists, holding him as he held her. She tipped her head back and looked up at him. He could tell she was searching for something in his gaze and he hoped she’d find it. Frankly, he knew that taking her to bed would go a long way to making him feel better.
“I don’t need protecting. I’m a grown woman.”
He waggled his eyebrows at her, trying to lighten the tension that lingered in the air like a streak of bad luck at a slot machine. “I’ve noticed.”
“Trust you to turn this back to sex.”
“Did I?”
She raised both eyebrows and gave him a very prim look. “You know you did.”
He winked at her. “Can’t help myself around you.”
She sighed and then moved away. “Thanks for coming to the rescue, but I need to get back to work.”
“You’re welcome. What were you doing out here?”
“Checking out the store from the outside.”
“You’ve checked it out before,” he said.
She walked toward her lingerie store and stood out of the foot traffic, watching the action inside. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s really mine. That this is my life.”
“You’ve worked hard for your success. You deserve it.”
“I don’t know about deserving all this.”
She gestured to her clothing and the shop and him. “I mean, I’m wearing a pair of shoes that cost three hundred dollars. When I was in Vegas before, I bought my shoes from the final-markdown rack.”
“I never knew that,” he said.
“I would have died if you had. I tried very hard to hide that part of my life from you. The house you picked me up at wasn’t really mine—it was the Jenkinses’. I worked there as an after-school maid. Their daughter was two years older than me and Mrs. Jenkins used to give me her old clothes.”
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