Explicitly Yours Series Read online

  “That’s not what I asked,” Beau said. “How you feel about him is one thing. Whether you’re attracted to me is another.”

  “I’m not,” Lola said firmly. She could’ve admitted the truth to any other man, because she was confident in her love for Johnny, but Beau wasn’t any other man by a mile. Her gut told her the truth was a risk she couldn’t afford to take.

  Lola went to leave but stopped when she opened the bill holder. There was a stack of twenties. She counted three hundred dollars, but his total was ninety-seven.

  She stuck only enough in her apron pocket to cover the bill. “This is too much,” she said, turning back to Beau. “I can’t accept this.”

  He hadn’t moved. He raised his eyebrows slowly. “It’s called a tip.”

  “No, I know, but it’s too much. The tip is double the bill, and I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said levelly. “You won’t even accept a generous tip?”

  He almost seemed angry. She almost felt angry. That much money wasn’t a tip—it was suggestive. It turned their harmless, flirtatious exchange into something sordid and cheap.

  She took the cash out and thrust it at him. “Please. I’m not comfortable taking this.”

  His mouth was closed, but his jaw worked back and forth. She didn’t recognize the look in his eyes, but it cooled any warmth that’d been growing between them. “Fine,” he said, taking the money from her. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a tip returned to me, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She walked away with her fingers gripping the empty folder.

  “Well?” Johnny asked as she approached the bar. “How’d it go?”

  She shot him a look. She was too annoyed to answer, but she couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to because Beau was right behind her.

  “This scene has been a nice change from what I’m used to,” Beau said. “You’ve really got a good thing going here.”

  “Like Lola said, I hope you’ll tell your friends,” Johnny said. “We could use the business.”

  Beau looked pointedly at Lola. She hadn’t mentioned telling his friends. “I will,” Beau said. “Even though I kind of like having it as my secret.”

  Lola held his gaze, willing herself to think of anything but attraction. She was failing.

  Nobody spoke for a few moments and Vero, who’d been busy closing out the register, chimed in. “Can I get you some water or something before you go?” she asked Beau.

  “You mentioned the owner’s looking to sell,” he responded, glancing between the three of them.

  “That’s right,” Johnny answered. He leaned back against the bar and crossed his arms. “Why? You know someone who might be interested? We’d really like to find an owner who wants to keep Hey Joe as it is.”

  “Every struggling business wants that,” Beau said. “They want to keep doing what they’re doing without sacrificing a single thing, but they want it to magically become profitable.”

  “This place has the history to back it up,” Lola said defensively. “We believe in it.”

  “And I admire that.” Beau turned to Vero. “Veronica, is it? Would you give the three of us a moment?”

  Vero winked. “Sure thing, baby.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lola said. “Give the boys a chance to talk.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Beau said. The warning in his voice kept Lola’s feet glued where they were. “This concerns you.”

  Vero left, swaying her hips especially wide on her way to the backroom.

  “Have you thought about buying this place?” Beau asked them.

  “Have I?” Johnny set his palms on the edge behind him and sighed. “Owning a bar is the idea one day, but not this one. Even if it is on the decline—well, you’re a businessman, you know. The brand has a solid reputation. It’s already got the foundation for success, just needs the right owner.”

  “You’re worried about the price.”

  “Nope,” Johnny said. “If I were worried about it, that’d mean I had a chance in hell of getting the money.”

  “I have the money to buy it.” Beau paused. “I can give you the money to buy it.”

  Lola’s heart had already gotten a workout that night thanks to Beau, but right then it thudded once and painfully hard—as if it’d been running, come to a screeching halt and smacked into her ribcage. Everything clicked for her. This was their answer. This was why Beau had been so interested in her and the bar. He saw an opportunity, but she saw their first glimmer of hope in a while.

  “You mean like an investor?” Johnny asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m talking about a one-time payment to buy the business and the liquor license outright. You wouldn’t owe me a dime of your profits.”

  Johnny pushed off the bar and stood up straight. “I’m listening.”

  Beau squinted at Johnny for a few seconds, but it looked to Lola as if he was somewhere else. “There’s a catch, of course—”

  “I think you got the wrong idea about us,” Lola said suddenly. At first glimpse it’d sounded like an answer, but as Beau’s eyes darkened and his tone dropped, she didn’t want to hear the next thing out of his mouth. “We may not have much, but we’re honest people. We do things by the book around here.”

  “Let the man talk, Lo,” Johnny said.

  She was too surprised by that to utter anything else. She and Johnny did do things by the book, especially Johnny—there was no reason to dismiss her.

  “It’s okay,” Beau said. “I understand her concern. She’s right to be cautious.” He scratched the long, stubbled line of his jaw as he thought. “It’s simple, really. I just want one thing in return for the money.”

  “What, our first born?” Johnny joked. “Free Macallan for life? Name it.”

  “Lola.” Beau looked from Johnny to Lola with such intensity in his green eyes that she reached back to steady herself against a barstool. “I want Lola for one night.”

  3

  As if Beau’s words had stopped time, Lola, Johnny and Beau stood frozen where they were. Lola didn’t breathe. She might’ve thought Beau’s proposition was a joke and even laughed if it weren’t for his composure when he’d said it. As if to him, the deal were already made. He wanted Lola for one night, and that’s what he’d have.

  “Excuse me?” Lola asked so quietly, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d spoken aloud.

  Johnny stepped closer to the bar that separated him from Lola and Beau. He leaned his knuckles on the surface. “What the fuck did you just say?”

  “Give me one night alone with Lola, and Hey Joe is yours.”

  “You’re offering me money to sleep with my girlfriend?”

  Lola hadn’t blinked in so long, her eyes watered. When she did, her mind caught up. It raced ahead. Emotions came as fast as her heartbeat. Thud. Shock. Thud. Indignation. Thud. Fear.

  “What I’m offering you is your dream on a silver platter.” Beau looked at Lola. “Both of you.”

  He had some nerve putting his eyes on her. Based on the last few hours, it wasn’t even that surprising he’d come on to her. But to try to put a price on her—and on their time together? Her heartbeat was pure anger now, short, quick bursts that made her ears hot. “Fuck you,” she said with her hands curled into two trembling balls. She wanted to say more, but she could only think of the crudest words possible. “Right, Johnny? Fuck him.”

  Johnny’s neck reddened from his T-shirt to his jaw. Her concern shifted from herself to him. He looked like he might lunge for Beau, but Johnny wasn’t a fighter. She’d never seen him lay an angry hand on anyone. She reached out to touch him, but he ripped his arm away and pounded his fist on the bar. “Tell me this is a sick joke, man,” he said through a clenched jaw. That was Beau’s cue to leave.

  Beau raised one eyebrow. “I still don’t have my answer.”

  “You want an answer?” Johnny asked. “How about I j
ump over this bar and give it to you with my fist?”

  “I’m not looking for a fight,” Beau said. “As long as we both have something the other wants, this can be worked out peacefully.” He paused and removed his suit jacket by the lapels. “However,” he said, tossing it over a stool, “we can do it your way too.”

  A door slammed in the back. Beau rolled up his shirtsleeves. She needed him gone before any of the staff came back out. She jerked her hand to the exit and said, “He told you to leave,” but no sooner had she looked away from Johnny than he was ducking to get out from behind the bar.

  Beau didn’t move except to turn and face Johnny, who was already past Lola. Johnny seized Beau’s crisp, white shirt. Beau’s body stiffened as he drew up to his full height and met Johnny head on. Johnny drew his arm back. In that split second, instead of raising his own fist or trying to get loose, Beau looked at Lola. There was no fear in his expression, and that scared her more than anything. Johnny wasn’t a fighter. She had no idea what Beau was capable of. Somebody would end up hurt, and it could very likely be the man she loved. She jumped up and latched onto Johnny’s bicep.

  “Stop!” Her feet were practically off the ground from giving Johnny’s arm all her weight.

  “Let go,” Johnny said.

  “Please don’t do this, Johnny,” she pleaded. “You won’t win.”

  Johnny’s head snapped toward her. The tension in his muscle immediately melted under her hands. “What?” he asked with his mouth hanging open.

  Afraid Beau might sucker punch Johnny, she forced her way between them. More specifically, she pushed Johnny back behind her since Beau was immovable. “Get out,” she told Beau.

  Beau held her gaze while he picked up his jacket from the stool. He blinked over her head. “Five hundred thousand,” he said to Johnny. “There’s a number for you. That’s what this place is worth give or take.”

  “What about what I’m worth?” Lola asked immediately.

  Beau’s eyes returned to hers.

  Johnny grasped Lola’s shoulders. “Move and let me handle this.”

  But Lola could not be moved as she locked eyes with Beau. In her hasty reply, she’d missed the number. Half a million dollars. It made her flush to be associated with any dollar amount, but this dollar amount was so high that she was absurdly impressed with herself. No person would walk into a bar and offer that to just anyone. It had to be something about her.

  Lola tried to keep her thoughts from her face, but Beau looked as if he knew everything. She forced herself to see past the amount. It didn’t matter whether this was about her specifically, because introducing money turned her from a person to a product. A service. The suggestion that she could be bought was a betrayal of her short but powerful time with Beau.

  Beau raised his chin just noticeably. “What you’re worth depends on whom you ask,” he said to her. “If you want to know what you’re worth to him, ask him his counteroffer. If you want to know what you’re worth to me, bring me that counteroffer.” He reached into his breast pocket and placed his card on the bar. “In case you change your minds,” he said before walking away.

  “We won’t,” she said.

  He paused a moment then turned around. “Earlier, before we were interrupted, you asked me my opinion. I was going to say that you’re captivating. You’ve held my attention from the start.”

  It wasn’t until the door closed behind Beau that Lola lost the strength that’d been holding her together. Her legs trembled as she turned around to face Johnny. She put her face into his T-shirt. It smelled like him. She would never not know his scent. When she didn’t feel his arms around her, she looked up into his face. His expressions were more familiar to her than her own, but this was one she didn’t recognize.

  “How could you say that?” he asked through his teeth.

  She blinked at him a few times and took a step back. “What did I say?”

  “‘You won’t win’? I was a second from pummeling him. Thanks for the vote of fucking confidence.”

  “Johnny, seriously? A fistfight? You’re above that.”

  “Were we just in the same room?” he asked incredulously. “Did you not hear what he said?”

  “Of course I heard. But it’s not worth it. You’re of more use to me here than in a jail cell. Or worse—a hospital bed.”

  “That’s not why you stopped me,” he said. “You didn’t think I could take him.”

  Lola raked her fingers through her hair. She had too much on her mind to be stroking Johnny’s ego. “Everything happened so fast. If you’d seen the look in his eyes—”

  “I did. I was standing right in front of him.”

  She shook her head quickly. “You didn’t see what I saw. I said that to protect you. One or both of you could’ve gotten really hurt. You don’t know his background. He could be dangerous.”

  “Don’t ever get in the middle like that again,” he said. “You could’ve been the one hurt. I don’t need you to protect me.”

  Vero came out from the backroom, whistling with her bag swinging over her arm. “You guys ready to lock up? The others went out the back, and I got somewhere to be.”

  “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Johnny muttered, walking to the front to shut out the lights.

  “What’d the suit want?” Vero asked. “He going to make an offer?”

  “No,” Lola snapped, already headed the opposite direction to get her purse from the back. When she returned, the bar was dark and empty. She heard Johnny start the car. On her way out, she remembered Beau’s card on the counter. She went back to throw it away—it was the last thing she wanted to see when they came in the next day.

  It was gone.

  * * *

  Lola rubbed her wrist where her watch had been. Johnny brushed his teeth so hard, she heard the whole thing from where she sat on the edge of their bed.

  It was always the normal-looking guys who were deranged. Given her past, she could usually spot them, but this guy, Beau—who seemed to be things she wasn’t used to, like charming and refined—that level of depravity on a guy like him surprised her.

  The ride home had been quiet. She’d gone over her brief conversations with Beau for any clue of what was to come. The only thing out of the ordinary was his sudden coldness toward her at the end when she wouldn’t accept his tip.

  She’d apologized to Johnny right before they’d gotten out of the car, but he’d sullenly ignored her. Her mind had still been playing catch up. Something in particular had nagged at her—she just couldn’t figure out what.

  The faucet stopped and Johnny came out of the ensuite bathroom in his boxers. He leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed. “What interrupted you?”

  “What?” Lola asked.

  He sighed irritably as if she’d checked out of a conversation she hadn’t known they were having. “He said you guys were interrupted before he could say you were ‘captivating.’ What interrupted you?”

  “It was early in the night,” she said, swallowing. “I don’t really remember.”

  “Try,” he said.

  Lola glanced at her hands. Beau had been standing across from her with his loosened tie and easy grin. Earlier. Before he’d become visibly stiff in those last moments. What had he said to her? That it was hard to get his attention, but that she had it. Such bold disregard for her relationship excited her more than it should. Nobody she knew went after anything that way—except maybe her before she’d settled down with Johnny. “I think he was trying to…to flirt with me, I guess, but you came out from the back,” Lola said. “That’s when I introduced you. He was being a little forward.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve thrown him out.”

  “Because I can handle myself,” she said. “Besides, you told me to flirt with him at the end of the night.”

  “Not really flirt,” Johnny said tersely. “I meant in a way that he thinks you’re flirting but you’re really not. Whatever.” He pushed off the
doorjamb. “So did you give him a reason to make that offer?”

  “Johnny,” she scolded. “It’s me. The woman you love and who loves you back.” She waited, hoping his expression would clear a little. “Of course I didn’t give him a reason. The whole thing was stupid.”

  “Come here,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said come over here.”

  She stood slowly and went to him. He took her chin and kissed her. Her upper lip pinched between their teeth, and she jerked back. “Johnny, stop. We need to talk about this.”

  “Later,” he said. With a hand on her shoulder, he gently nudged her toward the bed.

  “It’s four in the morning.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled her against him by her hips and kissed her again. He ran his hand down her backside and squeezed. “Right now, you know what I want.”

  She knew. Most of the time when they had sex, it was after she and Johnny had fallen into bed, or in the late morning when they woke up. Once in a while, though, Johnny got really worked up, and then he liked her on her hands and knees.

  She turned around willingly. When Johnny had his rare urges, he didn’t fight them, and she didn’t want him to. Those were the times he went absolutely crazy for her.

  She climbed onto the bed in only a long T-shirt. He lifted it up and grabbed her ass in both hands. He rubbed against her. She dropped her forehead toward the mattress as he entered her. His first few thrusts were long and slow as she warmed up to him, but they soon turned quick and hard. It normally took time for her to climax from penetration alone, but she almost always did this way. She became putty in his hands to know he was so consumed, he couldn’t even bother with foreplay.

  “That’s it. Damn, Lo,” Johnny said. “You feel good.”

  She gasped. “Right there. Don’t stop.”

  “You like that?” He ran a hand up her back, then grabbed her hips and pulled her into his next thrust. “Like it hard, baby? How’s that for fucking flirting?”

  Her breath caught. He was thinking of Beau, which made her think of Beau. “What?”