Coldhearted Boss(7)

With trembling hands, I open the wallet, ignore the hotel key and the thick black credit card, and move on to the cash. There’s more in here than I expected, nearly $800 total. Who keeps that much cash on them?! I could skim $500 and he’d still be left with plenty. $500 is more than I make in a month. I move to take it, but my hand is shaking and I tell myself I should look at his driver’s license first so I can memorize his address. One day, when I’m not surviving by the skin of my teeth, I’ll send him back the money with interest and a thank you note. He’ll get to feel good about himself. He’ll get to say he helped the poor helpless country girl when she was down on her luck. He’ll get to tell his buddies about it, and his wife, too. No—he wasn’t wearing a ring. I can’t add mistress to my growing list of sins.

According to his license, he’ll turn thirty-one this year, but that’s as much information as I can gather before I hear muffled voices out in the bar.

Is it him? Back already?

My heart leaps into overdrive.

It’s now or never.

I have to get out of here.

I flip back to the cash and rub the bills between my fingers.

Take it. Take it and get out.

This money would solve your problems!

I want it. I want that money so badly my mouth nearly salivates, but instead of taking it out and slipping it into my back pocket, I sigh and slam the wallet closed.

In the end, I can’t do it.

Instead of feeling proud that I’m doing the right thing, I chide myself as I walk out into the hallway. All that…for nothing. Now what am I going to do? How’s my mom going to get to her classes? How am I supposed to get to work?

The voices I first heard in the bathroom grow louder and I relax, recognizing one of them as my cousin. I spot him leaning against the bar talking to the new bartender, asking where I am. When he sees me emerge from the hallway, he looks relieved—relieved and tired as hell. His beat-up baseball hat is tugged low on his head, nearly covering all of his ashy blond hair. His neon yellow t-shirt—his uniform at the lumber mill—is stained with sweat around the neck and arms. If this was a bad day for me, Jeremy’s probably wasn’t far behind.

“Hey, I’ve been calling you,” he says, pushing away from the bar and straightening to stand.

I blanche. “Sorry. I wasn’t feeling well.”

He frowns and assesses me quickly from head to toe. Jeremy’s always been a worrier. When our lives were at the most chaotic in my high school years, he was truly the only person I had in my corner. I was there for him too, someone he could trust, someone he could talk to. We formed a tight bond.

“Ready to go?” he asks, angling his head toward the door.

I nod then turn to the bartender, holding up the sleek leather wallet. “That suit must have dropped this. I’m sure he’ll be back for it any second.”

After I hand it off, I follow Jeremy out to his beat-up truck, decline the half-finished cheeseburger he tries to force on me, and don’t look back in the rearview mirror even once as we pull out onto the old country highway.





Chapter 3





Ethan





Truth be told, when I make it back to my motel room and find my back pocket empty, my first reaction isn’t even anger; it’s shocked admiration. How the hell did she steal my wallet without me even noticing? That feeling doesn’t last long, though. My anger settles rightly into place by the time I make it back to the elevator. The facts are impossible to ignore: I know I had my wallet when I got up to follow her into the bathroom because I remember reaching for it before Steven insisted on closing the tab. Sure, it could have fallen out at some point between then and now (something that has never once happened before), but the other piece of evidence glaring me in the face is the fact that the brunette bombshell isn’t here right now, meeting me back at my room like she promised, ready to finish what we started in that bathroom.

No. Of course she’s not. She never planned on meeting me here.

She took my wallet and ran like the little thief she is.

Rage curls my hands into fists. I can’t believe I got played like that. I can’t believe she pressed her supple body against mine and kissed me back, moaning like she was as shocked by the chemistry as I was and all the while, she was planning to rob me blind.

I want to find her and teach her a lesson for taking advantage of me.

I ignore the part of my conscience that tries to lay the blame at my feet. I knew something was off when I first laid eyes on her in the bar. My instincts shouted at me to leave after I’d spent half the night watching her. I’d written off the feeling, though, mistaking it as some kind of gentlemanly urge. I felt like I was taking advantage of her. She looked so fragile and helpless up there at the bar all alone, her shoulders slumped with defeat, head tilted down.

Now, I realize it was all an act, no doubt one she’s performed a million times before considering how successfully she pulled it off. I could have sworn she was near tears at one point in the bathroom, right after I confessed that I wanted to make sure she was okay.

Jesus Christ. I’m an idiot. I can’t believe I fell for that!

I yank my hands through my hair. My god, she seemed so into me, into the way I was touching her, kissing her.

This never should have happened. My partners and I are only in town for the weekend and we have a million things on our agenda. I had no business noticing the brunette when she first walked into the bar, but now I see the trap plain as day. The whole setup was arranged to tug at my heartstrings. It’s so easy to pick it apart now that I have some distance. Casting aside her femme fatale beauty, I recall her faded jeans and thin t-shirt—clothes that looked like they’d been worn and washed a hundred times before.