Million Dollar Devil (Million Dollar #1)(84)

“And what do you want?” That’s all I wanna know.

She looks confused. “What do you mean?” Before I can say more, she says, “I was wrong, what I said about you. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m a liar and a fraud too.” Her voice cracks.

I tear off my gloves, take the check, and tuck it in her expensive purse. “Tell your dad thanks, but no thanks. I’m good. That world? It ain’t me.”

It takes everything I got to turn away from her. When I look back, she’s still standing there, frozen.

Finally, she says, “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

And she turns to leave, stumbling a little, her heels sticking in the mud.

I watch her wobbling a few steps away, a thousand things I want her to know flooding my head.

“It ain’t you, either, you know,” I call.

She turns.

I take a breath, stroke my week-old stubble. “All I seen when I was in your neck of the woods were people who’d cheat. Disrespect. Blackmail. Treat others like lesser beings because of how they made a living. I should’ve told those people to go to hell, but I found myself thinking I needed to join them in order to get what I wanted. But you ain’t like that.

“So as far as I’m concerned, the whole of ’em can go to hell.” I rub my neck and fix my stare on hers. “Except you.”

A small smile appears on her lips. She looks like she wants to say something. She looks vulnerable, unsure. Frustrated and hurt. All at the same time. “Take care of yourself, James.”

“It’s Jimmy. And don’t let those assholes eat you alive, okay? You’re better than all of them.”

She starts to walk to her car, and every step she takes makes me wonder what the fuck I’m doing. She drives away in that car, I’m never going to see her again. Our worlds are too separate.

By the time she gets into her car and pulls away, I’m already regretting this.

I’m mad as shit at myself. At life. At myself again. At everything.

I stuff my gloves into my pockets and shove my helmet under my arm as I walk back to the truck, where Charlie and Luke are waiting.

Just my luck. I’m in love with a fucking princess who I’m never going to be worthy of.

And I hate myself for not being up to snuff.

The boys are sitting in the cab, giving me identical looks like I just shot Bambi between the eyes.

“What?” I mutter, angrily throwing my shit in the back. I motion for Charlie to scooch to the center and climb into the cab of the truck.

Luke shrugs. “I don’t know why you let her go.”

Charlie nods. “You love her, don’t you?”

I look at them both. Grab my ball cap and fix it down low over my eyes so they won’t see it when I lie. “Just drive.”

Charlie grabs the cap from my head. “Answer the question.”

“Yeah,” Luke adds. “Listen to the boy. Answer the question.”

I sink down in the seat. “Yeah. So what? She’s a princess. And I’m—”

“A prince,” Luke finishes. “Believe me. She thinks so. We all do.”

“Not the kind that can give her a single thing she wants in this world.”

Charlie laughs. “She already has everything, Jimmy. Maybe she just wants you.”

I put my hat on Charlie and smash it down on his head as Luke says, “For the last time. Listen to the boy. He obviously got the brains in the family.”

Yeah. Maybe I don’t belong in her world.

But . . . I think she’d fit like a fucking glove into mine.

Would she do that?

Would she give it all up for me?

“You’re telling me to . . . ,” I mumble, the wheels in my head turning as I look down the winding road stretching through the woods toward the highway. Her Audi’s already disappeared from sight. “What are you saying I should do? Go after her?”

They both nod like bobbleheads.

Charlie holds up the camera. “I dare ya.”

Damn that kid. He knows there ain’t nothing I won’t do on a dare.

“All right,” I tell him. “But if you’re gonna film it for my channel, I’m gonna do it right.”





CHANNEL

Lizzy

“Thanks, LB,” I say from my home office when an email pops up in my inbox. “I’ll take a look at them and let you know.”

“All right, Lizzy. Take care.”

“LB. Wait!” I say before disconnecting the call.

At some point, I’m going to have to eat crow and admit that I was wrong about him. We’ve been getting along great lately, and I don’t want to hold back on what I have to say. “LB. I’m sorry for what I said at the launch. I was mean and rude, and you’ve been a great help to me after this—”

“I didn’t only do it for you, Lizzy. I did it for your dad, and for Banks Limited. Though I may have also done it for you,” he adds with a smile in his voice. “You’re a Banks, after all. In all probability, you are going to be my boss someday.”

“You may end up being my boss,” I say.

“Yeah. Well. I wouldn’t mind it the other way,” he says.

I smile when I hang up. I guess I should be happy. My father charged me with finding next season’s new face of our line. Someone who can be rugged and sophisticated, like our last model, who shall remain nameless. LB is helping. I see now why my father trusts him. He knows his stuff, and he’s loyal to Banks’s success.