Praise (Salacious Players Club, #1)(78)

“Sir?” Beau replies with a laugh.

I laugh too, trying to shrug it off, but I feel so fake. Almost mechanical, like I don’t even know how to behave normally. We make small talk while we wait for Emerson to return, and Beau doesn’t seem to suspect a thing, which should make me happy, but only makes me feel a little nauseous. Then Emerson returns with three beers clutched between his fingers, and Beau looks at them skeptically.

“I figured we could have one drink to celebrate your new job.”

Beau gives him an easy half-smile, taking one of the beers and dropping into the oversized leather chair. Emerson looks momentarily pleased with himself as he hands me my bottle, and it almost shatters my heart into pieces. Look at how happy he is. Beau is here and he’s actually smiling and they are about to repair their relationship. I can feel it.

How can I possibly take this away from him? And how can I be so selfish to expect Beau to just get over it? What is wrong with me?

With my eyes on Emerson sitting in the chair opposite his son, I drop slowly onto the last chair, and the minute my butt hits the seat, my eyes go wide.

The vibrator.

I completely forgot it was in there. And now I have to sit here with a remote-controlled dildo and no panties on while we pretend that everything is fine and we aren’t fucking behind Beau’s back. I can hardly hear a word they say over the chanting sound of shame echoing through my head—this is all my fault. Luckily, neither of them seem to notice.

In fact, for the next thirty minutes, neither of them notice I’m here at all.

I’m hanging on to the way Beau is looking at his dad. Between sips of his beer, he tells him about the new job as an apprentice for some big landscaper in the area. Then I catch the look of contentment and pride on Emerson’s face, and I sit here and question how the hell this happened.

A minute ago, things were so easy. Emerson and I could carry on our secret relationship under the guise of me being his secretary. And no one would get hurt. And just like that, Beau shows up, a cruel reminder that nothing is ever easy, and nothing good can ever last.

“So you like working here?”

It takes me a minute before I realize it’s Beau talking to me. With a swig of his beer, he stares at me and waits for my answer.

“Oh, um, yeah. It’s a good job.”

I can’t look at Emerson. I literally can’t bear it, but I feel his gaze on me momentarily. Probably the most he’s looked at me since Beau showed up.

“Good,” he replies with a nod of his head. “Well, next time I’m working in this part of town, I’d like to stop in again. Maybe we can all do lunch or something.” The way he’s looking at me, as if he’s hanging on to hope for something, is so hard to look at, I have to gaze down at my beer bottle, which I’ve completely peeled the label off of because of my nervousness.

“That would be great. I’d love that,” Emerson says, standing up.

Beau is still looking at me, but I’m frozen, my gaze locked on the cool drops of condensation on the brown glass of the bottle.

When Beau stands up, I breathe a sigh of relief. I just need to be alone with Emerson. We don’t have to go back to the way we were before lunch, but maybe we can just talk through this. There is something to salvage here…unless he wants to break it off now. I’m sure that with how good things seem to be with Beau that I don’t mean anything to him anymore.

No, I can’t think like that.

Beau hovers near the front door, and they make more small talk. When I see his hand reach for his keys he dropped next his dad’s on the front entryway table, I see something familiar sitting next to them. Heat floods my cheeks, and I start to panic when I spot the black remote, just inches from Beau’s hand.

He’ll just grab his own keys and leave. He won’t notice the remote.

When I glance over at Emerson, he seems unfazed, so deep in conversation with his son that he doesn’t even see what he dropped on that table in plain sight. I quickly stand up, hoping to get to the gadget first.

“All right, I should get going,” Beau says casually. I freeze in my steps across the room when his hand closes around his keys and the black remote, which looks so much like his truck remote it’s uncanny. In his fumble to pick them up, the remote goes clattering to the floor.

When Beau reaches down to pick it up, he must hit one of the buttons because the sudden, intense vibration between my legs is unwelcome and all wrong. I let out a scream and clamp my hand over my mouth, squeezing my face in a pained expression as I turn and try to run away. I have to take it out now.

The energy in the room changes immediately, like someone just flipped off the lights on a seemingly bright, sunny day. Beau stares at me curiously, waiting to understand why I would react like that, but what could I possibly say?

His vision pauses on me with the remote in his hand. “What’s wrong?”

Suddenly, there’s a scuffle, and I turn to find Emerson yanking the remote out of his son’s hand. With one quick click of the button, the vibration is gone.

“What is going on?” Beau yells.

I should leave. I need to get out of this room, this house, this entire situation, but I’m stuck—caught in Emerson’s gaze as he stares at me with a loaded, apologetic expression.

This is it, I think. This is the moment when he can finally admit to his son that he fucked up, when he can finally admit that I mean something to him, and that everything he said to me in private was real. I wait on bated breath for the moment that I can already tell isn’t coming. Not the way I want it to at least.