The Lion's Den(58)

I knew this. Yet in the elevator, we stood face-to-face. His eyes rested on mine. An electric current coursed through my body, pulling me toward him with a force I couldn’t describe. Was it just me? A reaction to his blinding beauty? Or did he feel the same current? I reminded myself once again he was a rake, a trust-fund kid with the privilege to “reject money” who was moving to New York in a few weeks.

Don’t fall for it, Belle.

And then, without warning, as though the magnetic force was too strong to resist, his lips were on mine. The heat of a thousand suns burned between us, our arms wound around each other, his pelvis pressing into mine. And there the blaze burned even brighter.

Ding! The elevator doors slid open, and light poured in. I pulled away. “Eric,” I cautioned.

“Belle.” His voice was rough with desire.

He reached for me.

“We can’t,” I said. “This didn’t happen.” And without a backward glance, I was out the elevator door and running down the hallway toward my car.



The following week I was on my bed memorizing lines when Summer arrived home from her private-airline steward training class. She flopped down on the duvet, sending pages fluttering. “Hey,” I protested. “I was using those.”

“Sorry, I’m just so tired.” She groaned. “I’ve been on my feet all day. I need a nap.” She crawled under the covers next to me. “Can you maybe do that in the other room?”

“Summer—” I pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes in frustration. She’d been living with me three months and had yet to donate a cent in rent. But we both knew I didn’t have the balls to ask her for it. I got up and started straightening the room, throwing discarded piles of clothes into the hamper.

“What’s up? You’re mad. I can tell you’re mad,” she said.

I sorted through a pile of books and magazines stacked on the bedside table. “My sister’s looking at USC Law School for next fall—”

“That’s great!”

“…so my parents are coming out with her during the holidays.”

“Nice. Where are they staying?”

“Here,” I said. “In my bed. Lauren and I’ll share the pullout couch. Paying for a hotel for a week in LA is too expensive, and I want to spend time with them. Anyway, you’ll have another apartment by then, right?”

She sat up on her elbows. “Oh. So that’s what you’re mad about.”

“I’m not mad, I just…can’t afford to support you forever.”

She sighed dramatically and flopped back on the pillow. “It’s not forever. I told you, it’s just for a few months…”

“You said a few weeks.”

She looked at me, hurt. “Are you kicking me out?”

Now I felt like an asshole. “No. I’m not kicking you out, I’m just…wondering when you might get your own place.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m done with training next week, but I’ve gotta get a job, and I’ll need a security deposit, a car.…It’s a lot. You’re lucky—you have parents that help you out, but I don’t.”

“You know my parents don’t help me,” I said flatly.

“Yeah, but, like, they would if you needed them to.”

I shook my head. The kind of help my parents provided was unconditional love and a hundred dollars at Christmas. They couldn’t afford anything else, and I’d never ask. Sure, I guessed I could always go home to my childhood bedroom and figure out some kind of job in Georgia if I totally couldn’t make it on my own, but I’d never seen that as an option. “I love you. You know I love you. But it’s been three months, and I’m struggling myself. If you’re gonna live here, it would really help if you could at least pay some rent.”

Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize things were so bad for you.”

I looked at her like she was crazy. “How do you possibly not know things are bad for me? Do you think I eat pasta every night because I love it?” I grabbed the scuffed-up pair of heels I broke at the flower market. “My stilettos are worn down to the nail. I busted my ass wearing these in the rain last week.” I chucked them into the closet.

“I’m broke, too,” she said. I picked up a pair of Prada booties she came home with last week and raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t buy them,” she protested.

I sighed. “Can you just contribute something? My rent is eighteen hundred. I’m not asking you to pay half. Anything helps.”

She nodded. “Yeah, yeah, of course…Dad’s coming into town next week. I can ask him.”

It took me a minute to remember that “Dad” was Three, Rhonda’s third husband and Summer’s recent baffling choice of father figure, who now lived in a gaudy mansion in Vegas with a bride just ten years our senior. I guessed he was the best (or richest, anyway) of Rhonda’s erstwhile husbands, but he’d been sleazy ten years ago, and I couldn’t imagine that had changed. Summer had despised him when we were in high school, but now that he periodically sent her money, she’d changed her tune. These days she referred to him as “Dad” and waxed on about looking up to him for being able to “capitalize on opportunity,” whatever that meant.