Chapter 6: Your Boyfriend?

Noise outside the bedroom door startled her awake.

Sloane sat up, both hands pressed to her temples. The hangover from last night was fully in residence. Her head was splitting. She couldn't even remember most of what had happened after they'd gotten upstairs — only flashes — and the last thing Holden had said before he'd left.

"Not fucking you tonight. Wherever you go from here, Sloane, I can find you."

She'd regretted coming back to Chicago the second he'd put her on this bed. Holden Ashworth in the same city as her had always meant trouble, and she hadn't even been here forty-eight hours.

She rubbed her face and stared at a point on the rug, trying to put yesterday into some kind of order. The knock came again. The door cracked open. Someone slipped in.

Sullivan.

The first thing she saw was the snake coiling up his calf — the black tattoo that wound around the outside of his ankle, climbed his shin, disappeared under the hem of his trouser. He was just like the snake. Smooth-skinned, too quiet, impossible to read.

He was in a deep brown three-piece, burgundy silk tie, dark hair pushed back off his forehead. Striking, sharp-jawed, the kind of handsome that made women in country clubs whisper. Black eyes, very direct.

She didn't bother looking at his face after the snake. She slid off the bed and walked to the closet to pick out a dress.

Bare feet sinking into the cream rug, the room totally silent.

"What — not even a hello?"

Sullivan, voice low and amused.

She yawned and pulled a black mini dress from the rack — silk, an unfinished hem, no back except for a single satin bow at the small of her spine, mid-thigh. Held it up in front of the standing mirror. Dropped one shoulder, then the other. The bodice was strapless and structured. It would do.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "You sticking around for the rest of the show?"

Sullivan was leaning against her desk, ankles crossed, idly turning a small ceramic figurine over in his fingers. Black eyes pinned on her, the way a wolf watched a deer it had no plans to chase yet. He gave her a slow smile and tossed the figurine back onto the desk.

She frowned. Didn't say anything.

He came up behind her, caged her between his arms, and pressed his face to the side of her neck. He inhaled. He stopped — she could feel him register the bite mark Holden had left under her ear — and exhaled slowly. His mouth lingered there a second too long for the version of them they were pretending to be in public.

She didn't move. Didn't push him off. Didn't lean in.

"Sloane." His voice had gone quiet. He let go and stepped back, turned half away, gave that self-deprecating smile he was so good at. "Why couldn't you have been Hadley. Such a waste."

She held his eyes through the mirror. Then she turned and laid a hand on his shoulder, lifted his chin with the tip of her finger.

"Sullivan," she said, "if you made her love you, she'd just be as miserable as you are."

He laughed, low. Breathed it out. "Yeah. All right. Get dressed. We're going home today."

By the time she was put together, he was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

Today was Granddad Ashby's eightieth. As Sullivan's officially-acknowledged girlfriend, she was contractually obligated to make an appearance.

The whole way out, he kept reminding her of the rules at the Ashby house, kept swearing his stepmother wouldn't make a scene with her.

She kept thinking she'd heard this exact pep talk seven years ago, in the same tone, from a different man.

Holden had given her this same speech the first time he'd taken her home.

Sullivan led her down to the underground parking garage and started up again. "I still don't get the location, Sloane. Half this lot is empty most nights. How are you turning a profit?"

She was running her fingertip along the rim of a hand mirror, touching up her lipstick. "I want to. None of your business."

He kept walking, looking for the car. She trailed after him, head down, focused on the mirror. The clack of her heels echoed across the empty deck.

He stopped abruptly. She walked into his back. Off-balance, her heel caught on a piece of loose gravel, her ankle rolled.

"Ah —"

She yelped. Sullivan whipped around just in time to catch her around the waist before she hit the concrete.

She was tilted backwards in his arms now, one of his hands flat at the small of her back, the other catching her under her ribs. The stance read like the closing pose of a tango number. His face was three inches from hers.

The lipstick rolled out of her hand, hit the deck with a small metallic ping, and started rolling down the slope of the parking lot.

Neither of them moved. They both watched the lipstick roll. It went a long way. Caught the edge of someone's polished black dress shoe and stopped.

Sloane's eyes traveled up the leg of those slacks, the cut of the suit, until she landed on a face she would have given a kidney never to see again.

Holden was standing six feet away, both hands fisted in his pockets, his jaw locked, and the tips of his ears flushed bright red. His mouth was curved into something that wasn't a smile.

Holden's ears went red when he was furious.

She had forgotten that.

Her stomach dropped. Of all the people. Of all the parking lots in this whole goddamn city.

He looked from her face to Sullivan's face and back. The amusement in his voice, when it came, had teeth.

"Your boyfriend?"

She tried to push herself out of Sullivan's hold — and Sullivan, the bastard, tightened his grip and answered for her before she could open her mouth.

"Yeah. He is."