Taking the Score(34)
“How much are we talking about?” Brody asked casually as he took a seat opposite the ugliest desk he’d ever laid eyes on.
A snake’s smile curled Grigson’s lips. “So she hasn’t told you? In fact, I’ll bet she doesn’t even know you’re here.”
“How about I cut you a check for a hundred and we call it even?”
“As you’ve gone to all this trouble, I think you’ll be willing to pay more than that.”
White-hot rage seethed beneath Brody’s skin. “You’re making over and above your investment, Mr. Grigson. Don’t get greedy.”
He merely shrugged, an unspoken offer on the table. If not a hundred thousand, then perhaps a half a million. Or a million.
Would he pay a million to keep Emma safe? In a heartbeat. But a leech like Grigson wouldn’t stop there. He’d want more. He’d demand more.
This ended today.
He unpocketed his checkbook. “I think a hundred thousand should cover it.”
Grigson projected smug. “Let me show you something, Kane.” He pointed a remote at one of the large screens on the opposite wall, but Brody raised his hand before he could run the tape.
“I’ve seen it. In fact, Emma showed it to me and we had a nice time watching it and getting us in the mood.” He was tempted to wink, he felt that fucking good.
For the first moment since Brody had walked in, Grigson looked uncomfortable. “I know what happened with your former fiancée, how she threw you over for your father. Do you really want this video to get out? Another woman making a fool of you?”
Goddammit, as if he cared about this sex tape shit. Old, stick-in-the-mud, tree-trunk wedged in his ass Brody might have cared. Not this one. Not the guy who burned eggs and wore funny socks and had a complicated relationship with a demon cat.
Not the guy in love with an incredible woman.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better than that, Grigson. You see, the thing is, I don’t care if you plaster that video all over the place. All I care about is making sure Emma is safe.” He signed the check for the original offered amount. “My accountant would think me remiss if I didn’t get a receipt for this.”
Grigson’s eyes flashed with fury. “You’re that crazy about her?”
“Yes,” Brody affirmed.
“Even though she set you up.”
Grigson’s barb struck home, but Brody shook it off like a tiger drugged with a trank. He didn’t know if Emma had set him up and right now, it didn’t matter. Keeping his cool was imperative. “All I’ve seen is evidence of a businessman monitoring what happens in his establishment. Good practice, but as I chose to find my pleasure with a beautiful woman in a strip club, then I’d say the fault is mine. I’m not going to blame her for this.”
He stood. “I assume you’ve got her over a barrel, something to do with her sister. I imagine it’s not necessary to mention no harm should come to her. But as you’re a businessman, perhaps this might give you an incentive. If you bother Emma or her sister again, you won’t enjoy the consequences.”
“Really? And what consequences might those be?”
Outbid, outflank, or outsmart. “I’ll release that video.”
Shock evicted Grigson’s smug expression. “Now why would you do that?”
“I’ll release it to the police. Along with my credit card records and the canceled check my lawyer gave you a few days ago. It would make a very damning case for prostitution.”
“You’d be incriminating yourself, Kane. And Emma.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t need to tell you how great wealth and political connections can smooth over practically anything. In fact, I’m not really sure which of your girls I was with that night. I’d had a lot to drink, you see, but the next day I found my credit card had been charged for much more than the going rate of a lap dance in a private room. Foolish of me, really, but I could never hold my liquor and some pretty, faceless girl had my dick out before I could say ‘ride me to heaven, baby.’ And when I was asked to pay $3,000 to make my video problem go away, I sent my lawyer…” He gave a mock frown. “I really shouldn’t have submitted to that extortion, but I was concerned about my reputation. Then the owner of the club—this pimp—wanted more. Extortion, solicitation, running a brothel. I think I could survive my mistake, but I don’t think you or your business could.”
Grigson’s entire body shook with barely smothered rage. Brody placed the check on this fucker’s ugly desk. “A receipt, if you don’t mind.”
Chapter Twenty
The door to the penthouse slammed hard enough to rattle Emma’s teeth. She rushed out to meet Brody and then questioned if that was such a good idea.
Anger had re-formed his handsome face to stone. Furious, he stood before her, heat and menace rolling off him in lethal waves.
“I’ve been calling you for the last hour,” she said. “Tell me you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“I did what I should have done from the beginning. Paid that prick off.” He waved a hand, dismissing what he obviously wanted to say to the west wing. “You’re free and clear.”
She swore the room spun, the penthouse’s sterile surroundings pressing in on her. Free and clear? If only it were that easy. She’d replaced a financial shackle for an emotional one. Where was the joy at getting out from under Ray’s thumb, at paying off Daisy’s debt? With Brody’s fury at having to bail her out, this didn’t feel like the end of her problems.
“You weren’t supposed to do that. I didn’t want to owe you.”
“That’s what you said.”
His words shivered through her uncomfortably. There was something about his tone that struck her as off, in a world where everything was off. He paced, hands on hips, evidently working to keep his temper from unfurling. He needed to let it out. If they had any chance, the air had to be cleared.
“Just say it, Brody.”
Those gray eyes were flat discs of fury. “He planted you here, didn’t he? He saw an opportunity, and he put you in my bed. Maybe the second I walked in that club.”
The chill in the room turned sharp, a blade of pain that sliced her to pieces. “No. It just looks like that.” He was supposed to see beyond the surface. See the real her.
“I saw the video on your phone, Emma. I saw the text messages between you and Grigson.”
“I didn’t know there was another camera.” At his forbidding expression, she rushed on. “I didn’t know that night, but later, he told me. He wanted me to use it to blackmail you.”
No response, and her heart clenched. “I refused to do anything to hurt you.”
Passion and fury warred on his face as agonizingly long seconds passed, the two of them facing each other like gunfighters at high noon. The moment held in pained suspense until he walked over and cupped her jaw. Stroked it with a gentleness belying those storms in his eyes.
Relief made her dizzy. He understood.
“It’s okay, Emma,” he whispered, his breath sweet. Drugging. “I forgive you.”
She blinked as if that could change the words into something comprehensible. “You—you forgive me?”
“You needed money, were desperate. You’ve been living your whole life on the make. You don’t have to do that anymore.”
She jerked back out of his grasp. “You think I’ve been playing you? After everything I said?”
His brows snapped together. “Baby, we’re all playin’ each other. This is the game of life.”
The game of life? This—this—asshole! “You’re going to put two and two together and come up with ‘We’re all getting screwed anyway’?”
“And you’re going to pretend Grigson didn’t insert you into my life without expecting you to do your duty? You said yourself you’d do anything for your sister.”
She had said that, but betraying Brody had never been an option. Running. That’s what she’d planned to do. Remove her poisonous presence from Brody’s golden life.
The raging silence between them smothered her to the point breathing was barely possible. What she felt was raw and hurting. She had trusted him with her body and her love, and he took it and burned it to ash.
Tears thickening her throat, she headed back to the guest room, every step a mile because the journey was the equivalent of ten football fields. She grabbed a hanger from the closet and walked into the bathroom, where she stripped and changed into the clothes she arrived in five days ago. Her overwashed underwear. The thrift-store suit. Those chunky shoes. She left the clothes he’d bought for her on the vanity and deposited her newer, sexier lingerie in the bathroom wastebasket. In a daze, she donned Ms. Strickland and left that other girl—the one who’d made the cardinal error of showing her real self to this man—in a fetal heap on the carpet where he’d made love to her.
Extreme Makeover: Life Edition, Part…damn, she had no idea.
Back in the bedroom, she found him pacing. On seeing her appearance, his eyes flew wide.
“Emma—”
“Maybe you should frisk me to see if I stole the silver. Grabbed myself some of your nerd dolls to sell on fucking eBay.”