Who was he kidding? Nadine was offering him an escape from the very woman who still haunted him while dangling a challenge in front of his face.
She’d found his kryptonite. The need to be needed. To have someone rely on him and only him.
Her eyes narrowed in on him with keen intelligence.
He hesitated to speak.
Because Nadine Titus was Satan with cherry-red lipstick. She was up to something, and yet the thought of driving back down that street, glancing up at the apartment with its smoke-stained siding, or passing the office he used to walk to one last time…
Well, it made him feel all over again. It took away the numbness he was so desperate for.
And the cycle started again.
“You.” Nadine’s lips curled into a menacing line. “Owe. Me.”
He leaned back in his chair, feigning a casualness he sure as hell didn’t feel. “That’s it…I work for you and the whole auction goes away, the date weekend with…” He couldn’t even choke out her name.
Though his heart did a killer job of pounding out Nikki, Nikki, Nikki, with every fucking beat it made against his rib cage.
“No more auction. I won’t even talk about it.” She shrugged. “It will be as if it never existed. It’s a win-win. What could you possibly lose?”
Nothing.
He’d already lost it all.
Slowly, he reached into his pocket. Click, click, click. His thumb went wild on the end of his pen before, with one last click, he signed the paperwork.
“What time do I leave?”
Chapter Three
I love you,” he whispered, kissing her cheeks. His lips stopped each tear before they fell from her face. He’d always promised that he’d stop her tears, never be the cause of them.
And she had believed him.
Who wouldn’t?
His rock-hard body felt like granite beneath her hands as he moved inside her, each kiss a promise, each caress a memory burned into her soul. They were forever. It would always be Nik and B.
Always.
She shattered beneath him as his mouth fused to hers and his hands grabbed her hips. He drove into her once more before he fell next to her and sighed. “I’m sorry—we’ll get pregnant, I promise.”
“Or die trying?”
He shrugged, offering her a sly smile. “So we’ll buy stock in Gatorade once I have my trust fund.”
Brant reached for her again.
She met him halfway.
Mouths fused.
Tongues tangled.
“Round two?” he whispered.
“Yes!” A sense of dread washed over her as he slipped away. What the hell? “Brant! Brant!” She reached for him but she wasn’t fast enough, and he disappeared into thin air as she clutched the white sheets and then burst into tears.
Alone. In her apartment. Without Brant.
She should have been used to it by now. She wasn’t.
Be brave, Nadine Titus had told her the night of the auction, squeezing her hand until Nikki thought it was going to fall off.
With a sob, she turned into her pillow and let the tears fall freely—she hated pity, hated thinking about the past, but ever since bidding on that man at the auction, ever since having to mail back every damn check he sent to her, she’d been dreaming of him.
Most of the dreams were sad.
Most of them left her emotionally spent, but she needed to allow herself to cry.
Damn him for being so unreasonable! Did he think it was easy for her? To blindly walk into that auction with her head held high? Did he think she did it out of desperation? Guilt? No. She’d been given no choice. Nadine Titus, owner of Azul, the boutique hotel she worked at, had done a little digging and decided that the only woman capable of straightening out Brant Wellington—
—was her.
Add that to the fact that Nadine wasn’t a woman you said no to, especially after she dropped several hints that it would be in Nikki’s best interest to bid on Brant at the auction if she wanted to keep her job.
All she had to do was show up. And so she had. And what had that gotten her?
Nothing but more heartbreak and another reminder of all the reasons things hadn’t worked out with Brant in the first place.
He was a self-absorbed asshole.
He wasn’t always.
She punched her pillow and laid her head back down. Reminders were everywhere; whether her eyes were opened or closed, she still saw his face even if she couldn’t actually see.
Loneliness washed over her. On the outside, things looked great, but on the inside, on nights like this, when she allowed herself to cry—and be bluntly honest with herself—she was heartbroken, angry.
Then again, that was what happened when you fell in love with your soul mate. It was rare that you ever got that piece of yourself back again.
And most days, she didn’t want it back—not unless Brant came groveling with it. And considering he kept chucking money in her face so she’d disappear, she highly doubted that would ever happen.