Hard Pack (Ridden Hard Book 2) Read online

  Did he? “No. Come back inside.” He opened the door wider.

  She stepped inside, and followed when he headed back into the living room. She fiddled with the buttons on her coat as she stood near the sofa.

  He wasn’t sure what to say.

  “When I broke up with Mischa, I blamed you for stealing my only friend.” Victoria stared at her shoes as she spoke.

  The words didn’t surprise him. That didn’t prepare him for the ache that ran from his teeth to his fingers to his toes. “Mischa wasn’t your friend. He was your martyr.” He didn’t blame Victoria for that, but it was a truth that needed to be out there.

  She dragged the back of her hand across her cheeks, but her eyes were dry. “I know. At least, I do now. Then? He was the only person who listened to me.”

  “Do you know what caused the relapse—I hope it’s okay to call it that—six months ago?” He didn’t want to muddy the waters by dragging up his own mistake. He wouldn’t deny it, but it didn’t change this.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  He wanted to. The more time he spent with Victoria, the less he wanted to spend apart. He didn’t want to argue. He wanted to figure out what this skip was in his heart each time she smiled, and make it happen more often.

  He stepped up behind her, slid her coat from her shoulders, and draped it over the arm of a chair. “Sit.” He tugged her toward the couch. “And try me.”

  She perched on the end cushion, as far from Tristan as was possible and still be on the same sofa. “I saw your name in that Tribune piece.”

  “You mean the firm’s?” That was enough to trigger thoughts of Mischa? He didn’t know how to process that.

  “I mean yours. Tristan Hough.”

  He really didn’t know what to do with that. “I don’t understand.” Was it because of the request he’d made of her years ago, to keep her distance? That didn’t seem right.

  “You know what it’s like to grow up with someone else’s expectations driving you? With people watching your every move?”

  “I do.” Not the way she did, but he’d been performing for as long as he could remember, to prep for that Olympic bid.

  “And you know what happens when you piss off the wrong person or let down the wrong fan.”

  His coach’s disappointment rang in his skull, after that silver medal was announced. “I’ve been there.”

  “I hit my late teens and suddenly I wasn’t Vicky the girl next door anymore. I was Vicky the pair of tits.”

  He winced at the description.

  A wry smile ghosted over her lips. “According to my studio contract, I had to be the most chaste pair of tits in existence.”

  “I’m sorry.” The sentiment felt weak.

  “Eh. I didn’t have a problem with it. My issue was with the people who didn’t believe it. I was tired after filming one night, and there was a group of fans waiting by the sound stage exit as I left. I tried to be polite, but one guy groped me, and I turned on him and gave him an earful. People were filming, of course, and the footage went viral.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Then you remember what they said.”

  It was impossible to look anywhere, the internet, TV, the magazines at the grocery store checkout, without seeing variations on Vicky the bitch next door. “Yes.”

  “The rumors about alcoholism and drugs sucked. The rumors that I’d made a sex tape when I was sixteen, got me fired.”

  “And none of it was true.” He wasn’t asking. Back then, like most everyone else, he bought in. He had no doubt now that if she said it was fake, it was fake.

  “If they believed it, I was going to make it true. There was no way I was depriving myself of those things if the world already thought I’d done them. And then the guy with the heavy tattoos and bottomless brown eyes bought me a drink, and I thought I’d found the perfect person to help me do exactly that.”

  Tristan couldn’t ignore the pit that formed, hearing her describe Mischa that way. “Except he’s not so much the bad boy you were looking for as sure, let’s give it a shot.”

  “Sounds about right. Two days later, after enough drinking and fucking that I was numb, I met his best friend and wondered...” She cringed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. You don’t want to hear it.”

  “First, I do want to hear it, and second, you can’t do that. You can’t get to the part of the story that’s about me, and stop. My ego is fragile.”

  “No, it’s not. You’ve got fractures, but your confidence is real.” She drew in a shaky breath. “The first time I met you, I wondered if I’d gone home with the wrong guy.”

  “Oh.” Maybe he should have seen that coming, but the confession stalled his brain.

  “And then you looked at me. No, through me. That icy blue stare froze me, and I saw so much judgment in your eyes. Just like everyone else.”

  But that wasn’t what he’d been thinking. He remembered that day distinctly. “The first time I saw you in person, I was thinking oh look, Mischa won again. Lucky fucker.”

  “Did you still feel the same after he told you who I was?”

  He’d used the knowledge to convince himself Mischa hadn’t won after all. That the stunning brunette on his friend’s arm was a mistake. She must be based on the rumors. Tristan couldn’t bring himself to tell Victoria that. He couldn’t lie to her either, though. What was he going to say?

  Chapter Eighteen

  VICTORIA FELT RAW AND exposed. She had no idea if this thing with Tristan was going anywhere. Right now she wanted it to, though there were still so many hurdles to overcome. There was no promise though, and telling him about a years-old crush would only make things hurt more if they fell apart. Because now he knew she’d been carrying this torch for that long.

  “He told me who you were, and I used the rumors to force myself to back away.” Tristan sounded apologetic.

  That hurt too, though knowing why he’d done it helped. “In a way you let it define me. But that’s okay, because so did I. So did Mischa, he just came at it from a different angle. I thought I’d found someone who saw under the mask, and let me be me. He tried to heal things that weren’t wrong, and that broke me. I don’t blame him. It’s not as though I had any idea. But I was looking for a friend, and he was looking for a princess to rescue, and I didn’t know how to cope.”

  “I really am sorry.” Sincerity hung in Tristan’s words.

  She tried to shrug off the cloud that enveloped her, and only half-succeeded. “You wanted to know what triggered my relapse six months ago. Why I hired someone to follow him.”

  “Because my name was in the paper.”

  She smiled, but didn’t feel the emotion behind hit. “Yes. I saw you, the blurb about your success, and I remembered what I couldn’t have. I’d just come out of another relationship that fell flat. I ended it because he and I didn’t click, but I was convinced it was my fault.” Why was she saying so much?

  Because she needed someone to get it. She needed Tristan to get it. “The guy was nice enough, and I was convinced I gave him up because I was terrified of falling into the same habits I had with Mischa. I was lonely, I couldn’t have you—a guy I barely knew, who despised me, how fucked up is that?—so I fell back into chasing him.”

  Victoria didn’t know how to interpret the range of emotions that raced across Tristan’s face. One instant she thought she saw pity, then disgust, or maybe sympathy. She didn’t know. She was grateful he didn’t interrupt; that would have derailed her in a way she couldn’t handle right now. “I couldn’t go through with it, so you know. Less than a week after I hired the guy, I called and canceled. Told him I didn’t want to know after all, paid him what was owed, and severed the contract.”

  Tristan let out a clipped laugh.

  She didn’t like that. “What?”

  “If the guy was on the job for less than a week, and Mischa caught him, you’re lucky you didn’t keep him on the payroll longer.�
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  That was almost enough to make her smile. A release for the weight that grew inside after baring so much of her soul. “None of this changes what happened, but I wanted you to see where I was coming from, and wow, that got deep.”

  “Given where the conversation started, I would have been disappointed with less.”

  “And you just wanted twenty-four hours of sex and games.” She tried to keep her tone light. To joke her way out of this pit.

  He scooted closer, and grasped her fingers lightly, tracing his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “I want whatever you’re willing to give me.”

  His soft voice matched the way he looked at her, and her breath caught. Fear surged inside. She couldn’t do this. Not that she knew what this was, but it clenched like a fist around her lungs.

  She shifted to kneel next to him, and adopted a seductive pose. “You don’t have to say that. We already agreed this is just fucking.” She trailed a finger along his jaw.

  He grabbed her wrist. “We agreed we weren’t in a rush to define it. You don’t have to do this with me. You don’t have to pretend everything we just talked about doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to hide it behind sex. If you want to talk, any time, I’m listening.”

  “What if that’s not what I want from us?”

  “Then look me in the eye, actually meet my gaze instead of looking past me, and tell me this is only sex, and I’ll pretend the last hour never happened.”

  Victoria could do that. She was a good enough actress to sell it, and even if she stumbled, he wouldn’t call her on it if she said any version of no. If she did that, this connection would die. It might be possible to patch it later, but it would never be the same. She grasped for the truth, and yanked it past terror and doubt. “What if I want to stay the rest of the day, and maybe tonight, not because of the sex, but because I want to be here with you?”

  “Nothing would make me happier,” he said.

  The kiss he planted on her forehead, soft and tender and unassuming, cracked her from the inside out. She shifted to rest against his chest, not trusting herself to speak. She was falling hard. More than with any guy before. More than with Mischa. The realization was terrifying.

  She was so fucked when this fell apart.

  TRISTAN DIDN’T SHOW a lot of properties in the winter. It figured he’d get a spur-of-the-moment request the one day he was out of the office, and it was for one of the office buildings on Mischa’s unsold block.

  Fortunately, the man was willing to wait. Now Tristan returned the favor. Having answered all the prospective-buyer’s questions, he followed a few feet back as the man took another pass through the three-story building.

  That left his mind a pleasant bit of traipsing space, about yesterday. He and Victoria made it through six Hellraiser movies, and given up at seven when they just got ridiculous. They didn’t do much else besides cuddle, and order pizza—Victoria insisted he needed to learn the latter, and that he was pretty good at the former.

  It was such a simple thing, but he didn’t remember ever having a day like that. True, the turmoil in the middle of it all hurt. He wasn’t sure which part made him ache the most.

  Scratch that, he did know. Victoria’s slip-up with the PI was bad, and confessing his own prejudice when they met was a test in strength, but the pain on her face, talking about her past, tore him apart the most.

  The wounds wouldn’t vanish because of a single conversation, but he liked being there for her. He still didn’t think she needed rescuing, but the idea of leaning on each other was appealing.

  “I like what I see.” The prospective-buyer stopped in front of Tristan, drawing him back to the present.

  “Fantastic. I can draw up the offer paperwork now, if you’re ready to put a number down.”

  The man chuckled. “Give me a day to do some math and I’ll be in touch.”

  “Fantastic.” Tristan swapped business cards with him. “I’ll give you a call on Thursday if I don’t hear from you.”

  He walked down to the street with the buyer, and hopped into his own car after the man drove off. His thoughts drifted back to Victoria. He dialed her number, taking the phone off the Bluetooth speaker, because something about hearing her voice in his ear was more intimate than blasting it through the car radio.

  “Morning.” The smile was evident in her voice.

  “I’m only a couple of miles away. Where do you want to go for lunch?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Okay.” Disappointment tickled his senses. Her no caught him off-guard enough he forgot how he was supposed to take another angle to close the deal.

  “I’d like to,” she said with a light laugh. “But I have a checkup this afternoon, so I’m taking a late lunch break for that.”

  “What time and where? I’ll meet you there.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He frowned. “I meant what I said about wanting to be involved. I’ll stay away if you don’t want me there, but I’d rather participate.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to. I love that you didn’t hesitate to offer. But there’s that issue of being seen together in public.”

  They hadn’t literally put a new label on their relationship, but he assumed they had one. “What are we going to do long term? Or is this your way of asking me to back off?”

  Her sigh echoed in his skull. “It’s not. I mean it that I want you here. After we get things sorted, we don’t have to worry about the rest of the world misinterpreting us.”

  “An audit can last a long time.” He was willing to wait it out, if it meant sticking by her side. The thought was unexpected, but it felt right. He didn’t like the idea of so much secrecy though.

  “I know.”

  “Are you going to keep me out of the delivery room?” The question popped out before he realized what he was asking. That was a huge leap from part-time dad, and weekend sleepovers.

  “Are you volunteering to be there?” Her disbelief mirrored the feeling half his mind was tossing at him.

  “I want to be equally involved. Even in the painful stuff. If you’ll let me.”

  She sighed again, but this one sounded like relief. At least, he hoped that was what it was. “I don’t know what we do if things aren’t cleared up by then, but yes, I want you there.”

  “Let me meet you at the doctor’s office,” he said. “It’s an OBGYN, not a five-star restaurant or the country club. The chances of running into anyone who knows us or cares are slim.”

  “All right.” The smile was back in her voice as she gave him the address. “One-thirty. If you’re late, I’ll be hurt,” she teased.

  “I wouldn’t miss it.” Giddiness flitted inside as he drove back to the office. He forced himself to focus on work for the next couple of hours, but it wasn’t an easy task.

  His desk phone rang with a call from Reception a little before one. “Ralph Wolfram is here to see you.”

  Tristan stared at the phone, willing the call to be a hallucination. Nope. The line was still live, and she was waiting for him to reply. “Do I have an appointment?” He knew he didn’t.

  “No, but he says he only needs a few minutes of your time.”

  Good, because that was all he was getting. Enough for Tristan to trip him up and see if he was responsible for this IRS investigation. “Have him wait in the conference room. I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  TRISTAN MAY HAVE SPENT large portions of the last few weeks ditching decorum and order, but right now, he was diving in headfirst. He froze a professional smile in place as he approached the conference room.

  Ralph Wolfram sat in the seat at one end of the oval table. He was leaned back casually. He straightened, but didn’t stand when Tristan entered the room.

  Power-play via body language. Tristan didn’t let it faze him. He shook the older man’s hand. “I only have a few minutes, but I’m glad you stopped by.”

  “I won’t take much of your time.” Ra
lph settled back when Tristan did. “I’m sorry for not making an appointment, but I haven’t been able to clear my calendar, and this spot opened up last minute.”

  Bullshit. He’d stopped by without calling, specifically to find out if Tristan would fit him in at the drop of a hat. “I understand. Life is so hectic these days.”

  “I’ll make this quick, since you’re short on time. I understand you recently assumed full ownership of this firm.”

  “I did.” It wasn’t a secret that Tristan had paid Mischa for his stake in the business, so Mischa could pay off the debt he owed Wolfram.

  “As you know, I’ve always admired the work you do. The gift you have for finding those diamonds in the rough when it comes to property, and flipping them.”

  “I believe you’ve mentioned that, yes.” Tristan boxed up his impatience with the way the conversation plodded along.

  “And I’m always looking for ways to expand my ventures.”

  Tristan was still working on how to broach the question about the audit without diving into a baseless accusation, but the comment sidetracked him. “I’m not looking for additional funding for any properties. I think you’ll understand when I say I’d rather forgo the stress associated with the tight deadlines.”

  “I should have been clearer. I’m not talking about a loan. I’m interested in a long-term partnership.” Ralph’s tone was smooth and his confidence never wavered.

  Definitely not. “I’m not looking for a business partner either.”

  “Hear the basics of my proposal before you write me off. Starting with my assurance that this is a silent partnership. I don’t want to disrupt what you do, I just want a piece of the pie. If pumping more capital into your firm gets me that, I’m willing.”

  At least he was honest about that, and he had Tristan curious now. “I’m listening.” He wasn’t considering the deal, and wouldn’t, but he had to know what it was.

  “Before we go much further, I should point out I do have some concerns about doing this. I want to be up front with those, because I suspect they’re easily cleared up.”