Page 74 of Dirty Player
I’d spent Friday night getting pummeled by Baltimore—a team we should have easily beaten, but our second strings couldn’t pull their heads out of their asses long enough to make a tackle—and then I’d spent the rest of the weekend wrapped up in Shannon. I’d helped her after the game, bone-tired and muscles aching all over my damn body, but still energetic enough to help her finish putting away all of her designs and getting Stamped back to how she’d had it before the street festival.
It wasn’t the first night we fell asleep without me burying my dick into her delicious cunt, but it’d been one of the best.
We’d talked. She told me about Des Moines, growing up in a run-down house on the east side of the city where nothing good had come from in the last fifty years besides Beaux Hale. She told me about her mom, working job after job to support them and they still managed to go hungry occasionally. I told her about life on the farm outside Savannah—where our town had two stoplights and half as many stop signs. Where everyone in town flooded football fields on Friday nights to cheer for the only good thing that brought them excitement outside the few who could have cable television. We laughed about the way we grew up, both of us dirt poor and desperately wanting more. The difference was that where I always wanted more for myself, she was the selfless one, doing everything she could, sacrificing everything she wanted for her brother.
It was that selflessness, that motive—to see her brother succeed at his passion and care nothing of her own ambitions—that sealed the deal that she was unlike any woman I’d ever met before.
No woman gave up everything for someone without growing bitter. With the closeness Beaux and Shannon showed each other, it was clear that wasn’t an issue for her.
I was quickly becoming enthralled with not only her body, but her sweetness and her wit and her intelligence. She was the kind of woman men fought over, claimed, wanted to keep chained to them like some primal beast because they knew the prize they’d been given simply by her attention.
It unsettled me, less than it should have, that I was already feeling these things for her, so fiercely and so quickly.
I pushed the chair back from the table where my lawyer and Serena’s lawyer had been waiting. The harsh sound of wood screeching gained everyone’s attention. I didn’t pay her lawyer any attention, but focused on Paul Costell.
“I’m leaving. You can handle this without me, right?”
After her play to find me over the weekend, a fortuitous event on her part that I’d run into her at the art festival, I’d gone searching for her.
She’d cried her fake alligator tears and clung to me, whispered how much she missed me. Missedus.
I’d repeated it was over. Would always be over. I didn’t have a shred of emotion left for Serena except for annoyance and disappointment at who she still continued to be. Within thirty days, her extravagant lifestyle, or lack thereof, would be none of my concern.
“I can, Mr. Powell.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I’d known Paul for over seven years and he still refused to call me by first name. It was Southern respect, but sounded strange on his lips considering I’d shown up at his kids’ seventh and ninth birthday parties.
“Mediation cannot continue without all parties present,” Serena’s lawyer said.
I’d gotten to know him as well over the last seven years. Never would I attend one of his kids’ parties—not that he’d asked. I didn’t even know if he had kids; the thought of that man creating offspring made me want to shudder on a good day. He was an asshole, and had most likely gotten rich off of my money alone from the cut he took before Serena got her hands on it.
“We’ll need to reschedule.”
“It is not our fault your client is late, as usual,” Costell clipped, and I didn’t bother hiding my grin. “Perhaps if you had stressed how important this meeting was, she’d be here.”
“She will be. I said she’s stuck in traffic.”
It was Raleigh at eleven o’clock in the morning. There was no traffic. And no construction. I’d checked after Paul had relayed the text.
“I’m done.”
I was. Completely. Done playing Serena’s games. Done with her lies and her need to be the center of attention.
Turning back to Paul, I grinned. “Tell me how this goes.”
“With pleasure.” He grinned back.
I turned on my heel, not caring at all about Mr. Gaines’s threats. Paul would take care of me; he always did. I clapped my hand on his shoulder as I walked by him, and just as I reached the conference room door, Mr. Gaines’ assistant opened it and walked through, holding it open.
“Gentlemen, Serena Powell has arrived.”
I scowled at the name. The one thing I gave her I could never take away from her. For years after our divorce that ate at me—that she still had my name and wanted nothing to do with me except a pocketbook from a distance.
Now I just hated her for it.
I rolled my eyes as Serena practically floated in behind the middle-aged and kind-eyed receptionist. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her, definitely wasn’t the first time I’d wondered how she worked for Gaines.
“Oliver, how kind of you to greet me.”
