them I’ll be down in ten minutes. I just have a few more lines to finish.”
“Forget the lines, babe.” Theo’s smile was charming, deadly when he aimed it at you, but Jo had known him long enough that she could steel herself against it—well, sometimes. “It’s your birthday. Finish them another time.”
“I can’t.” Her eyes narrowed—why was he pushing? “My deadline is tonight. I should have handed the piece in already.”
“Does it really matter?” Clearly confused, Theo waved a sure hand through the air—the lord in his manor. “Blow off the deadline. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“The big deal is that they’re counting on me to hand the piece in. If I don’t, they have to scramble to find something else for that spot.” Jo’s voice was incredulous—why was this so hard for Theo to understand? “And also, if I don’t hand the article in, I don’t get paid.”
“They pay you peanuts. What’s the point?” Theo reached for her hands again, and this time instead of just avoiding him, she swatted them away. Rising from her chair, she stood to face him, clenched fists growing sweaty at her sides.
“A hundred dollars is not peanuts.” Her voice was shaking. Damn it, Theo knew—he knew—that this job was important to her. “I’m saving it for school, and you know it.”
“Well, a hundred dollars isn’t anything to me.” He shrugged dismissively, and Jo felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “Just...please. Just forget about the article. I’ll give you the hundred dollars, okay? Just please come back downstairs so that I can give you your birthday present.”
For a long moment she was speechless. She actually kind of felt like throwing up.
She and Theo had their differences, but she loved him. She’d given him her body. Her heart.
And here he was pushing her to forget something that meant the world to her, just so he could get his way right now.
“You think I’m going to take money from you?” Horrified, Jo rubbed her hands over the hips of her jeans, trying to ease the clamminess. “After what we just did last night, how do you think that makes me feel?”
Understanding dawned on his face—at least, the tiniest inkling of it. “No, no. Jo, Jojo, that’s not what the money is for. Please—”
“No, of course it’s not.” Damn it, she was shouting. This was nothing new for her, not with her temper, but she couldn’t ever remember feeling exactly like this, sickness mixed in with the growing rage. “The money is so that I will ignore what I have repeatedly told you that I want right now, on my own damn birthday, and so that I will go do what you want. Lord Lawrence gets his way yet again.”
“Don’t call me that.” A dangerous spark flickered through Theo’s eyes. Lord Lawrence was what they’d all called him when he’d been younger and acting like a bit of a brat. “You know I fucking hate that.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it,” Jo taunted, finding a sick pleasure in getting some kind of reaction out of him. “When someone ignores what you’ve repeatedly said you want so that they can do what they want instead.”
“Wait a minute.” Theo suddenly stood up ramrod straight. He scrubbed his hands over his face before looking back at Jo. “You’re not talking about last night. Please tell me you’re not talking about last night.”
“Jesus Christ, Theo.” An inarticulate scream burst from her throat. “No, I’m not fucking talking about last night. If I hadn’t wanted your hands on me, you would have bloody well known it.”
“Right. I know,” he replied hastily, his restless hands now moving to rake through his hair. “You’re just so mad. And if we’re just talking about the article...”
If we’re just talking about the article, then I don’t know what the hell you’re so worked up about.
Her mouth, the mouth she’d used all over his body not twenty-four hours earlier, fell open with disbelief. Theo’s indifference to the gifts he’d been given had been a bone of contention between them before, but it had been...a small bone. A fish bone. Something that a sweet smile from him could help send into the garbage disposal.
This? This was a dinosaur drumstick, too big to be ground down in the kitchen sink.
“Look, I shouldn’t have done that.” Theo spoke hastily, trying to smooth over what he’d said. “That was wrong. Let’s not fight on your birthday.”
“Are you saying that because you’re actually sorry?” Resentment was bitter on her tongue. “Or are you saying it so that you get your way?”
She watched, almost as if she’d stepped outside herself, as temper flared in those caramel-colored eyes. Copper fire—that was what it looked like.
“Why are you acting this way?” He bit his words out the way he always did when he was angry, as though it took more effort to form them. “I just wanted to spend your birthday with you.”
“That’s not an answer.” He growled in response, actually fucking growled, and took a step toward her. She held up both hands and thought she might even have hissed. They’d been reduced to animals in their fury, and she was really fucking tempted to bite him.
And not in a fun way.
“Get out of my room.” Her voice was shaking. As she pointed at the door, she noticed that her hand was, too.
“What?” Incredulity lent an almost comical cast to his face. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
“I said get out!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the small confines of her room. Theo reeled back as if she’d slapped him, and her palm itched to do just that. He must have read the desire in her eyes, on her face, because his face reddened, the effect of his own temper, but he took a step back. With one last look, he spun on the heel of his ridiculously expensive shoes and stormed out of her room, slamming the door behind him. Minutes later, Jo felt the frame of the house shake as he slammed the front door as well. Crossing to her window, she hugged her arms to her chest and watched as Theo’s tall, lanky figure strode across the lawn, climbing over the short fence that separated their properties, his movements jerky.
He would drink now, she knew that absolutely. He’d pull one of his dad’s priceless bottles of scotch from the ornate liquor cabinet and numb everything he felt with the gilded liquid. He would retreat into a sullen cocoon, erecting the barriers that were his first line of defense.
He’d never erected those same barriers against her, but she knew him inside and out. And knowing him as she did, she saw with sudden, startling clarity that he truly wouldn’t understand why she’d responded the way she had. Why she hadn’t been able to just jump onboard Theo’s Fun Train...because to him, responsibility didn’t exist.
Knowing him the way she did, she wondered why she only now understood that this particular quirk of his meant that they were never, ever going to be able to work.
Acid churned in her belly as she sank down to the floor. It rose to her throat when Beth, the sister she was closest to, cracked open the door and stuck her head in, and she couldn’t reply.
“We heard
