as she passed them on the stairs. She was off to work the streets in her thigh-high boots, miniskirt and fringed bra beneath a faux fur jacket. “No tricks in the rooms.”
“He’s just bringing me home.”
“Don’t get caught,” the woman advised with a shake of her head. “You’ll get kicked out.”
Imogen didn’t look at Travis, but his thunderous silence pulsed over her as she pushed her key into the lock and entered her “home.”
It was the room where she slept when she wasn’t working but so depressing she would rather work. It was as clean as she could make it, given the communal broom was more of a health hazard than a gritty floor. She didn’t have much for personal effects, having sold any clothes and accessories that would bring in a few dollars.
There was a small soup pot on the only chair. It usually held a bag of rice and a box of pasta, but she had dumbly left it in the shared kitchen overnight a few days ago. She was lucky to have recovered the dirty pot. Payday wasn’t until tomorrow, which was why she hadn’t eaten when she collapsed.
Sinking onto the creaky springs and thin mattress of her low, single bed, she exchanged the damp blanket she’d been clutching around her for the folded one, giving the dry one a weak shake. “Can you leave so they don’t think I’m entertaining? I really can’t handle being kicked out right now.”
“This is where you live.” His gaze hit her few other effects: a battered straw basket holding her shampoo, toothbrush and comb, for her trips to the shared bathroom; a towel on the hook behind the door; a windup alarm clock; and a drugstore freebie calendar where she wrote her hours. “The street would be an improvement.”
“I tried sleeping on the street. Turns out they call your ex-husband and he shows up to make you feel bad about yourself.”
His “Not funny” glare was interrupted by a sharp knock and an even sharper, “No drugs, no tricks! Out!”
“Would you go?” she pleaded.
Travis snapped open the door to scowl at her landlord.
“He’s not staying—” she tried to argue, but of course she was on the bed, which looked so very bad.
“We’re leaving,” Travis said, and snapped his fingers at her.
She flopped onto her side with her back to both of them.
“Imogen.”
Oh, she hated her name when it was pronounced like that, as if she was something to be cursed into the next dimension.
“Just go,” she begged.
“I’m taking this,” he said, forcing her to roll over and see he held her red purse.
“Don’t.” She weakly shook her head. “I can’t fight you right now. You know I can’t.” She was done in. Genuinely ready to break down and cry her eyes out.
“Then you should have stayed in hospital. I’ll take you back there now.”
She rolled her back to him again. “Take it, then. I don’t even care anymore.” She really didn’t. All she wanted was to close her eyes and forget she existed.
With a string of curses, he dragged the scratchy gray blanket from her and threw it off the foot of the bed. Then he gathered her up, arms so tense beneath the thick wool that her skin felt bruised where it came in contact with his flexed muscles. He was surprisingly gentle in his fury, though, despite cussing out the landlord so he could get by and carry her down the stairs.
“Travis, stop. I’ll lose all my things.”
“What things? What the hell is going on, Imogen?”
IN THE FIVE minutes they’d been upstairs, a handful of jackals had begun circling to case the car. His chauffeur stood ready to open the back door and Travis shoved her into it, wondering why he’d got out at all.
To see how far she would carry her charade, of course, never dreaming she would take him into a dingy firetrap of a room that was where she actually slept.
He couldn’t even comprehend it.
Snapping a glare at her, he saw there was no fight left in her. Her mouth was pouted, her eyes glassy with exhaustion, her hands limp in her lap.
If she weighed a hundred pounds right now, he’d be stunned. It wasn’t healthy, even for a woman barely hitting five and a half feet tall.
“I can’t afford the hospital. Can you please just tell my landlord I’m sick, not stoned, and let me sleep?”
“No.” He slammed his door and jerked his head at his driver to pull into traffic, wanting away from here. As far and fast as possible. “Do you have gambling debts? What?”
“Oh, I backed the wrong horse. That’s for sure.” She rolled her head on the back of her seat to quirk her mouth in an approximation of a smile. “What’s that old song about not being able to buy love? Turns out it’s true.”
“Which means?”
She only sighed and closed her eyes, almost as if she was trying to press back tears. “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured.
“Explain this to me. You had a lover who stole all your money? Tell me, how does that feel?” He ignored the gas-lit inferno that burst into life inside him as he thought of her with other men, feigning great interest in her reply instead.
Her brow pleated and she turned her nose to the front, eyes staying closed. Her lashes might have been damp.
“You seem obsessed with my many lovers. Accuse me of anything, Travis, but not promiscuity. You, of all people, know I don’t give it up easily.”
That took him aback a little. He didn’t understand why. They were divorced. It shouldn’t matter to him how many lovers she’d had, so why was he needling her about it? He presumed she’d taken some. With her libido?
Sexual memory seared through his blood, lifting the hairs on his body and sending a spike of desire into his loins.
He ignored how thinking of other men enjoying her passionate response put a sick knot in his gut. He had long ago decided he was remembering it wrong, anyway. He’d been high on personal achievements when they’d met, which had lent optimism and ecstasy to their physical encounters. Whatever had been roused in him hadn’t been real or wholly connected to her. It certainly hadn’t been worth all she’d cost him.
As for what she’d felt?
“Right,” he recalled scathingly. “You want a ring and a generous prenup before you sleep with a man. You haven’t found another taker for that? Of course, you only have one virginity to barter, and sex without that sweetener?” He hitched a shoulder, dismissing what had felt at the time like an ever-increasing climb of pleasure as she grew more confident with him between the sheets.
His
