about him and she felt her resolve weakening. He was a client; she’d keep it all business.
“Okay. We can try it out. But if I feel like it’s not working, then we will have to figure out something else.”
“I’m sure it will work.”
Of course he was.
“Was that all?” he asked.
All?
He leaned in closer and she felt the brush of his breath over her mouth. Her lips parted and she realized that she was never going to be all business with him. There was no way.
“No.”
“No?”
“I need some resolution to the past,” she said. “You can’t be this close to me.”
“You’re the one blocking the door with your body.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He had a point, but he was still crowding her and he had been since he came into her office. “I mean it. Our arrangement is strictly business.”
His left hand shifted on the door and she felt his fingers in her hair. Her scalp tingled and sensation spread slowly downward. “Things are never going to be strictly business between us, Gabi. The past is always going to be there along with that one question.”
Don’t ask.
Don’t do it.
“What question?”
He leaned in even closer and she had to fight the urge to bolt away from him. But she wouldn’t let him know he was getting to her. She had to stand firm. He was just a man.
No.
He was more than a man. He was her own personal demon. One that she hadn’t exorcised because she’d never been able to see him as anything other than a hot fantasy. They’d barely dated before they’d slept together and then everything had fallen apart.
She couldn’t let him continue to dominate every moment they had together.
“If that one night together was a fluke,” he said.
He leaned in closer. So close that she’d barely have to incline her head for their lips to brush. Sure, she remembered their night together, but it had become hazy over the years, tinged with regret and anger. She wanted to take back something that she hadn’t realized Kingsley had stolen until this moment, a part of her womanhood that he’d damaged when he’d left her.
She put her hands on his shoulders and went up on tiptoe, so they were eye to eye. He was impossible to read. He’d always been hard, but now there was a new layer of ice in his gaze. A new barrier that she couldn’t see past.
For her own sanity, she had to keep this strictly business. She was twenty-eight and finally felt that she was getting her life on track. She wouldn’t let a man like Kingsley derail that.
“Oh, I thought you meant if I’d still want you,” she said, trying to turn the tables on him.
“Do you?”
She dashed to the side, ducking out from under his arm. “I’ve sort of outgrown bad boys.”
“Have you?”
“All girls do when they grow up,” she said. “Melissa will send over a contract. Good day, Kingsley.”
Kingsley wasn’t sure if he’d won or lost the battle with Gabi. She’d always had the unique ability to throw him. Even in college before...everything had gone crazy, she’d rattled him. But the past ten years had changed him. And though he’d enjoyed flirting with her—hell, he was a red-blooded male, of course he enjoyed flirting with her—that wasn’t why he was back in California, and he had to stay focused.
He got in his Porsche 911, driving a little over the speed limit as he headed to his new home. The mansion he’d purchased was perched on a cliff above the Pacific with a path to the beach that he intended to use frequently with his son. He’d been working hard—well, running from his past was more like it—since he’d left California. Now he was back and he knew one thing: he couldn’t raise his son in a world where he had had to face that kind of stigma.
It was one thing that Stacia’s death had left Kingsley mired in scandal. But he wouldn’t let it touch Conner.
His phone rang, blasting out “Bad to the Bone.” He hit the answer button on his hands free.
“What’s up, Hunter? Is Conner okay?”
“He’s fine, the little devil. I’m worn-out. I think he’s got the makings of a running back,” Hunter said. “Did she agree?”
Hunter wasn’t the playboy the media made him out to be. Kingsley knew they’d still be best friends even if they hadn’t been linked together in Stacia’s murder. He was closer to Hunter than he was to his own brother.
“Yes, she did. I didn’t mention anything about Stacia. I want to get Gabi out to my house so I can be subtle about the questioning,” he said.
“Hey, it’s your plan. I’m happy enough to let you set the pace. I just want to get some answers,” Hunter said.
Hunter could barely remember the entire night. And that was a little worrying, since his friend hadn’t been a big drinker in college. One theory they had was that someone had put a drug in Stacia’s drink—she and Hunter had been dating—and that Hunter had ingested some of it over the course of the night.
“When will you be home? I’ve got a meeting with Tristan Sabine in forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll be there in twenty,” Kingsley said. Tristan was one of the founders of a chain of nightclubs called Seconds. In fact, Gabi’s cousin Gui was another owner. Hunter had recently purchased a franchise of the club and opened it in San Francisco, to much success.
“Sounds great,” Hunter said. “I’m glad we’re back here. It’s way past time we got some answers and gave Stacia’s ghost some peace.”
And themselves, Kingsley thought. They’d never been able to live with Stacia’s murder or the fact that it had never really been solved.
He disconnected the call and concentrated on the traffic, but his mind wasn’t really on the past or the drive. Gabi dominated his thoughts the same as she had back in college.
She’d changed.
Really, idiot?
But that was the best he could do. She had changed. It wasn’t just maturing—it was more than that. There was a level of confidence that hadn’t been in her at eighteen. A level of self-assurance that enabled her to stand her ground with him.
He admired that.
He wished...hell, there wasn’t a day that had gone by in the past ten years that he hadn’t regretted what he’d
