Chapter 4
Let’s get married.
Pru stood there, shocked into silence for what might have been a good minute. Then she said, “What?”
Max folded his arms and leaned against the back of the suite’s couch. “You heard me. I said let’s get married.”
“What?” Pru said again. “No! What the...? Why would you even ask me that? What is wrong with you?”
She didn’t wait for his answer, just turned and rezipped her suitcase, grabbing it by the handle as she beat a hasty retreat for the door. Obviously, she had missed something in all her research. Something such as Max Benton being a psycho, one she needed to get away from as soon as possible.
“C’mon,” he said, following her out of his suite—or in this case, Sorley Greer’s suite. “You’re the one who told me to meet my brother’s terms, and me getting married—those are his terms.”
That announcement surprised her enough to make her stop and turn to face him. “Come again?” she asked.
“Cole wants to put me on a leash and bring me to heel before the Benton Group opens up their first Benton Inn in the fall. This new hotel needs to appeal to regular families, so he’s trying to get me to settle down. Like him. That’s the real reason he fired me. The real reason I had to sell my shares in the Benton Group to Sorley, so that he wouldn’t come after them.”
Max shrugged and shook his head as if none of what he was saying was a huge deal. But the fists he’d unconsciously balled at his sides belied his nonchalance. As did his lethal tone.
Pru arched an eyebrow at this latest bit of information about the Benton brothers’ relationship. She wasn’t one to dispense business advice, especially to someone like Cole Benton, who’d been groomed to be a hotel magnate from a very young age. But despite Max’s reputation as a reckless playboy who lived only for fun and clubbing, just an hour with him had revealed to her what her research hadn’t.
Max Benton wasn’t as devil-may-care as he appeared on paper. No, he was way darker than that. She could practically feel the wolf lurking underneath his surface.
And you couldn’t put a wolf on a leash.
If Cole had asked her—he never would have, but if he had—she would have told him to abandon his plan to reel Max in. She didn’t have any real evidence to back it up, but she was almost certain that Cole was playing with fire where Max was concerned. Trying to force him into marriage wasn’t even a remotely good idea.
“Okay, well that’s between you and your brother,” she told Max. “I don’t want anything to do with that.”
He ignored her refusal, regarding her with those pale green eyes of his. “How much is he paying you?”
She shook her head. Funnily enough, when she’d seen the amount Cole was willing to pay someone simply to find Max and deliver a large envelope to him, she’d thought it had been outrageously generous for the service provided. But standing in the hall with Max, she was beginning to think it might not have been enough.
“I’ll double it,” he said. Then before she could refuse him again, he said, “Tell you what, name your price. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
She shook her head again, wondering how she’d found herself in such a crazy scenario. “Max,” she answered, her voice hard and frank, “there is no amount of money that would convince me to fake marry you.”
“Never say never. That’s what I always say when it comes to money. You never know when you’re going to get hit with a rainy day.”
Pru would have thought Max was talking about his own currently diminished circumstances, but his eyes were gleaming at a ten on the wicked-bastard scale. “Don’t worry,” she answered drily. “I’ve got a savings account.”
If he was insulted by her refusal, it didn’t show. He just smirked. “I’d think you’d at least agree to think about it. After doing all that research on me, aren’t you a little bit curious?”
“About what?” she asked him. “About how you run through money like water? About how you’ve been arrested on every continent but Antarctica? About how you got the nickname ‘The Ruiner’?” Pru shook her head with her lips turned down. “I’m curious about a lot of things—that comes with being a detective. But not about any of that.”
She tilted her suitcase forward. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back to Las Vegas to pick up my check. I’m done here.”
He inclined his head to the side and squinted in a way that reminded her of his brother. Though the two men didn’t share anything in common but the color of their eyes.
“You sure about that?” he asked her with a smile so lazy, it looked as if he was on the verge of falling asleep. “Because this doesn’t feel done, and judging from that kiss, we could have a good time if you fake married me. A real good time, as they say here in New Orleans.”
Pru swallowed, her body stirring with the memory of how it had felt to have his mouth claim hers, and the reality starlet’s words rang in her ears for the second time that night. Once you go Max, you never go back.
Okay, time to go, she thought. She turned and walked away from Max Benton as fast as her stiletto heels would allow her.
She had responsibilities to see to back home, she reminded herself. Such as her little brother, whom she’d had to leave alone this weekend in order to fulfill this assignment, and a licensing exam to study for.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” Max called behind her. “Just ask for Sorley Greer.”
Pru didn’t allow herself to stop walking, not until she got to the bank of elevators at the end of the hallway. But as she pushed the down button, she couldn’t help looking back to where Max had been standing outside his hotel room door.
He was still there. Watching her with squinted eyes. Watching her as a wolf watches its prey right before it attacks.
Three weeks later Pru was still shaken by Max’s proposal. Not to mention that kiss! So much so that she could barely concentrate on studying for her PI exam. It didn’t help that her morning internet scour for everything related to Max Benton had turned up the exact same thing it had every other time she’d searched for news about Max.
Absolutely nothing.
No club spottings from gossip blogs. No wedding announcements either, even though his thirty-fifth birthday was the Friday after next.
Was he really going to give up all that money? If so, how would he continue to fund his lavish lifestyle? Or make his hotel dream come true?
She thought of her recent phone call with her friend who worked at NevadaStar, the Benton Group’s official credit union. In a weird continuation of her compulsion to keep looking into Max Benton, she’d decided to follow his money after the fact.
