Only when Belle caught Amélie’s eyes before she cast hers to the door did Amélie focus entirely on Tiffany.
The girl nodded, mouthed, “Thank you, Mistress Amélie,” and then turned her gaze to her Mistress.
Belle had it in hand, so Amélie silently left the room.
One worry done, Delia hadn’t wrought lasting damage on Tiffany.
At least there was that.
She went to the Dom lounge where she’d stowed her purse in her locker, as she didn’t come in the front not only for Tiffany, but also because she wanted no attention on her on a night with no Olly.
She also didn’t want to confront the possibility it was a night with Olly.
If he wished to end their separation, he did not have to come to the club to find her.
He had her number to call.
Hell, on the courier parcel, he had her address.
So if he was there, he’d be there for something else.
That something else not being her.
In the lounge, she retrieved her purse and pulled out her phone, quickly texting Aryas that Belle was taking care of Tiffany before she looked into her locker to see a scattering of toys that she rarely used.
She stared at them, having the depressing urge to collect them as well as all her things from the Honey and take them home. There was no point to them staying there for they wouldn’t be used.
And an even more melancholy thought, they would not be used at her home either.
“Leigh.”
She turned, closing her locker as she did, when she heard Stellan say her name.
Anger spiked, an emotion she’d felt frequently since Olly walked out on her because it was an emotion she could handle far better than all the others.
She had it now because she absolutely did not need this.
“Stellan, now’s not the time,” she declared, barely looking at him and moving to leave him, the room and the club.
He blocked her progress and she came to a stuttering halt and snapped her head back to glare at him.
“Please get out of my way,” she requested briskly.
“We need—” he began but stopped himself as he regarded her closely. Then he whispered, “Oh fuck. Leigh.”
She really needed to learn to hide her heartbreak. It wasn’t good everyone could read it in a glance.
She gathered her irritation around her and snapped, “I asked you to get out of my way.”
“He chewed you up and spit you out, didn’t he, honey?” Stellan asked gently.
He had.
That was none of Stellan’s business.
“I won’t ask again,” she warned.
But he didn’t move out of her way.
He lifted a hand and curled it around the side of her neck, dropping closer so his face was but an inch away.
He wore very nice cologne. It smelled expensive but it wasn’t obtrusive and this was not the first time she’d had that thought.
Though it was the first time she’d had that thought with it causing annoyance that he was detaining her rather than frustration that he smelled so lovely and would do so while she played with him if things were different.
“It’s a hard lesson to learn, I know, Leigh. It’s painful,” he said quietly, taking her out of her thoughts. “But there are those of us who understand the life and there are those of us who wish to live outside of it even if they need what they can get in the times they allow themselves in.” His body also moved closer. “When we go searching for what we ultimately need, honey, we have to be sure we find the ones who understand that.”
Although she was angry with him, and frustrated with this encounter, she wondered how Stellan knew about that pain.
She didn’t ask.
“Are you done?” she queried acidly.
“I know you’re pissed because of what you’re feeling, Leigh. I’m just telling you I get it and I’m here for you.”
“Thank you for that offer, Stellan, and I hope you take no offense when I decline.”
His hand at her neck curled deeper and Amélie was feeling quite tired of men not adhering to her wishes of not … being … touched.
“Then I’ll be very clear with what I’m offering, Leigh,” he ground out, suddenly impatient, his new tone and look snapping her alert. “You want to go out there for a drink and talk, I’ll be right beside you. You want to leave here and go somewhere else for a drink so you can talk, I’ll be right beside you there too. You want to go to my place so I can make you a drink and then we can talk, I’m there too. After that, you want me to fuck his memory right out of you, I’m really there for you. But,” he came even closer and something changed in his eyes she was shocked to her core to see, “if you need to take me to a playroom, bind me, paddle me, plug my ass, and make me eat you until you come and I can’t breathe, I’m buried so deep in your pussy, I’m there for that too.”
“Stellan—”
“You know I’ve been waiting for you and do not deny that,” he bit out.
She had no idea—outside Olly determinedly sharing that without Amélie ever quite accepting it—and she could not believe she’d read him so wrongly.
“Honestly, I didn’t,” she shared.
She saw the hurt flicker in his eyes before he dropped his hand and stepped back.
Amélie understood that hurt in an instant.
If what he said was true, he’d been watching, waiting, and thinking she’d been doing the same and intended to approach when the time was right.
That time being when she was through with playing with others and wanted a toy who truly understood the game to call her own, in and out of the club.
“Stellan, my sweet friend—” she began.
His handsome face turned hard.
“Don’t,” he clipped.
She lifted a hand to his chest but he stepped back so swiftly, it was like he was avoiding the touch of a flame.
She understood that, too, and dropped her hand.
“Games anyone should be smart enough not to play,” he said and her gaze cut to his. “You wanted me.”
She had.
“You’re a Dom,” she pointed out.
“For everyone but you.”
“I couldn’t know that,” she told him, something he had to know, because there were many switches but he’d never given that indication.
“You’re right. Unfortunately, you couldn’t, except I’ve been giving it to you openly since you found your stallion. But I played a game, Leigh, one that was fucking stupid. But I did it because I knew you were looking for a challenge. Not looking, it was a need and that challenge had to be significant. And I waited for you to take up my challenge, but I was too good at giving it to you because you didn’t even fucking see it was a challenge. Then you found what you wanted, and instead of me giving you that myself, since I had my head up my ass I thought you’d see what I was giving and eventually turn to me.”
So Olly had been right.
And she’d missed it totally.
“As lovely as your offer is, and as much as it means to me, which is a great deal, I’m afraid now is not the time for us to go there, my handsome Stellan,” she said softly.
“Right,” he bit off and started to turn.
She caught his arm and he turned back, anger hiding the other emotion flaring in his eyes.
“Are you a Dom?” she asked.
“For everyone but you,” he whispered.
Then he pulled free of her hold and prowled out after giving her a bewildering statement that just months ago she would have loved to explore its meaning.
She stared across the plush lounge Aryas provided his Doms and thought of Stellan.
She also thought of Branch Dillinger.
She further thought about Olly and the three days that had passed since their argument.
And last, she thought that life was a bitch of a Mistress.
And she didn’t care one whit about the pain.
nineteen
Make It All Okay
OLIVIER
“Boy, you gonna give me what’s messed up in your head or what?”
Olly, sitting in a recliner next to his dad, turned his attention from the football game they were watching to his father.
“Come again?” he asked, trying to fake like he didn’t know what his dad was talking about.
But he knew.
“Son, known you since you were born, had a hand in makin’ you, you don’t think I know when something’s up with my boy?” Teddy Hawkes asked.
Olly stared at him, trying to decide if it was worth the hassle of attempting to convince his father that nothing was wrong.
Having over three decades of experience knowing this was an impossible task, his hands moved before he told them to, right to his face, where they rubbed, then he swept them back over his hair to his neck, which he squeezed with them both.
His neck was tight as a bow and had been for a week.
Fuck.
He dropped his arms and looked back to his dad.
“You know how Mom used to say that if I didn’t get hold of my temper it’d get me in hot water?” Olly asked.
His dad whispered, “Shit,” lifted the remote, took the volume on the game down low, and turned in his recliner to face Olly. “What kinda hot water did you get yourself in, Olly?”
“There’s a woman.”
He said it like she was still there.
But she wasn’t.
Lost to him.
No, fuck him, she wasn’t.
He’d thrown her away.
“You’ve had your fair share of those and none of them had you starin’ at my plasma like you wanted to rip it off the wall and throw it out the window, so I’m guessin’ this one actually means something to you,” his dad observed.
“She did,” Olly replied quietly.
Teddy Hawkes’s brows shot up. “Did?”
“Does,” Olly corrected then shook his head. “She does, Dad. She’s classy and sweet and can be cute and she has a beautiful voice and an even more beautiful face.”
“And?” Teddy prompted.
“And we got into it and I spewed some ugly shit that crossed a serious line, none of it I can take back. Doing that, I broke us.”
“So what’s got you starin’ at my plasma like you mean it harm is that you’re tryin’ to figure out how to fix what that hot head of yours broke,” his father guessed.
Olly shook his head again, knowing he just ate a ton of hot wings and still having an empty feeling in his gut.
He also knew this feeling was because of the next words he said.
“No fixing it.”
“Boy, I know you and I know you got it in your head to do something, you can do it, especially if it means somethin’ to you. So don’t give me that malarkey.”
Olly turned more fully in his recliner toward his father. “What I’m saying is, even if I could fix it … and she’s Leigh, I lost it with her before, that time I had reason, and she got it and got over it fast, this time it really was not good. It started with me having a reason but I lost that and took it too far. But saying all that, I’m not sure even if I could fix it that I could actually fix us.”
“I think you know I’m not following.”
“We don’t fit,” Olly shared.
“And how’s that?” Teddy asked.
“She’s rich, Dad,” Olly stated. “Her family bought into Xerox when it was time to buy into Xerox and they had money before that kind of rich.”
“So?”
Olly stared at his father a beat before he pointed out, “I’m not.”
“So?” Teddy repeated.
Olly was losing his temper, not a good thing, as he’d been living with for the last week, so he clamped it down.
“So, Dad, I’m not rich in a way I’m never gonna give her more than she already has.”
“What’s your point?”
Olly blinked.
Teddy studied his son for a while before he kept talking.
“Olly, you should thank your lucky stars I didn’t feel that way about your mother or we’d both be screwed.”
“It’s not the same when it’s the man,” Olly told him something he knew.
“Damn, seems I hit the twenty-first century and left my boy behind,” Teddy remarked impatiently.
Olly kept a grip on his anger and started, “Dad—”
“Your momma didn’t work, my boys would have the second-best cleats when they played football, rather than top of the line.”
“It’s not—”
“She didn’t work, your sister would have some crappy, shiny, cheap fabric when your mother made her prom dress instead of the finest silk.”
“With Leigh, it isn’t—”
“She didn’t work, we woulda had an inside cabin on that family cruise we took when you were sixteen, rather than the nice one with the balcony.”
“I get what you’re saying, Dad, but—”
Teddy leaned over the arm of his chair toward his son. “No, I’m thinkin’ I gotta give you about a million more examples of what your mother offered this family before you get that your mom didn’t bring in much, but what she did bring in gave us all a better life.”
“You are not a millionaire,” Olly clipped.
“Nope, but I bet my boy who’s got a brain in his head and knows how to use it … most of the time,” Teddy started irritably, “knows well enough to pick himself a good one when it’s the one who means something to him. So I’ll also bet this girl you’re talkin’ about could be sitting on a mile-high pile of money and if her man came home with a bouquet of flowers he worked for the money to buy them just to let her know she was on his mind, that’d mean something to her and not a little something. A lot.”
Olly said nothing.
Teddy didn’t do the same.
“And I bet if he took her out for wings and a beer, she wouldn’t care, just as long as she was with him.”
That, uncomfortably and more than a little painfully, Olly suspected was the truth.
Teddy kept at his son.
“And I bet if you saved and worked overtime to buy her a diamond bracelet, even if she had twenty others, none of them would mean more to her than that one.”
Olly turned his head to look at the TV because he suspected his father wasn’t wrong about that either.
When he did, Teddy whispered, “Damn, I’m right.”
Olly looked back to him but didn’t confirm.
He didn’t need to.
His father knew.
“Boy, when it matters most, that’s the time to use that brain I know you know how to use,” his father advised.
Christ, his throat was burning in a way Olly knew even taking a tug of his beer wouldn’t help.
He knew it because he’d had that feeling a lot the last week.
“Just to say, we’re talkin’ about money,” Teddy went on. “Could spend five years explainin’ to you what your mother brought to our home, our family, and our marriage that had not one thing to do with money. And to push that point home, I mighta made the lion’s share of what we had in the bank, but I was no slouch in bringin’ what this family needed, what she needed, to the table too. And none of that had anything to do with how much money I made. This life, money means somethin’, absolutely. But it doesn’t mean everything and the bottom line truth of it is, when you rack up what’s important, it isn’t even close to the top.”
Olly knew that. He even suspected that with Leigh, the conversation they had about her not liking following in her father’s footsteps, he gave her something far more important than a mile-high pile of money.
He knew he had something to give.
He just did what he always did. Lost his temper and lost sight of everything but that.
“Okay, Dad. I heard you. You’ve pushed that point home,” Olly shared.
“You give her the good parts of you too?” his father asked, his tone more calm.
Olly looked
to him. “Our fight happened when we started to talk about where what we had was going.”
“So you gave her the good in you, and boy, you got so much. So much of your mom in you. Your sense of humor. Your smart mouth that’s smart in a way it’s hilarious. The way you look at things and understand where people are a lot faster than anyone I know. The way you give a crap. So much, you have a job where you’re on call and puttin’ yourself on the line to help a city full of folks you don’t even know. But you two started talkin’ about where you were going and your girl’s got the scales all hanging to one side, no doubt knowin’ exactly where she wants to take it, and you give her the only bad part of you and the other side goes crashing down.”
“That’s about it,” Olly stated roughly.
“Then fix it,” Teddy returned quietly.
“I get what you’re saying about Mom, Dad, but you did not face what I’m gonna be facing if I can fix things with Leigh, and that’s a big ‘if,’ I messed that up so bad. So you can’t say it’s that easy.”
His father nodded. “You’re right. I can’t. I’m a man. A man who had a wife and made a family. The man who raised you to be the man you are. I hear you. And I get you. And I get that I’m lookin’ at it from an entirely different perspective than you. Because I had the love of my life and she died in my arms. So I can look back to the life we had and twist it with a variety of scenarios. I could make your mother a millionaire and me a quarry foreman. And with what she gave me in the life we had, I’d know down to the pit of my gut that I would not care, Olly. I’d find a way to be all right with it because the alternative wouldn’t bear thinking.”
Teddy leaned farther across the arm of his chair and locked eyes with his son.
“I get it, too, that you aren’t there with this girl. You can’t see that because you don’t have that experience. You can’t know where you’re sitting if it’s gonna be worth it. What you gotta decide, boy, is if the risk is worth it. And I know you, Olly. With the pain you got in your eyes at losing her, you’ve already made the decision. So stop messin’ around and sort it out.”
With all his father’s words, that burning in his throat had a different meaning.
Through it, he shared that with his dad by saying, “I got midnights tonight.”
Teddy grinned. “Then do it tomorrow.” He sat back in his chair and grabbed his beer, doing this continuing on a mutter, “And I want her at my table as soon as. Been a while since I had a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice at my table who wasn’t my daughter.” He glanced at Olly. “No offense to your brother’s girl. She ain’t hard to look at but the woman’s got a voice like nails on a chalkboard.”