Lauren Blakely: Night After Night

His feelings for her ran too deep to just walk away.

He needed to do everything he could to get her out of the line of fire. He softened, cupping her shoulders. “If you’re in trouble, let me help you,” he offered, doing his best to let go of his past with Sabrina and to trust the woman in front of him, especially after last night and how she’d seemed to finally open up. “If there’s something going on, I want to help you. I know my way around.”

“I can’t. I have to do this on my own.”

“Why?” he asked, the word strangled in his throat.

“You have to trust me on this.”

“You’re making it awfully hard to trust you,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Her lower lip quivered. “I know,” she said, and her voice was starting to break.

“Tell me,” he said, pleading now. “Tell me what is going on. Tell me what they want from you. What they have on you. I’m a goddamn lawyer, Julia.”

“Clay,” she said, softly, pushing back. “You negotiate deals for actors and directors.”

He exhaled sharply, not liking the way she’d put that. “Yes, that’s what I do, and I’m damn good at it. That means I know how to solve problems, and I also understand the fine nuances of how people interact, and when you –“ he stopped talking to point at her “– lie to someone who’s carrying a gun, that’s a problem. And I want to help solve that problem if you’ll let me.”

She worried away at her lower lip, and he wanted to gently kiss her fears away and tell her it would all be fine. But he had no way of knowing that. Because she’d given him no reason to put faith in her words.

“I appreciate that. You have no idea how much. But I can’t let you do that.”

“Can you give me a reason why? Because every instinct inside of me is telling me to walk away and not look back. But you told me last night not to worry, and now I am worried. Because whatever trouble you’re in is looking bigger and bigger. So why won’t you let me help you?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, so tight and hard as if she were in pain. Then she opened them, and it was like looking in a mirror – her eyes were etched with the same kind of desperation he felt. The problem was, she held all the cards, and he didn’t even know what game they were playing.

“I just need you to trust me. That’s all. I need you to. I swear I need you to.”

He ran his fingers gently through her hair, wanting, wishing to be able to do this with her. To go all in. But the moment was far too familiar, and it felt like a flashback to this worst times, especially when she grabbed his arm hard. “Please,” she said.

He’d been here, he’d seen the same routine form Sabrina, begging him to believe her, pleading with him to see that she wasn’t hopped up on pills. Claiming she was getting help, when she was really selling off her purses and jewelry to buy more drugs. He has no idea if Julia was buying drugs, or shaking off a past as a stripper, or hiding some other dark secret. Because she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t give him the courtesy of the truth. That left him with one cold hard fact – she was lying.

Whether directly or by omission didn’t matter. She wasn’t being honest.

And that both hurt and pissed him off.

His veins felt scrubbed raw with a scouring pad as he gently, but firmly, peeled her hand off his arm. He didn’t need this in his life again. He had business to take care of for his clients, and he couldn’t risk the chance of another fucked-up relationship with a trouble-laden woman distracting him from his job.

Julia was perfect and captivating, clever and sexy, and tattooed head-to-toe with the warning sign trouble ahead . Good thing he’d seen it now before he went in too deep.

“I can’t do this Julia,” he said, grabbing the handle of his suitcase. “I need to go.”

He shut the car door hard behind him, locking it, as if that would keep thoughts of her at bay. He couldn’t risk letting a deal slip through his fingers again, and certainly not over a woman messing with his head, and his heart, so there was one choice for him now.

He’d have to find a way to forget her hard and fast.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of Julia and Clay’s love story in AFTER THIS NIGHT releasing May 12.

Copyright (c) 2014 by Lauren Blakely

LaurenBlakely.com

Cover Design by (c) Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations

Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon

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