The Billionaire's Beautiful Mistake (Bold Alaskan Men Book 1) (12 page)

“Aw, hell,” he mumbled and grabbed her arm, spinning her around.  “I won’t pay for it any longer, Violet.  I just can’t.”

She looked up at him, confused.  The green liquor swirling in her system wasn’t helping any longer.  His words were going round and round in her head and she didn’t like the answer that came to her mind.  Surely she’d misunderstood him because, he was implying that…

“You paid for what?” she asked, trying to clarify his words.  Why was everything looking so fuzzy right now?  She really hated being drunk, and she really needed some food. 

Creek sighed and looked around, thinking he should have had this conversation with her earlier, in private.  But here she was, and she’d chosen her career, she might as well be open about it.  If she was going to…he couldn’t even think the word when she was standing in front of him like this.  She just looked too sweet, too perfect and was the most tempting woman he’d ever encountered. 

And despite everything he knew about her, he still wanted her.  He wanted to lift her up into his arms and take her to his home, show her that she didn’t need to….

Aw hell!

Running a hand over his face, he shook his head.  “I won’t pay for our time together any longer, Violet.  I can’t.  It doesn’t feel right.”  He sighed and ran a hand over the scruff on his jaw, realizing for the first time that he hadn’t shaved again today. 

It suddenly occurred to him that he could help her out.  He could….

Violet put a hand to the side of her head, trying to focus on his words.  But they didn’t make any sense!  He couldn’t “pay for it” any longer?  Pay for what?  Pay for…?  “Excuse me, but are you saying you think that I’m a prostitute, and you’ve been paying to have sex with me?” she asked, disgusted and horrified in ways she hadn’t even considered possible before this moment.

Creek looked down at her, hearing the anger in her voice, but not understanding why she would be upset about him confronting her and explaining why he couldn’t see her any longer. 

“You’re beautiful, Violet.  But I just can’t…”

The slap across his face was harder than he would have thought her slender arms were capable of delivering.  The hit jerked his face sideways and he absorbed the anger for a long moment while he came to the realization that she’d just hit him.  When he slowly turned his head back to look down at her, he was furious. 

But he didn’t have a chance to release his fury.  She was poking him in the chest with her finger, her blue eyes on fire with the anger that was emanating out of her like a dragon breathes fire. 

Violet was shaking with the realization of what he thought of her, what he thought she was capable of.  She was somewhat horrified at the fact that she’d just slapped a person, but the hurt over his words, words that he seemed to believe, were overriding all of her guilt over physical violence. 

“Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again!  Ever!  And don’t you go around spreading lies like that.”  She was shaking so hard, she thought she might just fall down.  And then the tears started, and she couldn’t believe that he not only thought those vile things about her, but that she was going to show weakness in front of him.  “I thought what we’d shared together was special,” she told him, her voice rising with her fury.  “I thought our time together meant something.  And now I’m finding out that you thought that I’m a…that you think other men…” she couldn’t finish for a moment while she swallowed down the bile that threatened.  “I’ve never been with another man in my life besides you!  And I’ve never asked any man to pay to have sex with me, including you!  Who told you that I’m a prostitute?”  She wiped angrily at the tears on her cheeks.  “I want the names of the men that said they have paid for me!  I will confront every damned one of them and make sure that you’re aware that they never had sex with me, either paid or free, and then I never want to see you again!” 

Creek stared down at her, not understanding why she was so angry.  “Look Violet, I can understand if you were trying to keep this below the radar.  It isn’t exactly legal.”

She poked his chest again.  “Names!” she practically yelled. 

He threw his hands up into the air.  “Fine!  Me for one!  I’ve paid!   And won’t do it again!”

She gasped when he said those words, the pain jabbing down deeper.  “I’ve never asked you for money!  Never!  The only cash that has ever been transferred in my presence was that first night when you paid for the pizza!  And I didn’t get any of that money!”

He was disgusted now and he wasn’t going to take her anger.  With his hands fisted on his hips, he glared down at her.  “Are you seriously going to stand there and pretend that your stepfather hasn’t been pimping you out?  He showed up at my house last Friday and demanded payment for the previous nights!  I only paid for that first night, and was disgusted with myself.  But by the following morning, I thought I’d misunderstood.  I thought there was no way you could be doing something like that,” he grated out, so furious now that he couldn’t hide his anger.  “But who showed up on my doorstep five days ago, but your pathetic pimp, George, breathing whiskey fumes and telling me that you needed payment for the all the nights we were together.”  Creek shook his head.  “No way, Violet.  I’m not paying.  I thought...” he stopped and snapped his mouth shut as he glared at her.  He loomed down into her face.  “I’m finished paying Violet!  I can’t stomach it any longer!”

Violet heard the words but couldn’t believe them.  Everything he was saying, each new revelation was like a knife piercing her heart.  Anger wasn’t really what she was feeling at the moment, although she wasn’t exactly sure what emotion was choking her at the moment.  Everything he was saying, his words and the possibilities…they couldn’t be true!  “My stepfather was pimping me out?” she whispered, trying not to show how hurt she was, how much pain was lashing at her at this moment.  “You paid him for…” she stumbled as their conversation started to make sense, “you paid him for my services?”

“Yes!  He showed up, I wrote the check and he walked away, even giving me directions to your damn house, like he’d done this several times for other men who had shown up.  He even cautioned me to treat each night like a real date.  Explained this was your specialty and if I wanted something raunchy from another woman, he’d get that for me.  But I needed to respect your specialty.”

Violet pulled back as if she might be sick, more hurt than she’d thought possible.  “You paid for me,” she repeated.  “You bought me.  All those nights that I thought were special and amazing,” she said in a small voice, still not sure she could handle the reality of what he was saying, “they were just nights you owned me.”  She lifted her blue eyes up to his, unaware of the hurt emanating from her eyes.  “How much did you pay him?” she asked.

Creek sighed, running his hand over his face again.  He was starting to doubt everything he thought he knew about this woman.  From the look in her eyes, he was starting to suspect that he’d messed up.  Royally! 

“Five thousand,” he told her, needing to see the expression in her eyes, to detect the truth.  What he saw made him feel almost sick to his stomach.  The hurt and pain reflected in her eyes was unbearable.  He wanted to fold her into his arms, tell her that it was okay, that he’d take care of her.  But how could he?  She probably financed her business with her nighttime efforts. 

And then the solution occurred to him.  Moving closer, he took her arms, ignoring her efforts to get away from him.  “Violet, if you gave up spending your nights with other men, I could help you with your business.  You wouldn’t have to sell yourself any longer.”  He watched as a tear slipped over her long, dark lashes. 

“You paid five thousand dollars to my stepfather for five nights with me,” she whispered, standing stiffly in the warmth of his embrace and not sure what to do, how to react. 

Creek hesitated, thinking she should already know the answer.  And he was irritated that she was pretending that she didn’t know.  “Five thousand per night,” he snapped. 

He heard a groan from behind him, as well as from the corner and looked around.  Tucker was still changing out the bottles behind the bar, and Tyla was working intently on her computer.  But he knew both of them were listening. 

“Violet, let’s go somewhere private to discuss this.”

Violet pulled her arm out of his grip and stepped back.  “You paid my stepfather twenty-five thousand dollars?” she hissed, still stuck on the money.  “To have sex with me?”  Her head was spinning.  The pain was now gone, replaced by the horror of what he was telling her.  He’d paid money to have sex with her?  It seemed too crazy for words.  “I think I should be flattered.”

“No, I only paid the first time.  George came by demanding the other money but I told him to…”  He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.  “I refused to pay, Violet.  I couldn’t do it.  I want you.  You’re beautiful and special, but…”

There was a snort from behind her, but Violet ignored the sound, still too stunned by these revelations.  “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”  Her fingers pushed her hair back from her forehead, still reeling.  “George demanded twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“Stop saying that!” Creek demanded. 

She looked up at him, still trying to understand everything.  “But you paid him five thousand!  In cash?”

“By check,” he replied.  “Look, the money isn’t the issue.”  He reached out, trying to touch her again, needing that contact despite all he knew about her. 

Violet pulled back, refusing to let him touch her.  She couldn’t let him!  He’d…he’d paid for her!  He thought that she was a prostitute!  Everything they’d shared together, it was all sullied, dirty! 

“Oh yes it is!” she said, stepping back once again, refusing to let him touch her.  “You’re a bartender!  You don’t have that kind of money!”  Another snort, this time from the bar.  Her eyes hardened as she sneered up at him.  “Did you even try to negotiate with George?  Did you haggle a bit to get the price down?”

“No!”

“You should have!  Maybe you could have gotten a better deal for half the night.  Or an hour!  Maybe an hour would have saved your bank account.  I mean, we did sleep during part of the night.  Not very long, but there was sleep.  You should have calculated the hours that we slept and demanded a refund.”

“Stop it, Violet!” he snapped. 

Her blue eyes flared up at him and she backed away another step.  “No!  You stop it!  Stop talking to me!  Just go away with all of your offers to save me and help my business.”  She leaned in and poked her finger into his chest again.  “My business is going extremely well!  And I don’t…!” she was about to say that she didn’t need to prostitute herself, but the words simply wouldn’t come out. 

She turned towards the door, furious and hurt, and not sure about all the other emotions that were going round in her head at the moment. 

He glared at her back, furious that she was leaving and starting to panic at the idea of her being alone on the isolated streets.  Not only were there drivers that could hurt her, but the wildlife wasn’t something to be ignored either.  “Violet, you can’t drive.  I’ll take you home.”

“I’m walking!” she snapped, and let the door close behind her, too angry to care about the cold, or the melting snow that would freeze over tonight, or the man who had hurt her so badly she could barely see straight. 

“I’ve got this,” Tyla said and slapped her laptop closed, heading out the door to follow Violet.  But she stopped in front of Creek.  “You paid for her?  For that woman?”  She shook her head.  “Men!  They’re all idiots!” she snapped and walked out, not bothering to glance behind the bar where Tucker was now glaring at her as she left. 

“Violet, wait up!” Tyla called out.  But the woman just kept walking, hunching into her waterproof, down jacket that might be warm enough for the early evenings here in Alaska, but it wouldn’t help her after nightfall when the temperatures dropped even further. 

Tyla jumped into her Jeep and revved up the engine, turning on the heater to full blast.  She suspected the woman walking out of the parking lot would need the heat after that conversation.  Cold didn’t even start to describe what those two had been discussing.  Creek was in deep – deep in trouble and deep in love.  Any fool could see that.  The man was a cynic when it came to women, almost worse than the other three, one of whom she didn’t ever mention, even in her head.  For Creek to have offered to help Violet…that was love. 

Rolling down her window, she drove alongside the woman walking with her arms crossed over her chest, trying to keep warm despite the rain and valiantly trying not to cry. 

Tyla could understand what the woman was going through, what was flashing through her mind.  But that wasn’t a good enough reason to die.  “He’s not worth freezing over, Violet,” she said to the woman wearing jeans and high-heeled boots in the icy rain.  “He’s a total jerk and a complete idiot.  But I’m not one of them.  Why not get in and we can talk about it?”

Violet lifted her head to look at the woman, recognizing her vaguely as the one who had been sitting in the corner of The Rotten Apple.  “Do I know you?” she asked.

Tyla shook her head.  “Not at all.  But I know what you’re going through.  Tucker, Saeger, Knox, and Creek are friends and so similar that it is annoying.  And…” Tyla paused.

“You’re in love with one of them,” she said, guessing the truth even though the woman probably wasn’t going to admit it. 

“No way,” Tyla replied with a gamin smile.  “I’m not joining that wounded-hearts club.  But I know what you’re feeling.”