Page 37 of Beautiful Enemy

I open the cover and take in the date, my mouth rounding. “A first edition?”

“The first edition was published as a serial and in French. This is a second.”

I nearly drop it in my haste to replace it on the shelf.

“Why did you let me pick it up? It’s three hundred years old and could fall apart in a second.”

I turn to glare at him, but the expression on his face sets me back.

“Beautiful things are made to be touched.”

The softness in his voice sends shivers through me.

Like that, I’m rocketed back to the night on the beach. His words, his closeness, his intensity.

“I understand from Leni the door was up by a hundred last night,” he goes on. “You’ll need to do better if you want to profit from our deal.”

I frown. “I see our truce is over.”

“Were you hoping it wasn’t?” He cocks his head.

I refuse to cop to anything where he’s concerned. He’ll make me pay for it.

“There’s something about you I can’t figure out.”

“Only one thing?”

He ignores me and continues. “What changed from your first night in Ibiza to the next morning that made you renegotiate?”

I don’t want to talk about this. It’s personal.

But the man who told me about his parents dying two nights ago replaced my anxiety meds.

There isn’t a clean line between business and personal with him, if there ever was one.

“My cousin co-runs a program for women who’ve experienced sexual violence. Their funding has been slashed by government cuts. They need help keeping the lights on for a couple of months, or they won’t be able to keep providing services.”

He blinks at me as if I told him I wanted to buy breeding rhinoceros and start a farm back in Orange County.

“That’s very committed,” he says at last. “But you can’t take responsibility for everyone in this world. There are too many evils.”

Conviction has me standing straighter. “No woman should have to endure sexual violence, and they sure as fuck shouldn’t endure it alone.”

He studies me long enough that I feel as if he’s peering beneath my skin, under the layers of Little Queen or Rae which are fit for public consumption.

He shifts in his chair, his strong body reclining as both hands curl over the armrests. “There’s a charity event tomorrow for the local environmental commission. Plenty of cynics like me and bleeding hearts like you.”

“I heard. Ash asked me to go with him.”

“Ash?” Surprise flits across his handsome face. Harrison rubs a hand over his jaw. “Tell my brother he can find another date. You’ll go with me.”

I laugh, incredulous. “What? Why?”

“I can want the company of an earnest young music producer in my employ. Who knows? Perhaps you can elicit business for your show next week.”

I could promote Debajo, but that would mean being the date of this man I respond to when I shouldn’t. Fancy clothes, booze, Harrison King looking like the god he is while he wraps Ibiza’s in crowd around his finger.

Since my conversation with Callie, I can’t help wondering what else he could do with those hands.

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