The Stand Off (18 page)

***

Lux parked in front of her house
and headed inside with her head hung low. She wanted to go straight to her
room, curl up under her covers, and cry. She didn’t want to see anyone or talk
to anyone, and she definitely didn’t want to think right now. She just wanted
to sleep.

Lux opened the front door and was
immediately bombarded by her family and friends.

“Lux!” Pixie squealed and ran
towards her.

“What?” she snapped as Pixie
hugged her.

“He did it!” Kiki smiled as she
hugged Pixie and Lux.

“We didn’t even have to abduct
him,” Graves said as she threw her arms around her friends.

“He must really like you,” Lolo
smiled.

“Wait! What are you talking
about?” Lux belted out as she pulled away from them.

“Dean signed the building over to
you,” Pixie informed her.

“How do you know that?” she
snapped in horror, afraid that somehow they knew what she’d done.

“His attorney delivered the deed
while we were busy abducting him,” Kiki explained.

“Mom said it came minutes after
we left,” Pixie added.

“We tried to call and tell you,
but your phone was off.” Kiki told her.

“We didn’t even have to abduct
him in the first place,” Graves smiled.

“He was lying when he said he’d
called it off for 24 hours. He’d already signed it over,” Pixie finished.

“He signed it way before that,”
Kiki added.

“How do you know that?” Lux
asked.

“Look at the date on the deed. He
actually signed it over to you days ago.”

Lux took the paper and felt her
stomach drop. Her head began to swirl and her legs almost gave out from
underneath her. Pixie and Kiki grabbed her when she swayed to the side

“Whoa, are you alright?” Pixie
asked

“Yeah, yes…I’m fine. I have to
go,” Lux said with an odd gleam in her eye.

“Where are you going? It’s time
to celebrate!” Pixie said in a cheerful voice.

“I’m going to sleep,” Lux
frowned.

She rushed upstairs and headed
straight for her stereo. She turned it up to full volume, covered her mouth,
and screamed into her hand. She pinched her thigh hard, trying to make her mind
slow down. Her scream turned into a deep sob that she could no longer hold
back. She cried for a moment before she turned around and headed to her bed.
She dropped down on it and pulled the covers over her head.

She was confused, overwhelmed,
and unreasonably exhausted.

She wanted to sleep off the brunt
of it in the hopes that it would take the edge off. She wanted to sleep until
she forgot. She wanted to sleep until her heart and mind healed enough to
decipher the new information and the night’s events.

***

Dean walked into his house to
find his father in the living room.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Dean said with a straight face, despite his sarcasm.

“Your brother says that you gave
up that property for a woman. I called him a liar; I said there is no way that
Dean would do something foolish like that. My younger sons’ maybe... but never
my eldest.” His father stared at him with a look of disgust.

Dean just looked at his father
for a moment before he answered, “I did.”

“You cancelled a million dollar
deal for some pussy?” he growled.

“I damn sure did.” Dean refused
to back down.

“Such a sad day. I never thought
that I would see you fall. Not you Dean.”

“I’ll never fall,” he said with
enough confidence to rattle his dad’s cage.

“You’re a fool if you think she
really cares about you. She did it for the property and only the property.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“I would bet my last dollar that
she did! She is no different than the others of her sex. Women would do
anything to get what they want. They wear those masks and trick the poor fools
dumb enough to fall for it. I never thought that you’d be one of those fools,
Son.”

“I gave her the opportunity to fuck
me for the building. She refused. I gave her several opportunities to show her
true colors.”

“I can guarantee that it was all
an act, every bit of it.”

“Trust me, it was not an act,”
Dean said with certainty.

“She tricked you into thinking
that she wouldn’t prostitute herself to save her property but in the end she
did just that. She sounds a lot like your mother.”

“She’s nothing like her.”

“But your mom wasn’t like that in
the beginning, either. Your mother was as sweet as pie, the most amazing woman.
You saw how she turned out. You saw all of the men she brought in here while I
was away. Women are tricky.”

“She’s dead now; she’s paid her
dues.” He could see his father’s anger rising, and he knew it would take weeks
to calm him down.

“No, there’s a part of her that
lives on in every woman. They are all the same in the end. You’ll be deceived,
tricked, manipulated, and bled dry by the time that woman is through.”

“I don’t think so.” Dean shook
his head. “You don’t know Lux.”

“As hard as I fought to make sure
it never happened, in the end you became as big of a fool as I once was.”

“I am nothing like you, and I
never will be.” He stood up and headed towards the door.

“I’m not done talking to you
Dean.”

“You’re done, old man,” Dean
finished as he left the room.

Once upon a time, his father’s
words had rung true. He’d raised his sons with his beliefs and his mother’s
traitorous behavior over the years had proved his father right. But now Dean
saw things differently. Now he’d found a woman who was too blunt to be
dishonest. She was too straightforward to manipulate and too full of pride to
lower herself to his mother’s standards. She was the one woman he’d found that
hadn’t reminded him of his mother in any fashion. If anything, he didn’t think
that she would even get along with his mother, since their views were
drastically different. When he was a boy, he’d tried to love his mother, but
she was never the motherly type. After her death, it seemed easier to think
about all of the bad things she’d done.

Even though Lux had sworn she’d
had sex with him for the building, he knew the truth. He knew exactly why she’d
done it; her body could not deny what her mouth could.

“And what a reckless mouth it
is
,” he thought. He wasn’t sure why, but she was hurt. He would get to the
bottom of it.

He walked out of the house and
into the awaiting car. He sat in the passenger’s seat and closed the door
harder than he intended. Johann was waiting for him inside of the car.

He frowned and began to speak,
“I’m sorry I told dad, but he was on that ‘women are the devil shit’ again. He
told me to be heartless like you and him. I was excited to tell him that you
weren’t heartless like him, either. I know that you really like Lux.”

“It’s fine.” Dean replied in a
low tone.

“You’re not pissed?”

“No.”

“Really?” Johann was shocked.

“No, I’m not mad. He was bound to
find out sooner or later,” Dean admitted.

“Are the two of you a thing now?”

“We are.” Just saying the words
brought him a thrill of excitement. Monogamy with Lux was very appealing, and
he was becoming obsessed with the thought of having her all to himself.

Johann smiled and started the
car. “Life is crazy; you just never know how things will turn out.”

***

Lux woke up late the next
morning, feeling out of sorts. She’d slept for the entire night and most of the
day, but she still felt groggy. The date on the deed kept flashing in her mind,
and she quickly got up to get dressed. She could no longer delay the
inevitable; she needed to go see Dean.

She got in her car and raced to
his office building. She stormed in the building and hurried to the top floor.
She sped past the receptionist and down the hall to his office. She walked over
to the front of his secretary’s desk and stood.

“Is he busy?” Lux asked.

His secretary looked genuinely
surprised that Lux took the time to ask, “No he’s not.”

“Do you want to call him first
and make sure he will see me?”

“No, he told me to always send
you in, even if he was in a meeting.”

“Really?” She could not stop the
slight smile on her face.

“Yes and he just happens to be
free at the moment.”

“Thanks Amelia.” Lux’s smile
quickly disappeared before she walked over to Dean’s office door.

She froze for a moment, feeling
her heart flutter fast enough to fly out of her chest. She took a deep breath
and walked into his office.

Dean looked up to see her, and
she was momentarily stunned by the sight of him. Although he appeared exactly
the same, she saw him through new eyes. Everything he’d done to her the night
he took her virginity flashed through her mind at rapid speed. She felt her
inside melt.

“Hello Lux,” he said curtly as he
stared at her, his face void of any emotion.

“Are you busy?” she asked.

“Since when has that ever stopped
you?”

“I received the deed to the
building.” She walked over to stand before his desk.

“Good.”

“Funny thing is... it was signed
before I abducted you.”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“Was it an accident? A typo?”

“No.”

“You were going to give me the
building regardless?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said firmly, his back
straight. He showed none of his previous concern; he acted as if he were
talking to a stranger.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was planning on telling you
that morning, but the abduction derailed it.”

She was quiet for a moment before
she spoke, “I had sex with you.”

“For the building, correct?” he
raised his brow.

“Why else would I have sex with a
womanizer who thinks sex is a sport and women are disposable; a man who would
never
agree to a relationship?” she shrugged.

“I’ve never considered you
disposable.”

“Liar; all you wanted was sex,”
she whispered.

“And all you wanted was that
building. I was clear about what I wanted from the start; I never lied to you.”

“You only wanted what you
couldn’t have.”

“Keep telling yourself that. I’ve
had you now; I took your fucking virginity. I’ve been deep inside of you and I
still want you, despite the fact that you used me.”

“Used
you
? How did I use
you
?”
She put her hands on her hips as she stared at him.

“By your own admission, you only
fucked me for that property. I consider that being used.”

She looked at him blankly for a
moment. She hadn’t thought of it that way.

“You probably like being used for
sex.” She turned her nose up in feigned disgust.

“That’s irrelevant.”

“Why would you care about the
circumstances? I thought you’d just be satisfied that you got the sex.”

“I’m not… I want more,” he
admitted.

“No… no more. The only way I’m
giving more is if I am in a relationship. We both know that you don’t play that
game. You've never had a relationship in your entire life.”

“Neither have you,” he reminded
her.

“But I don’t object to the idea,”
she retorted.

“Relationships are tricky, they
tend to change things.”

“How would you know? A
relationship could improve things.”

“How do you know?” he shot back
at her.

“Because anything is a step up
from meaningless sex,” she explained.

“Why do you consider it
meaningless?”

“Because you believe
relationships are meaningless, and you treat women as if they are meaningless;
therefore, sex with you is meaningless by default.”

“I don’t consider sex with you as
meaningless.”

“But you can’t give me what I
want,” she said, hoping he would object. She hadn’t realized until that moment
that she had indeed wanted a relationship with him. She was angry with him
because he was not interested in more than sex.

“You don’t know that,” he said
honestly.

Was it possible? Could he
actually be monogamous?

“Hell no, this is Dean Blake
you’re talking about,”
she reminded herself.

“Unfortunately I do; you’ve never
let me forget,” she whispered before she turned and headed for the door.