She pushed a wad of keys into his hand, her own shaking. “It’s two in the morning, Jax. Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
Her concern pinched his chest. “Let me worry about that. Which key? Why do you have a thousand of these things?”
“The red one. Everything inside the store is locked in case someone gets past the system.”
He frowned as he held the door open. “This might not be the safest place to live, Lex.”
As she passed, her scent touched him. Invited him to touch her. Taste her. “Since I spend almost every hour here anyway, it only makes sense.”
Beside the door, Lexi uncovered a hidden keypad and punched in a code. She re-covered it with a snap and shot Jax a sad lopsided grin. “Now I have to kill you.”
He matched her grin, mesmerized at how her face was already so familiar to him. She locked the door, her gaze searching the exterior through the glass without turning on a light.
Jax eased up behind her, put his hands on her waist. “Who did you think I was?”
“Photographers,” she murmured. “Or a reporter. They’re always around, but they hover when I’ve got high-profile clients.”
“Who were they watching for?”
“Jessica Love, mostly. But Bailey Simmons came this week too.” She shook her head. “Bad scheduling. I’ll never make that mistake again.”
“Daughters of the biggest producer and director in Tinseltown? Yeah, probably not the best ladies to have in the same location in the same week without a LeCroix security force.”
“If I could afford one, a lot of my stress and problems would disappear.”
“Maybe you need to raise your prices. Jessie’s daddy would buy her the moon if it were for sale. Bailey’s daddy is still negotiating with God for the deed to the universe.”
She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “How did you know she goes by Jessie?”
“I’ve worked for her father, Stan.”
He’d actually had dinner with Stan and his family numerous times. He’d coacted with Jessie’s future husband on several big films, and they were friends. He’d been invited to Jessie’s wedding this weekend. But that would probably be overwhelming and unnecessary information at the moment.
She searched his eyes, but then nodded and gazed into the dark again. “He’s a nice man. Stan, I mean.”
“I knew who you meant. No one would ever mistake Simmons as nice.”
She hummed in agreement. “My prices are already high. My biggest problem isn’t getting what the dresses are worth, it’s cloning myself. There aren’t enough of my bloody fingers to go around.”
She lifted her hands, palms facing them. Even in the dim light, Jax could see her torn, roughened fingertips.
“The price of success, huh?” he murmured and drew one of her hands to his lips, kissing each fingertip.
Lexi sighed, and as soon as he lowered her hand, she turned in his arms. “I really don’t want you tired while you’re working. That’s dangerous. You need to get some sleep. We can talk tomorrow.”
He loved the way she tried to take care of him. “I’ve got a night shoot tomorrow. I won’t go into the set until late.” He eased the backs of his fingers over her high cheekbones. “God, you’re crazy beautiful. Why did you want to hide this?”
“I’ve had some bad experiences…” She looked away, her golden lashes sweeping down to hide her eyes.
Jax’s mind filled with the words she’d spoken shortly after she’d stepped into his hotel room. “The truth is that men are attracted to me for my…body.”
God, it all clicked. Men wanted her for her beauty, not just her body. Men used her as window dressing, the same way women used Jax—for dressing, a reputation boost, favors.
A dry huff of laughter drifted from his throat. “Baby, we are far more alike than you know.”
Pulling from his arms, she walked toward a wall and flipped on a bank of lights, filling the store with soft spot lighting.
Jax found himself standing in a near replica of his mother’s living room—every surface marble, chrome, smoked or etched glass. Overstuffed furnishings dressed in thick jacquard or leather dotted the small series of rooms. A fountain drowned out the exterior noises with a tranquil gurgle. Dresses on mannequins and hanging on racks sparkled like fireworks.
His gaze skimmed the space, taking in all the detailed woodwork, paint, displays. A few things struck him at the same time. He suddenly felt overly big and bulky and rough in the delicate, refined space, and terribly out of place. He realized what caliber of people Lexi must deal with every day, people far above what she believed of Jax’s life. And he recognized how much she’d accomplished. More than probably any other woman he’d dated.
“Let me just clear a few things up before they become problems.” Lexi strolled up beside him, arms crossed, then continued past and into a room with carpet so thick it swallowed her small feet and sparkling sandals. “Everything here is mine. Everything you see I’ve created, designed, sewn myself. I have a few seamstresses that help me out. They work out of their homes. But the work is so specialized and my clients so particular, I have to do all the finish work myself.”
Jax met her eyes. They looked as dark blue as the Pacific in the dim light.
“I’ve been building this business since I could draw. I didn’t go to college. Don’t have a fancy degree from a design school. I grew up poor. Dirt poor. So every success for me is that much sweeter. I’ve never borrowed a dime. Never had a financial backer. Everything about Lexi LaCroix Designs is one hundred percent…mine.”
“Fuck,” Jax whispered, rubbing a hand over his eyes, wishing he could take his impulsive words at the bar back. “Lexi, I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m telling you. I don’t need anyone to do or give me anything to succeed. I’m already there. I’m trying to refine that success to give me a better quality of life. But I have everything I need to do it on my own terms, in my own time, through opportunities that come to me because of all that hard work. I’m proud of that.
“And with how little I know about you, it’s hard to imagine what you could possibly have that you fear I would want. Money is the obvious answer, since as I told you in New York, Hollywood contacts hold no value for me. So let me just set your mind straight right now. My friend, Rubi, has been trying to push millions on me for years. I’ve had three different investors approach me. I’ve turned everyone down. I don’t want to leverage my business. I want to build it. Grow it. Myself. That’s what the business opportunity in New York was about. And that’s not panning out very well either.”
“Your rough day?” he asked.
“Partially, yes.”
Things were starting to fall into place—making him want her more and pushing her farther away at the same time.
He ran his tongue over his lower lip and looked around the shop. “And the reason you wouldn’t see me here in LA is because…” He gestured to the surroundings, his gut aching. “I don’t fit into that image you’ve worked so hard to create.”
She dropped her arms and raked both hands through her hair, then turned and wandered away, toward a rack of pristine white gowns, each sealed in a clear plastic cover.
“I’ve trapped myself. I didn’t realize it until I met you. I was just building a business, doing what I loved to do, growing with the market, meeting demand. Slowly, my clients became wealthier, more important, higher profile. It looked like success to me. I was so caught up in becoming what I’d always dreamed, accomplishing what everyone said I couldn’t that I didn’t see how limiting it had become.
“Now I feel like I live in a bubble. Cameras follow my clients into the shop; reporters dog me for the inside scoop. I’ve had reporters try to pay me off, seduce me, threaten me. They are relentless.”
She sighed and turned back to him. “Now how clean my personal image is becomes a factor in whether this billionaire will have me design his daughter’s wedding dress and the dresses for her eighteen bridesmaids to the tune of half a million dollars. Whether this big New York designer wants to take me on as a partner and distribute my work in stores I can’t even imagine reaching on my own.”
Jax nodded slowly, raked his bottom lip between his teeth, but it didn’t ease the growing knot in his chest. “And it doesn’t matter who I am as a person. Your biggest clients would take one look at me—my leathers, my tattoos, my too long hair, my motorcycle, the cuts and bruises and occasional black eyes—and jump to their own conclusions. Then judge you based on those. And take their business elsewhere.”
And based on how much of this she’d done on her own and the fact that she’d grown up poor, he’d bet this was all she had.
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Yeah, I get it.”
And he was disgusted with the whole superficial scene—one prevalent in the entire LA area, not just Hollywood. More, he hated the way it kept him from what he wanted most. Lexi.
She clasped her hands, threaded her fingers, and looked down at the floor again. “It’s that, yes. But, it’s also…” She swallowed. Her hands twisted. “I’ve just come too close to losing everything because I trusted. I hoped. And it’s, I don’t know, scarred me…or scared me…or both.”
She started laughing, an exhausted, disheartened sound, and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “See, aren’t you glad I didn’t tell you all this last month? You’d have thought I was psychotic. ’Cause…well, I kind of am…”
She covered her face and made a sound Jax couldn’t decipher between a laugh and a sob.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said, “but not because of that. I’d have been freaking intimidated. I think… No, I know, I’m still intimidated. I know a dozen corporate executives who can’t handle their personal and professional lives so well, Lex.”
She dropped her hands and gestured to her face, wet with tears again. “I’m obviously not handling it all that well.”
He grimaced. “You were until I messed things up.”
“No.” She approached him and gripped his arms. “This is not your fault. This is not about you not fitting in. This is about me putting on a face to be what others think I should be to keep my business going.”
She heaved a sigh and slid her hands down his arms until her fingers wound around his, then pulled him toward a corner of the shop. He followed, hoping she was going to drag him into a chair in some corner, raise her little dress, and straddle his lap, bridge this growing distance between them. But she started up a set of stairs in the back.
Even better. Her apartment. His mind drifted away from all the problems between them and straight to getting her naked, filling her, and staying there the rest of the night.
At the top of the stairs, an open space stretched the length of the shop. One glance and Jax could see this wasn’t an apartment. It was an office and a workroom with a bed in the corner.