Chapter 502 | A Loan Agreement for One Night at the Ritz

Chapter 502: 502 | A Loan Agreement for One Night at the Ritz

The sound bounced off the gas pump and scattered two pigeons off the station roof. Alexis slapped a hand over her mouth and folded forward until her forehead nearly touched her knees. Her shoulders shook under his palms.

"Mmmph... mmnnn... Jordan, someone is going to hear..."

Through the window, the man in the Padres cap studied the lottery display with the face of someone who had worked a San Clemente gas station for thirty years and heard worse. Jordan dragged his thumbs up the cord in her neck, slow enough to feel every fiber give, and she whimpered into her palm.

"Hahh... ahh... nnn, keep going, I swear if you stop..."

He didn’t. Heat rolled out of him and the tension in her shoulders let go in layers. Her back arched against the seat. Her slippered heels scraped the asphalt. When he pressed the spot at the base of her skull where Catherine Van Der Berg had apparently stored eighteen years of posture lessons, she went slack and let her head fall back against his stomach.

"Ohhh..." Long and low, until it broke in the middle. "Oh, that’s where she lives. You found where she lives."

His phone buzzed. Ten minutes, on the dot. Chloe had set a timer from twenty miles away.

He lifted his hands. Her shoulders followed him up an inch, chasing the heat, then settled and stayed down.

He wiped his palms on his jeans. They were still hot. They always were afterward, like a pan pulled off the burner that hadn’t heard the news.

She sat with her head tipped back against him, mouth open, blue lips wet, red from collarbones to hairline, a strand of blonde hair stuck beside the mustard at the corner of her mouth. Nothing left of the girl at the best table in Maison three hours ago. The cocky part of Jordan’s brain wanted to take a picture and frame it.

He was getting very good at not taking pictures. Chloe called it character development. Kumiko called it page twenty-nine.

"I hate you," Alexis told the roof of his car.

"Sure, princess."

"I told you not to call me that."

"You told me not to call you that right now. Ten minutes ago was right now. This is later."

She twisted around to glare at him. The mustard, the blue lips and the cat slippers undercut it, and so did her eyelids, which kept drooping as if her body hadn’t gotten the memo that the massage was over.

"I need to say something," she said, and turned back to the windshield so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

Jordan walked around and got in the driver’s side. He shut his door. He didn’t start the engine.

"I don’t want to go back to Kumiko’s tonight."

He kept his hands on the wheel.

"It’s not because of Kumiko." Faster now, as if she had to get it through the gate before her mother’s voice caught up. "Kumiko is perfect. Kumiko gave me her dumpling and sang me something in Japanese about a forest spirit, and I cried into the dumpling, which is now ruined, and she said the dumpling forgives me." She pulled the black cuff down over her knuckles. "But if I walk into that building tonight with no car and thirty-three dollars and a declined card, Chloe will look at me over her glasses from the kitchen island, and she’ll be kind about it."

"Chloe’s always kind about it."

"That’s the problem! I can’t handle kind tonight. I’ve had eighteen years of cruel and I know what to do with cruel. I don’t know what to do with a pregnant girl handing me eggs and telling me I’m not a guest." Her voice cracked. "I’ll cry on her floor and Miss Valentine will bake something."

She swallowed. "And tomorrow I’d have to sit across the eggs from her knowing she’d seen it. I need one night where nobody’s seen it. Just one."

Jordan considered telling her that Miss Valentine baked for everything, including Tuesdays, and that crying on Chloe’s floor was a mandatory onboarding step. He decided she wasn’t ready.

"So where do you want to go?"

A long silence. Waves somewhere past the freeway. A truck pulled up to the diesel pump and the driver climbed out without looking at them.

"There’s a hotel," she said finally, staring very hard at the fruit stand. "In Dana Point. On the bluff. It has a spa and the beds are actually good and the showers have real water pressure instead of whatever your building has, which sounds like a man crying through a straw."

"The Ritz?"

"I didn’t say it was the Ritz."

"You described the Ritz."

"It could be a different hotel on a bluff." Her ears had gone fully red. "There are several bluffs. Dana Point is famous for bluffs."

"Name one other bluff."

She opened her mouth and closed it. "I am not going to be cross-examined in a Honda."

Jordan said nothing. Silence, applied correctly, did more to Alexis Van Der Berg than his hands ever could. She twisted his shirt cuff into a knot.

"It’s not like I want to go to a hotel with you," she snapped at the windshield. "I want a shower and a bed and room service that doesn’t come in a cardboard tray. I can’t pay for it, because my mother turned me off like a faucet, and you’re the only person I know with a car right now."

"Kyle has a truck."

"I am not going to a hotel with Kyle!"

It bounced around the inside of the Civic. The diesel guy looked over. Alexis sank two inches and covered her face with both hands.

The diesel guy went back to his pump like a man who had decided this was either a breakup or a reality show and wanted no part of either.

"That came out wrong," she said through her fingers.

"It came out pretty clear, actually."

"Shut up." She spread two fingers and peered through the gap with one bloodshot eye. "You’ll put it on your card, and I’ll pay you back, every cent, with interest. Chloe can write the rate on her stupid legal pad and I’ll sign it. You are not doing me a favor. This is a loan, I’m a terrible credit risk, and you’re an idiot for agreeing to it."

"I haven’t agreed to anything yet."

Her fingers snapped shut. A small strangled sound came from behind her hands, like a kettle that had just discovered heartbreak.

"What’s the interest rate?" Jordan asked.

"Whatever Chloe says."

"Chloe will say something insane."

"Then I’ll pay something insane." She lowered one finger. "I’m a Van Der Berg. We have never once defaulted on anything except feelings."

His phone buzzed. Chloe.

Ten minutes was up four minutes ago. Where are you two going? Don’t lie, I can see your location.

Above it, a gold notification pulsed, smug and patient. Jordan very carefully did not tap it.

He typed gas station in san clemente, she’s okay and didn’t send it. That wasn’t the question Chloe was asking, and they both knew it.

Alexis lowered her hands. She sat up straight for the first time since the café, spine stacked, chin lifted, the old Newport posture snapping back by habit. Then she let it go on purpose. Shoulders down. Chin down. She turned in the seat and looked at him, mustard and blue lips and wet lashes and all.

"Jordan," she said, quiet and stubborn, like a line rehearsed eleven times and still hated. "Will you take me to a hotel tonight? Please."