by Cynthia Eden
The Crimson Star had been waiting for her, tossed in that elevator. Cameron had denied leaving it there. He wouldn’t lie to her.
Would he?
“Before you try shutting me down,” now Sam sounded a bit cocky again, “maybe you need to see what kind of shit her family is stirring up. I report the scandals. You rich fools make them.”
Cat couldn’t take her eyes off the laptop’s screen. Cameron must have been hacked. That was the answer. Someone was just using his account. She’d seen stuff like this before, on TV shows.
Jason hadn’t relaxed his grim stance. “Nothing else is printed about her, do you understand? Say any BS you want about me. Nothing about Catherine appears in your rag again…or I’ll buy this piece of crap tabloid, and I’ll throw your ass on the street.” The cold threat hung in the air. “Are we clear?”
Her gaze jerked to Sam’s face. He’d paled. “Clear as glass,” Sam muttered. “So much for freedom of the Press.”
“I don’t make idle threats, Young. Remember that.”
Sam nodded. His eyes blazed with fury.
Jason stepped back, took her arm, and led her to the doorway. She was more than ready to get out of that place, but, before they left, Jason gave a nod to a particularly fierce looking guy who’d been waiting outside the doorway. She’d met the man moments before. Ronald Wayne was Jason’s “manager”—though he looked a whole lot like an intimidating enforcer and not so much a pencil pusher.
“Confiscate it all, Ronald,” Jason told him. “Figure out where that email came from—and see if old Sam is holding back anything from us.”
“I’m not!” Sam snapped.
“Done,” Ronald said in the same instant, his expression never changing from that stony visage.
She didn’t speak to Jason again until they were back in his limo. She’d been too afraid to say anything else in the Crimson Star. Way too many prying eyes and folks eager for scandal had been in there.
The limo eased away from the curb and Cat exhaled slowly. “It wasn’t him.” Those were the words she needed to say. Her head turned and she met Jason’s gleaming stare. “Someone just used his email address. He was hacked. Something happened. It wasn’t Cameron.” Because he wouldn’t do that to her.
Jason lifted one brow. “Sometimes, you don’t know people as well as you think.”
“Sometimes, you do,” she fired right back. Cameron had been shaken when he realized exactly what was happening. He’d wanted to go with them to the Crimson Star, but Jason had ordered the guy to do damage control elsewhere and…Cameron had actually followed Jason’s order. Cat’s mind raced. “I’ve got to call my principal back home. Word is going to leak out—”
“You think Mila Jones will fire you?”
She blinked. “How do you know my principal’s name?”
For a second, he seemed to tense. Then he shrugged. “You must have mentioned it to me.”
“No,” Cat said very definitely. “I didn’t.” She straightened in her seat. “How did you know?” She’d told the guy very little about her life in Bridgeport, Maine.
A small town…so far away from the lights of Vegas. She’d picked that town because it had been the perfect place to start her life. To stop being just Nathaniel Donnelly’s daughter…and to be—me.
Jason glanced away from her, staring out the window, as if the city fascinated him. Or as if he were trying to avoid her stare.
“Jason.” She needed his stare to come back to her.
“I wanted to know where you were. Who you were with.”
A chill skated over her skin. “You had me watched?” No, that wasn’t good.
His gaze, narrowed now, came back to her. “You’re my wife, Cat. I needed to make sure you were safe. And I wanted to make sure you were…happy.”
She didn’t get him at all. “Then you should have picked up a phone and called me.” How hard was that?
“After you ran out after sex? Your disappearing act made it clear you didn’t want to be with me.” The words were clipped.
Hurt?
“We spent a solid week together—every single damn moment—in Vegas before that night,” Jason continued. “I thought you knew me. I thought I knew you.”
He’d known her body. Still did. She’d shared her dreams with him. Her hopes. But he… “I didn’t know you. Not until the end.” He spoke as if that week had lasted for an eternity. To Cat, the time had passed in a blink.
Jason leaned toward her. “You knew what mattered. You knew that you mattered to me.”
“No, I knew you were a handsome man who swept me off my feet. A man who seemed perfect…a man who never mentioned he was days away from driving my family into bankruptcy.”
They’d stopped. Tim opened the door for them, and she saw that they were in front of August Enterprises. The big, gleaming building towered over her. Yes, she recognized this place, though she’d never stepped inside the building before. She hesitated as she glanced up at the shining windows. Wasn’t venturing in there like heading into the lion’s den?
And Jason is the lion.
He was also pretty much pulling her forward and dragging her heels in would just make a bigger scene. So she followed him through the lobby and tried to act as if she was there willingly. Several people called out to Jason, but he didn’t slow his steps. He took her up in a private elevator, rushed them right past his assistant’s desk, and into the quiet expanse of his office.
And a very swank office it was. Huge. With several leather couches, an epic view of the city—one displayed perfectly by the floor to ceiling wall of glass on the right. A massive desk waited a few feet from that wall, and everything on that cherry desk was arranged in perfect order.
“You saved them.”
She had no idea what the guy was talking about.
“Your family. The business.” Jason marched toward his desk, turned around to face her once more, and crossed his arms over his chest. “You stole my bids that morning. You crept away like the thief you were and left me.”
It was the first time his fury had been directed at her. She didn’t like it. “Don’t act like the injured party!” Especially after the morning they’d been through. “You were the one betraying me, I wasn’t—”
“I wasn’t going to do it! I married you. You! As a present to my wife, I planned to back off.”
Every bit of air left her lungs. “What?” That couldn’t be true.
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “You didn’t stay around long enough to learn that though, did you? You never asked me any questions. You just turned your back on me and left.”
Her heart was beating too fast. “My-my brother got the deal.” Because she’d given him the bids…or because Jason had backed off?
“You owe me, Cat.” His gaze slid over her, moving slowly, so slowly over her body. Lingering on her breasts. Her hips. “The way I figure it, I gave up a fortune for you.”
“You lied to me—”
“You owe me.” His arms were still over his chest, but the pose was anything but relaxed. His eyes glinted with a combination of fury and passion. “I backed off the deal then, and I’m doing everything in my power to protect you now.” He paused a beat. “The question is…what will you do for me?”
She took a step toward him. “I’m supposed to believe you? When you have a history of lying to me?”
“I lie plenty, just not to you. Not anymore.”
She took another step closer then forced herself to stop. Why did she always feel like Jason was a flame and she was a moth intent on finding a fiery death? But he drew her. He had from the first night. Power and danger clung to him, and when he focused on her, when those golden eyes stared at her as if she were the only woman who mattered…
Cat felt more than a little drunk. No one else had ever looked at her with that heated desire. No one else had ever done the sensual things to her that Jason had.
“You had someone…spying on me,” she said. Don’t get closer to him. Don�
��t. But her traitorous body sure wanted to inch forward more. “You sent someone to Bridgeport—”
“I wanted to make sure you were safe.” Ah, that British accent was even more clipped than normal.
“Safe,” she tasted the word. “I was…” Suspicion pulled at her. “How long were the spies there? What did they learn?”
His lashes lowered to shield his eyes. “I didn’t say I sent spies, Cat. I went to see you in Bridgeport. I’m the one who came to…watch you.”
She rocked back on her heels. He’d been there, and she hadn’t known it?
“I didn’t stay long. Don’t worry. I wasn’t shadowing your every step.” Now he sounded annoyed. “I just had to see you. I needed to…I had to see you, all right?”
Nothing about their relationship was all right. But…
I wanted to see you, too, Jason. She hadn’t come back to Vegas, though, but she’d scanned the Internet for stories about him. Stalked the man online because she’d been hungry for details about him.
Her biggest shame? Yes, she’d even checked out the Crimson Star’s website before…because they often posted stories about Jason.
“I was even planning to…to head back to Bridgeport. To meet with you—”
To meet with her? “Why?”
“Because I couldn’t keep spending my nights dreaming about you.”
The guy was totally messing with her head. Did he realize that?
“But then you appeared back in Vegas,” Jason muttered, “talking about sex videos…”
She remembered the way his fist had slammed into the window of that limo. “At first, you thought I’d been sleeping with someone else.”
“I was ready to tear the bastard apart.”
She swallowed. Being with another man hadn’t been an option for her. Cat laughed softly, but the sound came out cynical. “How could I trust another man? How could I trust myself? You were the first one who got to me and after you…” Her hands were fists at her sides.
He didn’t move. “After me—what?”
I was wrecked for another man. “I made out with a guy in a bar a few weeks after I left you.”
The tension in the office seemed to ratchet up.
“I kissed him, and I hated myself. Because he wasn’t you. Because he didn’t make me feel the way you did.” No other man did. No other man could.
And when had she taken a few more steps toward him?
“I didn’t fuck anyone else,” Jason said, “because no other woman would do.”
“Why did you stay away for so long? If you were dreaming of me, why didn’t you come see me sooner?” No, had she just said that? When his eyes widened, she realized she had.
Jason straightened away from the desk. “Did you want me back? Cause, love, when a woman leaves your bed in the middle of the night and tosses her wedding ring behind her, that’s usually a pretty clear sign that she wants you to stay the hell away.”
But she’d foolishly hoped that he’d come after her. That he’d tell her how wrong she’d been. That she mattered to him. Only there had been…nothing. The days had passed. So had the months.
“But maybe that wasn’t what you wanted.” He lifted his hand. Helplessly, she’d moved closer to him, so close that he could touch her. His fingers skimmed over her cheek. “What is it that you want?”
You. That was the problem. Beneath the pain and the hurt, she still wanted him. “You have secrets.” She knew this with certainty. There was more that he hadn’t told her.
“We all do.” His hand fell away. “What do you want?”
She didn’t want to run from him. Didn’t want to be some pawn in a game that she didn’t understand. “Someone’s trying to wreck my life.” She turned from him. Made her feet move a few steps away. “I want that to end.”
But his hand closed around her shoulder and Jason whirled her to face him. “What about what I want? Aren’t you going to ask?”
She was afraid to ask. Hadn’t he realized yet that she had serious cowardly tendencies? “What do you want?” Cat forced herself to softly ask.
“I want you naked on my desk.”
Her nipples tightened.
“I want your legs around my shoulders.”
Her panties seemed to melt right then.
“I want you to fucking be as crazy for me…as I am for you.”
He was crazy for her?
Her gaze slid to the desk behind him.
“That’s what I want,” he growled then he pulled her flush against him. “And it’s what I’ll have.”
Chapter Five
Cat’s head tilted back as she stared up at him, waiting for him to kiss her, waiting—
He wasn’t kissing her.
“I guess that’s what you want to,” he murmured, and Jason’s lips quirked, “or else you’d be tearing me a new one right now.”
Her lips parted. “You—”
He kissed her. And, damn it all to hell and back, this was what she wanted. To feel alive. To feel passion coursing through her veins. He made her feel this way. Without him, all those months, she’d been…
Alone. Waiting.
His hands slid down her body. Curled around her ass and he yanked her up against him. His arousal shoved against her. Long and hard and thick and she squirmed against him. There were so many reasons why she shouldn’t be doing this. So many—
A loud crash sounded behind her. What? She pulled her mouth away from Jason as she realized that someone had just thrown open the office door. That crash had been the sound of the door slamming into the wall.
“Get your hands off my daughter, you bastard!”
That voice was a sickeningly familiar bellow.
But Jason didn’t get his hands off her. He did pull Cat to his side. He kept his arm around her, tightly holding her to him.
And she found that she didn’t want to go anywhere.
Her father filled the doorway. Jason’s rather horrified-looking assistant, Finn, was trying to pull him out of that doorway.
Her father hadn’t come alone. He’d brought reinforcements with him. Cameron was there, face tense. And at Cameron’s side, she saw Brock Mayer, one of Donnelly Dining’s main executives—and pretty much her father’s right hand man. Brock wasn’t glowering, but he did look uncomfortable as all hell.
“Well, let’s just make this a little party.” Jason’s voice was droll. “Finn, forget trying to shove them out. Just close the door and go take a very long break.”
Finn’s horror gave way to relief as he hurried out of the office. The door shut behind him.
Nathaniel Donnelly marched toward Cat and Jason. His eyes weren’t on Jason, though. His gaze—and his fury—were all on Cat. “Do you know what you’ve done?” Nathaniel yelled.
Jason tensed, then his body shifted a bit so that he was positioned in front of Cat. “I know what I’m going to do. Knock the piss out of you if you don’t stop yelling at my wife.”
“My daughter!”
She leaned to the right, glanced around Jason’s formidable body, and saw that her father’s face had purpled. He jabbed an angry finger toward her. “You couldn’t keep your legs closed, that’s what this is about? You screwed him, you didn’t give a damn about our company—hell, you never tried to work in the business! You thought you were too good, better than the rest—”
“No, I thought I wasn’t good enough.” Those words tore from her. And they were true. Mostly because her father had told her…over and over…that she didn’t have a killer instinct. That she wasn’t strong enough to handle the pressure of Donnelly Dining. Cat blinked as she straightened her own shoulders. She stepped away from Jason. She didn’t need his protection as she stood on her own. “You made me feel that way.”
Her father’s eyes were furious blue slits. “I woke up this morning to an email—a picture of you naked with this bastard!”
“Unfortunately, lots of folks have seen that picture.” She could feel the fire of embarrassment in her own cheeks. �
�Someone took the video without our permission. Someone—”
“He did it,” her father snarled. “To make a joke out of me! To bring Donnelly Dining down in the muck with him—”
“You’re rather boring,” Jason said, his voice flat and calm. “That’s disappointing. For our first in-person meeting, I rather expected more from you.”
This was the first time Jason had met her father?After the revelations about Jason’s past, she should’ve realized how painful this scene would be to him. Cat reached out for him. Her fingers curled tightly around his hand.
Jason glanced over at her, a faint furrow between his strong brows.
She squeezed his hand. Surprise flashed on his face. Then his fingers locked tightly around her own.
“I heard you shut down the Crimson Star.” That was Cameron’s voice. Sounding calm while her father was enraged.
Jason inclined his head. “I made the owner see the error of his ways.”
Cat risked a glance over at her brother. He was staring back at her, looking worried. He didn’t do it. “Someone used your company email address,” she blurted. “To send those pictures to Sam Young at the Crimson Star.”
His brows climbed. “What?”
But then Brock surged forward. Tall, blond, imposing, Brock had been working for Donnelly Dining for at least ten years. He’d been in the coveted inner circle for the last two years. She’d been forced to attend the big party for his promotion. Brock slanted her a worried stare, then focused on Jason. “I assure you, our online security is top-notch. There is no way anyone broke through our system.”
Jason shrugged. “Then I guess that means Cameron sent the email himself. He delivered the pictures of Cat to the Crimson Star. Then he left that rag in the elevator for her to find because the twisted fool enjoys hurting his own sister—”
“The hell I did!” Cameron took a fast step forward as his eyes narrowed. “Cat, you know I would never do anything to hurt you!”
She nodded.