“I’m not staying with her.”
“Come stay with me.” His voice was low and urgent. “If you’re not with Adrian and he doesn’t know where you are…do you have any money?”
“Please, Damien.” I couldn’t tell him about Jack. I looked away from the hurt expression on Damien’s face and took a sip of champagne to steady myself, and reminded myself that I needed this man. “It’s important that I stay completely hidden right now,” I explained, gritting my teeth at the necessity. “Right now, I need to be alone. Can you understand that?”
“Lara, it’s me.” When I said nothing, he gave a sigh. “I understand.”
It was clear that he didn’t, but I wasn’t going to push it. “Thank you. So, what did you find?”
“Let’s just enjoy dinner first.” He gave me a smile and gestured to the glass of champagne and raised his own. “I, at least, am in the mood to celebrate. Thinking you were dead was the most terrified I have ever been—I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are safe.”
I clinked my glass against his and took a sip. Why did Damien annoy me so much now? Before, I had been annoyed by his attempts to be closer than Adrian would want, but now…
“I’m glad, too,” I managed. “But you have to understand, Damien, not knowing what’s been going on…it’s been like hell. Can’t we talk about it all now?”
“I don’t want to ruin this. It’s…unpleasant.”
And just like that, I was furious. Unpleasant? He was trying to tell me that he’d been going through a hell of his own and all he could say now was that talking about it might be unpleasant? No one had come to kill him. His spouse, the person who shared his bed, had not sent a hit man. Damien didn’t understand—and he was determined to play the gentleman and the hero anyway.
“I have to go freshen up.” I stood too quickly, my chair scraping on the floor. “I’ll be back.”
I didn’t wait for a response, just swept away to the bathroom.
“I need him,” I muttered to myself as I splashed water on my face. “I need him, I need him, I need him, I need him.”
I patted my face dry and looked up at my reflection. My hands were in fists on the marble counter, and my eyes betrayed just how unhappy I was. I knew how to disguise that—I’d been doing it for years—but the trick this time was going to be wanting to do so, when what I actually wanted to do was march back out there and demand that Damien tell me the truth.
I was still staring at myself when the door opened and Jack slipped into the bathroom.
Chapter 23
Jack
She was staring into the mirror with the angriest expression I had ever seen on her face. I had seen her terrified, and grieving, but never furious. My eyes locked on hers in the mirror.
Her head jerked around. “What are you doing here?”
I hesitated. I knew the truth, that I hated seeing her with that man out there. Watching from the wings, scanning the room for Adrian or any of his lackeys, should have been easy, and yet my eyes had gone back to them, again and again, with a slow burn of anger kindling in my chest. And I couldn’t tell her that.
“You seemed upset.” I wasn’t about to say how happy that had made me.
“Yeah, well…” She turned around and leaned on the counter, crossing her arms. It was a gesture entirely at odds with the elegant gown, but she didn’t seem to care. “He won’t tell me what he found out.”
My brows shot up. “Are you sure he found anything at all?”
“Yes, I—” She paused to consider, and then nodded. “Yes,” she said again. “He just says it will be unpleasant to discuss, and why can’t we have a nice dinner first?” Her voice was getting thick with anger again.
I leaned against the door to hold it closed and tried to keep the smile from my lips. “Why can’t you just have a nice dinner with him first?”
“Because I’m not here for dinner!” Her voice rose and she glared up at me. She cast a worried glance at the door and continued in a whisper. “I’m not here to have a nice, romantic night. He should know that! I’m here to find out…” She swallowed and looked away, and then her fists clenched. “I’m here to find out why my fiancé tried to have me killed,” she finished. “I’m here to find the information to put him in jail for that.”
It took me a moment to realize what she had just said, and then the bottom dropped out of my stomach.
“Lara…”
“Don’t.” She looked away. “I just…I’m sick of lies. I have to know the truth.”
“Lara.” I couldn’t keep from saying her name.
She looked up at me, and I moved toward her as if in a dream. She seemed so small all of a sudden, hardly coming up to my shoulder even in her heels, and when I took her face in my hands, I worried that I might break her. My hands were shaking, barely touching her, but she swayed into me anyway. She stood on tiptoe as my mouth came down on hers, her lips parting under mine, her arms twining up around my neck. I looped my arm around her waist to pull her closer and she gave a tiny sigh of satisfaction against my lips.
It drove every thought out of my head. There was only the scent of her, completely beyond the expensive perfume she had worn the night we first met—the clean, soft scent of her hair, the taste of her, the way she shuddered when my lips found her throat. Her head tipped back as she pressed herself against me, and her hands clenched against my back.
The sound of my name brought me back to reality—just enough to remember where we were, and then all I could think about was her on one of the beds in the hotel room, that gorgeous dress on the carpet and her legs around my waist. I wanted to make her scream. I wanted to feel her come with me inside her.
“We should go,” I murmured against her mouth.
“Hmm?” Her eyes fluttered open and she kissed me again, slow and deep. “What?”
I looped my arm around her waist and leaned my forehead against hers, cupping her face in one hand. I couldn’t keep from smiling. “We should go,” I murmured.
I regretted saying anything when her head jerked up. “Damien…”
“Let’s just go.” I only narrowly kept myself from growling at the sound of his name. “Whatever he’s found out, we can find it out ourselves.”
“No, I…” She tried to draw away, but melted back against me a moment later, her head on my chest. She steeled herself before pushed me away from her. “I should go out and finish this.”
“Lara, if he has something to tell you, he can tell you over the phone.”
“No, I should…go. I should hear him out. I’ll just go and tell him he has to tell me.” She wouldn’t look at me.
I knew I wasn’t going to win this one, but I was damned if Damien was going to. I had Lara up against the door the next second; my kiss wasn’t gentle, but then, I didn’t want it to be. My tongue thrust into her mouth and my blood turned to fire when she moaned. She was lost in desire.
But this wasn’t how I wanted it to be between us. She deserved…
I drew away, chest heaving.
“What…was that for?” Her fingers glided over her bottom lip.
“To wake you up.” My voice was rough. “Go get the information. Then we’ll go.”
And I’ll give you everything you didn’t know you wanted.
She hesitated.
“Lara, if you don’t go right now…” My words trailed away, but my voice told her everything she needed to know.
She blushed, and almost ran. But at the door, she cast a look over her shoulder, and I saw the question in her eyes.
“Go.” My control was hanging by a thread, and I couldn’t stop my smile. “Later.”
Chapter 24
Lara
“You’re back.” Damien looked up with relief as I got back to the table. “I was worried. Are you all right?”
“Yes, thank you.” All right wasn’t exactly the truth—I felt a little like I was drunk, and I could still feel Jack’s touch all over my body—but it was close enough.
> “You were gone a while—” He broke off when he saw my expression. “Right. You said you’re okay.”
Thank you for listening. I clamped my lips shut on the words, aware of how bitter they would sound.
Still, I was done playing:
“Damien. Tell me what you found.” I saw his refusal and my teeth clenched. “No. It is not going to be a pleasant dinner while I am waiting to hear why my fiancé hired a hit man to kill me.”
His mouth dropped open. “You…knew?”
“Of course I knew.” My voice was ugly now. I didn’t recognize the sound of it. “Why did you think I haven’t gone back. I know what he did. I just don’t know why, and I cannot prove it. I need the information you have, Damien.”
“I…of course.” He nodded. “I don’t even know where to start. Lara, I didn’t know how to tell you what he’d done. I spent so long trying to figure out if I should even say.”
Irritation stirred, and was tempered by genuine pity. If our places were reversed right now, I knew I would have the same trouble Damien was having. His anguish was clear. How did you tell someone that their fiancé had planned to kill them? It was a terrible revelation, and one I would not wish on anyone.
“I know. I appreciate you trying to spare me.” I found a smile from somewhere, and it was even genuine. “You’ve always been a good friend to me. And right now, being a good friend means helping me get Adrian behind bars.”
“So you will do that?”
“Why would I not?”
“Often, people in your situation will tell themselves that the other person didn’t really mean it. They don’t want to believe what’s happening.”
“I don’t want to believe it,” I concurred. I tried to find words. I had spent these past few days struggling against the truth, wanting anything else to be the case, but as soon as I said the words to Jack a few moments ago, it felt as if I could finally breathe again.
Adrian had tried to have me killed. It wasn’t pretty. It filled me with horror—the thought of what might have happened if he’d hired anyone but Jack made me turn my head away instinctively, hissing through my teeth.
“Lara?”
“I’m all right,” I managed. I looked up at him. “You have to understand: I didn’t want this to happen. You’re right. I spent the past few days trying to find some explanation that was literally anything else. But it was Adrian. On some level, I knew that from the start. And I’m going to see this through. No one should just get away with that.”
Damien swallowed and nodded. His face was pale. He reached out to take my hand and I held myself still, allowing the touch; it was for his comfort, not mine, no matter what he was telling himself.
“I just want to hear the truth from you before it goes to the courts,” I said quietly as I drew my hand away. “I don’t want to hear it all for the first time from a lawyer. I want to hear it from you.”
“I can’t…prove all of it yet.” His face was miserable. “I am trying to find the information, Lara, I swear to you—if nothing else, please believe that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with everyone else wondering whether or not I would have hurt you, or if I was behind you disappearing like this. I am doing everything I can to figure out…” He sighed. “But I know all of it, even if I can’t prove it.”
I folded my hands in my lap and nodded. “Tell me.”
“I don’t think you ever knew…” He let out his breath. “How miserable Adrian was. Always.”
I blinked. This wasn’t where I had expected it to start.
“He was richer. He was. He had everything, and he made it seem like he didn’t care. But you never met his father; I did. The man honestly didn’t give a damn whether Adrian lived or died—not for his own sake, anyway. He hated Adrian’s uncle like crazy. He hated Adrian’s mother. He didn’t want the inheritance to go to them, and he wanted to build an empire. Adrian was nothing more to him than a chance to be reborn. I think—I know it sounds crazy, but I really think he thought, somehow, that he could take Adrian’s body and it would still be him in there, his soul living on instead of just his family. He never forgave Adrian for not being some sort of immortality for him. Adrian was just a kid, and his father hated his guts.”
I swallowed. Adrian had never told me any of this, but I had guessed some of it. he and his mother almost never spoke of his father, and when they did, it was with such hatred that I wouldn’t have been surprised if they spat after saying his name.
Still…
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No.” Damien met my eyes. “It’s not. But it’s where it all starts. Adrian’s father lived hard. It’s not a surprise at all that he died as young as he did. He lived like he wanted to die young—hell, maybe he did. Adrian learned it from him, and…he was just miserable enough to do the same thing. He didn’t open up often—you remember how he was, he was always talking, but he never actually said anything about himself, right?”
I nodded. I knew. Adrian was contemptuous of people who bared their souls and spilled their secrets. He considered it a point of pride to earn people’s trust without giving them anything, as if he had won some sort of contest only he was really playing. As if the truth was a precious commodity.
Right now, I supposed it was.
“You didn’t know how hard Adrian was using in high school. Anything he could get his hands on. He was good at hiding it. I…helped him hide it.” Damien lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t want him to get caught. He had this perfect future ahead of him, and I didn’t want him to ruin it. I told myself he would grow out of it. When you two started dating, I wanted to tell you—but it felt…dirty. It felt like betraying him, and I thought you would think I was…” He sighed and tipped his head back. “I thought you would say I was just jealous,” he finished.
I bowed my head. It was what I would have thought.
“He was holding it together for a long time.” Damien’s voice was quiet. “A lot of the time, it really did seem like he was getting better. He stayed with you, and I thought, well, you’d keep him together.”
“I…” Shame and fury washed through me in equal measure.
“Not like you had to.” Damien’s words were shaky as he tried to explain. “Not even like it’s something you could do. It’s just that I knew you weren’t going to run around and cheat on him, or try to take his money, or anything like that—I thought him staying with you meant that he’d decided to try to live up to who he could be. I thought you could be a good example for him.”
“But?” My voice was still bitter.
“But I don’t think he ever really wanted to change,” Damien said quietly. “I don’t think he even realized that was a choice he had. And it started to take on a life of his own. The drugs didn’t do it anymore. He started gambling, and—well, it’s not important.”
“And cheating?” I’d seen the slide of his eyes. “I knew about that.”
He shook his head. “Why did you stay?”
“You don’t understand.” My voice was like a whip crack. “You never understood, and I don’t think I can make you understand.” There wasn’t even any point in trying to explain it to him. “I knew. That’s all.”
“Right.” He looked away, chastened. “Well, he…yeah. You can guess how it went. It worse. And a lot worse after that. I realized he was embezzling from the company, and I…confronted him about it.”
I was distracted from my anger by dread settling into the pit of my stomach. “Oh, no. Damien…”
“Yeah.” He shook his head and, to my surprise, he started to laugh. “I put myself on the chopping block. I handed it all to him on a silver platter, too—I told him that what he was doing wasn’t being fair to you. He knew how I felt.” He looked up at me now, admitting it openly. “He confronted me, I admitted it. And that must have given him the idea. I saw him have the idea, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought he’d figure it out and clean his act up. I would have helped him.” His voice was
shaking. “I know it’s wrong, but I would have. I didn’t want him to get caught.”
“And instead, he tried to pin it all on you.” My voice was quiet.
“Yes.” Damien shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I signed my own death warrant, I guess.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said, no.” There was a roaring in my ears. “You signed mine.”
“Lara?” I could barely hear him over the rushing. “Lara, I swear, I didn’t ever think he would—”
“I know.” I gripped the table hard, trying to find my way back to myself through the spots and the roar and the dizziness that threatened to swamp me. “It’s not your fault. But it’s what he did. When you threatened to expose him, he decided to get rid of you—and he didn’t even care enough not to kill me in the process.”
“Lara, he’s not himself anymore.”
“Are you sure about that?” I looked up at him and took a savage pleasure in the sigh of him recoiling from the look on my face. I shook my head. “I have to go.”
“Don’t go. It’s not safe.”
“I’ll be fine. I have to go.” I was up and moving. I could hardly feel my feet striking the floor. I could hear him calling my name and I broke into a run.
An arm came around my waist and there was Jack’s voice murmuring in my ear. I didn’t understand what he was saying; all I could do was cling to him as he got me to a cab and away from all of it.
Chapter 25
Jack
What the hell had that bastard said to her? She was nearly passed out in my arms, her eyes glazed with shock, and her breathing was coming in little gasps.
“Lara, listen to me.” I took her face in both hands, and pushed away the stab of fear when she couldn’t focus on my face. “You have to keep talking. You’re in shock. Talk, baby. Tell me anything.”
She made a little questioning sound. She was fighting to free herself.
HUNTED: A Bad Boy Romance (Books 1-5) Page 11