Jack (The Family Simon 2)

He let that sink in for good measure. “You’re hiding something, and I’m going to find out exactly what it is.” Maybe then he’d finally get her out of his system enough to deal with a possible child rationally.

“You can’t….I’m not.” She gulped. “This is so wrong, Jack.” Her breath caught once more, and she had to take a moment. “So wrong. Just let me go home and we’ll talk when I know...when I know if I’m pregnant. Which I’m probably not. I mean, come on, the chances of that are pretty slim.” She exhaled and whispered. “Please. Let me go.”

Jack knew that whatever it was she was hiding went way beyond a possible pregnancy. For her to beg? That wasn’t Donovan James. She didn’t take shit from anyone. His resolve toughened. The two of them had a lot of issues that had never been addressed, and it was damn well time to put them to rest.

He pointed toward the seating area. “I’ll take the sofa. You might try getting a good night’s sleep—our flight is an early one.”

Donovan glanced out into the darkness, just beyond the wall to wall window. “Who knows about this?” she asked. “About Belize and…the rest.”

“No one,” he replied.

She turned back to him. “If I come. If I do this, you have to promise me no one finds out. No one can know.”

“That’s your call.”

She laughed, a bitter sound. “I wish it was.” And turned without another word.

Jack watched until she disappeared into the bedroom. The anger that boiled inside him was still there, and the satisfaction he was waiting for wasn’t coming.

In fact he felt like shit.

He eased back onto the sofa and tried to ignore the voice in the back of his head. The one that kept asking, Are you fucking crazy? Have you totally lost it?

He closed his eyes. One way or another, he was going to find out.

Chapter Fourteen

* * *

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

Donovan winced as Maverick’s voice filled her ear. She’d waited to call him from the private plane Jack had chartered. Their flight was delayed a bit as they had to update the manifest with her passport information and file the necessary paperwork.

Jack was chatting with the pilot, and damn him, he looked well rested and as handsome as ever. She, on the other hand, looked like absolute crap. Her hair was tied back in a loose pony, and she was dressed in sweats—not the trendy kind you could get away with wearing in public, but her old ratty favorites. Heck, there was even a hole in the butt of her track pants, but she didn’t give a crap. She wasn’t feeling the need to look good for anyone right now. In fact she’d hardly slept and a bed was looking real good.

She rubbed her fingers along her forehead, feeling a tension headache coming on.

“Donovan? Are you still there?”

“Yep,” she whispered, trying to quell the nerves in her stomach. She still had no idea what Jack was planning or why he’d come up with such a ridiculous plan, but at the moment she was stuck. No way could she let him leak

their rendezvous to the press. Cooper would be all over that, and she couldn’t let that happen. Ironic really, that she was willing to do this in order to protect Jack.

In order to protect yourself, she thought. Her stomach rolled and she wasn’t sure if the wave of nausea was because she was overtired, freaked out and just plain scared. Or if she was…

God, what a mess.

“What the fuck?” Maverick said gruffly.

“Rick, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Less than twelve hours ago, you told me that you and Jack would never be a thing. Now you’re heading to Gravenhurst with him?”

“That’s about right.”

“And you want this.”

“I do.”