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.