Zach stopped in his tracks and turned to face her. “Back to the house.”
Katie swallowed a lump in her throat and said, “I like it here.” She broke eye contact and looked around the hotel, people milling around everywhere.
Zach wasn’t fooled. He knew what the appeal of the crowded hotel was. Still, he had lots of time to accomplish his goal. He didn’t want a victim in his bed; he never wanted Katie to be a victim of any kind. The same competitive streak that made him so successful in business rose up within him now. Seduction would have been his first choice, with his true goal to have Katie as an active partner. He wanted her to want him. But now it was even more basic than that. He’d already maneuvered her so that she was under his power. Within his control. Yes, he had done that. He had that now. She was locked up tight for five years, if that was what he wanted. But this would be so much more enjoyable if Katie was with him a hundred percent.
And so much easier on his conscience. And so much more satisfying to the deep-seated need within him.
The seductive image of Katie being a full participant in his bed tempted him, just as it always had. He only had one shot at making their first time together work in his favor. He didn’t want her agreeing because she had no choice. The image that now teased his brain tempted him beyond all reason. Katie, coming to him naked, of her own free will and because of nothing but her desire for him. He had forced her into this situation; if he forced her to go through with it, he could never play it over. He would be setting the precedent for all future encounters. Why did it matter now? An uneasy feeling came over him and he pushed it aside, refusing to look too deeply within his psyche. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except what he wanted at this moment in time. And at this moment, he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with just her body anymore. He wanted her body and her soul.
With his motivation veering off course, indulging her seemed to be the appropriate action. He lifted her chin with a finger and rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “You like it here?” he asked in a teasing, questioning tone.
Katie felt the press of his thumb against her lip, heard the teasing quality of his voice, and a sultry feeling of languor invaded her system. As his brown eyes held hers captive, she managed to answer him softly. “Yes.”
“You want to stay here awhile?” His thumb continued the soft stroke of her lip.
“Yes, please.” Katie stood still, lightheaded, breath hitching in her throat at the rasping feel of his touch on her lips. He swiped back and forth, cupping her jaw, softly pressing her lip into her teeth, applying enough pressure that an arrow of heat slid through her veins.
“I like that word on your lips.” His gaze held hers. “You know I’d probably give you any damn thing you asked for, right?”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and wondered what exactly he meant by that. “Will you let me go back to Redwood Falls?”
His expression froze and turned pained and his answer was almost inaudible. “No.”
“Then I just want to stay here for awhile.”
“Okay, baby.” With one last touch, he took her hand and led her over to a couple of lounge chairs by the side of the pool. He tossed her bag and his keys onto a small table, sank down onto one of the loungers, and pulled the other chair over within inches of his, patting it in invitation for her to sit next to him.
Katie hesitated only slightly before reclining next to him. Her insides tightened when he picked up her hand, entwined her fingers with his, and pulled it over onto his stomach. She lay there, shaken, avoiding looking at him by continuing to look out over the ocean, and wondered how long he would imprison her hand.
Finally summoning up enough nerve, she glanced over at him, and found him sound asleep.
******
Later that evening, Katie was sitting on the couch with a magazine, hiding from Zach’s penetrating eyes, when her phone softly chimed. Zach was working on his laptop while engaged in a telephone conversation not far from where she sat. She picked up her cell from the coffee table and glanced in his direction. His gaze was firmly concentrated on her, even as he was able to listen and absorb the information he was receiving on the phone. He’d said he wasn’t going to work, but if what he was doing wasn’t work, she didn’t know what was. It was all right with her though, because it kept his attention away from her. But he was damn sure watching her now as she glanced at her phone.
A slight shiver trembled through her body as she broke away from the intensity of his gaze. She read the message on her phone and alarm bells began going off in her head. It was from her mother, asking if Katie knew how long Josh would be away with Hannah.
Katie’s mother was worried about Josh, yet little did the older woman know she probably should be more worried about Katie. Her parents thought she was on a long beach vacation with another single teacher she knew from her school. Zach knew that was her cover story. Katie hated to lie to her parents, but she couldn’t see any other way of protecting them from the truth. None of what she was sacrificing would do any good if her parents found out what was going on.
The central air conditioning system came on; the background noise and Zach’s phone conversation intruded into her thoughts. But she was distracted by the text message and only caught about half of what he was saying into the phone. ‘We need to find a way. I want you to catch the next flight to Houston and be all over that consortium. Somebody’s going to find the additional capacity to transmit the power. It’s going to be us. You know as well as I do that generation isn’t the goddamn problem.’
Zach’s voice weaved in and out of her head while Katie wrangled with whether or not to text Josh for her mother, which was what her mom was hinting at. Diana was the closest thing to a mother that Josh had, and unfortunately for her mom, sometimes he treated her as such. If he didn’t want her maternal apron strings pulling at him— and he was a grown man, after all— he would go for a long time before giving her a definitive answer.
But the problem was that Katie was afraid to text Josh. She was already fighting a guilty conscience about Josh and Hannah. She for sure didn’t want to be in on any more of their secrets, if there were any. If Zach ever found out about the two of them and that Katie knew about their relationship—she was scared to go there.
Her guilty conscience zinged louder, and she argued with herself. What was she supposed to do? Was she supposed to tell Zach, ‘oh, yeah, by the way, your sister is in love with my cousin?’ No, that wasn’t going to happen. And why should it? For one, it wasn’t her secret to share. But also because she didn’t owe Zach anything. There wasn’t anything binding between them. Nothing but a contract.
She stiffened her resolve. Zach had forced her into this. Forced her to come here. Forced her to quit her job. Just because the force hadn’t extended all the way to the bedroom, was not a reason to think she owed him her loyalty. She didn’t. This was about her family, about protecting them, and what was theirs. And that loyalty extended to Hannah. Katie loved her like a sister.
“Who was the text from?”
His deep voice interrupted her internal monologue and she looked up at him, stricken with a guilt she couldn’t hide. “Just my mom.”
“What did she want?” His eyes pierced her, looked straight at her, as if he were trying to see into her soul.
She looked down at her lap; Katie had never been a good liar. It was one of the reasons she avoided lying altogether. “She wanted to know if I was having fun. If we were enjoying the beach, the hotel, that sort of thing.”
He observed her in silence for a moment. “She asked all that in a text?”
“Not all of it. But I know my mom and can read between the lines. She’s curious about my trip. She didn’t know Angela and I are supposedly such good friends, well, yeah, because we’re not that close really … and I’m sure she’s wondering how it’s going.”
Her voice skidded to a halt when she realized she was saying too much.
Zach studied Katie in silence. She wa
s lying to him. She wouldn’t look him in the eye and she was babbling. Why the hell was she lying to him? Anger simmered in his gut. Anger that she had a defensive wall between them. He had a fierce determination to get into her head. He needed to know what the hell was going on inside her brain. He wanted that. He wanted to know what made her tick, what fuelled the lie she was telling him. She was being deceptive and it was irritating the shit out of him.
He stood up, prowled over to her and lifted her chin. Her eyes closed and she wouldn’t look at him. “What are you lying about?” His fingers held her chin in a firm grip as he stood over her, holding her immobile in her chair. “You want to rethink that answer?”
Katie dragged a ragged breath into her lungs, raised anguished eyes to his and whispered, “I can’t tell you.”
Her honesty hit Zach in the guts. He’d fully expected her to deny she was lying about anything. He hadn’t expected her to confess that anything was wrong. And goddamnit, he didn’t like that confused, almost fearful look in her eyes. He didn’t want her to be afraid to tell him anything.
He stared down at her small face cupped in his hand. She was so fucking beautiful. Her skin was porcelain, with only a hint of the sun she’d gotten today, and her dark, silky hair and eyebrows over those slanted green eyes gave her an exotic look that continually affected him as no other woman ever had. It had always been this way with her. But there was something he’d only recently realized; she wasn’t at all like the other beautiful women he knew. She wasn’t conceited. She wasn’t vain. And she had no idea what kind of weapon she held. She wasn’t aware of her beauty, so she didn’t understand what that beauty could do to a man. What that beauty did to him.
He thought about what she had just said. The way she had said it. Whatever the hell she was hiding wasn’t something she had done. He knew that for sure. This was about something else or someone else. And whatever it was, he wasn’t going to let it come between them. Nothing would come between them.