LITMIR.BIZ

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on, the kidnappers’ demands increased, the ransom increased. Only Morgan was willing to come up with money for the ransom...but that was another story.

      And yet, even as much as she struggled with her father’s crimes and how he’d shamed them and broken their hearts, she still didn’t want him suffering. She didn’t want him in pain. Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she thought she did. “So he wasn’t murdered. There was no torture,” she said, her mouth dry.

      “Not at the end.”

      “But he was tortured.”

      His eyes met hers. “Shall we just say it wasn’t a picnic?”

      For a long moment she held her breath, heart thumping hard as she looked into his eyes and saw far more than she wanted to see.

      And then she closed her eyes because she could see something else.

      The future.

      Her father was now dead and so he would never be prosecuted for his crimes, but the world still seethed. They demanded blood. With Daniel Copeland gone, they’d go after his five children. And while she could handle the scrutiny and hate—it was all she’d been dealing with since his Ponzi scheme had been exposed—her daughter was little more than a baby. Just two and a quarter years old, she had no defenses against the cruelty of strangers.

      “I need to go home,” she choked. “I need to go home now.”

      * * *

      Rowan had been watching the emotions flit across her face—it was a stunning face, too. He’d never met any woman as beautiful. But it wasn’t just her bone structure that made her so attractive, it was the whole package. The long, thick honey hair, the wide-set blue eyes, the sweep of her brows, the dark pink lips above a resolute chin.

      And then the body...

      She had such a body.

      He’d worshipped those curves and planes, and had imagined, that night three years ago, that maybe, just maybe, he’d found the one.

      It’s why he became so angry later, when he discovered who she was, because he’d felt things he’d never felt. He’d felt a tenderness and a connection that was so far out of his normal realm of emotions. What had started out as sex had become personal. Emotional. By morning he wasn’t doing things to her, he was making love with her.

      And then it all changed when he discovered the pile of mail on her kitchen counter. The bills. The magazine subscriptions.

      Logan Copeland.

      Logan Copeland.

      Logan Lane Copeland.

      It had blindsided him. That rarely happened. Stunned and then furious, he turned on her.

      Many times he’d regretted the way he’d handled the discovery of her true identity. He regretted virtually everything about that night and the next morning, from the intense lovemaking to the harsh words he’d spoken. But over the years the thing he found himself regretting the most was the intimacy.

      She’d been more than tits and ass.

      She’d meant something to him. He’d wanted more with her. He imagined—albeit briefly—that there could be more, and it had been a tantalizing glimpse at a future he hadn’t thought he would ever have. But then he saw it and realized that he wanted it. He wanted a home and a wife and children. He wanted the normalcy he’d never had.

      And then it was morning and he was trying to figure out the coffee situation, and instead he was dealing with a liar-deceiver situation.

      He wasn’t in love. He wasn’t falling in love. He’d been played.

      And he’d gone ballistic. No, he didn’t touch her—he’d never touch a woman in anger—but he’d said things to her that were vile and hurtful, things about how she was no better than her lying, crooked, greedy father and how it disgusted him that she’d bought him with money that her father had embezzled.

      He didn’t like remembering that morning, and he didn’t like being responsible for her now, but he could protect her during the media frenzy, and he’d promised his friend and her brother-in-law, Drakon, that he would.

      “There’s no going home,” he said tersely. “Your place must be a zoo. You’ll be staying with me until the funeral.”

      Her blue eyes flashed as they met his. “I’m not staying with you.”

      “Things should calm down after the funeral. There will be another big story, another world crisis, people will tire of the Copelands,” he said as if she’d never spoken.

      “I have a job. I have clients. I have commitments—”

      “Joe can handle them. Right?”

      “Those clients hired me, not a twenty-four-year-old.”

      “I did think he looked young.”

      She lifted her chin, and her long hair tumbled over her shoulder, and her jaw firmed. “He’s my assistant, Rowan. Not my lover.”

      “You don’t live together?”

      “No.”

      “Then why would you tell him to manage things at home?”

      Her mouth opened, closed. “I work from home. I don’t have an outside office.”

      “Yet he was genuinely worried about you.”

      She gave him a pitying look before turning to look out the window. “Most people are good people, Rowan. Most people have hearts.”

      Implying he didn’t have one.

      She wasn’t far off.

      His lips curved faintly, somewhat amused. Maybe if he was a teacher or a minister his lack of emotions would be a problem. But in his line of work, emotions just got in the way.

      “The tin woodsman was always my favorite character,” he said, referencing L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

      “Of course he was,” she retorted, keeping her gaze averted. “Except he had the decency and wisdom to want one.”

       CHAPTER TWO

      “SO WHERE ARE WE GOING?” she asked as the minutes slid by and they continued east over the city. Los Angeles was an enormous sprawl, but she recognized key landmarks and saw that they were approaching the Ontario airport.

      He was slouching in his seat, legs outstretched, looking at her from beneath his lashes, not at all interested in the scenery. “One of my places.”

      He acted as if he was so casual. There was nothing careless or casual about Rowan Argyros. The man was lethal. She’d heard some of the stories from Morgan after her night with Rowan, and he was considered one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

      And she had to pick him to be her first lover.

      Genius move on her part.

      Although to be fair, he’d never touched her with anything but sensitivity and expertise. His hands had made her feel more beautiful than she’d ever felt in her entire life. His caress had stirred her to the core. It would have been easy to imagine that he cared for her when he’d loved her so completely...

      But he hadn’t loved her. He’d pleasured her because she’d paid him to, giving her a twenty-thousand-dollar lay.

      She swallowed around the lump filling her throat. Her eyes felt hot and gritty as she focused on the distant flight tower. She didn’t want to remember. She hated remembering, and she might have been able to forget if it hadn’t been for the one complication...

      Not a small complication, either.

      So she regretted the sex but not the mistake. Jax wasn’t a mistake.

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