“That’s why he was angry.”
“He’s right, I should have told him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m embarrassed,” I admitted. “Not just because it’s a video of me having sex. And yes, I’ve seen the stupid thing, he wanted me to watch it with him afterward. And yes, you can see my face.”
“I wasn’t going to ask for details.”
I tucked my hair behind my ear. “Yeah, well… I’m embarrassed because it was bad judgment to let him record it in the first place. It makes me feel stupid. And I really, really hate feeling stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Cameron. You’re human. We all make mistakes.”
“I know.”
Inda shifted in her seat so she was partially facing me. “Can I speak candidly?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t think you were really fighting about whether or not you should have told him about the video.”
“No?”
“That was part of it. But I think you’re both struggling to trust each other. And wondering whether or not you’re trusted.”
“I trust him.”
“Maybe you do, and he’s just not certain of it,” she said. “Or maybe you trust him in some ways, but not others. But I’ve known you for what, four years? I know that trust doesn’t come easily to you.”
“I’ve trusted Jude in some very serious ways,” I said.
“Well, yes, you trust him as your bodyguard.”
“Not just that. Inda, we had sex in a closet at the Intercontinental Hotel. That’s some serious trust.”
Inda raised her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s bold.”
“Exactly. I’d never take a risk like that with someone I didn’t trust.”
“True,” she said, nodding. “But what about other risks?”
“Like what?”
“Jude said he doesn’t know very much about you. Neither do I, to be honest. I know the things anyone could know. Or things I’ve picked up on over the last few years. But you don’t share a lot of personal stories with others.”
I stared out the front of the cart, not really seeing anything. She was hitting a bit too close to the truth.
“Listen, you don’t act like you’re better than other people because of your job or your money, and I admire that about you. You’re easy to talk to. But when was the last time you shared something deeply personal with another person?”
“Does my vagina count? That’s deeply personal.”
She laughed. “Not something physical.”
“I don’t know. It’s easier to talk about work. Or Bluewater.”
She patted my leg. “It’s just something to think about if you and Jude decide to get serious.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Inda.”
Gripping the steering wheel again, I accelerated down the slope of the bridge. She wasn’t wrong. I had a hard time letting people get close to me. Probably because I knew how much it hurt to lose them.
Hazard of growing up an orphan.
Things had been happening so fast. I hadn’t approached this relationship like I usually did. No lengthy period of dinner dates and appearing in public together at events and galas. No careful consideration as to lifestyle compatibility. No analysis of goals and schedules and logistics.
God, that made dating me sound like a nightmare.
With Jude, I’d given into my feelings. My desires. The things my body—and my heart—wanted without over-analyzing the potential consequences. I’d started to let him in—really let him see me—but stopped just short of taking the full risk.
We came out onto the road, the village up ahead, but I stopped. “I should go back and talk to him. I handled that so badly and he doesn’t deserve to be my punching bag because I’m stressed.”
“No, but I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”
Those tears threatened to well up again and a lump rose in my throat. Would he forgive me? God, I hoped so. Because suddenly all I could think about was how empty my life would be without him. About how much I needed him. I didn’t want to need anybody—not like this—because that was a surefire way to get hurt, but damn it, I did.
I didn’t just need him. I loved him.
Oh my god, I loved that big, gigantic, mysterious, infuriating, gentle, amazing man. I loved him so much, I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Aw, Cameron,” Inda said, and reached over to rub my shoulder.
An engine rumbled behind us. I was stopped in the middle of the street, no longer on the golf cart path—I needed to get out of the way. But my eyes were swimming with so many tears, my vision blurred.
Sniffing, I swiped my fingers beneath my eyes.
Inda let out a startled yell that was instantly muffled. The world went dark, and it wasn’t tears blurring my vision. My breath was hot against the fabric suddenly covering my face. Thick arms grabbed me—thick arms that did not belong to Jude. They were hard and sinewy, pinning my arms down, dragging me out of the golf cart.
I tried to scream through the fabric covering my head, but a hand clamped over my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. Someone had my upper body and another set of arms quickly wrapped around my legs, carrying me like a rolled-up carpet. I thrashed and tried to kick, but they had me immobilized.
My heart raced and my lungs screamed for air. The hand still held my face in a tight grip, jamming the fabric into my mouth, covering my nose. I wiggled and writhed, but there were hands everywhere—was I being grabbed by a human octopus?—holding me down. Tying my legs. Binding my wrists.
Finally the hand covering my face eased and I sucked in a lungful of air. I couldn’t see, but I was lying on a hard surface. I heard the distinct sound of a van door closing and suddenly I was moving. God, I hoped Inda was okay.
The strangest thing happened in my brain. The words I’ve just been kidnapped flitted through my mind, but instead of inducing panic—which would probably have been the sane response, although not very useful—I felt suddenly detached. Like this was happening to someone else and I was along for the ride. An observer, rather than a participant.
Because this couldn’t be happening to me. I couldn’t have just been snatched out of my golf cart on the streets of my very safe, gated, secure enclave. I couldn’t be riding in the back of a van with a bag over my head, totally immobilized by both ropes and the hands of some very strong men.
But it was happening.
And as if this insane situation needed something else to make it even more terrifying, the hand on my mouth released just as something hard pressed against my forehead. I heard the very recognizable, very distinct sound of a gun being cocked.
My brain did another strange thing. Instead of focusing on the gun pointed at my head, it fixated on the fact that the raspy voices murmuring around me sounded Russian.
32
Cameron
Fear can do surprising things to a person. Some people crack in the face of terrifying danger. They pass out, or scream, or shake and cower. Others fight back, adrenaline making them stronger, and sometimes reckless.
It made me calm.
The van stopped and the rolling metal sound told me they’d slid open the door. The pressure of the gun barrel against my forehead disappeared and hands and arms once again manhandled me. They hoisted me out—roughly—and carried me… somewhere.
One of my shoes fell off. It was utterly ridiculous how angry that made me, considering Inda and I had been kidnapped by men with guns. She hadn’t made a sound, and I firmly told myself she was just being cooperative, like I was. It wasn’t because they’d knocked her unconscious. Or worse.
Maybe that was why I was focusing on my now bare foot and the image of my beautiful red suede and crystal Jimmy Choo lost on the ground somewhere behind us. A defense mechanism to keep the eerie detached calmness I felt from breaking.
I had a feeling the other alternative was incoherent screaming, and there was a good chance that would get me killed. So I kept that shoe in my head, l
etting my mind come up with a loose plan for retracing my steps—or rather, the steps of the men carrying me—to get it back.
Logical? Not really. But it kept me from shaking with mortal terror, so I went with it.
The men spoke in low voices to each other and they were definitely speaking Russian. I heard a ding that sounded like an elevator, followed by a swish. We moved again, then the distinct sensation of rising in a straight line. Definitely an elevator.
I’d been picturing some kind of abandoned dockside warehouse. Maybe with empty crates or pools of dingy water on the floor. Probably a stench, like rotting fish. Or maybe just the reek of gunmetal and bad intentions.
An elevator made me wonder if I was going to be tied to a chair, and when they whipped off the bag that was currently blinding me, I’d find myself in a luxurious office. A man with a cigar and a glass of whiskey would tell me what this was all about while his henchmen stood in the background holding military-grade rifles.
My movie-esque fantasies were as ridiculous as my preoccupation with my missing shoe.
The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and once again I was moving. The man carrying my lower half adjusted his grip. At this point, I just hoped they didn’t drop me.
At least one part of my elevator ride conjecture was correct. They tipped me, lowering my legs, and shoved me into a chair. Strong hands pressed against my shoulders, keeping me down, and there was that gun barrel again, hard against the side of my skull.
I didn’t struggle while they retied me to the chair. I couldn’t see, had no idea where I was or how many men surrounded me, and I had a probably-loaded gun pointed at my brain. I just wanted to survive the next few minutes and hoped someone would take the fucking bag off my head.
It was hard to breathe in here. And the panic that I was successfully avoiding with unrealistic theatrical imaginings was getting harder to ignore—pressing at the edges of my consciousness and making my heart race uncomfortably fast.
Finally, the bag was unceremoniously yanked off my head. I blinked a few times, the light glaringly bright. Was I in some kind of interrogation room with a light shining in my face to confuse me?
No, it was weirder than that. It was a chandelier.
I was in a large hotel suite—or a room that had once been a large hotel suite. The windows were covered with thick sheets of dusty canvas, the wallpaper peeling, and the carpet looked like an entire music festival of rock stars had done unspeakable things that no amount of industrial shampooing could ever clean. The furniture was gone, save the chairs Inda and I were tied to—thank god she was awake and looking around—and a folding table that sat in front of us.
Two men with guns stood nearby and I caught sight of at least two more disappearing through an open door. Maybe they were going to stand guard in the hallway outside.
I looked at Inda. She didn’t appear to have any injuries, just messy hair and the misfortune of being tied to a chair. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” She shook her head a little. “I almost passed out a couple of times. They wouldn’t let me breathe. But I’m okay.”
“Good.”
I strained against the ropes, but they rubbed painfully over my skin. My ankles were tied to the chair, as were my arms. Another rope wound around my chest, over my upper arms. There was no way I was going to wiggle myself out of them. I was bound tight.
Another man walked in and it took my poor, on-the-verge-of-losing-it brain several seconds to process what I was seeing. Because out of all the unbelievable things that had just happened to me, this was the most outrageous.
There was no fucking way.
“Hey, Cami.”
I stared at Bobby Spencer, dressed in a beige linen jacket over a shirt with a giant Gucci logo. He swiped off his sunglasses and tucked them into his jacket pocket.
“What the fuck?”
“They didn’t hurt you, did they, babe? I told them to be gentle.”
My gaze shifted to Inda, wondering if she was seeing what I was seeing—her wide eyes told me she was—then back to Bobby. “No, really. What the fuck?”
“I know, tying you to a chair is a little much, but it’s kinda hot seeing you like that. And I had to make sure you wouldn’t get away, so…” He shrugged and glanced at Inda. “Your friend is hot, too.”
“What… where… what’s going on? Where are we?”
Bobby looked around at the dilapidated room and took a few steps closer. “One of my little ventures. I bought this place, I don’t know, eight years ago? It was a hot property back in the day, but it’s a shithole now. I was going to turn it into the sickest nightclub in Miami with a luxury hotel upstairs. Brilliant, right? A place where the rich and famous can party their asses off and then take the party to their private suites. But the project kind of got halted because, I don’t know, I got bored. Shit like this is a lot of work.”
I gaped at him for a second, because why did he think I gave a crap about his business plan for what was apparently an abandoned hotel property? But then again, this was Bobby.
“Why did you kidnap me?”
“Technically, I didn’t kidnap you. I hired them to do it.” He gestured over his shoulder at the men standing guard.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” he asked, like he couldn’t fathom why I didn’t automatically understand. “Because you had to make everything complicated by hiring the goddamn Hulk.”
It was taking too long for my brain to catch up, but the implications were so unreal, it was no wonder I was staring at him like I’d been hit in the head and couldn’t think straight.
Bobby Spencer. It had been him?
“Wait. You’re the one who’s been fucking with me?”
“I wasn’t fucking with you, I—”
“The guy who attacked me in the parking garage,” I said, cutting him off. “Was that you?”
He shook his head, once again pulling a don’t be an idiot, Cameron face. “No. But you broke three bones in my buddy’s foot with your shoe.”
“Good,” I said. “I wish I’d had the chance to puncture his balls, too.”
“Cami,” he said, his voice irritatingly soothing. “Come on, now. There’s no need for that.”
“Did you try to run me over on a sidewalk?”
“No, babe, I wasn’t even there.”
“So you didn’t have anything to do with it?”
“Well, I arranged it, but I wasn’t actually in the vehicle. That was another buddy of mine.”
“What the fuck, Bobby. He could have killed someone.”
He shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “He smokes a lot of pot, his reflexes aren’t great.”
I turned to Inda. “Are you hearing this?”
She looked as baffled as I felt. “Yeah.”
“Okay, since apparently this is really happening, did you send me those emails?”
“Yeah, I hired a guy. The going rate for a good hacker is high as fuck right now. You’d be surprised.”
I ground my teeth together, trying to stay calm. “Who broke into my house and left a fish on my bed?”
He grinned. “That one was me. I’m pretty proud of that.”
I was going to kill him. “Was that supposed to scare me, or just gross me out?”
His mouth turned up in a smirk. “You don’t get it? Sleeping with the fishes. It’s from The Godfather.”
“Nobody puts a fish in anyone’s bed in that movie. It’s a horse head.”
“Is it? Maybe I haven’t seen it.”
“Oh my god,” I groaned. “How the fuck did you get in my house?”
“I paid one of your cleaners to give me the code. That cost me a shit ton too, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Plus, I got a little souvenir.”
“You what?
With a disgusting leer on his face, he pulled a black scrap of fabric partially out of his inside jacket pocket. “They were in the hamper, so they smell like you.”
Calm, Cameron. St
ay calm. You’re tied to a chair and there are men with guns. I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath.
“Fine, Bobby. You got me. I’m tied to a chair in one of your bad investments and it kind of smells like pee in here.”
He scrunched his nose.
“So tell me why,” I continued. “Why did you do this?”
He pointed to a manila envelope on the table. A ballpoint pen sat on top. “To get you to sign that.”
“I’m not signing a marriage license, no matter how many guns you point at me.”
He grinned. “That’ll come later, babe, don’t worry. No, that’s the paperwork to transfer your ownership of Spencer Aeronautics to me.”
“What?”
“You keep asking questions, so maybe I’m not speaking clearly, or they stuffed something in your ears when they dragged your fine ass over here. You’re going to sign the company over to me.”
“Since when do you want Spencer?”
He rolled his eyes. “Since always. It has my fucking name on it. That company was always supposed to be mine.”
“You don’t know anything about it. You’ve never worked there. Why do you want to run Spencer?”
“I never said I wanted to run it. I want to own it. You can keep your job, I’m not trying to get rid of you.”
“The more you talk, the less sense this makes.”
“My father started that company, Cami. And I’m his one and only heir. So I’m sure you can imagine how hurt I was when I found out he’s been selling his shares to you.” He started to wander slowly in front of us, gesturing with a finger. “Not only is he selling his shares, the old man is about to give you a majority interest. And yes, I know what that means. It means you’ll be in control. And I just can’t let that happen.”
“So you’re throwing a tantrum because Daddy isn’t giving you the company he spent his life building and to which you’ve contributed absolutely nothing.”
“It was supposed to be part of my inheritance. It’s bad enough that my old man is like a goddamn vampire who doesn’t age. I don’t know if the fucker will ever kick the bucket. But then I find out that by the time he does, the Spencers won’t even own Spencer Aeronautics anymore. What kind of fucked up shit is that?”
The Mogul and the Muscle: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy Page 22
