That did it. His rage had officially reached a level he’d never experienced before. His face burned like Hades, and his hammering heart seemed to have taken up residence in his tight throat. He could almost taste the bitter flavor of his fury, could nearly smell its acrid odor fuming up to suffocate him.
Hands quaking like a son of a bitch, he just couldn’t help himself. Jager did what he supposed any man in this particular she-devil’s life did when she pissed him off. He stalked over and jerked her up out of the chair. Her forearm felt so small and fragile in his grip, he instantly readjusted his hold, loosening his fingers. But he didn’t let her go. Oh, no, he wasn’t going to let the little shrew out of his sight until he had his hands on her camera, and her written promise she’d keep her spewing, plump mouth shut. Yes, it would be easy to snap her bone, but he wouldn’t. Jager wasn’t an abuser by nature. At the moment, he might be a bully for the first time in his life, but he’d never lay a hand on anyone, especially not a woman.
Oh, but you can bet your ass I feel like laying a hand or two on this one.
With his nose mere centimeters from hers, he drilled his gaze into her defiant, glittering one. He could smell her fiery scent, and goddamn if she didn’t make his cock twitch and start to ache with the need to sink into her depths and—fuck that. This was madness.
It was career suicide.
“Let go of me, you sonofabitch.” She tried to wrench her arm free, but he tightened his hold enough to prevent it. He had to admit, even while being overpowered by a man, the woman had more balls than most men he knew.
“Do you know just how much I’d love to close my hands around that skinny little neck of yours and squeeze the life out of you for this? Huh? Do you?” He shook her, and her head bobbled around before she got control of it. “Watch your big, beautiful eyes bulging from their sockets?”
“I’m starting to understand just how much.” Anjelee swallowed and her gaze wavered. It was all a vague gesture of uncertainty he hadn’t expected to see so soon. But it didn’t last long. She abruptly changed tactics.
Her knee came up and plowed him between the legs.
Jager let out an umph of surprise and doubled over in mind-blowing pain. He let go of her arm in the process, and cupped his crotch with both hands. Nausea assailed him. His sac was on fire, scorching so intensely, his eyes went cross and the room spun in circles around him. He stumbled to the bed and collapsed, curling into a fetal position, sweat beading on his brow.
“You…bitch,” he managed to roar between pants and groans. “Not only will you…have trespassing and extortion on your prison record…but assault too.”
Though he had a hard time keeping his eyes open, he noted that she crossed her arms, a sign of bravery that, if he weren’t all balled up in agony at the moment, he might have admired.
“Uh-uh, I don’t think so. I’ve got all my bases covered, pal.”
He groaned as his stomach threatened to let loose of all that beer he’d drunk at the wedding. “What the fuck’s that…supposed to mean?”
“Emailed myself copies of the photos.” As an afterthought, she added a shrug.
Goddamn mother fuckin’ son of a bitch.
“You expect me to believe that?” he moaned, attempting to sit up. Oh, my poor balls, my poor balls, my poor balls. He breathed in, out. “I just hung up with Mitch. You couldn’t have left there fifteen minutes ago. No time to go Internet surfing. No cafes open this time of night, either.”
She giggled. “Laptop’s in my rental car. Got a satellite Internet subscription with one of those thingies you slide into your computer to connect. After I easily got away from Mitch’s incompetent bodyguard thugs, I fired up my hard drive, slipped the camera’s chip in, and voila, downloaded them all—every last naughty one of them—to My Pictures. A few more little clicks and I had them all zipped into a tidy little file and sent them off through cyberspace to myself. They’re sitting in my inbox as we speak.”
No, no, no, no, no!
Jager finally dragged himself up to a full sitting position and dropped his head into his shaking hands. He did his best not to reach down and cradle his poor throbbing sac. He was going to throw up, he just knew it. “So? You emailed pictures to yourself.” Time to use a bit of reverse psychology. “I hardly think that’s going to save you from any legal action. Or from disappearing off the face of the earth.”
She sat down next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. The spiteful, sarcastic move made him cringe, but he tried to play the game her way for now. And he forced himself to breathe lightly so as not to inhale too much of her provocative scent.
“Ah, Jager, Jager, Jager.” She sighed and clucked her tongue, rubbing a hand in a circle over his back. He attempted to overlook the fact that it caused goose bumps to shimmy up his spine and made him partially forget the painful swelling of his scrotum. But attempted, he was beginning to realize, didn’t always work where this woman was concerned.
“You see, I have this safe-deposit box at a certain bank in California.” Anjelee patted his back, rubbed again. She tossed her head in a show of arrogance, and he got a whiff of her apple shampoo.
“One of my siblings has a copy of the key,” she went on in a baby tone one might use to relate a nursery tale to a child. “She doesn’t know what it goes to or where the bank is located, but—” she thrust up a finger, “—she has instructions that, in the event of my death or disappearance, or even incarceration or attempted prosecution, she’s to go to my lawyer and obtain written instructions on where to go to use the key. See, there’s a certain…document I’ve left there in that little safety deposit box. My lawyer has his own instructions as well. Those include to never turn the document over to dear old sis…unless any or all of the aforementioned circumstances have come, shall we say, to light? So…wanna guess what’s in that important document?”
Mother fucker.
This was a son-of-a-bitching career nightmare for both Mitch and Jager. He’d never been so pissed off in all his life, and he briefly wondered if Hawaii carried the death penalty, or life sentencing for murderers. But he had to get a grip. He couldn’t let this happen. He shoved her away and got to his feet, ignoring the excruciating throbbing in his balls. His legs were shaky, and his stomach continued to hurl, but he forced himself to focus on the pretty painted face staring mockingly up at him.
“Let me guess. Email logins and passwords, maybe?”
She leapt to her feet and clapped like an elated child. Her voice bubbled with glee, and when she smiled, he caught a flicker of the little silver ball on her tongue. “Yes, excellent guess! And permission to sell any of my existing photographs, including the new ones now in my email box or already on my hard drive, to any publication in the entire world! Isn’t that just so clever?”
His cock had gone completely flaccid, more so from her words than from her assault. He disregarded it—had his dick really responded to her in his dream?—and planted his hands on his hips, snaring her with what he hoped was an intimidating, nasty look. “You bitch. Why are you doing this? Do you realize I could lose Mitch Wulfrum as a client over this?”
And holy shit, he didn’t even want to think about what it could do to Mitch and Kiona’s careers.
Anjelee merely arched a brow, as if she hadn’t thought of that—which he didn’t believe for one second—but still didn’t give a shit one way or the other.
“Are you doing it for money? Is that it?”
She shrugged. “Among other things.”
“You know something?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Thank you,” she replied sweetly, and those damned dimples emerged again.
“How much, goddamn it. How much do want?”
“Enough to keep the boogeyman away.”
Jager rolled his eyes. “What, are you like five years old?”
“No, thirty-one, as a matter of fact.”
Damn, he’d never have guessed that. The li
ttle hellcat didn’t look a day over twenty-one. He sighed and spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m going to ask you one more time before I resort to choking the life out of you. How much money to get the camera and now your laptop, see that you delete the email in your inbox, and keep that fat little mouth of yours shut forever?”
“Hmm, excellent question. Now let me see…” She fixed her twinkling gaze somewhere over his shoulder while tapping her claw-tipped finger against her chin. “About…oh, say, fifty thousand?”
“What?”
“I said fifty thousand. Not one penny less.” Her voice went hard. No more joking sarcasm. It was apparently time to get down to business.
“You’re crazy. There’s no way in hell—”
She spun and marched to the door, her small little ass jiggling as she went. “Fine. Your choice. I can probably get even more for them somewhere else, anyway.”
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“To call Superstars and let them know I have a story and supporting pictures that’ll make their subscriptions and sales on the stands skyrocket.”
He raced to the door and whirled her around. “I said wait, goddamn it.”
She canted her head and blinked with disparaging innocence. “What for? It seems you’ve made your choice.”
“No, no, you win. Fifty thousand it is.” He scrubbed his face, narrowed his gaze on her. Mitch was a millionaire, but holy crap, was he ever gonna freak. “But you have to hand over the laptop and camera, let me witness you deleting the email account, and then sign a legal agreement to keep your mouth shut—no future articles, no selling your story on the side, nothing. Agreed?”
Anjelee wrinkled her nose and made a play of thinking hard for a few seconds. She finally nodded. “Sure. Agreed. What an excellent idea.”
Chapter Twelve
“I still can’t believe I paid that bitch fifty thousand,” Mitch muttered.
At an exhausting four a.m., after resisting one final urge to choke Anjelee, Jager had uttered an eager farewell and driven to his house to meet Mitch. He pushed past him now, made his way into the living room, and popped open his briefcase on the coffee table. “You said whatever it took. And that was her bottom dollar. It’s done.”
Mitch collapsed next to Jager onto the leather sofa. “Jesus Christ. It’s still making me nauseous.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jager sat down carefully, wincing at the tenderness between his legs, and briefly thought how Mitch didn’t know the meaning of the word nausea. He drew out his laptop, fired it up, and shuffled through a stack of papers inside the briefcase. He had Anjelee’s PC in his car and would deal with them later—including combing every inch of her hard drive for any photos she’d missed pointing out to him, or any incriminating files. She’d also turned over the login information to her email box, which had allowed Jager to get in and delete the account right after she’d left his hotel with dollar signs in her eyes and the money already electronically transferred into her account. Oh, he was on to her, all right, the vixen. He could just see her racing over to the business center in her hotel, logging onto her email account, and restoring the deleted file. But nope. Wasn’t going to happen, not if Jager could help it. Deleting the account had solved that mess before she could even think to implement another catastrophe.
There was no need to mention to Mitch she’d gone two steps further in her devious plan by downloading photos and emailing them to herself. Mitch needed to get on with his wedding celebration and take time to relax and enjoy himself while he could with his new partners. His next movie was scheduled to start filming soon. No, no need to add to his worries. Jager had it covered for now.
But still, what a fucking mess it had all been.
“What about the camera?” Mitch propped his elbows on his knees and shot Jager a sidelong, wary look. Maybe he didn’t completely trust Jager to handle his affairs anymore, but from here on out, Jager would prove to him he was capable of continuing the job.
“Got it right here, along with a signed agreement to keep her mouth shut.” Jager dug the camera out of an inside briefcase pocket, held it up along with the adapter cord for uploading photos, the CD, and the battery charger. “All the wedding pictures are there, too. It’s digital, so just load this software onto your desktop when you get back to California. Or feel free to load them here on my desktop too if you want to take a look, then just delete them off the hard drive before you go. At least the incriminating ones.”
“Nah. We’ll just look at them this way for now.” Mitch had the camera on, and was scrolling through the shots on the little screen. He arrived at one that depicted him in a hot and naked clench with Kol. His face went hot-pink. “Shit, these would have caused some damage, all right.” He switched the equipment off and let out a long, breathy sigh. “Thank God you got her to agree to everything.”
You have no idea how much I’m thanking God.
“No kidding. Anyway,” Jager said, in a rush to get this all over with, “then you connect this cord from camera to computer. Snapshots’ll upload in an instant.”
“Mmm, handy,” Mitch mumbled, going back to fiddling with dials and buttons.
“Yeah. So everything’s taken care of, even the funds transfer.” He saw that his laptop had almost finished connecting to the wireless Internet. While he waited, he handed Mitch a manila envelope containing the gag document Anjelee has signed. “Your copy of the agreement.”
Jager’s own copies also contained yet another paper stating she’d voluntarily turned over the laptop and the camera to him. He’d thought that to be the best way to prevent her from coming back later and trying to have him arrested for theft. Oh yeah, he could easily see Anjelee Montrose turning the tables on him and seeing him put behind bars for something he hadn’t done. The blackmailing bitch.
Jager went on as he put fingers to keyboard and logged onto Mitch’s personal bank account. “I think this electronic transfer was the wisest way to conduct the transaction. No check or signature by you for her future forgery use, which I wouldn’t put past the little sneak. I figured sending it from your personal account to hers, and labeling it as payment for wedding photography services, or something to that effect, in the comments section would be best. That way, there’d also be no tax questions in the future like there would be if the money was to come from PR or marketing funds.”
The bank page popped up on the screen. Jager turned the laptop toward Mitch to show him where he’d already transferred the fifty grand from Mitch’s account to Anjelee’s.
Jager rifled through more papers and located one of their usual authorization-of-funds-transfers forms used between them when Jager conducted Mitch’s PR business. He slid the paper with a pen onto the coffee table. “Just sign your approval of the transfer and I’ll be on my way.”
“I can’t believe this.” Mitch snatched up the pen, scanned the document, and scrawled his signature on the line.
“I know.” Jager tore off Mitch’s copy, slipped it into the manila envelope, and stuffed the duplicate into his briefcase. “I’m sorry the three of you had to go through all that. But it looks like it’s handled now, so you can head out on your honeymoon without any worries. Everyone doing okay?”
Mitch got to his feet. He wore a navy blue silk robe knotted at the waist, looking every bit the handsome, masculine movie star. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “They’re sleeping. It’s been a long night.”
You have no idea.
Jager shut down the computer and gathered his things. He had to admit he’d secretly looked through all the pictures. He’d known Mitch’s hush-hush sexual preferences since day one, but seeing it happening in the flesh, so to speak, had been a stunning experience. Before this week, Jager never would have guessed Kol to go along with homosexual activities. But apparently, after their little private trio marriage ceremony Jager had witnessed, and now the obvious proof of it in pictures, there was no denying Kol definitely had a thing for the male gender too. Obviously, Jager ha
dn’t known Kol well enough, but now that he’d seen it all in action, it made sense, and they all seemed to fit so well together.
Kiona’s obvious acceptance and enjoyment in the photos hadn’t surprised him one bit, either. She was a sexual creature by nature, and though he’d had to avert his scrutiny from her nakedness—she was like a sister to him, for Christ’s sake—Jager had thought how happy and fulfilled she’d looked in the shots.
He rose, shook Mitch’s hand. “Well, I’m glad it all worked out in the end.”
Mitch blew out a breath and pumped Jager’s hand. “You can say that again.”
“Yeah, I was worried for a bit there, I admit, but we’re all good now.” He retrieved his briefcase and laptop and turned, making his way to the front door.
Mitch followed. “Uh, you don’t think she let anything out to Heloki, do you?”
Jager turned to face Mitch. He shook his head, silently praying to all the gods in the universe that Anjelee wouldn’t breach their contract. “If you read the agreement she signed, you’ll see I specifically named Heloki as off limits too. She swore not to reveal any of it to him, or anyone for that matter.”
“Kiona’ll be relieved to hear that. He’s supposed to come by sometime today to sign her trust fund over to her.”
Jager pulled open the door, grinned. “Yeah, I know. Remember? Besides your need to cover up those rumors, that trust fund’s partially responsible for starting this whole huge ball rolling.”
Mitch snickered. “Yeah, I suppose in that respect, I should be thankful to Heloki.” His smile faded. He searched Jager’s eyes. “I’m happy with them, really happy. Thanks, Jager.”
“No problem. Have a great honeymoon.” He stepped out onto the front porch, drew in the sultry night air scented by ginger and hibiscus, and spun to face Mitch again. “And like I mentioned last week, remember the cabin and the whole island I reserved for you is extensively private. Everyone who’s rented it is close-mouthed about its location and existence. It’s got acres and acres of lush rain forest, a long stretch of concealed beach and lagoon, and a fully equipped and stocked house. Not to mention the island is never booked by more than one guest at a time.”
Kabana Heat Page 20
