by J. S. Scott
Jason raised a brow. “Don’t try to make me into a hero, Hope. I’m sure it was completely selfish. And my requirement for you to stay is definitely hedonistic.”
“Then it was a waste of your time,” Hope spat out at him. She stalked into the living room with Jason on her heels.
“I don’t think you understand how badly I want you,” Jason said ominously. He snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her down to the couch. “Let’s hear about why you lied in the first place. Talk to me.”
Hope landed on his lap, but she scrambled off him and seated herself on the other end of the sofa. She couldn’t be close to him right now. She needed to out herself about some of her life and take her chances with Jason, even if she was still ticked about his highhanded tactics in trying to get her to stay. She swiped at the tears on her face. “You know about my photography career?”
“Obviously,” Jason said acerbically. “It’s hard to miss a portfolio full of pictures. It’s also clear that you didn’t want anybody to associate you with the billionaire Sinclair family, which is why you used your initials. What I don’t understand is why you never told anyone.”
Hope saw a flash of hurt in Jason’s eyes. “Do you think my brothers would have been supportive?” She snorted. “I love them with all my heart, but they would have done everything they could to stop me from doing something I wanted to do. You know they would. For God’s sake, they wanted me to have security even when I was in college. The only way I talked them out of that was by telling them that nobody associated me with the Boston Sinclairs, and I’d never tell anybody. After college, I had to let them think that I was living a very quiet, very anonymous life. Otherwise, they would have had security all over me, whether I wanted it or not. “
“Why does it have to be extreme weather?” Jason grumbled. He couldn’t disagree with her point about her brothers.
Hope shrugged. “It started out as a fluke. I’ve always loved storms: the thunder, the lightning, and the unstoppable power of Mother Nature. Thunderstorms are brutally beautiful and fascinating because there’s still so much we don’t understand about extreme weather. Maybe it’s the mystery that first intrigued me. I started right after school as a freelancer, most of my photos of lightning strikes and thunderstorms. Newspapers and other companies began to buy them, wanting more. I moved into it gradually, noticing that what I was photographing was what was most in demand. Eventually, I didn’t wait for the storms to come to me. I went to them.”
“So when most sane people were running away, you were running toward the storms?” Jason rumbled, still sounding upset.
Hope nodded. “Yes. I’m always as careful as I can be. Tornados are unpredictable, but David and I tried to be as cautious as we could be. Sometimes I wasn’t so careful when I started. I was too naïve and intoxicated with being free to care. When you grow up beneath the iron fist of a raging alcoholic, and then are left to a mother who blames you because she can’t move away somewhere else to forget the past, you learn to appreciate freedom. “
“Your mother blamed you?” Jason said angrily.
“Every single day. I was constantly reminded that if I didn’t exist, she’d have her freedom. The day I graduated from high school was the happiest day of my life. I could finally stop feeling guilty for just existing.” She cuddled Daisy on her lap as the feline leapt onto the couch.
Jason nodded his head toward her cat. “The same day that you got a deaf cat as a graduation present.”
“I never regretted having her,” Hope told him honestly. “She gives me unconditional love. She’s been a great companion, Jason. She goes with me when I can take her, and she adapts to any environment, which is very strange for a cat.” Hope wasn’t about to tell him that she cherished Daisy just that much more because she’d gotten her from Jason.
“How did none of us ever figure this out for ourselves? Why did none of us know you were a photographer? How did your brothers never discover it?” Jason said, disgruntled.
“Because I didn’t want anyone to know. I wanted my freedom. They believed I was living an idle, anonymous life in Aspen, traveling occasionally with friends. It’s what I wanted them to believe.”
“You know what you’re doing is crazy, right? You’re risking your life for pictures.”
“It’s my life to risk,” Hope threw back at him. “And I don’t think it’s crazy. It’s my job.”
“I saw the pictures, Hope. The destruction and loss of life has to take its toll on you.” He gave her a sharp glance.
That was the hardest part, the area of her job that ate at her soul. “It’s horrible,” she admitted. “I help when I can. I took first responder training. But yes, it’s…difficult.” She swallowed a lump in her throat at the truth. “Extreme weather is going to happen whether I’m there or not, and the victims are going to suffer horribly. I had to suck it up and try to help.”
“What were you doing in Vegas? It’s apparent to me now that you weren’t there for a bachelorette party like you told me you were when we ran into each other. You would have been worried about contacting whoever you were with. There was nothing and nobody else in your room except your stuff.” Jason looked at her, as though he mentally willed her to tell him the truth.
“I was there for a conference. I was asked to give a lecture on extreme photography. That’s why I had my portfolio with me.” Hope’s stomach sunk as she revealed some more of her lies. “The party seemed like a good excuse when I slipped up and told Grady I was going to Vegas. I was tired that day. I’d just gotten back from Oklahoma. I was exhausted and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Jason raised his brows. “Ah, yes. The guy in some of your pictures. Where does he fit in?”
“David,” she said in a choked voice. “He was an extreme meteorologist. We went to college together. He lived in Oklahoma, and we teamed up for tornado chasing. I learned a lot from him.” Hope was breathless with disbelief that she was actually spilling all of this to Jason. But she could tell by the stubborn look on his face that he wouldn’t stop until he got the truth.
“How good of a friend is he?” Jason asked hoarsely.
“He was probably my best friend.” Hope watched Jason’s face.
“Friends with benefits?” he asked gruffly.
Hope let out a startled gasp. Was he actually…jealous? “No. David wasn’t into women that way.”
“He’s gay?” Jason looked relieved.
Hope nodded and teared up as she replied. “He was gay. He…died.” She hated saying those words, hated to refer to David in the past tense. She still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that her best friend, her only friend, was gone.
“When? How?” Jason asked in a gentle tone.
“Almost two weeks ago now. I was just coming back from his funeral and visiting with his family when Grady called me. I was close to his parents. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, Jason. I had no idea what I was saying to Grady. I was babbling.”
“I’m sorry you lost your friend, Peaches,” he utterly sincerely, tenderly. “What happened?”
Hope’s heart still ached over losing David, but she answered shakily, “We don’t know all the details. He was chasing a large tornado fairly close to his hometown. Witnesses say it suddenly changed direction, and it put David right in its path. I was here in Colorado because I was trying to get my lecture together for Vegas, so he was alone. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. His truck was literally picked up and tossed down somewhere else. There wasn’t much left of it.” Tears streamed down her face. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Jesus, Hope. You could have been in that truck.” Jason’s voice vibrated with fear. “I actually heard about the incident. I had no idea then that it was somebody you knew. It’s one of the reasons I’m so freaked out about you chasing after tornados. People with decades of experience and a ton of knowledge can still die.”
Hope nodded. She couldn’t argue with him. Tornados were the most unpredi
ctable of storms. Even with precautions, nothing was guaranteed because you could never completely predict its path. “I know. David was good, very cautious, and he still died. He was passionate about tornado research. He didn’t do it for the adrenaline rush; he was trying to save lives, give people in the path of the tornado a longer warning.” David had been one of the most compassionate men she’d ever known.
Jason moved over and pulled her onto his lap. His hands stroked over her back and her hair as she cried. “I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry. Please promise me you’re done chasing tornados,” he said gruffly as he buried his face in her hair. “Please.”
The pleading note in his voice unraveled her. She sobbed and clung to Jason with her arms around his neck. “I can’t do it anymore. Not without David. We were a team, and he was the one with all the knowledge. If I got any pictures I thought could be studied, I copied them and donated the photos for research.”
“You’re not doing it with anybody ever again. Promise me, Hope, before I lose my mind,” he rasped against her neck. His body shuddered fiercely. “You could have been with him.”
“I wasn’t,” she answered with a shaky voice. “And I promise.” She couldn’t bear to hear the fear in Jason’s voice, and she never planned to chase another tornado. Losing David had torn her apart, and it was something she’d never do again without her friend.
“Thank Christ,” Jason answered gutturally as he squeezed her body tightly.
“I miss him,” she confided. “He knew me. He was the only one who really did.” Her friend had known all of her secrets, but he was gone, and the emptiness in her soul was so profound that she had barely been able to function since his death.
“Let me know you again, Hope. Let me in. Please,” Jason begged. His voice quavered with emotion.
“What if you don’t like who I am now?” she asked hesitantly, so tempted to lean on Jason, let him take away some of her pain.
“I will. And I swear I’ll never tell any of your secrets. Talk to me.” He kissed her reverently on top of her head.
“We have to fix this marriage situation, Jason, before we can ever be real friends again,” she told him softly.
“It will get fixed,” he replied vaguely. “And I’m not sure we can ever be just friends again. I know I can’t. I want to be your lover, too, Hope. I want you, and I know you want me, too.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you physically,” Hope said with a sigh. Why deny it? Why oppose him when he could feel her response every time he touched her? Her traitor of a body was a dead giveaway. “I just can’t do it physically or emotionally.”
“Your supposed fiancé? Bullshit. You don’t love him and you know it. If you did, your body would never respond to me. I know you well enough to know that, Hope.”
“It’s not James. It’s me. You understand now why I was out of my mind when I talked to Grady, and I wanted to get him to quit harping about me going to some billionaire fundraiser that you were attending in Colorado. He wanted me to go meet some decent guys. Like every billionaire is awesome?” She rolled her eyes. “Out of sheer frustration, I told him I was marrying James, and I’d be busy at the bachelorette party in Vegas. I shouldn’t have said it, but I was willing to say just about anything to get him to leave me alone. I just wanted him to stop lecturing me and let me get off the phone.”
“So your boyfriend didn’t ask you to marry him?” Jason questioned warily.
“He didn’t ask me anything at all. He doesn’t exist. I made him up. I used my fictional boyfriend whenever I needed to get my brothers off my back or when I knew I was going to be out of touch for a while. James doesn’t even exist.”
Hope knew she was doomed the moment that she saw Jason’s incredulous expression. All of the energy he’d expended to blackmail her into staying here with him had been for nothing. She wasn’t now—nor was she ever—going to marry. Maybe neither of them had known what they were doing when they got married, but Jason wasn’t evil, and she had a feeling he wasn’t trying to make her stay just because he wanted to get laid. Her upcoming marriage had to have had something to do with his drunken decision to marry her, and his subsequent refusal to let her leave. She had a hard time buying that he just wanted to screw her.
“You lied about him, too?” he growled. His eyes flashed like blue flames as he pulled back to look at her.
“Yes.”
“Un-fucking-believable! Why the fake boyfriend?” He slid her off his lap and pinned her to the couch with his body. “Why the hell did you have to lie about that? Dammit! I want to know you again, Hope, but I don’t fucking understand you.”
Letting him know her was much too dangerous. Somehow, she needed to push him away, even though her heart didn’t want to. “Same reason. My brothers were always trying to hook me up with anybody they knew when they were traveling to Colorado. I didn’t want to be fixed up. Finally, I made somebody up. In spite of the fact that I do it a lot, I actually lie very badly. I stumbled when they asked his name, coming up with something completely unoriginal. I panicked when they wanted to know what he did, who he worked for. I knew they’d be spying. I had to make him unemployed.”
“And the breakup before you went to Grady’s for the holidays?”
“We had to break up because Grady wanted me to bring him along with me. What do you think he would have said if my unemployed fiancé couldn’t make it to his engagement party?”
Jason’s nearness made her body ache with unfulfilled desire, but her brain protested; his anger stifled her. “Please get off me, Jason,” she pleaded. She needed distance.
“Christ!” he hissed vehemently. “Everything about you is a lie.”
“Yes.” She breathed heavily. She felt trapped by the angry man above her, even though she knew he’d never hurt her. “Everything.”
I need to push him away. It’s better if he hates me.
Hope struggled to get away from him. She needed air; she needed space. “So now you know. There was never any reason for you to marry me, and certainly no reason to try to make me stay.” She pushed against his chest, his strong body as immovable as a stone wall.
“Oh, there is a reason I want you here now. I want to fuck you, Hope. For some reason I can’t get you out of my system. I might not like you very much right now, and I sure as hell don’t understand you, but I still want your body,” Jason rasped, apparently not happy about that fact.
“Get. Off.” Hope gasped now, desperate to get away. His angry voice, his large, unyielding form suffocated her.
“I plan to get off,” he told her bitterly. “Inside you.”
“No!” Hope clawed at him to get away, and she panted heavily. “I can’t. Stop, Jason. Please.” The words left her mouth as a desperate plea.
“Jesus.” Jason sat up and his hand scraped through his hair savagely. “What the hell is wrong with you? One minute your body is responding to me like you want me as much as I want you. And then, a few seconds later, you’re fighting to get away.”
Hope sat up quickly and raked her hair out of her face with a trembling hand. “I don’t want you. I just need to get out of here, annul this disastrous marriage and move on with my life. I don’t want you to tell my brothers, but I can’t stop you.”
Jason’s furious eyes bored into her. One of the muscles in his jaw twitched wildly.
Hope had never seen Jason this irate.
“You’re staying for two weeks. When you leave, I’ll never say a word to your brothers,” he demanded, his expression cold and calculating.
“I can’t. I’m busy right now,” she tried to explain. Now that he knew her fiancé was a sham, why did he still want her to stay?
“I don’t give a shit. The last thing you need is to be out chasing fucking storms, even if they aren’t tornados. You’re staying here. Take the deal or I’ll tell every single one of your brothers and you’ll have more people on your ass than the president of the United States.”
Okay. Now he’s trying to st
op me from doing my job because it’s dangerous. Even though I agreed not to chase tornados anymore, he doesn’t want me to chase any storms at all.
Hope stood up, indignant and pissed off. Jason might not like how she ran her life, but he didn’t have the right to interfere. “I can’t do what I do without anonymity,” she told him heatedly. “Even if I’m not chasing tornados, I still have a job to do. There’s plenty of other extreme weather.”
Jason rose and looked down at her. His towering strength was meant to intimidate her. “Then I guess that’s a problem. You’ll suddenly be famous. H.L. Sinclair, the known photographer, will become even more famous because she’s part of the mega-wealthy Sinclair family. The media will be all over that.”
Dammit! The press would be all over her, too. It would be the end of her career. She couldn’t do what she did with a freaking entourage. Her fury with Jason exploded, and her hand flew toward his face in outrage.
He caught it before it connected with his cheek. “Don’t try it again. No woman has ever succeeded before you, and it’s not happening a second time.” A firm, strong hand held her wrist next to his face.
“Bastard,” she hissed. She hated him for what he was doing.
“You finally got that right.” Jason’s icy eyes ran over her face impassively. “Do we have a deal or not?”
Hope contemplated her alternatives, and came up with…nothing. “No sex.” She yanked her wrist from his hand and lowered it back to her side. “I’ll give you two weeks, but I’ll make your life miserable while I’m doing it.” He would be suffering the entire two weeks, and she could do it without even trying, just by being her own, broken self. Jason was about to find out that he couldn’t have what he wanted from her. Fine. She’d give him his damn two weeks, and he’d be glad to get rid of her after those days had passed.
