“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.”
Chapter 4
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 f**king 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 f**k 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 f**king 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 stop 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.