She didn’t make it very far. Jason grabbed her by her upper arm and swung her back around. “You’re staying for a while,” he informed her, his face impassive.
“I can’t stay. I have obligations,” she said irritably, not happy with his bossy tone.
“You’re staying,” Jason repeated. “And we’re going to have a little talk. Then I’m taking you to bed and f**king you until you can’t think of anything else but me. I think we’ve ignored our attraction to each other for far too long.”
Hope gaped at him, stunned. “I’m leaving, and I’m not having sex with you.” She fumed. “I’m…engaged.”
“Another thing we need to talk about. Soon,” Jason said ominously.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she replied defensively.
I have to get away from him. Now.
He clasped both of her shoulders. “Exactly how much of our time in Vegas do you actually remember?”
What did that matter now? Obviously she’d gotten drunk enough to black out most of her return back to Colorado, and her recovery from her hangover from hell. “I remember seeing you. I remember going out for drinks. I don’t remember much after that,” she admitted, exasperated.
“Then you’ve forgotten a lot,” Jason informed her ominously. “There will be no other men. You’re not engaged to someone else. You’re already married. To me,” he finished fiercely. He took her left hand in his, entwined their fingers, and held the conjoined digits up to rest against his chest.
Hope gasped as her gaze landed on their entangled hands. The sparkle of the diamond on her finger twinkled mockingly back at her. Jason had a gold band on his left ring finger, and she sported an exquisite diamond ring that she’d been in too much of a fog to even notice earlier. “No.” She shook her head adamantly in horror.
“Yes,” Jason snapped back. “We’re married, Hope.”
“I can’t be married to you. I couldn’t have forgotten my own wedding.” Impossible!
He let go of her hand and it fell back to her side. Wordlessly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that he handed over to her.
Hope opened it frantically, looked at the marriage license as though it was a death sentence. She scanned the document and stopped at the signature at the bottom. It was shaky, but the signed name was hers, and she’d opted to use Jason’s last name as her married name. “Oh, God. This can’t be real.” She groaned.
“It’s very real. When I found it, I had the marriage checked out. It happened, Hope. The wedding is being recorded at the courthouse in Vegas,” Jason replied coolly.
“We actually said vows?”
“Apparently, we did,” he rumbled.
Hope’s head reeled, her body nearly motionless with shock as she looked up at Jason’s cold expression. His eyes bored into hers. “Were you drunk, too?” It had to be the only explanation. They’d both been out of their minds. “It’s all just a big mistake. We can have it annulled. We can tell them neither one of us were of sound mind at the time,” she told him breathlessly.
“I’d deny it,” Jason answered ruthlessly. “Now that you’re here, we have some unfinished business to resolve.”
Hope broke her eyes away from Jason’s and moved to the kitchen. She dropped the marriage license onto the counter and used the solid stone surface for support. She needed to figure this out, create some distance between her and Jason.
How in the hell did I let myself become Hope Sutherland, no matter how much I’d had to drink?
“Why would you deny it?” She looked at his face again from across the room. “This is a huge no-brainer, something that happened by mistake. We need to fix it.”
He moved toward her with a savage grace that reminded her of a stalking, golden-haired lion. He placed a hand on each side of the cupboard, and effectively trapped her with his strong, muscular arms. “You know I want to f**k you, Hope. I think I made that abundantly clear last time we were together. But most of all, I don’t want you marrying a man who will make you miserable. We can f**k each other until we’re both satisfied, and then and only then, we’ll get this marriage annulled.”
“All of this, staying in a joke of a marriage, for just a screw?” Hope looked up at him, baffled and hurt by his atypical behavior. She couldn’t see anything in his eyes except calculated determination, and it infuriated her as much as it made heat spiral in her core. This wasn’t the Jason she knew. It was an entirely different part of him with which she’d never become acquainted. Nice to meet you, jackass. Now where did you put the real Jason Sutherland? “You can’t make me stay with you.”
“You think not?” he queried unemotionally. “What if I just tell your brothers that you’ve been lying to all of us for a very long time? How do you think they’ll feel about that?”
Jason knew. “You wouldn’t. They’d be hurt,” Hope exclaimed desperately. She wondered just how much he’d discovered. Obviously, he’d found out about her career, her portfolio more than telling. Dammit!
“Then why did you do it, Hope? Why? How do you think your family would feel if something had happened to you and they never even knew about your career? What if you just disappeared in some natural disaster and they never knew what happened to you? It would kill all of them,” Jason answered. Anger vibrated in his voice. “I know it sure as hell would have haunted me for the rest of my damn life.”
“I don’t understand why it would have bothered you at all. Why is this any of your business? We aren’t friends anymore. We had an…encounter at the holidays, but that’s all it was. I grew up a long time ago. I don’t need your protection,” she huffed, pushing furiously against his rock-solid chest. Apparently, he was angry, but she didn’t appreciate his attempts at blackmail.
However, she couldn’t let him tell her brothers. They’d be devastated that she hadn’t shared her real life with them, but it was impossible for her to do that. They would tie her down, follow her constantly if they knew she was in danger, put her safety ahead of her anger at them. She couldn’t do her job that way. Unfortunately, they’d also discover that she’d lied to them, and she loved her brothers more than anything. Lying to them had put a distance between her and her siblings that made her heart ache. But she hadn’t seen any other way. After her stifling childhood, she’d needed to be free to pursue her own career, just like Dante had done when he’d become a homicide detective. However, being the youngest and only female in the family, her siblings did the overprotective older brother routine to perfection. They all had the money to have her watched constantly, and she’d never be able to bear that.