I’ve always been biding my time, waiting for Hope.
His anger fled, replaced by concern as he thought about the night before, the broken look on her face when she’d told him she wasn’t ready. He could have sworn he saw a flash of worry, a moment of fear in her eyes. Had he imagined things, or had she really been afraid? Most likely, he was imagining it. Hope had had boyfriends before, the most recent one for several years, a deadbeat who had no job, and was obviously a selfish bastard judging by Hope’s lack of sensual experience.
He just f**ked her and sponged off her.
That thought made Jason insane. Hope had a huge heart, and he didn’t like the thought of anyone taking advantage of her.
His fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop and accessed his private email. Searching, he finally found the email Grady had sent to everyone when he’d become engaged. He found her name among the group and he started a new email with her address:
I need to know you made it home safe and that you’re okay. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll find you.
J.
He pressed the Send button harder than necessary.
Her response came that evening, when Jason was home in his New York penthouse:
I’m back in Aspen, and I’m okay.
H.
Leaning back in the desk chair of his home office, he closed his eyes. Dammit. He’d wanted further information. Yes, he wanted to know she was safe, but he’d wanted her to say more, tell him more, let him know how she felt.
Holy shit! He started to sound like a woman, wanting to pry Hope’s emotions from her until she talked. Usually, he avoided emotional confrontations at all costs. He was an only child, so he didn’t have sisters who tried to strangle him with emotional bullshit. And if a woman started to even begin to show an emotional attachment, he was done with the relationship. Most times, he didn’t have to worry about it. He was careful, stuck to women who just wanted or needed sex with no strings, and that had worked out well for him most of the time.
I’m losing it.
Hope Sinclair would come with all kinds of strings attached, and she’d already tied some of the knots to secure them to him. Strangely, he didn’t give a shit. Casual sex was going to be a thing of the past. She’d ruined him. And if he had to wait…he’d wait. Hell, he’d already waited eight years for her to grow up. Now, he wished he hadn’t waited so damn long.
She’s mine. She’s always been mine.
Eventually, he’d snare Hope Sinclair, and keep her until they had both f**ked each other out of their systems. It was the only way he could think of to get his sanity back again.
Maybe then I’ll be able to concentrate. Maybe the restlessness and loneliness will go away if I have Hope as many times as we both want it.
He deleted her email and brought up his work documents, with a fervent hope he didn’t have to wait too damn long.
*****
For the next several months, Jason tried to give Hope a chance to recover from her relationship with her loser boyfriend, tried to be patient.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to stop emailing her at least once a week. He wanted to know whether she was doing okay, and some secret part of him did it for completely selfish reasons: to remind her that he was waiting. The emails he sent were always the same:
I just want to know that you’re doing okay.
J.
Her answers were always two words:
I’m fine.
H.
In January when he emailed, she was fine.
For the rest of the winter when he wrote, she was fine.
In the spring, she answered his query the same way: she was fine.
Then, in the early summer, she was getting married.
What. The. Fuck.
Jason was in Rocky Springs, Colorado, at a charity benefit function when he found out that Hope planned to marry the same loser who Jason was waiting for her to get over. He’d talked to her brother, Grady, and had gotten the news from him. Hope had never mentioned it. She was just fine, according to her weekly, two-word email responses.
She’d never let him know that she was back with her ex-boyfriend, much less that they were getting married.
Unfortunately, Jason wasn’t so fine with the news. He was f**king livid, and he’d had enough of waiting.
He was finally going to get Hope in his bed and oust the ass**le in her life when he did; he wasn’t opposed to playing dirty if that’s what it took to achieve his goal. Jason didn’t know what kind of number this guy was doing on Hope to get her to marry him, but the game was about to end.
Unfortunately, even though she had plans to marry another man, a guy who didn’t give a rat’s ass about her, Jason still wanted her for himself. And he wasn’t giving her up until he was damn good and ready to do so, and the ass**le in her life was completely out of the picture. For some reason, she was running away from what had happened between them, but he’d catch her, make her admit she wanted him and didn’t love the man she was marrying. If she had loved another man, she never would have been intimate with him at the holidays.
Maybe Hope thought Jason was only an ass**le on the surface, but she was about to find out just how big of an ass**le he could really be. When it came to Hope, he was perfectly capable of being a ruthless bastard to have her, keep her away from someone who would hurt her, and she was about to see a different side of him. So, she could end up hating him. It was better than her ending up married and miserable, tied to a bloodsucker.
He and Tate Colter, a half-crazy, very wealthy ex-Special Forces guy, put together a plan in Rocky Springs, right after Jason found out that Hope was getting married. It was a selfish, greedy scheme that would change his life and Hope’s irrevocably. Jason didn’t think twice about implementing it with Tate’s help. His reason clouded with anger and disbelief, he plowed ahead with Tate, his only objective to separate Hope from any other man except him. Any other outcome was unacceptable, unthinkable.
Jason ignored the niggling voice that told him that ending her marriage plans wasn’t the only reason he was taking this particular strategy. Instead, he set the plan in motion, eventually slamming a barrier between himself and any of his emotions after he’d made the decision to act out Tate’s proposed solution, just like he’d always done in business. He and Hope did have unfinished business, and he was about to wrap it up—permanently and completely.