Selfishly, that was exactly what Jason wanted. He’d taken her with the intention of sating himself with her, before eventually letting her go. Already angry and hurt that she hadn’t told him that she was getting married, all he’d wanted was Hope in his bed, and to prevent her from marrying an ass**le. Now he wasn’t so sure he was going to let her out of his sight ever again. Not that he wasn’t still pissed off at her, but his protective instincts overrode his anger. Jesus, did she have some sort of death wish to be chasing these kind of storms?
You don’t know me anymore.
Hope had told him that when they’d been together in Amesport. Turns out…she was right. “She has an entire secret life that nobody knows about,” Jason speculated aloud, pissed off and troubled. Where in the hell was the shy girl he had known, the quiet, sweet young woman he’d seen right before she left for college? Every time he’d seen her after that fateful day, she’d been quiet and subdued, doing nothing to indicate that she’d…changed.
“We all have our secrets,” Tate said solemnly. “She’s accomplished a lot for a woman her age. She sells a lot of her photos to major publications, and she’s already highly respected in her field.”
“It’s f**king dangerous,” Jason replied irritably. “How would you feel if you cared about someone who rushed into dangerous situations all the time? What if it was your sister, Chloe?”
Tate frowned. “I’d lock her up and throw away the key.”
Jason raised his eyebrows, giving Tate an I-told-you-so stare.
“She’s my little sister,” Tate continued defensively.
“Exactly. Someone you care about, someone you want to protect.”
“She’s related,” Tate grumbled. “I’ve never felt that way about any woman. I couldn’t. I did some crazy shit. On any given mission, there was always a very good chance that when I left, I wouldn’t be coming back.”
Jason watched Tate’s face, the brief, haunted look that flashed in his eyes. He wasn’t Special Forces anymore, but some things Tate had done during his military days obviously still preyed on his mind. “You’re loaded, Colter. You have a good family. Why did you do it?” Jason wondered why someone with Tate’s privileged background would join Special Forces. In fact, Tate was the only billionaire he knew who had even enlisted in the military when they had billions of dollars in the bank.
Tate shrugged. “Because I could. I’m a damn good pilot, and I thrived on the adrenaline for a long time. We did some good things, saved some lives. It was worth it.”
Tate could be an annoyingly arrogant son of a bitch, but Jason respected him. No doubt he had saved lives. “You’re not in Special Forces anymore. What’s the excuse for not having a woman now?”
“What was yours?” Tate shot back at Jason.
“I was obsessed with Hope,” Jason admitted readily. His fixation with Hope had always been in the back of his mind every time he was with a woman. Hopefully, he could f**k that fascination away now that he had her. They’d probably be sick of each other after a day or two together.
Tate squirmed. “Yeah. Well, I guess I just haven’t found a woman worth obsessing over. Thank God,” he mumbled in a low, fervent voice.
Jason ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” His mind was blurry from lack of sleep, and his head spun from finding out so much about Hope that he hadn’t known. Maybe finding everything out now was a good thing. Maybe the fact that she was obviously a compulsive liar and not the sweet woman he thought he knew would cure him of his compulsion to f**k her, make her his. He sure as hell hoped it would. Unfortunately, even though he was pissed, his protective instincts were still present and even stronger now that he knew she ran into danger all the time. Regrettably, he also knew the Hope he had known was still there. He’d sampled her sweetness on their one night together over the holidays, and that taste of her had just left an agonizing desire for more.
I don’t know who she is now.
“Get some rest.” Tate got up from the recliner. “Do you need anything else?”
“I have to find a way to get Hope’s cat,” Jason answered with a grimace. “Hope was only planning to be gone for a few days. I don’t know if anyone is taking care of her cat.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Tate replied nonchalantly. “I’ll drop the cat off later. It’s a short helicopter ride.” He strode to the door and opened it.
“Tate?” Jason raised his voice so Tate could hear him across the room.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you want her address?”
Tate smirked. “I hacked her computer. I have it.”
“Keys to her condo?”
“I’ve never met a lock I couldn’t pick,” Tate told Jason arrogantly. “Later.” He closed the door behind him.
“Cocky bastard,” Jason grumbled as he went to the door Tate had just exited and locked it, although he was actually more angry with himself than he was at Tate. Colter had actually helped him reach an objective: stop Hope from marrying somebody else, a man who, most likely, cared nothing about her and had to have been sponging off Hope for years if he’d never gotten a job. His other reasons were connected to his main objective and were just as urgent, but purely selfish.
Jason tried to pacify his guilt by telling himself that Hope would end up happier in the long run, but that didn’t help him now. That damn, niggling voice inside his head was back, and he couldn’t seem to quite close the door on his emotions entirely. Granted, the voice wasn’t loud enough to stop him from doing what he needed to do, but it was annoying to have some regrets about basically kidnapping Hope, even if she had gone with him willingly, albeit completely intoxicated.
He sat back down with her computer, unable to stop himself from perusing every bit of data he could find. Tate had left the computer open, and seeking out information on Hope was just too big of a temptation. Desperate to piece together her life, he tried to fit all of the data together. Some of it made sense; much of it didn’t.
She had a lot of emails from a guy named David. Was this the mysterious fiancé? I don’t even know the guy’s name! Although, most of the emails exchanged were nothing more than meeting sites and travel plans. There was nothing romantic, and very little personal information exchanged. David was apparently in Oklahoma, from what Jason could surmise.