He just fucked 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 fucked 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:#p#分页标题#e#
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 fucking livid, and he’d had enough of waiting.
He was finally going to get Hope in his bed and oust the asshole 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 asshole 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 asshole on the surface, but she was about to find out just how big of an asshole 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.