“Let me know you again, Hope. Let me in. Please,” Jason begged. His voice quavered with emotion.
“What if you don’t like who I am now?” she asked hesitantly, so tempted to lean on Jason, let him take away some of her pain.
“I will. And I swear I’ll never tell any of your secrets. Talk to me.” He kissed her reverently on top of her head.
“We have to fix this marriage situation, Jason, before we can ever be real friends again,” she told him softly.
“It will get fixed,” he replied vaguely. “And I’m not sure we can ever be just friends again. I know I can’t. I want to be your lover, too, Hope. I want you, and I know you want me, too.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you physically,” Hope said with a sigh. Why deny it? Why oppose him when he could feel her response every time he touched her? Her traitor of a body was a dead giveaway. “I just can’t do it physically or emotionally.”
“Your supposed fiancé? Bullshit. You don’t love him and you know it. If you did, your body would never respond to me. I know you well enough to know that, Hope.”
“It’s not James. It’s me. You understand now why I was out of my mind when I talked to Grady, and I wanted to get him to quit harping about me going to some billionaire fundraiser that you were attending in Colorado. He wanted me to go meet some decent guys. Like every billionaire is awesome?” She rolled her eyes. “Out of sheer frustration, I told him I was marrying James, and I’d be busy at the bachelorette party in Vegas. I shouldn’t have said it, but I was willing to say just about anything to get him to leave me alone. I just wanted him to stop lecturing me and let me get off the phone.”
“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.”
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 fucking 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.