ForHisSakeBlankEditionHTML by Erika Masten Read Free Book Online Page B

a great deal to me.”
    “It would mean a great
deal to Adrian.”
    The gentleman fished a
business card out of his pocket and handed it to me, then pointed to the small
print under the impressive script spelling out his name. “I don’t pass many of
those around. That’s my international mobile number at the bottom. Ring me, day
or night, when he’s ready to meet me. Until then, if you’ll excuse me, my
eldest son came with me to Natal and will be expecting me back at the hotel. If
I’m late, he’ll start going on again about me having to have a bodyguard. He
really means a minder.”
    I walked with Edward as
far as the white taxi that answered his hail. “You’ll be hearing from me, Mr.
Knight, I promise.”
    “Yes, Miss Bloom,” he
agreed with another small wink, “I do believe I will.”
    As I watched the taxi
slip away in traffic, the daydream came up on me hard and fast. Adrian and me,
fingers entwined. Christmas dinner with traditional roast goose at the Knight country estate or a posh London brownstone. Edward greeting me with a kiss on the cheek at the door. Children running around shrieking for their Uncle Adrian to play
with them. I broke out in a sudden flush, overwhelmed with the strongest
longing for family I thought I’d ever felt, but not just for me. Family for Adrian.
    The need to get back to
the courthouse and tell Adrian I’d met his grandfather had me scurrying through
traffic, dodging bumpers and the indignant blare of horns. My ears were still
ringing as I ran up the steps of the building, past the thick, two-story
columns I’d hid behind that morning.   I
did think for a moment that I’d heard someone call my name, but I hadn’t been
able to pick out any familiar faces with a quick glance over my shoulder. Just
before I reached the door, a hand locked around my wrist and dragged me toward
the deep shade to one side of the courthouse entrance.
    “Penn?”
    “What did you do,
Chloe?”
    I jerked back on my
arm, but my ex just dug his fingers in deeper. “Could you be more spec—?” I
started to huff, but he shook me.
    “You show up at my
suite, promise to call and blow me off, and this morning I find out more than
one person is calling around making inquiries about my business contacts on the
East Coast and in Brazil. Very specific inquiries, Chloe.”
    Perhaps I should have
been quicker with the offended glare, the indignant denial, but I hesitated
wondering if Karl or maybe Ullman’s clerk had managed to find a loose link in
Penn’s network, something to tug on, to start it all unraveling.
    Penn twisted my arm,
much harder than anything I’d felt from him before, and I yelped. Several feet
away from us, two large men in plain suits shifted nervously and tried not to
watch us so openly. Probably security, unsure as to whether they should step in
as their employer manhandled a woman in public. I had to wonder just how low
Penn had sunken that he needed hired muscle now to mind him.
    “Who have you been
talking to, Chloe, and what have you told them? And who is your source? Did
you—?” He glared fiercely at me. “Did you go snooping through my computer in my
suite?”
    Before I could stop
myself, I snipped, “Didn’t you ?”
    The confusion in Penn’s
eyes this time was anything but endearing, because it wasn’t innocence so much
as surprise I’d figured him out. I knew what he’d done to Karl Richter and that
he’d used his access to me to do it. His eyes turned hard and cold again.
    “You can’t imagine how
much money you’re going to cost me if you fuck up any of the deals at stake
here,” he growled beneath his breath.
    “No, I can’t, and I
don’t want to.”
    “How can you—?” He was
literally panting with anger, snarling through his teeth and hardly able to
speak without outright roaring at me. “You’d betray me after two years with me?
A few weeks with Alexander, and you’re his whore?”
    Despite the fact that
it felt like Penn was about to