CHAPTER SEVEN
THIS IS YOUR MOMENT. Don’t mess it up.
Katie Whittaker jammed her ear against the living room door, straining to hear Jared Caine’s voice through the wood as he talked on his cell phone. Her heartbeat thumped her throat in heavy staccato punches.
“Lloyd Whittaker’s arraignment hearing is tomorrow. I’ve got Danners and Ramirez escorting her to the courthouse to testify. She’s holding up okay. She’s not great at taking orders, but she’s pretty spunky for a kid whose old man beat up her sister right in front of her.”
A kid?
Heat exploded in her cheeks like a mushroom cloud—and her heart shrank in her chest.
She was nineteen. She wasn’t a kid. Not anymore. Not after what had happened two weeks ago.
A shudder reverberated down her spine at the memory of her sister Megan’s cries for help muffled by another door.
Don’t think about that now.
Megan was safe now in Italy with Dario De Rossi—the billionaire who had rescued her sister the night Lloyd Whittaker had gone rogue. The man Megan was going to marry.
Katie swallowed past the bubble of panic—and loneliness.
Megan deserved to be happy. Megan deserved to be the Whittaker sister having lots of hot sex on a private island in Italy with her handsome billionaire fiancé—because she’d stood up to their father, and taken the brunt of his anger, while Katie, as usual, had gotten off scot-free. Because, instead of busting down the door and saving Megan herself, Katie had run away and got Dario De Rossi to do the job for her.
Was that why Jared Caine—the security expert Dario had asked to look out for her—thought she was still a kid? Did he know what a coward she’d been?
Ever since their first meeting when Dario had introduced her to his friend Jared—and he’d clasped her fingers in a strong, unyielding grip that had sent five hundred volts of electrical energy zipping and zinging up her arm—she’d wanted him to like her. But everything she’d done to attract his attention, to get him to notice her, had backfired.
When she’d followed his instructions to the letter, he’d simply stopped coming around, leaving his men to watch over her. And, when she’d argued with his orders, instead of him realizing she was too old to be treated like a child he’d become even more detached, even more patronizing, listening patiently to all her concerns then telling her what to do anyway.
But tonight all that was going to change. She was going to show Jared she wasn’t that frightened kid who had run out on her own sister. She was going to show him the real Katie. Show him that she could be strong, smart and brave just like Megan. When she put her mind to it.
Panic wrestled with the mac and cheese she’d had for dinner.
All you have to do is show him who you really are.
She clasped the handle and willed herself to open the door.
“You know what you are, Katie? You’re just like your mother.”
Lloyd Whittaker’s oft-repeated observation whispered across her consciousness—insidious and destructive—and her fingers clenched on the polished glass handle.
It’s not true.
She was nothing like Alexis Whittaker. The woman who had let down everyone who loved her. Megan had told her as much over years and years, whenever Lloyd Whittaker had accused Katie of being reckless and stupid and shallow. And, anyway, they’d discovered two weeks ago that Lloyd Whittaker wasn’t even their biological father. He’d just pretended to be for years so he could steal money from their trust fund. So what did he know?
The latch clicked and Katie stepped into the room. The breath she’d been holding gushed out as Jared’s gaze rose from his cell phone. He stood in the window alcove, silhouetted by the street lamp outside, his tall, broad-shouldered frame on instant alert.
“Katherine? Is there a problem?” He tucked his cell phone into the back pocket of his pants. The intensity of his gaze as he studied her had warmth blooming in her stomach, and it gave her the courage to walk across the room.
She loved the way he looked at her, as if she was the only person he could see. The only person who mattered in that instant. No one had ever looked at her with that much concentration before. Not even Megan.
She forced herself to keep on going, her bare feet making no sound on the rug.
“Maybe,” she said, past lungs clamped in a vice.
“What is it?” She heard the concern. Need rolled through her and her heart pumped so fast she could hear it thundering in her ears.
He did care, behind that wall of detachment, that veneer of professionalism.
She didn’t stop until she reached the alcove—and stood close enough to him to absorb the harsh beauty of his rough-hewn features. She let her gaze drift over the intriguing scar which bisected his upper lip, the closely cropped US Marine-style hair, which made him look fierce enough to wipe out a Taliban stronghold single-handed, the sensual mouth that never quite cracked a smile and the defined muscles on his arms and shoulders stretching the seams of the tailored white shirt.
At five foot eight she had always felt too tall, but Jared Caine had to bend his head to meet her gaze. The evidence of his height sent the whisper of sensation shuddering downward. And the vice around her lungs tightened.
“Why don’t you ever call me Katie?” she asked.
His gaze remained steady, the blue of his irises so deep and true in the light from the street, she felt herself drowning in them. Every inch of her skin prickled with reaction. The awareness of him was so strong, the muscles in her belly liquefied.
A muscle twitched in the stubble on his cheek. And his gaze flicked down.
A startling heat swept through her, driven by the five hundred volts she
