Chapter Twenty-Seven
Through a glaze of tears, Harper drove back to her town house. How could she have actually believed Chase was falling in love with her? How could she have been such a fool?
As she thought back on it, every time she’d been with him, she had been the initiator, the seducer. No virile male turned down sex when it was offered, and Chase was an extremely virile male.
A sob caught in her throat. All Chase had ever wanted was a connection to her father. A way to get information that would put Knox Winston in jail.
Her heart twisted, her despair so great her whole body ached with it. She’d had a thing for Chase Garrett since she was sixteen. As a woman, that attraction had grown far beyond infatuation.
On their perilous journey into the jungle, she had come to admire him—his skills, his instincts, his protectiveness. Her attraction had turned into a powerful sexual desire, then deepened into love.
A shudder rippled through her. Stupidly, those feelings had allowed him to manipulate her, use her to get to her father.
She never would have guessed his animosity ran so deep.
Harper wiped a fresh rush of tears from her cheeks. Was her father actually a criminal?
DEA. Drug Enforcement Administration. They had to believe Knox Winston was involved in drug smuggling or some other heinous crime. As she parked the car in her garage and went into her town house, a dozen thoughts swarmed through her head.
Her father did business with people in South America. After her mother had died, in the years before Harper had left for college, she had helped her dad entertain foreign business associates at the house. She spoke Spanish, which he was extremely proud of. She was a real asset, he had said.
But any business discussions were held behind closed doors, and she was never included.
She thought back to what Agent Tanner had said. What if he and Bran Garrett were telling the truth? What if her father had ordered an attack on Chase to keep him away from her?
She no longer trusted Chase but she trusted Bran. He wouldn’t lie about something like that.I know my brother well enough to know his feelings for you are real.
Her heart squeezed. Was it true? It wouldn’t change what Chase had done, but Harper desperately wanted to believe she was more than just a pawn in a scheme to get back at her father.
One thing was certain. No matter what Chase did or didn’t feel for her, she didn’t want to see him hurt. Add to that, she owed him for saving her brother. She didn’t want him injured—or God forbid, even killed!
Since she couldn’t face her father looking as if she had spent the night in Chase’s bed—exactly where she had been—she hurried upstairs to her bedroom to shower and put on something presentable.
Choosing a conservative dark brown pencil skirt, she added a rust-colored silk blouse and heels, the sort of outfit she knew would please her dad. She pulled her hair into a twist, dabbed on enough makeup to hide the pallor of her face, grabbed her purse and headed back out to the BMW.
Pausing long enough to text Shana that she would be late getting to work, she backed the Beemer out of her garage and headed for Highway 114 for the half hour drive to Westlake.
All the way there, she tried to figure out what she could possibly say to ensure Chase’s safety without letting her dad know his conversation last night had been overheard.
Which brought her to another problem.
Could she actually stand by and allow the federal authorities to collect enough evidence to put her father in prison? She couldn’t let it happen, yet if she told him about the device in the bottle of scotch, she might be the one going to prison.
Worse yet, he would know Chase was responsible for putting it there. Would he actually order him killed?
Her stomach roiled and doubt prickled her skin. She had witnessed her father’s ruthlessness on more than one occasion, heard the brutal way he spoke to anyone who displeased him. More than once, she had actually seen him strike one of his employees.
She thought of her mother’s suicide. At the time, she’d been too young to wonder what had caused her mother’s depression, but as she’d grown older, she had begun to believe it was more than partly her father’s fault.
She remembered his abusive language, the disdain he had shown Amelia Winston. The abusive way he had treated her brother.
Michael.Suspicion crawled through her. Michael had been kidnapped in Curaçao and taken to Colombia. He had been purposely singled out, yet no ransom had been demanded. Who was responsible? What was their motive? Was it something to do with drugs? Was her father somehow involved?
She pulled up to the gate and the guard let her pass. Following the winding road, she drove up in front of the sprawling Italian villa, pulled to a stop in front of the house. Harper took a deep breath. She had to be careful, handle her dad just right.
She rang the bell, and her father’s latest butler opened the door.
“Good morning, Giuseppe. I need to see my dad.”
