“Yes?” I grunt.
“They’re talking to the cops,” she tells me.
“She has to,” I reply. “No choice. It would look strange if she didn’t. My sweetheart is no fool.”
“There’s something else,” she says.
“Spit it out, then.”
“After you left, she seemed different. Like she was relieved you were gone. And she and her date hugged like it was real. Like she was, I don’t know, sort of seeking comfort in him for whatever you said to her.”
I close my eyes for a moment, wishing I’d stopped by the bar on the way out and smashed her face in. “Perhaps she’s trying to let him down gently.”
“It didn’t look that way to me,” my spy grumbles. “I’m sorry, Mr. Conti, but you asked me to watch and see if this thing between them was real. After you left, it looked real.”
I drive out of Peaks, toward the forest, thinking how easily Elle agreed to meet me. But… but she just had a change of heart, right? She’s finally seeing things my way.
But what if this woman is right?
What if Elle is trying to trick me?
I almost think about calling Father again, but he’s pissed at me for not leaving the country. That was a condition of helping mebreak out of prison. But he doesn’t understand that I couldn’t leave, or even think about leaving, without my woman to back me up.
“She wants this,” I murmur.
“I can’t tell you what to do, sir,” Henrietta replies. “My job is to tell you what I saw, and this is what I saw.”
I hang up, keep driving, keep thinking. This is supposed to be exciting, real, a new adventure. Finally,finally, she’s seeing my attention and my little games for what they are.
Signs we belong together.
But what if…
Fuck.
If she’s trying to trick me, she’ll play. I won’t enjoy it because she’s the one thing I never wanted to hurt. The first time I laid eyes on her, I wanted to own her. No, no, that’s not right. The second I laid eyes on her, I knew Ialreadyowned her.
But if my spy is correct, none of that matters.
It will break what’s left of my heart, but I’ll have to send her to her parents.
CHAPTER 27
ELARA
As Rhett drives through the forest, I smooth my hands over my stomach, trying to quell some of the nausea. I did what I had to do, said what I had to say, but it still feels wrong.
“I feel like a traitor,” I admit quietly.
“Your parents would understand,” Rhett says. “If they knew why you did what you did, said what you said, they’d forgive you.”
“Thanks. But I wasn’t thinking it wasthemI’d betrayed.”
Rhett looks at me, his eyes the same dark intensity that they were when I was playing along with Lucian in the restaurant. It was as if Rhett was on the verge of exploding the entire time.
“You didn’t betray me,” he says firmly. “Because you didn’t mean it. And anyway…”
“This is all fake?” I ask. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”
