She licked her lips. “Hardeep paid my dad off, with the demand that he not bother us. I don’t know the exact amount, but I assume it was huge.”
Jas squeezed her waist. “Yes. I knew about that. Hardeep put us on notice to make sure he didn’t show up. I figured your dad must have been a terrible guy, but I didn’t know the scope of the terribleness.”
That had been another big attraction to marrying Hardeep. He’d had people in place to protect her.
A surge of love flowed through her at his memory. Herhusband had been so good and lovely and generous in so many ways. Hardeep had assured her the money was nothing to him, and it was a proper quid pro quo, but it was still hard to shake that feeling of being a bother. An expensive bother. “That bribe eats at me sometimes. Like Hardeep had to buy me.”
“Whatever Hardeep did for you, I’m grateful.”
“I only wish I could have done it on my own,” she confessed. Her deepest shame, that familiar bitterness over the fact that she’d needed help.A big strong man to save you.
After the wedding, for a while, she’d tried to join Hardeep on his daily jogs before finally admitting she hated running. The only way she’d managed to get through those three-mile-long hilly jaunts was by concocting elaborate revenge scenarios against her father if he ever came crawling back.
They were dramatic and impressive scenarios where she placed her stiletto heel on his neck and laughed while he begged for money and mercy. She’d filed them away, and now she had a far more rational break-glass-in-case-of-emergency plan, a fund of money to ensure she could pay her dad off again if he ever tried to bother her. Keeping a well-stocked bribery account wasn’t nearly as exciting as, say, forcing the man to eat a bug for every hundred dollars he wanted from her, but it was definitely more grown up.
“How would you have done it on your own? Sounds like you were barely able to breathe on your own, without him watching you. That you managed to find someone in a position to help you is a miracle. That you took that help is another one. I’m grateful,” he repeated.
The words settled on her soul like a balm. It was the mushiest thing anyone had ever said to her, and her heart galloped. “Yes. I guess I am too.”
He rubbed her back for a while in silence. “Katrina?”
“Yes?” She yawned.
“My knee is killing me and my butt is cold. Can we go back to bed?”
She gave a soggy laugh. So much for mushy romance. “Yes. Let’s go back to bed.”
Chapter Twenty
KATRINA LEARNED QUICKLYover the course of the next morning and afternoon that reciprocated affection did not turn you into a princess with a perfect singing voice and talking woodland creatures.
It did, however, turn you into a space cadet.
She’d been delayed taking Doodle out for her potty break this morning and had to clean up the consequences, all because she had dawdled in the shower, soaping up her aching body and watching Jas brush his teeth through the steamed-up glass of her shower. She’d burned their quiche at breakfast because Jas had had the nerve to wear a pair of snug cotton joggers with a white T-shirt French-tucked into the front waistband. She’d almost knocked her cup of coffee over onto her laptop because Jas had had the further nerve to bend over in the aforementioned sweatpants.
He was so lean, but tightly put together. Like a very sleek sports car. A manual one.
Katrina rested her chin in her hand and stared out the window. Jas had left to go do something outside a few hoursago, and she’d been grateful. Out of sight, out of mind, and she could give her poor brain a reprieve from thinking about his butt and cotton and his butt in cotton, but alas, her focus seemed to be shot even when he wasn’t sashaying in front of her.
“Katrina?”
Katrina’s gaze cut guiltily away from the window and back to the open laptop on the breakfast table. “Yes?” she asked, and pushed her hair behind her ear. She pointedly shifted her chair so she wouldn’t be able to see out the window.
Rhiannon peered at her. She and Lakshmi were sitting side by side on a couch, a tiny bit of their luxurious hotel room in India visible. On the split screen was Jia, who was, thankfully, painting her nails and hadn’t seemed to notice Katrina’s distraction. “I said, I’m glad you’re ready to go on the offensive,” Rhiannon repeated.
Katrina sobered. The single cloud hovering over her sex-induced happiness was the bane of her existence. Well, one of them.
Up until now, she’d avoided looking at Becca, Alan, or Ross’s Instagram accounts, but Ross had done a live video for his “fans” last night. She and Jas had obviously been otherwise occupied, but once she’d come out of her haze enough to check her phone this morning, she’d found texts from Rhiannon and Jia.
Katrina had scrolled through Ross’s Instagram before watching the video and had been disturbed by his recent posts with their vague as hell captions. A shirtless shot ofhim contemplating the ocean:Sunsets are better with your sweetheart. #CafeBae #CuteCafeGirl #nofiltersrequired #theLordismyfilter.A photo of him, again shirtless, holding his mom’s dog:Sandy’s kisses can’t compare tohers.#CafeBae #CuteCafeGirl #PuppyLove #CantWaitToSeeHer #weddingbells.
Barf.
None of that had compared to the video, though. She’d watched it with Jas next to her, but even his presence hadn’t prevented the cold ball forming in the pit of her stomach.
Over the course of twenty minutes, Ross fielded questions from people about his new nutrition company, his past as an athlete, and his exercise regimen. Then the questions about her had started. Where was she, why wasn’t she coming forward, were they really seeing each other, what was her real name?
Ross had spouted some cutesy non-answers, but for the last one, the bastard had looked straight into her camera and winked.I’m sure one of you super-sleuths can find out who CuteCafeGirl is. No one’s truly impossible to find.
