“We can fix this. Don’t contact him anymore, okay? How much money did you give him?”
“Thirty thousand dollars.”
“What the—”
“I didn’t take it from you all. It’s my savings.”
Grant wanted to go after Alan, kill him, and bury him in one of the carefully curated flower beds. But instead, he picked Kate up and carried her back to the house.
“Should we tell her grandmother?” Grant saw Margaret through the window. She looked as if she was having a good time.
“No,” Kate said. “Just let me go to my room. I can walk.”
She struggled to climb out of his arms, but Grant ignored her and carried her upstairs. Mark dug the key out of Kate’s clutch and let them into her hotel room.
“I’ll stay with her,” Grant told his cousins.
“I don’t need—” Kate protested.
“I wasn’t asking,” Grant said.
Chapter 59
Kate
Kate had needed some air to clear her head, but then Alan had surprised her on the path.
“You need to pay up,” he said. “And I don’t mean money.”
He was trying to drag her off the path when the Holbrook cousins had shown up. She was so relieved to be rescued.
She didn’t think Alan would try to blackmail her any further. Between Grant and Carter, he was probably scared out of his mind. She hoped he didn’t press charges, though, but he had been able to walk, so it probably wasn’t that bad.
“What happened, Kate?” Grant said, lying next to her after she ran out of energy to cry.
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice husky. “He was my professor. He was married. His teenaged daughter found out. She called me.”
“You didn’t know,” Grant told her. “He lied to you and led you on.”
“But you don’t understand.” She could barely talk through a new round of sobs. “I still kept seeing him for days after. He said his wife was a bitch and hated him and he loved me and he was leaving her for me. His daughter finally gave me a list of other students he did the exact same thing to. I’m so stupid. I ruined that poor girl’s family.”
“Alan Von Breuer ruined his family,” Grant said firmly. “He was wrong on so many levels.”
“He’s going to come back and ruin you!” Kate cried. “You’ll go to jail, and it will be all my fault!”
“Hey,” Grant said, taking her face in his hands, “I can take care of myself and you. Don’t worry about it. I saved you, didn’t I? Let me handle it.”
“You did save me,” she agreed, sniffling.
“I’ll always save you,” Grant said solemnly, “if you’ll let me. I’m serious about you. We should just, I don’t know, go out for dinner or something and talk like normal people.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling at him. “I’d like that.”
Kate didn’t know when it would happen because as soon as they got back from the wedding, she and Walter were immediately back in the air for several weeks to build off the success Grant had had with the Ethiopian mining contracts. They flew back in town for a big party being thrown in Grant’s honor.
Grant was a rock star, and in addition to selling Holbrook Enterprises to the mining company in East Africa, he had also managed to secure a contract with a Nordic shipping company.
At the party, when asked how he had managed to beat out the German and French logistics companies, he had smiled sheepishly and said, “I did a tour in Afghanistan with a Norwegian Special Forces guy whose dad runs this company.”
