My brow furrowed. “But Pierce, you just?—”
His grip around me tightened in warning as he kept his gaze on his butler. “Please leave us and shut the door behind you.”
Tompkins backed out of the room without saying another word.
“Why wouldn’t you tell him? He needs to get a doctor…and the police.”
“I’m fine. And trust me, he’ll do his part.”
Despite my curiosity over the snooty butler, I had a far more pressing question to ask. “That woman who was in here—who was she?”
“Her name is Skylar,” he said as he led me across the room to a soft leather chair. After sitting, he pulled me down onto his lap.
I was in too much shock to object. I pivoted on his lap to point to the door and the hallway beyond as if the woman would reappear and attest to what I’d witnessed. “She said you asked her to marry you, that she turned you down, that she thought you were going to do something…drastic.”
“Is that what that snake told you?” He brushed a lock of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “And how did that make you feel, babygirl?”
I continued to stare at the empty doorway, then my gaze swept across the room to the chair where I’d found him slumped over, as if walking through the events of the last few moments would help my mind catch up. “What?”
“Did you feel jealous that she told you I asked her to marry me, or were you worried about my safety?”
“I—” My nails bit into my palms. I wanted to claw that woman’s eyes out, but Pierce didn’t need another weapon to use against me.
I tried to rise off his lap, but he stopped me, putting his hand over my thigh and squeezing. A not-so-subtle warning. Pinching my lips, I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “If you must know…I was worried that if you died, I’d go to prison for killing two Worthington men.”
“You are a terrible liar, babygirl.”
I’d give anything to not have let that laugh settle somewhere behind my ribs, in a place I couldn’t reach to pull it out. Why? Why him? Granted there had been precious few men in my life but why him? Who had I pissed off in a former life that theuniverse would make me fall in love with the man who had tormented both my nights and my waking moments?
“Who was she?” I shifted on his lap, putting as much distance as he would allow between us.
“She was my fiancée until a few years ago, when she slept with one of my best friends. She did me a favor.” His hand drifted toward my cheek, but I pulled back. “Especially now.”
“Why were you slumped over in the chair like that? I thought you were dead.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“That is what I wanted you to think.”
My brow furrowed. “You were trying to freak me out? You’ve done some manipulative, controlling, arrogant bullshit to me but to sink so low as to make me think?—”
He wrapped his hand around my neck and pulled me against him so his mouth could claim mine. His tongue didn’t sweep inside like it usually did, but the press of his closed lips was just as domineering…and arousing.
“What was that for?”
“For caring.”
“I just called you a manipulative, controlling?—”
“I know what you said…but I also know what you meant.”
I pursed my lips. “You’re proving my point. Only an arrogant man would assume to know what women are thinking.”
He shifted his hand to cup my cheek. “Not women. Just you.”
My breath caught before I could stop it. I covered it with a cough.
