“Okay, for one, I didn’t know if the plan was going to go through until later this afternoon. And two, I needed to meet with Crawford alone, and the only way to do that was?—”
“To get rid of me?”
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate in his blunt response. “Ineeded you out of that restaurant, but there had to be a plausible reason to explain your sudden exit.”
“And your first thought was to have some woman you work with pretend to be an E.R. nurse from Charlotte? Do you haveanyidea what I felt when she told me my sister was hurt? That Avery’s condition wascritical? I mean, at the veryleast, you could have given me a heads up.”
“Actually, I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Both.” Colt inched closer. “If that upsets you, I’m sorry, but I promised I’d tell you the truth. And the truth is, if you’d known what I had planned, your reaction when you got that call wouldn’t have been sincere.”
“My reaction?”
He nodded. “I know it was harsh, but you needed to hear the news cold so your reaction to it was genuine. Crawford needed to believe the story, which meant making you believe it, too.
“Butwhy?” Her elevated voice echoed off the hotel’s thin walls. “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t wait until after dinner to meet with Gordan. Or why not wait until tomorrow, when I’m on a plane back to North Carolina?”
“It couldn’t wait.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
Alex scoffed as her back teeth crunched painfully together. “Really?That’swhat you’re going with? ‘Because?’”
“I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
“I did.”
“The whole truth, Coulter.”
“Thatisthe whole truth, Alex.” He took a broad step toward her. “I did what was needed to get you out of that restaurant and away from that son of a bitch.”
“And that was the best plan you could come up with? What the hell were you thinking?”
The guilt and regret that had been on his face before vanished with the hardening of his stare.
“Funny. I was about to ask you that very same thing.”
“Me?” Alex flinched. “What didIdo?”
“Please, you were practically swooning all over the guy.”
She sucked in a disbelieving breath. “I did no such thing.”
“I mean, it makes sense, right? Given that you prefer your men to be ‘a bit more mature’.”
Her brows dipped inward with confusion before his words finally sank in.
Son of a?—
“You were listening to us?” Alex’s voice rose to a higher pitch. “But how?”
Colt remained quiet as he glanced down at her wrist.
