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He grunted and circled his finger in the air for me to continue.
“Her mother and Aspen’s ex have been laundering campaign funds or using them for something shady. Other stuff I don’t understand or really give a shit about. But the ex came after the ring because he needs cash. If Aspen gives it to him and he uses it for shady shit with her mother, it’ll lead back to Aspen. The FBI will make it a family affair.”
“She hates her mother.”
“I know. Look, she can’t give him that money. If she won’t listen to me, then I need you to help her. Make sure she doesn’t do it.”
He moved, leaned a hip against the counter where there was a sink and pamphlets about birth control, STDs, and the shingles vaccine.
“You knew about this and let her get sucked in?”
“Hell, no.” I hopped off the table and began to pace, trying to steer clear of Theo as much as possible, which was hard in the small room. “I found out about it the other night. I need to make sure she’s safe. Protected from her mother. From being put in jail.”
I held out a scrap of paper with Mark’s name and number on it. Theo took it, stared at it. “Who’s this?”
“The guy at the FBI who’s running the case on Senator Bergstrom. Have her call him.”
He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
So I did. I told him about Mark. How he’d showed up on my vacation. Asked me to be his wingman at the bar to approach Aspen. That I saw her and wanted her as my own. And everything that followed. That I fell in love with her.
“You love her?” Theo asked, surprised.
“Yes. Crazy, I know.”
I stared at him as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Did you know Aspen is actually a famous ballerina?” he asked. “Infamous actually. A soloist at nineteen. A prodigy, she was called. The best of her generation. Then she mysteriously walked away and disappeared. It’s because she got pregnant with Sierra. Her parents cut her off entirely and she moved here. Legally changed her last name to Lane.”
“Why are you telling me this? I know her parents are assholes. I’ve met them and saw how they treat her firsthand.”
“I don’t give a shit about them,” he snapped. “If you love Aspen, it needs to be about her, not you.”
“What are you talking about? She didn’t want a relationship, so I said we could be fake. I offered her money to pay off her ex, but she wouldn’t take it. So I made it part of the fake relationship.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “It was all about you. You saw her. You wanted her. You needed her for your stupid tabloid bullshit and when she said no, you dangled a carrot in front of her. A big one you knew she needed. How could she refuse?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that. You have fame. Money. The film deal. You have everything. All the power.”
I swiped my hand through the air. “No. That’s not true. She has me by the balls.”
“Yeah, balls. Not heart. Why didn’t you tell her about the FBI guy?”
“I told him she wasn’t involved and figured that was the end of it.”
“You’re charismatic, attractive. You have that stupid hair.” He pointed at it and frowned as if it was a bad thing. “Women fawn all over your ass. You didn’t have to work hard with her. I assume she fell right into your bed.”
I glared at him, not liking the way he was talking about Aspen. He made what we did that night in my hotel room sound cheap.
“I’m here, aren’t I? I could be on a plane to India right now. I turned down the film to make this right.”
His eyes widened making it clear he wasn’t expecting that.
“You think I’m an asshole, fine.” I didn’t give a shit what Theo thought of me. “But I’m here because I don’t want her to go to jail for something I knew from the second I saw her she had no part in. Somehow, in some fucked-up sense of fate or karma or whatever, we ran into her parents the other night. Aspen thought I used her to get to her mother because of the ‘in’ she has with the producer. Not true.”
“The last guy she really dated did the same thing. And he was going to marry her for it.”
