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Cat.
She was in the dressing room. She spun toward him, her cheeks bright pink, her hair in her eyes and her arms filled with shoes and purses and God only knew what else. Even as he blinked and tried to figure out what was happening, a couple of shoes tumbled from the stack and bounced against the parquet floor.
Those must have been the sounds he’d heard downstairs.
“Cat?” Jake took a careful step forward. “What’s going on?”
“ Mendes is going out,” Anna said. “I told her not to, that you wouldn’t want her to, but she said—”
“She said?” Cat said hotly. “I said that I didn’t need your permission!”
“She doesn’t know the city,” Anna said urgently. “I tried to tell her that, Ramirez, but—”
“Go out?” Jake took another step into the bedroom. It looked as if it had been torn apart. Dresses and little silk things he didn’t want to look at too closely littered the bed; jewelry spilled from open boxes on the dresser. “Go where?”
“Someone phoned,
sir. I was making dinner and—”
“And,” Cat said, blowing her hair out of her eyes, “I picked up the phone.” She gave Jake a chilly smile. “I thought it might be you, but it wasn’t. It was a man named Lucas.”
Jake felt his stomach drop. He turned to Anna and gave her what he hoped was a smile.
“Thank you, Anna. You can go home now.”
“I can stay a little longer, Ramirez, if—”
“Home,” he said firmly. He took out his wallet and pressed some bills into her hand. “Tell the doorman to call you a taxi.”
Anna nodded. Jake waited until he heard the sound of the front door shutting. Then he cleared his throat and turned back to Catarina.
“What did Lucas say?”
“He asked to speak with you. I said you weren’t home and he said—evidently he thought I was Anna—he said there was a party tonight, something last-minute, and if you wanted to come and bring along your Brazilian charity case—”
Oh, hell.
“Cat. It isn’t the way it sounds.”
“—bring along the lady you were trying to fix up so you could get her off your shoulders—”
“Back,” Jake said absently. “Cat. Damn it, I swear I never said—”
“I am going to this party, Jake.”
“No. I mean, not tonight. There’s an Embassy function next week, and—”
‘I—am—going,” Cat said coldly. “I’ll find myself a husband without your help, and I’ll be off your shoulders once and for all.”
“It’s back,” Jake said again. “And you’re not on it. I never said—”
“Get out of my room, please. I want to finish getting dressed.”
Finish? She was wearing a robe. She hadn’t started dressing. But he decided not to risk things by pointing that out.
“I don’t want you to go to this party, Catarina. You’re not ready for it.”
“No?”
