He gave me a smug, self-satisfied look. ‘You know who I work for.’
I scrutinised him for a while. It was true. It would be easy enough for him to keep that promise.
‘I’ll get it in writing before we begin,’ he said.
‘Aargh!’ I threw my hands in the air.
‘Lizzy, this could be the case of your career. Bigger than catching cheaters.’
‘I like catching cheaters.’
‘I’m not asking you to do it for me. I’m asking you to properly finish the job you came here to do. Your client wants justice, and if you help me, that’s what you’ll be giving her. In fact, it will be more justice than she bargained for.’
I groaned, letting my head fall into my hands.
‘Why don’t you pitch it to her and see what she says.’ I hadn’t noticed until now, but Cam had somehow managed to walk all the way up to me. The sun was behind him, and it framed him in a way that made him bloody glow. He was still shirtless, and the play of light and dark on his chest was doing something to all those stupid muscles. ‘You know you want to.’
‘Fuck!’ I hissed.
‘Talk to Sharaz, see what she thinks. And if she doesn’t care, then you can just walk away from this and I will leave you the hell alone. You will never see me or hear from me again. But if she likes the idea, well . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s play happy couple in love and go catch a bad guy.’
I tried to play it casual, like it was any other job, any other cover, but it wasn’t.
This was anything but casual.
I needed more time with her.
Just a little more time to make her see what I already knew – that whatever this thing was between us, it wasn’t fake, and it sure as hell wasn’t going away any time soon.
Should I have pretended that I’d deleted her footage? No. Stupid, stupid move. But I always found myself making these idiotic mistakes when I was around her, because when I was around her, my brain didn’t really work the way it should, and logic flew out the window.
Because when I was around her, it was all emotion. Nothing rational survived.
CHAPTER 25
Problem was, when I pitched the idea to Sharaz, shelovedit. And I don’t mean loved it in a normal way; she was obsessed with it. And since we were on a video call, I had the pleasure of watching for at least five minutes as she laughed until she cried. When she was done, mascara smeared and the hyperventilating finally stopped, she managed to speak again.
‘Oh my God,’ she gasped. ‘People will be talking about this for years to come. His golf buddies, his business connections, and all the wives. Oh, they’ll feast on this scandal like it’s a five-course meal. This is socialannihilation. I love it. Do you have any idea how humiliated he’ll be?’
I nodded. Once more, the rich were very strange. Her main joy was his humiliation, his public ousting from their upper-crust society, not the fact that he would actually be behind bars. ‘I’ll do it then,’ I said. Professionalism always won in the end, even though the idea of being near Cam made me feel anything but professional. I hung up. This was a disaster, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive this ludicrous plan of ‘till death do us part’ . . .
Death.Yes. There was the solution. I could just kill him. I burst out laughing and let my mind wander for a second, enjoying all the various ways in which I could hasten that outcome.
Shit! I needed to vent. To yell. To scream into the void. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a handy void available, so I did the next best thing.
‘Hey!’ Philly’s voice chirped happily on the other end of the line. ‘How’s island life?’
‘Philly, it’s a disaster.’
‘What is?’
‘It’s Cam and me,’ I moaned.
‘What? Lizzy. You didn’t? Did you?’
‘Didn’t what?’ I suddenly caught on. ‘No! Not that. Definitely not that.’
‘Well, if not that, then what?’ she asked.
