Behind Closed Doors (Behind Closed Doors #1)(48)

“Which I should have expected,” he replies. “And baby, I play really damn good ‘f*ck you’ poker, but our options to get you out of this are limited. I’ve been chasing options in my mind—”

“While winning your table?”

“No. I shut it out until the minute it was over. I could put you under lock and key, but then you’re under lock and key until I find a way out of this. I could go grab some other woman, kiss her and let her hang on me to make it seem like you’re unimportant, but no one would believe that since you came as my guest. There is no answer but ending this. I don’t even know what to say to you.”

“This isn’t your fault, Jason.”

“I knew I had this going on in my life, yet I chose now to get involved with you. So yes. It is my fault.”

“This thing happening in your life is why we met in the first place, and Stephanie could have easily brought me into this herself. I bought her storage unit. And speaking of her, she has to be here. Otherwise she wouldn’t know about me.”

“Unless someone’s helping her,” he says. “And I’d like to think that amounts to nothing more than some hotel staff—not someone on the circuit.”

“The waitress?”

“She’s on my radar, but I couldn’t call attention to her without shutting down the game and implying some sort of security breach.”

“Which she was, and is,” I point out.

“Which would have only made me look more suspicious later, if I were to be accused of stealing.”

“Then I assume going to security is out of the question?”

“I can’t risk them grabbing her, and her rebelling by accusing me of stealing right in the middle of filming this show.” His lips thin. “All reactions that were expected when that napkin was handed to me.”

“You blinked tonight.”

“What?”

“When you read that note on the napkin, there was a subtle telltale sign. It shook you.”

“I don’t blink.”

“You did, Jason.” My mind goes to the place it had earlier tonight. “A lot of people want the king to fall, and you’re the king. What if Stephanie isn’t asking for money because someone is paying her to rattle you? Maybe no one intends to blackmail you at all.”

“I’ve considered that option, but that’s a gamble I can’t take. Not with everything she’s put on the table, which now includes you.”

“Don’t make decisions to keep me calm, because I’m not freaking out.”

He studies me for several beats. “Why aren’t you?”

I think of the past manipulators in my life, some high profile and powerful. “She wins then,” I say. “She can’t win, and the reality is that she didn’t think this through. She and whoever else is behind this have gone too far. You’re in a corner now and ignoring her is no longer an option. You can fight back, or you can roll over and start losing tournaments. And I haven’t known you long, but I know you aren’t someone who rolls over.”

“Or they think they have me just desperate enough to hand me a ransom demand that I will pay.”

“Or that,” I concede, shaking my head. “I hate the idea of being used against you.”

His hands settle at my waist. “Skye—” His cell phone rings, and his expression tightens. “I have to—”

“Yes. Take it. Please.”

He releases me, removing his cell from his pocket, glancing at the screen and then me long enough to say, “Daniel,” before he answers the call and listens a minute, exchanging a few undecipherable comments before he ends the connection.

“The waitress disappeared,” he tells me. “Abel and Daniel are looking for Stephanie, but the PI we’re using has absolutely no lead on her being here.”

“Maybe she’s not,” I say. “Maybe she just paid someone to pull this off today.”

“She has no money, which would mean she promised them something in exchange.”

“Or someone else did,” I say, returning to the place we both know this could lead. “Someone who wants you to start losing.”

“So if I lose, I end this. For you and me.”

“No,” I say. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s the obvious solution.”

“If you do that, what keeps them from doing this to someone else? I mean if they can do this to you and win, why not others? If you pay a blackmail fee that never ends, then you encourage whoever this is to do that to others as well. Is that how you want this to go? Is that what you really want to do?”

He presses his hands on the wall next to me, his arms caging me although I don’t want to escape. “What I want to do is play ‘f*ck them’ poker, and erase that blink you saw.”

“How?”

“By kissing you the way I want to kiss you right here and now, then going outside into the public, and doing it again before winning the tournament.”

“Do it. All of it.”

His fingers tangle in my hair. “When this night is over—”

“Don’t say we need to talk—because there are other promises you’ve made me that I think I’ve earned.”