The Mogul and the Muscle: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(68)

“What about it?” I asked, drawing my eyebrows together. “And how is that even relevant?”

He crossed his arms. “Nicholas had to warn me about the blender.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the blender. It works great.”

“You should probably need a license to operate it.”

“Are you trying to be funny right now?” I asked. “Because I don’t know what this has to do with anything.”

“I’m just realizing how much I don’t know about you.”

“What are you talking about? You know plenty about me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do I? I know your work history. I know things that anyone could discover if they did some research. Other than that, all I know are things you accidentally let slip in a moment of weakness, or things you had to tell me because I asked direct questions. Even then you can be evasive.”

“I’m evasive?” I could feel my cheeks flushing and it had nothing to do with the sun. He couldn’t be serious. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not the one in danger,” he said. “And because there are some things I can’t tell you.”

I put my hands on my hips. “That’s very convenient, don’t you think? I know you speak Russian and own a six-thousand-dollar custom tailored tux, but I have no idea how or why.”

“It cost four.”

“That’s a good deal, it’s beautiful. And also beside the point. I think your number one skill is question evasion.”

“I told you, I can’t always answer questions.”

“Of course—murky past. Top secret. Things you can’t reveal to anyone or you’d have to kill them.”

“Look, Cameron, you’re my client. And as my client, I thought we had an understanding.”

I knew he was right. I was his client, and I should have told him. But I was at the tail end of a day that had included scary people following me, a trashed office, a high-tech spy gadget, and the continuation of a PR fiasco. And he’d just poked at one of my deepest private insecurities.

Other than my three friends, the only people around me were employees. I was alone.

“Right, your client.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you’re here. To do a job.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. He probably sensed danger. And I could have stopped there, but instead, I snapped.

“You didn’t even want this job. You’re supposed to be retired, not shadowing a bitchy CEO in and out of meetings all day.”

“Cameron—”

“And because some psycho broke in to my house, suddenly we’re sleeping together. I’m in the middle of a PR nightmare, my office is trashed, and someone’s trying to either get rid of me or hurt me, or both. And here we are, playing house, watching Food Network in my bedroom and fucking in a hotel closet. We still don’t know who’s behind all this shit, and now the whole thing is fucking complicated.”

“Well, maybe we should have kept it professional.”

His words stung, but I refused to let it show. Fought back those traitorous tears threatening to form in the corners of my eyes. “Apparently so.”

A flash of emotion crossed his face, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. “I still have a job to do.”

“Fine. Do your job. I’ll sit here on house arrest so the big bad wolf doesn’t eat me. And I’m not hiding anything from you, so you can drop the interrogation.”

I turned and walked back inside. I didn’t stomp. I didn’t try to slam the door. I didn’t clench my hands into fists or whip my hair around in a show of anger.

I stayed cool and collected. The consummate professional. If he wanted to be a brick wall bodyguard, I’d be the unflappable CEO.

It didn’t matter that I was crumbling on the inside. I didn’t have time to crumble. There were too many people who depended on me. Too many responsibilities for me to see to. I’d hold myself together, like I always did. Keep a tight grip on my feelings and face each problem as it came. As the saying went, I’d put my hair up, put on some gangsta rap—or maybe some eighties pop—and handle it.

I couldn’t afford to be more vulnerable right now.





30





Jude





Cameron walked away like she’d just left an R&D debriefing. I could imagine her strolling calmly to her office to catch up on emails. Maybe taking her laptop out to the upper balcony so she could sit in the shade of an umbrella and get some work done.

Like she didn’t care.

Like I was just another employee.

An employee who’d been dismissed.

Fuck this.

For the first time in five years, I was quitting a job. I didn’t need this shit. She was the one who’d kept information from me. And she had the audacity to get defensive? I was trying to keep her safe—keep someone from screwing up her life, or worse. So much worse.

And she wanted to argue about who was keeping secrets. Who was being guarded.

Yeah, I was fucking guarded. I kept secrets. A fuck ton of them. But that was the nature of my life. I didn’t say the actual words very often because it tended to freak people out, but I’d been a spy. A spook. People thought they knew what that meant because of movies and spy dramas. But they didn’t know. They had no fucking idea.