Owned by Fate (Serve #1)(24)

For long moments, she studied him intently. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jonah said too quickly, feeling blindsided by her empathy. He hadn’t anticipated it. If anything, he’d expected Caroline to agree with Renee’s decision to keep Gabby away. Or for her to become uncomfortable with the personal nature of the conversation and tune out. “Do all eight-year-old girls like pink?” He asked the question without thinking, wishing immediately that he could snatch it back. What was he thinking?

“I did.” She gave a jerky shrug. “I still like it.”

On top of the unburdened feeling he was experiencing, her compassionate expression suddenly felt like too much. He turned on his heel toward the back of the apartment. “I’m going to put this folder in my office. Make yourself comfortable.”

He could feel her startled gaze on his back as he left the room.





Chapter Nine


Caroline stared after Jonah, feeling as though the rug had been torn out from under her. She shouldn’t have asked about the damn manila envelope. The sadness she’d seen upon arriving at Serve earlier that evening had just come back in full force, knocking the breath from her lungs. It hadn’t seemed easy for him, telling her about his daughter, a topic that appeared to trouble him greatly. She wished he hadn’t told her…wished she hadn’t witnessed his pain or his masculine vulnerability, because now he’d made a dangerous shift in her mind. From sexual fascination to complicated, many-layered potential lover. A man she wanted to know more about. Someone who, despite his assertive nature, still needed soothing, understanding…affection.

No. Not from her. She wasn’t the one to give it to him. Tonight, she’d come here to exorcise the unwelcome feelings he’d stirred inside her. To rid herself of this physical need to experience something her mind found distasteful and wrong. Not to become Jonah’s confidante or to encourage any more communication between them. There were people who were counting on her to be objective and come out the other side of tonight intact. Her family. The magazine’s employees. Her secrecy had kept them all in the dark, but their respectability sat squarely on her shoulders.

With a jolt of urgency, Caroline came back to herself and looked at Jonah’s home for the first time. She could have looked at one hundred apartments and somehow known this was his. In the same sensibility as his club, everything had very clean lines. Stainless steel, white, black, purplish grays made up the color palette. However, there were little quirks scattered throughout the room that one would miss if she wasn’t looking. A giant mural stretched along one wall, a series of boxes inside boxes, painted in such a way that the 3D effect made it look as though one could walk through it into another dimension.

Caroline, interested despite herself, wandered farther into the living room, her feet sinking into plush white carpet. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, although instead of crystals, white hands hung down in tiers as if reaching for her below. Two rosy-cheeked lawn gnomes stood on either side of a massive fireplace, as if on guard duty. A beat-up copy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Slaughterhouse-Five was bookmarked on the mantel.

All these little things spoke volumes about him, having the audacity to make Caroline like him even more. The feeling scared her into action. After casting a quick look over her shoulder to make sure Jonah hadn’t returned, she wound through the living room and pushed open the first door she saw.

His bedroom. It was massive in size, yet nondescript when compared to the living room. As if he’d designed it with the intention of keeping his personality out. Caroline didn’t allow herself time to puzzle over that before she began to strip off her dress. No more conversation or peeks into each other’s lives. Tonight had been arranged for one reason, and she couldn’t lose sight of that. In the process of pulling her dress over her head, Caroline found her attention arrested by something metal hanging from the ceiling. A…bar? She squinted to get a better look, but it was so high up, she couldn’t make it out. Then it hit her. In her online research, she’d seen pictures of suspension bars. As in, a bar used to secure your partner using ropes or cuffs. So he or she couldn’t get free. Jonah had one in his bedroom. In her bedroom, she had a gumball machine and a Breakfast Club movie poster. If that didn’t reiterate their Grand Canyon of differences, she didn’t know what would.

It dawned on her then that she could use this to her advantage. Blast right out of her comfort zone so far she’d have no choice but to go screaming back to it. Away from Jonah in the process.

“What are you doing in here?”

Caroline spun around to find Jonah leaning against the doorjamb. He’d stripped off his shirt to reveal his rugged, muscular chest. He radiated such base sexuality, it caught her momentarily off guard. Unlike most of the citified men she’d seen shirtless, Jonah had hair on his chest, and she could actually feel herself being ruined for smooth, hairless chests forever. Ruined.

Underneath the dark brown hair, a blue anchor tattoo stretched across his pecs, reminding her that he’d been in the Navy. Worked with his hands. Ropes. Shadowed eyes raked her from head to toe, reminding her that, thanks to impulsiveness, she now wore only a red thong. With a tremendous effort, she didn’t squirm under his heated regard but stood her ground and let him look his fill. “I didn’t want to wait.” Ignoring the heat settling between her legs, she encompassed the room with a gesture. “Isn’t this where we were going to end up anyway?”