Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 138334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 692(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 692(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Did he want his rescuer to have that information? He brought his hand up to his eyes. She’d replaced the original bandage with a new one. This one was made of cotton and soaked in soothing cool water.
He had to admit she had saved his life. He never could have moved the branch on his own or gotten himself out of the jungle before Miguel showed up to check on his brother. He was lucky that no one knew he had come to the city yet. He was extremely lucky that the little wildcat rescuing him had chosen to come back for him.
Why? That was the burning question. He had warned her about what kind of man he was. He’d told her the truth. He didn’t leave witnesses. He didn’t get attached. That was the rule he lived by, and it served him well. So why was her scent already affecting him?
“Tell me your name.”
“That would be a mistake on my part. You’ve already said you’re going to kill me the minute you’re back on your feet. I’m not going to make it easy on you by telling you my name.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your fingerprints are all over this room.”
“You wish I’d make it that easy for you,” she said with a little sniff of disdain.
Gedeon was really beginning to like her. He didn’t like too many people, but she didn’t seem to be afraid of him when everyone was terrified to look at him wrong.
“Guess you’re going to have to get used to me calling you all my loving endearments.”
She heaved a sigh. “Fine. My name is Susan. You can call me Susie.”
“You can’t lie worth shit. I’m going to call you my little lotus blossom.”
“You most certainly are not. You’re giving me a headache just talking to you. You probably give everyone headaches when they talk to you.”
She sounded very tired. Exhausted, actually.
He had to get the money sent by courier or it wouldn’t much matter whether she had saved him or not. He didn’t know if he trusted her with that amount of money. The package had been in his jacket, right where he put it, untouched. That didn’t mean if he sent her to send it off, she’d actually follow through. More than a million dollars was a huge temptation, especially for someone living in a dump. He didn’t need his sight to tell him this place was no five-star hotel.
He might as well tell her the truth. “Look, little Lotus Blossom, I appreciate that you would go to all the trouble of saving my ass, especially since it’s clear that you’re not wild for me, but if I don’t send this money to Victor Orlov by courier before midnight, I’m as good as dead. Nothing I say or do will be considered a good enough excuse.”
She sighed. “You could have led with that right away.” There was movement on his left side and then directly behind him. He heard her swear under her breath in a very unladylike manner.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting the blood money for the criminals you work for, what do you think? I didn’t haul you all the way here just to let them send someone to kill you.”
“They’ll know I wasn’t the one to send them the money.”
“No, they won’t,” she denied.
She sounded totally confident. That gave him pause. There was even a twinge of sarcasm in her tone, as if she was annoyed that he persisted in underestimating her. He was beginning to think he did, but it was impossible for her to know how he sent money owed to any of his clients.
“Okay, I’ll bite, baby, how are you going to send the money to them when you don’t even know where to send it, how to send it, who to use, who to send it to, or the exact wording used so they know it’s clean and from me?”
“I looked in your phone.”
“It’s password protected.”
“It was until you told me your password, along with a lot of other things you shouldn’t have told me. Since you were going to kill me anyway, I just let you carry on.”
She sounded smug. He wanted to strangle her because he was very afraid she was telling the truth.
“And then I read all those private messages and learned more things I shouldn’t know. I figured if I was going to die, it should be for a good reason, not for something stupid like I witnessed you doing a good deed killing all those horrible traffickers I had planned on killing or because I saw you shifting into a leopard. Whichever one of those two things you thought it was worth murdering me for.”
She had planned on killing all those men herself? That was laughable. She probably couldn’t kill an insect without feeling remorse. Putting his hands around her neck and strangling her was a very personal way to take her out, and right now his fingers were itching to get the job done. Or maybe he just wanted her to be that close to him again.