The Bravo Billionaire. Christine Rimmer

aunt Cass. You know all about my aunt Cass, now, don’t you? Blythe told me how you sicced your detectives on all of her friends. How you keep files on folks, how you never, ever trust anyone.”

      “Excuse me. There are people whom I trust.”

      “Oh, sure. Maybe. After you’ve had your detectives on them, keepin’ track of their every move for ten or twenty years.”

      He felt that urge again, to wrap his hands around her pretty neck and squeeze. He spoke more quietly than ever. “You have no idea the kind of precautions a man in my position has to take.”

      “You don’t have to take precautions, Jonas. You just do. I mean, all those guards you have out there at that mansion of yours…”

      He did not have guards. Not exactly. He employed a skilled and discreet security force to patrol the grounds at Angel’s Crest.

      The woman was smirking. “Bel Air is a gated community, with security guards checking out anybody who tries to get in. And then you’ve got that big stone fence around your property. And did I mention that other locked gate smack in the middle of that high stone fence, that gate with the camera that zooms in on anyone who rings to be let in? And is that all? Oh, no. There is more. Because you’ve also got those guys straight out of Men in Black sneakin’ around in the jacaranda trees, talkin’ to each other on their walkie-talkies. I mean, pardon me, Jonas, but you are kind of paranoid.”

      “No.” He spoke with extreme patience. “I am not paranoid. I am careful.”

      “You are too careful. And I keep thinkin’ that, no matter how much you love Mandy—and I do know that you love her, Jonas—but no matter how much you care for her, she can’t help but be affected by the way you are, by the way you keep people away from you, the way you are so afraid to trust anybody.”

      “I am not afraid.” He spoke more forcefully than he meant to.

      She actually had the temerity to roll those just-about-green eyes.

      Clearly, they were getting nowhere. He said, very quietly, “I want you to take a good, long look at that offer.” He turned to leave.

      She spoke to his back. “Jonas, this is pointless. I am not goin’ to—”

      “I’ll call you tonight.” He shut the door on her before she could finish whatever it was she had started to say.

      He called her at midnight. She answered the phone on the first ring. “What?”

      “Did you read it?”

      “I did. All the way through to the part about how I give up all claim to custody of Mandy. And then I stopped reading.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I’m not takin’ this offer—which I already told you this afternoon. If you’d only bothered to listen, you could have saved yourself a phone call tonight.”

      At that moment, Jonas realized he was truly and completely fed up with this woman. So fed up that he said exactly what he was thinking. “I could ruin you, Emma Lynn Hewitt.”

      She gasped. He found the small, shocked sound inordinately satisfying. “I guess that was a threat, huh?”

      “Let’s call it a warning.”

      “Call it what you want. It won’t work.” There was steel beneath the twang. “A person’s got to stand for somethin’ or she’ll fall for anything. My aunt Cass used to say that.”

      Terrific. Now she was going to beat him over the head with clever little sayings from country-western songs. “I could care less what your aunt Cass used to say.”

      “Well, all right. Then listen to this. This is what I say. You are not bullyin’ me into doing things your way.”

      The problem, Jonas realized then, was that she meant exactly what she said. Damn her.

      This couldn’t be happening to him. But it was.

      Everyone had a price—except, apparently, Emma Lynn Hewitt. For Emma Lynn Hewitt, no amount would be high enough.

      He could break her, financially, and she knew it. Yet even the threat of losing everything she’d worked for wouldn’t make her give in and see things his way. The woman had values. And she was determined to stick by them. She would come to her own decision, in her own time. And whatever that decision was, he was going to have to live with it.

      “Oh, Jonas.” Her tone, all at once, had become insultingly gentle. “I do understand why you are how you are. Blythe told me all about it. And it’s no secret anyway. I know it was all over the newspapers back then. Such an awful, terrible thing. I am so sorry, that ugly things like that can happen, that sometimes evil never gets made right. And Blythe, well, you probably know that she blamed herself. She said that her breakdown took her away from you just when you needed her most.”

      Jonas put the phone below his chin and sat back in his chair. He looked up at the intricately carved crown moldings overhead.

      Emma Hewitt blathered on. “When she was better, she tried to reach out to you. But she said, by then, you’d spent so much time feelin’ all alone that you were used to it. You wouldn’t open up to her. You wouldn’t open up to anyone, you wouldn’t—”

      Jonas had heard enough. Very quietly, while she was still talking, he hung up the phone.

      After that, Jonas waited. He had finally understood that he had no other choice. He did not call Emma Hewitt or try in any way to contact her again.

      Three more days went by. During that time, he found he was coming to grips with the fact that there would be a long court battle.

      So be it. Possession was nine-tenths of the law. Mandy lived with him and she would continue to live with him. He could have his lawyers stall and negotiate for years. By the time Emma Hewitt won custody—if, in the end, she did win—Mandy would be all grown-up and running her own life, anyway.

      By Monday, one week before the deadline set out in Blythe’s will, Jonas had become certain that he would not hear from the Hewitt woman until the deadline had passed and her lawyer got in touch with his lawyer to begin the custody suit.

      That night, she came to him at Angel’s Crest.

      Chapter 5

      It was eleven-thirty at night and it was raining when Palmer got the call from the gatehouse. The butler found Jonas at his desk in the study.

      “Ms. Emma Lynn Hewitt at the main gate, sir.”

      Jonas shut the lid on his laptop, aware suddenly of the feel of his own blood, the hot surge of it through his veins. “Tell them I’m expecting her and let security know she’s on the way up.”

      “Of course.”

      “Show her in here when she gets to the house.”

      “I’ll do just that, sir.”

      Palmer left him.

      Jonas got up and went to the bank of windows nearest the desk. He stared out at the night, at the lacy shadows of the jacarandas moving in the wind and the waving branches of the palms. The hard warm August rain pinged against the leaded-glass panes, glittering as it slithered down.

      The study was at the front of the house. After a time, he saw her headlights cut the night. The lights slid past the window where he stood and stopped not far from the front portico. They went dark.

      Jonas didn’t move. He waited, standing absolutely still.

      Soon enough, he heard the door behind him open. “Ms. Hewitt,” Palmer announced.

      Jonas turned.

      She stood in the doorway, Palmer close behind her. She wore an ordinary gray raincoat thrown over a curve-hugging shirt of some sort of elasticized lace. The shirt didn’t quite meet the waist of her clinging white bell-bottomed pants.