Page 42 of Alpha Bait

"He doesn't have to know."

"He's my brother. He knows everything."

I leaned over and kissed her.

"Don't sound so defeated."

She turned to face me.

"Say we do disappear. What happens then?"

"I look after you. We live happily ever after. We're fuckin' rich."

She sighed and flopped back onto her back.

"What?"

"Jamal. He controls all my money -- all the family money. I might be rich now, but I won't always be. Not without him."

"Money won't change how I feel about you, Indie."

"You don't mean that."

"I do. You're a brilliant woman. You don't need Jamal and you don't need me to be successful."

She turned back to face me, her face lighting up into a smile.

"You're the first person I've met who's ever suggested I could survive without my family."

"It's true."

"Rich? Let's do it then."

I smiled.

"Really?"

"Yes. But we can't go to Iceland. Or Bali. Or Tuscany."

"Where do you want to go then?"

"Somewhere different. Patagonia?"

"Ahh, Argentina," I replied in a mock Spanish accent.

She giggled.

"Yes. Argentina."

"So what do you say, baby? You want to run away together?"

She stared back at me, uncertain, the reality of what I asked set into her face. Leaving her family would mean sacrificing everything she'd been bred for. It wouldn't be a wanton sacrifice. I was a Carmichael. She was a Holloway. She had every right to be suspicious of me and to question the wisdom of allowing a known scoundrel to steal her heart and whisk her off to South America.

I could practically see the questions whirring by behind her gorgeous brown eyes. She inhaled sharply and returned to her back, her face set into a pensive gaze at the ceiling. Possibilities churned in her mind, including all the possibilities that I might not be the man I said I was.

She sighed.

"Rich..."

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