Page 41 of Claimed by Him

Nineteen

I tooka deep breath as I ran up the steps to the front door of a beautiful, sprawling house. Only a few streets over from where Jenna and Rylan lived, I now realized I hadn’t fully appreciated how rich Jalen was until this very moment. It was one thing to know that he’d sold his first company for a large, undisclosed sum. It was something else entirely to see what he’d been able to do with the money.

Fortunately, that just made me feel even better about what I was doing now. He had the sort of money and public face needed to get things done. Since he was the one who hired me, I didn’t feel guilty about talking to him before telling Theo I’d found Meka. Besides, if something went wrong, it would crush Theo if I gave him hope that the worst was almost over.

I knocked on the door and waited. I twisted my fingers together as I mentally ran through what I wanted to say. Because of how things had gone the last time we’d been together, I knew he’d most likely tell me to get lost, which meant I needed to get him to understand that I wasn’t here for me before he slammed the door in my face. Those girls couldn’t afford for more time to be wasted.

I had my mouth open, ready to give Jalen a rapid-fire list of all the reasons he needed to help me, but when the door opened…it wasn’t Jalen.

She was tall, but not quite as tall as me, slender, almost too much though, but none of that was my business. It didn’t matter that I now recognized her as a model I’d seen on billboards and magazines all over the country. Elise Marx, if I remembered correctly. Long, chestnut brown hair, the sort of dark eyes that men wrote about. She was gorgeous.

“Who are you?” She crossed her arms as if my being here was interrupting something important. Her beauty sleep, no doubt. Although from the looks of her, she didn’t need much of that.

I ignored the fact that, for all Jalen’s talk when he’d seen Clay, it hadn’t taken him long to fill his bed. That wasn’t why I was here though. He was an ass, and I didn’t want that drama in my life. I wasn’t here for me, or even for Jalen, really. I was here for Meka and the other girls. Jalen was a means to an end.

“My name’s Rona Quick. Jalen hired me to find…hired me to do some research for him. Is he here?”

She gave me a tight smile. “My husband isn’t available right now.”

Husband?

Okay, now I was pissed. That asshole had made me part of an affair. But again, not the point of me being there. I could be furious with him later, when this was all done.

“I need to talk to him.”

“What you need is to walk your ass out of here and never even look at my husband again.” She gave me one of those up and down looks that women like her always used on women like me. “I don’t care what promises he made you or how special you think your connection was. He’s mine, and nothing’s going to change that.”

I took a slow, deliberate breath, and then let it out. “I need to speak to Jalen about his case. It’s urgent.”

“Elise.”

Jalen’s voice came from behind her and color flooded her cheeks. “I’m taking care of it, Jalen.”

“I need to talk to you about Meka.” I raised my voice so that he’d be able to hear me.

“Who’s Meka?” Elise snapped. “Some other woman you’ve been fucking? The three of you, all together? Is that what you’ve been doing?”

“Meka’s none of your fucking business, Elise.” Jalen appeared at her side. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

Damn. I didn’t like the woman but seeing how coldly he was treating her actually made me have some sympathy. At least I knew it wasn’t just me he behaved like that with.

After he helped me get the cops involved, I planned on never seeing him again. He’d get my invoice in the mail, with a request to drop the check in the mail rather than bring it to the office.

“Jalen.” Elise’s voice had taken on a whiny quality that she was far too old to be using. She was probably only a few years older than me, but I was about twenty years too old to talk like that.

“Now, Elise.”

“I need my purse before I can go.” She stormed back into the house.

“You said you’re here about Meka?” Jalen looked in my general direction, but not directly at me.

If I’d cared, I would’ve thought that he looked embarrassed.

But I didn’t care, so there was that. I didn’t care that he was wearing a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt that made him look far too good for this early in the morning. Or that just the sight of him made me remember what it had been like to have him inside me.

“I am, but if you’re busy–”

“Come inside. It’s cold out there.”

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