Page 47 of Disciplining Dana

Dana gave him her best look of contrition. “I’m very sorry, sir. You’re right, I didn’t wait for your permission as we agreed. But please understand, I needed to get in there, and I couldn’t run the risk they wouldn’t let me. I owed it to my employers—and also to you—to make every effort I could to confirm what I suspected. To get the results everyone has come to rely on me for, and to prove to you I was right.”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” he snorted. “The hell you couldn’t have waited. People may’ve given you a long lead in the past to drag them around by the nose, but I’m not one of them. When you’re on my property, you follow my rules.”

“I understand, sir, but as Kurt will verify, I’m really not good at that.”

“I don’t need Mr. Ellery to explain to me what you’ve made abundantly clear. But not following rules or respecting other people’s boundaries is what’s going to get you arrested and have your boss trying to explain why one of his employees trespassed into my mine and nearly got herself killed.”

“I really don’t think it needs to come to that, Mr. Hawkins,” Dana implored. “If you’ll let me explain what I found?—”

Mr. Hawkins made a curt, dismissive gesture. “I really don’t give a damn what you found. I run a very respectable, very well-established, very profitable business that I’m proud of. Now, I know your passion is all those pretty little rocks your boss loves sending you out to discover, but me… I couldn’t care less.”

Dana stiffened. “This isn’t about ‘pretty little rocks,’ Mr. Hawkins. These are some of the most valuable?—”

“Let me guess,” a voice challenged her.

Dana snapped her head toward the voice, her eyes going wide with surprise. She’d not expected the person who’d just spoken—Jagger—to have anything to say about what was going on here tonight. She’d assumed his presence was as a security guard or something of that nature. Whatever his capacity, though, he clearly felt himself in a strong enough position to comment, which made what he said next even more shocking.

“You didn’t come here looking for sapphires, did you? You came here searching for rare earth metals.”

Dana gasped.

What the fuck?

“How did you know?”

“Let’s just say you’re not the first,” Jagger answered curtly.

Dana swallowed, words escaping her for a second. This… this wasn’t anything she’d expected, at all. However, she couldn’t let this man or Mr. Hawkins gain the initiative here, because she needed to get this situation back under control. Her control.

“Okay,” she drove on, waving her hand as if to diminish what he’d just said, “so, if you know that, then you must know they are some of the most difficult minerals on Earth to find, and the money they’re worth is?—”

“I. Don’t. Care,” Derek shot back in a clipped tone, his eyes blazing cold. “I’m not sure how I can make that any clearer, Ms. Aziz. I have what I want in life. I’m not interested in get-rich-quick schemes. The sapphire mine serves the exact purpose I need it to, just the way it is.”

Dana swallowed. Mr. Hawkins wasn’t falling for her plan as easily as she’d hoped, and the presence of the other man was disconcerting. She was going to need to regroup. “Okay, fine, I understand,” she said in a calm, placating tone, “but what I did, I did on my own. None of this is Mr. Ellery’s fault. He had no idea what I was doing.”

Mr. Hawkins turned his gaze to Kurt. “Is that true? You didn’t have any idea what Ms. Aziz was planning?”

Kurt blew out a sigh. “When I couldn’t find Dana, I had a pretty good idea what she was up to. I’d hoped I was wrong, but when Roman said she’d come into the gift shop, and he hadn’t seen her leave… my gut told me what I was going to find.” He glanced at Dana, then shrugged. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t know because Dana and I are partners, and I should’ve done more to stop her.”

Mr. Hawkins drummed his fingers on his desktop for a moment before addressing Kurt. “I like to think myself a pretty good judge of character, so I don’t think I’m far off the mark when I say this isn’t the first time something like this has happened before, is it?”

“Maybe not the first, no,” Kurt replied expressionlessly.

“And have you ever had any luck stopping her in the past?”

“No… but that still doesn’t matter.”

Mr. Hawkins brushed the answer away. “But you’d like it if you could, wouldn’t you?”

There was a short pause that seemed to stretch far longer than it did.

“Yes.”

“What?” Dana snapped her head around. “Kurt… why? You know what I’m capable of, what I’ve done, the things I’ve”—she stumbled, the word tumbling out before she could catch herself—“we’ve accomplished!”

It didn’t work. He caught her mistake, rolling his eyes even as she tried to correct it.

Fuck.

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