Page 94 of Regret

“Why?” she asked softly without looking at him.

“Scar, the only way to make sure he doesn’t ever find you is if we—if I—find him first.”

“I don’t want you to go looking for him, Hunter.”

“I know. But it’s the only way. Trust me.”

Scarlet turned around and basically dropped a bowl of cereal in front of him. “Why now? Why didn’t you look into his background when you accepted the job in finding his long lost cousin?”

Hunter leaned back in the chair. “I did. All I found was info on his Marine career. Nothing else. Nothing about his family—your family. It was like this guy didn’t exist apart from being a Marine.”

“And you didn’t think that was suspicious at all?”

“No, I didn’t. A lot of high class clients pay a lot of money to keep their lives a secret. It wasn’t my job to dissect this asshole’s past back then, Scar.”

“Of course it wasn’t. Your job was to find me and take me back to myloving cousin, wasn’t it?” She slanted her head to the side, long dark hair falling over her shoulder, blue eyes burning with anger…fear.

Hunter moved the laptop aside and leaned over the counter on his elbows. “Yes. That was my job. And you know what? I’m fucking glad I did. I don’t regret finding you for a second.”

The palpable atmosphere was so intense he could feel it inside his bones. Scarlet didn’t move, her eyes locked on his. There was no predicting what her next move would be—to kiss him or punch him in the face. But it was neither.

Leaving her bowl of cereal on the counter, she turned her back on him and walked out to the deck.

He wanted to go after her, but decided to give her some time alone. A lot had happened during the last few days which she obviously needed to deal with—him too.

A part of him understood why she didn’t want to go looking for Brent, but Hunter knew the only way to get rid of a problem was by facing it head on and dealing with it once and for all. And the fact that he wanted to punish the asshole in the most unimaginable ways had nothing to with it—at all.

That sixth sense Hunter seemed to have ninety-nine percent of the time was urging—no, begging—him to dig deeper. Somehow, Hunter didn’t believe Brent wanting to protect his inheritance was the only reason the fucker spent years searching for her. And the guy whose face he almost squashed into the pavement that night at the club, Blow Me, his words stuck like glue in Hunter’s head,

“All I know is that he’s been searching for her for years and not a day goes by that he doesn’t stare at this one picture he has of her. It’s fucking creepy.”

Why would he be staring at a picture of Scarlet every damn day? Something just didn’t add up. And whenever Hunter wasn’t able to make sense of something, he made it his life’s mission to figure it out. But now that he had a personal interest in this, the need to get to the bottom of it all just skyrocketed. He needed to find this son of a bitch, and he needed to find him now.

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