Page 63 of Bossy Trouble

Rage filled me up to the brim.

“As I said, Donovan doesn’t give two shits about you,” Alexander continued. “So you might as well stop protecting him.”

“I’m not protecting him,” I said because I wasn’t willing to ruin Donovan despite everything Alexander just showed me. “I wouldn’t do that, especially after…everything. I’m just being honest.”

“Your daughter is five years old,” Alexander said suddenly. “Correct?”

My heart went cold. “What does my daughter have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing. I just found her age curious. Didn’t you end your fling with Donovan five years ago?” Alexander cocked his head at me, feigning confusion. “I wonder why he doesn’t know he’s her father.”

Ice-cold feelings of dread washed over my entire body, and goosebumps broke out. “Leave my daughter out of it.” My voice trembled.

“Get me the information I need,” he said. “You have exactly one week.”

24

DONOVAN

Icouldn’t stop the panic that was reverberating through my body.

Ever since Georgia left, I hadn’t been able to get much done. Instead, my mind kept replaying her words again and again.

As you were walking to your office, he turned and looked back at me. I don’t know why, but I got an eerie feeling from it.

Damn it. I’d been so careful not to touch her or indicate that she meant anything to me. The minute I saw him standing there, I didn’t even glance at her for fear that he would somehow know she was someone in my life—someone important.

Georgia had always been someone important in my life, but I was only just realizing how much. In the past few weeks, she’d crept under my skin like a virus, and both she and her daughter had firmly lodged their way in a small box of people titled, ‘Those I will kill and die for.’ I hadn’t meant for my relationship with Georgia to be more than casual, but somehow, I knew it would get to this point. We had far too much history and chemistry for it not to.

Love?

Nah. I didn’t think that was it.

In my experience, love was something sappy that turned men into complete idiots. It was why I avoided the emotion like a damn plague. If I loved Georgia, I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything but her and would be buying her flowers all day, taking her to dinner, and doing all the other shit men in love did. I would be jealous whenever another man breathed in her direction, and every step I took would be designed to make her happy.

But I wasn’t doing any of that. Which meant what I was feeling wasn’t love.

But I cared about her a whole lot, and I didn’t want her to get involved in this shit. Which meant that I had to protect her.

I made the call instantly.

“What do you want, you bastard?” answered a grumpy voice at the other end of the line.

“Nice to talk to you again, too,” I greeted. “Listen, Cole. I need your help.”

“And why on earth would I help you?”

I sighed. “You’re not still mad about Vegas, are you?” The man could certainly hold a grudge.

“Of course I’m mad,” he grouched. “My wife was pissed. She refused to speak to me for three days.”

“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t have made the bet,” I said, recalling the incident with amusement. A very drunk Cole had dared me to volunteer for the karaoke and serenade the pretty girl at the bar. I’d done it with ease, but in return, I dared him to dance the hokey pokey with his shirt off, much to the entire bar’s amusement. One of the strippers enjoyed the show so much that she came over to join him. Someone took a picture of it, and soon, it spread over the internet. “Besides, I helped you do damage control, didn’t I?” I’d called in a few favors from some media execs I knew to shut down the story, so it only trended for a day and wasn’t aired.

“Still,” Cole said grouchily before sighing. “What do you want?’

“What else?” Cole was an old friend from college. He was also a former military, and he owned one of the best security agencies in the country. “I need three of your best men for security.”

“Is this for an event?”

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