Page 116 of Sucker For You

“—they threatened to pull my financing. Unless I could—”

“Control me.”

“I didn’t say that. But, babe. . .” With a visible effort, Chase abruptly and mechanically softened.Repulsive. He tried to take her hands, tried to wheedle her into complaisance and compliance with smiling lies, but she’d seen through the cracks in his mask. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. She’d known that already. No, he didn’t evenlikeher. “Babe, I know you want to do the right thing. Maybe you got confused and you weren’t thinking, but you want to do the right thing for us.”

Again:right?

She stared back at him, and her lips trembled. Not with anxiety or pain or anger, though.Laughter. What a stupid thing to say! There had never been anus. Bright bubbles surged in her throat.

“No. You want me to do the right thing foryou. Because I’m an asset. I’m attractive and captive proof of the efficacy of BioPulse’s medication. I’m valuable marketing material for them. For you, too.”

With her on his arm, Chase had been marketing himself—hisstatus—as much as the BioPulse drugs. Hadn’t he?

“Forus! You know you don’t want to—”

“—make waves?” Her laughter foamed higher, hotter. Wes would have laughed with her. He would have made the same joke. “I don’t want to rock the boat? Is that what you think?”

“I—”

“You have no idea what I want, Chase.”

Partly because she’d never told him. Partly because he’d never cared.

He’d been no more concerned with her well-being than BioPulse Pharmaceuticals was with its cephalopods.

Asset, subject, profit.

Her smile was incandescent. “You don’t know, because I nevertold you. That’s my fault. But I’ll tell you now:I want to do exactly what I’m doing. I want to make waves. To be a problem, when that’s what is needed. I don’t want to stop. I won’t.”

Chase’s fingers contracted around his glass. His voice darkened with warning. “Bella—”

“No.”

Whether he did or didn’t have the influence with BioPulse Pharmaceuticals to abort its cephalopod experiments—and given how fast the company had turned on him, she was evidently more of a problem than he was a benefit—at least the Moss Landing octopuses would soon be safe in the hands of federal agents and MORI staff. If Wes could prove that the corporation’s satellite location was emptying its waste into the bay, regulators might even shut the facility down. The cannery would be left to its ghosts and the sea.

Yes, Isabel smiled while she defied Chase.

“Fine. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re forcing my hand.” Above the guttering candle, Chase’s lips barely moved. “If you don’t stop, I’ll remove you from the Ceretobicin trial. I’ll strike you from the roster. No more migraine medication. Do you want to go back to that? To how things were before? I don’t think so.”

Finally, he was right: she didn’t want to go back.

She didn’t want that life again.

Pain, fear, guilt.

Once, his threat might have scared her. Not now. Not when her mind and her conscience were clear. She told him, “You’re right. I don’t want that. But it doesn’t matter. Because BioPulse doesn’t administer Ceretobicin’s Phase Three clinical trial. UCSF Medical Center does. I expect the hospital will be interested to hear that you’ve threatened a patient,Dr. Meyer.”

“No. You wouldn’t—” His voice rose again, cracked.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know me. And you’re making a scene.” She stood.Ring, wine, calm. She moved away from the booth and from him, toward the restaurant’s balcony.

“Don’t walk away from me—”

A salty evening wind whipped her skirt around her calves, and Atlas’s exterior doors snapped closed behind them; Chase had followed her onto the deck. Elbowing past a catering tray, a heat lamp, and through a group of women toasting a promotion, he came after her to the railing. She studied spindrift floating off the white-capped pulses of surf that frothed below the balcony planks, and watched the beam of a buoy as it illuminated her wine glass with the last glimmers of sunset. She ignored conversations humming at the outdoor bar with its gaudy string lights and upbeat music—and she didn’t turn.

“If you don’t act nice, I’ll call off the wedding.”

“Good.”