Page 98 of Sucker For You

“I’ve just spent a week meeting with R&D in BioPulse’s headquarters, Bella. So, yes.”

“Have you visited the satellite testing facility in Moss Landing?”

Another pause.

Static and muffled breathing. A door clicked shut.

Then: “Where. . . are you in Moss Landing right now?”

She didn’t answer that. “Are you aware of Hydromotinzate’s side effects?”

“What?”

“When you promote BioPulse’s upcoming trial at the San Francisco Medical Center, do you disclose that the ataxia medication causes brain damage in its animal test subjects?”

“Wha—how—” An inhale crackled across the connection. “How do you know. . .?”

“Do you, Chase?”

“Isabel, how did—whatdid you—”

She hung up on him.

17

Her phone remained dark on the coffee table for one minute, then five. Isabel stared at the screen or maybe nothing at all, unmoving, unthawing while the bungalow’s clock ticked. Her fingers were frigid.

Wes waited.

But no one could outlast her patience. Certainly not him. So after a quarter-hour of calcifying quiet, he cleared his throat. “How do you think that went?”

She blinked. A single audible inhale jerked her chest.

He pressed his advantage and her clawed hand. “How do you feel?”

“I. . .” She glanced down at their fingers, at his purpling nails and her own ashen knuckles. She released him. “I—I’m sorry, and. . . all right? I think.”

“Yeah?”

One finger traced his wrist, where a crescent of half-moon indentations mottled his tan. Though she grimaced, at least she didn’t apologize again. Instead, she nodded. “Thank you for being with me. By myself, I don’t know if I could’ve. . .”

“You would’ve been just fine, Buttercup. You didn’t need me here.”

She didn’t.

Isabel didn’t need him—not for this fight. She was capable and clever, and she’d trapped that asshole into an admission ofguilt (well,almostan admission) with nothing but her smart, incisive silence. Wes’s smile curdled as he massaged sensation back into his hand, however. If he was being honest, the small, shameful truth was that even though he was proud she didn’t need him or anyone else right now, because she had herself and that was more than enough. . . hewantedher to need him.

Which was fucked up.

Then again, was it wrong to want Isabel’s flinty, stormy, lovely lightning eyes to see and value him for more than his current transactional function as a visa guarantee? Not that he minded being an asset. He didn’t. Not for her. But after last night, floating in the glittering waves with her mouth slanted in a whisper of warmth and wanting against his, her body pliant in his arms?

Maybe it was all right to want that.

“That’s true,” she told him. “I didn’t need you here. But I’m glad you were.”

Maybe it was all right to smile at her like he’d swallowed the sun.

She didn’t glance away. A dimple curved in her cheek. Her lips were rosy with biting, slightly parted—and for a moment, notwithstanding what they’d learned and endured today, the world was golden.