Page 51 of Beg for You

We’d trusted each other.

Yes, I had my grandmother.

But even though she and Chris meant the world to me, the two people in my life I would have done anything for, I still held something back from both of them.

Even Ted didn’t know the pain I carried inside me, the guilt.

Would I ever have someone in my life who I could trust with every part of me?

Thick tattooed arms flashed through my mind, vicious scars, a sensual mouth. That rough voice commanding me to touch myself, make myself come.

Of Cal standing over me, thick fingers wrapped around his arousal, his abdominal muscles flexing and twitching while he stroked his thick length. The way his eyes had blazed when they locked on me, on my body, like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

He hadn’t even touched me, had been five steps away, but I’d felt his hands, his mouth sliding over my skin, his words like his lips were pressed against my ear.

Afterward, he got me to lie back on my side and he’d carried on painting me. I’d fallen asleep, and when I woke, I was in his apartment alone. I’d wandered downstairs. Dane had been at the counter, and the look in his eyes when he saw me was intense, impossible to read. After he told me Cal was in his workroom with a client, I’d left.

I’d slept most of the day away, and as much as I didn’t want to come to this schmooze fest, I’d had no choice. My father and Spencer were getting impatient with me, with my avoidance. My father’s situation was becoming critical—well, that’s what he kept telling me when he left messages and texts.

I still didn’t know how he could even contemplate forcing me to make this kind of decision. I’d tried desperately to come up with a solution, but raising the kind of money I needed seemed impossible. This morning I’d had two more rejections from investors I’d approached. My family was a bad bet, and apparently, everyone knew it.

Either I married a man I didn’t love, or I lost the only family I had left.

I disappointed my father.

I failed him again.

Could I do that?

God, could I hurt my grandmother like that? Tear down her world and leave her anchorless. Watch her lose everything she loved.

A shiver wracked through me so strong I nearly dropped my glass of champagne.

A hand landed on my back. “Easy there, sweetheart.”

My head shot around, and my gaze collided with Spencer’s.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” Not a question.

I had most definitely been avoiding him.

But now he was standing right beside me, I knew avoiding my current nightmare was over. I had to play this carefully, though. Angering him would not be good for me or my father. I took a sip of my drink, needing time to gather my thoughts. “I needed time alone to think.”

His fingers walked across my back, curling around my waist, and he gave me a squeeze. “I understand that, it’s a big decision, but I’m getting impatient, Cassandra.”

“Spencer—”

“I thought tonight we’d take a step in the right direction.”

I tried to move out of his hold, but he tugged me closer. “What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

He started walking, taking me with him. “If we’re going to announce our engagement soon, we need to be seen together more. People need to see us as a couple for this to be believable.”

“I’m not…we can’t—”

“John, so good to see you,” Spencer said, pulling me into a tight circle of people. Friends of my father, ranch owners and associates that Spencer was desperately trying to win over. His father was not a nice man, and over the years he’d severed many relationships with his ruthless and often underhanded business tactics.

These men were from old influential families in Springhaven, from ranches that had been around for decades, like my father’s. They stuck together, and all Spencer’s efforts to wheedle his way in, to use them to advance his own agenda, had failed.