When I wasn’t teaching, I was marketing—talking to hotels, handing out postcards in Waikiki, tacking flyers to electric poles—whatever it took to get more clients.
I even contacted Brad’s father and ate all the crow before asking if I could teach at the summer camp he ran up on the North Shore.
I worked as hard as I could and squeezed in sleep, not when I needed it, but whenever I had a chance.
Which is why I didn’t appreciate it when the doorbell rang just as I was settling in for a midday nap. Mom had just taken Dad to the physical therapist on her day off, so it was on me to answer it.
But my irritation turned into shock when I opened the door.
Han was standing on my parent’s front porch, his expression grave.
“Something happened,” he told me before I could ask what the hell he was doing here. “We’ve had a falling out with the 24K. And you’re going to have to come with me.”
15
HAN
She was here. Here in his space. It had been years since Han invited a woman into his private abode. And he had never asked one to stay for more than a couple of hours.
As he watched Jasmine move around his penthouse, he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. He still couldn’t believe it was over—his obligation to Kuang. The mission to kill Mika Hayes. His old plan to simply complete the Golden Circle deal and return to Rhode Island.
This new plan was much riskier, dangerous for reasons that went beyond Kuang Jr.—whose territories he’d decided to claim for The Silent Triad now that they were no longer a valued business partner of the 24K.
That was why he’d invited the bomb into his house. Both to bait Kuang Jr. and to keep the snakehead from making a move on her now that his dad had fallen out with The Silent Triad. She was a key piece in this chess game he’d decided to play with the 24K Dragon’s oldest son. That was the only reason he’d risked bringing her here after what happened between them on Valentine’s night. The only reason.
Still, Han couldn’t quite get over it. Jasmine was here. Here. Walking around the main room of his open-plan penthouse and stopping in front of the glass doors that led to a lanai with a private swimming pool.
He tracked her every move inside his domain, feeling much like a lion who’d invited a doe into his cave without expectation of dinner.
“How long am I supposed to stay here?” the doe asked after she was done with her self-guided tour. “A couple of days? A week?”
Victor and Phantom had demanded to know the same thing when Han called to tell him that he wouldn’t be decamping from Hawaii, even though Victor had made an enemy of Kuang by calling off his engagement with the 24K’s daughter. He answered her the same as he answered them, “Into the foreseeable future.”
“Into the fore…” Jasmine let out a sound of disbelief. Then she narrowed her eyes at him. “Dude, if you wanted to fuck me again, you could have just gotten the ‘no freaking way’ back at my house. All these dramatics aren’t necessary.”
Han pressed his lips together to keep himself from immediately responding. Not just because she’d insulted him with her accusation, but also because she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Jasmine had become a problematic snag in the back of his head over the last couple of months. The sex hadn’t worked. Hadn’t made him want her any less or—how had she put it? Unclogged his drain. That she had guessed that so easily made the blood simmer in his veins.
Inside he fumed, but outside he insisted, “I am keeping you here for your safety.”
He sliced a hand toward the open door of the second bedroom. “You will be sleeping in there. My room is on the other side of the condo.”
She glanced toward the room he’d indicated, and panic flashed in her eyes, letting Han know that she was beginning to take him seriously. “I can’t stay here. I have to help my mom with my father….”
“A nurse can be arranged for your father,” he answered before she could trot out that excuse.
“I don’t want a nurse to help him. That’s my job, the whole reason I came back here. Plus, I have to work. I can’t pay you back and get out of this messed-up situation if I can’t work.”
Han stilled. She’d genuinely meant what she’d said about paying him back? He’d thought that had been her pride speaking. Women had said much worst to him after he told him they had to go—only to happily agree to see him again on the rare occasion that he texted them twice.
Jasmine, it appeared, was not one of those women.
