“I figured it would be a great way for me to process all this danger I’m supposedly in from K Diamond, who I still haven’t seen or heard from. But whatever, I guess I’m just waiting around for you to take the L.”
Take the L…American slang for admitting to a loss.
Han ground his teeth. This wasn’t the first insinuation she’d made about the K Diamond threat not being real since she’d walked back through the door after getting all of her things as commanded. And she wasn’t wrong.
As concerned as Victor and Phantom had been for him, Han had gone about the business of completing the Golden Circle deal—now sans his useless partner without hearing a peep from the 24K Dragon’s son.
But he disliked that she honestly thought he was keeping her for reasons that had more to do with sex and pride than her safety and his secret plan to take over K Diamond’s undeserved territories. And he really despised that he once again had to explain to her something that was basic common sense for most house guests. “No morning karaoke.”
“Oh,” she said. Her shoulders deflated with almost comical disappointment as if they hadn’t had some version of this same conversation the last twelve mornings in a row. Then she had the temerity to put on an innocent tone as she asked, “Is that an order?”
Han had managed to hold on to his temper until now. But thirteen days of being woken up from a sound sleep….
“Yes, that’s an order!” he answered, his voice hard and commanding. “No more making noise of any kind before I wake up. That’s an order. No more acting as if you’re not doing this on purpose when I am only trying to protect you. That’s an order!”
She stood there quietly as he ranted, but a slight flaring of her eyes let Han know his words were hitting home.
“Copy that,” she said quietly before leaving for her surf class.
And even though she’d gone out of her way to rile him to that point, guilt stirred uneasy in Han’s stomach as he watched her go. But then he thought of his brother Victor back home, embittered and driven nearly crazy by one woman.
If he’d hurt Jasmine’s feelings, annoyed her…good. She finally understood she could not continue to cross him. He’d taught her a lesson, and there was no reason to feel guilty about that.
And the lesson worked.
Han discovered that the following afternoon when he woke up—naturally and in a quiet apartment.
He smiled triumphantly before getting out of bed and padding out to the kitchen, where he made his own breakfast as opposed to texting one of his men. Over the past couple of weeks, he might have fallen into the habit of pilfering one of the homemade mixed bags of fruit Jasmine kept in the freezer to make smoothies.
He had to admit they weren’t half bad. She used tropical fruits he wouldn’t have thought of in her mixes, like papaya, mango, and pineapple—drop in some protein powder and pour some of the fresh coconut water she kept in the fridge on top, and it made for a delicious breakfast replacement.
Anyway, after drinking down his smoothie, he was delighted to go down to the gym—at his usual time, not early because that pretty lunatic had woken him up, and he couldn’t get back to sleep. He even whistled a little ditty as he rode down to the gym in the elevator. And so what if it was “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, the same song Jasmine had woken him up to the day before?
The point of the matter was he had won the war with his house guest. Her scourge of noise had ended, and now he could exercise when he wanted to without a headache pounding in the back of his head because he hadn’t gotten enough sleep—
He stopped inside the gym door when he saw both Chen and Yaron working out, even though Chen was supposed to be with Jasmine at all times.
“Hey, Boss,” Chen called out with his usual good cheer. Yaron simply nodded.
“Where’s Jasmine?” Han demanded without returning the greeting.
Chen paused at the top of his bicep curl. “She said she didn’t need me to drive her anywhere today, so I figured she was still upstairs with you.”
Yes, perhaps she was upstairs in her room. That made sense and explained why he hadn’t heard her moving around this morning. Maybe she’d finally decided to sleep in too.
But a bad feeling came over Han, one that wouldn’t allow him to simply get on with his workout.
A few minutes after his conversation with Chen, he burst through the door of his penthouse and went straight to her room. There he found a note on her pillow:
Job interview. Guard bad look. Back around 2!”
Han read and re-read the note, growing angrier each time. She hadn’t learned her lesson. She had chosen instead to defy him openly. He seethed, then…
