Page 49 of Fighting for Scarlett

The sense of desolation Tate felt knowing that Scarlett had just slipped outside of his reach came as a shock.

If he’d wanted her, he could have had her, but he’d made his choices, decided that risking falling in love was too great a chance to take, and taken the easy way out, pushed her away before he could develop feelings. He’d been ruthless in how he’d gone about it because he’d panicked at the strength of his feelings after just one night.

Coward.

There was no other way to describe his behavior.

Now, even if he changed his mind, he’d lost his chance with her.

Lost it as soon as he’d accused her of bringing Raul’s men to his front door.

The sting on his cheek from where her palm had connected ran deeper than surface level. Not in a physical sense, she hadn't inflicted any injury, no broken bone, not even any bruising, if there was even a red mark at all it would quickly fade. But the sting of knowing that he’d hurt her, pushed her too far away from him to ever get her back, that would leave a lasting mark.

What could have been now never would.

Taking a step away from him, Scarlett pulled her cell phone from a small pocket in the side of her leggings. He hadn't even realized she had it on her. When he thought about it, he recalled her having her cell in her hand when she crept out of her house, but so much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that it had slipped his mind. He’d been preoccupied with the idea of Scarlett taking a bullet for him to think of anything else.

Rookie mistake.

Scarlett hadn't been alone while in his house other than one short trip to the bathroom, she hadn't made a phone call, and while she could have sent a text with the phone on silent so he didn't hear the tapping of keys, there was another much more likely scenario.

The cell phone was bugged.

It would explain why Raul’s men knew when she was back home and then knew she was at his place. She was being tracked.

Since her cell phone had been left behind when she was kidnapped, he didn't think Raul’s men had a chance to put the tracker in her phone.

Which meant …

Maybe somebody at Prey was setting Scarlett up.

They might have access to her phone, and they’d know about the drug. Was it possible she really had been kidnapped and someone else had set up the email trail in case she was found so nobody would be looking at them?

Was it possible that someone was one of her teammates?

Who else would know enough about both Scarlett and the drug and have access to her cell phone?

She wasn’t supposed to be found. She was supposed to have died in Raul’s remote jungle home, never to be seen or heard from again. That would leave the true traitor in the clear and make sure suspicion never landed on them.

“No,” he said, knocking the phone from Scarlett’s hand when she tried to make a call. If the phone was compromised, he had to destroy it. Then he was going to have to keep Scarlett someplace safe, away from Prey, while he figured this out. He needed input from someone who wasn’t messed up when it came to this woman. Someone who could think clearly and logically when she was around because those were things he absolutely couldn’t do. If that didn't tell him everything he needed to know about his feelings for her then nothing else ever would.

“What are you doing?” Scarlett growled, giving him the most adorable little death glare he’d ever seen.

Fighting a smile—he didn't think Scarlett would appreciate him thinking she was cute when she was clearly furious with him—he lifted a foot and slammed it down onto the phone which had landed at their feet.

“Are you crazy? Do you think I was going to call Raul right in front of you? Newsflash, Tate, I don’t have his number because we’re not buddies,” Scarlett snapped.

“I think your phone is bugged,” he explained.

That took a little of the wind out of her sails. “Oh. I mean, I never thought of that, but it makes sense. Why did you think of it?” she asked, suspicion raging in her huge doe eyes. “After all, you already have a convenient target standing right in front of you. I'm the epicenter of all that is evil, aren't I?” she taunted.

Was he ready to set aside all hints that she was guilty, even if it was because she had been coerced, and fully embrace the notion that she had been innocent all along?

Was he ready to set aside the evidence against Scarlett and look at it from a different perspective?

Was he ready to allow his gut to lead him rather than constantly trying to override it with what he thought was sensible logic but was really just his guilt over getting his father thrown in jail?

Was he ready to trust the woman whom he suspected if he let her have the power to wriggle beneath his defenses and lodge herself in his heart, a place he wanted to protect from love at all costs?

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