Page 109 of Rescued Heart

Nathan shrugged. “Guess your parents really don’t need you to save their house from foreclosure. What about your sister’s wedding?—”

“How did?—”

“Then there’s the youth center and your little firefighter.”

The evil man. Why hadn’t she seen it at the very beginning? Because she’d been looking for love in the wrong things.

Lord, I can’t fix this.

Nathan leaned toward her. “Like I said, I do my homework. One lie and you get everything you want. Even me.”

“You’re a monster.”

“But a rich one.”

She shifted her gaze off Nathan’s gleeful expression to catch a familiar building as it flashed by the window. Then a giant rooster yard sign by the road.

That couldn’t be right.

She looked out the back glass. A blue gas station with a diner attached to it. The same place where she’d stopped for directions and to change before the mayor’s fundraiser. The place with the best peach turnovers.

“Aren’t we going downtown to eat? Or are we not going to a restaurant at all?”

“Changing the subject is never going to work. Make the deal with me so we can have a nice fake dinner with Leo and Carter. Isn’t your costar supposed to be your newest beau, based on your contract? I can let him have a few months with you if he pays up what he owes.”

Her eyes snapped to her ex while her pulse hammered in her temple. She narrowed her eyes. “Carter said he owed the Duke…You’re the Duke? You had Carter attacked?”

“Sweetheart, if you’re struggling with one lie, you don’t want me to tell you the truth about the Duke or what happened to Carter. You’ll find yourself in an entire ocean of lies you can’t get back to shore from.”

So hewasn’tthe boss? “Is that what happened to you? You met the Duke, and now you’re in too deep?”

He popped a mint in his mouth from another smaller golden metal container. “Life isn’t a movie, Lady B.”

“How many times must I tell people that I know that?”

His gaze flicked to the window. “This doesn’t look like any downtown. Not that this city is anything close to the class it needs to be for the resort. But in time, it could work.”

Her mind started to click off the details. “The Duke is trying to get that upscale resort here too. But why here?”

The smug expression dropped from Nathan’s face before he lifted her phone and looked at the time. He thumped his knuckles on the glass. “You need to check your GPS. If we’re late, your pay will be docked.”

Bianca snagged her phone from him. “Be nice to Justin. He was supposed to be off duty.”

The limo took a sharp turn. She bumped over into Nathan.

He snaked his arm around her. “If you missed me that much, all you had to do was say so.”

She slapped his hand and pressed her hip against the opposite side of the seat.

The tires bounced all the way into the woods along a dirt path sprinkled with gravel.

Nathan banged on the window between them and Justin again. “You couldn’t have found a more suitable place to turn around?”

Bianca picked up the phone that connected to Justin’s Bluetooth. But there was no dial tone.

She held the handset toward Nathan. “Something’s not right.”

“What?” Nathan barked.

---