Deep Blue (25 page)

“Jaeger said he had a female friend who might stop by from time to time. I’m Kate, the mother of his child.”

My jaw clenches
. Calm, must remain calm.
“Why are you using Jaeger’s credit card?”

“Oh, just ordering a few necessities.” She smiles prettily. “Jaeger told me to make myself at home.”

“That’s interesting. I would think you’d be spending less money on
necessities
and more time figuring out how to get your daughter back.”

Her brow puckers. “Oh, I am, but there’s only so much I can do. I hate this waiting around, but the court hearing isn’t for another month.”

A month! Freaking hell.

“The most important thing Jaeger and I can do is create a loving home for our daughter.”

No. Way. This has got to end. She’s using him. “Where’s Jaeger?”

“In his outhouse.”

Woodshop, dumbass.

I’m not leaving Kate in Jaeger’s office. She might decide to use his credit card to purchase a hot tub or a tropical island. “Do you think you can show me the way?” I ask sweetly. “I always forget which door to use.”

Kate smirks. She knows I’m full of shit, but she lowers her slender, mile-long legs and saunters into the living room and out the back door. We pass her fancy sports car, and I do a double take at another luxury vehicle in the drive, this one red. Who is this, now?

Kate raps on the woodshop door and walks inside, clearly having no problem barging into his private space. It pisses me off, until I see Jaeger—with another woman.

He’s sitting on the couch with a beautiful brunette standing between his legs in nothing but a bra and a short black skirt.

“Jaeger!”
Kate exclaims in a nasal, high-pitched screech.

Okay, I can be understanding—my boyfriend’s living with his ex-girlfriend—but this is taking it too far. “Sweetie, you seem to have one too many women in the house.”

Jaeger glances over, his face startled and confused. He didn’t budge when Kate yelled, as if he’s grown accustomed to tuning her out, but my comment grabs his attention. “Cali?”

The woman in front of him eases back, making no move to cover her chest. She’s in a pretty black bra with perfect abs—noticing meaningless details helps keep me from fleeing the scene in a huff of indignation. I’ve had my fill of shit, but I love Jaeger, and the expression on his face is one of shock. He’s as surprised as me, and I don’t think it’s because I walked in on him.

Jaeger stands and staggers to me. He grabs my hand, angling toward the woman. “Danielle, this is my girlfriend, Cali.”

Kate snorts beside us, her face contorted in annoyance. Jaeger doesn’t introduce her.

Danielle lifts her purse from the floor beside the couch and casually pulls out a silk tank. She turns and slips on her top as if she dresses in front of an audience every day. “I see I’ve caught you at a bad time.” She walks over and squeezes his thick bicep. I’m tempted to bite her hand like a rabid animal. “Call me later.”

I’ve gotta hand it to the woman—she’s got balls.

Jaeger watches Danielle leave, then looks at me. His eyes widen. “What? She ambushed me. I had no idea what she was up to.”

“Jaeger—” Kate screeches. I’d forgotten Kate, and at this point, I’d prefer to tune her out too. “—how can you do this? Think about our daughter!”

“Kate,” Jaeger says curtly. “Give me and Cali a moment.”

Kate slams the door on her way out and Jaeger marches to one of his worktables. He shoves tools in a drawer and bangs his fist on the table. “What the fuck!”

“Yeah-h-h,
my thoughts exactly,” I say.

He stalks over, linking our fingers. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. We’ll go to your place.”

“Wait.” I tug his arm to a stop. We will go to my place and talk, because I have a few questions for him, but first— “You can’t leave Kate alone in your house. When I arrived, she was shopping online with your credit card and claiming you as her
husband
.”

“Motherfucker,” he mumbles.

Jaeger is judicious with his expletives. He must really be pissed. After spending his day searching for Kate’s sister in Reno, then getting ambushed by a cougar and discovering he’s being ripped off by his ex-girlfriend, I guess I can understand.

We walk to the house and Jaeger flings open the back door, catching it a second before it smashes me in the face. He stalks across the living room. Kate moves around the kitchen island with a bag of cookies in her hand, tracking his progress. At the end of the hall, Jaeger pulls out a key, then closes and locks the door to his office. Her mouth drops open. She shuts it and glares at me.

I follow Jaeger into his bedroom. He pulls clothes out of drawers and a walk-in closet and stuffs them in a canvas duffel he’s yanked out from under the bed. He rummages noisily in the bathroom before returning with a leather toiletry bag he tosses in the duffel as well.

Throwing the whole thing over his shoulder, he places his hand on my lower back. “Let’s go.”

Jaeger doesn’t say a word to Kate as we pass the kitchen to the front door. She stands frozen, with a mug in her hand this time, watching us leave.

He guides me to my car. “I’ll follow you to your place,” he says.

I have questions, but I get the feeling now isn’t the time to bring them up. From the rearview mirror, I notice Jaeger talking on his cell phone.

Tyler’s still out when I get home. I plop on the couch, and Jaeger walks in a few minutes later. He drops his duffel by the front door and scrubs his face—

—and the front door swings open and bangs him in the back. Tyler peeks around the corner. “Sorry, man. Didn’t see you there.”

Jaeger sinks into the recliner, elbows on his knees, head lowered.

Tyler looks at me. “What’s up?”

He knows about Kate’s kid extortion. I fill him in on Jaeger’s failed attempt to track down Kate’s sister and what I walked in on at the woodshop.

I’ve calmed since seeing the half-naked woman between his legs. If Jaeger were any other boyfriend, I might be suspicious. But he’s totally befuddled.

Tyler flips one of the dining chairs around and sits on it backward. “Cougar, huh?”

Jaeger looks up. “I had no idea,” he says stone-faced.

I shake my head in disbelief. “What do you mean? That woman was all over you at the Blue bar.” Naked-lady-Danielle is the same woman I saw Jaeger with at Blue the night I went home with Drake.

“But—” His eyes look around as if mentally searching. “—she’s my client. I thought she was being friendly.”

“Dude,” Tyler says, “You’re kidding, right? She took her top off in your house.”

Jaeger frowns. “I figured it out by then, man. She walked
in
without her top on. Kinda obvious at that point—still stunned me, though. She managed to back me into the damn couch,” he grumbles.

Tyler and I look at each other, and Tyler snickers. If the situation weren’t so infuriating it would be funny.

Jaeger glares at Tyler. “Not funny, man. I was attacked unawares.”

“Older women,” Tyler says. “Predators, every one of them.”

“Tyler!” I exclaim. “What do you know about older women?”

He holds up his hands innocently. “What? I’m in my prime. Older women flock to virile men like me.”

I did not just hear that. “I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.”

He shrugs. “You asked.”

Jaeger groans, leans his head back, and stares at the ceiling.

I walk over and sit on his lap. “It’s okay, sweetie. You’ll just have to get used to the older ladies not looking at you as a nice young man anymore. They want to get into your pants now.”

He glares at me and I smile.

“She seemed like such a nice client,” Jaeger goes on as if he hasn’t heard anything Tyler or I have said. “She was friendly, but …”

“Oh, she was nice, all right,” Tyler says. “She would have given you a nice long blow—”

“Tyler!” I yell. “Knock it off, you jackass.”

I rub Jaeger’s shoulders and his head lolls, his eyes drooping. He’s exhausted. The cougar was startling, but not our biggest problem. “What are you going to do about Kate?”

He huffs out a breath. His muscles bunch up again, but his eyes remain closed. “I called my credit card company. Told them the situation and asked them to block those purchases. My father’s speaking to a lawyer. We’ll need to establish paternity before we move forward with custody arrangements. Kate acted like we’d live happily ever after together.” He shakes his head. “She has another agenda and fleecing me must be part of it.”

“You think she wants your money?”

I wasn’t raised to rely on a man for financial support. My mom taught us to take care of ourselves. It’s partly why I’m having issues with the career upheaval. In some ways, I’m like a guy; I need to know I’m financially capable before I feel complete.

“She wants my money, my home, whatever she can get. I’ve had Mason and Adam asking around, though Adam’s useless. He’s all bent out of shape over his breakup with Breanna.”

“They broke up?” I interrupt. “Adam treated her like crap. Why is he so upset?”

Jaeger shrugs. “That’s Adam for you. No one knows what goes on inside his head. He’s a good guy when it comes down to it.”

“Let’s get back to the part where your friends are asking about Kate,” Tyler pipes up. “What did they find out?”

“Mason says she ran off with a guy from Reno after my accident. I was in and out of rehab and pretty messed up. Didn’t keep in touch with friends or hear the news. Supposedly, the guy she’s been dating since then deals drugs on the side. Light stuff—pot, acid. He started dabbling with meth over the last year and got caught running a lab out of Sparks. He’s serving time for it.”

Unbelievable. “How does she go from you to a drug dealer?”

He raises a shoulder. “The guy was loaded. Drove a nice car. Mason heard he bought her a place. I had things going for me in high school. Once my Olympic career faded, she took off. I guess now that this guy is in prison, her funds have dried up. She needs someone to leech off and is using our connection—our
kid
… if she’s actually mine.”

I slide next to him on the chair. “She wants in your life because you’re beautiful and wealthy.”

He wraps his arm around my shoulders and smashes me to his side. “You think I’m beautiful, babe?”

I frown. “Everyone thinks you’re beautiful, including the cougars of the world.”

“Well,” Tyler says drolly, “I don’t think you’re beautiful.”

Jaeger ignores him and looks down at me. “You’re the beautiful one. I think of myself as a manly sort of guy.”

“Fine,” Tyler interrupts. “I’m the beauty. And being admired for my looks does not diminish my sense of masculinity.”

I swivel my head. “Tyler, why are you still here? I’m trying to have a private moment with my boyfriend.”

He stands and shoves the chair back in place, narrowing a look at Jaeger. “Just don’t make it too private.” Jaeger glares right back. My man is not having a good day. Tyler had better not push it. Tyler digs in his jeans pocket and pulls out his keys. “I gotta run another errand anyway. See you in a bit.”

He leaves and Jaeger stands, pulling me up with him. “I have something in the back of my truck I want to show you.”

Outside, Jaeger grabs two large boxes from his truck bed—one long, the other wide and flat.

I stare at the packaging. “You bought camping gear?”

“If I’m going to stay with you, I need a place to sleep. Your couch is nice, but I’m not looking forward to my knees dangling off the end again tonight.” He holds up the king-sized, pillow-top air mattress. “This way, we can sleep together.” His grin is highly suggestive.

I like where his head is, but I eye the box skeptically. “Where exactly are we putting it?”

He hoists the boxes on to his shoulder, grabs my hand, and walks to the gate. “Your backyard.”

“Uhh, did you learn nothing from our game of catch at the beach? I’m not sportsy, remember? That includes camping.”

Okay, there’s no technique required in camping. I’m just not a fan of cold and rough sleeping arrangements.

He drops the boxes on the cement patio outside the back door. “You go hiking. You can’t be that opposed to the outdoors.”

Foiled by my own actions. I grumble and he grins at me.

Jaeger rips open the tent box, an act that would have taken me thirty minutes with the help of a large screwdriver and scissors. His muscles and large paws are a huge turn-on. I follow those clever hands as he sorts and puts together the tent.

“I bought one with a skylight.” He glances up and smiles. “We can look at the trees and stars at night.”

I’m sort of following what he’s saying, nodding in agreement. But mostly I’m thinking about that tent and how see-through it is. It looks pretty opaque. It’s definitely not soundproof. We’ll have to be quiet …

This could work.

I grab the mattress box and hand it to Jaeger to open. He tears it apart and I smile happily, admiring the muscles flexing through his jeans as he bends and builds our home with his bare hands.

He glances up and sees me watching. Instead of scolding me for the dirty thoughts that must be evident on my face, his jaw clenches and he works faster.

I love this man.

Our tent is the size of a motorhome. Then again, Jaeger is too. Unfortunately for my housemates, the patio has been compromised. Our giant tent-home takes up the length of the cement pad.

I’m lying on the mattress, which is surprisingly comfortable and mattress-like, staring at the stars through the skylight. Jaeger crouches his way in and zips the tent closed. I can stand without having to bend, but that does not apply to overgrown men.

He removes his shirt, and my mind goes blank.

I sit up abruptly. “Wait. We have to talk,” I say, but I’m staring at his chest, my gaze trailing to his eight-pack and the waistband of his jeans. I force it up, only to find him smiling knowingly.

I plaster a somber expression on my face. “Don’t think it’s okay for half-naked women to show up at your place, because it’s not.” There,
I
told him.

He sits next to me, and I’d like to say the indentation of the air mattress is why I fall into him, but I think it’s all me. Damn. Being a hardass girlfriend is more challenging than it looks. It’s a good thing Jaeger’s a good guy.