Targeted Risk (R.I.S.C. #7) - Anna Blakely Page 0,51
near the first minute they’d met, Juliet Farrow had somehow broken through his barriers. She brought out the best of him, and Mike was defenseless against her.
And now, thanks to Ben Lopez, he’d lost her.
If he hadn’t come by with that goddamn folder, Mike would’ve had the chance to tell her himself.
You had your chance. You had a fuckton of chances. You blew this, dipshit. No one else. Now you have to try and make it right.
Staring back at her, Mike tried to explain. “Look, Jules. I know this looks bad. But if you’ll just let me—”
“Bad?” Juliet pulled her gaze from his and laughed. “Oh, this is way worse than bad. This is...” She shook her head and rose to her feet. “I can’t even find the word to describe what this is.”
“I wanted to tell you. Hell, this is what I came back in to tell you!”
“Yeah? Why, now? We’ve spent all this time together...first at your place and then here. You’ve had ample opportunity to come clean, Ja...Mike.” She raked her fingers through her long hair. “But you never said a fucking word. But then your buddy, Ben, drops this bomb in my lap, and you just happen to pick that moment to tell me the truth. Do I look that fucking stupid to you?”
“No.” He took a step forward. Juliet put out a hand and stepped backward. “Damn it, Jules. Keeping this shit from you has been killing me. I fucking hated doing it two years ago, and it’s been even harder since I found you, again.”
“I’m so sorry this has been so hard for you.”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“This is unbelievable.” She put both hands on the top of her head. “I trusted you. Actually trusted you. I slept with you, for Christ’s sake. I thought I...I told you I...”
“Love me. You do, baby. And I love you.”
“I don’t even know who you are!” She threw her hands to the side and shouted. “How the hell can I love somebody I don’t even know?”
Shit. Fuck. Shit!
“You know me, Jules. Yeah, I may have lied about my name and what I did for a living, but you know me. The important parts...the real parts. The part of me that loves you more than anything in this entire fucking world.”
“No.” Juliet shook her head sadly. “I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Mike went to her, then. He wanted so badly to take her hands in his, but knew she’d probably deck him if he tried. So he just stood there, in front of her, begging her to believe him.
“Everything about us is real.” He stared into her sad, beautiful eyes. “Everything I said about you and me...about loving you. That’s real. Always.”
“How can I possibly know that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“The truth,” she scoffed. “You’ve been lying to me from the second we met. I know nothing about you...Michael J. Bradshaw.”
His name left her lips in a sarcastic quip of anger and disgust, and Mike felt as though his entire world was imploding around him. He was drowning in a sea of deceit and lies. A sea he, himself, had created two years ago.
And there was no life raft in sight.
“What do you want to know?” He refused to let go of the dream. Of her. “Ask me anything you want, and I will tell you the God’s honest truth.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious, Juliet. It doesn’t matter what it is...good, bad, embarrassing, ugly...I’ll tell you everything.”
Her inner turmoil was a living, breathing thing. Mike knew she wanted nothing more than to tell him to go to hell and storm out. Thankfully, however, their secluded location was on his side.
It was the only thing he had going for him.
“Fine.” Juliet walked back over to the table and sat down. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my time, but sure, I’ll play along. But so help me God, if I even think you’re lying to me, I’ll walk out that door and take my chances with the fucking bears.”
If he wasn’t balls-deep in trouble with the spitfire woman, he would’ve smiled. But this was it. His one and only chance to make her understand, and there was no room for error.
Feeling as if he were in the fight of his life, Mike took a seat in the chair directly across from her. Willing to let her interrogate him for as long as it took, he rested his elbows on the table and said, “What is it you want to know?”
“Is your name really Michael Bradshaw?”
“Yes.”
“Do