driving her crazy. She loves it. I saw her myself this afternoon. She’s ok, I promise.”
Her eyes closed. She couldn’t keep them open. “Good. So scared. Worried.”
A light touch ruffled the hair over her forehead. “I know. I was, too.”
“Anyone know...why…did this?”
“Not yet. The TSP won’t stop until they find out. You...you rest now. You’re going to be ok. I’m not settling for anything less. Virat and Cage did a great job stitching you back up. Stay still and let your body heal.”
“I’ll do that...”
Something occurred to her then. That last shot. He’d been there. “You ok, too?”
“Yes. I’m just fine.”
“Good.” She gave him a sleepy smile as the fear slipped away. “Thanks, Jacobson. Saved me again. Starting to become a habit...”
She focused on the warmth of his hand on hers as she drifted back under the haze one more time.
23
Even though in her fifties, Jennifer Henedy had a grace about her that drew a man’s eyes. Kyle Scott leaned back in his desk chair and watched Jennifer as she stalked around the office they shared. She was more agitated than he was used to seeing her.
It was enough to pull his attention from the work he’d been focused on most of the morning.
He’d been her real estate partner and all-around assistant since he was twenty-one. It was a front at this point, but he doubted she had any idea of that.
He could do anything he chose at this point in his life. His father had offered him position after position within his own organization. It had been tempting.
His father was a very powerful man in Texas, after all.
Kyle knew there was a lot to be gained by being involved with the woman who had such close connections throughout the city. She had a relationship with the deputy mayor and had a city councilman in her pocket.
Both men had been in her bed. Off and on for years.
Kyle and Jennifer had been sleeping together off and on since he was twenty-one as well. He didn’t know who’d seduced whom. If there was anyone on the planet that he knew well, it was Jennifer.
She was his perfection—for all her faults. There wasn’t a more ideal woman out there. If she had one fatal flaw, it was her temper. Her anger would push her to make more mistakes than she realized.
He’d used that against her numerous times. Part of his enjoyment of her was the way he could manipulate her for his own needs.
“What has you so rumpled, darling?” he asked coolly. Sometimes, her temper required icy cool to diffuse. “Come on, tell me all about it.”
“What’s got me so pissed? Like you can’t figure it out! Wallace is a total moron. He’s ruined everything.”
“He has. Whereas he is sitting in prison right now, you are not. So what are your next steps?” He wouldn’t mention it to her, but he had followed every article that he could find on what her husband had done a few days ago. Information was power. Kyle had learned that lesson at his father’s knee. If nothing else, Wallace’s actions would allow Kyle another way to control the firestorm pacing next to him.
He did so love to control her.
Kyle stood and approached her. He was a tall man, thin, but strong. He placed both hands over her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Think, Jennifer. Think. What are your next steps?”
“Make the divorce public.” She pulled in a deep breath. “Or...make it out like he’s lost his mind, stay by his side, and divorce him when the fallout is over. Which is better for my image? That’s what I need to figure out.”
Everything was about her image. That was one reason why they’d never gone public with their own relationship—that and her marriage to that moron Wallace. It would not have looked good for her to have an extramarital affair, let alone with her son’s closest friend.
Image...was everything. “What has Wallace said?”
Kyle would give his left nut to know what had possessed that wimp to pick up a gun and shoot a nurse no one had ever heard of before. If the woman had died, it would have at least been interesting. They would have been able to dig into her life and find out the why. She was holding on in intensive care, he’d heard. Every source he had said the TSP was rallying around her.
Some said she had connections with the TSP—an uncle or something. It made sense. Kyle’s sources were usually pretty accurate.
He